Why the war on WikiLeaks is wrong and hypocritical
Quote of the day.
By Mehdi Hasan Published 07 December 2010 15:43Quote of the day.
The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us: "You went after WikiLeaks' domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don't like the site. If that's the way governments get to behave, we can live with that."
* Clay Shirky, internet guru, writing on his blog (but hat-tip: Guardian live blog)
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55 comments
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, recognized that anti-Semitism would further his cause, the creation of a separate state for Jews. To solve the Jewish Question, he maintained “we must, above all, make it an international political issue.”
Herzl wrote that Zionism offered the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.” In his “Diaries”, page 19, Herzl stated “Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies.”
Zionist reliance on Anti-Semitism to further their goals continues to this day. Studies of immigration records reflect increased immigration to the Zionist state during times of increased anti-Semitism. Without a continued inflow of Jewish immigrants to the state of "Israel", it is estimated that within a decade the Jewish population of the Zionist state will become the minority.
In order to maintain a Jewish majority in the state of "Israel", its leaders promote anti-Semitism throughout the world to "encourage" Jews to leave their homelands and seek "refuge".
Contrary to the propaganda put out by Israel's supporters, Israel is NOT supported by the majority of the world's Jewish people. Benjamin Netanyahu does not speak for all Jewish people. And being anti-Israel is not "anti-Semitic"
To all you retarded Americans - Wikileaks didn't leak the info. Whoever did that may have done the illegal part. Wikileaks pusblished the information as a news outlet. The Guardian, El Pais and Der Spiegel did the same. Who's in to kill them all?
Once the info is out it is not illegal to publish it. That's call freedom of speech you f**king morons.
Remember the Pentagon papers? How the f**k do you think you got Nixon?
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Well, you have goy to say that Mehidi, and fair play to you. Pslu the whiteman, as in the present establishment, that might be a different white colour a year from now.
Fair play Mehidi - you'd should be proud for backing up your arab world.
Feck gormless western whitie pillocks with nothing really to say, apart from tend their back gardens.
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Why WikiStinks!
Like 'limey' Captain Cook, Aussie charlatan anaemic Julian Assange is obsessed with vitamin deficiency, and ekes out his well paid wretched counterfeit closet existence, by digesting green leeks and mellow yellow swedes. Gutless, ingestion, inevitably results, in much media friendly, stinking hot air. In reality, the only dangerous leak that Assange may have accomplished was from a johnny bag.
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Mehdi - please be more like me - I love this country and understand that because it has been good enough to give me work and better wages than pakistan I dont act like It OWES ME A FAVOUR like you. Stop with your Muslim victimhood and accept that theres no such thing as a free lunch - if the whole world gave up its culture to accommodate people like you, then theres no freedom.
Ganesh Ali, How does quoting Clay Shirky imply any of the things you accuse Mehdi of?
Is Julian Assange, the public face of Wikileaks, free speech's latest martyr? This is a question that needs to be asked, by all the freedom loving people in the world. Mr Assange seems to be facing a concerted effort to silence him, one way or another; from the rather predictable attacks on his website, to attacks on Wikileaks's finances, or calls for his kidnapping or murder, by US and Canadian politicians. Yet, even under US law, he hasn't committed a crime by publishing US leaks. Indeed under the US constitution, the first amendment protects his rights to free speech. Yet there are many powerful people, that would like to see Julian Assange silenced, one way or another. This latest tranche of leaks, comprising of some 250,000 documents, hasn't just incurred the wrath of the US; it has incensed politicians from all over the world, including the UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, China, South Korea, North Korea, Afghanistan, Italy, Russia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen and the list goes on, and seems to grow longer every day. Mr Assange now finds himself facing the serious charges of rape and molestation in Sweden. Clearly the charges need to be answered in the interests of justice, but there is more than a whiff of political conspiracy. The timing alone is very suspicious.
