Slashdot Mirror
Wikileaks Source Outed To Stroke Hacker's Own Ego
Binary Boy writes "Bradley Manning, the US Army private arrested recently by the Pentagon for providing classified documents — including the widely seen Apache helicopter video — may have been duped by wannabe hacker Adrian Lamo, according to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. Lamo told Manning he could provide protection under both journalist shield laws, and the clergy-lay confidentiality tradition, and instead immediately turned him in to authorities in an act of apparent shameless self-promotion."
The article also goes into Wired's role in the whole situation, the strange, sometimes sensationalist media coverage, and the odd similarity between this case and proposed scenarios in a US Intelligence report from earlier this year aimed at undermining Wikileaks.
If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.
Yes, I think this hacker is aiming for all the lulz he can get. Adrian Lamo? Adrian Lmao? indeed....
So we can suppose this is an operation to make people doubt the safety of going to Wikileaks?
Suppose something happened to Lamo in revenge, out there in the offline world - maybe such operations would be discouraged in future.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
You may not like the guy, but it seems like he has done some legitimate hacking and cracking in his day.
He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
All I care about is why that footage hasn't really been all that well explained by the military.
I want to see and hear both sides on this obviously, but pointing out the motivation as hubris at this point is sort of the smaller part of a bigger picture.
crazy dynamite monkey
Honestly, if you're going to leak government docs to Wikileaks, you should't go around tooting your horn about it to random "hackers" you find on-line. This guy may have been caught in the end anyway, but he didn't do himself any favors by not KEEPING HIS MOUTH SHUT about it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
that he would betray the confidence of someone who trusted him.
Whatever the reason, nobody is ever going to trust Lamo with a secret again.
ON DELETE CASCADE
href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/wikileaks-part-ii-adrian-lamo-responds-580-0?page=0,1
and
href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/spies-wikileaks-and-hackers-oh-my-443
Highlight of the reply from Lamo:
You have a number of questions that could be answered by contacting me. I politely request that you consider doing so via my publicly-available contact details in the future - and if you did & I was somehow unreachable, I retract this & apologize.
I would suggest that Manning is neither a whistleblower nor a spy (although he may be guilty of espionage, which is a different animal in some circles.) I was aware that KLP had little interest in keeping my identity secret.
Whether I was right is not for me to globally judge (though I believe I did the right thing, which is also a different animal. Yes, I'm splitting that hair mighty thin.)
Poulsen knows I've been around the block a couple dozen times, and I've been a bona-fide confidential source, albeit never for Poulsen. I don't feel taken advantage of. If I was pressured, it was up to me to exercise my right & ability to resist.
I object to your characterization of Asperger's as a "disability" - it's more-often described as a "syndrome" or "condition" in psychiatric circles, and in a less pejorative fashion to boot.
I know Poulsen isn't my friend. We don't socialize. We don't go clubbing. He's the most highly ethical journalist I know. If I were unaware that he considers me a source, not a friend, I'd be taken advantage of. I am however quite aware of this.
The government - and this is important - never asked me to be a source for them in the Manning case, in terms of eliciting information in furtherance of prosecution. This request would be improper, and I would decline in the interests of justice.
I have no reason to lead me to believe that Assange is on the run from anything larger than his own PR machine. It's perverse that this story has increasingly drifted from focusing on Manning to focusing on Assange.
I hope this clarifies things for you from my end. I've been entirely candid with you, and hope you'll update with a clarification from my end.
Unlike the summary posted above, the article is very unbiased. I'm surprised how sensational slashdot has become on issues like this. This isn't about some hacker wanting street cred, it's about an agent of the government getting a criminal to talk. Salon even stops slander found in other articles that is just journalism upon journalism leads to US Government vs. WikiLeaks, which at this point looks completely ridiculous.
I for one congratulate Salon for this very well balanced article.
He also believed, the guy on the other end when was saying that he's a journalist *and* a minister. Really, why not a *doctor* also, third one's charm, they say.
