Posts Tagged ‘cablegate’

Bradley Manning for Nobel Peace Prize

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Members of the Icelandic Parliament have nominated Private First Class Bradley Manning for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. If there’s any sense of justice left in the Nobel Committee, he’ll win.

Bradley Manning is accused of leaking a video showing the killing of civilians by a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq. As well, he is charged with sharing the documents known as the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and embarrassing US diplomatic cables, all of which Manning leaked to the champions of transparency: Wikileaks.

Since his arrest in May 2010, Manning has been held in military prison without trial.

The chain of events Manning helped spark include:

In 2009, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Since then, Obama has increased military spending, expanded US-led war into several new countries, and has furthered the continued erosion of precious civil liberties.

If Pfc Manning doesn’t take the Nobel this year, maybe the Committee should strip Obama of his award and instead bestow the 2009 honors on a more deserving peace-builder.

US Troops Handcuff, Execute Elderly Women and Children

Saturday, September 3rd, 2011

Wikileaks just dumped 250,000 un-redacted US embassy cables – most of which were classified – to the series of tubes we call the Internet. Out of the many stories which have already surfaced, none, so far, are more damning than one stemming from a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The leaked cable provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, and then they called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence!!! Autopsies showed that all the dead – including four woman and five children aged 5 years or younger – had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

Disgusting.

Hopefully these and other leaked documents will provide the push needed to hold the key players behind this war – Bush, Cheney, Rummy – accountable for their crimes against humanity. Then, maybe the next time a problem arises, leaders won’t be quite so eager to drop the bombs.

Wikileaks Finally Resorting Crowdsourcing

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Whistle blowers and freedom fighters extraordinaire – Wikileaks – have just released 35000 classified documents originating from U.S. embassies from around the world.

But this time, instead of slowly sifting through the heaping pile themselves, they are doing something new – opening up the classified cables to the public, letting crowdsourcing handle the brunt of the painstaking work.

The entire cache of cables made freely available online in searchable format, making it easy to scour. And whenever any intrepid investigator finds a juicy tidbit they need only tweet about it with the hashtag #wlfind to share it with the world.

Finally, Assange and his gang are embracing a bit of that transparency they so vehemently espouse – something I’ve been lamenting about since January.

Well, better late than never. Plus, with plans to expose more nations – like Israel and Russia –  to the dreaded transparency treatment, it is high time Wikileaks distributed some of their burden to the rest of us.

WikiLeaks to Take On Israel

Friday, December 24th, 2010

Awesome news: Wikileaks plans to release 4000 secret Israeli documents within the next 6 months!

Reiterating what we covered in yesterday’s post, people who reveal abuses by governments and other powerful groups are helping to create a more just civilization.

Considering how Israel has consistently violated international law and human rights for decades, these leaks are sure to help ease the plight of the Palestinian people.

As more embarrassing and damning information comes to light, the true face of Israeli Apartheid will be laid bare for the world to see. Then, paralleling the world’s struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, global political pressures will mount until these Israeli injustices ultimately cease. Viva Palestina!

In other whistle-blowing news, Wikileaks’s entire stash of cables has been leaked in Norway. To date, Wikileaks has only ‘slow-leaked’  a few thousand of the cables. Now, perhaps, the flood gates will be entirely opened.

We should be crowdsourcing these piles of classified documents. Open them all to the public, allow discussions and ratings for every one. Let the masses filter out the most relevant information faster and more effectively than the handful of individuals doing it now.

While such a move might be irresponsible for journalists to undertake, it would be a great thing for transparency and freedom of information. Power to the people!

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Update: Thanks to rudetrooper for pointing out that the cables are already being collaboratively sorted on reddit – http://www.reddit.com/r/leakspin (and probably other places too)