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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.'"
How does a little egg on the Governments face = endangering troops? Seems to me sending them to Afghanistan and Iraq puts them in more danger than anything wikileaks could ever publish.
for bringing our own war criminals to justice.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And later, this:
Wow, who is being alienated? Who are these damn people making these claims, and why isn't The Daily Beast bothering to identify them? Cowards, the lot of 'em.
Dog is my co-pilot.
You know you've made the big time when the Big O goes after ya through diplomatic channels. :p
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
He blew any attempt at real credibility by sensationalizing "collateral murder." Exposing the Afghanistan documents has done very little in telling the public something we didn't already know (everyone was well aware that there have been civilian casualties). Ironically, all he really did was expose a bunch of innocent civilians as US informants, who are now likely to be beaten, tortured, and murdered (along with their families) by the warlords they had outed. How noble of you, you egotistical twat.
Similes are like metaphors
What about investigations into the crimes that US troops (among others) and people higher up in the chain of command have conducted?
Why do they never get put on trial and punished?
Naive to think that they ever will be perhaps, but still...
"These documents that this website released endanger the lives of men and women around the globe. THESE DOCUMENTS. THESE DOCUMENTS RIGHT HERE."
If you don't want people to know about what's in the documents, stop fucking talking about them.
Living With a Nerd
It's not limited to just troops. I'm sure that the Taliban greatly appreciated suddenly having a comprehensive list of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants.
The US is just doing what it does best: being a bully.
They would get a lot more support for this sort of action if the leaked documents were legitimately classified due to national secrets rather than just because they are embarassing. Revealing that the US government has been lying to its citizens and the world about what is happening in Afganistan and Iraq is certainly something they wouldn't want but keeping the electorate in the dark prevents them from providing direction to the country by electing officials to serve its aims
Anyone read the Jump 225 Trilogy by David Louis Edelman? This garbage sounds like a page right out of those books... The govt needs to keep their mouths shut and their hands off before they end up looking even stupider than they already do. Information wants to be free. If wikileaks dies, it's not like something else won't come up to replace it.
You know, you could replace Assange's name in this quote with Obama's and it would read equally true. Trying to drag us Europeans in as allies to support what looks like a war on exposed government cover-ups will not do wonders for how the US government is perceived over here.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
The guy runs a web site. The USA have become control freaks. The troops were not put in danger by wikileaks they were put in danger by the Pentagon's lax security.
Gosh, it's as if our government doesn't appreciate it when people leak videos of our soldiers murdering civilians! You'd think they'd be grateful, since it gives them a more accurate understanding of why the civilians there are turning to extremism.
I'll do the Glenn Greenwald thing and point out the pathetic "stenographic reporting". When you anonymously quote a political body supporting itself as news, you are a tool of that political body. Here are the sources cited in the article:
American officials say
Officials tell The Daily Beast
American officials confirmed last month
Now, the officials say,
an American diplomatic official
a Defense Department official marveled.
American officials say.
An American military official tells The Daily Beast
Come to Brazil!
and if the government can't keep its secrets, don't blame the folks who find them on the street. 95% of that stuff has already been in the papers, after all, within a year of its happening. the issue is level-1 security, the folks who have access. in the US, prior cases have established that if the press gets facts, they can print.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I know I will hear a lot of counter-arguments to this but I'm going to say it anyway.
The documents were leaked by people who are in a position of disagreement with their orders and the behavior of the military and political officials. Simply saying "I don't like it" isn't enough of a statement for anyone's needs or purposes. If they are in the know and have evidence that "bad things" are happening, presenting proof of these bad things is the only true means of expression.
The U.S. and its involvements (interference) in the affairs of other sovereign nations is simply not appreciated by the majority of the world and this is especially true more recently. If there is anything that threatens the U.S. national security more than anything else, it is the increased disapproval of the U.S. in the world. People who are intent on sharing facts and truth wouldn't be as much of a problem if the U.S. was on the straight and narrow.
The notion of "if you haven't been doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear" has been used by governments against its citizens for a very long time. But when directed against governments, we see a pretty different set of standards.
Maybe a week or so ago. He simultaneously stated that there was nothing new or dangerous in the leaked documents, yet called it irresponsible for WikiLeaks for release this information. Normally, I'd take into consideration the "this will harm our intelligence assets" argument, but this has been going on for 9 years and every time we get a peek behind the curtain, we see that the public face on the war is a complete lie.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Wikileaks is journalism, and this is a test of the American principle of "Freedom of the Press".
Sometimes the press publishes embarrassing, inconvenient, or dangerous information.
Those are the times when society is asked, "Is the freedom to publish a core value enshrined in a special place in our society or not?"
As an American, I hope the answer continues to remain "Yes".
For the sake of argument, let's assume that releasing these documents was morally and/or pragmatically wrong/harmful. I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I'll cede the point for this discussion.
What actual *crime* was committed in releasing these documents, that would justify a criminal investigation, limited travel, and general harassment by the government? Certainly the person with original access to the documents committed a crime in releasing them to unauthorized persons, but once that happened, what further crimes have occurred that would justify governmental interference?
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". Has anyone checked if this is true? Are the names of Afghan civilians in the disclosed documents?
So when did reporting secrets become illegal Reporters do it all the time, it's their job. Half the time it's the politicians who leak the information in the first place. I really didn't see much in the stuff that everyone didn't already know or suspect anyway. Anyone remember the Pentagon Papers?
The leaked files were in possession of Wikileaks for months. During that time they contacted the Pentagon for assistance in minimizing the damage to informants that would likely be a consequence of the leaks.
The Pentagon and US military railed against the idea of helping to mitigate the damage and condemned the notion of making this data public, and so after a few months of fruitless negotiation the entire 91,000+ files were leaked unaltered. The perception that this all happened in the space of a few days is false and not worth entertaining.
Do note that Assange has subsequently been cavalier over the notion that people could die should the Taliban employ the documents to locate them; his comments have been of the blunt 'ends justify the means' flavour. Whether a person's life is worth the US losing this amount of face over controversial events in Afghanistan is down to individual perception but my point is that this situation isn't quite as clear cut as much of the mass media depict - and this goes for those in favour Wikileaks actions as well as those against.
about the freedom fighters in their backyards getting direct and indirect US aid?
Strange how this 'leak' was shown to to the US gov and given an ok.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/26/times_wikileaks_white_house_meeting
Now its crimes under other allies "national-security laws"?
Using foreign courts to shut down material published in the US is an interesting new tactic.
Why not just use foreign operatives to shut down leakers in foreign lands?
The Soviets and East Germans had some great missions to study.
Warm up the 'presidential finding' printer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The key part of the article, of course on the second page, is the following:
"Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review," he tweeted on Monday, referring to the effort by WikiLeaks to convince the Defense Department to join in reviewing the additional 15,000 documents to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be placed in danger by its release. "Media won’t take responsibility. Amnesty won’t. What to do?"
