The looting of Kenya under President moi mentioned in article currently not resolving (comes out blank/new page).
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On the positive side…
I did not know about Wikileaks until I read about this injunction on the BBC. ‘Free’ publicity 😉
Truly fascinating what you find here.
thieves and liars
With any luck, this will be a pulled loose thread that begins to unravel a stinky sweater.
Like the person commenting above me I also only became aware of this site through the BBC article.
What an incredibly worthwhile endeavor. I may have just acquired a cause and new form of participation.
Kudos. Keep us closely posted. I will spread the word.
I’m not really that surprised…
After visiting the US on several occasions, my impression is that it’s far from the “land of the free”. You probably don’t realise it if you’ve lived there all your life, but compared to the UK it definitely feels more “fascist” than any other else I’ve visited.
I’m not at all surprised that something like this has happened to be honest. Although, as mentioned by another poster, it’s definitely worked in your favour as I had never heard of Wikileaks before this!
- that being said from the UK? wow. I cant say I feel good when visiting the states today, but trust me: UK is no difference at all. With all those CCTV cams the “big brother” feeling is even much more omnipresent ..
Regrets
I’m an American. As a US Marine I served in the forces that keep my country free. I served to defend my country and its constitution. I find it deplorable that individuals subvert our constitution in the manner done here. It was always my belief that I was ready to fight to defend the right to speech, no matter whether I agreed with or personally liked said speech; I still believe that.
Facist?
Not my intent to sidetrack this thread but there’s hyperbole and then there’s absurdity. But the comment “You probably don’t realise it if you’ve lived there all your life, but compared to the UK it definitely feels more “fascist” than any other else I’ve visited”. shouldn’t go unchallenged. with despotic governments such as rule in China, Burma, Iran and a list of dozens others, the US remains a bastion of the republican form of government.
That is not to say that we don’t have the occasional officious, pompous little twerps hanging around our courtrooms in judicial garb.
What was done here is distasteful to the vast vast majority here and like all wrongs, it will eventually get righted. The universe has a way of sorting things out.
- The security theater that visitors are subjected to and the governance theater exported by the national media make it appear to be tending towards fascism to those of us who don’t live there. Here’s hoping you’re right.
wikileaks
It’s biblical. Evil prefers to activate in darkness. These people obviously have something to hide.
Times injunction as precident?
News of Wikileaks is spreading.. I just learned of Wikileaks through an Arstechnica.com article. Hopefully, this injuction will also be found to be unconstitutional. It will be interesting to see how this case proceeds.
This is a very interesting, and much needed site.
Judge also ordered IP addresses of individuals who accessed wikileaks to be released to plaintiffs
I hope wikileaks’ lawyers are planning an urgent attack on this obviously unconstitutional action by Judge White. I viewed the Order Granting Permanent Injunction and was even more concerned when I noticed that the judge is ordering that the IP addresses of those who accessed wikileaks.org to be produced to the plaintiff (Bank Julius Baer). ” “Dynadot shall immediately produce both current and any all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account, including, but not limited to, … and IP addresses and associated data used by any person, other than Dynadot, who accessed the account for the domain name, to the extent such information is maintained by Dynadot. ” (link to injunction at [1])
I know that our (US) freedoms and rights have been slowly diminishing, especially over the past 7 years, but I am truly shocked and appalled that our legal system is allowing a judge to make such a sweeping Order, not to mention the tactics used. On the good side, I am so glad to now know about wikileaks and its supurb mission. I heartily applaud them!
What about “press freedom” ?
Doesn’t exist anymore? This is however still in the laws… (in something they call “constitution”, isn’t it? – maybe it’s not an important document…)
Wikileaks Press Release
WIKILEAKS.ORG DOWN AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction
Contacts: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Contact
Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008
The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.
Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian hearing — ordered to print blank pages — ‘wikileaks.org’ name forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar — the best justice Cayman Islands money launderers can buy?
When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret censorship lists of Thailand’s military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”, the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:
BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island ORDER GRANTING
entity, PERMANENT INJUNCTION
WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
limited liability company; and DOES 1
through 10, inclusive,
[..]
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
[..]
Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
any other website or server other than a blank park page,
until further order of this Court.
The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there were “serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands”, “Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client’s identity”, “Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty” and that “These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The ‘FATF’) as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering”. As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering “Countries of Primary Concern”.
The Cayman’s case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over $4,500,000,000’s worth of money laundering including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_Moi which became the Guardian’s front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.org/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).
To find an injunction similar to the Cayman’s case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaked “Pentagon Papers” and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times’ printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.
The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.
The order was written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the ‘Wikileaks.org’ name through — California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for ‘Wikileaks.org’. The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.
In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.fi (Finnland) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.
The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.
Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.
Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney’s in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice “by email” prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.
White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank’s lawyers without a single amendment.
The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.
Wikileaks remains available publishing from non-US, non-Chinese jurisdictions including http://wikileaks.se/ and http://wikileaks.fi/. See http://wikileaks.se/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names for more.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf