Posts Tagged ‘freedom’
WikiLeaks New on Cablegate Releases

08:00 PM Zinnia Jones who contributed with chat logs to the NY Mag piece on Bradley Manning releases statement about it, says unredacted logs will be made available next week.
I provided them with our logs because I wanted them to see a different side of Bradley. I will be releasing the unredacted logs next week so that everyone can read them. After all of the stories portraying him as mentally unstable and revealing his problems at home and in the military, I felt it was important for people to know that there was a time when he seemed satisfied with his life. Read more
UK Police Stop & Search Citizens to prevent hooligans

(photo: David King)
Public workers, up to seven hundred and fifty thousand teachers and civil servants, are alleged to have participated in a June 30 general strike called for in the United Kingdom after UK Parliament passed changes to pensions and retirement, specifically, increasing the amount an employee has to contribute. Read more
Tim Lawson interviews Jim Richardson: Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning
Tim Lawson spoke to Jim Richardson, a member of Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning, about the group’s campaign work. This interview was sent to us by Mr. Lawson, for publication on WL Central.
Can you tell me about the Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning group?
Bradley Manning is a US army soldier accused of passing information to WikiLeaks, including the “Collateral Murder” video of an American airstrike that killed two journalists and nine other Iraqis and wounded two children; the Afghan War Diary; the Iraq War Logs; and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables, many of which reveal vast differences between the public statements and the actions of numerous governments.
Manning was arrested in May 2010, and from July 2010 to April 2011 was held waiting trial in maximum security under widely criticised conditions at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia.
He is facing charges carrying sentences of up to 52 years jail, and, in theory, the death penalty. After worldwide outcry, on April 20, still awaiting trial, Bradley was moved to a new military remand prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where his detention conditions seem to be better.
Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning is a small, informal, self-organised group, currently of six people. Michele, our founding member, started things going in March 2011, with a rally in support of Manning in Sydney’s Martin Place.
It was cold and wet but 50 people were there; David Shoebridge from the Greens spoke.
Several people volunteered to help Michele. We organised a bigger rally as part of a worldwide solidarity weekend, on April 10, 2011, in Town Hall Square, with speakers on international law, academic freedom of speech, whistleblowing, and again David Shoebridge. We had support from the Sydney WikiLeaks Coalition. We gained some more members then.
Our goals are to draw attention to Bradley Manning’s legal case and the circumstances of his detention; to campaign for a fair trial and eventually for his freedom; to raise awareness of his heroism, if he is the leaker, in exposing apparent war-crimes and government misdeeds; and to canvas the broad associated issues of whistleblowing, open democratic governance instead of secrecy, and the role of the media and the people in checking abuses of power.
There’s information about the group and our activities on our website: http://syd4bradley.posterous.com/
What rallies or campaigns are coming up in the near future that people can get involved in? In what other ways can people get involved?
A pre-trial court hearing for Manning is expected sometime in June. We will hold a rally or “vigil” in Martin Place when that’s announced or commenced, possibly at short notice.
The next event after that we’re working on will be a forum, to be held in the evening in central Sydney, we hope on August 2. Details will be available soon on our website http://syd4bradley.posterous.com/events.
We’d love it if people in Sydney who would like to support Manning would come to these events. There are a number of further things you can do:
- Post a photo signature at http://iam.bradleymanning.org/
- Campaign on social media: we are on Twitter at @syd4bradley, and there’s a US “savebradley” Facebook page.
- If you’re in a relevant course [at university], for example, politics, law, or media, ask questions about Manning’s case and the issues it raises in class, or try to relate them to your studies
- Join our group if you’re in Sydney; find an existing Manning or WikiLeaks support group on your campus or in your area; or start a new one!
We already know of groups in
Perth and Brisbane. Email us at syd4bradley@gmail.com if you’re interested in linking up.
