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Obama Wants Allies To Go After WikiLeaks
krou writes "Coming on the back of human rights groups criticizing WikiLeaks, American officials are saying that the Obama administration is pressuring allies such as Australia, Britain, and Germany to open criminal investigations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and to try limit his ability to travel. 'It's not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking. It's UK troops, it's German troops, it's Australian troops — all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,' said one American diplomatic official, who added that other governments should 'review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.'"
From TFA:
"The initial document dump by WikiLeaks last month is reported to have disclosed the names of hundreds of Afghan civilians who have cooperated with NATO forces; the Taliban has threatened to hunt down the civilians named in the documents, a threat that human-rights organizations say WikiLeaks should take seriously."
Maybe not troops, but civilians were apparently endangered.
Wow, who is being alienated?
There has been quite an outcry from various humanitarian organizations who think the documents were not redacted well enough to hide the identities of civilians who may now become targets of reprisals.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
While not necessarily directly harmful to the Allied forces, the leaks include the names of informants and those sympathetic to Allied forces.
Since the names started showing up on Wikileaks.
Don't forget Guantanamo Bay. Didn't he win the election in part thanks to those promises to shut that hellhole down?
cat:
and no NEW states secrets policy is more stringent than anything that came before
Uhm... reality check.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/congress-considers-rules-for-invoking-state-secrets.ars
- That new state secrets policy that is WAY more stringent than anything before.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090313/1456154113.shtml
- The Obama admin claiming that the details of a copyright treaty are "state secrets."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/02/10/obama
- Obama administration invoking "state secrets" FAR MORE OFTEN than the previous administration
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/foia-filtered
- Obama administration having political appointees vetting FOIA requests intended for the Dept of Homeland Security, and making decisions on what can be released on the basis of political expediency...
The question of no "new" Gitmos - Yes, but the one we have isn't anywhere close to shut down.
The question of "no new pointless, unwinnable wars have been started" - How many are we on the brink of still?
While not necessarily directly harmful to the Allied forces, the leaks include the names of informants and those sympathetic to Allied forces.
To Shillnonymous and friends. Reality: Out of the thousands of records only three records contain a name of an "informant". One of which died and another was a pro-Taliban double agent. Not to mention that the White House also had the opportunity to redact names via the New Your Times contact, but declined to do so - they could not have cared less
All those news channels (and there are many - mostly US based) all all standing on very shaky moral ground, considering the news channels and their parrots talking about "thousands of Informants exposed" just happen to NOT talk about the murdered 20K+ civilians. What is more important - actual deaths or your self delusion/lies over thousands of imaginary Informants "and their families" dying.
I think if you check you'll find that no-one in the previous Administration violated the Geneva Conventions.
Alas, while it's still inconvenient as hell, the only part of the Geneva Conventions binding on the USA are the parts we're actually signatory to.
Even more inconvenient, the parts we didn't sign onto include all those bits about treating guerrillas as the same as soldiers....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Geneva Convention doesn't apply to just any asshole with a gun (a pretty good description of both Taliban and Al-Qaeda), only to uniformed soldiers of an official army of an actual recognized country and to unarmed civilians. Armed people in civilian clothes using civilian facilities, unmarked vehicles and tactics like IEDs and suicide bombers are a fair game and have been routinely shot on the spot in every war without any legal repercussions.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I can answer this for you.
"NO."
Remember that study that was done a few years ago where highschool students across the country were asked questions like "do you think freedom of speech should be limited?" and "does the press have too much freedom of the press?". An overwhelming number of students (the future of the country, yadda yadda yadda) stated things siding with restricting freedom of the press and limiting free speech.
This country has no sense of the liberties they are supposed to value. It only knows platitudes and threats. That's why the market for yellow ribbon stickers on the back of SUVs is booming and criticizing anything that the government or military says or does is responded with some variation on "you want the terrorists to win?!" or "this is America! Love it or leave it!".
source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6888837/
source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-30-students-press_x.htm
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
This is not the same study, but has similarly sad results:
source: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19031
The First Amendment Center has conducted the annual survey since 1997. This year’s survey, being released to mark both annual Constitution Day (Sept. 17) activities and the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, also found:
* Just 56% believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme — down 16 points from 72% in 2000.
