WikiLeaks communicationsThis cryptic message, posted to WikiLeaks twitter account yesterday, comes ahead of the imminent release of more than 400,000 "mostly" low-level documents related to the Iraq war. Wikileaks.org currently reports that the site is down for scheduled maintainance.
infrastructure is currently under attack.
Project BO move to coms channel S.
Activate Reston5.
WHAT IS PROJECT "BO" AND RESTON 5
Colbert: "[B]ut there are armed men in the group, they did find a rocket propelled grenade among the group. The Reuters photographers who were regrettably killed were not identified as photographers, and you have edited this tape, and you have given it a title, called 'Collateral Murder'."Judge for your self. Watch the video. Its a callout. So don't tell me its a lie.
Assange: "Yes"
Colbert: "That's not leaking, that's a pure editorial."
Assange: "So the promise we made to our sources is that not only will we defend them through every means that we have available, technologically, legally and politically, but we will try to get the maximum possible political impact for the material that they give to us and."
Colbert: "So 'Collateral Murder' is to get political impact?"
Assange: "Yes, absolutely. As the material we promise to the public, we will release the full source material, so that if people have a different opinion, the full material is there for them to analyze and assess."
Colbert: "Well actually then, I admire that, I admire someone who is willing to put 'Collateral Murder' on the first thing people see, knowing that they probably won't look at the rest of it."
Assange: [Laughs uncomfortably]. "That's true."
Colbert: "That way you properly manipulate the audience into the emotional state you want before something goes on the air.
Assange: "no, no."
Colbert: "Because that is an emotional manipulation, 'what you're about to see is "Collateral Murder," now look at this completely objective bit of footage that you are going to show. That's journalism I can get behind."
Assange: "That's true, only one in ten people did actually look at the full footage, however,"
Colbert: "So that's ninety percent of the people accept the definition of collateral murder."
Assange: "Yes. And"
Colbert: "Congratulations."
Assange: "Thank you. aaah."
Colbert: "Do you believe that it was collateral murder?"
Assange: "Yes."
Colbert: "You do?"
Assange: "Absolutely"
Colbert: "Do you get to make that call? Did you put the words "Collateral Murder" up?"
Assange: "Yes."
Colbert: "You did?"
Assange: "That was our call."
Colbert: "Really? [Long pause] I want the Pentagon to know he is not really in my studio right now. [Laughter] thousands of miles away via satellite. [Laughter] How can you call that 'collateral murder?' What branch of the service did you serve in, Sir? huh?"
Assange: "Well I'm an Australian, actually."
Colbert: "So what branch of the barbie did you throw your shrimp on?" What . . .you guys not fight down there? How can you, how can you call collateral murder. I watched the entire thing. I'm one of that ten percent. And you did not reveal that there was a firefight that had gone on nearby . . ."
Assange: "There wasn't that's a lie."
Colbert: "That's a lie?"
Assange: "That's a lie."
Colbert: "So . . ."
Assange: "We have classified records [ed. note: suddenly he doesn't want to release something classified!] to show that in fact all that there was, twenty-eight minutes beforehand was a report of small arms fire, the person involved was not identified, the location involved was also not identified. Twenty-eight minutes later the Apaches are circling around the suburb of New Bagdhad, came across these men and killed them."
Colbert: "What were these men doing in the streets carrying rifles and rocket-propelled grenades."
Assange: "It appears that there are possibly two men, one carrying a AK-47 and one carrying a rocket-propelled grenade, although we're not a hundred percent sure of that, uh, in that crowd. However, the permission to engage was given before the word RPG was ever used and before the Reuters camera man Amir El Damin pulled up his camera and went around the corner."
Colbert: "What is the purpose of letting the public know?--its like you're saying it is better to know than not to know."
Assange: "Yes, there's, I mean . . ."
Colbert: "Have you not heard ignorance is bliss?"
Assange: "All too frequently."
Colbert: "Aren't you stuck in a bit of a bind? You got a lot of attention for showing. . .death."
Assange: "Yes."
Colbert: "Do you have another video showing death? I understand that you have a video of a uh, tanker being attacked in Afghanistan."
Assange: "Yes we have another video . . ."
Colbert: "And how many people die in that one?'
Assange: "uh, the military says ninety-seven"
Colbert: "Ninety-seven, ok. Don't you get kind of caught in the "24" trap which is that you've gotta, you've gotta make every single episode about violence and death, or else no one's going to watch any more?"
Assange: "Just as long as we don't have to increase the numbers every episode, I'd be happy Stephen."
Colbert: "Now let's go back to the small-arms skirmish, down the road, what's the difference between small-arms skirmish and a firefight? It just seems like its a matter of scale. Once your guys with your guns and your RPG get there it ends up being a firefight. Isn't that what happens in war, you try to stop these guys from getting together to form a group that could give massive resistance to the United States?"Judge for yourself. I think Colbert schooled this fool, myself.
Assange: "Well that's going back within time, Stephen."
Colbert: "Yes, but that's what I do. Its called editing, its what you guys did with that piece."
