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+--- Thread: Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive (/thread-5039.html)
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 25-02-2011
PayPal just froze the account of the Bradley Manning Support Network, a group raising funds for the legal defense of alleged Wikileaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning. The group can no longer accept donations through PayPal, or access the money in its account.
The Bradley Manning Support Network didn't do anything illegal. PayPal even admits there's no legal reason to shut down the group's account; it's an "internal policy decision."
We need to stand with other Bradley Manning supporters. Can you sign your name to our letter to PayPal demanding the company restore service to the Bradley Manning Support Network?
Tell PayPal to drop its unreasonable demands of the Bradley Manning Support Network and restore access to the group's PayPal account. Click here to sign our letter.
PayPal's decision to purposefully block funds to help Bradley Manning is no accident. Two months ago, PayPal also arbitrarily blocked donations to Wikileaks.
Just days after PayPal blocked service to Wikileaks, PayPal executives apparently began a campaign to find excuses to block funds for the Bradley Manning Support Network. The group says its leaders:
"...fielded lengthy calls from executives at PayPal regarding website content, the intended use of the funds being solicited in support of Bradley Manning, and accountings of the recent purchases (primarily envelopes, paper, and postage stamps) made with PayPal funds."
Even this wasn't good enough for PayPal, which decided that the only way to allow the Bradley Manning Support Network to use PayPal would be to give the company direct access to its checking account - an extraordinary and unreasonable demand.
Sign our letter to PayPal: stop blocking funds and restore access to Bradley Manning's legal defense fund.
Thank you for standing up for Bradley Manning.
Michael Whitney
Firedoglake.com
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Magda Hassan - 25-02-2011
Already closed my account because of the Wikileaks hoo haa. Makes me wish I had another account so I could close that one too for this reason. What a shocking company Pay Pal are to do business with.
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 25-02-2011
Magda Hassan Wrote:Already closed my account because of the Wikileaks hoo haa. Makes me wish I had another account so I could close that one too for this reason. What a shocking company Pay Pal are to do business with.
Agreed. Typical American Right-Wing Corporation...even those that don't start out that way....somehow wind up that way. As an interesting footnote, I canceled my Pay Pal account, but they are owned by eBay; so I told eBay I wasn't going to use my eBay account for buying or selling until they reversed their policy with Pay Pal [different names, same company]...and how did they respond...they canceled my eBay account! :loco: :finger:
N.B. One can still contribute to the American Nazi party and similar hate groups via Pay Pal without problem.....
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Magda Hassan - 25-02-2011
Some welcome good news. PayPal are still bastards though.
Quote:PayPal Backs Down, Reinstates Account for Supporters of Bradley Manning
2011-02-24 13 comments
Apparently reacting to enormous backlash from supporters and criticism in the media, PayPal has reinstated the account of Courage to Resist, an organization which has partnered with the Bradley Manning Support Network to raise funds for the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. The change in account status came only hours after the nonprofit organization published a press release drawing attention to the matter. Over 10,000 people signed the petition hosted by Firedoglake today urging PayPal to reinstate the charitable account, while many more supporters called PayPal directly to voice their criticisms.
Within hours, PayPal responded reinstating the account so that Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network can continue their work.
Jeff Paterson, Project Director of Courage to Resist and member of the Bradley Manning Support Network's steering committee, provided the following statement:
We have spent nearly a month trying to resolve this matter with senior PayPal staff. Only after a conference call in which their chief compliance officer bluntly stated that our account would be permanently restricted and our funds returned in 180 days did we issue this morning's statement on the matter.
I little while ago I received an email from the PayPal machine, "Hello Courage to Resist, Our review is complete and we have restored your account." Upon logging into the PayPal account, we're now greeted with, "Your Account Access is Back in Regular Standing. Thank you for taking the steps to return your account to regular standing…"
Thank you to all of our supporters many of whom contacted PayPal individually or signed the petition hosted by Firedoglake who helped us restore our account. We are extremely grateful to everyone who raised their voice today. While PayPal was never a primary channel for our online donors, it is especially valuable to our international supporters who do not use US-based credit cards or checks. I hope you will now help us get back to our real work in support of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning.
Do more to help Bradley Manning!
- Stop the extreme, inhumane and illegal pre-trial punishment of Bradley Manning
- Ensure that Bradley Manning receives top-notch legal representation from the lawyer of his choice
- Stop any effort by the United States government to hold a secret court martial trial, unchecked by public and media oversight
- Free Bradley Manning!
