Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop FOSS in Europe - and errata too!

[woodsmoke]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

About the discussion about the guy himself. We, really, have little or no information about how he actually pulls this off aside that "he gets it" he has a "crew that puts it though the sieve that THEY decide on" "they publish it".

So....just how is he getting the stuff?
a) He is someone who is "known" to go to so an anarchist can provide information hoping that the whole system collapses and he/she is the top dog with the biggest gun/noodle (liberals by definiton don't want ANY guns around, so after all the stupid righties kill themselves, the top dog would be the liberal with the biggest wet noodle).
b) One "side" or the other "side" wants to destroy the "other side" and so takes the information to him and hopes that the other side doesn't take information defamatory of them
c) faceless bureaucrats go to him becuse multibillionairs or governments give him money to give to them so they can retire to an island that they own.

In all cases he is the nexus of the information and what causes it to flow to him.

He has been setting himself up for this role of the urbane, mysterious pseudo world traveller for quite a while and has finally arrived.

If he is eliminated the nexus is eliminated, for a while at least.

woodsmoke

[skunk]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Wikileaks are just a clearing house. Anybody with access to confidential information that they feel should be in the public domain is invited to deliver said information to wikileaks via a very secure dropbox, where it is vetted and often published.

The current debacle is because this private in the US military http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning had top secret clearance and thought that the information he was reading as part of his job should be made public.

I'm more interested in what is in the file that is available for download from the website called "Insurance" that is protected by a 4096bit encyption key that would only be released if Assange were arrested or had an "accident". You have to suspect that some of the juicier stories have not (yet) been released.

"If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter." Thomas Jefferson

[PhilT]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Hi Everyone,

I started this thread by referring to a leak identifying Microsoft's “dirty tricks” but it seems to have become a thread all about the ethics of Wikileaks; BUT - this is OK!!

Everyone who uses this forum is interested in Open Source Freedom – that is, we all believe in sharing, in helping each other, in maintaining our rights to use and modify software, and in our duty to oppose those corporations who attempt to steal our freedoms and also to resist the increasing state-sponsored interference in every aspect of our lives. We believe in the rights of the individual, in cooperation, shared benefits, and contributing to the “common good”. It's ironic that our ideas are labelled “communist”, or “socialist” or “anti-American” when in fact they were the very principles upon which the American nation was founded when freedom was wrested from an imperialist England. That is why I believe we should shout “Hooray!! for Wikileaks” and even more, “Hooray!” for those individuals who are brave enough to send the prime data that Wikileaks makes available. I believe most of the leaks are in the public interest, even if not all.

It seems to me that very often “whistle-blowers” are obedient to a higher moral cause than many Governments and Corporate Moguls who are only interested in power and monetary wealth. The worry that our politicians, diplomats or corporate bosses have about being exposed for their duplicity, arrogance and lying, their condescending hypocrisy, and their desire to keep their power and privilege, is often dressed up as “The National Interest” when in fact it's their own interests they are really worried about. Julian Assange is now being hounded everywhere: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11893104 which I think is a disgrace and an affront to all decent free-thinking folk.

Time was when independent newspapers rooted out and published such details (and when Jefferson made his famous comments); and then came the time when “TV News” actually used to be “News” rather than pre-digested sound-bites, confrontational salacious gossip or propaganda for the protection of the corporations that now own them and pay their salaries; news programs are now basically entertainment and seem to me designed to “dumb down” any meaningful public engagement. The Internet has become one of the last bastions of freedom – hence the increasing clamour from politicians and corporations to control and censor it – again under the guise of the “National Interest” or the “fight against Terror”. What a joke! America is now no longer a Democracy (and the UK where I live is rapidly ceasing to be one). The government “of the people by the people for the people” has become the “Exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few”. Corporations and “bought” politicians re-write laws to protect themselves. Criminal elements in the government sanction torture and war crimes, and then have the nerve to investigate and judge other countries' ethics. The Supreme Court sanctioned the Bush coup d'etat and now places the rights of corporations superior to individuals; the Central Bank and the Investment Banks ride rough-shod over individuals and gorge themselves on multi-billion excesses amidst increasing poverty. How can it be right for any single person to have a billion dollars?

It's against this background that people like Julian Assange try to provide some window into truth. I believe they should be supported, protected and encouraged because they are acting on our behalf! As has been said before, it only takes the indifference of a generation of unthinking men for all personal freedoms to be surrendered to the corporate world or for the state to seize control. Sometimes Freedom has to be defended; and sometimes it takes the sacrifice of brave men to do it.

Go back a few hundred years in Europe. People were then kept in thrall to an unholy alliance between tyrannical monarchs and a corrupt Catholic church and we entered the Dark Ages and knowledge was only preserved by cultured Muslims. Salvation was sold by Catholic priests (who lived well). People were murdered and mutilated by obscene “inquisitors” who raped, tortured and burned millions of innocent men, women and children. Why? Because they said they did not need a priest to access the grace of the Divine, and therefore did not need to pay their tithes to the Church. So much death and suffering has been caused in the name of God by bigoted, ignorant, stupid, arrogant, power-hungry, intolerant men who created their anthropomorphic 'gods' in their own image. Now we have fundamentalists of every faith justifying their own killing or the seizure of land in the name of their 'god'. Whatever happened to : “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”?

And now we have replaced the unholy monarchs of yesteryear with unrepresentative governments who exploit us by depreciating the money through constant inflation, who incrementally remove our freedoms and who struggle to achieve complete control over every aspect of our lives – what food we should eat, what drugs we should be forced to take, what information we should receive, where we should be allowed to travel, and how we must be made subservient to Authority (often unelected). It's like 1984: the Ministry of Truth (responsible for propaganda, aka State Department), the Ministry of Love, aka Homeland Security (responsible for war and TSA personal abuse). Government is sick. Perhaps it's time for a new Revolution of concerned patriots against the oppressors who wrote the Patriot Act and who daily abuse their power through their Agencies, their corrupt Supreme Court, their subservient Patent Office, their selfish Bankers, their self-serving Senate and the rampant Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about in the 1950s.

Hooray!! for Wikileaks, I say! All Health to Julian Assange! May he remain free.

[Detonate]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

PhilT, you put a lot into that post and I can tell you feel deeply about the intrusion of government in our lives. And about the corrupt nature of government. I hope your call a new revolution means a non-violent one. I believe that revolution has started. At least we are still able to discuss matters such as this, people in other parts of the world would never be able to post such a message without fear of the authorities knocking on their door. And the way things are going, we may be sliding to that condition here.

[PhilT]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Detonate, Yes, I do mean "Peaceful Revolution". I am a pacifist, but that does not mean ignoring injustice or evils. It means that we have to be prepared to stand up and be counted, and sometimes to refuse (politely) to comply. And, Yes, sometimes you do wonder about whether you are being "watched". I also agree with you that we still live in relative freedom, but there are dangers of the slide down the slippery slope to ...... who knows what? Honourable men need to be vigilant - and I do believe that the free flow of information is paramount - hence my approval of justified "leaks". Actually, this Forum is not really the place for political comment, and I did wonder about posting. If the Moderators want to remove it, I would not complain. It's just that the ethics of FOSS are so valuable, and this Forum exemplifies them wonderfully.

[MoonRise]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Nicely written!

[woodsmoke]

Re: Wikileaks -"Revolt" of the Masses

The word Revolt is in "" because the book was originally written in Spanish(not textbook) but "academc" and "street".

The original title was:

La rebelión de las masas.

And, as we all know there are nuances to the words.

However, be that as it may. Ortega y Gasset was a great influence on the "thinkers" and the ''thinking" of his day...

Discussions of the book abound wherein the essayist provides an "aristocratic" viewpoint but with an underlying "populist" viewpoint(OR VICE-VERSA) and the writer really is not aware of advocating one while also advocating the other in some kind of schizophrenic way that causes the reader of the essay(about the book) to end up not really knowing which position is being advocated.

Actually the word rebelion and revolt are possibly really incorrect. Because there are those who argue that the "masses" have 'taken over" and not "revolted" but that they aren't qualified to take over. But at the same time that if one really delves into the "I live therefore I am" concept then it could also be argued, schizophrenically" that the masses maybe do have a place beside the aristocracy.


Another big idea, one of several, is that the masses have accepted/ created the situation of.... the "businessman" becoming the defacto replacement of the King/Queen.

Another big idea is that a very large number of people can be affected by the actions of one of the "unqualified" masses and never even know that it happened. But, then again, large numbers of people can be affected by a supposedly qualified person also.

The case in point here being the argument over whether Assange is "more" qualified than a "president" or "sulatan" to know certain information. And, Gasset actaully delved intot he idea of what happens when people die because of the decisions of a "mass" man or the "qualified" man and who is to make the decision about which "man" is "better qualified".

So, Assange then becomes one very good esample of the inexorable linking of the subject with the verb. The "I" with the "things/concepts/" that affect "I" and that "I" then becomes both subject and verb instead of just subject.

When the subject is seperated frrom the verb then he takes no responsibilithy for the possible deaths of thousands from his actions as verb.

The obverse(correctly spelled) of the argument is that the other subject(the sultan) is "less" qualified to not be connected to the verb and that when thousands die because of him not being connected to the verb it is bad.

Gasset never imagined the multinatuional conglomerate of today which has more money than whole governments, but he had the "germ" of the idea and discussed it in an admirable way....but again..... there are also schizophrenic parts which are hinted at that go back to his ideas of "I and "yo" and the interaction with the environment as being part of "I and "yo", and hence the "I live therefore I am".

Note: the "yo" is not a misspelling of "you" it is the Spanish equivalent of "I" but not exactly the same, there are....brutta figura differences..

Of course the idea of the evil multinational corporation is now kind of a given starting with the sixties and can be seen in posts in this thread.

But.... the point of this small note is that one can read Revolt of the Masses today and see the playing out of a lot of the ideas that the man described.

And one can ALSO see the sophistication of his original exposition as opposed to today's expressions.(NOTE: I am NOT referring to the discussions in this thread, but to the larger actors on the national stages that we se/or do not see/ on the telly.

the book is not very large, for the simple reason that a good idea is simply explained.

I append an essay but, again the book is small and easily understood by anyone.

Wikipedia article on the book

Essay which is probably longer than the book! lol

woodsmoke

[Elisa]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

BTW if you are blocked from reading Wikileaks sites, drop me a line (PM) to get actual website or Wikileaks published documents... 8)

[toad]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

ditto, I finally managed to download their archive.

Nice one, Elisa

[PhilT]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Whatever your views about the question of "Leaks" it's been quite repugnant to hear senior American folks (politicians and right-wing news commentators) clamouring for Assange's assassination, or kidnapping. Any level-headed viewing of the data shows that he is not the incarnation of the Devil or particularly anti-American. So it was nice to see Ron Paul asking some important questions on the floor of the house.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_795014.html

Being British, I'm personally disgusted by the caving in of the UK to pressure to keep him locked up on such flimsy and possibly trumped up charges: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_794285.html

But here's an interesting Open Source comment: http://webmink.com/essays/wikileaks/

[toad]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

+1

The American far right is beyond my comprehension. I'm afraid I've lost them as I've lost Pol Pot or Kim Jong-il.

But I have another problem in that I am a user of PayPal, Amazon and Visa all of which have caved in but I am not quite willing to give up on the convenience they bring to my everyday life. Is it down to good old letter writing stating my disgust at their behaviour of pulling the plug on Wikileaks (but not the Klu Klux Klan for example)? Or has anybody heard of another way of voicing one's displeasure at their behaviour?

[dibl]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

@toad you can write all the letters you want, but I think a little perspective might help clarify what's going on here:

- wikileaks is engaged in publishing stolen U.S. government internal communications, which may be helpful/useful to terrorist organizations
- a U.S. law exists prohibiting any person or organization from rendering assistance to terrorists and their activities
- that law gives the government a right of action against funding source organizations and persons, and channels
- we don't know (and presumably Amazon, Visa, PayPal et al don't know) whether wikileaks is receiving funding from terrorists
- with the benefits they are providing via the leaked documents, one could certainly wonder whether payments are being made in return
- therefore, your financial transaction-processing organizations are dropping a questionable customer, out of self-protection.

[Snowhog]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Humanity doesn't live in a utopia. Would it be nice if it did? Heck yes! Because we don't, it is also a matter of basic self-preservation to recognise and understand that there are others 'out there' who, given the opportunity and the means, would do us great harm.

Should all information be disclosed to the public? I think not. I do think that we, as citizens, (here, that is the United States) must exercise eternal vigilance and always keep a watchful eye on our Government. Governments are a necessary evil, and that evil must be held in check.

[PhilT]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

Read the last paragraph in this article, and the list of "gentle-folk": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-..._b_795001.html

Americans are in danger of losing their freedom under the guise of being branded as: 'spies', 'traitors', enemies of the state' and so on, just for disagreeing with the "Official View".

Always the issue of national security is invoked as the reason for this proliferating legislation. The outcome? A hydra that breeds fear. Under similar laws in Germany in the early thirties, it became a form of 'espionage' and 'treason' to criticize the Nazi party, to listen to British radio programs, to joke about the fuhrer, or to read cartoons that mocked the government. Communist Russia in the 30's, East Germany in the 50's, and China today all use parallel legislation to call criticism of the government -- or whistleblowing -- 'espionage' and 'treason', and 'legally' imprison or even execute journalists, editors, and human rights activists accordingly.

[toad]

Re: Wikileaks - Documents aiming to stop Free and Open Source software in Europe

- wikileaks is engaged in publishing stolen U.S. government internal communications, which may be helpful/useful to terrorist organizations

Stolen? Interesting way of looking at it. Is it known how exactly the material was obtained? I would just like to stress that whistle blowing is not the same as stealing by anybody's book.

- a U.S. law exists prohibiting any person or organization from rendering assistance to terrorists and their activities
- that law gives the government a right of action against funding source organizations and persons, and channels

That bridge is one too far, if you ask me. Or put it that way, is it ethical that should the rest of the world suffer because of irrational fears in any one country?

- we don't know (and presumably Amazon, Visa, PayPal et al don't know) whether wikileaks is receiving funding from terrorists

True, neither do we know whether you, snowhog or indeed I are funded by terrorists.

- with the benefits they are providing via the leaked documents, one could certainly wonder whether payments are being made in return
- therefore, your financial transaction-processing organizations are dropping a questionable customer, out of self-protection.

Which benefits are these documents providing for terrorists? Do you really believe the hype about this? I remember reading something about some list of "vitally important" installations - stuff like bridges, depots et al. If you are referring to that then we ought to shut down google maps immediately!

But regardless, I am sure that wikipedia has proved _much_ more useful to "terrorists" and it may also have happened that they received funds from such sources. Should we therefore cut them off from the money supply?

I am sorry, but I don't buy your arguments. However, please give me more - nothing like a good old discussion to get things out in the open