Perhaps his mistake was to take on too many powerful vested interests at once. Even as the furore over the latest leaks was beginning, he announced that his next targets would be the financial institutions. Is it surprising that the banks and payment clearers have pre-empted Wikileaks, by cutting off their funds?
Yet there is a bigger principle at stake here. The issue of who is in charge, citizens or their political representatives? Are we to live our lives in a haze of ignorance, simply trusting our politicians to do the 'right thing', or should we be empowered to hold them to account? It is clear Assange believes in the former and the age of the internet makes this possible, like never before. It isn't hyperbole to declare the advent of organisations such as Wikileaks, is bringing about a seminal change in politics. All of a sudden, politicians are seriously worried about what they say in official communications. Both the scale and reach of Wikileaks is astounding and the ability to remove the veneer of lies behind which so many politicians hide, is truly terrifying to them.
Hostile elements in the media were quick to pre-empt the real assassins, by assassinating his character in the press, trying to play down his mission. They try and distort his mission as little more than hubris, with little to do with freedom of speech. So who has come to Mr Assange's defence? A few campaigners, a few celebrities and a few journalists. Where are the Muslims, who seems to be at the centre of many of the leaks? Predictably, nowhere to be seen. Muslims should be at the forefront of civil rights campaigning, since we are the biggest victims of illiberal laws. It isn't good enough to watch from the sidelines.
Elgato gets a thumbs up from me. Assange has become the story, not the dead of Iraq or anything else. The press is playing along with this because they have lunch twice a week with their government sources. It's fantastic wikileaks can lift the lid on western hypocrisy just for a moment, but I don't think there's any fear of functioning democracy or real justice as a result.
Government documents that is classified Confidential, Secret, Top Secret and above, to include No Forn Dis is not covered by any amendment. It is covered under US federal law according to the particular classification. The publication of these documents is a violation of federal law. Otherwise, there would be no point in classifying them. A free press is not a licence to print what you want. If I were to take out an ad that said Mehdi is a child molester and of course it’s not true, he could then sue me and I’d be eating supper at loaves and fishes by the time his lawyers were finished with me. A violation of federal law does not come with immunity because it was violated in print. We have freedom of speech, but you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater just for your amusement. He also knew what he was doing, and the harm he was doing to allied troops, (to include his fellow Australians) and Afghans. Some of you people really need to grow up a little.
do one Buckskins you ZIO-FASCIST scum, everyones sussed out what your really about...
WikiLeaks has once again released confidential files, into the public domain and the response from those concerned is alarming.
So, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has been conducting a damage limitation exercise; contacting all the individuals mentioned in the leaks and most likely issuing grovelling apologies.
If you read the responses in the media from the individuals insulted, you can begin to see a trend forming; either they have dismissed the allegations as nonsense, or have completely ignored the content of the leaks, instead choosing to condemn the release of this information and branding it a threat to national security.
A bit like letting a school bully insult you, but then attacking the good pupil for telling the teacher.
Hmm.. it makes you wonder if they were all reading from Hillary's script.
If I was the kid being bullied, I'd certainly see the good pupil's intervention as a welcome reprieve.
More information is expected to be released in the coming days and weeks. We wait in anticipation and look forward to both the content and response from people mentioned.
WikiLeaks has placed dozens of allied Afghans on the Taliban's hit list. They will be skinned alive then beheaded. Assange of course can give a rats ass.
Buckskins you mug your the one that needs to grow up and stop throwing tantrums....
on the revelation that several Arab leaders, are urging the United States to attack Iran, Chomsky says, "Latest polls show Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent. This may not be reported in the newspapers, but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments and the ambassadors. What this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership."
America-the empire of hypocrisy, has always supported the Arab dictators in the Middle East, in oppressing Muslims.
The reality is that the Middle Eastern populations know very well that the primary threat to their existence is Israel, backed by the US, not Iran.
Arab dictators however, have a different view. They are in power because of American support. They are in power because they serve the interests of Israel and the US, at the expense of Arab populations.