Wikileaks went to the Pentagon and/or White House and asked them to assist in the redaction of sensitive things... like the names of civilians. They refused to do so thinking it would prevent the release of the documents. Instead, Wikileaks simply did a cost-benefit analysis and found that the potential danger of the Taliban acquiring the documents, sifting through them, picking out suspect names, and then targeting them was not as valuable as releasing all these documents to the public.
Now, the government is going to try to demonize Wikileaks in every possible way... not because they're endangering lives or missions, but because they are willing to unveil damaging secrets. It's the Pentagon Papers all over again. The government will lose this battle in the long run.
Then again, as the immediate effects of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers showed, the public doesn't care. Ideally, people would be marching on DC, enraged at military mismanagement and lack of direction, but, just like before, they get excited by the sensationalism and then they forget.
Lose-Lose
PROTIP: Paragraphs and appropriate capitalisation can help you look less like Gene Ray.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Let's not beat around the bush. What they REALLY mean is that wikileaks is threatening their justification for spending. Spending is what makes the business of government incredibly lucrative for the elite few, not lying. Lying is merely a means to more spending.
The defense industry is worth billions of dollars per year, and the vast majority of that cash comes from government. The more money passing through the hands of the elite at the top, the better their position to exploit that flow of cash for personal gain.
Am I saying that money is the primary motivator of war, and the underlying objective of defense spending? You're damn right I am.
Why don't we outsource our War on Terror to India or China, we could pay them 1/4 for what we currently pay and they would be happy for the money. Save money and if we outsource to the Chinese we won't have to worry about the enemy not understanding we are serious.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Perhaps leaking everything you can get your hands on it's always the best thing to do. Just a thought.
Transparency can suck. It can have serious repercussions.
It is still better than secrecy.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
It's not that Wikileaks is the problem, it's the leaks themselves. Silencing wikileaks (the symptom) is not the cure for the leaking (the disease). Similarly, it's like any outlet (take your pick) reporting on anything remotely embarrassing to any government being a crime against society. This kind of thing keeps our governments honest and accountable as unfortunate, "dangerous", and embarrassing as it may be...
This is my thought too. I think it's a good thing to have a venue where evidence of wrongdoing can be leaked. For example, I didn't have an issue when they leaked the video of the Baghdad strike that killed the Reuters journalist and other unarmed civilians. The military was trying to cover it up, and the video showed evidence of possible wrongdoing. But they shouldn't leak something just because they can. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for the military to keep much of their information classified.
You are thinking of Japan. Germany has an army but they are too busy wearing leather and getting busy... with each other....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
So, this doesn't come as a surprise either. Similar foreign policy, not as blatantly arrogant as Bush, but not better as Clinton's. The right answer to the leaked documents would have been: "Of course the documents talk about human right abuses. That's why we have these documents. It just shows that we are investigating every claim and are really committed to justice..." Next step: work with international support (Amnesty International) to have names redacted ("in the interest of Afghan civilians" maybe). Not the dumb old "really bad if our dark secrets become public"-statement. That might work with some super-patriotic Americans but will damage any trust other countries had in the new administration.
The European reaction to American pressure tactics? Quite predictable. European politicians will complain but play along, but the public will grin even more about the American claim that they are the champion of free speech.
Not that the government wouldn't have a justified interest in keeping at least some war related documents secret for at least a period of time, but the way they are going after the leak is more damaging than the leak itself. It reminds people of past cover ups. Obama is about to loose all the good-will bonus he got after the election. His hope-slogan carried the hope that things could be done differently and not the same-old. Now it's the same old "pressure the Allies"? Well, that's how Reagan created the Green party in Germany. Maybe Obama can help the pirate party.
This rallying cry to governments who have something to fear and something to hide means that maybe now is the time for the freenet: http://freenetproject.org/whatis.html
I've never wanted to use it before (to donate some disk space) because I'm darn sure that it will have more hidden porn on it than politically suppressed information, but maybe, if obama's call to action is heeded, maybe I will have to establish a node or two.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Also make sure to say what war crime they committed as per 18USC2441. Then please provide evidence of said crime to at least the standard of a reasonable cause to believe (what is normally required for a grand jury indictment).
If you are talking about the helicopter video then no, sorry. While there were civilian casualties, that is not illegal. War is not pleasant and the rules of war are very different from normal civilian law.
So if you really believe there are people who need to be indicted, then let's here specifics. If you are just grandstanding and/or talking without understanding what a war crime really is, then please stuff it.
In some cases, it is not. Consider police informants.
A quote from an "American diplomatic official" becomes the Obama administration's position in an article and then becomes what Obama himself wants in the /. story that links to it.
The next step will probably be someone linking to the /. article and suggesting that God wants the world's nations to rise up against Wikileaks.
Is what the public good in releasing them was. Much as I support a person's right to have information they keep private, I support the government's need to keep various things classified. Now, that right is abused sometimes (the Pentagon Papers are a good example) and in that case the data should be leaked. However as I said, I have to see a compelling reason the public needs to know, and in particular one that is more compelling than the government's need to keep it classified. It is not a black and white situation of one side is right, the other is wrong. As with so much in human interactions, there are shades of gray. You have to weigh the public's need to know vs the harm caused and so on.
Thus far I've not been shown why the public needs to know this. Nobody has shown me something in them and said "It is critical that this information be made public." All I've heard about is civilian casualties. Well duh. War is nasty business, which is why it shouldn't be done unless absolutely necessary. People die, and that includes civilians. Anyone who pretends not to know that is fooling only themselves.
So to support Wikileaks in this (especially given the attitude they cop) I need to see what it is that the public needed to know so much that it outweighed the harm.
Did all of /. randomly forget how the internet works? Let's say Obama, the Brits, whoever, actively gets this site shut down or somehow stops the flow if info from this website. 3 more will pop up in it's stead. If it's that big of a deal, how bout they just do some good old fashion counter-leaking by giving bad information? Make the site discredit the crap out of itself and then it becomes little more then the trashy fake news papers next to the Cosmo magazines in the grocery stores saying that Fergie had a kid with an alien. On top of that, cover your damn tracks better if there's shit you don't want out on the interwebs...
Given the that officials sources have be shown to be full of shit, how can they expect us to believe them now?
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
Perhaps leaking everything you can get your hands on it's always the best thing to do. Just a thought.
Why don't you start it? You can publish your income, what route you take to work. Anything embarrassing in your past? Oh' post that too. While we are at it how about your address, SSN if you have one, and bank account with routing information. What if I went through your trash and published whatever I find. Next I pay people you trust for dirt and publish that too. Anything I can get my hands on to use your phrase. Those are all illegal acts but I shouldn't be prosecuted. Hey! I'm just doing what I think is right, so I can ignore any laws. Not all information should be public. It may sound like a good idea to the feeble minded and anarchists, but not all secrets need be published.
Japan has a military, a very good and well equipped military with one of the biggest defense budgets in the world.
Japan has F-15s, wants F-22s, has ballistic missile defense, advanced tanks, Apache gunships and the JMSDF has even gone back to the Naval Ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
"This administration"?
FGD 135
Can some folks from the rest of the world comment on this USA situation? Europeans? Canadians? Asians?
