Politics Wikileaks?

Forums New posts
Zitellis Heid

Zitellis Heid

Legendary Radge
Joined
May 26, 2006
Does anyone have any thoughts to their credibility?

As we tend to take all things Wikipedia as a main source of our info, when looking for quick general info, for granted, what do Bouncers opinions have to add to this sister site?

A mutli- national award-winning News source, how much trust do we have in it?

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Wikileaks Graphic of hourglass, colored in blue and grey; a circular map of the western hemisphere of the world drips from the top to bottom chamber of the hourglass.
URL Wikileaks - WikiLeaks

Type of site Document archive
Registration Private
Owner The Sunshine Press
Launched December 2006

WikiLeaks or Wikileaks is an international organization that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press. Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.

The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa. Newspaper articles and The New Yorker magazine (June 7, 2010) describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director.

Wikileaks has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award. In June 2009, Wikileaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International's UK Media Award (in the category "New Media") for the 2008 publication of "Kenya: The Cry of Blood Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances", a report by the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya.

In April 2010, Wikileaks posted video from an incident in which Iraqi civilians were alleged to have been killed by U.S. forces, on a website called Collateral Murder. In July of the same year, Wikileaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review.

In May 2010, the New York Daily News listed Wikileaks first in a ranking of "websites that could totally change the news"

:hmmm

Thoughts?
 
don't know that much about them

All I do know is that last month they showed a very powerful piece of footage of a helicopter going over a street in bahgdad and a group of people being shot to pieces for no great reason other than they thought one of them was carying a gun.
The crew took great delight at shooting innocent victims including young children.As far as I know this footage would have been kept under wraps if the US military officials had got their way. So good on them; and good on them for their further expose's.It should help bring this brutal war in Afghanistan to a swift end.
 
outsideleft said:
All I do know is that last month they showed a very powerful piece of footage of a helicopter going over a street in bahgdad and a group of people being shot to pieces for no great reason other than they thought one of them was carying a gun.
The crew took great delight at shooting innocent victims including young children.As far as I know this footage would have been kept under wraps if the US military officials had got their way. So good on them; and good on them for their further expose's.It should help bring this brutal war in Afghanistan to a swift end.
Click to expand...

How do you know what you saw was what really happened. I am not saying it wasn't but i couldn't prove it was either.
 
Pretty legit imo.

Good (long) article here from the New Yorker about the guy who set it up and their methodology.

What I find particularly interesting about it is their ability to produce unfiltered source documentation, and the effect that is going to have on the mainstream medias role as the arbiter of what our news is and how it's presented. Their linking together of the NY Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel over the classified stuff they released from Afghanistan was something which I think suggests they are starting to get a bit more media savvy with how they can ensure the stuff they get is covered.

And the footage of the attack they called collateral murder and released was absolutely genuine. I didn't like the edited together short one as it seemed like editorial (ie having it with commentary) rather than straight news, but the longer one was something which we are shielded from.

Governments don't like them. That's good afaic. The role of the media has to be to hold power to account and they simply have not been doing that for decades now.
 
gordoz said:
How do you know what you saw was what really happened. I am not saying it wasn't but i couldn't prove it was either.
Click to expand...

Because the US Government went absolutely apeshit at it being released. And because they launched a full investigation about who had gave it to Wikileaks (Private First Class Bradley Manning) who one US Congressman (Mike Rogers) now wants executed for treason.

Yip, passing out video showing US troops carrying out what is probably a war crime, in some people in powers mind, is apparently treasonous because it shows the US in a bad light. You know what actually puts them in a worse light imo? Committing war crimes.
 
I don't really care about their motives because as far as i can tell they'll publish anything, without editorialising.

you have to treat the content with care, but then what's new. I think they provide a useful services overall.
 
egb_hibs said:
I don't really care about their motives because as far as i can tell they'll publish anything, without editorialising.

you have to treat the content with care, but then what's new. I think they provide a useful services overall.
Click to expand...

The more important thing is that they will publish what they get which the media simply don't do if it doesn't suit them. They'll protect their sources.
 
Brainwrong said:
Holy flurking schnitt, I knew nothing of this:

collateral murder

WARNING: this is really disturbing.
Click to expand...
we discussed this before. it's actually sadly unremarkable; they fire only on what they believe to be combatants. sure they are trigger happy, but only fire after getting clearance that the people are believed to be combatants. sure their patter is callous, but i'm not sure what people really expect soldiers shooting at people to be like. to many people swallowing old hollywood movies perhaps.

this is just war; there'll be 101 atrocity stories to come out of iraq i'm sure, but this is a fuck up story. The way it is presented here is in stark contrast to wikileaks - from the url onwards the presentation is spun to present the incident as something that it isn't.

wikileaks 'just the facts ma'am' is much preferrable.
 
egb_hibs said:
we discussed this before. it's actually sadly unremarkable; they fire only on what they believe to be combatants. sure they are trigger happy, but only fire after getting clearance that the people are believed to be combatants. sure their patter is callous, but i'm not sure what people really expect soldiers shooting at people to be like. to many people swallowing old hollywood movies perhaps.

this is just war; there'll be 101 atrocity stories to come out of iraq i'm sure, but this is a fuck up story. The way it is presented here is in stark contrast to wikileaks - from the url onwards the presentation is spun to present the incident as something that it isn't.

wikileaks 'just the facts ma'am' is much preferrable.
Click to expand...

It looked pretty much like a wikileaks piece, I'll have a further deek.

Whilst I was watching I thought; how many times has this happened?

I need to read more about it but I can't see how getting clearance from somewhere, that has no further info than they do, to shoot makes the decision to shoot any more valid. I could be wrong on that front, but I interpreted the situation as there was no-one at ground level at that stage to confirm if the cameras were actually guns. The thing that's disturbing was that they really WANTED to shoot.
 
Brainwrong said:
It looked pretty much like a wikileaks piece, I'll have a further deek.

Whilst I was watching I thought; how many times has this happened?

I need to read more about it but I can't see how getting clearance from somewhere, that has no further info than they do, to shoot makes the decision to shoot any more valid. I could be wrong on that front, but I interpreted the situation as there was no-one at ground level at that stage to confirm if the cameras were actually guns. The thing that's disturbing was that they really WANTED to shoot.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest a read of Generation Kill. One of the more disturbing books I've read tbh. Reading that would suggest you are quite possibly right in your impression. Incompetence, mixed with fear, mixed with detachment, mixed with a gung ho attitude, mixed with willful recklessness is what that seems to suggest is the de facto position within the US military.

Gimme a shout if you want a lend.
 
wee 162 said:
I'd suggest a read of Generation Kill. One of the more disturbing books I've read tbh. Reading that would suggest you are quite possibly right in your impression. Incompetence, mixed with fear, mixed with detachment, mixed with a gung ho attitude, mixed with willful recklessness is what that seems to suggest is the de facto position within the US military.

Gimme a shout if you want a lend.
Click to expand...

Cheers man, just got it on amazon for 0.01*






*+2.75 shipping...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Hibs Chat
  • New Posts
  • Just Back
  • Chatroom