Assange: "We didn't edit the first eleven minutes, which included all the carnage, even in the so-called edited version [Ed. note: gets testy here and disputes Colbert by saying "so-called edited version"] and then we did some flashbacks of two scenes that occurred earlier."
[Edit past material already transcribed]
Colbert: "until I knew something about Baghdad, I could assume it was paradise."
Assange: "That's true."
Colbert: "Yes, but this footage puts a face on war that says people get killed."
Assange: "Yeah, so a lot of soldiers have said to various blogs then to us in E-mail, well, war is war."
Colbert: "Exactly. War is war. I haven't fought in a war, therefore I don't judge it, how can you do that?"
Assange: "Yeah. They say war is war but what is war and so we . . ."
Colbert: "War is hell."
Assange: "That's right. And we show war is war and uh, you may make the justification that well, lots of bad things happen in war, but what is it? Well this is what it is."
Colbert: "Is there anything you would not . . you would not reveal? If you had the launch codes to nuclear weapons? Would you. . .would you release them to make some point about how easy it is to endanger the world? It'd make a great point, make a bit of a splash."
Assange: "The argument that was really thrown at us was would you release the list of oil sources."
Colbert: "Would you?
Assange: "No. We wouldn't"
Colbert: "Why, that's awfully high and mighty. What if somebody else found them and leaked them to you?"
Assange: "yeah so"
Colbert: "If I found who they were, and I leaked them to Wikileaks, would you leak them?"
Assange: "Not immediately. Not immediately. So we have . . ."
Colbert: "Would you have your fingerprints and your faces changed?"
Assange: "We have a harm minimization process where we contact people beforehand to give them some sort of time to address [Crosstalk]."
Colbert: "Did you call all of the soldiers in that helicopter?"
Assange: "They didn't need harm minimization" [Crosstalk].
Colbert: "Who . . . who needed it?
Assange: "In this particular process it was the families on the ground, the children who were in that van, as an example, you need to speak to . . . contact beforehand, we sent people to Baghdad to do that and to understand that situation."
Colbert: "So that's a situation. . .you're implying that the only people who suffer in war are civilians, not soldiers."
Assange: "Soldiers are debased in war, its one of the things that this video shows . . .the character of these soldiers in the air has been corrupted by the process of war. So, we should have some sympathy for those soldiers who go to war but understand that that's an inevitable outcome if you send them there, a consequence of sending them."
Edit--my hands are getting tired--stuff about being spied on by governments etc.
Colbert: "Are you the future of journalism?"
Assange: "I hope we're not the past of journalism, because the past of journalism is mired and needs to change.'
Colbert: "Now you guys have raked in some serious cash because of this."
Assange: "Yes."
Colbert: Y'all tweeted that you made over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in donations after this thing went up online?"
Assange: "That's correct."
Colbert: "And your little tweet said, you know that's how you . . .that's a business model for journalism, actually do it."
Assange: "Yeah, try actually doing journalism for a change, that's a good, a good business model."
Colbert: "So, so, making cash off of publishing images of the suffering of others, you say is a model that journalism hasn't tried?"
Assange: [Laughs uncomfortably] "The images it uses are too hard to get."
overused christmas story joke detected breaking page start operation champurrado
Actually there is a better solution. The National Security Archive is doing the right thing right now. You mass FOIA, and sue when you think that stuff that shouldn't be hidden is hidden. A federal judge gets to decide, not the Executive Branch. Nobody can say shit and you got the stuff in your hands.If FOIA requests couldn't be denied, after a trial or not, you'd be correct. And if we're talking about the same federal judges that are acquitting mercenaries from Blackwater of murdering Iraqis in cold blood, you'll forgive me for not holding out much hope for justice.
Often times, the government will settle and reveal some of the information.So we can hold our government partially accountable for their crimes, if they are willing to admit to them in the first place?
This isn't rocket science.True; it's anti-democratic state-controlled tyranny, where one monolithic hierarchy is the judge, jury, and executioner of it's own crimes. It's unConstitutional for any member of the government to spend my money without giving me a full account of it, so I know that I'm not, for instance, selling weapons to sworn enemies in Iran to fund drug wars in Colombia.
"That's the lesson of the Pentagon papers. No matter how smart people are in the White House and the Pentagon, no matter how well intentioned, they can get into crazy and illegal activities. And once they're in, and these schemes begin to fail, you cannot count on them to have the moral courage to admit a mistake, to cut their losses, to throw in the towel, to get out.''posted by notion at 1:21 PM on October 21, 2010 [4 favorites]
-Daniel Ellsberg
Do you still think mass, indiscriminate leaking of documents is a good idea? Please tell that to the people that the Taliban has vowed to kill using those documents. Please.You've swallowed a disinformation campaign hook, line, and sinker. There are no "people that the Taliban has vowed to kill". In fact, the Pentagon released a report confirming that no lives were put in danger by the leak.
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Rhaomi at 7:53 AM on October 21, 2010 [1 favorite]