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Digging Into the WikiLeaks Cables
A number of readers have sent in new WikiLeaks stories today, many of which focus on the content of the leaked diplomatic cables. The documents showed how the US government bullied and manipulated other countries to gain support for its Copenhagen climate treaty (though behavior from the US wasn't all negative), how copyright negotiations largely meet the expectations of critics like Michael Geist, and how Intel threatened to move jobs out of Russia if the Russian government didn't loosen encryption regulations. Perhaps the biggest new piece of information is a list of facilities the US considers 'vital to security.' Meanwhile, the drama surrounding WikiLeaks continues; Julian Assange's Swiss bank account has been frozen and the UK has received an arrest warrant for the man himself; the effort to mirror the site has gained support from Pirate Parties in Australia, in the UK and elsewhere; and PayPal was hit with a DDoS for their decision not to accept donations for WikiLeaks.
Wikileaks didn't release anything, they published information that was released to them by someone else. It should be noted that there has never been a case of someone successfully being prosecuted in the US for publishing leaked documents. The leaker, the one who actually violated an oath and removed those documents and gave them to someone else, that person should be punished. I wouldn't even argue against a treason case being brought against him or her. But trying to punish what is essentially a journalist, publishing information received from a source, is a very, very slippery slope for the US to start down.
They really started to put the heat on wikileaks when Julian threatened to release information about banks. When he was attacking the puppets, there was mild outrage. Now that he is going after the puppet masters, he's a dead man.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Tell them that you support Wikileaks and that you want answers about what the cables reveal the US Goverment is doing. That what the US is doing against Wikileaks in response to this is wrong and unAmerican. The response by the US Government is embarrassing.. it confirms that we really do all of these backhanded actions that the cables say.
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
the takedown of Wikileaks is a triumph of world government
You're confusing "world government" with a situation in which multiple governments around the world happen to have similar interests in being able to communicate, diplomatically, without every cable being broadcast by an attention whore with a poltical agenda. That's neither a conservative or liberal thing. It's a practical reality thing. Even diplomats who might side with Assange's politics are pissed at his willingness to burn the house down in order to get rid of a rat.
Nations have to be able to communicate with each other off the public record on some matters. Assange even seems to agree on this, but he thinks that he should be the one to decide on which matters, when, and between which parties. Finding that to be the unctuous, unilateral posturing that it is is neither a conservative thing nor a world government thing. It's common freakin' sense.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Former UK Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said WikiLeaks' actions were "verging on the criminal".
Since when do we arrest people for doing things that are almost illegal?
Why is it that whenever there is some sort of multi-national drama, suddenly the discussion gets shifted to "conservatives are mindless drones of some tinfoil hat New World Order," or "Fox News is partly to blame" or the likes? I seriously wish that Godwin's law could be modified to include the phrases "liberal media bias", "Fox News", "New World Order," sheeple," and "shill"
Everyone with any knowledge of history.
So you ever have candid conversations with coworkers, friends, your spouse and so on about other people? Conversations where you drop pretense, say what you really think, what you really mean. Do you find that these conversations are often beneficial? Now, would you still have that same kind of conversation if you know it would be given, verbatim, to the person(s) you were talking about?
There you go then.
As an example when we get a new student in at work, I've explained to them on various occasions when they were going to be dealing with someone who was an asshole, or someone who is incapable of following simple directions, and so on. I couldn't have those conversations if the person was listening in. I mean there isn't any way I could let a student know they are dealing with an asshole, no matter how diplomatic I was the asshole would get mad. It is important that I can have a candid conversation with the students about this, it makes them able to do their job more effectively. But I couldn't do it if I had to record my conversations and hand them over to the parties involved.
Also it appears that Assanage doesn't want to acknowledge this. He was asked a very good, pointed, question in regards to this (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/robertcolvile/100066669/is-julian-assange-a-coward-or-a-hypocrite/). Rather than provide a defense, give reasons why he feels that the good of his actions outweigh the harm, he just blows it off angrily because he doesn't like the question. Seems like he isn't willing to consider the consequences, the downside of his actions (all actions have a downside, everything has a cost).