Considering that he was found guilty once, I don't think Lamo wants to be carrying secrets for other people anymore. If I were him, I would be staying on the straight and narrow for a while.
Palm trees and 8
I assume that his name is pronounced "lame-o."
P.S. This is the proper way to not out yourself online to a hacker.
Could you provide some details? We will protect you under both journalist shield laws and the clergy-lay confidentiality tradition...
the american society is in serious breakdown. Unfortunately, it will drag down most of western society.
The Americans are so self centred and introverted, they will commit patricide for purely save face.
Hint
>Will you dig a hole for me? You get 50% of what you find.
Yah, great idea mate!
>OK, dig here
So you want us to use american expertise and resourses?
>YEP
OK, 50%, right?
>yep
this is deep
>your problem
WRONG- THE WORLDS PROBLEM.
I bet that lameo Lamo is LMAO.
If you want to play James Bond, you have to expect to run into Blofeld every now and then.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It seems as though this guy didn't leak the data for the public good, but rather because he was angry. He was getting back at people etc, etc. Well that sort of thinking doesn't lead to good decision making.
There's a real difference in personality type and action between people with different motivations for breaking a trust and revealing confidential data.
In the case of conscience, it is because you really believe this is important to the public good. You believe that the world needs this information to be public. That was the case with The Pentagon Papers. The reason Ellsberg leaked the documents was he felt that he had to. He had tried to contact Senators and have them deal with it, but they wouldn't. He was out of options more or less, and felt the only way to deal with it was public disclosure, that the public's need to know outweighed the oath he'd taken to keep classified information secret.
However this was not a case like that, it was a case of ego. Manning was pissed off (in part because apparently he'd been broken up with) and decided to act out on it, in this case by leaking documents. He may have felt they should be public, but his motivation was ego. Well guess what? When ego is involved, people like to brag. They can't help but run their mouth to show how awesome they are.
Personally I don't feel a lot of sympathy for him for that reason. Were this a case of a deep personal belief, I can respect that, however he was just being spiteful more or less. Also, if he is telling the truth about leaking a quarter million diplomatic cables it is clear he doesn't care. There is no way he read all of those and decided they all needed to be public, he's just leaking information indiscriminately.
Whatever the case, it isn't likely to go well for him. Given that this was done in the course of his duties as military personnel, he will most likely be tried by court marshal as per the UCMJ. Means he's not likely to find a sympathetic civilian jury.
Lamo told Manning he could provide protection under both journalist shield laws, and the clergy-lay confidentiality tradition
What? Since when is this guy a priest journalist?
I don't get it
Big wow.
Lamo caught a felon. Who cares if his motives reveal him to be just a lowlife?
Read the article - that's part of what Glennwald is asking. He's asking, why would a 22-year-old Private with access to high-security information get onto AIM and spill his guts about an issue that could get him thrown into jail for a long time with some guy that he's never met before? Something is funny about the whole notation.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
ggreenwald: Good Gawker post on Wired's concealment of the Lamo-Manning chat logs: [is.gd] kpoulsen: @ggreenwald I'm supposed to take journalistic ethics lessons from Gawker? Pass ggreenwald: @kpoulsen No - you should explain whether the claims Adrian made about his chat that don't appear in your published logs are in them ggreenwald: @kpoulsen And you should release the parts you're concealing that don't reveal harmful national security secrets or very personal issues
Unfortunately it seems Julian Asange and Pvt. Manning did not know Adrian Lamo's history. He's already on an FBI watch list, and his previous encounters with hacker activities basically turned him into an "outed hacker". Such people can make careers as counter-intrusion consultants (Phiber Optik, Kevin Mitcnick) or as Journalists/radio personalities (Bernie S, Kevin Poulsen). But they *cannot* go back to grey or black hat hacking, and anything along those lines. They are being watched too carefully. On his interview on the "Off the Hook" radio show, Adrian Lamo was unusually regretful and capitulant when he got "caught" intruding into people's systems. He made no attempt to defend his actions. This should have been the first clue that this guy was basically a state actor or something of that nature. Given how effective WikiLeaks has been, it is shocking to me that they were so lax in security as to allow someone like Adrian Lamo anywhere near their crown jewels. Now Manning is going to be a fall guy, and iterpol/the FBI has a ridiculous premise for subpoenaing Julian Asange. This whole cock up sucks so much ass. Why did Julian Asange feel the need to go public? Why did they trust some outed hacker? Along with cryptome.org, Wikileaks has been *such* an important resource for free speech and open society movements everywhere. I sincerely hope that it does go down in flames from all this crap.
