Wikileaks to Release New Video Showing Murder of Scores of Afghan Civilians

[Gita]

Wikileaks to Release New Video Showing Murder of Scores of Afghan Civilians

Quuote

'Wikileaks, the scourge of governments from China to the US, will soon release a video related to this killing of more than a hundred innocent Afghan civilians in May 2009. This comes on the backdrop of the release of helicopter footage of the slaying of Iraqis in 2007. Take note of what the US were saying when the news broke last year of the casualties:

"We do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties. When the insurgents embed themselves amongst the population, this makes it very difficult. But we ask our commanders to use proportionality and restraint, especially among the populated areas and consider other options." This is a familiar accusation against Hamas in Gaza but had been widely discredited by human rights organisations. It is easier to accuse the Taliban of this tactic because they have a stricter interpretation of Islam and are therefore more 'evil'. The release of this video will hopefully give us the answers, although I suspect we all know what they are.'

Source: Wikileaks to Release New Video Showing Murder of Scores of Afghan Civilians

Unquote


ThT3u4TWuY8

[Gita]

Double Post

[Antonia]

What can I say.... The helicopter strike video was bad enough I posted it on my FB page... this just breaks my heart... I

[Gita]

What can I say.... The helicopter strike video was bad enough I posted it on my FB page... this just breaks my heart... I

I know it can be heartbreaking and I was in two minds whether to post the vid but truth can be hard to swallow and at least it’s reaching more people. I’ve seen enough of these atrocities where I felt my heart and soul shred to pieces but then realised that this state was no good to anyone including myself and learnt not to just meld them back together but strengthen my heart and soul so that more healing light can be sent to those affected. It’s not an easy task but I much prefer it to the alternative. I may not be able to help those people physically but I refuse to feel helpless in these situations and have become pretty good at helping them remotely using healing energies.

[Gita]

Wikileaks to Publish Secret State Dept. Cables: Daniel Ellsberg Fears Pentagon Hit on Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange


Daniel Ellsberg fears a US hit on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

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[Gita]

Quote

WikiLeaks Founder Has Afghan Massacre Video


Julian Assange, who the Feds fear may release State Dept. secrets, denies having them—but he’s readying video of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan.

After several days underground, the founder of the secretive website WikiLeaks has gone public to disclose that he is preparing to release a classified Pentagon video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan last year that left as many as 140 civilians dead, most of them children and teenagers.

In an email obtained by The Daily Beast that was sent to WikiLeaks supporters in the United States Tuesday, Julian Assange, the website’s Australian-born founder, also defends a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist who is now under arrest in Kuwait on charges that he leaked classified Pentagon combat videos, as well as 260,000 State Department cables, to WikiLeaks.

"Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s [sic] engaging in abusive actions all over the world," Assange said in an email. "We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true."

American officials have said they are eager to determine the whereabouts of Assange, who canceled an appearance last Friday in Las Vegas, to discourage him from releasing any more classified information on his website, which is nominally based in Sweden and promotes itself as a global resource for whistleblowers. As recently as two weeks ago, Assange, who first gained global notoriety as a computer hacker, was in his native Australia.

In April, his website posted a copy of a classified Pentagon video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Baghdad in which a dozen people were killed; that video is also believed to have been leaked by the Army intelligence analyst, Specialist Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland.

hile denying again that WikiLeaks has the State Department cables, Assange acknowledges in the email today that he is in custody of the May 2009 video that shows the airstrike on the Afghan village of Garani, believed to be the most lethal combat strike in Afghanistan—in terms of civilian deaths—since the United States invaded the country in 2001. Assange writes that "we are still working on" preparations for release of the video of "the Garani massacre."

The State Department and Pentagon did not immediately comment on Assange’s email message.

American officials have acknowledged in the past that they are concerned about the release of the Garani video, fearing that it could undermine public support for the American military campaign in Afghanistan both in that country and in the United States. Pentagon officials were outraged by WikiLeaks’ release of the Baghdad video this spring.

State Department officials are especially alarmed by the potential that Assange might post the huge library of classified department memos that Manning is reported to have bragged of providing to WikiLeaks earlier this year. The department has confirmed that it is conducting a forensic examination of Manning’s computer equipment for evidence of what he may have downloaded.

