The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #133910   Message #3045538
Posted By: VirginiaTam
03-Dec-10 - 09:29 AM
Thread Name: BS: Wikileaks - how embarrassing
Subject: RE: BS: Wikileaks - how embarrasing
From Scoop Undernews which keeps dropping out and in - I copied the whole article

Wikileaks loses Amazon web site

Zero Hedge - An update from Reuters: "Amazon.com ceases hosting services for WikiLeaks website -Senator Lieberman" and "DHS says Amazon has agreed to stop hosting WikiLeaks." Game Over

It seems the days of Wikileaks are over. The question now is who will be the next Wikileaks.

The website of WikiLeaks, the organization that just released a trove of sensitive U.S. State Department documents, appears to have lost or left its main Web host, Amazon.com.

The main website and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic documents were unavailable from the U.S. and Europe on Wednesday, as Amazon servers refused to acknowledge requests for data.

Availability of the sites has been spotty since Sunday, when it started to come under a series of Internet-based attacks by unknown hackers. WikiLeaks dealt with the attacks in part by moving to servers run by Amazon Web Services, which is self-service.

Amazon.com Inc. would not comment on its relationship with WikiLeaks or whether it forced the site to leave. Messages seeking comment from WikiLeaks were not immediately returned.

Thoroughly embedded media goes after Wikileaks

Glenn Greenwald, Salon - With some exceptions, we have the group which -- so very revealingly -- is the angriest and most offended about the WikiLeaks disclosures: the American media, Our Watchdogs over the Powerful and Crusaders for Transparency. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the U.S. government had failed to keep all these things secret from him. . .

Then -- like the Good Journalist he is -- Blitzer demanded assurances that the Government has taken the necessary steps to prevent him, the media generally and the citizenry from finding out any more secrets: "Do we know yet if they've [done] that fix? In other words, somebody right now who has top secret or secret security clearance can no longer download information onto a C.D. or a thumb drive? Has that been fixed already?" The central concern of Blitzer -- one of our nation's most honored "journalists" -- is making sure that nobody learns what the U.S. Government is up to.

Then there's the somewhat controversial claim that our major media stars are nothing more than Government spokespeople and major news outlets little more than glorified state-run media. Blitzer's CNN reporting provided the best illustration I've seen in awhile demonstrating how true that is. . .

One's reaction to WikiLeaks is largely shaped by whether or not one, on balance, supports what the U.S. has been covertly doing in the world by virtue of operating in the dark. I concur wholeheartedly with Digby's superb commentary on this point yesterday:

"My personal feeling is that any allegedly democratic government that is so hubristic that it will lie blatantly to the entire world in order to invade a country it has long wanted to invade probably needs a self-correcting mechanism. There are times when it's necessary that the powerful be shown that there are checks on its behavior, particularly when the systems normally designed to do that are breaking down. Now is one of those times." . . .