The following news article really, really irked me; particularly the U.S.
Government's hypocritical response in the third to the last paragraph.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the very controversial
WikiLeaks website. As the news article below states, WikiLeaks is a
whistle-blower website which began operation about four years ago. It
acquires documents and other evidence which exposes the dirty little secrets
which many governments, corporations and individuals don't want exposed.
WikiLeaks' most recent exposé consisted of thousands of field reports from
Afghanistan -- which have been verified as being authentic -- which reveal
that the war in Afghanistan is not going nearly as well as the U.S.
Governmentn purports.

At any rate, recently -- after the Afghanistan field reports were freely
made available by WikiLeaks to three of the world's largest news agencies --
the Obama administration attacked WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange -- one of
its founders -- as we see by this paragraph from the article:

----- Begin Quote -----

By the end of the week, President Obama had addressed WikiLeaks, and his
defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, had castigated the organization,
accusing it of endangering the lives of Afghans by publishing documents that
had not been vetted to remove the names of military sources. Adm. Mike
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same news
conference that WikiLeaks "might already have on their hands the blood of
some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

----- End Quote -----

Admiral Mike Mullen's statement is clearly the epitome of American military
hypocrisy. In its wars over the past two decades alone, the U.S. military
has directly killed literally thousands -- and indirectly, millions -- of
innocent civilians, in its endeavors to spread American hegemony. This is in
fact one of the primary reasons why the American military is so hated in
Afghanistan, as well as by many people in Iraq, and in other nations which
have felt American military wrath over the years. The U.S. Government and
U.S. military classify these unintentional deaths as acceptable collateral
damage, and they continue to happen, as news reports oftem reveal.

As I have said before, if there is one thing that the war in Afghanistan is
showing, it is that contrary to his pre-election rhetoric, Barack Hussein
Obama is every bit as much a warmonger as George W. Bush. Obama is a
smooth-talking serpent with a college degree and a slippery tongue, and he
totally suckered America.

And do you really think that America's military involvement in Iraq is over?
Don't count on it! As the Bible says, can a Leopard change its spots? Hardly!

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye
also do good, that are accustomed to do evil."
Jeremiah 13:23, KJV


A Renegade Site, Now Working With the News Media

By NOAM COHEN - NYT

August 1, 2010


THE four stages of a political movement, as Gandhi told it, were: "First
they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

For the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks, the release last week of secret
field reports on the war in Afghanistan that it obtained from American
military sources certainly looked like a victory. Not only did The New York
Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel devote hundreds of hours of reporters'
and editors' time to analyzing and confirming the information in the
documents, the three agreed to coordinate publication for last Monday,
ensuring there would be blanket news media coverage on at least two
continents.

This success followed long periods of obscurity, mocking and, at times,
hostility toward WikiLeaks and its hard-to-miss leader, Julian Assange,
since the site began in late 2006.

"In the beginning, everyone was skeptical of whether it would work out,"
said Daniel Schmitt, a WikiLeaks spokesman based in Germany.

Traditional news media may have finally taken WikiLeaks seriously, but the
episode also reflected a change within the organization itself. By handing
over the documents to professionals, with no strings attached, and before
the site itself could offer its own interpretation, WikiLeaks was retreating
to the job of information procurer rather than information explainer.

That's a shift in strategy since the last time WikiLeaks had an important
leak -- the release in April of a video of United States soldiers in an
Apache helicopter killing civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters
journalists. Then, WikiLeaks itself tried to supply its own context and
analysis.

In addition to an unedited 39-minute version of the video, the site
published an edited version, under the title "Collateral Murder," which was
criticized in the media for lacking context and for its provocative title,
notably in a testy interview of Mr. Assange by Stephen Colbert.

Lisa Lynch, an assistant professor of journalism at Concordia University in
Montreal who has written academic papers on WikiLeaks, called the
"Collateral Murder" video "an audacious attempt to assert
themselves into
the conversation."