It seems as though this guy didn't leak the data for the public good, but rather because he was angry. He was getting back at people etc, etc. Well that sort of thinking doesn't lead to good decision making.
TFA has excerpts from the chat in which Manning had told Lamo that he wanted this material out in the public domain to spur debate, that he was having some moral issues with how the military was doing business. What's your source that he was doing this for revenge?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Let us indeed remember Adrian, as the colossal dillhole he is.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
ggreenwald: Good Gawker post on Wired's concealment of the Lamo-Manning chat logs: [is.gd]
kpoulsen: @ggreenwald I'm supposed to take journalistic ethics lessons from Gawker? Pass
ggreenwald: @kpoulsen No - you should explain whether the claims Adrian made about his chat that don't appear in your published logs are in them
ggreenwald: @kpoulsen And you should release the parts you're concealing that don't reveal harmful national security secrets or very personal issues
Lamo has always been a little bitch and only claims to be a hacker to try and get some street cred. He doesn't really know the first thing about hacking or how to write a really good article. I'm sad that Manning left himself open to be such a target to such a Lamo.
wannabe hacker Adrian Lamo
Even a cursory glance at Lamo's history will show he's not a "wannabe" hacker. He was and is a quite accomplished and successful (except for getting caught) hacker.
I mean, really: Protip:
1. Go to some Internet café and upload everything to a "free homepage", "online hard drive" or similar service.
2. Go to another Internet café and post the link to a couple of forums that Wikileaks people frequent, saying that you just found it on that homepage trough a random google search.
3. Watch how after you leave the computer at the Internet cafés, they get wiped and overwritten with a disk image.
4. Watch dozens of customers use the same PC in the next hours/days, making it impossible to know by the fingerprints or by asking the people there, who actually did the upload or posts.
5. WIN!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I know Lamo, he's one of my Facebook buddies.
All i have to say is, He's a hacker, aren't all hackers about placating there ego as much as possible without getting in trouble?
Lamo is a lame-o
If you read about Lamo's reaction to story (Wired had an excellent article about it), you'd find it has nothing to do with "ego." And it has nothing to do with being a "snitch." He said himself that he agonized over the decision for a long time because normally he wouldn't turn someone in. And he supports Wikileaks. But in this case, Manning was completely reckless, vacuuming up any and every piece of classified information he could find, and "throwing it up in the air." This is a legitimate threat to national security. Manning wasn't identifying abuses anymore, he wanted to create anarchy. He said it himself in one of his chats.
Releasing embassy cables could reveal names of operatives, and details of secret operations that really should be kept secret. Just because it's secret doesn't mean it's unethical or some abuse of power. There's plenty of people out there collecting information for our government about real threats in the world, and those people put their lives at risk for a good cause (most of them). They haven't done anything wrong. Yet they might find themselves in a Chinese prison never to be seen again once their name is released, and for no reason than some out-of-control monkey who wanted to create "anarchy." I would've done the same.
Summary: "may have been duped by wannabe hacker Adrian Lamo"
FTA: "convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo"
2+2=5?
Sent from my CR-48
If this guy goes to prison, I will be the 1st one in line to thank him for his service to the country. As a Vet and citizen I want people who sacrifice for their country in ANY fashion to know they are appreciated.
I will admit, I do not know what his motivations are, but then we'll never know. He could say one thing and simply be lying. However the way he has acted leads me to believe ego was the driving force. As I said, the biggest would be running his mouth like he did. He wanted credit for what he'd done, but of course that would get him in trouble. So he was bragging to those he believed he was safe in telling.
Then there's the events preceding the leak. By his own statements his girlfriend had broken up with him, he'd be demoted for assaulting another solider, and he felt like his family wasn't supporting him. That is not a mindset that to me sounds like ground work for a rational decision. Sounds to me like he was angry, and the military was the target that bore the brunt of his anger. He may claim it was a moral decision, but people are able to rationalize all kinds of things. To me it sounds like ego.
Finally there's the 260,000 diplomatic cables he claims to have released, but that have not yet been seen. Now there's one of two ways this goes:
1) He really did leak a quarter million pieces of classified correspondence. In this case, it is a purse ego move as there's no way he could have looked at them all and decided they were relevant. He was just shotgun releasing everything he could, since his ego told him that he was the good guy and whatever he does was right since it gets back at those that hurt him.
2) He made it all up, in an attempt to appear more competent, more powerful, etc than he really was. That is pure ego, making things up for the purpose of appearance.
So all in all, to me it looks like the guy was driven by his ego, not his conscience, to do what he did.
You say, "But no one leaks video of the hundreds of encounters where a copter shots a bunch of insurgents." and imply that this means most of the people viewer therefore lack a real ability to assess the video.
What you say is true, but it is incomplete.
The US military intentionally and openly prevent the publication of such videos, they 'embed' journalists instead of allowing them to investigate, *precisely* so the populace lacks any ability to form a contextual framework within which to assess 'operation crusade' or whatever the military expedition in the middle east is now called.
I've heard lots of old hawks bleating that Vietnam was lost at home, that the population's objections to an unjust war made it unwinnable. The people at home aren't allowed to see what is being done in their name, because they might not like it, and might wish to exercise their democratic rights to stop doing it.
So it seems to me that what is needed is more of these videos, more wikileaks, more transparency, and more democracy. Not. Less.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
I couldn't continue reading after this tidbit:
Despite being convicted of serious hacking felonies, Poulsen was allowed by the U.S. Government to become a journalist covering the hacking world for Security Focus News.
The US government allowed Poulsen to become a journalist? Is there a fucking license issued by the Federal government or something? "I'm sorry Mr. Poulsen, you're not allowed to become a journalist." When the author of any article is that retarded they discredit themselves so severely that I cannot accept anything they write.
The author thinks it may be a setup by the Pentagon to discredit Wikileaks.
I think that the govt has establish a relationship with Lamo in the past. Similarly, just after the Apache helicopter video became news, the govt came down hard on Manning, scared the wits out of him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Now all of a sudden we are hearing about vast amounts of state secrets that nasty ol' Wikileaks took from Manning's tender but misguided hands.
(sniff) 'How could those rats do this to my Homeland?!!!' (sob...)
Only thing is Assange says he has never seen or heard about this supposed cache of stolen communications, and I tend to think that the govt is telling Manning to make this (damaging to Wikileaks) claim as part of a deal.
A couple of years ago, the leader of a political party in New Zealand stood before the nation and told them neither he nor the party would sell the only NZ-owned bank operating in the country if they won the upcoming national election.
While he was saying that, his deputy leader and the party's candidate for the role of Minister of Finance, was in a locked room at the party conference, telling the party faithful that yes, of course the party was going to sell that bank.
Unfortunately for the party leader and his deputy, somebody recorded the deputy's comment and leaked it to the media. A furore ensued because the sale of local assets to overseas buyers is now a very touchy subject in NZ.
However, most of the strongest criticism appeared to be aimed not at the party and its leaders, but at the "slimy" individual who "dared to spy on the party and leak confidential information"!
A thoroughly nasty witch hunt followed and the individual was outed, resulting in death threats and promises of severe legal retribution against him. His character was assassinated in ways nobody thought possible.
Amazingly, that party won the election and is now in government, and a couple of weeks ago made it clear they were looking to sell-off the bank, until the negative uproar overwhelmed them and they hastily backed-down.
Humans are very strange creatures in so many ways.
My grandmother told me that anything two or more people know is not a secret.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
Adrian: And he called the reporters?
