In Yesterdays livethread the community here showed just how awesome we are. So many good articles, videos and audio were provided by many, many posters.
twiggs diary about how the U.S. is going to charge Assange with spying. All in vain folks. They can't. How stupid of our government.....
Thanks to everyone who took part. It really is cool to see people come together and share with others. Again, thank you all.
Here are the basic links:
Official Wikileaks cable viewer
Unofficial Wikileaks information resource
Fun search tool for the cables
Once again, I can't rec this video enough. It's about 22mins long and well worth it. Again, here is the exchange that I think is VERY important:
When the host asks Baruch Weiss, a former U.S. Government lawyer,
if leaking classified information is a crime in the United States, he says:
"I'm going to say it twice because noone will believe me the first time, but the answer is usually no. No.
There is no statute on the books in the United States that says 'Thou shalt not leak classified information.' There is no statute of that sort. Congress tried to pass one during the Clinton administration and Clinton Vetoed it and for a very good reason. And the good reason is, that in the United States there is a huge over-classification problem. There is a huge amount of material that should not be classified that is."
Libeblogs:
Guardian
The Nation
NYTimes
The Guardians overview/portal page
Some videos:
Wikileaks documentary
Grit TV interviews Ann Wright who is a former United States Army colonel and retired official of the U.S. State Department, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She is most noted for having been one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Go ahead and watch.
Here is an interview of Noam Chomsky by Amy Goodman.
Colbert interviews Ellsberg about Wikileaks!!
Really, watch Stephen. Great stuff.
Rapnews with a little Assange thrown in
7 part video of Wikileaks describing what they do. I consider this a must watch.
Interview with Assange from July 2010 on TED.
Put on your reading glasses:
!!Members of Wikileaks set to start rival site called Openleaks.
Several key members involved with online whistleblower WikiLeaks are said to be deserting beleaguered founder Julian Assange to form their own rival site, Openleaks, reportedly expected to launch Monday.
According to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the new site will be called "Openleaks," and like its predecessor, will allow whistleblowers to leak information to the public anonymously. However, the new site will differ in that it won't be responsible for hosting the information itself directly for the public eye, but will instead act as an intermediary between whistleblowers and media organizations.
Glenn Greenwald
Bradblog
Julian Assange
Why do cables matter?
Raw story interviews Wendell Potter
Put your earplugs in:
Brad interviews Ellsberg
And as always, donate to Wikileaks
Ok folks, I will add as the day goes on but that does not rid you of your job! Gimme gimme gimme some info please!
Naomi Wolf at Huffingtonpost writes an amazing article that you need to read right now!!!:
The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.
She ends withs this:
Those calling for Julian Assange's criminalization include:
- Rep. Candice Miller
- Jonah Goldberg, Journalist
- Christian Whiton, Journalist
- Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Journalist
- Sarah Palin, Member of the Republican Party, former candidate
- Mike Huckabee, Politician
- Prof. Tom Flanagan
- Rep. Peter King
- Tony Shaffer
- Rick Santorum
- Rep. Dan Lugren
- Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Journalist The Washington Times
- Rep. Virginia Foxx
- Sen. Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
- Sen. Joe Liberman
- Sen. Charles Schumer
- Marc Thiessen, Columnist
Ok folks. Near v. Minnesota
Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment). Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called Near the Court's "first great press case."[1]
It was later a key precedent in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), in which the Court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.
New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.
President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press under the First Amendment was subordinate to a claimed Executive need to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment did protect the New York Times' right to print said materials.