Amnesty International has expressed concern, calling the Quantico detention conditions harsh and punitive, and 295 American legal scholars signed a letter in April 2011 saying the conditions amounted to a violation of the U.S. constitution. Can you further describe these conditions?
[US journalist] Glenn Greenwald was probably the first person to draw wide
attention to “the inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention” at
Quantico, in a Salon.com article in December 2010.
Greenwald described those conditions as constituting “cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture”, and “likely to create long-term psychological injuries”.
Here are some of the details, taken from the American legal scholars’ letter you mention:
- intensive solitary confinement, alone in his cell for 23 hours of everyday
- barred from exercising in his cell
- not allowed to doze or sleep during the day, but required to answer
whether he was “okay” every five minutes - no pillow or sheets on the bed, only a coarse blanket
- awakened at night every five minutes if he turned or covered himself so guards could not see his face.
An 11-page letter from Bradley, prepared with assistance from his lawyer, described continually repeated rejection of requests for his removal from “Prevention of Injury” status, despite support for this removal by Quantico brig psychiatrists; and a series of incidents in March 2011 where he was stripped of all clothing at night and forced to present for morning inspection totally naked.
In addition, at Quantico Bradley was denied unmonitored visits from anyone except his lawyer; all other visits were recorded.
Official, unmonitored visits were denied for the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez; Congressperson Dennis Kucinich; and a representative from Amnesty International.
It does not seem to be clear yet whether such visits will be permitted now
Bradley has been moved to Fort Leavenworth.
Do you believe the horrendous conditions Manning was kept in at Quantico were devised to put pressure on him to implicate Julian Assange?
Given the pressure and physical torture that we know have been inflicted on detainees held by the US elsewhere, for example at Guantanamo Bay, such an intention is not out of the question.
A more general level of cruelty in American penal institutions, combined with animus against Manning for his alleged actions, may be a less Machiavellian explanation.
Whatever the motive, and although the effect on his mental health may have been severe (with his friend and visitor David House saying that by January 2011 Manning appeared “catatonic” and had “severe problems communicating”), his treatment at Quantico does not seem — as far as we know at present — to have resulted in him revealing information or evidence about Julian Assange or the leaks.
On May 24, PBS-Frontline aired a sweeping documentary on Bradley Manning. WikiLeaks was upset with how it was portrayed in the documentary. Do you think the documentary was beneficial or counterproductive?
The Frontline documentary WikiSecrets, and a subsequent May 27 video by the *Guardian* with the extraordinary title — complete with question mark — The Madness of Bradley
Manning?, are representative of a general tendency of a large proportion of the mainstream media to focus on issues of personality rather than principle or politics, let alone philosophy.
Julian Assange has questioned the accuracy of parts of the so-called chat-logs published by Wired. But if they do genuinely express Manning’s thinking, his reasons for leaking materials arose out of his observation of oppression in Iraq, and are based on his desire for “people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public”.
It is not beneficial for an understanding of why Manning may have been the main WikiLeaks whistleblower for the press instead to try to trace his alleged actions to his childhood, his gayness, or his private history.
These films and other denigrations (not to mention associated personal attacks on Assange) have been widely criticised, for example by Greg Mitchell in The Nation, and the US Bradley Manning Support Network.
We have a short post on our website called “Why Blow the Whistle?” along these lines too.
We hope that people will see through trivialisations by the media, and instead focus on the revelations of the leaks themselves, and the challenge they pose to militarism and governmental secrecy.
Bradley Manning has been accused of undermining national security in the US. What do you think about these claims?
While the leadership of the United States sees its national security and national interest in waging wars in other parts of the globe and in [the] dominating exploitation of world resources, exposure of its military and diplomatic crimes will indeed be against that selfish interest.
If instead realisation develops in the US and elsewhere that this is one finite planet, where we all have a common interest in peace, sustainability and sharing, then Bradley Manning — if he is in fact the source of the leaks — will be thanked and celebrated as a hero well into the future, for allowing people everywhere to see truths which help set them free, no longer to be deceived or manipulated by their governments, but to decide their own and the world’s destiny for themselves.