What is the global outlook and emotional stance towards Wikipedia vs. USA Govt? How does everybody else feel? Who does your locality empathize with the most?
Here it is much infighting, dicking around, pissing, and moaning. I am just curious as to how the USA looks from an outside perspective, either through your own eyes or through the commentary of the international media? Are folks talking about this stuff in the streets of Paris? Are kids discussing this in classrooms in England?
Russia, don't worry, I already know there that in Soviet Russia, documents leak you. Just kidding. Don't go KGB on my ass.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Yes, because the only people who side against Wikileaks are the ones in the US military.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to my bunker and rally my allies within the Digg Bury Brigade.
I doubt they'd be leaking police informants names unless those informants were out breaking the law on the public's dime and weren't being held accountable.
The moment Wikileaks stops leaking everything that's when their credibility wanes and people stop paying attention. Pressure him to withhold and he becomes something less than a site where real information can be brought to light.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The president needs some sort of an internet killswitch, so they can shut everything down in emergencies like this, before data has a chance to propagate. Hmm...
What law should be used? "incriminating another country"? "leaking of unflattering documents from another country"? "disclosing another countrys secrets"?
This is utterly insane and dont reflect nicely upon Americas self-image of being "Always Right(tm)". Not to mention the image it projects abroad. Obama had a very shortlived popularity thats for sure.
I seriously doubt Obama runs the show at all. He seems more and more like a puppet for the military complex.
HTTP/1.1 400
I'm not sure how a foreign citizen who released documents on servers hosted in Sweden did that could possibly be a violation of the US Code. It's nice that you're so adamant about fighting to protect the "freedoms" of a country where justice apparently means being raped in prison. I moved out of America, and let me tell you how much more clearly I see through the bullshit from the outside. The rest of the world are rolling their eyes at you.
--Obyron
Not always, afghan informants being hunted down and killed? Oh that's way better. You know its funny how people who call out for transparency don't publish their own names on a blog post! It's easy to spout about transparency when its not you. Case in point our current president!
So bring the informants to United States already. They did their jobs. I'm sure there will be new informants to come forward.
Do you let a spy stay in foreign country if (s)he's been exposed?
Government is only part of the picture. The other half is what I like to call "Red State Stupidity".
Red State Stupidity is the phenomenon whereby people who heavily favor the Republican Party and "conservative" ideals act in a way that's completely detrimental to themselves and their interests.
Take war, for instance. People living in the Red States are often the poorest people in the USA, and thus the first to get shipped off to hellholes like Afghanistan and Iraq as the front-line troops. They'll often wind up dead or seriously wounded, all for very little compensation. Intelligent people in such a situation would obviously not vote for politicians who scream for war. Yet that's exactly what we see these Red State Citizens doing; they actively support warmongering, when they're the Americans who suffer the greatest from war.
Furthermore, these Red Staters are already the primary recipients of most federal welfare and transfer payments. Their poverty in fact puts them in the best position to receive more such funding. Yet they go out of their way to support politicians who seek to eliminate all social programs that benefit the citizens.
Even worse, these Red State Fools support politicians who actively support free trade, which is just another name for shipping the jobs of these Red Staters over to Mexico and Asia. These Reds have in fact caused the very unemployment that has brought them so much poverty!
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.
After reading through the previous list it's obvious you have your flavors confused.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Publishing the leaked documents on Freenet would have the added benefit that informers would have the time to die of old age before anyone managed to download the leaked documents.
Is it just me or has Obama done a full 180 turn around on what you expected his policies to be since he came into office. So far I have yet to see a strong indication that he does things differently. So much for "change".
>Obama administration is pressuring allies such as Australia, Britain, and Germany
Yah!...., And we wanted you (Obama administration) to go full out Whoopass on the boys from BP,
for what they are responsible for, but nothing happened there, so guess if this don't fly , no one will feel for you!!
The Obama Administration wants to go after wikileaks.
This is not the work of one man... This is the work of pentagon officials and the like.
If Obama were responsible for everything his administration does, I think we could classify he, and any other president ever, from the planet Kypton.
Quick question, how are the people who elected your government supposed to make an informed decision come election time if they don't have the information about what their government is doing/supporting? You claim the government was "duly elected by American citizens" which is obviously true, however I would make the argument that without this kind of information being made available to the public the American citizens don't truely know the people/party they are voting for.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
This just in!
God wants the world's nations to rise up against Wikileaks.
No doubt!!! The whole wolrd (and especially the middle east) knows we (the USA) are capitalistic pigs, so wouldn't it make sense to pay someone else to do our work for us - like we do with pretty much everything else? (blatant exaggeration with 1/1000 of truth)
How about their credit scores? How about their social security numbers? Why isn't the theft of their identities treated as a netional security concern? Why isn't the buying and selling of their medical records, shopping history, the web pages they surf all a matter of national security?
Why is Wikileaks being targeted, but not TransUnion, Experian and Equifax? The government can't have it both ways (well yes, they can and often do), as it seems they are setting a double standard. It's OK to publish information about the troops if you're selling it to advertisers, but not OK to publish on Wikileaks?
Who's to say that the information TransUnion is selling is any less a threat than what's in those redacted documents? Imagine a soldier with a bad credit history being pressured to do something against national interests by someone claiming they can "fix" the credit history of the soldier...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Oops, I read the original post as
Perhaps leaking everything you can get your hands on isn't always the best thing to do. Just a thought.
I replied accordingly. I still think it's what he meant... just a typo.
No, excessive line breaks and arbitrary caps make you look like Gene Ray. No caps or paragraphs make your post look like a blog entry from 2003.
Why would you doubt that? They just did.
It was the same kid for both. 22 year old Bradley Manning, only 2 steps above a fucking no-insignia private, who they thought it OK to give a Top Secret clearance to.
I know that slashdotters automatically love anything involving making information more free, but...
I liked Wikileaks, too, until they published all the reports from the ground in Afghanistan. Up until then, at least the high-profile stuff revealed actual coverups of things that could be damaging because the fact that it happened was embarrassing or wrong. But the latest stuff? It's pretty much mundane, but it reveals important sources of information to American troops. Revealing that the troops have sources of information would be fine if completely unsurprising. But who benefits (other than the Taliban) from revealing their names?
C'mon, Wikileaks. Step up and act like real journalists. Think before you post. And if you fsck up, don't be surprised when people get pissed off.
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!
Those documents were reviewed by Wikileaks removing names. And some docs were withheld.
If these were just dumped on line somewhere this would not be the case.
Wikileaks is not the system that is broken. And Wikileaks saved lives.
Is that the same military who, a couple months ago, couldn't keep their top general and his aides from criticizing POTUS and top WH officials in Rolling Stone?
Oh wait, you've defined the propaganda campaign so as to include everything that could ever happen in the US, so no disproof of your claim would be logically possible in your system.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
What a dick. Seriously.
Change? When it comes to war and civil liberties, the only changes he has made is maknig the government's positions on both more extreme.
There has been a bought and paid readings of a prewritten script as part of a coordinated effort to progressively demonise, discredit and finally destroy Wikileaks. The PR divisions of most organisations, charities included, can simply be viewed as part of the modern media sector. And as part of that sector, their primary purpose is to echo the opinions and worldview of their benefactors.
