PDF Symposium Highlights, some Criticism, and a CableCount

-Some awesome stuff from the Personal Democracy Forum Symposium on Wikileaks today! CBS news sifted through some of the hours of live feed to give us some quotables--but video of the unfettered and non-diluted  awesomeness can be found here. Some stuff I liked, for your brain-churning pleasure:

Jay Rosen, NYU journalism professor: "In my mind, Wikileaks is the world's first stateless news organization...You've heard of voting with you feet? The sources are voting with their leaks. If they trusted the newspapers more, they would be going to the newspapers."

from personaldemocracy.com

Carne Ross, founder and director of the Independent Diplomat: If WikiLeaks and other emerging organizations continue, we need to develop a new discourse on the responsibility they must bear. 

Jeff Jarvis' Amended Bill of Rights in Cyberspace

I. We have the right to connect.

II. We have the right to speak freely.

III. We have the right to assemble and act.

IV. Information should be public by default, secret by necessity.

V. What is public is a public good.

VI. All bits are created equal.

VII. The internet shall be operated openly.

-I also found an article by a Ph. D in psychology that talks about what she discovered when she decided to do some research on that megalomaniac with the hair everyone's talking about, and the organization with all the state secrets. It's probably the best-worded and most comprehensive talk I've seen about why we should care about what's really going on--and it managed to communicate some things that I've been thinking for days and don't have the neurons to get out effectively.
Read Five Wikileaks Myths and their Disturbing Truths, by Elaine Shpungin, a woman with the greatest last name in the history of the planet. I might wind up re-posting it again on its own, it's so useful.


-Wikileaks criticism: Yes, that's right, I'm calling shenanigans. Reports are coming in that it looks like wikileaks is not living up to promises made to Private Bradley Manning, the 22 year old reputed-original-leak-source of the Afghan War Logs, locked up in Quantico for the last 200 days. There's confusion and anger about the amount of monetary compensation, or the timeliness in which that compensation is being delivered. I don't quite know what's going on, but I DO know this--if Manning was the source, I feel like wikileaks has a responsibility for him. I know your bank accounts were messed with and there's a lot going on in your court, but pull up your socks, guys.

-French Newspaper Liberation set up a wikileaks mirror--the first example of mirroring from a press company, and a rather strong show of solidarity. Wonder what'll happen if the States manage to work up a law that makes the publication of these things illegal...

Cable Count:  as of Dec 10th, Wikileaks has leaked 1,269 cables. That's half of one percent of the cables they possess. Meanwhile, accusations of "reckless publishing" still fly.




...Oh, and one last thing.
Report from one of the Cables says that North Korea wanted to increase diplomatic ties by inviting Eric Clapton to play a concert.
He is, of course, our only hope.

http://xcelenergycenter.blogspot.com/2009/02/
eric-clapton-steve-winwood-punch-xcel.html