A Documentary On WikiLeaks [Multilingual]

Click here to watch on YouTube and select subtitles in your language.

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism faculty and officers tell President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder that “while we hold varying opinions of Wikileaks’ methods and decisions, we all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables Wikileaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment” and that “as a historical matter, government overreaction to publication of leaked material in the press has always been more damaging to American democracy than the leaks themselves.” -Jim Romenesko

December 13, 2010

Dear Mr. President and General Holder:
As faculty members and officers of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, we are concerned by recent reports that the Department of Justice is considering criminal charges against Julian Assange or others associated with Wikileaks.

By Glenn Greenwald 

By Debra Sweet

One of the important developments in 2010 is that Wikileaks published information which revealed U.S. war crimes and the diplomatic operations of the U.S government.  Instead of prosecuting officials responsible for these crimes, the U.S. government has unleashed a series of vicious attacks on Wikileaks.

The Obama administration is attempting to re-write laws in order to silence Wikileaks.  Assange’s life is threatened in the national media. The U.S. military and State Department has banned personnel from reading these documents. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard and Bank of America ban people from donating to Wikileaks.  But people are resisting such bans. Columbia Journalism professors protested Columbia's ban, and it was rescinded! 

Do people need to know that the U.S. military killed 68 people, including 21 children, in one airstrike in Yemen, a country the U.S. isn’t even at war with? Do they need to know that the U.S. is working with the Pakistani government to wage drone strikes on civilian populations in order to dominate that region?

We say YES!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media:
Mike Gogulski
Bradley Manning Support Network
+1-202-640-4388
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Quantico, VA, December 22, 2010 – After trying other avenues of recourse, the Bradley Manning Support Network is urging supporters to engage in direct protest in order to halt the punitive conditions of the soldier’s detention. Bradley Manning, 23, has been held in solitary confinement in military jails since his arrest in late May on allegations that he passed classified material to WikiLeaks.

By Andy Worthington   

In disturbing reports from the US, it appears that Private First Class Bradley Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused of leaking the Afghan and Iraqi war logs, the US diplomatic cables and the “Collateral Damage” video, which have dominated headlines globally since WikiLeaks began making them available in April this year, is being held in conditions that bear a marked and chilling resemblance to the conditions in which a handful of US citizens and residents were held as “enemy combatants” under the Bush administration.

Manning, whose 23rd birthday was on Friday, has been held in solitary confinement for seven months since he was seized in Kuwait, where he was held for the first two months prior to his transfer to a military prison in Quantico, Virginia.  According to David House, a computer researcher from Boston who visits him twice a month, his “prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell … is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect.” House explained how Manning “was no longer the characteristically brilliant man he had been, despite efforts to keep him intellectually engaged.”

By Chris Floyd

More than a century ago, an aging man, staring his own death in the face, spoke the truth of our times:

Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for. Again fraud, again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men.

By Larry Everest

Beginning on Sunday, November 28, Wikileaks (wikileaks.ch) began publishing batches of 251,287 secret State Department diplomatic cables from 274 U.S. embassies and consulates around the world—the largest batch of secret government documents ever made public. These documents had been leaked to Wikileaks, a website dedicated to government transparency. Wikileaks aims to release all the cables, which date from 1966 to February 2010 (with most from the past three years), in stages over the next several months. This follows Wikileaks' releases of secret documents on the U.S. wars in Afghanistan in July and Iraq in October.

By Debra Sweet

As the Obama administration issued its "Afghanistan Progress Review" yesterday, announcing plans for even more drone bombings in Pakistan and even floated out the possibility of a ground invasion as well, and Congress debated amending the Espionage Act to go after Wikileaks and its sources, 250 of us gathered outside the White House to say "Stop These Wars!" Some 130 people were arrested and cited for standing along the White House fence, including many Veterans for Peace members, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Pentagon Papers-leaker Daniel Ellsberg, and writer Chris Hedges. 

By Chris Floyd 

At 3:25 p.m. on Tuesday, a UK judge reverses an earlier court decision and granted bail to Julian Assange, who is being held in a British prison on a warrant for "sexual misconduct" charges in Sweden. The bail is attached with heavy conditions, including the demand for a large wad of cash upfront, a daily curfew (which will keep Assange off the prime-time news), and the requirement of wearing an electric tag.

The ruling does not free Assange, however; he is sent back to jail pending the gathering of the cash, and pending a decision by Swedish authorities to appeal the bail ruling.

At 4:18 p.m., outside the courtroom, film director Ken Loach, one of the many people putting up money for Assange's case, makes this comment:

Clearly, if the Swedish government opposes bail it will show there is some vindictiveness beyond this case. It will show there is some political element that goes beyond the case.

Indeed. At this writing, it is not believed that Sweden has never pursued anyone so zealously (if at all) through the international criminal justice system on a charge of 'sexual misconduct' (not rape).