I Support Wikileaks and so Should You!

I wasn't going to write about this - it's about internet freedom more than in the city streets - but I feel now that I must given the ridiculous news I just heard on CBC radio. I've just heard that now INTERPOL is declaring Julian Assange to be an international Criminal that they want to catch - high priority! This is Crazy. INTERPOL doesn't deal with the type of crime he is being accused of. What is happening is that large governments are trying to defame and shut down Wikileaks using what I am convinced are lies. (The charges of rape against him are very suspicious, not something INTERPOL usually concerns itself with, probably phoney, and frankly who cares if this guy is a jerk - wikileaks needs to be there with him or not)
Wikileaks is an organisation that does nothing new. They simply release embarrassing secrets on the internet as people have been doing since the internet began. However, now that the Internet is less private (the Facebook/Google era) and sharing information is more important than ever Wikileaks is stepping up to the plate to try and protect anonymous whistleblowers. They try and manage the information they leak too, to redact private names (when possible) and otherwise give some order to the flow of information.

The problem is wikileaks twice this year released major batches of Classified US State Secrets about the War in Afghanistan and later about diplomatic secrets. This is embarrassing to the US and many other large military governments. In order to protect their secrecy and bad practices these governments are trying to go after and shut down Wikileaks rather than clean up their own human rights abuses and other unacceptable "secrets."

So, I've made a donation to Wikileaks and I think that if you can afford it you should too. It is getting expensive for them to host these files and to fight legal battles to protect whistleblowers.

If you agree with me about this important issue please also donate, cut and paste the images above and below onto your website or blog, start a facebooks group and otherwise support wikileaks. (Please cut and post image rather than linking here - I have no bandwidth - Thanks - Here is a link to the directory of the original image I grabbed from google and the svg I used to make the Obama Style Julian Assange image) I am astounded how "patriotism" is being used to stifle this important free speech and transparency service and how the conversation in the mass media is rabid - talk of treason and enemies of the USA etc. Talk that wikileaks will be declared a Terrorist Organisation by member of the US legislature! We can't let internet freedom for really important stuff like this get destroyed by (literally, not being paranoid!) secret police agencies from military state governments.

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Here is the information from wikileaks donations page as of November 30, 2010 (The 11th Anniversary of the day we all shut down the WTO) Please try the page link first because my blog information will undoubtedly become out of date soon. However, if enemies of wikileaks (Keepers of secrets that should be aired) manage to shut down the website using DDOS as they have been in the past then I'm backing it up here so you can use it and still donate. I have no idea if the paypal button will work or not. When I clicked on that from the original page it was not in English. Personally, I used option #1 but I suspect that #2 is a lot more secure. Iceland recently passed some good laws to protect whistleblowers after having their economy destroyed by rich robberbarons who used secrecy to get away with it.

Donations

WikiLeaks brings truth to the world by publishing fact-based stories without fear or favor.You can help support our independent media by donating financially. Our organisation exists because of the work of many volunteers who have contributed thousands of hours to building WikiLeaks from the ground up. But we still need donations to pay for computers, expert programmers and other bills. You choose how much you can donate, we don't recommend any particular amount. Just do what you think is right. There are four ways to donate:

1. Online Transfer via Credit Card
2. Bank Transfer [option 1: everyone]
3. Bank Transfer [option 2: tax deductible in Germany]
4. Paypal via Wau Holland Foundation
5. Postal Mail

1. Online Transfer via Credit Card
Using our friendly credit card processing partner Datacell Switzerland:
https://donations.datacell.com/

2. Bank Transfer - Option 1: via Sunshine Press Productions ehf:Klapparhlid 30, 270 Mosfellsbaer, Iceland
Landsbanki Islands Account number 0111-26-611010

BANK/SWIFT:NBIIISREXXX
ACCOUNT/IBAN:IS97 0111 2661 1010 6110 1002 80

3. Bank Transfer - Option 2: via the not-for-profit Wau Holland Stiftung Foundation:
Bank Account: 2772812-04

IBAN: DE46 5204 0021 0277 2812 04
BIC Code: COBADEFFXXX
Bank: Commerzbank Kassel
German BLZ: 52040021
Subject: WIKILEAKS / WHS Projekt 04