Rocky: Yeah. It threw my whole training schedule off.
Adrian: Don't be mad at him. He's just trying to help.
Rocky: Adrian, I ain't mad. It's just that, uh, when a reporter's around, I get out of joint 'cause they take cheap shots, and Paulie knows that. Paulie keeps askin' me for a job all the time, but he don't know nothin' about fighting.
Adrian: Are you gonna say anything to him?
Rocky: Well, what's to say? I just don't know what he wants from me.
Alex, I'll pick Occam's Razor for $100. It has occurred to me that PFC Manning was just that stupid.
I've seen an example of this sort of thing on Slashdot, where someone representing himself as an Army NCO mouthed off regarding a technical capability of his systems. It took a couple of tries reminding him of his OPSEC responsibilities before he purchased a clue, deleting his personal information from his /. profile. Too late, though, as I pulled his POC from Google cache, and within about 5 minutes strung together his specialty, his unit, its facility in the FRG, its most recent deployment to the ME, his photo from a unit newsletter, his friends and family on MySpace, and likely stateside address from Zabasearch.
is http://twitter.com/6
he use to comment on people's comments and questions
You REALLY do not want to hear the TRUE military opinion about this.
But I will tell you anyway:
War is hell.
You put the lowest class of people you can have with all their prejudices and tiny small minded worries, give them very powerful weapons and tell them to create "peace".
That ain't going to work, it has never worked and it will never work. Very specialist units of the military could possible do that, like the old SAS where you didn't count if you weren't at least 30+. A man, not a punk teenager with a gun and an attitude.
Vietnam. What do you think of it? Poor honest soldiers attempt at a hearts and minds campaign ruined by secret CIA operations? WRONG, it is EXACTLY the opposite. The CIA was doing a good job, copying similar operations by the british to win over the population by building the country up. It was working and then some dickshit politician decided it wasn't going fast enough and send in the regular mass murdering army.
No, this is not what the hollywood movies tell you what happened. You need to read some books to find this out.
Iraq is a war fought by the military and the military kills people. Armed or unarmed doesn't matter. Everyone is a target especially if they got a different skin color. That is war. You can't put a teenager in a tank and expect him to go from fighting to peace-keeping an instant. Highly trained and underpaid cops of 20 years EXPERIENCE have a hard time doing that. Soldiers? Forget it. That is not what they are trained for. they are trained to be killing machines operating killing machines and that is what you saw.
Nasty? You bet, just as nasty as 8 MILLION civilian casualties caused by US soldiers in Vietnam. COUNT THEM and realize that this killing figure was achieved WITHOUT the gas chambers that allows the germans to reach 12 million. Yes, 2/3 of the holocaust by the americans in Vietnam. THAT IS WAR. Not the nice and polite actions of Israel/Egypt were fewer people are killed then on a busy weekend on the roads. But all out brutal war aimed at destroying a peoples freedom and make them subjugated.
Everyone with a brain knew that Iraq would end up like this because America hasn't learned anything from Vietnam. About the only way for America to learn at this point is to round up every single Vietnam veteran and put them on trial for war crimes. Because that is what that war came down to. But America can't do that. It would not tear the nation apart, it would destroy it utterly. Because the US IS war crimes. Compare the holocaust with the trek west and try to spot the difference. The difference? The direction. The germans went east for lebensraum. The americans went west and both slaughtered the people that they viewed as lesser and unworthy of living.
THAT is the US. How can you expect an army from such a country to behave nice in dirty war?
No doubt some American will mod this down, because it comes far to close to the truth. The US is build on war crimes. Its founders of freedom kept slaves. That is the history of the US. Watch the video. There are no missing bits, this is the full story of what happens when you put a scared 20 year old guy in a killing machine amongst people he thinks of as less then himself and who are the enemy of everything he believes in.
No, it ain't nice. But really, you don't want to hear this. Same as you don't want to hear the truth about any of America's past. Note the COMPLETE lack of any mention of how blacks were treated during WW2 in Band of Brothers or The Pacific. Realistic portrayal of WW2 my ass.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You have to wonder, if this is a breach of "national security", then is the security we're talking about safety from Iraqis, or the military's security in the knowledge that they have no real popular referendum on their actions?
