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WikiLeaks' International Man of Mystery
AcidAUS writes "The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow the whistle. Here's a detailed profile of the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, by Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald."
You gotta hand it to the CIA. When they attack something like Wikileaks, they really take the long view.
First, show how Wikileaks is somehow providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information. Now, set the founder up for more publicity, implicitly encouraging violence upon him.
It's a chilling effect on anyone who might be initially inclined to provide information to Wikileaks under their cover of anonymity.
It used to be leaps and bounds ahead, but in the last few years, I'm not so sure. The GP is right, it seems like almost every kooky story about oppressive laws, internet filtering, censorship, etc. is coming out of Australia lately. Even China is starting to look more open than Australia, and that's just sad. I'm glad that Australians are trying to do something about this, but it certainly took them long enough to finally realize that their country's international reputation is starting to really suffer.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, the political system in Australia is a disgrace, but is leaps and bounds ahead of that in the US
And this coming from the folks who gave us Rupert Murdoch? I'm going to have to politely disagree.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Although I can see why Slashdot might give you that impression, do remember that the reporting on here is usually quite sensationalist.
Australia doesn't yet have an internet filter (hell, the Bill hasn't even been introduced into the House yet, and even if it passed there would face near-certain death in the Senate), and it's been aggressively fought every step of the way. Contrast this with China, which obviously has a well-known filter (and one far, far more intrusive than the simple URL blacklist proposed in AU). Contrast this further with other countries have introduced an AU-like filter quietly and without much debate (most recently, New Zealand).
If anything, it shows that the democratic process is working well in Australia, the fact that you are hearing and seeing so many stories (read: so much opposition) to such proposals.
The other kooky story you are likely to have heard out of Australia in the last 12 months is the lack of an R rating for computer games. There's been quite a breakthrough on that front, with the one man primarily responsible for blocking the introduction of the R rating retiring as South Australian Attorney-General. His replacement has publicly stated they are in support of an R rating for games. So it appears we'll get our R rating within the not too distant future, bringing us into line with the classification systems in the US and EU.
Australia has problems like any country. But I don't think they are anywhere on the scale of China, or even on the scale of other Western countries like the UK (far more surveillance there than in AU). The US overall has a good record on such matters, but it too is not perfect (witness the whole warrantless logging/tapping of public phone conversations debacle etc.). The problems might be ~different~ in other countries but they are no less serious.
if you haven't already watched the "collateral murder" video on wikileaks, you must. It will open your eyes.
Its scary how the American gunner is just begging for excuses to execute people. He invents an excuse that the guy who is obviously just holding a camera has an RPG. They quickly escalate one implausible gun sighting (which was clearly a shoulder bag) into the fact all the people are carrying AK-47s when they are clearly empty-handed. They even followup by shooting an obviously unarmed ambulance team that includes kids, which turned up after just to help the injured.
This is what Americans are actually doing abroad. This is how the world sees America.
Its scary that the army can put such crassly stupid and vicious people in charge of such powerful killing machines. Its scary that the army are defending these killers and the army are clearly beyond the reach of the law.
This is our country doing this. We are the bad guys. To all those that think America is honorable, and right to be in Afghanistan, watch this video then think again.
Actually such things are inevitable in a warzone. That's why you should never start wars lightly[1]. Lots of bad stuff will happen.
It's obvious to many in hindsight that it's a camera. But if you look it from the POV from a paranoid nervous young military helicopter pilot, it does look like the tube of a RPG - esp when the camera sticks out from behind the wall...
What follows after that is just what soldiers do - they kill people, and they are _conditioned_ to think it's OK to kill people. So they make up all sorts of excuses so that they can pull the trigger.
If the helicopter pilot isn't paranoid enough, he or his friends will get killed. Because there ARE people out there who are out to kill him and his friends, and yes sometimes there are children around when it happens. And yes, both sides can be relaxed and merrily joking about stuff minutes before they blow away the other side.
War is how you get otherwise reasonable people to kill strangers they have never met and would otherwise be happy to sit down and have a meal with together. You set things up so that if they don't kill the other side, the other side would kill them and/or their friends. If that doesn't happen, you kill/punish them for disobeying orders.
To me the appalling bit is not that civilians were killed because the pilot made a mistake, it's that the war was either started due to lies or incompetence.
I have to say though that the US military seem to have a reputation of being more trigger happy, and even since the WWII days - the joke goes that when a German plane flies over, the British take cover; when a British plane flies over, the Germans take cover; when a US plane flies over, everyone takes cover... ;)
[1] http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/How-to-reduce-unwanted-wars
The apache video brings out a bias on one side or another to people who have only heard about it let alone watched it. It would be hard to present it without bias so the best thing is to be upfront about why you are showing it to the world.
In my view it divides those that are happy for the troops involved to be unprofessional, disobedient, undisciplined thugs because they are on our team and those that are not happy about it - but I'm biased.
More information on Assanage the reporter doesn't know about...
Back in the early 90's, APANA, The Australian Public Access :/
Network Association, kicked 'proff' out because he was using
their network to crack into overseas systems. APANA was
threatened with disconnection because of his attempts were traced
easily. proff was already a known kook, who was attempting to
make his system 'suburbia' (later suburbia.net) a global
CyBeRpUnK HQ, his quest being to become the ULTIMATE CYBERPUNK
who could overthrow governments (sound familiar..?) When we
kicked him out, he spammed and attempted to DDoS apana.org.au.
Sounds plausible. Do you actually have evidence to back up this claim or are you just referencing the illustrious "my friend told me" angle?
If he does, he should upload it to Wikileaks...
I say that in jest but thinking about it more, it would be a very good litmus test for the statement "He is not politically motivated. He is more concerned with truth and the quest for it."
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull