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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.'"
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
Many government agencies have inspectors general who are *supposed* to fill that very role. But the problem is that they're rarely independent in any meaningful way, making it highly unlikely that they'll perform any other role than making it *look like* someone is there to do fair investigations. Even at the executive level (in the U.S.) the Attorney General is theoretically supposed to handle such investigations. But who is going to conduct any investigation of the President or his party when he is the very man who appoints (and can fire) them?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
From The Fourth Estate:
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why do people constantly bring up nuclear launch codes in discussions about national security secrets? The system of nuclear launch codes was not designed to protect America from foreign threats; it was designed to protect foreign nations from rogue soldiers engaging in an authorized nuclear strike. The nuclear command and control system is mostly related to ensuring that our nuclear weapons can only be armed following an order from the President or a combination of cabinet members.
That being said, the entire nuclear command and control system was designed when concerns about soviet spies were rampant. It was, naturally, designed to withstand a certain level of information leakage without compromising security. The idea that a leak on the scale of what Wikileaks does would somehow compromise our nuclear weapons system is a bit far-fetched; by the time Wikileaks even got around to publishing launch codes and missile locations, the information would be completely out of date and worthless (launch codes are changed daily, and missiles are periodically shuffled between silos; also, we open a certain fraction of our silos, chosen by the Russians, for Russian airplanes to photograph, as part of an agreement of assurances that we are not exceeding a certain number of nuclear weapons).
Palm trees and 8
move the war into Pakistan directly
I agree we're not doing any good in Afghanistan, but Pakistan is a real mess; US influenced puppet government, strong anti-US sentiment from a lot of the population, 650,000 active troops, and they have nukes. Pakistan scares the shit out of me.
If you want to know why we invaded Iraq, all you need to do is dig around a little. Check out this letter from the PNAC to President Clinton, when Clinton was president. Look at who signed the letter, you have Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. Bush stacked his administration with members of the PNAC and they shaped his foreign policy. Go read what they wrote, what their ideology was before 9/11, and the way they acted after 9/11 will make sense. They wanted to attack Iraq, and after 9/11 they took advantage of the chance.
Basically it was to get rid of a bad guy, stabilize the region (which is a strategically important region), and intimidate other bad guys. To a degree these goals were effective, they got rid of the 'bad guy,' and they were able to intimidate Syria (another regional 'bad guy') to get out of Lebanon (for a while anyway). Whether it helps to stabilize the region remains to be seen. Iraq has democracy now, for better or for worse. Personally, while I think these are good goals, there were better ways to achieve them, and the end wasn't worth the cost. The administration led by the PNAC was an arrogant bunch.
They weren't hiding any of this if you were paying attention. The marketing speak became about terrorism when they tried to sell it to the American public, and it became about WMD when they tried to sell it to the United Nations. It is also worth remember that, while we didn't find any WMD, pretty near every country who investigated at the time, including US Democrats who voted to authorize the war, believed Saddam had WMD. It is also possible that Saddam himself thought he had WMD; at the time his administration was kind of falling apart and there was a lot of corruption, so people could have been telling him things that weren't true.
Qxe4
They really are - MSNBC reports "this dude said A". And that's it.
The Daily Show reports "this dude said A today, but last month he was saying not A! Further, his entire political position is premised on not A! So when he says A today, he's full of shit".
And that's the sort of analysis we want to hear. The fact that it's also hilarious is a bonus.
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."