No, I'm "acting" as if they don't always have all of the facts they'd like to have about all of the people they'd like to shut down when they rig their next election.
they're privy to all the data in and out of their country
Many of the people who support the Iranina opposition live outside of that country, and are in communication with the diplomats of other countries in the expectation that the Iranina government won't end up in possession of what they've had to say. You know, so that when they funnel support into that country, it's less likely that the people with whom they're working won't be strung up for opposing the Mullahs. You can't really be this clueless, can you?
How dare you tell someone they can't call out unethical behavior and instead have to "vote with their dollars" on the free market?
What a fine, fine straw man you've built, there! Excellent craftsmanship. I especially like your use of the phrase "how dare you" - that's a classy touch. When you're lying, and pretending that someone said something they didn't, you might even win over a couple of fellow morons by using that sort of sniffing, unctuous tone. Well done!
Undercover cops and witness protection programs are tools of the lazy and the weak. We enforced the law long before these concepts were invented and could continue to do so without them.
Ah, the good ol' days, when we waited for organized, serial-crime-committing-organizations to commit yet another crims, and then lashed out with a posse and a mass lynching because we were pretty sure we had the right guys, and what the heck, stringing up half a dozen guys who look guilty is a good deterrent anyway, right?
Do you know any history at all? Covert agents, working to enforce the law, go back thousands of years. Why? Because criminals are sneaky, and organized criminals are often even better at it. And when you think that an organization with a history of committing crimes is going to commit another one, you want to prevent it from doing so, and figure out who all the players - not just the foot soldiers you catch in the act - are.
Or what of protecting people who testify by successfully jailing all those criminal elements who seek to do them harm?
And you were planning on doing this how, exactly, without knowing in advancec who all of those people are, where they operate, how they move themselves and their resources around specifically to evade capture, etc? Reality doesn't want to comply with your tidy solution.
Relying on secrets to keep these things safe is the same as putting a password on a stick note. Just plain stupid.
By your logic, that means that there should be no passwords, just like there should be no encryption and no un-announced health inspections, or un-announced movements of nuclean materials. Just line a few hundred miles of roadways with thousands of troops! A much better idea, no question.
the need for undercover cops is because we have vice crimes
You mean, vice crimes like car theft rings, extortion operations, embezzlement, insurance fraud via arson, currency counterfeiting, militant terror cell operations, election fraud, industrial espionage, murder for hire... stuff like that? Yeah, if we just decided, as a culture, that those things actually weren't bad, then we could just let them happen naturally like they should, and everyone would be happy. I think you have a great plan, there. Tell us more!
Several news organizations have access to all cables, and decide themselves what to release and when. That's why your post was false.
So, you're saying that Assange's specific, deliberate decision to provide the stolen documents to publishers means he has no hand in it? That the leaks he publishes on WikiLeaks aren't something that the people at WikiLeaks decide to publish?
I'm curious as to what you believe that will accomplish
Accomplish? It's what I want to counter-accomplish. Assange has accomplished the building of a reputation with certain people as a heroic, all-knowing vetter of government activities as being worthy of disclosure or not. I'm pointing out that that reputation is a fiction, and that he's more interested in his public persona than he is in the consequences of his actions.
Assange is completely coy about this. Oh, so careful to redact names! But how many sources for intelligence about Iran and the protest movements there are (per Assange's deliberately leaked documents) British-educated engineers from a prominent pre-revolution Isfahan family that owned a large Iranian factory and were once Iranian national fencing champion and former president of the Iran Fencing Association, and former vice-president of an Azerbaijan sports association? The Iranian regime may be medieval about some things, but even they can put two and two together with information like that. Thanks, Julian!
I don't. I used these specific examples because they were in one of the early releases of the diplomatic cables that Assange decided to publish. If I wanted to make something up, it would have been different.
Stolen embassy cables identifying a key Iranian political protest organizer? Check! Released by Assange.
Stolen embassy cables detailing arrangements made to fight AQ in Yemen? Check! Released by Assange.
Details on Wikileaks' funding, and their choices of how and when to compensate people who work with them? Check! Kept secret, by Assange.
What would be your motivation?
I think the better question would be, what's your motivation for pretending those things aren't true?
Ah. So, the identity of an undercover cop who is working to bust up an organized crime operation - that should be public, right? The location and identity of people in witness protection programs - definitely public need-to-know, right?
The timing and routes of shipments of nuclear materials - definitely something that should be easily Googled in advance, right? Encryption keys used to secure communications by South Korea as they coordinate their efforts to be ready in case North Korea tries to sink another of their ships... absolutely no need to keep any of that secret, obviously?
The government employment records, including household/family details, of the people who work with everything from smallpox to anthrax in NIH, NIST, military, CDC, and related labs? Definitely something that should be run past Julian Assange, for his personal decision on whether it should be public, right? The number of, and location of each shipment in the nation's strategic bauxite reserve system, and the purchase plans that foreign commodity manipulators would love to know? Definitely something that should be published overseas right before checks are written, right?
Yes. Greenwald is a huge, agenda-driven, axe-grinding hypocrite on this entire topic. He wants to have it both ways, but only when and how he sees fit. Just like Assange.
True. It's important that when Assange decides it's a good idea to reveal the identity of an important Iranian political protester, that the Mullahs' regime gets plenty of undistracted time to round up him and his family. Yes, Assange has been the very picture of thoughtfulness as he participates in the dissemination of such constructive information. It's so nice to know that an attention-whoring weasle like himself is the arbitor of what should be secret (like how is organization pays people, and how it provides server space to people like Manning during the theft of a quarter million documents) and what should not be (like the methods used to combat organizations that like to burn teachers alive for the intolerable sin of teaching girls to read).
If you think that the innovation that hires people, increases standards of living, enables previously impossible forms of communication, and which trickles into everything from medical care to energy production is "away from people's needs and interests," then you're... an idiot. I know it truly, truly bothers you that it's possible for someone to actually earn a living while doing something that other people want and need without doing so under the benevolent direction of someone like yourself, but... get over it. While you're wringing your hands over a business's need to generate the income that employs its staff, pays for its bandwidth, etc., they're actually out there doing things. And if you don't like them, it doesn't cost you anything... as opposed to what you seem to prefer: that they follow your personal editorial direction, instead of those that dedicate some of their own resources (money) in supporting Wired's editorial stance. You've already chosen not to do business with them. Great. Who have you chosen to pay to write things for you? Why aren't you talking about them, instead?
if it's a state secret it probably should be released
If this is your take on it, you're a lost cause. You cannot run counter-intelligence, diplomatic missions, counter-terror operations, law enforcement, nuclear power plants, and a lot of other things without the ability to keep some documents out of the hands of bad actors. Your contention that there probably should be no state secrets shows you to be either a juvenile troll, or a completely naive person who should wait a few years, talk to a lot more people, and think things through before yammering on topics about which you're clearly clueless.
Except that the article linked to is a debunked distortion that deliberately mis-interprets the military's use of the word "exercise," deliberately ignores the fact that Manning is allowed to interact with others, and that the scope of his case (involving a quarter million stolen documents) makes it impossible to have already prepped a prosecution and defense - hence the time elapsed. That article's characterization of his detention is a highly politicized, agenda-driven bit of axe grinding.
While the Congress, which appropriates all funds and controls all military spending, was being run by Democrats. Get your facts straight before you lecture someone else.
leaving the war veterans/servicemen untended in military hospitals by cutting budgets for them
Republicans have no authority over those budget items. That's entirely in the hands of the Democrats in congress. Happily, that's going to (partly) change next year. But that still leaves Harry Reid in charge of that agenda in Senate, as he has been for years. Only he can control whether or not those budgets go up or down.
i wont even bother detailing
Obviously, because then you'd have to deal in facts. Which I can understand you're hesitant to do, because then you'd have to explain the actions of the party that's actually in control of the legislature, and has been for years.
Since most business owners who do most of the hiring are small to medium business owners
According to the current administration and the party in charge of both houses of congress, people making over $250k are the rich ones who aren't paying enough taxes.
tax... the ultra-rich more
The top 10% of earners in the country already pay 70% of all of the income taxes. The top 1% are paying more than half of that.
And government food stamp programs, for example, were more effective 50 years ago.
Being on food stamps is your idea of things being better?
I think the evidence is pretty solidly on the side of things being better for the majority when marginal tax rates are high.
Not only is that a grotesque case of confusing correlation with causation, it also ignores the fact that standards of living are up for everyone.
Regardless, how will taxing a business owner more cause him to spend more money, hire more people, and - most importantly - result in people who already pay no income tax paying less income tax? Which "things" were better for a poor person fifty years ago?
Not in the least. You find it to be at odds with their world view because you imagine them to be cartoon villains and are projecting your own simplistic hatred into your vision of how they think. You're deliberately setting up a straw man to hate, here. So, there's really no point in fussing with you on the details, since you're not actually thinking about the facts.
In what way is asking for the Democrats to be specific about who is going to benefit from a vague, randomly-priced benefits package in any way at odds with conservative thinking or routine public policy positions?
no. what they have opposed, was something that would benefit the people who have been at the forefront of their much-touted 'war on terror'.
No, not "the people" but "some people" - with an undisclosed spending plan and no direct mention of how the money is to be raised or handled.
this is not whether the budget is 11 bil, or this or that
Which is exactly why the country is nearly bankrupt. There's no way to do right by any public sector employee if you can no longer even employ them. That's where we're headed, right now. Greece. Ireland. Portugol. Why? Because people like you think it's not important how much is spent, or who arrived at the magic number, or from which generation the money will be borrowed at what cost. Would YOU support a bill that didn't address any of those issues? Why would you?
just like how someone serving in actual front
Every firefighter signs up for this possibility. Soldiers get combat pay when they're deployed into a combat zone. We make no such distinctions when people are working here in the states, as firefighters. If you think that being ready to deal with emergencies created by people blowing up stuff in domestic situations is the same as combat pay, then why aren't you proposing that all first responders (any of whom may indeed face that situation) are covered by such a bill?
Why aren't the local firefighters in DC, Maryland, and Virginia who responded to the wreckage at the Pentagon on the list? Because it's a capricious bill that isn't well thought out, and that's why it was opposed as written. Of course, you know that, and you're still playing cheap politics.
Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, expressly called for a net-oriented "fairness doctrine" that would require web sites posting opinions to link to opposing opinions. He was, of course, derided by the right for this, and he's backed away, speaking now in more vague terms about it, to avoid being directly quotable. He knows it's offensive on the face of it. On the other hand...
Obama's "diversity czar" at the FCC has (along with even-handed, thoughtful gems like, "White people need to be forced to step down so someone else can have power" and his gushing praise for Hugo Chavez's handling - read: nationalization and government programming - of media in Venezuela) said that he finds the Fairness Doctrine, as it was used previously, to have gone not nearly far enough in having hard and fast rules about the content of communication.
Who would be left to work factory jobs in abject conditions for minimum wage (or worse)?
Right, because the economic pie is of a permanently fixed size, and the right knows that only by keeping other people from having things, can they hang onto their own wealth.
No, that's how the left sees things. They can't fathom that business owners make more money when more people are making more money to spend. Instead, they think that the only way for a person who doesn't make much to get more is to take it from someone else. You couldn't have it more backwards. The left is all about people "getting" what they want, as opposed to creating what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
You act as if Iran is stupid.
No, I'm "acting" as if they don't always have all of the facts they'd like to have about all of the people they'd like to shut down when they rig their next election.
they're privy to all the data in and out of their country
Many of the people who support the Iranina opposition live outside of that country, and are in communication with the diplomats of other countries in the expectation that the Iranina government won't end up in possession of what they've had to say. You know, so that when they funnel support into that country, it's less likely that the people with whom they're working won't be strung up for opposing the Mullahs. You can't really be this clueless, can you?
How dare you tell someone they can't call out unethical behavior and instead have to "vote with their dollars" on the free market?
What a fine, fine straw man you've built, there! Excellent craftsmanship. I especially like your use of the phrase "how dare you" - that's a classy touch. When you're lying, and pretending that someone said something they didn't, you might even win over a couple of fellow morons by using that sort of sniffing, unctuous tone. Well done!
Undercover cops and witness protection programs are tools of the lazy and the weak. We enforced the law long before these concepts were invented and could continue to do so without them.
Ah, the good ol' days, when we waited for organized, serial-crime-committing-organizations to commit yet another crims, and then lashed out with a posse and a mass lynching because we were pretty sure we had the right guys, and what the heck, stringing up half a dozen guys who look guilty is a good deterrent anyway, right?
Do you know any history at all? Covert agents, working to enforce the law, go back thousands of years. Why? Because criminals are sneaky, and organized criminals are often even better at it. And when you think that an organization with a history of committing crimes is going to commit another one, you want to prevent it from doing so, and figure out who all the players - not just the foot soldiers you catch in the act - are.
Or what of protecting people who testify by successfully jailing all those criminal elements who seek to do them harm?
And you were planning on doing this how, exactly, without knowing in advancec who all of those people are, where they operate, how they move themselves and their resources around specifically to evade capture, etc? Reality doesn't want to comply with your tidy solution.
Relying on secrets to keep these things safe is the same as putting a password on a stick note. Just plain stupid.
By your logic, that means that there should be no passwords, just like there should be no encryption and no un-announced health inspections, or un-announced movements of nuclean materials. Just line a few hundred miles of roadways with thousands of troops! A much better idea, no question.
the need for undercover cops is because we have vice crimes
... stuff like that? Yeah, if we just decided, as a culture, that those things actually weren't bad, then we could just let them happen naturally like they should, and everyone would be happy. I think you have a great plan, there. Tell us more!
You mean, vice crimes like car theft rings, extortion operations, embezzlement, insurance fraud via arson, currency counterfeiting, militant terror cell operations, election fraud, industrial espionage, murder for hire
I know it's hard concept to grasp, but try to make distinction between a law-enforcement agency and a government "business".
Are you actually clear on the fact that law enforcement is a goverment activity?
Several news organizations have access to all cables, and decide themselves what to release and when. That's why your post was false.
So, you're saying that Assange's specific, deliberate decision to provide the stolen documents to publishers means he has no hand in it? That the leaks he publishes on WikiLeaks aren't something that the people at WikiLeaks decide to publish?
I'm curious as to what you believe that will accomplish
Accomplish? It's what I want to counter-accomplish. Assange has accomplished the building of a reputation with certain people as a heroic, all-knowing vetter of government activities as being worthy of disclosure or not. I'm pointing out that that reputation is a fiction, and that he's more interested in his public persona than he is in the consequences of his actions.
Assange is completely coy about this. Oh, so careful to redact names! But how many sources for intelligence about Iran and the protest movements there are (per Assange's deliberately leaked documents) British-educated engineers from a prominent pre-revolution Isfahan family that owned a large Iranian factory and were once Iranian national fencing champion and former president of the Iran Fencing Association, and former vice-president of an Azerbaijan sports association? The Iranian regime may be medieval about some things, but even they can put two and two together with information like that. Thanks, Julian!
I'm curious. Why do you post lies?
I don't. I used these specific examples because they were in one of the early releases of the diplomatic cables that Assange decided to publish. If I wanted to make something up, it would have been different.
Stolen embassy cables identifying a key Iranian political protest organizer? Check! Released by Assange.
Stolen embassy cables detailing arrangements made to fight AQ in Yemen? Check! Released by Assange.
Details on Wikileaks' funding, and their choices of how and when to compensate people who work with them? Check! Kept secret, by Assange.
What would be your motivation?
I think the better question would be, what's your motivation for pretending those things aren't true?
Governments don't need secrets to operate
... absolutely no need to keep any of that secret, obviously?
Ah. So, the identity of an undercover cop who is working to bust up an organized crime operation - that should be public, right? The location and identity of people in witness protection programs - definitely public need-to-know, right?
The timing and routes of shipments of nuclear materials - definitely something that should be easily Googled in advance, right? Encryption keys used to secure communications by South Korea as they coordinate their efforts to be ready in case North Korea tries to sink another of their ships
The government employment records, including household/family details, of the people who work with everything from smallpox to anthrax in NIH, NIST, military, CDC, and related labs? Definitely something that should be run past Julian Assange, for his personal decision on whether it should be public, right? The number of, and location of each shipment in the nation's strategic bauxite reserve system, and the purchase plans that foreign commodity manipulators would love to know? Definitely something that should be published overseas right before checks are written, right?
Yes. Greenwald is a huge, agenda-driven, axe-grinding hypocrite on this entire topic. He wants to have it both ways, but only when and how he sees fit. Just like Assange.
individual atrocities don't get enough attention
True. It's important that when Assange decides it's a good idea to reveal the identity of an important Iranian political protester, that the Mullahs' regime gets plenty of undistracted time to round up him and his family. Yes, Assange has been the very picture of thoughtfulness as he participates in the dissemination of such constructive information. It's so nice to know that an attention-whoring weasle like himself is the arbitor of what should be secret (like how is organization pays people, and how it provides server space to people like Manning during the theft of a quarter million documents) and what should not be (like the methods used to combat organizations that like to burn teachers alive for the intolerable sin of teaching girls to read).
away from people's needs and interests
... an idiot. I know it truly, truly bothers you that it's possible for someone to actually earn a living while doing something that other people want and need without doing so under the benevolent direction of someone like yourself, but ... get over it. While you're wringing your hands over a business's need to generate the income that employs its staff, pays for its bandwidth, etc., they're actually out there doing things. And if you don't like them, it doesn't cost you anything ... as opposed to what you seem to prefer: that they follow your personal editorial direction, instead of those that dedicate some of their own resources (money) in supporting Wired's editorial stance. You've already chosen not to do business with them. Great. Who have you chosen to pay to write things for you? Why aren't you talking about them, instead?
If you think that the innovation that hires people, increases standards of living, enables previously impossible forms of communication, and which trickles into everything from medical care to energy production is "away from people's needs and interests," then you're
if it's a state secret it probably should be released
If this is your take on it, you're a lost cause. You cannot run counter-intelligence, diplomatic missions, counter-terror operations, law enforcement, nuclear power plants, and a lot of other things without the ability to keep some documents out of the hands of bad actors. Your contention that there probably should be no state secrets shows you to be either a juvenile troll, or a completely naive person who should wait a few years, talk to a lot more people, and think things through before yammering on topics about which you're clearly clueless.
Except that the article linked to is a debunked distortion that deliberately mis-interprets the military's use of the word "exercise," deliberately ignores the fact that Manning is allowed to interact with others, and that the scope of his case (involving a quarter million stolen documents) makes it impossible to have already prepped a prosecution and defense - hence the time elapsed. That article's characterization of his detention is a highly politicized, agenda-driven bit of axe grinding.
The evidence suggests that Wired and/or their journalist staff do not have an absolute policy of protecting their sources.
Right. Because being journalists doesn't relieve them of the complications and obligations that with knowing things about a crime.
except that it happened on republican term
While the Congress, which appropriates all funds and controls all military spending, was being run by Democrats. Get your facts straight before you lecture someone else.
leaving the war veterans/servicemen untended in military hospitals by cutting budgets for them
Republicans have no authority over those budget items. That's entirely in the hands of the Democrats in congress. Happily, that's going to (partly) change next year. But that still leaves Harry Reid in charge of that agenda in Senate, as he has been for years. Only he can control whether or not those budgets go up or down.
i wont even bother detailing
Obviously, because then you'd have to deal in facts. Which I can understand you're hesitant to do, because then you'd have to explain the actions of the party that's actually in control of the legislature, and has been for years.
Since most business owners who do most of the hiring are small to medium business owners
... the ultra-rich more
According to the current administration and the party in charge of both houses of congress, people making over $250k are the rich ones who aren't paying enough taxes.
tax
The top 10% of earners in the country already pay 70% of all of the income taxes. The top 1% are paying more than half of that.
And government food stamp programs, for example, were more effective 50 years ago.
Being on food stamps is your idea of things being better?
I think the evidence is pretty solidly on the side of things being better for the majority when marginal tax rates are high.
Not only is that a grotesque case of confusing correlation with causation, it also ignores the fact that standards of living are up for everyone.
Regardless, how will taxing a business owner more cause him to spend more money, hire more people, and - most importantly - result in people who already pay no income tax paying less income tax? Which "things" were better for a poor person fifty years ago?
they have contradicted THEIR OWN RHETORIC
Not in the least. You find it to be at odds with their world view because you imagine them to be cartoon villains and are projecting your own simplistic hatred into your vision of how they think. You're deliberately setting up a straw man to hate, here. So, there's really no point in fussing with you on the details, since you're not actually thinking about the facts.
In what way is asking for the Democrats to be specific about who is going to benefit from a vague, randomly-priced benefits package in any way at odds with conservative thinking or routine public policy positions?
So either theres a superduper left wing conspiracy that is REALLY BAD at what it does
Actually, that sums it up very well.
Several people on this thread have already done so, multiple times.
no. what they have opposed, was something that would benefit the people who have been at the forefront of their much-touted 'war on terror'.
No, not "the people" but "some people" - with an undisclosed spending plan and no direct mention of how the money is to be raised or handled.
this is not whether the budget is 11 bil, or this or that
Which is exactly why the country is nearly bankrupt. There's no way to do right by any public sector employee if you can no longer even employ them. That's where we're headed, right now. Greece. Ireland. Portugol. Why? Because people like you think it's not important how much is spent, or who arrived at the magic number, or from which generation the money will be borrowed at what cost. Would YOU support a bill that didn't address any of those issues? Why would you?
just like how someone serving in actual front
Every firefighter signs up for this possibility. Soldiers get combat pay when they're deployed into a combat zone. We make no such distinctions when people are working here in the states, as firefighters. If you think that being ready to deal with emergencies created by people blowing up stuff in domestic situations is the same as combat pay, then why aren't you proposing that all first responders (any of whom may indeed face that situation) are covered by such a bill?
Why aren't the local firefighters in DC, Maryland, and Virginia who responded to the wreckage at the Pentagon on the list? Because it's a capricious bill that isn't well thought out, and that's why it was opposed as written. Of course, you know that, and you're still playing cheap politics.
Cite
Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, expressly called for a net-oriented "fairness doctrine" that would require web sites posting opinions to link to opposing opinions. He was, of course, derided by the right for this, and he's backed away, speaking now in more vague terms about it, to avoid being directly quotable. He knows it's offensive on the face of it. On the other hand...
Obama's "diversity czar" at the FCC has (along with even-handed, thoughtful gems like, "White people need to be forced to step down so someone else can have power" and his gushing praise for Hugo Chavez's handling - read: nationalization and government programming - of media in Venezuela) said that he finds the Fairness Doctrine, as it was used previously, to have gone not nearly far enough in having hard and fast rules about the content of communication.
Who would be left to work factory jobs in abject conditions for minimum wage (or worse)?
Right, because the economic pie is of a permanently fixed size, and the right knows that only by keeping other people from having things, can they hang onto their own wealth.
No, that's how the left sees things. They can't fathom that business owners make more money when more people are making more money to spend. Instead, they think that the only way for a person who doesn't make much to get more is to take it from someone else. You couldn't have it more backwards. The left is all about people "getting" what they want, as opposed to creating what they want.