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Lamo told Manning he could provide protection under both journalist shield laws, and the clergy-lay confidentiality tradition, and instead immediately turned him in to authorities in an act of apparent shameless self-promotion.
What the hell did you expect him to say? "Hey, I'm planning to turn you over to the authorities as soon as you email me that video. And can you please hurry? The Justice Department said they want somebody arrested within 12 hours, and that a bonus is involved." I mean seriously--what the fuck? Regardless of his motives, the private in question allegedly willingly showed classified materials to someone who was not authorized to see them. Period. Do you expect the military to have a "we'll take it on a case by case basis" when it comes to the UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF CLASSIFIED MATERIALS?
Who submitted this article? I'd click "back" to check but I'm too fucking lazy.
He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?
So Lamo says, a man who admits to deliberately deceiving people. We haven't heard anything directly from Manning himself. He still hasn't been charged with anything after 3 weeks.
>>Lamo says that Manning thereafter sent him additional emails encrypted to his current PGP key, but that Lamo never bothered to decrypt them. Instead, Lamo claims he turned over all those Manning emails to the FBI without ever reading a single one of them. Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo -- what preceded and led to their chat -- are completely unknown.
The only way that the FBI could've read the emails without having Lamo himself first decrypt them, is to allow the FBI access to his secret key and password. You be the judge on the plausibility of that happening.
Lamo, just killed any credibility he had. I wouldnt want to be him right now. What goes around comes around.
Governments are *very* good at force escalation. Gandhi and MLK won by denying them legitimacy once they employed force. By comparison, the Palestinians have never gained their own state precisely because they've refused to forswear violence.
You need not be completely non-violent of course, but you must convincingly reject violence. Indeed, Gandhi and MLK both faced competition from violent groups with the same goals, but they and their lieutenants rejected violence so absolutely that government could not blame them for any violence. Arafat never seriously even sought that status.
I doubt online rights would suffer if Lameo got shot by one lone crazy with guns and NRA membership, but your public encouraging of said hypothetical gun nut makes rights activists look bad, and any concerted effort towards would be even worse.
If you feel like doing some good, how about helping convince slashdot, boing boing, etc. to impose a 1 year moratorium on wired.com links. Lameo is just a moron who tricked Manning. Wired has seriously violated journalistic integrity.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Just think a bit about it.
I've read every TFA rolling around.
Lots of contradictions in Lamo/Wired story about how their communication come to be.
All this c*ap about one analyst somewhere having access to whole 260,000 of diplomatic cables... What is he? Root of whole bunch of .gov machines? You /.ers of all people, you believe in this???
And again, one whistleblower being naive enough to confess to some net person?
I can't believe so much people are buying stories like these.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
I guess eleven-page spreads in the New Yorker would not constitute "shameless self-promotion?" http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian
Wouldn't the NSA and FBI have the ability to see the entire conversation?
Lets face it, the kid was impetuous and stupid. He's also very young and it's to be expected. The fact is what he did was illegal and the fact that it's illegal AND he talked about it on the government monitored internet is what makes him so dumb.
It's like if Bin Laden would go on AIM and go to Jihad.com and chat.
Obviously he doesn't know enough to know that the NSA can read that? He's an idiot.
What I don't understand is why this kid could be so smart as to have the technical skill to pull off that kind of operation but then be so dumb as to communicate in plaintext over AOL.
This is as stupid as just emailing a confession. The kid wasn't even smart enough to know about PGP.
First of all it wasn't Wikileaks that caused this kid to be captured. It was this kid behaving in a dumb impetuous fashion that caused him to be captured. Typical hacker kid who pulls off an exploit and then brags about it to his friends. It's always the situation that individuals who brag get caught.
On top of that he was messing with the US gov, this means all the alphabet agencies were hunting him and he goes and tells Adrian Lamo? The entire situation is ridiculous and comical in my opinion.