Iran might be a threat to the dictatorial regimes, but not to the Arab people. Israel, US and the Arab dictators are allies in oppressing the Arab people.
How many wars have the US manufactured and waged in the last 50 years?
How many millions of people have the American Government killed in so many nations, including Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan?
American governments strive for war. The CIA was instrumental in the American war against humanity.
Thousands of Iraqis have been killed in an illegal war, in Bush's attempt to articulate that democracy is the way forward.
America is the enemy of democracy in the Middle East.
The extremely 'democratic' Madeleine Albright, declared that the murder of half a million Iraqi children before the invasion, was worth it.
Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and the rest of the world's war criminals are still at large, thanks to American "justice".
Buckskins, your argument seems to be that the US government is not governed by the US constitution. have I got that right?
No you don't kenny.
There was a time when the west reserved hypocrisy and double standards for the non west. Now that the art has be refined to perfection over decades; the political classes have gained the experience and the confidence to extend its practice at home in the west. The way things are taking a turn for the worse; who knows, will be the turn of torture next? Long live the free press, it has expressed its freedom of choice by remaining silent on the subject. The free market companies have exercised their freedom by withholding payments destined for Wiki leaks. Long live freedom. As or the legal profession, it is finding ways of circumventing the law. Long live justice. Under such circumstances, should we be criticizing China or Russia?
mitchy, MI5, playing their games. They know where we live. WHO FECKING CARES.
There's too many of us, they are inverting themselves, we are the capital state checking up on them, all of a sudden, and they do not like it, because we are talking SIMPLE sense.
What's happened to this site today - upgrade going on? Severs gone up in smoke? Hardly any comments at all - tumble weed.
I don't know but I wish the IT dept would get a move on and put back up the articles from this afternoon as well as the comments that have disappeared and enable commenting again. I couldn't get on the site for about four hours.
Lou - plenty of strange thing seem to be going on with the Oether these days. Quite a few articles about it here on the beeb. Wikileaks goings-on usually getting the blame,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology/
...Aether even, not oether, as in the space where web stuff live in between A and B.
@ aron kohan,
i'm not defining that islam is made to look like the evil, deranged, and diseased, bastard child of fundamentalist and spanning to even secularist judaism and christianity/catholicism. Zionism however, doesn't apply here. It's not a religion; believers of Zionism reject God, G-d, Yahweh, and so on. It might be more applicable, if one wants to pit Zionism against any group of people, to say semetic non-Zionist dwellers of Palestine and Israel, and any non-dwellers of the same descent. There are, I am sure, some Islamic Folks who support Zionism, just as there are some radical orthodox Jews (not to mention your "is is Chanukah yet?" types as well, or those who smirk at the Manischewitz bottle) such as the Neturei Karta, who stand vehemently against it. Just saying stick to the facts while you roll your eyes at it all.
Exactly Mehdi, I am also surprised why more of your journalistic brethren aren't being more vocally supportive of wikileaks. We are after all supposed to be living in a democracy with freedom of the press.
It's a bit more thatn not liking the site. This quote ignores that.
aron kohan,
What a laugher your post describing how the US is behind everything? I must say a classic case of one’s mind completely closed to critical thought. Not so coincidentally it mirrors the state of mental slavery endemic across the Islamic world--because hey it’s all the US's fault-- oh wait shouldn’t it be the "da evil joooosss fault?" You know all 13 million Jews who supposedly want to conquer all of the Middle East, have control of all of the world’s banks/media outlets, and have the western governments in their back pocket? Well here are some facts for you to chew on:
1) The Islamic world still to this day denies the genocide of 2.5 Armenians, 2 million Hindus(East Pakistan in the 70’s), and most glaringly the 3 million in Darfur over the past 15 years. When confronted by the west the OIC's typical chime is "your attacking Islam."
