greekemmy

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.