A Summary of the Case for Wikileaks (WITH LINKS)

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(This is intended for use as a LTTE or for other readers less informed than most DU'er's. Comments welcome!)


We are living in times of extraordinary incursions against the rightful liberties and powers of ordinary citizens. The U.S. Congress has acquiesced in, among other things:

* Routine secret service and police violations of First Amendment rights, including preemptive round-ups and detentions of protesters in connection with RNC's and other events (see various posts http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/search/label/First%20Amendment">here and sources cited therein, esp. http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/2008/08/police-prepare-for-rnc-by-pre-emptively.html">here and http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3889234">here);
* Massive, ongoing NSA/AT&T violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including wire-tapping and mining of e-mails of U.S. citizens (see various posts http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/search/label/telecoms">here and sources cited therein);
* Gross TSA and other governmental or quasi-gov'l violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including unreasonable, invasive searches without the least pretext of probable cause (see posts http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/search/label/Fourth%20Amendment">here {may include some repeats from previous link} and sources cited therein);
* The institution of policies of torture and assassination of U.S. citizens and others (see, e.g., http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations">here, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Torture_by_proxy">here, and http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6">here);
* The invasion of Iraq based on lies; etc.

No one has been held to account for these violations; indeed, for the most part, they have not even been investigated. Talk about the terrorists winning. And similar violations are taking place in other so-called democracies.

There have been periods in the past when the corporate media did a better job of fulfilling their proper function as the "watchdog of democracy." But they haven't been doing that for some while (see, e.g., "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laila-alarian/before-wikileaks-iraq-war_b_772779.html">leaked reports back up what Iraq vets have been telling journalists for years, only to be ignored").

Part of that problem is that, leaving the internet aside for the moment, the vast majority of media worldwide are directly or indirectly controlled by large corporations (see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership">Wikipedia and the sources cited there). Wittingly or not, much if not most of the corporate media serves mainly to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_States">catapult the propaganda," controlling the national agenda by echoing talking points originated by conservatively-funded think tanks and disseminated by Faux News et al.

As for the internet, large corporations are already well on their way to controlling most of that, too; among other things, witness http://act2.freepress.net/sign/real_net_neutrality?source=conf">the latest proposed FCC regulations.

Wikileaks works with the major newspapers of the world to carefully vet and redact everything it publishes, it has published nothing that has not previously been published by one or more of those newspapers, and it has published less than 1% of the material leaked to it.

Not a single person is known to have died or been injured as a result of any Wikileaks disclosure ever (I'm pretty sure if the U.S. government could name one, it would have been leaked by now).

In contrast, as of this writing, the number of Coalition soldiers who have died because of the lies used to justify invading Iraq, conservatively counted, are nearing 5,000, and Iraqi deaths are nearing 1.5 million.

Indeed, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rowley-wikileaks-20101015,0,5616717.story">the U.S. agents who warned the of the possibility of 9/11 but were ignored have speculated that tragedy might have been prevented if someone had leaked to Wikileaks.

Some have tried to argue that Wikileaks' work is not REAL journalism and so should not be afforded the same First Amendment protection as other news media.

But prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the corporate media in the U.S. utterly FAILED to report the fact that the aluminum tubes claimed by the Bush admin to have been purchased for use in a nuclear weapons program were in fact ill-adapted for such use and were more likely purchased for other reasons (I heard that fact mentioned only on the BBC). Indeed, rather than verifying the Bush admin's claim, The NYT chose to publish Judith Miller's completely uncritical – if not complicit – story, "http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-printpage.html?res=9402EFDE1E3EF93BA3575AC0A9649C8B63">U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" – https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Iraqi_aluminum_tubes">a story substantially based on the deliberate leaking of classified information by Scooter Libby, chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The corporate media are also the same "journalists" who failed to analyze Bush admin claims far enough to realize that a half-dozen specious reasons to invade Iraq did not add up to one good one – something obvious to the millions who demonstrated against the invasion in "https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Iraq_war_protests">the biggest global peace protests before a war actually started."

There simply is no principled basis for distinguishing Wikileaks' publications from those of The NYT and other newspapers.

The U.S. and other governments have struggled for months to find some legal violation to charge Wikileaks with, without success. To date, the only U.S. law seriously proposed as a possible basis for charges is the Espionage Act, which was used to try to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers – and in that case, the charges were dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Wikileaks' case, the argument for a violation of the Espionage Act is even weaker, since (1) Wikileaks has neither stolen nor leaked any information but merely published information others leaked to it, and (2) Wikileaks is not a U.S. citizen or resident.

The lack of any basis for legal action against Wikileaks has not stopped a number of major corporations from trying to shut it down, including Amazon, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard, among others. What if those corporations decided to shut down your small business because they didn't like truths you happened to be telling? How long would it take for your busines to tank?

What if the government threw you in jail without bail based on allegations that you failed to discontinue intercourse after a condom broke?

Some commentators in the U.S. have even called for the assassination of Wikileaks' staff. One has to wonder what might have happened to Assange by now if he hadn't had his http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks-insurance-file/">insurance file.

The inescapable conclusion is that what the powers that be fear most is not terrorists, but the truth.

Knowledge is power, and a balance of power requires a balance of knowledge. The way things are now, corporations and governments know everything about us and we know almost nothing important about them.

I believe that too much information is better than too little. I have more faith in our ability as a species to collectively sort through the info and interpret it helpfully, than I have in the likelihood that any smaller group of individuals entrusted with the power to pick and choose what we should know, without meaningful oversight, will fail to abuse that power.

In truth, we must ALL be journalists, which means we must ALL have access to the facts.

However you may feel about Wikileaks' publications, if you agree that freedom of speech is essential to democracy, please stand up against those who seek to control and stifle it.

I support Wikileaks. I hope you will, too.

You can sign a petition to stop the crackdown on Wikileaks http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?slideshow">here.


(THANKS TO ALL THE DU'ER'S WHO HELPED FIND INFO USED IN THIS PIECE!!!)