2) Islamophobia? The OIC and the Islamic world would have you believe it is the world's worst problem. Yet why is it that the Islamic world collectively is labeled by all the major human rights groups as the world's worst human and religious rights abuser? Not so ironically the OIC states championing the “defamation of religions” legislation at the UN that seeks to reinstitute blasphemy laws are all in the top ten list of the world’s worst human and religious rights abusers—oh my a classic case of assploding hypocrisy!!!!
3) The irony of the "oppressed Muslims" of the world crying about human rights when their states ban all non Muslim missionary work, ban or severely restrict all other religions, and my personal favorite the inclusion of archaic Dhimmi laws that institutionalize the discrimination of the non Muslims. Quite rich for Muslims to beat everyone up about religious freedom in the west when their very religion and the actions of their coreligionists quite clearly state there is no true religious freedom in Islam!
4) Least of all let’s not forget the oppressed Muslims despite being only 23% of the world's population somehow account for 60% of all named terrorist groups and over 70% of the separatist movements.
Ah but I digress its all the kafirs fault! The colonialism, capitalism, foreign policy, support of the "da evil Zionist joos”, and our rampant Islamophobia is to blame for it all? The Only problem is that for some reason only one faith based group seems to have these problems and has had them for centuries? Hmm why is that--could it be they breed terrorists like rabbits, have hair trigger sensitivities when someone dares to point out the all to obvious causal link between the message of their faith and the carnage/abuses inflicted by its followers, follow a faith that actually discourages critical thought(see Al Ghazali’s master work “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” for perspective), self imposes segregation of their communities to the tune of 1,000 plus “no go areas” in Europe least western decadence corrupt their faith, and so often are inflicted with moral blindness when it comes to their own evils such as their complete silence regarding the 20th centuries worst humanitarian crisis that being the 3 million and counting dead in Darfur?
Yes the West has all kinds of issues like the illegal war in Iraq, our sometimes moral blindness to some of Israel’s transgressions, our misguided foreign policy, corporate greed, and a much longer list. The difference in the West is we still use critical thought and make the effort to atone for our mistakes. The Islamic world cannot, does not, and sadly their faiths abhorrence of critical thought makes it all but impossible to do so. After all its why the world’s worst human and religious rights abusers don't blink an eye when accusing the other of xenophobia, bleat on and on about Israel yet ignore Darfur, and have the moral and ethical blindness to build a shrine to their faith over the bodies of 3,000 their coreligionists immolated crying “Allahu Akbar.” Hey it’s all the other guys fault anyway--right?
Well we have heard the message loud and clear “you will never truly be tolerated you until you submit.” Our message in reply is “we are done tolerating the intolerant!” Ooops gotta go the Hasbara organization just called---something about a failed suicide mission in Sweden--gotta do some spin control to make sure this one is pinned on the religion of peace again!!
Not sure, but I seem to be getting selectively censored...
Amazing thing the oriental mind. They equate a lone self hater, and alledged rapist, with the Burmese and muslims killing thier own like mad dogs! This is the reason why our victorian forefathers called them westernised oriental gentleman, the sort who half understood our culture and wore JJ.instead of dishwallahs
Who would you trust with your democracy? The US/White House/Senate/Congress? The Pentagon? I'm with Julian.
The lack of outrage at this affront to the concept of a free press is frankly astonishing.
The vested interests in our media have revealed themselves to be nothing more than conduits for government press releases, rather than journalists.
Quotes of the day are useless and amount to nothing... an it doesn't help that i haven't heard of this "internet guru" in my whole life. Then there's generally the concept that his quote is lacks substance and wit and is a stale cliche.
Oh yan and one more thing Mehdi, i find your "polemical" journalism to be even more lacking in substance and wit and even more cliche. So that's probably why you write for this extreme right-wing rag, The New Statesmen
Is it free press though? Assange isn't publishing his own material, he's got hold of other people's material and is publishing it without their permission. I'm on Wikileaks side, but the freedom of speech route is murky.
