Corporations over people, business over justice. We need to protect our whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds, Mark Klein, and places like Wikileaks.As for why this California judge ordered the whole site taken down over a few documents, that's not clear. As the BBC reports, "The case was brought by lawyers working for the Swiss banking group Julius Baer. It concerned several documents posted on the site which allegedly reveal that the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion." Why didn't the judge just didn't order the documents taken down instead of the whole site? We hope to get some expert guidance on the question.
Update: Just spoke with Steve Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy, who offered a clue. "My hunch is that the action was dictated by the practical options. [The judge and Julius Baer] don't know who wikileaks.org is or who the responsible parties are upon whom a court order could be served. What they did know was the U.S. based internet service provider." So they got the ISP to shut the site down. "If they had known who to serve the order to – who represents Wikileaks --, then they might have chosen a more targeted action." Nevertheless, he thought the judge's move was "extraordinary," based as it was on the bank's contention that these were legally protected documents.
A large number of mirror sites have sprung up to counter the judge's move -- sites mirroring not only wikileaks, but also the Julius Baer documents at issue.
"Wikileaks had boasted that they were impervious to censorship," Aftergood told me. "This is the most serious test they've faced in their year-long existence. They may lose their current website, but dozens of mirrors around the world will endure. And I expect they will regroup."
The word "vulgar" was by far the favorite word of critics, and make no mistake, it was used in a way that was consistent with its classist roots as a term denoting the lowly language, taste, behavior, and entertainments of the common people. John Broder of the NY Times made the classist connotations of the term explicit by suggesting that Edwards would teach us to use a more "civil tone". Bloggers are the vulgar common people and in order to get into the hallowed halls of politics, we need to become civilized. Joan Walsh, in her companion article to mine in Salon, also drew on class-based metaphors to describe what was distressing about the blogger invasion, when she called our style "street-fighing". Bill Donohue provided as religion hook to excite the masses, but I think the mainstream media was willing to entertain his baseless accusations because it provided them another opportunity to rail against the vulgar bloggers.The mainstream media is afraid. The vulgarly common blogger citizen voter is no longer sitting passively being fed the pre-digested news. We are demanding journalists actually check facts and report. We recognize and challenge bias. We talk to others, share information, do research, provide links.