In the email, Assange does not confirm any relationship between the website and Manning, describing him as "one of our alleged sources."

But he suggests that Manning is being treated unfairly—"detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held" without trial.

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Continued here. (http://uruknet.info/?p=m67084&hd=&size=1&l=e)

[Gita]

Quote

A Safe Haven For Investigative Journalists Everywhere
WikiLeaks Inspired "New Media Haven" Proposal Passes In Icelandic Parliament
Reykjavik, Iceland; 4:00 UTC, June 16th 2010.

The WikiLeaks advised proposal to build an international "new media haven" in Iceland, with the world's strongest press and whistleblower protection laws, and a "Nobel" prize for
for Freedom of Expression, has unanimously passed the Icelandic Parliament.

50 votes were cast in favor, zero against, one abstained. Twelve members of parliament were not present. Vote results are available at http://www.althingi.is/dba-bin/atkvgr.pl?nnafnak=43014

One of the inspirations for the proposal was the dramatic August 2009 gagging of of Iceland's national broadcaster, RUV by Iceland's then largest bank, Kaupthing:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Financial_collapse:_Confidential_exposure_analysis_of_205_companies_each_owing_above_EUR45M_to_Icela ndic_bank_Kaupthing,_26_Sep_2008

Two changes were made to the proposal from its original form as per the opinion of the parliament's general affairs committee [http://www.althingi.is/altext/138/s/1329.html ]. The first of these
altered slightly the wording of the first paragraph so as to widen the arena for research. The second of these added two new items to the list of tasks for the government:

- That the government should perform a detailed analysis, especially with respect to operational security, for the prospect of operating data centers in Iceland.

- That the government should organize an international conference in Iceland regarding the changes to the legal environment being caused by expansion of cloud computing, data havens, and the judicial state
of the Internet.


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Source (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25743.htm)

[Gita]

Quote

Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for "360 Rotational Fire" Against Civilians in Iraq

Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers seen in the now-famous Wikileaks video in which two American Apache helicopters fire upon a relaxed, unhurried gaggle of men in Baghdad, has stated in an interview with World Socialist Website that he witnessed numerous times the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq after IED attacks. McCord is on of the soldiers seen helping two wounded children after the attack. He has stepped forward with open opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and written a letter of apology for his part in the incident to the mother of the children, who has accepted his apology. The mother's husband was killed in the attack and found with his body shielding that of one of his children.

McCord said to reporter Bill Van Auken:

"we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].He goes, "If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street." Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, "Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?" And you couldn't just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I've seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them."

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Continued here. (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wikileaks-Soldier-Reveals-by-Ralph-Lopez-100616-298.html)

[onawah]

Thanks for posting this Gita. It certainly is sobering, but I have hopes the wars will end soon, and for that reason, this is all good news.

[Gita]

You are very welcomed Onawah and I do admire your optimisim. :thumb:

[Gita]

Jeremy Scahill: Minerals, WikiLeaks, and Blackwater for Sale
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[Gita]

Quote

WikiLeaks founder drops ‘mass spying’ hint

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has given his strongest indication yet about the next big leak from his whistleblower organisation.

There has been rampant speculation about WikiLeaks’ next revelation following its recent release of a top secret military video showing an attack in Baghdad which killed more than a dozen people, including two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Bradley Manning, a US military intelligence officer based in Iraq, has been arrested on suspicion of leaking the video but it is also claimed that Manning bragged online that he had handed WikiLeaks 260,000 secret US State Department cables.

In an interview with the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, Mr Assange said cryptically of WikiLeaks’ current project:

“I can give an analogy. If there had been mass spying that had affected many, many people and organisations and the details of that mass spying were released then that is something that would reveal that the interests of many people had been abused.”

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Continued here. (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/22/2933892.htm)

[fifi]

Wikileaks is mentioned on CNN. Hopefully this article will make more people know about Wikileaks.

The website that reveals state secrets

Quote
(CNN) -- In the early 1970s, when Daniel Ellsberg wanted to get top-secret information about the Vietnam War to the public, he leaked the bombshell Pentagon Papers to elected officials and national newspapers.

But if Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst, wanted to leak secret documents today, he probably would send them to a powerful and controversial new venue for whistle-blowing: a website called WikiLeaks.org.

"People should definitely think of WikiLeaks as the way to go" when other methods of leaking information fail, he said recently.
.....
Ellsberg , the former U.S. Department of Defense official who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the '70s and who now donates to WikiLeaks, said the site has the potential to change the way the world's governments operate.

He says the site will make leaders more accountable to the public.

The recently released military videos are "a very small door, so far, into the huge library of broadly withheld information," he said.

He called Assange a hero for trying to shed light on those hidden catalogues.
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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/07/what.is.wikileaks/index.html?hpt=C1

[John Parslow]

Hello Gita

The latest Headlines from Reuters:


NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said it could take weeks to determine how much damage WikiLeaks' release of military documents on the war in Afghanistan did to national security. It took only minutes to gauge its effect on the way people get news.

WikiLeaks posted some 91,000 documents on its website, but to make sure they got attention and heavy exposure, they shared them first with The New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The episode underscores how the Web and social media give groups that did not exist a few years ago central roles in journalism, and how mainstream media outlets still play a key role in analyzing and disseminating news.

It also shows that the brand names of those outlets, even as their luster fades in the Web age, can amplify the perceived importance of news based on how prominently they cover it.

The question is whether WikiLeaks is journalism, a term whose plasticity has been tested by organizations publishing on blogs and Twitter as the Web threatens traditional outlets' finances and loosens their grip on who publishes the news.

"I don't know what you call what WikiLeaks is doing, and I don't mean that in a disparaging way," said Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief of investigative journalism group ProPublica and former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. "They're a new phenomenon."

Whereas newspapers like The New York Times look to historical guideposts of "All the news that's fit to print" and reporting the news "without fear or favor," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Der Spiegel, "I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing the bastards."

WikiLeaks has published thousands of documents from sources that it says expose corporate and government corruption. It posted a video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007 that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists.

WikiLeaks proclaims its opinions, calling the helicopter attack video "Collateral Murder."

That video garnered as much criticism for WikiLeaks as the U.S. military got for the attack. Some detractors accused WikiLeaks of selective editing to buttress its point of view, though to be sure, mainstream media outlets have been hit with similar accusations for hundreds of years.

In the latest case, WikiLeaks got lots of attention on the Afghanistan documents by limiting initial distribution of its documents to traditional news outlets that are world famous for their journalism, if not universally trusted.

Their decisions to play up the documents ensured that their impact rippled throughout the world, even as many observers said there was little new information in them. Within minutes of their release online, links to the stories appeared on Twitter, blogs discussions began and news websites picked up the reports.

"EVERYWHERE"

"The more important a leak is and the bigger it is, the less chance it has of being properly reported if it is released at once to everyone," the thin, white-maned 39-year-old said at a news conference in London on Monday. WikiLeaks shared the material with the mainstream papers a month before publication, giving them time to study the documents.

Assange has no home and stays with friends around the world. His network, he said, includes 800 part-time volunteers and 10,000 "supporters." WikiLeaks relies on servers in several countries where laws give it more protection for its disclosures, The New York Times reported.

The WikiLeaks page on Twitter lists its location as "everywhere."

According to a June article in The New Yorker, the Australian Assange and his colleagues use encrypted communications and a suspicion of surveillance prevails.

In some ways, WikiLeaks is vaporizing traditional notions of reporting.

Using a network of people to pore through documents is what journalism experts call "crowdsourcing" -- using many people to learn things instead of relying on the lone investigative reporter meeting Deep Throat in a parking lot.

In this case, WikiLeaks employed its network to sort through the documents, but essentially enlisted the Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel as fact checkers and well-recognized stamps of approval for the quality of the information -- a form of collaboration that rarely if ever happened before the Web.

"Had they simply posted all of the material they'd gotten, they could be accused of being grossly irresponsible," said Edward Wasserman, a media ethics professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. "And they would never have achieved the kind of prominence and never received the kind of publicity that they've received."

(Reporting By Robert MacMillan in New York and Peter Griffiths in London, Editing by Howard Goller and Jackie Frank)


Love and peace. JP

[Caren]

Hi John,
Very interesting post re: "WikiLeaks". Thanks for this.
Peace to you, caren

[John Parslow]

Thank you caren

All my love and peace to you. JP :cool: