Slashdot Mirror
Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
But for some reason the firehose put it down to purple and it was rejected. I understand he's a media whore with shady beginnings but what was everyone afraid of? That the interview would go poorly and he'd start releasing sensitive Slashdot information? :-)
My work here is dung.
Wikileaks and the Daily Show are some of the very few examples of real journalism we can find today, I hope they team up and become a hilarious force of journalistic good.
You can't take the sky from me...
from the balls-of-steel dept.
Surely that should be 'balls of steal'.
HE should reveal the location of all US nukes and their launch codes... because those are kept secret and cost a lot of money.
Julian Assange also admits someday he's probably going to have "blood on his hands." He has put himself in a tough situation. But I'm betting the increased daylight will do more good than bad.
Information longs to be free. Blah blah blah. You're a hero, Mr. Assange...give yourself a pat on the back.
I admire whistleblowers. But there is sometimes a fine line between heroism and stupidity. And whistleblowers almost always pay a hefty price for what they do. Best case scenario they either lose their job outright or are shuffled off into a corner somewhere, never to be trusted or promoted again. Worst case scenario, they end up in jail or dead. The "thanks" are usually short-lived, the stain of being an employee/contractor/soldier who can't be trusted lasts forever.
I hope this guy and his whistleblowers continue to keep fighting and that Wikileaks is around for a long time. But, make no mistake about it, the powers-that-be will fight it. And the more Wikileaks releases, the farther those powers will be willing to go to silence the site.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
A government (foreign or domestic) posted this just to get dontpaniconline.com slashdotted. It's a cover-up.
Nullius in verba
The press does a bad job specifically because it is not just a group of volunteers; the press ultimately needs to make enough money to pay reporters, journalists, editors, etc. In countries where news is a business, getting on the government's bad side can mean losing access to news sources (the ability to speak with powerful people); in countries where news is sponsored by the government, getting on the government's bad side could mean getting fired or receiving less funding. There are a few exceptional cases, such as the New York Times leaking the illegal wiretapping program, but more often than not it seems that news organizations avoid creating controversies.
Palm trees and 8
This is the kind of bullshit you hear from people who don't have a fucking clue what regular people are like. Sure, it's possible that a government may hide their activities from the public in an attempt to deceive or control them. Much more often, however, the government needs to keep information from the public because the public is full of panicky morons. And yes, sometimes a restriction on information is vital to national security. Traditional media doesn't "fail" to expose this information; they have enough sense to determine what benefits the public and what doesn't. Assange clearly lacks any fucking iota of that kind of sense.
Organizations like Wikileaks are essential to having a democratic country. Such a thing like the Afghan War Diary is very much needed to evaluate which leaders to elect. Remember these are our tax dollars being used/wasted to fight this war. We have a right to know the body count and the details about past missions. Without that how am I supposed to know who to vote for? If I don't have the facts, how can I make an educated decision? My only choice is through the mainstream media which doesn't have the facts.
I need -facts- to back up my election choices. I need to know stuff like the Afghan War Diary, otherwise how will I know if its worth continuing the Afghan war? It seems my only two options in the mainstream media is either DESTROY ALL TERRORISTS WITH NUKES!!!!! and EVERY SOLDIER WHO GOES TO AFGHANISTAN KILLS 324234 CHILDREN!!!! and none of them deal with the facts.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
In some specific regards he's right. He and his staff take on some personal risks of reprisals, but I think the reason he is doing what other sources of Journalism aren't, is that he *can*. Unfortunately, most of the world media is either State-controlled, or owned by for-profit corporations, which means in the first case that they aren't allowed to report such things, by the government which controls them, or in the second case, aren't as willing to take the risks, because it might hurt profits.
I think only a a relatively small, non-profit, or possibly, privately owned, organization can actually engage in such risky journalism, because they have basically nothing to lose (well, some of the staff could lose their personal property and/or go to jail).
The guy is just a glory hound with a self inflated sense of purpose.
I notice the biggest stories that got him the most publicity were those involving the US government.
Meanwhile, I haven't any big leaks from them on truly secretive and oppressive regimes like North Korea, China, Iran.
Why isn't wikileaks focusing on countries like those on their true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities? Because it doesn't seem to get him the glory and buzz.
The guy is just a glory hound with a self inflated sense of purpose.
I notice the biggest stories that got him the most publicity were those involving the US government.
Meanwhile, I haven't any big leaks from them on truly secretive and oppressive regimes like North Korea, China, Iran.
Why isn't wikileaks focusing on countries like those on their true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities? Because it doesn't seem to get him the glory and buzz.
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The drawback to wholesale leaks like this is that sometimes innocent people can be harmed. As an example, when Valerie Plame's identity was divulged, the CIA downplayed her official capacity as being that of a desk jockey. That's what they'll say whether she really is a desk jockey, or an elite 007 killing machine. Anyway, the problem with exposing Valerie Plame is that she had contacts in the field who were then exposed to have been meeting with a CIA agent. Kinda puts those people at risk within their own organizations.
Same with these documents. Even a casual remark in a report about a helpful shop owner can put that person on a Taliban hit list.
The perspective espoused by WikiLeaks is irresponsible and naive.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Someone recently linked an image comparing the CNN homepage with Al Jazeera Home page. The difference is extreme. One is a gossip rag, the other a, highly biased, news source.
But CNN probably makes more money, or used to anyway.
Remember the story about Ballmer being a bad CEO despite raising revenue and profits? That is because in the United Corporations of America, making a profit isn't enough you always go to be growing your profits and growing the amount by which your profits grow. Raise your profits for 10 years in a row by 25% and you are doing badly, it should be year 1: 25%, year 2: 40%, year 3: 60% etc etc. Impossible? Yes it is, but is what the stock market wants, what employees payed in stock options want.
So everything in the UCA is constantly squeezed, cost cutting here, cost cutting there. Spend a little less, earn a little more until you are left with... well it the iPhone 4. Made with slave labour, broken by design. And no this isn't just about Apple. Dell is even better at it. Sold broken PC's, broke anti-trust laws everything to increase the bottom line year after year.
And then you apply it to news. And news isn't cheap or efficient or effective. And you won't notice when it is gone until it is far to late. Until you get to a state that "politicians" refuse to speak to journalists and have them barred from events and only ask questions submitted in advance and then only those they like. Sarah Palin anyone? If you think she is bad, the exact same thing has been going on for a long time. Ask the wrong questions and forget about getting invited to the special events. So no reporter at a white house press briefing asks hard questions, at least not without prior approval.
Think about it, if journalists asked real questions, guys like Bush and Blair would have been as embarrased as when they meet a private citizen who manages to corner them. Brits might remember Blair being totally unable to counter woman questioning him on public health care. Brown the same. What NO report mentioned is that not a SINGLE ONE OF THE PRESS CORE asked those questions. If you are reporter and you haven't had a poltician cry, then suck. And this is the same around the world.
In Holland we have tv news for children. If you compare that show from ten years ago with the adult news, you will find that the adult news now is softer then the children news from way back.
But who is to blame? Big business intrests? Perhaps, but we the public let them. We let the likes of Murdoch own every newssource. We don't refuse to watch fluf pieces on the news and now the fluff has become the news.
And don't blame it on the right either. The left is just as guilty of it. The right has fluff pieces that ignore global warming and corporate corruption. The left has fluff pieces that ignore problems with immigration and culture clashes.
Fluff is not just Idols, it is news that doesn't upset you.
If you read a news source and you agree with it, then you are reading fluff. And we like it. See how quickly people resort to flamebait and troll to silence troubling thoughts on slashdot.
There was another piece, that people seek communities in games that give them the least amount of stress. Well, that is also how we seek out news. Be REALLY honest with yourself, how often do you purposefully seek out news from a source critical to your own world views?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The fact this guy is the man of the hour over the Afghan leaks that caused such a hubbub two days ago does not mean he isn't flawed despite unduly positive portrayals on Slashdot and elsewhere.
A big criticism of Julian Assange is his constant courting of the media to the point of being a prolific PR man - Slashdot did a post on him some months ago with the grandoise assertion that he was an 'Interational Man of Mystery'.
Truth is that his past, which is hardly whiter than white given all the suspected hacking he has done, makes him out to be much less of a virtuous crusader and more an occasionally maverick human being like quite a few people who once embarked on black hat attempts are. I agree with Wikileaks and enjoy the prospect that authority will be questioned a lot more as a result...but Assange isn't angel or particularly 'moral' .
The only thing which seperates him from older, more seasoned leaking website owners is that he is talented at courting PR and media, is decent at public speaking, and functions well as the recognisable 'face' of Wikileaks - nobody else in the leaking business has talent in the important matter of image, promotion and driving attention to his site. Were Assange lacking in that, Wikileaks would be nowhere near as famous/infamous as it is at the moment.
I don't know how much of the content at the links below is repeated in TFA, but I thought these were good:
Apologies to those outside the UK or otherwise without access as the second interview is on iPlayer.
(Incidentally, the Guardian also had access to the Afghanistan data, as was mentioned in a previous /. article. Since I have the tabs open, I'll repeat some key links from that here:)
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
As a USMC Iraq combat vet, who has for the past few months been studying the Afghan situation extensively, I can say that this is a good thing. Anybody who is actually involved knows that the Paki, and more specifically ISI, have been a problem for us since the early 80's, and not much has changed. The Paki's have and will continue to say "What? Not us!" but they are full of shit. The fact that the politicians are relatively good at hiding this fact undermines the general public's knowledge about the situation, and therefore it is a major part of controlling public opinion about our war. The facts are that we send money to ISI (often bypassing paki authorities completely) who then have (sometimes rogue) officers directly funding everything from afghan warlords, to Al Queda, to Paki Talibs, and on down the line. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has absolutely no interest in really getting rid of their extremists, on either border, because Islamabad has so much fear of India, the militants are a tool they plan to use if needed. They will only do enough to keep our money flowing to them, but not enough to truly alienate the extremists. Its enormously complicated, with factors such as Iran and Russia playing into the equation. Regardless, I just hope that Assange did a good enough job purging of intel that could jeopardize people, but when so much is being hid, this kind of knowledge should be made public, albeit perhaps a bit with a bit more ambiguous information.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Name ONE item that the world DIDN'T know about U.S. quagmire BEFORE Wikileaks leaked the 90,000 documents.
I double dare you.
Yours In Kranoyarsk,
Kilgore Trout
BTW, his source for the recent leak is a 22yrs old US soldier.
I was wondering what happened to that.
I guess some people harbour angry feelings towards him for releasing that military video - something along the lines of loose lips might sink ships. I think more good than harm came from releasing the video, but I can see where it strikes a nerve with some people.
I mean if your kid happened to be in the military - and it would appear that the military is hiding something your kids may or may not be doing - it would make you feel uneasy, to say the least. Most parents would still side with their kids though.
We know, for a fact, that there's a *lot* of material being classified that has *ZERO* relation to national security, and every relation to embarrassing or revealing criminal malfeasance by those doing the classifying.
Let's see the documents that Cheney and Bush used to justify invading and conquering Iraq. Let's see the ones explaining the real reasons that the US did *not* use our troops to take Tora Bora.
mark "and where's the war crimes tribunals?"
And somewhat naive to boot. Sorry if that upsets the anti government anti capitalist liberal left element on here but thats the way I see it. Who the hell is this guy to decide for a democratically elected government what should remain secret or not? I don't remember voting for him. I notice theres a distinct lack of leaks from the real unpleasent regimes around the world, just the standard issue potshots at western governments that I've come to expect from left leaning organisations. When he leaks something of importance from north korea or zimbabwe or congo THEN I might believe he's something more than just a media whore.
Some things simply have to be kept private, if national defense is to function in our best interests. It's simply impossible for anyone outside of the government to second guess what must be kept secret, and what must not. Julian Assange is not in a position to make these judgments. He simply does not have the complete picture. All leaking bits and pieces can do is create a less than complete picture. He is not doing U.S. citizens a service. Conversely, if we cannot trust our government to make this decision, we need to do something about our government.
So I wonder why members of their organizations never send anything to WikiLeaks? Makes the playing field somewhat uneven don't you think?
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
If something awful happens to befall the guy he gets what he deserves. I'd even support any Gov't efforts to help that something awful along. He's put the lives of people in jeopardy. He thinks it will somehow serve a greater purpose if those people (our sons and daughters serving as war fighters) get killed rather than allow the Govt's to have classified communica. He's a buffoon.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
March was far before any of that was released ...
The trap we can fall into with WikiLeaks in my opinion is that they themselves can craft a leak to suit their own political agenda. If they are the ones responsible for redacting certain information in information they are going to post, it wouldn't be very hard to redact or edit certain parts to make documents sound very different than the original.
What they are doing is great in principle but they are in a position of "power" that is easy to abuse. I'm not suggesting they should stop but we as readers need to take what they post with a grain of salt and do as much fact checking as we can.
he's a media whore with shady beginnings
Anyone would become a "media whore" in a situation where being one could make the difference between staying alive or getting shot in a dark alley with noone caring about it...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Anybody who has been paying attention to the Afghanistan war should not have been surprised or shock over the wikileaks documents.
Really, what great new detail have you learned in those documents that you couldn't have read in a newspaper or article in the last 4 years? Civilians sometimes gets killed? Drones sometimes crash? Pakistan may be helping the Taliban? Big whoop. Anybody with a clue knew or suspected this long go.
So if you need wikileaks as your primary source of information and facts, then you really have a problem.
Ok, more details about ugly side of war. We all know what happens there. Pakistan is _partly_ to blame about Taliban? News at 11. Civil casualities? Sadly, but these things happen in the war.
Except ammo for Afghan war opponents it doesn't give me or any other knowledgeable person new stuff about situation there. I respect WikiLeaks about other leakages, but I think this is overplayed and overhyped just for site owner's sake - and it feels wrong to do that. It feels that Julian doesn't want WikiLeaks to be neutral source of information but propaganda voice.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I wonder how he deals with the obvious truth that there are hundreds of governments that
1) violate human rights
2) do not hide this fact
China, India, Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia, Egypt, Chad, (the entirety of North Africa), Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, ... the list goes on and on and on ...
Most governments that really violate human rights do not claim they don't. They just claim human rights are unjust (all muslim nations), or that they know better what human rights are because they're ... (insert Chinese, North Korean, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Taiwan, ...)
The population of these countries easily exceeds 3 billion human beings.
How exactly will documenting abuses help against this ?
And I wonder how human rights can even be applied at all worldwide.
Human rights match make some serious demands on a country's law : ...
-> right to private property *psssst* no communist human rights, and at what point does socialism begin to violate human rights ?
-> right to roof *psst* no human rights in (very) capitalist countries
-> right to not be discriminated by religion
a) this includes the right to marry : neither muslims nor hindus can respect human rights *and* their religion, even if they live in a country that does (and I think this goes for most religions)
b) this does not include the right to marry : islam and human rights do not mix (since sharia demands separate rights per religion)
c) this includes the right not to be criticized/insulted (as the UN seems to want) : let's go convict Christopher Hitchens (and all these pesky atheists) for crimes against humanity !
-> right to not be discriminated by sex : again obviously islam violates this, so does sikhism and the Japanese "religion"
-> right to representation in government : no communist human rights, no dictatorial human rights, or in a (real) kingdom,
And that's ignoring the tangled mess that is human rights in warzones, and how ridiculously difficult they are to respect (and ignoring that only the US even tries to respect them, most US adverseries just routinely violate human rights even in peacetime)
And apparently violating human rights, even in big ways, does not justify ANY reaction by anyone. Example : Iran gets to execute minor girls (12yo) for the crime of being raped as a matter of policy, and this does not justify an incursion (but there are easily thousands of cases like this)
In general (see recent post about cop video) a "public servant" does not deserve much privacy. Per Robert A. Heinlein, "Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." When "national security" is used as an excuse to keep something secret, it is important for the public to be sure that the "something secret" is not an illegal action, or an attempt to avoid responsibility for making a mistake. Sometimes I think that the best way to ensure a democracy survives is to put ALL public servants, from the President on down to local cops, under 24/7 video surveillance. But this can only happen in a society that doesn't have hangups about nudity or bathroom functions or sex (therefore the good old USA is doomed....)