Make a donation to support our work
Sign our petition
Follow us on Facebook
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Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 26-02-2011
It makes one realize how little GOOD news this Forum has to report....no reflection on the DPF - but a reflection on the nature of the forces in control in the times we live....IMO. Yes, PayPal still bastards....for even thinking of it and what about re-instating the account for Wikileaks?!?!
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 01-03-2011
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/former-assistant-secretary-under-reagan-says-cia-will-take-out-assange_b23353
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 02-03-2011
Responding to the controversy today arising out of a publication by Private Eye, Wikileaks made a statement concerning its relationship with the journalist Israel Shamir, the subject of concerted speculation and rumour over the last few months.
The statement is as follows:
On Tuesday 1st March 2011, @wikileaks said:
WikiLeaks statement that was given to, but not used by, the UK satirical current-affairs magazine, Private Eye:
Israel Shamir has never worked or volunteered for WikiLeaks, in any manner, whatsoever. He has never written for WikiLeaks or any associated organization, under any name and we have no plan that he do so. He is not an 'agent' of WikiLeaks. He has never been an employee of WikiLeaks and has never received monies from WikiLeaks or given monies to WikiLeaks or any related organization or individual. However, he has worked for the BBC, Haaretz, and many other reputable organizations.
It is false that Shamir is 'an Assange intimate'. He interviewed Assange (on behalf of Russian media), as have many journalists. He took a photo at that time and has only met with WikiLeaks staff (including Asssange) twice. It is false that 'he was trusted with selecting the 250,000 US State Department cables for the Russian media' or that he has had access to such at any time.
Shamir was able to search through a limited portion of the cables with a view to writing articles for a range of Russian media. The media that subsequently employed him did so of their own accord and with no intervention or instruction by WikiLeaks.
We do not have editorial control over the of hundreds of journalists and publications based on our materials and it would be wrong for us to seek to do so. We do not approve or endorse the the writings of the world's media. We disagree with many of the approaches taken in analyzing our material.
Index did contact WikiLeaks as have many people and organisations do for a variety of reasons. The quote used here is not complete. WikiLeaks also asked Index for further information on this subject. Most of these rumors had not, and have not, been properly corroborated. WikiLeaks therefore asked Index to let us know if they had received any further information on the subject. This would have helped WikiLeaks conduct further inquiries. We did not at the time, and never have, received any response.
END
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Magda Hassan - 03-03-2011
The original story about the Israel Shamir/Assange connection came from an article written in an online magazine called Reason.com by Michael Moynihan http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/14/the-assange-employees
But let me tell you a little more about this fellow. He is a visiting fellow at TIMBRO the Swedish far right wing 'think' tank, an occasional commentator on that bastion of good journalism, The Glenn Beck show on Fox, and writes in the English language Swedish press and the right wing press in Sweden. He seems to be connected to the Karl Rove inspired slander machine of Assange and Wikileaks currently churning out its lies.
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 06-03-2011
Anonymous Declares War on Corporate Execs, DoD Officials who Target WikiLeaks
3rd March 2011
By Joanna Molloy
NY Daily News | March 3, 2011
The cyberplatoon of hackers known as Anonymous has a new target.
Not 24 hours after the U.S. Army announced it had filed 22 counts against reputed WikiLeaks source Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, including one capital count of aiding the enemy, Anonymous issued a new threat Thursday.
"The decision to charge Bradley Manning with a capital offense in addition to other charges is a provocation, and Anonymous is set to respond accordingly," spokesman Barrett Brown wrote on DailyKos. He said the group will keep going after corporate execs involved in plots against Wikileaks.
And, he told The Daily News: "We are looking at information on various military officials."
Army prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty, but military regulations would allow the tribunal of judges to put Manning on Death Row if he's found guilty.
Three weeks ago, Anonymous aimed its Internet death ray at security firm HB Gary Federal, posting 78,000 confidential corporate emails on line and hacking into CEO Aaron Barr's Twitter account. Barr's tweets revealed plans to undermine WikiLeaks by intimidating journalists and planting misinformation on behalf of Bank of America, the San Francisco Business Times reported. On Tuesday, Barr resigned.
Anonymous briefly shut down the website of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative organization backed by billionaires David and Charles Koch.
The hackers have said they are looking for weaknesses in the corporate networks of Georgia Pacific and other companies controlled by the Kochs, USA Today reported.
Anonymous has also targeted Palantir company, which they claim planned to help HB Gary Federal with dirty tricks, saying on DailyKos, "Palantir must be destroyed."
Palantir has denied involvement, but fired a 26-year-old engineer in the wake of the scandal.