What isn't comical is the fact that if there really are all these thousands of classified documents and if American lives really are at stake here, thats not funny at all. I don't know the details of the situation, but if the goal was to discredit Wikileaks it may actually have the opposite effect.
People like that need to be drug into the street and killed immediately. Pathetic.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
>He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister,
Lmao!
Who said I was encouraging gun nuts? If you read my post you'll see no suggestion of any action nor any suggestion of the tools of choice. The 'something' that might happen in revenge could be as innocuous as a custard pie in the face
(I'm British - custard pies are more respected as the weapon of choice than guns over here). However I will take issue with your assertion that governments are best at force-escalation.
If the war that Bradley Manning has lost his liberty to truly expose has shown us anything it is that even when governments try to escalate they will always be outmanouevred by the irregular forces. Insurgents, freedom fighters, terrorists - call them what you will, they can plumb depths of savagery governments can't even peer into.
Against a motivated force of irregulars government will eventually always lose because weapons can't kill an idea.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
> He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?
Well, it's NOT hard to become an ordained minister, so it's not that unbelievable.
Lamo could very well be one, for all I know.
No, he was smart enough to know about PGP, if you rtfa you'd know that. Manning initially reached out to Lamo through encrypted email (mail Lamo claims never to have decrypted).
Lamo apparently goads him into unencrypted communications, and then promises confidentiality.
It's not just Americans who suck, it's people in general
Yes. Exactly. This is exactly the reason why surrounding the room you sit in is a civilised society. Because there are rules to promote law and order.
Think of the US in human terms. If it was a person, it would be a loud flashy self absorbed bully would walk in to other peoples homes and beat them up whenever he wanted, he would also arrange others it for him. He would loud mouth about how he has a 'code', the very same rule he judges other by, he would break at his slightest advantage. Not only would this bully be clearly armed to the teeth, but he would also tend towards constant conflict. Running in to him would probably be the most dangerous thing you could do in your life.
You would hate him. He would be a danger to you and your community. As a person, it would only be a matter of time until he was in prison, probably a running gun battle with police, televised! This is the show we, the rest of the world have watched for generations. You can easily sit back and quote the atrocities of other countries. I completely agree that many other countries are filled with gun toting crazies. I agree that leaders of other countries knowingly commit crimes against humanity, of barbarism.
Make no mistake however, the US is squarely in the same group. The only difference is the lengths to which the US will go to in maintaining the charade that it's a bastion of peace, humanity and democracy.
Lies, confetti and speeches are nothing but wind. Unites States, you are what you do. A murderous bully who saves kittens is still a murderer. No good deeds you do will repay what you have done to the world.
Yes, ideas can survive almost any conventional military attack, but waiting for your enemy to get bored and go home isn't exactly substantive progress towards your political ends.
Iraqi 'irregulars' will win precisely when the U.S. goes home, but all their efforts spent keeping the American body count high may not make the departure date any sooner.
America achieved their revolutionary goals definitively largely because England was over committed elsewhere, the French gave significant aid, and they already had massive influence within the existing power structure.
Afganistan and Vietnam has significant aid but still ended up just waiting the USSR and US out because they were not over committed elsewhere.
Afaik, the communist revolutions like China, Russia, Cuba, etc. largely ate the existing decadent power structure from the inside, same for many European revolutions.
The Palestinians will never achieve their political goals through violence because the Israelis are also fighting for survival. I'll grant they'll never drive the Israelis into the sea using peaceful means either, but they could establish stable states.
Gandhi and MLK achieved radical political change quite rapidly using non-violent means.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You say medics can be shot, if armed. COMBAT medics, if armed. These weren't combat medics and they were not armed as can be VERY clearly seen.
And an AK47 is no threat to a armored helicopter.
Did you WATCH the video? or just takes Fox news word for what it showed?
WATCH IT, and LISTEN to the pilots. They KNOW the people on the ground are unarmed.
People like them used to shoot blackies because it was fun. These are the kind of guys that guarded concentration camps. LISTEN to them talk.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.