History tells us that Wikileaks will eventually end up in one of three states.
Untrusted news source: They will drift into corruption and/or incompetency and lose their credibility.
Beholden news source: Their donors will congeal into a very small number giving very large percentage of donations.
Self-serving news source: They will focus only on the stories that will stir the most controversy and thereby gather the most publicity for them.
20-minute interview at TED Glodal a few weeks back: http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html
What I want to know is how much of the released documents painted the military in a good light versus in a negative light. In any given set of after action reports there is bound to be a certain amount of good stories and a certain amount of bad ones. Both do not get released because they contain sensitive data. However both exit. What was the ratio of positive to negative? Or was it all negative?
I think Wikileaks plays an important role in information being free (as in information)
My concern is that with the things that he releases, and especially what he chooses to focus on, that he has an agenda and that he is using what is otherwise noble to press that agenda.
benefits open societies and hurts closed ones
i jut wish that there were a way wikileaks could get more secrets from closed societies in a way that was less deadly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The above post is completely wrong. These governments do try to cover-up abuses - it's why China routinely makes people disappear or why you can't find information about Tianneman Square from within the Great Firewall. It's why Iran tried to silence cellphone and facebook updates during their uprisings.
Plus there are a lot of supposedly "democratic" governments that treat their own citizens like children, and therefore hide information these governments think we are too dumb to understand. Such as the US and EU governments. Wikileaks is necessary to keep their shadier dealings in the light too. Such as ACTA and the Global Warming treaties that were "classified". Wikileaks revealed these documents for review by the People
.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Narcs, informants, and other snitches " all have one thing in common, they give everyday peoples secrets to authority figures.
He gives authority figures secrets to all of us.
it's the difference between robin hood and a tax collector, both take money off people and give it to someone else, people hate tax collectors so surely they'd hate robin hood just as much.
As a US taxpayer, I have blood on my hands and I'm not proud of it.
I remember elementary school, and as I recall it there weren't that many innocent people being murdered. Comparing tattling in the schoolyard to uncovering potential war crimes is just ridiculous. When serious wrongs are being done then yes I do like tattle tails, narcs, informants, snitches, or whatever you would call them. What I don't like are complicit cowards.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Agreed! It doesn't make this particular event less laudable.
But as he promotes his website, travelling about at seminars and elsewhere it's assumed that he's inevitably promoting the more spurious or outright fabricated 'leaks' that also manifest as content on the website.
Anyone who is determined enough, and certainly an office of paid employees fit for purpose, can just flood Wikileaks to the point where doubt descends on a lot of what arrives on the site. This has likely begun already: What's to say Wikileaks won't become to leaking websites what 4chan is to message boards?
But I'm sure Assange will be out there still prostrating before the media who then portrays him as either a rogue or a grand old servant to liberty right up to the last moment that it's viable.
This is why he isn't laudable; because he's knowingly riding on the back of something he knows isn't credible and whose credibility will worsen over time - same as any other newspaper editor, media presenter, or spurious PR producing entity would.
Human rights are not a monolith. It would be nice if they were, but depending on your foundational assumptions there are very conflicting views of rights. I think the most fundamental division is positive vs. negative rights. It underpins the mutual exclusivity of two of your examples: 'right to private property' and 'right to roof'. You can't have both. The right to private property is a negative right insofar as it obligates people to inaction in the form of 'you cannot take my stuff.' The 'right' to housing and/or food/medicine is a positive right because it obligates people to act in the form of 'you must provide me with housing/food/medicine.'
As far as I'm concerned, the 'you cannot' form of rights is superior to the 'you must' form of rights. As a society mandates that more productive people be slaves (that's what involuntary labor for others is) to the less productive it deincentivizes labor and the expression of talent. Where success is penalized and deficiency is rewarded it is only a matter of time before real productivity collapses.
(Note: the Wikipedia article on positive vs. negative rights includes a bullshit criticism from James Sterba who argues that poor people have a negative right to 'not be interfered with' when they take things from the rich. Ludicrous reasoning to try to camouflage the obvious implied social obligations, so simple that it can be satirized in barely more than a minute. Dr. Sterba is probably more wealthy than I am, so I think I should road trip my ass to Indiana and see how he really feels about rights when I raid his house.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
What is the right way to go about it then?
Jonathanjk.com
Then side with your kids like this: they're not allowed to tell people or the press all the fucked up things that are happening over there and it's probably eating them up inside, so finally they can get a little relief. Having secrets sucks, even for the secret-bearer.
If I were in the military I would probably be pretty frustrated by all the over-zealous secrecy labeling. Yes, you don't tell the press that you're bombing Daquiri in the morning, coming from the north under their radar, but there's no reason you shouldn't be able to talk about it the day after the bombing.
Sheesh, one of their top generals got fired just for expressing opinions! That's a fucking oppressive atmosphere.
Be quiet and get back to work, citizen. The government knows what's best for you.
Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
Well said indeed.
How is he a criminal if Wikileaks released this information outside of US jurisdiction? Also, both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the needless deaths of thousands of Americans, hundreds of American allies, and hundreds of thousands of civilians. People I care about have been maimed and killed 'over there.' Isn't that blood upon the hands of the US government and the American people who put them in power? Lastly, this undermines your assertions: "An ongoing Pentagon review of the massive flood of secret documents made public by the WikiLeaks website has so far found no evidence that the disclosure harmed U.S. national security or endangered American troops in the field." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38417666/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
"Truth is that his past, which is hardly whiter than white given all the suspected hacking he has done, makes him out to be much less of a virtuous crusader and more an occasionally maverick human being like quite a few people who once embarked on black hat attempts are. I agree with Wikileaks and enjoy the prospect that authority will be questioned a lot more as a result...but Assange isn't angel or particularly 'moral' ."
So... if I get this straight... his past is definitevely not whiter than white because he's suspected of maybe possibly ocasionally being like others who once did some hacking which makes him definitely not particularly moral?
To cut it down, suspicion of what he once did means he's definitely not moral?
And then, top it off, you started with "Truth is" to make sure that your running stream of condemnation and conjecture is not to be questioned.
That's some quality nonsense right there. Well done.
Came to point this out. It wasn't a detail in wholesale leak, it was a targeted leak about this one person's secret identity. And it probably done out of revenge like the coward mentions.
" Where are his efforts to find the Taliban documents showing their human rights violations?"
Where are his efforts to find proof that water is wet?
"And where are the documents showing the amount of effort the US soldiers put in distributing contributions from US citizens, including medical, school, and sport supplies? Putting themselves in harms way to protect civilians during firefights? Or the extrodinary efforts they take to try to limit civilian casualties."
Front and centre at every press conference and event where the military want to make themselves look good.
They're already making every effort to get that information front and centre.
Wikileaks job is to show the other half of the story.
"And where are the documents showing the Taliban's indiscriminate placing of IEDs and the number innocent lives they have taken?? Hmmm??? "
Actually the recent leak had quite a lot of info about the civilian deaths caused by IED's.
Nice to know you've been too lazy to actually read anything before posting.
A journalist uncovers information which needs to be heard.
if a journalist discovers a company selling hotdogs made of rat meat they shouldn't have to spend an equal portion of their time talking about how really the companies products are quite good and affordable in some parody of being "unbiased".
"it's a data dump that any 12 year old with access to the Internet could do if they got the data."
get back to me when you find some 12 year olds who regularly get their hands on data which makes front pages worldwide.
What nonsense, what is the UNHRC except exactly "the monolith" you claim doesn't exist ?
And most of the UNHRC rights are "you must" rights, often with the "you" part ill-defined, mostly understood to be states, or, you know, whoever is convenient.
This, of course, stops neither claims that something is a human right when it's not (such as "the right" of human shileds to not get shot when providing cover for attacking soldiers*) and denying human rights (such as, oh, free speech in Turkey, or religious freedom anywhere in the muslim world).
* the Geneva convention is quite clear : if a terrorist is firing from within a crowd, anyone who declared war on the terrorists (ie. notified them) is perfectly within his/her rights to blast the entire crowd to hell
is an item relating SPECIFICALLY to the U.S. quagmire, not one vehicular incident.
Therefore, you submission does not qualify.
As always,
K.T.
Your tattle tail analogy is just flat out wrong. Here's a better one: imagine that a teacher is secretly giving undeserved bad grades and detentions to kids she doesn't like. Now imagine one kid finds out, exposes it, and gets the teacher fired. That kid would be a fucking hero to all the other kids, and rightly so.
Summary: giving THE MAN dirt on your comrades makes you a rat; giving your comrades dirt on THE MAN makes you robin hood.
I believe you are mistaken. Journalists have agendas just like all other people on the planet; Assange is at least not pretending to be uninterested.
This whole "journalists should be unbiased" bullshit is something the mainstream media came up with in order to not have to do anything but report soundbites from both sides of the story, as if they were somehow equal.
Further, it's not Assange's duty to provide positive PR for the US Government. They should really be doing that job themselves, and honestly it seems like that's just one more thing they're failing to do.
If he wants to set up an organization whose goal is to smear the USG, then that's his choice. It's not his fault that doing so is incredibly easy.
If you visit the site, within half a second you'll find this link:
http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary.html.7z
I think Wikileaks is a great idea in theory, but just like the USA, EU, and everyone else... Wikileaks also has a political agenda.
Lets says Pres Obama said, "I'm going to release 70,000 war documents about Afghanistan." And such documents detailed mostly happy things about the war in Afghanistan. We'd have CNN, Foxnews etc saying how the documents were released strategically to paint a light picture of a grim war.
Yet somehow, when a third party receives documents and ADMITTEDLY filters through them, absolutely no one is questioning the political motivation of such third party.
I'd like to believe in Wikileaks, but I don't trust the man's agenda, and neither should you. It's merely business as usual, and should be taken as 'another piece of the whole truth'.
So rather than post a few snarky sentences of hyperbole verbiage would you like to actually question my 'running stream of condemnation' and say why it's incorrect?
Factually it isn't; Assange was a black hat hacker who has admitted an illegal act and was fined for that accordingly. He admitted to it. He was also suspected in several other incidents (including one suspicion of inserting the letters 'WANK' onto NASA computers) but due to insufficient evidence he was never charged. That's ambiguous; but his undertaking of hacking in the past is certainly not.
So go on, why aren't the events I just mentioned that are recorded on a multitude of credible sources not 'truth'?
The notion of a democracy is that each person should have a chunk of freedom. Freedom and a government with secrets can not exist. Democracy is ruined by secrets. How should I pick a candidate to vote for? Candidate A declares that the military needs a larger budget. Candidate B declares that the military has too much power and their budget must be reduced. Since I can not know what the military is up to or how much research is being funded by the military compared with installing conventional weapons etc.. just how do I vote? In essence I have no reason to vote when I can not know what is going on.
I salute the brave folks at WikiLeaks and hope that they prosper and expand their efforts to stop this curtain of blindness that governments are addicted to putting in the publics eye.
Where are his efforts to find the Taliban documents showing their human rights violations? Or clear violations of the Geneva Convention? And how they are the ones putting civilians in danger by not following the Geneva Convention
Seriously, are you suggesting that terrorist organisations commit mass murder keeping in mind the statutes of the GC? The Taliban do not pretend like some governments do -- they openly state their threats, and are pretty successful at bringing many of them to fruition -- and violate many a convention in full public view and do not regret a bit in doing so.
And where are the documents showing the amount of effort the US soldiers put in distributing contributions from US citizens, including medical, school, and sport supplies? Putting themselves in harms way to protect civilians during firefights? Or the extrodinary efforts they take to try to limit civilian casualties.
You can watch heart-warming/heart-wrenching documentaries on CNN for that.
I can't believe I'm having to explain this, but the UNHRC is not 'human rights'. I said human rights are not a monolith, which refers to human rights as an abstraction. The UNHRC is not an abstraction, it is a concrete organization established to serve a purpose based on the perspectives of its operators. Just because this organization has opinions on human rights, and a measure of authority (where it is given latitude by governments who are hopefully extensions of the general will of their constituents) to act on these opinions, by no stretch of the imagination does this make the organization equivalent to the concept of human rights itself. You, sir, are a moron.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
>>>Putting themselves in harms way to protect civilians during firefights?
The soldiers would not need to do that if George Duh Bush had not sent them to Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place. The soldiers would not be in harms way, if Barak Hussein Obama had kept his campaign promise and brought the soldiers home. I'm glad the soldiers are brave, but I'd be even happier if the soldiers were at home & enjoying life.
.
>>>he is an activist with an agenda to demonize the US
Me too. But not the whole US - just the idiots inside the US government that act as if they were a modern form of the old Roman Empire. And not just the US government, but ALL governments. Not one of them can be trusted. The leaders are as honest as other men, and not more so.
.
>>>A journalist is unbiased
Just like unicorns, no such creature has ever existed. I think your definition of journalist is in error. A free press, just like free speech, is a reflection of the creator's biases. Anyone who claims to be unbiased is a liar. Or worse.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
dude, I hear ya!
If that traitorous bitch hadn't pointed out that we shouldn't be going to their country and bombing the brown peeples, we'd have slogged on to victory, and there'd be a McDonald's in Ho Chi Min city today!
err, what?
>>>As a society mandates that more productive people be slaves (that's what involuntary labor for others is) to the less productive
And therefore you violate the negative right to not be someone else's slave. That's the main flaw with positive "must have" rights - they violate your negative right to be free. Hypothetical example: My neighbor spends most of his life smoking and then develops lung cancer. The doctor determines he can cure the problem by giving the man a lung transplant with clean lungs.
Am I (and other neighbors) under obligation to pay for this man's lung operation? Positive rights say I must, but that would make us partial slaves to that one man, so negative rights says that is not allowed.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Slashdot is here to serve advertisers, not its readers... That's why most of the articles are little more than binspam for Apple, Google, MS, etc.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Investigations can turn into witch hunts. Remember Ken Starr? He couldn't find anything in Whitewater to pin down the Clintons, so he made a brouhaha out of the Lewinsky story.
Where are his efforts to find the Taliban documents showing their human rights violations?
His efforts aren't needed. Those documents aren't secret.
Or clear violations of the Geneva Convention?
His efforts aren't needed. Those documents aren't secret.
And how they are the ones putting civilians in danger by not following the Geneva Convention .. they don't wearing uniforms and they quarter with civilian! Hmmm???
His efforts aren't needed. Those documents aren't secret.
And where are the documents showing the amount of effort the US soldiers put in distributing contributions from US citizens, including medical, school, and sport supplies?
His efforts aren't needed. Those documents aren't secret.
Putting themselves in harms way to protect civilians during firefights?
His efforts aren't needed. Those documents aren't secret.
Or the extrodinary efforts they take to try to limit civilian casualties. And where are the documents showing the Taliban's indiscriminate placing of IEDs and the number innocent lives they have taken?? Hmmm??? Where are those docuements Assange?? Or do they not have the impact you are looking for when advancing your agenda??
His efforts aren't needed. Those documents aren't secret.
He is nothing more than a hack with an agenda and deserves zero media attention.
His agenda is to reveal secrets. That's an inherent agenda against secretive organizations. I don't think he's ever claimed to be unbiased, and he's always claimed to favor openness over secrecy.
Yeah he really gets off on drawing attention to militaries killing innocent civilians. What a self-centered jerk.
(Score:5, Insightful) Mod parent UP! Where the hell are the Mod points when ya need 'em?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Uh, yes? Like I said, "'you cannot' [...] is superior to [...] 'you must'"
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
He deserves our thanks for what he and other at Wikileaks are doing.
'Because its embarrassing' should never be justification to hide atrocities
behind 'National Security'.
Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job
More and more of the world's media is owned by an increasingly small group of people.
They bury this information to help their current political ally and the politicians
allow them to do whatever they want.
Umm, tax collectors THEORETICALLY collect taxes for the common good. (Yes, that's not all they do, but that's why I'm against other taxes.)
Robin Hood is just a thief. And yes, I still see/enjoy various movie depictions of Robin Hood.
I do not understand how people can consider him a journalist. A journalist is (mostly) unbiased. I do not see him releasing any leaked Russian documents. Or Cuban. Or Venezuelan. Or... Or...
He's obviously locked in on the US. How is that journalism? The guy has an axe to grind. Or are we saying the Russians have no secrets?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The difference between the countries you name and the US, as human rights violators, is that the US is clearly the biggest violator of human rights all the while claiming to be the enforcer of human rights laws globally.
We covertly support war criminals and dictators when politically advantageous, Saddam was one such person that comes to mind. We've also supported and sold weapons to the islamic leadership of Iran even though publicly we recognize them as adversaries.
We've started wars and invaded countries promoting ourselves as heroes and saviors and then kill civilians using depleted uranium weapons before pillaging all wealth from those countries.
The headlines today state that our pentagon has misplaced and cannot account for $8.7B of Iraq's reconstruction money. I wonder who's pockets were lined with that.
It's good there is something like WikiLeaks out there that is willing to risk themselves and their lives to expose just what hypocrites, liars and assholes the American leadership really is. Every American should hang their heads in shame over what we've allowed ourselves to become. Global assholes!
Here at home, we've had political leadership for at least 30 years now, that no longer fear the people. We are being ass-raped by our government and are unwilling to do anything about it, like go to DC and kill everyone there.
We now have the government we deserve
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Do you think the Norwegians will have the guts to award him the Nobel Peace Price?
Yes I was agreeing with you.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
After his bad reception in Washington, where a number of US politicians tried to cover the British (and Scots) Governments in drilling mud, Cameron is this week in Turkey assuring them of our support for their EU membership bid (and describing Gaza as a prison camp), before the Indians get told that our real Special Relationship is with them. Our new Government is already into Plan B after only a few weeks. The US Administration may have won its war with BP, but it risks being out-manoeuvered in the East,
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I agree that in many of the countries you mentioned peoples rights are safe guarded better here. However there are examples were interference from us leads to much greater harm in a country than would normally be the case. Our polity views conflict as an opportunity to be exploited. An example would be in one of the countries mentioned ,Turkey, in 1996 there was an assault on Kurdish communities in the south. 30000 villages were bombed and the were 1 million refugees. The American government responded by making Turkey the number one country to receive US aid.
In Europe there were certain changes within the thinking of the polity. Some of these include splitting church and state and others involved liberalism. We were allowed to do this at our own pace. This is not going to happen in Arab countries firstly because the leadership is so weak and cruel that any speech critical of them is a threat that needs to be dealt with. Even if there are people who are not political (but have a large following from masses of people) they are a threat purely because of the ability to influence the masses. This has happened to popular spiritual leaders who are not political. Secondly we are willing to support tin pot dictators. We like them, they're good for business, and with modern tech we can help the oppressors win their battle against peoples freedoms, in ways we never had to battle with in our history.
Documenting abuses means that what happened in Turkey (and many other countries) will be much harder to get away with, thus leading to fewer incidences.
One more point! you said many things about other cultures some of them quite insulting like these people had inherently weaker values because of there cultural or religious views. Some of this is wide of he mark, I don't know the details but a lot of what you said about Islam is false. Islam is a religion that does not like black and white distinctions in judging people. You're a Muslim a kaffir (unbeliever) or a munarfiq (hypocrite) in Islam. A kaffir is someone who understands Islam but rejects it. To qualify this, unless someone explained Islam to you, you're not an unbeliever. Hearing it on TV is not an invitation to Islam. Most of the people reading this can not be a kaffir. The munarfiq (hypocrite) is the worst person, and Islam has real problems with these, the lowest part of hell being reserved for them. How do we judge them. In the words of the Prophet "The characteristics of the hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he gives his word, he breaks it; and when he is given a trust, he is unfaithful." Someone who was born a muslim can be a hypocrite, making him the worst person of all. Add to this that in Islamic theology your final assertive act will decide how your life will be judged. I don't know how my end will be (if I will even be a Muslim at the end of my life). I don't know how your end will be, so how can I judge you. It seems with these basics of Islam many of the things you have mentioned are false, they can not be true if we logically extend from the most basic principles. Some of the things you have mentioned are merely corrupt cultural practices, not Islam.
One other note because of said corrupt (and rich) rulers state versions of Islam have spread as the one true Islam. Even many Muslims are confused about there religion. Good authorities on Islam can be found in California and Chicago
I'm so used to people disagreeing with me I was confused and disoriented. I wondered if I had shifted to an alternate universe where Slashdot norms were all reversed.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Home(*) from Iraq, not from Afghanistan.
(*) Actually, I'd take them out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and wherever else Al-Quaeda and bin Laden are. We were attacked, and we have every right/necessity to find the people behind it.
If you'll recall, it was Cheney's office (or Rove's, I forget which if there's even a difference) who gave Plame's name to the press. Though there was little investigation by the government as to the source in that case. Double standards do not sit well with the public. And this is a single data point, but the US governments own inaction in prosecuting Plame's divulger demonstrates that "sensitive" info and names can be released without damaging "national security." It does add another data point to the theory that "national security" is whatever benefits those in power.
Indeed! Quick, get a rope, we need to string up that traitor George Washington!
Funny how perspective changes things.
The military always justifies civilian casualties as necessary collateral damage, often as the fault of the opposing force hiding behind them, especially in wars such as Afghanistan. Well the military is hiding information needlessly behind "national security" and now crying foul over declassification because it puts troops at risk. Well, the public deserves to know the things that aren't directly critical to national security, and by their own logic the military is at fault for any troops or civilians put at risk by this information being leaked. If they hadn't been blatantly lying to us since 2001 about so many things, this sort of information wouldn't be so desirable to organizations like wikileaks. Where would their drama and story be if the military was already telling us things aren't going well? This all may sound cold and heartless, but it's a taste of their own damn medicine. Honestly I would happily die in another terrorist attack knowing I lived freely, and I would be awful mad dying for a country out of 1984 -- no one has asked me the whether the atrocities that have been committed to foreigners, and to our own citizens and our freedoms, are worth it to me. No one has asked me whether "any means necessary" to protect our homeland and population is valid. It's all assumed that we as American people are willing sacrifice anything and everything, including the lives of foreigners, for our security. I'm sorry but 40000 people a year die in car accidents in the US. How much more must we and the rest of the world pay for the 3000 that died in 9/11?
considering they tried to kill him...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
**Assange isn't a journalist, he is an activist with an agenda to demonize the US.***
Let me see if I have this straight. Journalism consists of telling the story you want people to hear and no more. It's a point of view, but a pretty sorry one if you ask me.
May I suggest that it is long past time to take your value system in for an overhaul?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Well, most likely it's all negative. It's all about spin - you publish your successes, you bury your failures. Oh, we killed 100 insurgents today and only lost one? Publish that! Hide the fact we accidentally killed 5 children - One heroic death while killing 100 evil nasty enemies.
Positive news gets redacted of sensitive information and published. Negative news, even the downsides to the positive news, gets buried. Of course, some easily controlled negative news gets out since no one believes anyone can be 100% successful.
Here's a better analogy than yours.
corporation is making a product.
By employing people in the local community they are creating jobs and allowing people to live off of the wages they make.
The corporation also gives away money every day to help less fortunate people in the community. This is "known" in the community but no specific examples are released.
However, the corporation also occasionally makes a mistake. during some of these mistakes, bad things happen alongside the good (as an example they give money to a homeless man who ends up buying a gun and killing someone with it).
Nothing ever gets "reported" except the mistakes the corporation made (they gave money to a man to buy a gun!), and those are only reported by an "inside the corporation" informant who secretly gives only those negative documents to the leaking "journalist".
the leaking "journalist" makes no attempt to see if the documents are true (no mention that the money given was part of a help the community initiative and this person was one of many to receive money and the only one to use it to kill someone), fake or even partially accurate, and makes no attempt to discover anything else the corporation does.
yeap
that's a good source for anything all right.
no, he gets off on finding any POSSIBLE thing that is anti-american.
don't see him releasing a lot of confidential information from the chinese government, or the Saudi's, or most of the rest of the world that routinely kills civilians using both military and paramilitary forces.
I can't believe that all these raging rednecks are so blinded with rage, that they still can't understand that WikiLeaks was probably played (quite well) by yanks. I wouldn't be surprised if WikiLeaks was actually a CIA operation. It would be beautiful if it was.
Think about it - what, exactly, has Wikileaks ever released, that has ANY value to anyone, except as entertainment for the sheep^H^H^H^H^masses?
The biggest WikiLeaks achievement, so far, is to 'reveal' how Pakistan is not really a friend of US. Who benefits from this the most? Certainly not the sheep. Or Pakistan. But US govt, since they'll now have instant 'popular support' in any action (non-military, of course) against Pakistan. They could have not done this with normal media manipulation, in such a short time, even if they were fully dedicated to it.
Everyone talks about WikiLeaks, but noone ever mentions Cryptome. Cryptome is the place where real information is released, where real sensitive data can be found, and Cryptome owner is a real living legend, considering how much effort and work he has put in it.
So, why are all these rednecks not making empty threats against John Young?
Oh, it's because you wouldn't know what good information (or logic, for that matter) is, even if it hit you in the head.
We did find WMD, we found small cache's
how is a small cache a weapon of MASS destruction?
troops hit by a few IED's made with Chem shells
not MASS destruction.
small cache's were combined we found quite a bit
but that still does not meet the definition of a weapon of MASS destruction. Not all chem weapons automatically qualify as WMDs.
Posting anonymously because I've also moderated.
--
.nosig
Actually, I would like to know if Wikileaks will ever publish any inside information about the Taliban or Al-Quaida.
Y'know, to prove he is being a journalist or a media whore.
I pick the latter. You obviously picked the former.
We already *know* that the Chinese government abuses human rights. China abuses human rights. Teenage boys wear hoods. Bears shit in the woods.
On the other hand, the United States claims to be whiter than white, and claims to value freedom and all the rest. Therefore, it is much more significant when you can prove the US government is saying one thing, but in reality is sending people for torture, lying to the electorate, doing things at the behest of energy company executives etcetera.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Effectively wrong on many levels -- for starters, the ones "electing" weren't local Hawaiians, but rather the rich oligarchs from the mainland US and Europe.
Oh, dear. Have you ever heard the term banana republic? That mostly applied to Central America and the tactics of fruit companies there, but the basic mechanics were very much at work in Hawaii as well, only for pineapples instead of bananas. (Hint -- Dole Fruit started in Hawaii, and the founder's cousin appointed himself head of the forcibly instated "Republic of Hawaii".) Rich white businessmen forcibly stripped the Hawaiian monarchy of power and relegated locals to an undercaste position.
Read up on Hawaiian history next time before posting stuff like this. Hawaii was very much overrun by capitalist white folks bent on enforcing their will, locals be damned -- or better yet, de facto enslaved to work the fruit plantations.
Try this and this for starters.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If someone were to upload some Taliban documents, and he could read them, maybe he would post them. My question, is, if your sources are anonymous, would it be easy for someone to use you as a propaganda conduit? Probably covered in some of the 300+ posts, but I still had to ask.
Their they're doing there hair.
wow unfairly modded flamebait.
Jonathanjk.com
Robin Hood is just a thief.
No, Robin Hood takes your money to wage a war on your behalf. He's a government.
Sentences. Use them properly.
Also, quit being an imbecile. Your stupid scare-mongering analogy has so many holes in it you could use it as a novelty door for a submarine.
Did you just... Did you just compare waging wars to charity?
You pulled a whole lot more out of that sentence than anybody else could have.
I'm just saying.
Leavenworth for Life + 50 sounds about right.
"America, the most trusted names in news in our country are a couple of comedians. This is scary."
If being funny is necessary to help get people interested in good news, the pragmatist in me approves. I mean, entertainment value is often used to help get people interested in bad news (fight fire with fire?)
BTW, the British seem to have legendarily crappy news sources (such as the Daily Mail), but also some good ones [The Guardian reporting on this WikiLeaks disclosure comes to mind as a particularly salient example]
Different perspective may be the key in addition to general quality.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
'A media whore with shady beginnings' ? Hardly..
He's got open-source projects under his belt with rubberhose (which, at the time was pretty cool), and boring stuff like NNTP caching. He's did a fair amount of work in the security / privacy computer sciences.
And if you think about it, his impact on the world with wikileaks has been greater than essentially everything he did before it. And he's remained true to his ideals consistently, he didn't just hop on the web2.0 'lets start a wiki' thing out of no-where. It's an extension of his political and ethical belief system.
Haters gonna hate..
heya,
Your point is a little bit naive, I think you'll find.
Assange doesn't favour openness over secrecy, lol, he actually has an agenda to, as others have noted, "demonise" the US. Now, you may or may not agree with his bias/conclusion *shrugs*, and I'm sure a lot of people have an axe to grind with the US. But at the end of the day, to claim he's somehow a champion fighting for "openness" is just trying to fool yourself.
He's not objective, not by a long shot, and I don't think he's really fooled anybody (if he even tried), except for the very stupid, that he is objective.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Have you actually been to Vietnam lately? Lol.
I went back at the beginning of this year. In terms of actual development as a modern country, sorry to break it to you, but the place is a dump. It's one of the poorest nations in SE Asia, and believe me, there are many, many poor nations in that area.
The people are awesome, if a little...abrupt/rude at times, but the infrastructure is a joke. They don't have a functioning railnetwork even in the capital city, their idea of powerlines - it's basically just a tangle mess everywhere.
This is a *neat* set of powerlines in Vietnam:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twenty_questions/3200848817/
Many of the ones I saw were just a tangle mess. They have open sewerage systems in many places - this is in the capital city. Phone lines, internet access, other utilities all of that is I suspect far worse than what you'd get in even say, India (I'm talking cities to cities here, please don't drag in rural areas).
Ironically, parts of the South are still more advanced, probably due to the French/American influence, prior to the war.
So let's see...the US let the Communists win, and the country basically stagnated, and went down the gurgler. Gee, great job now. And the government is still repressive, censors the internet a la China, and crushes any political opposition.
Oh, and yes, you can get a McDonals in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon...lol. Western businesses are everywhere - ironically, what do you think is driving the recent economic growth in the country. Yeah, that's right, the West.
Cheers,
Victor
Every American should hang their heads in shame over what we've allowed ourselves to become. Global assholes!
I thought Americans were dicks? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-owXgAvb6qM
Well man up then douchebag. GET YOUR ASS TO MARS!
No? Afraid of flying lead and IEDs? then STFU.
(patiently awaits the " I've bad eyesight" ,or whatever med condition precludes that, that you assholes spew.
Since he's not a U.S. citizen and is not on U.S. soil, he is outside of the relevant jurisdiction. He could however find himself classified as an enemy agent, and at that point he's going to have to be reallllly careful about keeping track of extradition treaties.
The soldier who provided the leaked information, on the other hand, could very well face charges of treason and consequently a firing squad. I hope his 15 minutes of fame were worth it.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
I guess some people harbour angry feelings towards him for releasing that military video - something along the lines of loose lips might sink ships.