Manning is the suspected source of some of 251,000 diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, which began releasing the documents in November.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is out of prison on bail in England, where he is fighting against extradition to Sweden to face sexual molestation charges.
Assange has confirmed that Wikileaks has internal data from the Bank of America but that it could be "a snore," Reuters reported.
The cables, roughly half of which are classified, are believed to have sparked the Tunisian revolution, which dominoed other North African revolts.
A recent CBS poll found that 6 out of 10 Americans feel Wikileaks will damage national security in a time when the country is under terrorist threat.
It is too soon to know how Americans feel about Anonymous, but last week TV satirist Stephen Colbert appeared to give his tacit sign of approval by having a V for Vendetta mask a logo of sorts for the group projected on his face.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/03/03/2011-03-03_anonymous_hackers_declare_war_on_coporate_execs_military_officials_who_target_wi.html
Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive - Peter Lemkin - 07-03-2011
Authored by Tony Kevin, former Australian Diplomat.
Chillingly, inexorably, the lifepaths of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are converging.
Not yet in the sense that Manning's US military torturers hope for, with a desired confession by him whether true or falsely coerced of prior collaboration with Assange to pass US classified intelligence material to Wikileaks. Either would satisfy them, because even a false and forced confession, that could be later disavowed by Manning in court, could be enough in the US judicial system to trigger a valid US secret grand jury arrest warrant for Assange's extradition to the US. Such a warrant could be served either on the UK or Swedish governments, depending on where Assange was at the time.
More broadly, their stories are appropriately coming together now as stories of two young national heroes, one American and one Australian, who are putting their lives on the line now for the sake of defending the principle of individual moral accountability for the actions of their national states that profess to share similar political values. This principle has been variously expressed by many political leaders and thinkers, of which a few examples here will suffice. I am sure an Obama quotation could be readily found to add to this short list:
US founding father Benjamin Franklin, in 1792 - … a nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Martin Luther King at the height of his US civil rights struggle - Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
"Conspiracy as Governance", Julian Assange, 3 December 2006, from me@iq.org
Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance, since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution of a people's character, the impact of reported, but unanswered injustice is far greater than it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity and excesses provide their populace with an unprecedented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly unanswerable injustices.
Bradley Manning -
"12.15:11 PM) bradass87: Hypothetical question: if you had free reign [sic] over classified networks for long periods of time ... say 8-9 months ...and you saw incredible things, awful things ... things that happened in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a datk room in Washington DC ... what would you do?"
(Weblog of an alleged conversation between Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo, published by Kevin Poulsen, as quoted by Robert Manne in his essay "The Cypherpunk Revolutionary" published in 'The Monthly' of March 2011 (see below)).
Different words, but the same moral message of personal moral responsibility for the actions of one's state.
It is appropriate and timely now that Julian Assange has come out paying public tribute to Bradley Manning's heroic resistance to his torturers.
The calculated and escalating psychological tortures now being inflicted on Manning, while allegedly staying just within legal boundaries of US military regulations governing the treatment of military prisoners deemed to be a high national security risk, are redolent of political prisoner torture techniques so memorably visualised or recorded in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, George Orwell's 1984, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's First Circle and Gulag Archipelago.
Manning actually and Assange potentially are now experiencing such hells. The US protocols may be more psychological, less physically violent, than the Soviet versions. But the intent is the same: to strip a man of his morale, sense of self and personal rights, and contextual sense of time and place.
Manning's jailers seem increasingly desperate to break his will and spirit. On the latest horrifying news that they are stripping him naked, on top of the earlier reports of them waking him if they cannot see him clearlyostensibly to check he is alive and denying him human company and exercise, it seems that they have lost any remaining sense of proportionality and human decency. The torturers are now in control of the jail, as the torturers at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo gained control of their jails a few years ago.
Australian, British and Swedish people of good will and moral decency, regardless of political views on the legality of military personnel's whistleblowing on evil state actions or on the importance of protecting our respective national alliances with the US, now need to understand clearly that this is the kind of treatment that awaits Assange if he should be extradited to the USA on national security breach charges.
We need to understand that Assange faces what Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib went through a few years ago in Egypt, Pakistan and Guantanamo, when their own government failed in its duty to protect them. Australian citizenship did not protect them then and it will not protect Assange now, should he fall into US hands.
It is up to Australian citizens back home now to try and prevent this from happening by making our well-founded concerns for Assange's safety and human rights clear to our government - (refer Barns, Kemp and Kevin briefing notes for last week's meeting of Australian parliamentarians).
Similar cruelties were inflicted on British terror suspects illegally rendered to Guantanamo, and on asylum-seekers illegally rendered from Sweden to torture in Egypt a few years ago.