2011-06-25 Tim Lawson interviews Jim Richardson, member of Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning
Assange: le mandat d’arrêt complété
Un étau est en train de se resserrer sur WikiLeaks et son leader charismatique. D’un côté, le site tenu pour responsable d’un « 11-Septembre de la diplomatie mondiale » est menacé d’asphyxie, via une attaque en règle visant ses capacités d’hébergement. De l’autre, Julian Assange, son fondateur et porte-étendard, est devenu un homme aux abois.
Read more
Should the press really be free?
In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that « only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. » We agree.
The ruling stated that « paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. »
It is easy to perceive the connection between publication and the complaints people make about publication. But this generates a perception bias, because it overlooks the vastness of the invisible. It overlooks the unintended consequences of failing to publish and it overlooks all those who are emancipated by a climate of free speech. Such a climate is a motivating force for governments and corporations to act justly. If acting in a just manner is easier than acting in an unjust manner, most actions will be just.
Sufficient principled leaking in tandem with fearless reporting will bring down administrations that rely on concealing reality from their own citizens.
It is increasingly obvious that corporate fraud must be effectively addressed. In the US, employees account for most revelations of fraud, followed by industry regulators, media, auditors and, finally, the SEC. Whistleblowers account for around half of all exposures of fraud.
Corporate corruption comes in many forms. The number of employees and turnover of some corporations exceeds the population and GDP of some nation states. When comparing countries, after observations of population size and GDP, it is usual to compare the system of government, the major power groupings and the civic freedoms available to their populations. Such comparisons can also be illuminating in the case of corporations.
Considering the largest corporations as analogous to a nation state reveals the following properties:
- The right to vote does not exist except for share holders (analogous to land owners) and even there voting power is in proportion to ownership.
- All power issues from a central committee.
- There is no balancing division of power. There is no fourth estate. There are no juries and innocence is not presumed.
- Failure to submit to any order may result in instant exile.
- There is no freedom of speech.
- There is no right of association. Even romance between men and women is often forbidden without approval.
- The economy is centrally planned.
- There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.
- The society is heavily regulated, to the degree many employees are told when, where and how many times a day they can go to the toilet.
- There is little transparency and something like the Freedom of Information Act is unimaginable.
- Internal opposition groups, such as unions, are blackbanned, surveilled and/or marginalized whenever and wherever possible.
While having a GDP and population comparable to Belgium, Denmark or New Zealand, many of these multi-national corporations have nothing like their quality of civic freedoms and protections. This is even more striking when the regional civic laws the company operates under are weak (such as in West Papua, many African states or even South Korea); there, the character of these corporate tyrannies is unregulated by their civilizing surroundings.
Through governmental corruption, political influence, or manipulation of the judicial system, abusive corporations are able to gain control over the defining element of government the sole right to deploy coercive force.
Just like a country, a corrupt or unethical corporation is a menace to all inside and outside it. Corporations will behave more ethically if the world is watching closely. WikiLeaks has exposed unethical plans and behaviour in corporations and this as resulted in recompense or other forms of justice forms of justice for victims.
More about WikiLeaks
- How WikiLeaks works
- Why Wikileaks is important
- How WikiLeaks verifies its news
- Who’s behind WikiLeaks
- Anonymity for sources
- Prizes and background
- Some of the stories we have broken
- How more inquiring can make difference
- The importance of principaled leaking journalism
- Should the press really be free?
- Legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks
Some of the stories we have broken
- War, killings, torture and detention
- Government, trade and corporate transparency
- Suppression of free speech and a free press
- Diplomacy, spying and (counter-)intelligence
- Ecology, climate, nature and sciences
- Corruption, finance, taxes, trading
- Censorship technology and internet filtering
- Cults and other religious organizations
- Abuse, violence, violation
War, killings, torture and detention
- Changes in Guantanamo Bay SOP manual (2003-2004) – Guantanamo Bay’s main operations manuals
- Of Orwell, Wikipedia and Guantanamo Bay – In where we track down and expose Guantanamo Bay’s propaganda team
- Fallujah jail challenges US – Classified U.S. report into appalling prison conditions in Fallujah
- U.S lost Fallujah’s info war – Classified U.S. intelligence report on the battle of Fallujah, Iraq
- US Military Equipment in Iraq (2007) – Entire unit by unit equipment list of the U.S army in Iraq
- Dili investigator called to Canberra as evidence of execution mounts – the Feb 2008 killing of East Timor rebel leader Reinado
- Como entrenar a escuadrones de la muerte y aplastar revoluciones de El Salvador a Iraq – The U.S. Special Forces manual on how to prop up unpopular government with paramilitaries
Government, trade and corporate transparency
- Change you can download: a billion in secret Congressional reports – Publication of more than 6500 Congressional Research Reports, worth more than a billion dollars of US tax-funded research, long sought after by NGOs, academics and researchers
- ACTA trade agreement negotiation lacks transparency – The secret ACTA trade agreement draft, followed by dozens of other publications, presenting the initial leak for the whole ACTA debate happening today
- Toll Collect Vertraege, 2002 – Publication of around 10.000 pages of a secret contract between the German federal government and the Toll Collect consortium, a private operator group for heavy vehicle tolling system
- Leaked documents suggest European CAP reform just a whitewash – European farm reform exposed
- Stasi still in charge of Stasi files – Suppressed 2007 investigation into infiltration of former Stasi into the Stasi files commission
- IGES Schlussbericht Private Krankenversicherung, 25 Jan 2010 – Hidden report on the economics of the German private health insurance system and its rentability
Suppression of free speech and a free press
- The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009 – Publication of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored from the Independent’s website. WikiLeaks has saved dozens of articles, radio and tv recordings from disappearing after having been censored from BBC, Guardian, and other major news organisations archives.
- Secret gag on UK Times preventing publication of Minton report into toxic waste dumping, 16 Sep 2009 – Publication of variations of a so-called super-injunction, one of many gag-orders published by WikiLeaks to expose successful attempts to suppress the free press via repressive legal attacks
- Media suppression order over Turks and Caicos Islands Commission of Inquiry corruption report, 20 Jul 2009 – Exposure of a press gagging order from the Turks and Caicos Islands, related to WikiLeaks exposure of the Commission of Inquiry corruption report
- Bermuda’s Premier Brown and the BCC bankdraft – Brown went to the Privy council London to censor the press in Bermuda
- How German intelligence infiltrated Focus magazine – Illegal spying on German journalists
Diplomacy, spying and (counter-)intelligence
- U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks, 18 Mar 2008 – Classified (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. Has been in the worldwide news.
- CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11 Mar 2010 – This classified CIA analysis from March, outlines possible PR-strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. Received international news coverage in print, radio and TV.
- U.S. Embassy profiles on Icelandic PM, Foreign Minister, Ambassador – Publication of personal profiles for briefing documents for U.S. officials visiting Iceland. While lowly classified are interesting for subtle tone and internal facts.