"In a way, the 'Collateral Murder' video moved away from the model," she
said, looking back on earlier leaks that were processed without WikiLeaks'
becoming the focal point of the coverage. She added that after the critical
reception, "there must have been a realization this was a better way to
present the material."

Mr. Assange certainly seems to have dialed down his language after the
experience of "Collateral Murder." At a news conference last week, he was
asked if the Afghan logs showed war crimes by NATO forces.

"It is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime,"
he said patiently, though he couldn't resist adding that "there does appear
to be evidence of war crimes."

Mr. Schmitt confirmed the shift in an interview. "We certainly learned our
share from the whole 'Collateral Murder' episode," he said. "We
just need to
make sure that the line is more distinct than it was with the 'Collateral
Murder' release."

In Ms. Lynch's paper published this year on WikiLeaks and the future of
investigative reporting, she said that before the site went live, organizers
tried, and largely failed, to get media attention for the site's first major
leak -- a 2005 memo on civil war policy by the Somali Islamic court system.
The vision was that the memo would be commented on, analyzed and
distributed, wiki-style, in the words of one WikiLeak organizer whose e-mail
is quoted by Ms. Lynch, by "one hundred thousand enraged Somali refugees,
blade and keyboard in hand, cutting apart its pages until all is dancing
confetti and the truth."

In fact, the authenticity of that leak was questioned. Ms. Lynch wrote,
"Members expressed frustration that their analysis was granted little
authority by the press, with one member acknowledging that until the site
was certified by someone with 'a gold plated reputation,' it might be hard
for them to gain media credibility."

Even at that time, Mr. Assange was recommending a path that worked closely
with traditional media outlets: "We are in a romance with journalists'
hearts; if our voices sweet are not easily reachable on the phone when their
desire and deadlines peak, others' voices, less honeyed but always, always
available will replace them," he wrote in an e-mail in 2007, according to
Ms. Lynch.

In the years that followed, WikiLeaks frequently served journalism
(particularly in Britain, with its tough libel laws) by hosting material
obtained by reporters, but kept secret by court order. In cases involving
accusations of tax avoidance, membership in a racist political party and
dumping of toxic waste, WikiLeaks published material that The Guardian,
among others, was prevented from publishing itself. The Guardian has
returned the favor by writing an editorial in praise of WikiLeaks.

The shift in tactics with "Collateral Murder" was debated within WikiLeaks,
Mr. Schmitt said in an interview. "There always is debate within
WikiLeaks,"
he said. "Whether that debate is over the strategy of working with the media
or of choosing that title -- there is no common opinion about that."

While WikiLeaks was inching toward traditional media, newsrooms began making
their way to WikiLeaks. It was The Guardian that reached out to Mr. Assange
to get a look at the WikiLeaks material on Afghanistan, according to a
detailed report in the Columbia Journalism Review, not the other way around.

Mr. Assange was eager to comply, and, according to the journalism review,
asked that The Times and Der Spiegel be included. He had learned the hard
way, Ms. Lynch said, that without enlisting news media coverage, the site's
scoops "were received with a thud."

The Obama administration sought to undercut the leak in an e-mail to
reporters by saying that WikiLeaks was opposed to the war in Afghanistan:
"It's worth noting that WikiLeaks is not an objective news outlet but rather
an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan" was the advice to
reporters. But Mr. Assange, in a more neutral tone, responded that WikiLeaks
did not "have a view about whether the war should continue or stop." But he
added: "We do have a view that it should be prosecuted as humanely as
possible."

By the end of the week, President Obama had addressed WikiLeaks, and his
defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, had castigated the organization,
accusing it of endangering the lives of Afghans by publishing documents that
had not been vetted to remove the names of military sources. Adm. Mike
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same news
conference that WikiLeaks "might already have on their hands the blood of
some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

In response on Friday, Mr. Assange was returning to a more combative tone.

"The grounds of Iraq and Afghanistan are covered with real blood," he told
CNN, adding, "Secretary Gates has overseen the killings of thousands of
children and adults in these two countries."



Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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