Illustrious campaigners against human rights abuse in the Bush years - eminent international figures like Philippe Sands in the UK and Mark Danner in the US need to appreciate that it is all starting to happen again in a similar (not identical, obviously) way in the treatment of Manning and Assange.
While the desired goal of Manning's torturers must be now to extract from him some kind of confession' incriminating Assange, their fall-back goal would be to reduce him to an insane or vegetable state from which he could not recover in time to mount an effective public defence of himself in the military court-martial. Manning's open-court testimony if he could hold on to his courage, integrity and sanity meanwhile - would be severely embarrassing to his accusers, and could arouse American liberal public opinion in his favour. They would want to try to prevent this risk, hence their present apparently desperate escalation of torture.
Thus, the coming days and weeks are crucial. As a Christian who believes in the power of prayer, I am praying for Bradley Manning now. And anyone, be they British Swedish American or Australian, who cares about defending our nations' common values of human rights and freedom of speech should be making their views on his current mistreatment publicly known and known to our political leaders.
There are encouraging signs here in Australia in recent days of a growing liberal mainstream concern for and about Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. Australians of conscience are beginning to see more clearly the principles at stake here.
Crikey, a well-regarded and widely read independent internet website and daily email newsletter on politics and society, published two articles last week discussing and condemning Manning's treatment, by top columnists Guy Rundle on 3rd March 2011 and Bernard Keane. (paywall/free trial) also on 3rd March.
In essence, Rundle is horrified but fatalistic at Manning's escalating mistreatment and at him now facing a possible death sentence under new charges of 'aiding the enemy' (whoever the enemy may be). Manning erred, says Rundle. Rundle prays for a 'quality of mercy' from the US government, but is not hopeful this will be forthcoming. For this, Rundle implies, is how ruthless national security states behave.
Keane is openly outraged that, on the face of it, the new death penalty charges define the media which published and discussed the war diaries and the video of the Iraq helicopter killings (titled by Wikileaks as "Collateral Murder") as the enemy.
I think even more significantly, a lengthy essay discussing Assange (and more briefly Manning) by Australia's most eminent liberal-humanitarian political commentator Robert Manne appeared in the latest (March, 2011) issue of Australia's leading monthly public affairs magazine, The Monthly (published in a print version, and an internet version is available to subscribers). Extracts from Manne's essay were published in the open-access Weekend Australian of 5/6 March also here.
Manne's article is closely historically researched. He digs into Assange's personal development towards the major political figure he is today. Manne contrasts Assange to the other prominent or notorious, depending on one's point of view, Australian media figure Rupert Murdoch.
Manne does not present Assange as a plaster saint, but it is clear at least to me that he views Assange in a generally positive light as a sort of polar opposite to the way in which Murdoch's Fox News is dragging down the language and mores of American political and public life.
Manne traces Assange's earlier years in Ayn Rand-influenced cypherpunk' circles, where Assange honed his skills as a computer systems hacker. Manne shows how Assange finally broke away from that culture, repelled by its self-obsession, its political cynicism and nihilism, and its failure of courage when faced with any kind of state resistance: a conversion to a realization of personal moral accountability that Manne (on my reading) seems to admire in Assange, despite their obvious large differences of political values and style.
Manne's article will influence Australian liberal mainstream opinion in Assange's favour. Manne also offers brief but important recognition of the public importance of the Afghan and Iraq War logs and videos that Manning had downloaded to Wikileaks, at least according to very convincing evidence yet to be tested in court' (Manne, op.cit).
The multi-party parliamentarians' briefing meeting in Parliament House, Canberra on 2 March, on Wikileaks Central website, is a sign of the way public opinion is beginning to build in Australia around a human rights-based concern for Manning's and Assange's safety and human rights.
Australia's best politicians read the public mood carefully. They know that this could become a big issue as the David Hicks case became a big issue in Australia under Prime Minister John Howard in 2001-2007. Hicks came to be seen as a grievously abused Australian victim of American cruelty and injustice, however hard Howard and his ministers tried to portray Hicks as an Al Qaeda terrorist in training.
Australia's Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard (a lawyer) will not want to go too far down that dangerous road. Under growing pressure of public opinion, I believe the Gillard Government will try to find a face-saving way to better protect the human rights of these two men.
This might not much help Manning as an American citizen in his own country. But it might help Assange.
Gillard s forthcoming talks with US President Obama are fortuitously well-timed. I have no doubt that the Manning and Assange cases will be privately discussed. Let us hope those discussions are constructive of humane solutions.
Article:
http://wlcentral.org/node/1433