'Hacking is vandalism.'

But not when hacking into cult sites presumably? Also done by Anonymous in a prolonged campaign against Scientology to 'set the information free.'

Rigid adherence to the letter of the law is just plain stupid when the law is an ass. It is also unnecessary in these times of governments trumpeting their benign acceptance of protective whistleblowing policies---observed more in the breach, so unfortunately just PR and window-dressing for the main part.
Laws are supposed to be made in the service of the people in a democracy, not in order to allow the authorities to oppress and suppress the people in order to maintain their own grasp on power.

Soldiers are expected to obey their conscience before following illegal orders or pursuing an illegal war. The Bush/Rumsfeld tampering with and spin-doctoring of the interpretations of the Geneva Convention does not change that expectation.

[www.esquire.com]

[www.veteransforpeace.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2010 09:19PM by Stoic.

The soldiers, in their own words:

The short version:

[www.youtube.com]


and the longer version:

[www.youtube.com]

And it getting worse. Now under the guise of alleged "national security" information that should be public, is being hidden from the public, using that trick. That will get worse with the new laws.

This means cults and cultish groups will have more tools to block whistleblowing documents from coming into the public domain.
They want it to go back to like it was before the internet, when you literally could not access the information on these groups and sects.

For now, Wikileaks has many mirror sites. [wikileaks.ch]

Also, the cult information should be contained in the main encrypted Wikileaks insurance file, that is located in torrent networks.
Search for:


wikileaks insurance torrent.

by the way, no one really knows who is doing the DDOS and hacking of those websites. It could be anyone.
It could even be some of the same agencies looking for an excuse to shut down the internet freedoms...that is a common counter-insurgency tactic, and they consider themselves involved in a cyber-war.

Internet freedom is at risk.

hm, Wikileaks mirror sites went from 100 to almost 1400 in about a day. So some internet freedom is not dead yet.
..yet.

This is a very complicated scenario, and I would advise those making assumptions on it based on their predisposed political beliefs to take a look at this website I found. And, yes, it can easily be made relevant to Rick Ross' site! I suspect much of the research came from this site.

Five part story on wikileaks, with part 1 discussing Assange's connections to Anne Hamilton-Byrne's "the Family" which was also linked to Swami Muktananda.

[psychedelicdungeon.wordpress.com]

Is this Assange in this photo?

[i.imgur.com]

The Family

[www.culteducation.com]

Swami Muk

[www.culteducation.com]

Quite a tenuous connection, that his mother's erstwhile boyfriend may have been involved in this truly horrible cult while Assange was in his pre-teens, early teens. And that his mother went on the run from the horrible and abusive boyfriend with Assange when he was a child.

At that age a person truly is a child and hardly responsible for the horrors that supposedly responsible adults perpetrate around and to the child.

I can sympathise that such an early childhood exposure to the monstrous things that some humans do to their children and each other would give the resulting adult a heightened interest in exposing the common lies and manipulations that we are fed.
My childhood growing up in a monstrous and abusive cult has had a very definite impact on the way that I view the exploitation, lies, misinformation and coercive persuasion that is used to control peoples minds and lives. It couldn't be otherwise and I make no apologies for it.

I am also very sharp to this day when some sanctimonious type attempts to guilt trip me into thinking in the 'correct' PC approved mannner--read: toeing the line and agreeing with their world view-- by trying to make me responsible for a non-existent suicide of a person who has previously posted personal material openly on the web of their own free will.
This is not directed at you, Shakti.

It couldn't be otherwise and I make no apologies for it, I was dealing with far worse than such pathetic attempts at coercion when I was 7 years old, I'm hardly going to roll over for such emotional blackmail now.
I sincerely hope that Assange is of the same mind and refuses to roll over.

I posted this purely because I believe there is a issue that effects RR users - again i apologise for bad thread choice but i was honestly stumped where to post it.

If the powers at be can shut down wikileaks by smearing Assange and using it to change freedom of information acts - then in the future they can shut down similar sites INCLUDING this one - Wikileaks have helped to expose cults so really i suppose we should help them in some way? I don;t agree with everything wikileaks has done recently either but the bigger issue here is human right to free speech.

I don;t think the wikileaks supporters are cyber terrorists they are trying to do things right - online petitions, public protest's, internet groups and awareness.

Hacking has become such a dirty word and is not used in its real context anymore.

[en.wikipedia.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2010 09:59AM by richiekgb.

Quote

“Every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”


--Daniel Ellsberg

Here is a link to a video of Daniel Ellsberg discussing Assange with Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now". Ellsberg says that Assange voluntarily redacted many names, and asked the Pentagon to tell him which names it wanted blocked from public view. The Pentagon did not respond to his request. I highly recommend this thought-provoking interview to everyone interested in the Wikileaks case.

[www.youtube.com]

Daniel Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon advisor who released 7000 pages of classified documents containing the truth about the Vietnam war to the New York Times in 1971. These documents are usually referred to as the Pentagon Papers.

From the moment the Pentagon Papers were published, the Nixon administration dedicated itself to jailing Ellsberg on national security grounds. (In fact, one of the break-ins associated with Watergate was the theft of Ellsberg's psychiatric records. The administration hoped smearing Ellsberg as an unstable, psychotic nut would distract Americans from the horrors the Pentagon Papers revealed.) The case against Ellsberg went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in his favor.

I consider Daniel Ellsberg a hero who saved lives by helping to bring about the end of the disastrous Vietnam War. And that's what almost everyone thinks about him, now that nothing's at stake.

Ellsberg's website:

[www.ellsberg.net]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2010 10:54AM by Christa.

Good links, Christa. I found this quote from Ellsberg's blog particularly relevant:

'The big question is not whether Americans can “handle the truth.” We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions — an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, most of which have mounted a hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.

So far, the question of whether Americans can “handle the truth” has been an academic rather than an experience-based one, because Americans have had very little access to the truth. Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, “ground truth.”


Regarding the complicity of the mainstream media in supporting the witch-hunting of Assange, there is this comment, taken from a report on the awarding of the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award to Assange and Wikileaks. (my emphases) The fifth estate referred to is of course the freedom of the internet:

[www.commondreams.org]



'This year's award was presented Saturday, with the customary "corner-brightener candlestick," by SAAII awardee, and former UK ambassador, Craig Murray, after Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg discussed WikiLeaks' release of almost 400,000 classified battlefield reports from Iraq. The award reads as follows:

It seems altogether fitting and proper that this year's award be presented in London, where Edmund Burke coined the expression "Fourth Estate." Comparing the function of the press to that of the three Houses then in Parliament, Burke said:

"... but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth Estate more important far then they all."

The year was 1787 - the year the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The First Amendment, approved four years later, aimed at ensuring that the press would be free of government interference. That was then.


With the Fourth Estate now on life support, there is a high premium on the fledgling Fifth Estate, which uses the ether and is not susceptible of government or corporation control. Small wonder that governments with lots to hide feel very threatened.

It has been said: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." WikiLeaks is helping make that possible by publishing documents that do not lie.

Last spring, when we chose WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for this award, Julian said he would accept only "on behalf of our sources, without which WikiLeaks' contributions are of no significance."

We do not know if Pvt. Bradley Manning gave WikiLeaks the gun-barrel video of July 12, 2007 called "Collateral Murder." Whoever did provide that graphic footage, showing the brutality of the celebrated "surge" in Iraq, was certainly far more a patriot than the "mainstream" journalist embedded in that same Army unit. He suppressed what happened in Baghdad that day, dismissed it as simply "one bad day in a surge that was filled with such days," and then had the temerity to lavish praise on the unit in a book he called The Good Soldiers.

Julian is right to emphasize that the world is deeply indebted to patriotic truth-tellers like the sources who provided the gun-barrel footage and the many documents on Afghanistan and Iraq to WikiLeaks. We hope to have a chance to honor them in person in the future.

Today we honor WikiLeaks, and one of its leaders, Julian Assange, for their ingenuity in creating a new highway by which important documentary evidence can make its way, quickly and confidentially, through the ether and into our in-boxes. Long live the Fifth Estate!'



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2010 03:17PM by Stoic.