I don't get this. Why does anyone in the USA feel that these wars are in their interest at all?
I'm not American, but before Iraq I used to feel like the USA was if not a complete white knight, at least the least-worst big power in the world. But when GWB did his 'yeah, I'm proactively invading, and I like torture, who's gonna stop me?' circus show, suddenly something flipped inside me, and I realised that militaries are not fundamentally on anyone's side who is not in their immediate chain of command.
And the American people haven't been directly in the chain of command of the US military since Hiroshima. Not really even during WW2 - William Stephenson's British Security Coordination saw to a lot of secret propaganda to swing things so that war became cool. Ever read the very first issue of Superman in 1939? The villains were arms dealers trying to drag the USA into a European war. That attitude sure changed quickly, and it wasn't all due to a spontaneous change of heart in the voting public.
So: why this feeling in Main Street USA that anyone revealing war secrets is worse than prosecuting a bad war in the first place? Especially from people who often lean right and are fearfully distrustful of a Government they see as "men with guns" telling them how to live - yet when it comes to literalmen with guns, they're all for knuckling down and taking orders from the Commander In Chief right away! I can't get my head around that contradiction.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Sheesh, one of their top generals got fired just for expressing opinions! That's a fucking oppressive atmosphere.
A military is an organisation where people can legally get executed by their superiors for disobeying an order.
How can such an organisation be anything but oppressive, by definition?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
As a US taxpayer, I have the blood of the Taliban on my hands, and I am proud of it. My only regret is that I'm medically ineligible to go over there and knock off a few personally.
Were is the evidence for this? I've seen people make this claim but I cannot find much about him that would suggest this.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Most likely it's negative. The military would publish and shout from every hilltop all the positive stuff.
Because "we killed 3 Taliban leaders using a missile from a drone" is good,
but include "and 240 of their relatives, who also happened to be attending the wedding" would put the USA's national security at risk.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The evidence comes from introspective ignorance. If you simply ignore all the other info leaked all around the world then yes, he is out to get the USA!
No, he takes people's money to wage war on other people's behalf. He's a politician.
You know you can twist your ass around all you want but the end result is simple :
US (and any government that tries) : 99% compliant with human rights (and trying, but failing to make that 100%)
Enemies of the US : 10% (at best) compliant with human rights (and trying to make that less). Taliban : 0%
Complaints about the behavior of the US : this thread is full of them
Complaints about the taliban's behavior : "not needed"
So the EFFECT of what you're doing is simply advancing the cause of the taliban, destroying human rights.
Somehow we're to believe you are not aware of this. That your "good intentions" (who incidentally make you feel better about yourself at zero cost, and zero risk*) make up for any ill effects.
So all your feel-good complaining :
1) make the situation worse for everyone, and parrots what everyone says
2) makes you feel better about yourself
Are we to think this is a mere coincidence ?
* while obviously complaining about the taliban, or "muslim students" in English, will quickly evolve into a question about "that" religion, and that's not without risk, or at least not without consequences (you know the "RACIST !" says the 3 year-old who can't win the argument).
So you're talking about "human rights" as a fairy-tale concept, meaning exactly (and only) what you want it to mean, and nothing else.
Why are you denying my human right to your car ? You're a war criminal !
(this in hopes of showing you how idiotic your point is)
Slashdot "norms" are mostly about what gives "me" the most free stuff.
So negative rights (your "right" not to give me free stuff) are not all that popular at all.
It's sad, but it's how it is.
"Every American should hang their heads in shame over what we've allowed ourselves to become. Global assholes!"
America hasn't turned into global assholes, we started out that way. The country was founded on chattle slavery and continued as genocidal land grabbers. This was all done in the name of capitalism to benefit the wealthy same as it is now.
I think what you say is true, even though you said it facetiously. He is a self-centred jerk. I wouldn't trust him as a friend, but he got things done. Life is full of such people - Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are prominent examples. However you just took a quote out of context and used it to get mod points, so fuck you.
So you're saying muslims are only obliged to kill people who :
Most of the people reading this can not be a kaffir. The munarfiq (hypocrite) is the worst person, and Islam has real problems with these, the lowest part of hell being reserved for them. How do we judge them. In the words of the Prophet "The characteristics of the hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he gives his word, he breaks it; and when he is given a trust, he is unfaithful." Someone who was born a muslim can be a hypocrite, making him the worst person of all. Add to this that in Islamic theology your final assertive act will decide how your life will be judged. I don't know how my end will be (if I will even be a Muslim at the end of my life). I don't know how your end will be, so how can I judge you.
Can you say "making excuses" ? And quite pathetic ones at that, don't you think ?
How do you square yourself with this "literal order from allah" ? (if you don't believe the quran is the literal orders from allah, please don't claim you're a muslim)
When the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then ...
Regardless, even, of whom exactly you should kill and ambush and generally attack in every dishonorable way imaginable, it's an order to kill.
So, to put it extremely frankly : choose. Do you (a) refuse allah's orders, and are therefore not a muslim (b) you're a murderer.
Which is it ?
I don't think you have any idea what my point was, nor do I think you know what your own point is (you start by attacking a concrete organization you style as the physical manifestation of human rights, and now you attack the abstraction of human rights, essentially decrying human rights categorically). What have I said human rights mean? How have I been exclusive in my definition? (I've been comparative but not exclusive.)
Once you go back and answer these questions, I think it will be quite clear who the idiot is. (Hint: It's you.)
I have the feeling that you read only the first paragraph of my first response, and you didn't even bother to look at the Wikipedia article, preferring instead to approach the matter like some illiterate caveman thinking 'negative bad, positive good!' Regardless of the fact that in speaking of the technical terms negative rights and positive rights, that's not what those words mean at all.
From your various posts it seems likely to me that you support negative rights more than positive rights, just as I do , but you're so stupid you can't even tell that you agree with me. In fact, the association embarrasses me. You need a lot more knowledge and a better attitude before you're qualified to discuss these matters in a way that ultimate does not embarrass the very things you advocate.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
wikileaks waited on release of the information so it could redact all personally identifying information of military personnel
i guess you need to get your news about wikileaks form somewhere other than breitbart
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
On the other hand, the United States claims to be whiter than white, and claims to value freedom and all the rest. Therefore, it is much more significant when you can prove the US government is saying one thing, but in reality is sending people for torture, lying to the electorate, doing things at the behest of energy company executives etcetera.
:)
As opposed to the behests of sugar and fruit companies. This isn't actually anything new historical examples going back at least as far as the mid 19th century.
Yet there are still people who believe things along the lines of "Even if this happened 20/30 years ago, the current people in charge are better". Many of them will still believe this even if it can be shown that the current people are associated with, the offspring of, even the exact same people who were in charge a few decades ago. No doubt their opposite numbers in China think the Chinese government is perfect
Personally I'm not convinced that politicians have improved since Roman times. It's a combination of power corrupting and power tending to attract the corrupt/corruptable.
If you volunteer for the military then you are not being oppressed because you chose to enter into a contract wherein superiors tell you what to do and you are punished if you don't. You might say young men were oppressed during the Vietnam War because there was a draft and they were forced to join, and I would have to agree with you, but as it stands I hardly think it qualifies as oppression.
Well, we can disagree, but I think that the people who should decide the fate of a land are its inhabitants, as individuals, without regard to where their ancestors lived. When I move to a place, I think that it is reasonable for me to participate in the democracy there.
Obviously, it's not always so simple, but I am unsympathetic to people who think that citizenship and voting rights should apply only to those whose great-grandfathers lived in the same district. To me, that is a violation of individual liberty. I developed this feeling as a white man born and raised in Alaska, where some natives think that my vote shouldn't matter because my ancestors came from, uh, well I don't even know where they came from. All I know is I lived in Alaska, that's where I was born, that's my home, and attempts to disenfranchise me felt deeply racist. Happily, Alaska is a part of the United States, which protects my rights to participate in democracy there.