- Cross-border clashes from Iraq O.K. – Classified documents reveal destabalizing U.S. military rules
- Tehran Warns US Forces against Chasing Suspects into Iran – Iran warns the United States over classified document on WikiLeaks
- Inside Somalia and the Union of Islamic Courts – Vital strategy documents in the Somali war and a play for Chinese support
Ecology, climate, nature and sciences
- Draft Copenhagen climate change agreement, 8 Dec 2009 – Confidential draft « circle of commitment » (rich-country) Copenhagen climate change agreement
- Draft Copenhagen Accord Dec 18, 2009 – Three page draft Copehagen « accord », from around Friday 7pm, Dec 18, 2009; includes pen-markings
- Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009 – Over 60MB of emails, documents, code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, written between 1996 and 2009 that lead to a worldwide debate
- The Monju nuclear reactor leak – Three suppressed videos from Japan’s fast breeder reactor Monju revealing the true extent of the 1995 sodium coolant disaster
Corruption, finance, taxes, trading
- The looting of Kenya under President Moi – $3,000,000,000 presidential corruption exposed; swung the Dec 2007 Kenyan election, long document, be patient
- Gusmao’s $15m rice deal alarms UN – Rice deal corruption in East Timor
- How election violence was financed – the embargoed Kenyan Human Rights Commission report into the Jan 2008 killings of over 1,300 Kenyans
- Financial collapse: Confidential exposure analysis of 205 companies each owing above EUR45M to Icelandic bank Kaupthing, 26 Sep 2008 – Publication of a confidential report that has lead to hundreds of newspaper articles worldwide
- Barclays Bank gags Guardian over leaked memos detailing offshore tax scam, 16 Mar 2009 – Publication of censored documents revealing a number of elaborate international tax avoidance schemes by the SCM (Structured Capital Markets) division of Barclays
- Bank Julius Baer: Grand Larceny via Grand Cayman – How the largest private Swiss bank avoids paying tax to the Swiss government
- Der Fall Moonstone Trust – Cayman Islands Swiss bank trust exposed
- Over 40 billion euro in 28167 claims made against the Kaupthing Bank, 23 Jan 2010 – List of Kaupthing claimants after Icelandic banking crash
- Northern Rock vs. WikiLeaks – Northern Rock Bank UK failed legal injunctions over the ¡Ì24,000,000,000 collapse
- Whistleblower exposes insider trading program at JP Morgan – Legal insider trading in three easy steps, brought to you by JP Morgan and the SEC
Censorship technology and internet filtering
- Eutelsat suppresses independent Chinese-language TV station NTDTV to satisfy Beijing – French sat provider Eutelsat covertly removed an anti-communist TV channel to satisfy Beijing
- Internet Censorship in Thailand – The secret internet censorship lists of Thailand’s military junta
Cults and other religious organizations
- Church of Scientology’s ‘Operating Thetan’ documents leaked online – Scientology’s secret, and highly litigated bibles
- Censored Legion de Cristo and Regnum Cristi document collection – Censored internal documents from the Catholic sect Legion de Cristo (Legion of Christ)
- US Department of Labor investigation into Landmark Education, 2006 – 2006 investigative report by the U.S. Department of Labor on Landmark Education
Abuse, violence, violation
- Report on Shriners raises question of wrongdoing – corruption exposed at 22 U.S. and Canadian children’s hospitals.
- Claims of molestation resurface for US judo official
- Texas Catholic hospitals did not follow Catholic ethics, report claims – Catholic hospitals violated catholic ethics
More about WikiLeaks
- How WikiLeaks works
- Why Wikileaks is important
- How WikiLeaks verifies its news
- Who’s behind WikiLeaks
- Anonymity for sources
- Prizes and background
- Some of the stories we have broken
- How more inquiring can make difference
- The importance of principaled leaking journalism
- Should the press really be free?
- Legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks
Prizes and background
WikiLeaks is the winner of:
- the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award
- the 2009 Amnesty International human rights reporting award (New Media)
WikiLeaks has a history breaking major stories in major media outlets and robustly protecting sources and press freedoms. We have never revealed a source. We do not censor material. Since formation in 2007, WikiLeaks has been victorious over every legal (and illegal) attack, including those from the Pentagon, the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the Former president of Kenya, the Premier of Bermuda, Scientology, the Catholic & Mormon Church, the largest Swiss private bank, and Russian companies. WikiLeaks has released more classified intelligence documents than the rest of the world press combined.