No-one cared about these civilian risks when the documents were first released; the Pentagon was still reeling from the shock of encountering actual investigative journalism. The scriptwriters were called in, but it took them a week or two to come up with hooks. The civilian risks has so far been the most successful way to paint the leaks in a negative light. The mainstream media, literally incapable of digesting the data load it was faced with, has swallowed this propaganda far more easily, and found it more palatable than doing the job they claim to do--showing truth to power.
The powers said that the war in Afganistan was going well; that the US and the UK were winning. The Wikileaks expose proves that they were lying. The war was going terribly all along. See what that is there? That's journalism; not paid propaganda. Wikileaks did the people of the US and the UK a enormous service, virtually unparalleled in history. And instead of their thanks, Julian Assange is going to be drawn and quartered.
The Western free press is dead; Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. It is not possible to expose hard truths or challenge those in power in any modern Western state(or at least the Anglo-Saxon ones). Those who try will be destroyed, discredited or simply ignored. This is made possible by the modern media, which has become a propaganda complex of terrifying size, power, and influence.
The definitive proof of all this will be the fate of Assange, which is now playing out before our very eyes. He is going to be torn apart by the monstrous media; A feral pack--on leashes. He is finished. No idealistic journalists, no cadre of bloggers, no editorials, no law, no person, no country can save him now.
And if you try anything similar, they'll get you too.
May the Maths Be with you!
On the one hand we have US incentives 'to boost financial whistleblowing' and on the other we have a situation that many find reprehensible - that of modern expansionism/imperialism under the guise of "anti-terrorism" and the associated denigration, arrest and trials of those that blows those whistles. Where can we safely draw a line that allows those that have serious issues with their employers, whomever they may be - private or government - to voice their concerns and their fears and the interests of the "public at large"?
I think I am of the opinion that whistles ought to be blown: the war against terrorism, in two attacks - NYC & London - took 2,976 (NYC) and 52 (London); what should probably have been a proportional response could be anywhere from 110,600 Iraqi deaths (AP, April 2009) to 1,033,000 (Opinion Research Business survey, August 2007). I would research the Afghani civilian casualties, but I'm a little bit horrified at the moment from things I have read.
Whilst I agree that action was needed, two countries invaded after the 11th of September 2001 appear to have had absolutely nothing to do with the attack and, if anything, it should possibly have been Saudi Arabia that ought to have been invaded.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
He's running Afghanistan the way the Generals want it, as he advertised. I am pissed that he covered up the documents about our military men torturing people. That wasn't very transparent of him.
But I do like the actions taken for DADT, Iraq, Drugs laws, etc...
He was the lesser of two evils, after all.
Blar.
Good try. With the quote tag thing. I didn't actually read your comment.
And the Taliban has made clear that they will be hunting down said informants.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Obama is open to CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and others to investigating the 'war', but the second someone post something on uncensored documents. WTF! I hope all these other nations tell Obama; "Michelle's tits or GTFO!"
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
I suppose this whole situation isn't surprising. People are afraid of change. But, really? Change doesn't have to involve ugly wars and violence as it has classically entailed. We have the power to move on and grow up to the next stage of realizing what democracy is. You know, or we can just sit tight and decay in to a festy mess of archaic social trash (if we haven't already).
Wikileaks seems like a major move towards actual openness. A supposedly democratic country ought to be ruled by the people. We created a system of representation back before the telegraph was functional because it wasn't practical for all the "owners" to be informed and react. Since the telegraph, well over 100 years ago, very very little progress has been made towards a democratic system that the current one is meant to provide. It's time that our citizens (who also make up our governments) recognize that the hacks we've used to make this work are training-wheels we can throw off. We have the means for our citizens to be easily involved with decisions and the first step towards that working at all, is those citizens need access to the information.
I appreciate the need to control certain military information, at least, in a short-term. However, Wikileaks is one of the most positive steps towards creating actual people-rule (democracy) since the establishment of the existing supposedly democratic constitutions we enjoy today. To attack them over this is nothing short of profoundly distasteful. It's like hanging the guy who put up a post-board for someone running up and slapping a blasphemous message on it.
To the Obama admin, please, reconsider what your doing. You're in office because the people have willed you there. They have a right to know what's going on, it's THEIR country (and same for the other democratic powers). If your military operations (the validity of which is a major other topic) really really really do require such secrecy, then it's up to you to keep that information private. If that information gets out, burning down the news paper factories isn't exactly confidence-inspiring PR. Actually, it makes the people feel like they're NOT in control. And.. well, there's a fair bit of history about what happens after awhile of that feeling - suffice to say, the 'power' you have is entrusted, not owned.
At the end of the day, we all are trying to make the world a better place. We just have a hard time agreeing about what that looks like. It's this nature that I think will ultimately lead us all to a more productive place. All the players mean well, through some kind of logic.
I personally think Wikileaks isn't the issue here at all. They deserve to be left alone AND they didn't do anything especially profound here. If they hadden't existed, there would have been many other places for this information to have been placed. Stop taking notes from China, Western culture will NOT be owned in that way.
Now... How do we move forward, towards a more stable WORLD? Let's start by shooting less and maybe talking a hell of a lot more.
Can't we all just be nice to eachother?? I feel like we're collectively a raging infant, can we grow up already? No?
<3
I'd bet on the oval office using unlocked desk drawers. I'm pretty sure your hand is riddled with bullets long before it reaches the drawer handle.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
umm this isn't offtopic. Read the excerpt next time.
If someone (including me) seriously thought that Obama might really bring any kind of change to the way the U.S. is governed - they should stop to dream today. At least that's what I'm doing.
Especially after he received the Nobel Peace Prize I was really hoping that he would try to live up to the enormous expectations. He didn't. He's just another president, doing just the same all the previous presidents did - and definitely not bringing any real change.
It seems that it doesn't really matter who is president. One way or the other they all fuck it up.
Now I just hope that the Nobel Peace Committee has the balls to hand out the next one to Wikileaks to make up for some of the damage they did by awarding it to Obama.
"comprehensive list of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants[citation needed]"
I have heard there were 2 names leaked, I have heard there were thousands linked. You seem pretty sure on hundreds leaked. I've yet to hear any citations and I am beginning to think the thousands of innocent Afghans is a "won't someone think of the children" plea.
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
No names have turned up, it's made up. The deaths are not people who have names in wikileaks, so they can't be the reason these people were killed, unless the Taliban get a heads-up into WL. Unlikely. More likely is that someone started that bullshit point to make WL the baddie and idiot mouthbreathers haven't bothered to check because it fits with their "if yer not wi' us, yer agin' us" mentality.
Doing "nothing" is pretty much the same policy the Bush administration had in the same situation, so... not better than before, but no worse.
