Posted by Here I republish Cabledrum’s account of the facts relating to his banning from ‘The Official WikiLeaks Forum’ in May 2012 and the deletion of his posts. I will be soon giving a personal account of what I know regarding these events.
I have included in brackets a web page (a post by Green) that I have archived for good order’s sake. Green was my forum mod nick. In the Page that have archived my Mod nick name is captioned as ‘Guest’ this is because I deleted this account in Aug/Sep 2012. At the time that I wrote this post I was a mod with co-ordinator role for the Forum’s Volunteer Translation Project and I had been given the ‘title’ Language Co-ordinator.
Verbatim From Cabledrum’s WebPage: https://www.cabledrum.net/wlf.html
Update [May 18, 2012]: On May 17, I published the following correspondence via Twitterand Facebook after having waited one week in vain for an answer. In response to this publication, WikiLeaks Forum now has banned me from accessing the forum and blockedme on Twitter. This is the only “answer” I got up to now.
Update 2 [May 19, 2012]: WikiLeaks Forum now has deleted all content ever posted by me even outside the “cabledrum” board, including WikiLeaks press releases, Cablegate listings, cable analysis etc., a total of more than 300 postings with over 40,000 page views.
Update 3 [May 21, 2012]: WikiLeaks Forum has posted a statement, (http://archive.is/Zjfhi) claiming that all my postings would have “accidently been deleted” and could not been recovered automatically. In response I offered to recover the cabledrum board posts from my backup.
Update 4 [May 24, 2012]: WikiLeaks Forum has refused my offer to recover the cabledrum board posts from my backup and blocked my IP address from reading Forum posts.
Subject: The Al-Manar case From: cabledrum To: isis, C, qubit, Z, sawz, Green, ariana Date: May 09, 2012, 06:31:30 PM Dear WLF team, As you probably know, my moderator permissions got revoked and the "cabledrum" board was taken offline without prior notice. Why? On April 25, I posted a highly controversial article from the Lebanese media organization Al-Manar, regarding the Nasrallah interview on "World Tomorrow". Al-Manar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, is banned in several countries, including Germany (where WLF is operating from) and the US (where WLF server is hosted). I've also posted an opposing article from Jerusalem Post. As a result, I have been accused for posting illegal content "in spite of Z's warnings about it's anti-constitutional character". I'm accused to have "grossly violated" the board rules and to have endangered both WLF and Z this way. But: This posting was made with Z's approval. I informed him in advance and asked for his permission to post this article. We've discussed the posting details for over an hour, particularly the legislative situation (which wasn't mentioned by Z but by me). Finally, Z explicitly permitted me to post the Al-Manar article. Shortly after it was posted, I asked Z again, if the posting is ok this way. He told me that he worries about it and wants to discuss the issue with the other admins. During this chat, the posting was removed by C. On this point, I've stated again that I accept this decision. Over the next three days, we dicussed the legal situation and possible alternatives. Finally, on April 28, Z posted a copy of the Al-Manar article from another website on his own and without my knowledge. This posting was removed 3 hours later. Assuming that I did post that article "in spite of Z's warnings" (which in fact isn't the case): Why did Z post a copy of it afterwards? In response to this issue, the "cabledrum" board was taken offline. This board contains a number of valuable postings, all mentioned by WikiLeaks on FB/Twitter, and got more than 10,000 page views. There was never any problem with this board. Even if any of the above accusations against me were true (which isn't the case): Would it justify this degree of censorship? Even the postings of banned users remain online. I am punished for something I haven't done. And even if I had done it (which isn't the case) it would not justify the sentence. Since I have been accused and sentenced without any opportunity to defend myself, this internal PM should be an acceptable remedy and should not be understood as offensive intervention. I still try to hope on some strange misunderstanding. Cabledrummer
Subject: Re: The Al-Manar case From: Z To: isis, C, qubit, cabledrum, sawz, Green, ariana Date: May 09, 2012, 06:45:30 PM the cabledrum board will remain closed. greetz Z
Subject: Re: The Al-Manar case
From: suspect
To: isis, C, qubit, Z, cabledrum, sawz, Green, ariana
Date: May 10, 2012, 05:09:04 PM
This is Cabledrummer. I have to write from another account since the
cabledrum account got banned from sending messages, in response to my
attempt to contradict.
Quote from WLF Mission Statement:
Quote from: Z on May 24, 2011, 12:08:07 PM
The forum stands for the values Wikileaks has defended since its
creation, such as freedom of speech and information.
[..]
We encourage constructive dialogues.
Unfortunately, WikiLeaks Forum fails to comply with its own standards.
Decision-making lacks any transparency, dialogue is unwanted, criticism
is forbidden, complaints are silenced. This is not what WikiLeaks stands
for. And this is not the spirit of a free open community I'm dreaming of.
I strongly support the idea of WikiLeaks in the best possible way, I did
before WLF and I will continue. Sadly, I'm prevented from sharing my work
on WLF now and I'm not even allowed to ask for a reason.
At this point, I stop wasting my time with begging for fair treatment.
Cabledrummer
Subject: You have received a warning From: The Official WikiLeaks Forum To: cabledrum Date: May 10, 2012, 05:37:41 PM cabledrum, You have received a warning for inappropriate activity. Please cease these activities and abide by the forum rules otherwise we will take further action. Regards, The The Official WikiLeaks Forum Team.
greekemmy 