Talk:Rights groups: Forcing Wikileaks.org offline raises 'serious First Amendment concerns'

Press release from WL
"Bank Julius Baer & Trust -- the shadowy Swiss-Cayman "private banking" entity currently attempting to sue Wikileaks before US Federal court Justice Jeffery White in San Francisco has released a misleading press release on, where else, but "Business Wire". Wikileaks doesn't have $500 to spend on propaganda wires, but Wikileaks has something better -- the truth, verifiable and lots of it:

WIKILEAKS RESPONDS

Baer alleges that they couldn't negotiate with Wikileaks. This is a lie.

Wikileaks at all times responded with grace and dignity to BJBs highly irregular demands and left communication open. A full record of the correspondence is available on http://Wikileaks.be/ The last letter is from Wikileaks. BJB did not submit the correspondence to the court, although it must be absolutely central to the issues held there. We wonder why?

Wikileaks is happy to let the public decide, but the shadowy Swiss-Cayman "Bank and Trust" has been allergic to the sun from the very beginning. The first sign of its hyper-sensitivity was when its Hollywood lawyers, Lavely & Singer refused to put their demands in writing -- even email -- as requested. The second sign was when the same lawyers refused to even identify their client! Finally the lawyers refused to even state what city they would be taking their threatened action in so Wikileaks could arrange representation in that city, instead preferring to abuse process and arrange a hearing where Wikileaks was not represented. But don't take our word for it -- see submissions to the court by our then pre-litigation council Julie Turner and the correspondence between Wikileaks and the bank on http://wikileaks.be/

It is clear BJB decided to hire Hollywood lawyers Lavely & Singer who abused process and it is now paying the consequences. Wikileaks demands an apology.

Nearly all of the documents at issue are over 10 years old with the most recent document being from 2003. BJB claims in its court filings to have been aware of their release since 2003 and the Swiss media had the documents in 2005. The documents are nearly all trust arrangements setting up anonymizing shell structures. The only relevance these documents have now is that they expose who was funneling money through the Cayman Islands trusts a decade ago.

BJB stated in its Business-wire press release that "It wasn't our intention to shut down the Web site". This is a lie. The requests to the court to do just that are a matter of public record. Further, at any time, including now, BJB could have asked the court that its earlier request for an order to shutdown the site be rescinded. It has not done so. While one might be tempted to blame Hollywood lawyers run amuck, BJB continues to employ the same law-firm, which can only be an endorsement of it its ruinous behavior.

Until attacked by the bank Wikileaks took a skeptical position on the documents. BJB in attempting to shoot the messenger has only succeeded, spectacularly, in shooting itself."

more wikiwords, like the word whistleblower
I don't know, and didn't know what it was so I added it as a link, please comment also after and 'if' you remove it. 79.103.158.167 14:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The syntax to link to wikipedia is word - if it appears as a redlink it will likely be removed. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)