That's one way to look at it. Or you could be truthful and acknowledge that Arizona's attempt to "get a handle on the illegal alien problem" really amounts to nothing more than "discriminating against people who look like they might be Mexican". That's really all there is to it. In fact, most law enforcement organizations in Arizona (with the notable exception of the notorious Maricopa county sheriff) were opposed to the bill, because it put their law officers in an impossible situation - they had to try to decide whether someone was likely to be an illegal immigrant based purely on their appearance - leaving the law officers a choice between effectively ignoring the law, or exposing themselves and their departments vulnerable to discrimination lawsuits.
You mean, better than the previous administration's policy of gutting both monopoly enforcement AND civil rights enforcement (and worker safety enforcement and environmental enforcement and... I could go on). Yes.
I don't think the leaked Afghanistan war documents are a 'little egg'. It's clear proof that the war is lost and there is no hope for winning. ...
Bullshit. The Wikileaks documents a lot of out-of-context reports, mostly from low-level soldiers and unit commanders. Essentially, it's an internal bug-tracking database for the war.
Look at any internal bug-tracking database for any reasonably-sized project and you'll immediately conclude that the project is a horrible steaming pile of crap that everyone hates. That does not necessarily mean that the project actually is worthless. Imagine what the MS Windows (or OS X, or whatever) internal bug database must be like. Millions of known, incompatibilities, crash reports, and unsubstantiated error reports. And yet MS and Apple make shit-tons of money from them, and millions of people use them every ay.
Of course there are major problems with the war. It's a fucking war.
It's called progressive taxation, and it's been a foundational principal of our tax system since the income tax was invented. And that's as it should be. Rich people get proportionally more out of a functioning society than poor people do by definition, and should pay proportionally more. Think about it this way: if society collapsed tomorrow, who would stand to lose more: Bill Gates? Or the bum sleeping under the overpass? Having a livable society requires paying taxes, and rich people should pay proportionally more of them.
I hate when politicians try to shoot the messenger rather than address the message. Sure, it's pretty clearly illegal in the US to distribute this information. However, once Assange made it "public", EVERY SINGLE NEWS ORGANIZATION did the same thing in summarizing what the documents said. They read it, and distributed summaries of the information contained in the documents. Where are the criminal charges for them?
Instead, I want the president of my country to come with answers to questions like:
- When Pakistan is substantially aiding our enemies, and we aren't going to fight Pakistan, how can we win the war?
- When Pakistan is substantially aiding our enemies, why are we giving Pakistan aid money?
- Why are we pursuing the status quo when the status quo isn't working?
- Why would one of our own soldiers give up this information?
I sincerely hope the answer isn't "We need to keep our military forces field-trained, and Afghanistan is the best place to do it. Plus, we need to justify military spending." Or "I don't know, but I don't know how to get out of this war, and no one else does either."
Just like we didn't meaningfully respond to the message that the Muslim world largely dislikes the US for actual reasons (primarily economic) and not just because we don't follow their religion after 9/11. Instead of giving them reasons to like us, we legitimize the hate.
I hear Obama's old car before he became president and had the secret service drive him everywhere had a MAN SIZED TRUNK! Oh the horror.
Seriously though, mixing silly criticisms like that in with serious criticisms like "he started a fucking war" and "he opened gitmo" just make it look like you are being serious about that one as well. You don't help your cause by making yourself look like a nut.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Wow really. So do you don't mind if I publish your phone call records, credit card purchases, SSN, credit card numbers, bank account informations, home address, phone number, and voting history?
There is your answer.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As a non-American citizen, Assange has no particular obligation to attend to the defense of the US. Calling him a traitor is simply a false accusation.
Right, the Taliban does all this stuff, but they themselves are blameless. In fact, all these deaths are really Assange's fault. Please. The Taliban is going to go around murdering people regardless of any information released at Wikileaks.
Assange-bashers need to pick an argument. Either the information he released is old news (in which case it was also old news to the Taliban), or it wasn't. And if there really are new revelations of misconduct by the US Armed forces there, then he was right to release the data. You can't go around insisting both that there was no cause to release it AND that it was horribly threatening to Afghan informers.
Not an intel officer here, but I used to work with them fairly closely. I seriously doubt the Taliban has an intel cell capable of doing these kinds of logic puzzles, because in real life it's a lot harder than you've presented it here - it's actually quite difficult to know what you know. Getting all these pieces of the puzzle (informants A, B, and C had certain knowledge at certain times; no one else could have known; A's schedule was this, B was that, C was something else, and the NATO intel officer was in town on this date; etc) all assembled is actually quite difficult. And the easy solution - just shoot all three - is not so good either. The Taliban has already alienated huge swaths of the population and the amount of random killing this would entail is probably not to palatable to their leadership anymore.
Breaking my statement above about replying, but I'll make sure to put ...
... in any post that might potentially benefit from that, in future. I had hoped for a slightly higher-level of intelligence than 'moron' reading it. I've been around here for a long time, and I ought to have known better. [sigh]
THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE ENTIRELY SERIOUS
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
No kidding. Everyone is swallowing this "hundreds (or even thousands) of Afghan informants are at risk" line. If there's such a list, where is it?
OK, lets see: the White House has been leaking items to the press for decades (unnamed sources at the White House...). It's OK to print that.
People like Dick Cheney blab about the identity of under cover CIA agents (Valerie Palma), and it's OK to print that.
But if Wikileaks publishes documents that the Pentagon says are "unimportant" and "nothing new", it's not OK. It's an national emergency.
I guess we need some kind of referee to tell us which leaks are OK.
I fully understand you weren't trying to be serious. I'm explaining why people thought you were being serious...
I'm giving the the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you didn't actually think "Doesn't support the indefinite holding of suspects without charge in internment camps." is a joke as well.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
It would be one thing if we were doing something like WWII here - fighting for our own survival. But we're not. We're spending a bunch of money we don't have, getting a bunch of our own people killed, and only God knows how many Afghans killed, fighting a war that is essentially useless. No one realistically thinks that we're going to transform Afghanistan into a model of peace and democracy no matter what we do. No one thinks that if we just left Afghanistan tomorrow, our national security would be affected in any way whatsoever. Given that, yes, I think this war needs to be shoved in America's face every day, 24/7. This is what we're buying with our tax dollars and the blood of our soldiers. We're killing a bunch of guys who hate us, but live in caves and have no realistic capability to do anything to us. Plus blowing up wedding parties, schools, etc, etc. Yes, most of our operations are going correctly and not killing civillians. But the number of civilians it's OK to kill when there's no threat to you? That would be zero. America needs to see these images, over and over and over.
Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul could have been extremely popular but neither would have been allowed to progress far and despite their slim chances the party establishment and media made sure they didn't have a fair chance just to be on the safe side. It takes a large movement to break the barriers down it also must be FAST because some successful new plan will be implemented before too long.
Unlike JFK, you can't be allowed to rise to this level of power these days without being "safe" because it is far easier to knock down a beginner when they are weak than when they rise to power. I think Carter was a fluke who made it due to blow back from Nixon but they managed to assassinate him politically which was still expensive and risky. Better to avoid that situation. Obama may be in a similar situation for obvious reasons and given how openly some are borrowing from that playbook. He is referring to it as well - its not just a rerun but also refinement of the process. If the system remains in place long enough we'll have playbooks for enough situations the game can be easily rigged. Some of you may have noticed how similar the politicians talk/act so similarly and it is NOT coincidence.
Obama is changing positions now that he is in; however, I should mention that during the campaign he was quite vague on many things (as is necessary given our broken political climate.) This gets you IN but also creates disappointment because expectations differ when you are so general; furthermore, all the marketing is about EMOTIONS not much else which allows even more interpretation and contradictions for voters to make. This is your fault, not theirs - a great leader can't win without playing your emotions.
I think Obama is picking some HUGE battles and getting anything he can for them while skipping the rest which is one reason I think he is not a sell out (yet) -- healthcare being a prime example. He is trying to take on the untouchable issues the public is not smart enough to handle because they don't elect "leaders" with the guts to touch them.
Also, a good measure is how powerful they are: the more powerful, the more they are merely going along with the corrupt establishment. If they are "weak" or "ineffective" they are probably going against the flow. You must work by the laws of nature of the environment in which you live.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Then why does the administration want Assange charged with all these violations? This information is either material or it isn't. If this material isn't "new or dangerous", then 1) why was it classified, and 2) why the big reaction?
It was bad enough when Bush tried to pull this "political embarrassment to our administration is the same thing as endangering the nation/troops" codswallop, but I am not going to accept this bullsh*t argument from Obama.
Or every member of every Army that's ever gone to war against the US would be a traitor. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
... I agree that the documents should have been released, one can hardly fault the Pentagon for refusing to go along with the redaction idea. The Pentagon considers these documents classified, and by law, they would have had to redact all the classified info. Since Wikileaks was obviously not going to go along with that (what would have been left to release?), there was no cooperation between them and the Pentagon.
You realise that the Daily Mail is hardly an unbiased source? And note how "A million march to US Capitol" in the headline becomes "tens of thousands" in the text.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
So you have now your own samizdat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat ). Just like in good old times...
And the Taliban has made clear that they will be hunting down said informants.
The Taliban has made it clear that they are murderous xenophobic aliens from another planet. If they will be proud of the fact that they killed people who were clearly there to help Afghans who were in need of glasses and other simple medical care free of charge then they are obviously capable of anything. Hell with them, they are murdering viruses, and not worthy of consideration as human beings. I don't think they need to explain anything, because they are obviously capable of anything. If you were to return to a cold, empty, sterile Earth after 50 years of space exploration and were wondering what happened, I think you would be correct in assuming the fault lay at their feet.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
An honest leader would let people know what was going wrong; especially when they lack the power personally to fix it without some public outrage to move things along. Sounds pretty messed up to think competency has to do with cover ups.
Being leader means eating a lot of shit that had little to nothing to do with you. Try being a leader sometime; its easy to bitch when you are clueless. Everybody is a critic.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Like the entire war being a terrible farce? I know I'd want to cover that up!
There is a war going on for your mind.
You are correct. My post was part of a coordinated propaganda campaign that began with an EO by President Nixon. Wikileaks was the elder Bush's idea, but SS7 couldn't get the Belorussians on board to to the technical implementation due to some internal connectivity issues. But if you believe any of that, you may have bigger issues.
My point: The hypothesis of a "very sophisticated domestic propaganda campaign" is non-falsifiable.
"[O]ur military is operating a very sophisticated domestic propaganda campaign against the American public" is an extraordinary and broad claim. "A few other big discussion websites have shown the same pattern" is not evidence to support that claim. As stated, that claim could not be supportable because its scope "a very sophisticated domestic propaganda campaign" includes all possible activities if such a campaign is successful. It is very similar to claims about omnipotent god(s) having great power in that there is no way to disprove the presence of "a very sophisticated campaign" or omnipotent god(s) since the (dis)proof itself could not be independently distinguished from a manifestation of that campaign or god(s) itself.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
There's a difference between simply breaching confidentiality and security vs whistleblowing. Which is why whistleblowing needs legal protection. When whistleblowing is legally protected, enforcing all the laws on unauthorized disclosures protects whistleblowers while leaving merely untrustworthy people subject to proper penalties and controls.
--
make install -not war
ok, so passing out the war journal like candy was probably not the best idea in the world. But, them doing it publicly kept it off of the torrent sites that a superquadrabilion people look at everyday. It was pretty well hidden until the government found out about it and decided to make a big scene over it. I bet you now if you could track the number of people reading it now compared to the number of people reading. They can't blame him too much for who read it.
Everyone should read War is a Racket, written by Marine Major General Smedley Butler in the early 1930s:
--
make install -not war
If anyone thinks Assange and Wikileaks didn't see they this was going to make them a target of the goverment, well give us a call when you get back from Fantasy Island. . Assange knew before hand this wasn't going to make him Employee Of The Month with anyone in the Various goverments that are involved in Afghanistan. Thhe other Papers that got the info before it came Public was almost a form of insurance in case he got caught with the info before Wikileaks put it in the public eye. I don't agree with Assange's crass attitude to The floks at Amnensty International and those that pleaded with him to " take innocent peoples names that could be put in harms way out of the documnets" . I think thats more than resonable and a proper thing to do and yopu would think Assange for all his drum banging and chest beating about the publics rights for this, and the protections for that would be concrened as well. Well not entirely it seems, when Assange didn't like what Amnest had to say, his response was to tell them he put bout a press release unless they bowed to his wishes, and then later on Assange posted on Wikileaks' Twitter feed saying " the site, which claims it has 800 volunteers, needs $700,000 to conduct a "harm-minimization review". A later Tweet added: "Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review. Media won't take responsibility. Amnesty won't. What to do?"" Huh?? Assange seem to be letting the popularity he and Wikileaks are getting inflate his ego a tad too much, so know the Media or Amnesty responsible for posting the info if it puts people in harms way? Assange seems to need to have some one else is to blame, when things get hot in the Kitchen Assange having obtained a load of documents that belong to someone else, didn't seem to be worried that if they make the documents wen't public a number of people may die as a result??? Assange seems to have the belief that the responsibility for any such deaths will lie with the military from whom the documents were taken, Amnesty International and the Media. Assange seems to believe that anybody but he or Wikileaks will bare responsiblity for the results of actions which He choose to take. Yes the goverment has culpability too, but they didnt choose to leak this documents with anyones name in it did. He doesn't think those against the Taliban or groups they have ties with will punish those who help any foreign agency or goverment. Well your worng Assange there have been plenty of storeis about that going on and everyone knows this. Assange seems to have drank to much of his own Jonestown Kool-Aid drunk on power and seems to have developed a sense of self importance that is beyond what has to do with wy Wikileaks was started and what the beliefs and reasons behind it were. Assange is driving a fine vehicle of democracy on the wrong side of the road, and he's damn well liable to kill people while driving down it. Assange has seemingly forgotten that with power comes responsibilty, he expects other to take responsibilty and be accountable for their actions, but then shirks it when it comes to his own. C'mon Assange you can't have it both ways...
** note to NSA/CIA/White House/RNC/DNC/Goldman Sachs: If you've overlooked my name, please add me to all your various watchlists. ** The campaign against Wikileaks insults the dignity of the people of the United States and the world. It is long past time for the United States to become a good neighbor in the world instead of continuing to become a nakedly imperial power. p.s. to Mr. Gibbs and Obama: I'm a human being, a former naval office and I vote.
"Nothing we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves." -- Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The rest of the world are rolling their eyes at you.
Oh no! The Crowd disapproves. And they have never, ever been shown to be wrong years after being sure they were right and persecuting all the Galileos they could find.
Right?
Futurist Traditionalism
One of the important parts of the Geneva Convention is the idea that for it to apply, both sides have to be playing by the rules and trying to minimize civilian deaths and so on. For example it says that you cannot go and attack a hospital, or church/monastery/etc even if enemy soldiers are being treated there. It is off limits... Unless they are STAGING from there. So if wounded soldiers are being treated at a hospital, you need to leave it alone. If soldiers are using it as a base for attacks, it becomes a legit target.
This happened in WWII. The Germans took over a monastery that had good line to shell allied ships. Not only was it physically a strong structure, but they figured that allies would leave it alone with their reverence for churches. Not so much, it was bombed to rubble.
When you are a uniformed soldier of a military in a declared conflict, and your side obeys the rules, there is a reasonable chance you will be afforded the protections of the Geneva Convention. If you are some guy running around with a rifle and bombs pretending to be a civilian, you will probably discover those same rules are not applied.
That was just the first article that came up in google. Numbers estimates vary from source to source.
Here's a better source, with pictures, that talks about the numbers discrepancies. (Short version: the park service estimated 1.2 million).
If they're on every page, then it would be easy for you to provide the filename and page number for the very first mention of a civilian informant? I mean, it would be trivial: "Page 1 of the document named 'secret military stuff.txt' identifies an American sympathizer in Afghanistan, and puts his/her life in danger".
Surely you, the honorable Anonymous Coward, wouldn't exaggerate for effect?
on the latest WikiLeaks info has gone from the DOD's "no big deal" to "threat to American troops".
But anyone who's followed politics for any length of time knows that the average classified document is classified to protect the jobs of bureaucrats and politicians, NOT the American people.
The Obama Department of 'Justice' is far more likely to prosecute whistleblowers than the companies ripping American taxpayers off that they're informing on.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You can publish your income, what route you take to work. Anything embarrassing in your past? Oh' post that too. While we are at it how about your address, SSN if you have one, and bank account with routing information.
What if I went through your trash and published whatever I find. Next I pay people you trust for dirt and publish that too. Anything I can get my hands on to use your phrase. Those are all illegal acts but I shouldn't be prosecuted. Hey! I'm just doing what I think is right, so I can ignore any laws.
So you equate publishing a private individual's personal info with publishing official documents regarding the strategy and prosecution of a long, bloody, invasionary war?
Can we get that guy who cried on youtube to leave Britney alone to reprise his role to send a message to the white house?
On the plus side, this keeps going, we get to find out what's inside that insurance file...
why fuck around with wikileaks if you could instead order all the damned troops to come home, post-haste. if obama had any balls and was willing to follow his own campaign promise, he could issue orders to the generals to be home in time for Christmas. he's been such a wishy-washy disappointment, on so many levels, for so many reasons.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
And if you actually read the article, you'll notice that in the title, "US Capitol" refers to Washington D.C., but in the text, they say "tens of thousands" went to Capitol Hill.
Capitol Hill is a quite small part of Washington D.C.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
My typos aside, that was my point as well. The problem with releasing unvetted information is you aren't always sure the info is correct, and sometimes you have to wonder who is leaking info and what do they have to gain. ie: you become a tool for someone else's motives. And when it comes to military info, I lean toward being very careful about releasing info (disclaimer: I'm a vet) but when there is wrongdoing, yes, someone needs to hang. Just slapping it on Wikileaks isn't the answer in this case, it just made more problems. I don't agree with the govt about muzzling them, but I wish they would act with a bit more discretion, and MAYBE releasing to someone other than "everyone" would be the better course of action for the first few months.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Citation please for police resources being used more often in wealthier neighborhoods than poor ones. I would be curious to see a police report break down in terms of volume and type of crimes. Are more police resources used in rich neighborhoods, or is it because the rich are sequestered away from the poor (and supported by their own private security forces?) which leads to less crime?
The majority of wear on roads is by trucks, not sports cars of the rich.
See http://www2.ku.edu/~iri/publications/HighwayDamageCosts.pdf One of the reaons we see more road wear in the US is because we build our roads cheaply and thinner than other countries.
The SEC is a FEE FUNDED agency funded by transaction charges made on trades similar to how the Patent Office is a fee funded agency funded by application charges, they are not a fully tax funded agency. In fact congress does not even return the entirety of fees back to them in their budget. The excess goes into the general fund!
see: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aCGM.3vStcjU
The wealthy already pay a disproportonate share of taxes simply because they have more money. Its hard to collect a lot of taxes from people that have no money.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Wikileaks have succeeded where all others have failed, simply by burying everyone in 91,000 documents looking for easter eggs!
Really, the amount of time spent trying to get a name out those docs before they died of old age, even with such helpful categorisation would surely be enough to completely disable any real activity.
It seems to be spin however tenuously tied to the truth to destroy the validity of Wikileaks and any info they receive that they then release which is in some way embarrassing.
If our taxation was truly progressive it would not be treating wage income differently than investment income. For example the tax rate on dividends depends on your regular income tax rate, but at a rate much lower than the normal income tax rate. This would bring in serious amounts of money, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were serious reprocussions in the economy.
Now while there are some decent economic arguments to be made for and against taxing investment income differently, the majority of wealth is not concentrated on high wage earners who pay a disproporataly high rate on their own earnings. If people want to stick it to the "wealthy" or in turn their own pension funds/retirement savings, then you would want to increase capital gains and dividend tax rates to mirror wage rates.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I'm done. Mark said it best in Doonesbury. He said it too early, I think. Now it's a done deal, though.
http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2009/12/25/
Doesn't support the indefinite holding of suspects without charge in internment camps. One measure of a society is how you treat undesirables, and Guantanamo bay is an indelible stain on the Bush/Cheney years.
There is a world of difference between being a criminal suspect and a prisoner of war. I realize liberal ideology gets in the way of that distinction, but it is an important, pragmatic, and legal one.
The real stain is how a few of them were treated. Gitmo would never have been an issue if it wasn't for the "enhanced interrogation" that some of them received. The close-gitmo crowd has always been way off base.
(And yes, innocent bystanders can become prisoners of war too. War is ugly. Get over it.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
(If you make more, you should take more home. I really don't care if the relationship isn't linear. I don't think it should be, to be honest.)
The real question is: What is wealthy?
The problem is that not all income is the same. Take small business owners, for example. Most are sole-proprietorships. Many are barely scraping by, but land in a wealthy tax bracket. Now THAT is not fair.
(Yes, I realize there are other organizational structures. They too have their problems. Many of them are also tax related.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
He's a scumbag politician. Politicians are meant to be reviled, limited, and controlled.
Douglas Adams -
"It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it."
[Uncalled for attack against Obama family and the very few good politicians redacted]
Only sheep "like" the people who seek to control their lives.
No. Only sheep like the people chosen for them to control their lives. The distinction is important.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
"Bush couldn't read the words, even *with* the teleprompter."
That's utterly stupid. Fine, you hate George W. Bush. We get it. But knock off the "he was too stupid to speak" meme. It's bullshit, and you know it. Do you actually listen to speeches from other presidents? Bush's performance in public speaking is no worse than LBJ or Truman or Bush the Elder, and at times even, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter couldn't pronounce "nuclear" either.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
people, armed, and descending on seats of government with the intent to kill treasonous legislators, judges, and executives, after deciding that no other recourse for their grievances was possible
Helicopter flying high,
the sound of gunfire;
falling leaves.
I mean it: Taking up arms against the US government means that the best long-range armament ever known to man will be used against you. It doesn't matter how many people you can arm, if you can't hide your infrared signatures, you'll be gunned down and you won't even know where the bullets came from. And if you rely on "they wouldn't fire on patriots", you'd better ask yourself if the people who mistake a camera for a rocket launcher will be told you are traitors, terrorists, or patriots.
You can't take the sky from me...
Michelle Malkin? Really? She's all kinds of fucked-up in the head. She's so full of hate I'm surprised she doesn't stab herself in the face when she looks in the mirror.
I vote straight ticket Tastycrat. Though the Slug Party has some ideas I need to look into.
This is my thought too. I think it's a good thing to have a venue where evidence of wrongdoing can be leaked. For example, I didn't have an issue when they leaked the video of the Baghdad strike that killed the Reuters journalist and other unarmed civilians. The military was trying to cover it up, and the video showed evidence of possible wrongdoing. But they shouldn't leak something just because they can. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for the military to keep much of their information classified.
And there are perfectly legitimate reasons for exposing such classified information to the general public. WE, the Citizens, have a right to know what is going on. The military has a right to attempt to control and classify information they hold as being valuable. I do not fault the military for attempting to prevent the dissemination of such material. This is how the military works- NEED TO KNOW basis. But when the media fundamentally fails to uncover and accurately report on what OUR military is doing(whether by virtue of being co-opted by the military(embedding reporters) or by outlandish censorship privileges granted to the military buy OUR executive branch, and when wars have been going on for nearly a decade, with no real end in sight, and when the war itself has become so routine and mundane that the vast majority of Americans live their lives as if there was no war going on because they have become so perfectly isolated from it and anaesthetized to reporting of it that for all practical purposes it does not exist for them-there exists a perfectly legitimate right, and moreover a moral imperative to shatter the status quo and disrupt the anaesthetized conscience of the masses and challenge the unchallenged legitimacy of actions by our military, which are funded with our tax dollars and which are claiming the lives of our sons and daughters and killing and maiming tens of thousands of war victims.
The day will never come that there is any transparency in the doings of OUR military. The military only functions in so far as it controls information. Sure the exposure of such information effects the functioning of the military- to expect the military to react in any way other than how they have responded to these leaks, is at best pathetic naievete, at worst simple disingenuousness. But the sovereign, WE THE PEOPLE, is the ultimate arbitor over what information should be withheld from us and what information we should have access to. The government is only a PROXY for WE THE PEOPLE. And each time we citizens forget and/or neglect this fact we find ourselves with atrocities committed by our government and by our military IN OUR NAME. No governmental or military necessity will ever ultimately trump the sovereigns right to know, AS LONG AS WE FIGHT FOR IT, only when we acquiesce to authority, AUTHORITY GIVEN BY US, are we held to be treasonous or illegitimate in our rightful pursuit of knowledge pertaining to what our government and military does, IN OUR OWN NAME.
If you're asking for a bt link for "War is a Racket", it's not needed. It's available in its entirety here.
Look like your facebook account ? We have to face the fact that personal information does not have the same value for all. And sometime it's scary how critical info is available for all to read at everybody indiference. Regardless. We hide personal information because the critical infrastructure that depend on it is not secure enought to resist am indentity theft. The fact that everybody know my bank account number should not matter since they should not be able to access it for example.
In today's world, if you're going to pick up any shreds of truth, you have to look at as many sides of an issue as you can find (maybe especially the ones you disagree with). I was just googling.
I mean its not like he a has a war to worry about, or a crashed economy, or building health care, or environmental disasters.
I am sure he has time to pressure allies, to press charges against a WEBSITE that they do not like.
I mean that makes perfect sense.
Though seriously the title is misleading. Bad Editors, Bad! It makes it sound like Obama himself is saying this, when really its just his staff.
All of that said, I hope when they approach Canadian officials that they tell them to "take a hike hoser!". If sending troops as allies to your stupid wars and having our troops killed for your stupid mistakes, you have the audacity to try and pressure us to enforce your stupid laws? Ya right. Though considering our current glorious leader "the harper" is such a douchebag USA love puppy he will likely hand everything over and the kitchen sink, and break our own laws in a frenzied attempt to placate the all seeing Obama.
Seriously I hope I am not the only one that sees so many things wrong with this message on so many levels.
this is about as true as weapons of mass destruction. This has put no one at risk. I cant believe establishment is getting away with this spin....
Things like Wikileaks promote it, stuff like Obama's Admin trying to pressure other governments to suppress them try to destroy it.
I still remember from the Iraq War where American "friendly fire" killed a whole bunch of Canadian troops. Basically the bombed they crap out of the Canadians on the ground, apparently ignoring the friend or Foe electronics. I don't remember all the details as it was a while ago, but I got the impression that there was some sort of half asses investigation, to which the final result was a big bunch of nothing. Something along the lines of "Oopsie, war is hell!".
I would have loved to see the Wikileaks video of that engagement, to see how it really went down. However all we have to go on is what they determine and considering its their ass and face on the line, they may have a little "bias" in any sort of investigation of say, themselves.
Wow really. So do you don't mind if I publish your phone call records, credit card purchases, SSN, credit card numbers, bank account informations, home address, phone number, and voting history?
There is your answer.
The difference is he is not your servant, you are not supplying all the money in his bank account, you do not own the property at his address. For the Federal Government, all these things are true - and you can check the voting records of your congressperson I believe, as well as check their political funding status.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
"Perhaps leaking everything you can get your hands on it's always the best thing to do."
Which was the original statement.
And no not even in government is it a good thing.
And really not in military.
For instance do you really think it would be for the best to publish blue prints for all US nuclear weapons?
Or for any?
Or the complete specifications of the Aegis missile system?
Or the complete plans of the Virginia class Submarine?
A prime example of this came from WWII. The Japanese where not sinking many US subs.
A senator wanted to know why. He was told that the Japanese depth charges where set to shallow.
He told a reporter and it got published.
Soon there where a good number of dead US sailors.
Well that may have help the Japanese for a time but it sure hurt the families of those sailors.
It also hurt a lot of US solders that ended up facing Japanese troops that got resupplied.
So no leaking everything is a bone dead stupid idea.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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