I'm conservative and I fully realize this. Very large organizations are freezing or removing Assange's assets with a response time very unusual for large companies. To me, this points to extreme government pressure (like the acts mentioned in some of these cables). It's pretty obvious the rape charges were probably dug up from nowhere, and it's making a joke of interpol and national judicial systems. It's obvious that there is unprecedented government pressure to catch this guy either on a bogus technicality or through brute force that blatantly ignores international law. It does scare me that governments are willing to bypass justice at an international level when a real danger to politicians is present. I hold beliefs that not everyone agrees with, and I hope that there won't be a time when holding an unpopular believe gets me labeled as an "international threat to peace" not worthy of personal freedom.
However, with that said, I think Assange could have been much more careful about what he exposes to the public. Exposing information such as locations important to U.S. security is irresponsible, offers no real benefits, and just paints an easy target on the back of his head.
You should note that Wikileaks redacts their releases and gets advice from more mainstream sources on what to redact. If that's as fringe as crashing planes into buildings, I really don't want to hear your opinions on any news source. Most of these docs are innocuous in any case. "Tell us about President so-and-so" is what most of them end up being.
SSC
Governments, overall, are not innovative, and tend to make two mistakes. One to assume that the world still works as a zero sum game. With the advance of technology and the free market, this is no longer true. In spite of this governments still insist on using tools that assume the zero sum, such as war. Huge deficits have been built up over the past 10 years due to war expenditures at expense of the free market. Although private enterprises do thrive in war, these tend to be government proxies, such as Haliburton, rather than free agents.
The second thing governments do, which is more relavent to the current situation, is security through obscurity. At one time this was a reasonable endeavor, in our process oriented world it is not reasonable. Profit cannot be dependent on the arbitrage of knowing something a little before someone else knows it. Power cannot be maintained by simply keeping information from other people.
These are both pre-democracy pre-free-market ideals that are too long held by the elite. At most they want an ancient republic where only they hold power, and the majority is held hostage by the fact they do not have the secrets of power rather than a modern democracy where the freedom of information and commerce insure the most efficient use of resources so that the maximum number of people benifit.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's not technically Assange that decides what leaks. It's people with access to the data who leak. Some people are painting this as an attack on diplomacy itself, but it's not and can never be. Assange doesn't have magical powers to shut down diplomatic dialogue as he is merely the messenger, not the message.
The story of the cables is very simple. A young, idealistic and (yes) rather naive young private who had been told his entire life that the USA was the light and the good in the world joined the military. There, he found he had access to everything. What he discovered is story after story of abuse of power shielded by secrecy, abuses that disgusted him. We know this because he said so himself. He decided to do something about it, and did.
If all there'd been in this archive was an occasional rude diplomat do you really think it would have leaked at all? Probably not. Manning didn't seem like an unhinged anarchist to me. He seemed like somebody angry about what he read, somebody who correctly thought others would agree.
The easiest way to protect yourself from Wikileaks is to ensure your organization doesn't do anything worth leaking. Simple as that.
The silly part is that the prosecutors really went all out to push what flimsy case they had to the max... and came up with some weird interpretation of the law that says "having sex without a condom is illegal if you do not have the lady's consent signed in her own blood", or some such. A ridiculous, trumped up case even under Sweden's somewhat broad definition of rape/sexual assault. And for this he makes Interpol's most wanted list? Something smells awfully fishy....
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It'd be nice if Julian could WikiLeak his own sexual assault information. As far as I've seen he's said it's a frame job but admits having sex with two women. Why not just have this out in the open and not leave people worried that backing WikiLeaks is backing a rapist?
Put what "out into the open" exactly, his penis? Unless he video-taped that time he had sex there is nothing for him to leak. I doubt he has the prosecutor's documents; he and his lawyer didn't actually know the details of the accusation until the Nov. 18th hearing for the international warrant, and I find it hard that the prosecutor would suddenly become forthcoming about this information. He offered to cooperate while he was there but the charges were "withdrawn". The Swedish authorities said they've been "trying to contact Mr Assange, but have not yet been able to" while Wiki-Leaks says "No-one here has been contacted by Swedish police". This would be an easy charge for the police to refute if they had made efforts to contact Wiki-Leaks.
In short I don't think the burden of proof here is on Mr. Assange. I think the burden of proof is on the Swedish Police and INTERPOL to explain why an organization usually reserved for mass murders and other war criminals is suddenly issuing a "Red Notice" for a suspected rape case, even before the appeals process in Sweden is exhausted.