More about WikiLeaks
- How WikiLeaks works
- Why Wikileaks is important
- How WikiLeaks verifies its news
- Who’s behind WikiLeaks
- Anonymity for sources
- Prizes and background
- Some of the stories we have broken
- How more inquiring can make difference
- The importance of principaled leaking journalism
- Should the press really be free?
- Legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks
About us
Half of the world saying that Julian is criminal and that should be arrested. Other half thinks he is a hero..
- Because of his intelligence, courage and his will to show the world something hidden!
- Because there are too many bad people, bad politicians!
- Because there are too many people who want to hear real news!
- Because there is half of the world who want to say something!
I21st century, and still fighting for freedom?
We are here to provide you little piece of that freedom.
We are here to speak together, to speak our mind…
We are here to build a community who supports a man who stand up for our rights.
The freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole.
We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions.”
The First Amendment envisions that the sort of robust political debate that takes place in a democracy will occasionally yield speech critical of public figures who are “intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large.
Julian Assange, you are not alone!
Support Us on Facebook!
How WikiLeaks works
WikiLeaks has combined high-end security technologies with journalism and ethical principles. Like other media outlets conducting investigative journalism, we accept (but do not solicit) anonymous sources of information. Unlike other outlets, we provide a high security anonymous drop box fortified by cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies. This provides maximum protection to our sources. We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the public. When information comes in, our journalists analyse the material, verify it and write a news piece about it describing its significance to society. We then publish both the news story and the original material in order to enable readers to analyse the story in the context of the original source material themselves. Our news stories are in the comfortable presentation style of Wikipedia, although the two organisations are not otherwise related. Unlike Wikipedia, random readers can not edit our source documents.
As the media organisation has grown and developed, WikiLeaks been developing and improving a harm minimisation procedure. We do not censor our news, but from time to time we may remove or significantly delay the publication of some identifying details from original documents to protect life and limb of innocent people.
We accept leaked material in person and via postal drops as alternative methods, although we recommend the anonymous electronic drop box as the preferred method of submitting any material. We do not ask for material, but we make sure that if material is going to be submitted it is done securely and that the source is well protected. Because we receive so much information, and we have limited resources, it may take time to review a source’s submission.
We also have a network of talented lawyers around the globe who are personally committed to the principles that WikiLeaks is based on, and who defend our media organisation.
More about WikiLeaks
- How WikiLeaks works
- Why Wikileaks is important
- How WikiLeaks verifies its news
- Who’s behind WikiLeaks
- Anonymity for sources
- Prizes and background
- Some of the stories we have broken
- How more inquiring can make difference
- The importance of principaled leaking journalism
- Should the press really be free?
- Legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks
Why Wikileaks is important
Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society’s institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. A healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in achieving these goals. We are part of that media.
Scrutiny requires information. Historically, information has been costly in terms of human life, human rights and economics. As a result of technical advances particularly the internet and cryptography – the risks of conveying important information can be lowered. In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that « only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. » We agree.
We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their own government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government through the media.
In the years leading up to the founding of WikiLeaks, we observed the world’s publishing media becoming less independent and far less willing to ask the hard questions of government, corporations and other institutions. We believed this needed to change.
WikiLeaks has provided a new model of journalism. Because we are not motivated by making a profit, we work cooperatively with other publishing and media organisations around the globe, instead of following the traditional model of competing with other media. We don’t hoard our information; we make the original documents available with our news stories. Readers can verify the truth of what we have reported themselves. Like a wire service, WikiLeaks reports stories that are often picked up by other media outlets. We encourage this. We believe the world’s media should work together as much as possible to bring stories to a broad international readership.
More about WikiLeaks
- How WikiLeaks works
- Why Wikileaks is important
- How WikiLeaks verifies its news
- Who’s behind WikiLeaks
- Anonymity for sources
- Prizes and background
- Some of the stories we have broken
- How more inquiring can make difference
- The importance of principaled leaking journalism
- Should the press really be free?
- Legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on WikiLeaks







Recent Comments