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The Wright Perspective℠
Social Commentary from the C-Suite to Main Street℠
A Blog by Gary Wright II
Wikileaks.org - and so the government witch hunt begins
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
Patriot - one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests
What is WikiLeaks.org? The site was founded in 2006 by Sunshine Press as a means of distributing documents, photos, and videos that have great political or social significance. Though the site has reported on numerous issues of importance, they have only recently received worldwide attention when they published thousands of official documents regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials tried to brush off the release of those documents as being "nothing new." It may have been nothing new to those involved in the wars, but for the rest of the world it brought to the surface the motives and true costs of these two wars. In my opinion, it also provided clear evidence of war crimes that were committed by the United States and our leaders at every level of our government.
The latest release of secret documents is probably the most embarrassing. It has been referred to as Cablegate because it contains thousands of diplomatic documents (called cables) from US embassies throughout the world. The cables reveal the true nature of our leaders hidden behind our facade of diplomacy and democracy. Many people thought the thousands of Cablegate documents should have all been released together, but releasing a few at a time was actually a smart move. The media coverage of the war diaries faded after a few days, while the slow release of Cablegate ensures constant media coverage over a much longer period of time.
Tonight I read the subpoena issued to Twitter demanding information on WikiLeaks.org and it seems that the government witch hunt has officially begun! Unfortunately, the US government is attacking the wrong people. Don't shoot the messenger! The true problem for our country is not the release of all of these classified (and embarrassing) documents - the issue lies with the actions taken that are recorded within these documents.
Attachment A Section B of the subpoena requests all "records of user activity for any connections made to or from the Account, including the date, time, length, and method of connections, data transfer volume, user name, and source and destination Internet Protocol addresses." As I am writing this, there are 637,339 followers on Twitter and 1,516,290 likes on Facebook. The WikiLeaks web site receives over a million hits per day. If you count those who viewed the documents but not followed or liked WikiLeaks - the number is huge!
In addition to Twitter, sealed subpoenas were also sent to Facebook, Google, Google Gmail, and MySpace. I have personally only read the one sent to Twitter on 12/14/2010. The US government also applied great pressure to internet service providers, Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and others in an attempt to block funds from being sent to WikiLeaks.org
The investigation is primarily targeting two people: Julian Assange, who is an Australian and the founder of WikiLeaks.org, and private Bradley Manning who allegedly released the helicopter video from the Iraqi murders. Manning is being held in a military prison and will likely face a court-martial. Julian is currently fighting extradition to Sweden on trumped up sex charges. For Assange's protection, there is a heavily encrypted "insurance file" that will be released if anything happens to him.
Sometimes the quickest way to end a war is to show to the world the true costs of a war. It was the leak of 7,000 documents that ended the "conflict" in Vietnam. If World War II documents and photos had been leaked to the public, it may have prevented (or at least minimized) the murder of millions during the Holocaust. Despite the serious charges against these two men, I believe that history will eventually view them as heroes and patriots.
Best regards,
-- Gary Wright II
I've written several blog entries on this topic. To read more, visit our page devoted to PFC Bradley Manning .