Again, obviously it's not always simple to make demarcations, but I start from the position that humans living in a place share the right to govern that place.
"God bless America"
I'm not American, but before Iraq I used to feel like the USA was if not a complete white knight, at least the least-worst big power in the world.
Even in the time of the "Cold War" it's unclear if the USA qualifies at "least worst" in comparison with the USSR. Even discounting the toppling of democratic governments there are issues such as apartheid and McCarthyism.
What!
I'm a Muslim, and believe everything that entails. Islam does not condone wanton killing you're taking that verse out of context. I'm no Scholar of Islam but that verse sounds like a time when the prophet was at war with the Qurash clan (leaders in Mecca). A war he did not start and did not want. Even the most negative voices don't fault him in his time at Mecca. What did he get for his efforts, his weaker followers were tortured. That's why (once the Muslim community emigrated to Medina) they fort. There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, 1/5 of the world is Muslim, do you mean to tell me that every one (including me as I'm a follower in Islam) of them is out to get none Muslims. I'll agree there are a lot of jerks who want to kill. But the can not effect what Islam really is. There is the Qur'an and what is commonly interpreted by the most qualified scholars and what their consensus therein is, this is a normative understanding of Islam. There are several works dating from over a thousand years ago that are viewed as authoritative.
So to answer you're question frankly: I accept all of Allah's commands. Does that make me a (a) A killer, along with one 1/5 of the planet or (b) You are narrow minded bigot filled with hatred. Please do not reply if it is (b) I don't want to talk to some like that.
To me, this highlights the crux of the problem with Slashdot - moderators with a political agenda. Just because some Slashdot readers might have a negative opinion of his previous work releasing the helicopter videos because their politics don't agree with him, they downvote a potentially interesting story. Whether you agree with his agenda or not, you have to admit it would be an interesting interview.
Now I fully expect this comment to get down-modded by the exact same people that down-modded the interview in the first place.
Slashdot over the years has turned from a forum that used to house excellent discussions to a tyranny of the majority - democracy at it's worst where any few idiocracy wannabes with mod points can make sure your post never gets read, not because it is an unworthy post, but because they don't personally agree with it.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
So you agree your religion commands you to kill. You're just nitpicking about who exactly it orders you to kill. And if I protest this it's because I'm racist ? Oh, please.
Would you object to other religions killing ? Heh. Would you protest Jews comitting genocide on palestinians ? Why ? You're no better, you're just an incapable lazy buffoon.
As long as you refuse to even define what we're talking about, how could you possibly be right ? At best you're stating nonsense. Literally non-sense. You're not even wrong, in fact you talk such non-sense that it isn't even possible to evaluate whether it's true. It's non-sense in the most literal definition of the word : it means *nothing*. Zero. Zilch. Your argument is merely a sequence of letters, no more meaningful than a totally random one.
So let's first define what we're actually talking about. Clearly.
And stop hogging my human rights ! (ie. your car). After all, don't we both agree that human rights must not be violated ?
When is Joe Sixpack going to wake up and smell the coffee? Everything you said is absolute truth. The nexus of evil is the US Federal Government. The only answer that has a faint hope of reversing this would be for all the states to secede.
Social Credit would solve everything...
We were attacked but that doesn't mean the solution is more killing. If some guy blew away my wife, that doesn't give me the right to go Rambo and start busting down everyone's doors trying to find the murderer.
Plus the "attack" wasn't that serious. 3000 dead. Big deal. That's how many people die in cars. Every year. Almost 30,000 car deaths just since 9/11. Are we going to declare war on the CEOs of GM, Ford, Dodge, et cetera because of it? No. We'll mourn the loss, develop better safety/security standards, and move on.
Sometimes when a bully hits you on the nose, the best thing to do is just walk away.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And sometimes you need to punch them back, make them realize you will not allow yourself to be walked all over.
Please note that this comment has nothing to do with my opinion on post 9/11 actions, and is only meant to state that sometimes, violence is the answer.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
In self defence yes! If I may qualify self defence it is the use of minimum force necessary to defend one self. That means no killing if it can be avoided.
Under the above logic then yes, they can defend them self's, as can anyone, whither they have a religion or not. In fact the prophet said "You must always help your brother" meaning Muslim. When asked by a companion "What if your brother is the oppressor" then he said "Then you help him by stopping him". Islam does not accept any killing or injustice full stop. Please go and learn something about Islam.
You did't give me an answer. I am a Muslim does that make me a
The right to private property is a positive right: the right to use government force to remove someone from a piece of land when you have a government-issued piece of paper that says its yours. And as all material objects trace their origin to land, so any physical claim of property rests on such government action.
Slaves to non-productive investors and bankers, perhaps. But making people pay for services they use via taxes is not slavery; nor is making them pay their fair ante for playing the property game.
If you want to carve the planet's land and resources up into "private property", to draw imaginary lines on the planet and point government guns to enforce them, you owe it to the people who are no longer permitted to walk where they please, to gather and hunt where they please, to build a shelter where they please, to compensate them for the share of their common inheritance that you're fencing off. See Tom Paine's "Agraian Justice" for an early but sound and eloquent exploration of this principal.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Robin Hood THEORETICALLY (being a fictional character) returned wealth stolen and exploited from aristocrats and corrupt politicians. back to the people.
We could use a few hundred of him today -- send them to Wall Street and Washington.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Where do you get, in that verse (or at least that chapter), the self-defence part ? That just came out of nowhere, and curiously you didn't mention it earlier when talking about kafirs ... Could you be a little more consistent ? (or truthful ...)
Otherwise, you've answered your own question, along with a dozen excuses :
So you agree your religion commands you to kill.
*excuses* yes *excuses*
For comparison, the bible commands *NOT* to kill, not even defensively. It just states that there are situations where lives are lost no matter what you can do, and then (and only then), you are allowed to make the decision to end a life. But even in the situation where you attacked, to prevent a worse situation, killing is a sin, and must be atoned for. So for example, if you could travel back in time, as a good Christian, it would perhaps be "allowed" to kill Hitler (but it would certainly never be "good"), and you would still need forgiveness for this act. Killing to save your own life (ie. self-defense as you call it) is definitely a grave sin. Simply put, a good Christian will only ever take the decision to try to end a life in order to protect the lives of others, and will never end a life to protect his own.
Frankly, it's easy to see that your excuses are desperately grasping at straws indeed. Btw you forgot the excuses for the slavery, genocides, raping of slaves, racism (the part about the "function" of black people in the quran (ie. slaves), paedophilia (having sex with minor children without their permission is called paedophilia). You believe your prophet is a paedophile because allah ordered him to do it ... let's see some excuses for this too. And, of course, the fact that all these acts are not just theoretical in your little booklet, but have been consistent, including today, in muslim societies ("little booklet" : barely 60 pages, in large print (and even a lot less in kufic arameic, the original), compared to close to 500 for the torah, and close to 1500 for the bible, and that's not in large print. Most historians even believe that the quran is just 23 random mistranslated excerpts from the bible, and frankly, have you ever read the later chapters of the quran and compared with the new testament ? They're right)
But the main question is how exactly you twist these words to a defensive meaning ? Because that's some serious twisting indeed :
When the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then ...
All these verbs, slay, besiege, take, lie in ambush ... they're all active verbs (also in the original syrian, ok granted, I know maybe 50 words ancient syrian, but they have a rather extensive and meaningful grammar that's surprisingly clear), if they denoted a defensive act they would have used the passive form, for ... well that's simply how you say that, even in today's arabic. These are clear, short, direct sentences that mean to attack, independent of any action of the people you attack. In other words, the act they denote is halfway between military attack and terrorism.
Unless, of course, you claim allah cannot be comprehended. Of course, that would mean allah is not capable of clearly expressing his will, and is generally an idiot. That'd mean anyone attempting to be a muslim is just as much kuffar as any saudi street hooker.
Whisleblowing fallout - A response to 'why the world needs wikileaks' from Don't Panic magazine
http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/politics/whistleblowing-fallout