* 58% of Americans would prevent protests during a funeral procession, even on public streets and sidewalks; and 74% would prevent public school students from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that might offend others.
* 34% (lowest since the survey first was done in 1997) think the press “has too much freedom,” but 60% of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report the news without bias, and 62% believe the making up of stories is a widespread problem in the news media — down only slightly from 2006.
* 25% said “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” well below the 49% recorded in the 2002 survey that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, but up from 18% in 2006.
No, they cannot prove your wrong since it is damage control - the only shaky moral ground they can invent to stand on. Notice that these shills never talk about the 20K+ innocent Afghan civilians who are already murdered - not even an apology, or feign of concern - like they want you to think it never happened.
Wait, there's a list of hundreds of informants? Because Wikileaks took a hell of a lot of time trying to redact actually materially dangerous information (vs the politically dangerous info) for there to be hundreds of informants names available still... I haven't looked myself, but stating things as fact without evidence to back them up seems a hell of a lot like you're falling for the propaganda.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
However...
So, only "wrong on all counts" if you have a sufficiently-twisted world-view...
Reply if you must, but this is the last comment from me on the subject, as I said, it was only supposed to be humorous, with one serious thing thrown in for each of them.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
WRONG!
Absolutely no human organization made any statement about Wikileaks. "Amnesty International spokeswoman Susanna Flood confirms there was no authorized statement on WikiLeaks."
Just because some guy from an human-rights association said something about the matter, it's not the same as saying that a Human-Right organization said something about the matter. Because if you mix the two things, you would also say that the USA governments wants Wikileaks founder "Hunted Down And Grabbed And Put On Trial' " just because some idiot Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush Karl Rove said so on air in FoX News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp8a8EWiWls
If it weren't for these fools living in the Red States, war wouldn't be considered acceptable. Most people in the civilized Blue States would not stand for money being wasted like that.
You are an idiot. Off the top of my head:
Wilson - Democrat - WW1
FDR - Democrat - WW2 (FDR went even further than most, he had the US Navy attacking German warships months before war was declared by Germany or authorized by the Congress)
Truman - Democrat - Korea
JFK/LBJ - Democrats - Vietnam
And those are just the major wars. Democrats have engaged in their share of police actions too.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What do all of those countries have in common? No immigration whatsoever.
See, that's why we Europeans, call you Americans stupid. You are here, in the net, could easily check the fact before open your big mouth, but you choose to say just the shit you hear in Fox News. Some of these countries have in fact MORE immigration than the USA. 12% in Sweden against less than 10% of population in USA. So what about find another excuse?
"by redacting all of the names"
Which they actually did.
So it's really 9% cultural foreigners. Face it Scandinavians are much more similar then Americans regionally and don't hate each other nearly as much (damn Yankees).
Looking at your reference I note that at most half are not from other first world nations (taking wild ass guesses for 'Europe' and 'Americas' but assuming Asia and Africa are mostly third world immigrants).
Care to comment on how much of Sweden's social system is funded by rapidly depleting Oil reserves?
Further both Sweden and the United States of America are mixed economies (just mixed differently). Neither is pure capitalism or socialism. IMHO social-democracy has had so many definitions over the last 100 years a to lose all real meaning (like 'Liberal' in the USA).
I don't accept your premise that 'social-democracy works better then capitalism' (assuming you define capitalism as the USA's system).
People vote with their feet. Are there more Sweeds in America or Americans in Sweden?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Strange. I found a bunch on the first day I looked at them.
Look at the category: MEDCAP
Shouldn't take you very long to find quite a few documents with names in them. MEDCAP is the category where medical patrols goes from village to village to help people and also establish good ties with the locals. You'll quickly be able to see that a lot of the documents in that category includes both village names and names of locals that are friendly and cooperative.
Now, I personally think it was entirely appropriate of wikileaks to release the documents. However, there is no doubt that quite a few names are leaked in the documents.
Oil? In Sweden? You are thinking about Norway - Sweden doesn't have any oil and have never had any oil.