Governments don't like documents being exposed because they've got something to hide. However, exposing these documents is dangerous because of its sensitive content.
That said, we are supposed to be living with a free press society, and Assange is attempting to set an example of truth over political promises, transparency over opaque policy discussions and concrete substance over silver-tongued style. In today's society? I'm afraid you starting losing from the word 'go', Mr. Assange.
Y'know what Etchtee, you're right, who gives a shit. They can all away and throw shite at themselves for all I care.It just annoys me when I type out my rantings for them to be mysteriously swallowed by the ether. or MI5.
The herd are waking up, and they're not happy...
ffs, again?! Come on NS! This site's my only outlet for my left-leaning, anti-establishment diatribe. Back to shouting at the TV for me then...
@Missy Elliot - what about WWI and WWII, White Wsetern 'Gentlemen' killing each other like rabid dogs, great culture.
Mehdi Hasan - nice appearance on beebs This Week on Thursday, Yeh Baby!
Stars in this iPlayer repeat of it at time 17.45,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wlb7c/This_Week_09_12_2010/
Very amusing.
We don't really live in a democracy. Oh, all right, compared to China, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and lots of other nasty places we do, sort of. But that's not really saying that much, is it? Look here, we've got lots more freedom than they have in Burma! There's something awfully wrong here, isn't there?
Personally I don't rate the British electoral system as being especially democratic, heresy I know, but all that about given huge majorities to parties who only get about 30% of the vote, just gets to me. And don't get me started on the House of Lords!
And as for the press being "free", well, you cannot be serious, surely? A "free" press where ownership is in the hands of so few people, and Rupert, bloody, Murdoch. I think you jest.
One of the primary reasons for Wikileaks is the way the "free" media is so under state/corporate control and direction. It's not exactly as obvious as in Russia or China, but... we're getting there.
Journalists have an accute ear for language, and an eye for unstated rules, and they understand that they have to leave them unstated, if...
Orwell understood the nature of censorship in freedom loving democracies,
"The sinister fact about literary censorship [...] is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for an official ban."
How he'd be rolling around today splitting his sides. This must be officially santioned "Freedom Day" all hail the homeland!
ohh the evils of islam and the peace and love of christianity and zionism.
And finally (cheers) to show that I'm not a slavish defender of Assange and Wikileaks, though it is hard, because anyone who can enrage the American ruling class to the verge of insanity, and in some cases beyond into the realm of supporting international terrorism; well he mus tbe doing something right.
Perhaps it was a form of arrogance or maybe he was naive, or an idealist. But Assange seems genuinely to have believed that we live in a liberal democracy and that the Empire and the states under its sway, give a flying fuck about bourgeois democracy and civil rights! Poor Assange. What a crucial mistake he made there. And now he's going to be crucified for crimes against Roman Rule, for having believed despite all the evidence to the contrary that we still live in a democracy, with freedom of expression, speech, and the rule of law. Poor sucker!
So many from the right are banned from even commenting on left wing newspapers. The common argument from likes of Guardian is that "It is private company so it has all the right to censure"
Moreover, what about the news of the world leak?
Your leak is Wikileak our leak is outrageous?
Tit and Tat, hows that?
In a parallel universe the Sun would be an anti-fascist beacon of truth, and contain the following headline.
Blood-soaked butchers in the White House say Wikileaks putting lives at risk!
i think its missy elliot's time of the month take a rest...
writeon, Andy Coulson is being hammered by the same left wing media.
Right?
" simply because you decided you don't like the site."
And that's what makes the rest of his post utter nonsense.
I find it extraordinary that crudely anti-Muslim comments are frequently (and rightly) deleted, but vile comments about "zionist scum" and so on can remain.
"Zionist" in this context is a proxy term for Jew. What on earth is the NS up to?
The Russians call it Kompromat - the use by the state of sexual accusations to destroy a public figure.