4. PayPal via Wau Holland Foundation
WikiLeaks Donate button:

5. Via Postal Mail
You can post a donation via good old fashion postal mail to:
WikiLeaks

(or any suitable name likely to avoid interception in your country)
BOX 4080
Australia Post Office - University of Melbourne Branch
Victoria 3052
Australia

Some background info I think useful is below:

In case you never saw this when it came out
WikiLeaks Video of US Military Killing Innocent Civilians in Iraq

Some people think wikileaks is only embarrassing the USA but this is clearly not the case
WikiLeaks exposes the hypocrisy of Muslim nations by Muqtedar Khan

The government is spreading all sorts of character defamation and disinformation to stop wikileaks however they can. Wikileaks even took seriously the claim (bogus I think) that the information they release might endanger lives of individuals such as Afghan civilians or US soldiers. They were willing to redact details if the government would be diplomatic with them (the same government willing to be diplomatic with dictators and kill in national interest) but obviously the US is more interested in defaming wikileaks than actually protecting anyone's safety:
Letters between Wikileaks and the U.S. Government published by New York Times
Just an antiwar article about wikileaks that I think makes the (should be obvious but somehow isn't) point that transparency is crucial to peace and real democracy:
Can WikiLeaks Help Save Lives?

Update:

• Former Harper advisor calls for Assange to be assainated.
• Typical BS claim that wikileaks is making human rights harder to deal with while simultaneously lying about human rights (at APEC the Canadian government did not actually get Indonesia to stop repressing Timor, they pepper sprayed people - we were here and know it)

Update Dec 10

• Wikileaks website taken down. Canadian company EasyDNS helps put it back up at http://wikileaks.ch/
  
• Anonymous is taking down visa, mastercard, paypal, amazon websites after they withdraw service to wikileaks -
  
• Operation Payback Anon ops is down
  
• Kind of a cyber war going on.
• Don't be afraid to support the ideas that are going to bring us a more democratic society.

Update Dec 10
The Guardian especially, Huffington Post and CBS are some mainstream news sources that are doing a good job keeping up with this "Cablegate" Story. many other mainsteam news outlets seem to be hostile to wikileaks - maybe because the exclusive scoop was given to competitors? They offer a lot of noise about the issue being a soap opera rather than an important struggle for openness. Smaller more anoymous websites seem to be often overloaded either by DDOS or just popularity. There are torrents on the wikileaks site, on piratebay, isohunt and others surely. Please post any important links you may find. I'm seeding the torrent wikileaks insurance but it's frustrating to not be able to open it. Everyone should be seeding it though!

Here is the current wikileaks info http://213.251.145.96/cablegate.html but i suspect that changes sometimes. Actually there seem to be better torrents there than elsewhere. That page took me a while to find but its the best really.

Update Dec 11
I've finally found the software that the so called hacktivists use to attack enemies of wikileaks. The software is called Low Orbit Ion Cannon and I had seen it mentioned before but the name is so nonsensical I ignored it. Google that term. There is some stupid, silly, unreliable and offensive info on it on Encyclopedia Dramatica that is however also useful if you can tollerate the immature Anon culture language. I would suggest using the Java version but so far I can't find it. Sourceforge windoze version and Github windoze version is the newest (I've never used that site) Just follow the instructions. (Choose the binary version if you don't know what the source version is)

The reality behind the Assange "rape" accusations - 'sex by surprise' is not rape as we call it. Basically there is a sexual disagreement between him and two women that because of Sweden's unique legal system is disputed in a court room. How this became an interpol warrant for "rape" is amazing.

Twitter and blogger AnonOps feeds are alive.

Some more interesting:

• What it is like to Participate in Anonymous Action
• operation leakspin
• Guardian editor discusses future of journalism and "scientific" sourcing
• What wikileaks teaches us about the weakest links in an open internet.
• Mirror wikileaks! I think I will do this when I get the time. Hopefully that is sooner than never.
• Pirate pad. What is it for? Interesting tool.