That the nations of the world are acting like states in a one world government.
Other than the fact that they're not, I guess, sure. Or are you referring to things like treaties, by which some nations agree on how to handle issues like reciprocal defense costs/operations or extradition? Otherwise, your analogy is absurd. The US states operate as a federation, under a constitution that they all ratified. They form a constitutional republic. The US and, say, Poland (or Sweden, etc) operate under no such common framework.
Or are you just refusing to believe that two different countries might each realize that having some grandstanding activist like Assange playing the extortionist with diplomatic cables is bad for each of them? You don't have to be part of the same government to arrive at the same conclusions.
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.
no smoking gun about... a fascist conspiracy to kill democracy
Though there is a lot of stuff in there about our interaction with places where non-democratic fascists are alive and well, and spilling the beans about those opposing them is not always particularly helpful.
I'd also point out that all the spying in the world has utterly failed to deal with things like organized crime
Really. So all of the organized crime types that are locked up in jail because of undercover operations would be better off (for all of us) out pushing more heroin, shaking down businesses, importing sex slaves, counterfeiting goods, running real estate scams and all the rest? And everybody who currently sends us tips about trucks full of illegal immigrants or contraband, they should be exposed to the people doing the crime? And people who are in witness protection programs... they should be Google-able so that their murderous former spouse or other associates can just look them up, since information wants to be free, blah blah blah? Give it a rest.
That is a flat out lie. WikiLeaks has redacted all names that are not well know or public figures. To say otherwise is to lie.
You are incorrect, and you'd know that if you bothered to read what's being released. They've specifically given away enough details to identify just the sort of person mentioned. Assange holds back a name, but is happy to point out that the person he's "protecting" with anonymmity is a UK-educated engineer from prominent Pre-Revolution Isfahan family who once owned a large factory in Iran and is a former national fencing champions of Iran, former president of the Iran Fencing
Association and former vice-presidents of an Azerbaijan sports association. Why, that could be any of millions of people, right? Way to go, Assange!
Provide some evidence that this assertion is warranted.
I see. You'd rather be pedantic than face reality. That's OK. Reality really doesn't care what you think about it. Unfortunately, if you vote while disconnected from reality, that does sometimes have some impact the people around you. That you're so unable to see how a government tasked with, for example, defending its borders might need to not broadcast to the people against whom it's guarding every little detail of how that work is done... never mind, you're trolling, obviously.
I'd like to see these assertions backed up by some reasoning and some observations.
Evidence: the existence of foreign espionage agencies and organized crime. Or... are you proposing that these things do not exist? Or that they do, but there's no point trying to deal with them? That there's no point keeping a covert eye on people who, for example, might want to derail a shipment of nuclear fuel, or perhaps blow up a van full of explosives at a tree lighting ceremony?
I'm sure secrecy is productive any government. But is it productive for democracy?
A government stripped of the ability to conduct the affairs required of it cannot protect the environment in which the democracy lives. People who want to own the democracy don't have to worry about being caught if every action of the agencies charged with enforcing the law are telegraphed in public. You want a democracy? It requires rule of law. Rule of law means being able to actually do something about people who break it, including dealing with sneaky ones that require the work of people like undercover cops.
If anything, it's this sort of clumsy propaganda effort that discredits our diplomats.
You obviously haven't been actually paying attention to the information that's coming out. This is public disclosure of cables from our own diplomats back to officials in the US, detailing - among other things - topics like how we're interacting with foreign governments as we conduct actions against terror cells, or what sort of cover a counter-terror operation is being given by another government. Or the identity of opposition figures in Iran's population. Glad you're so glib about it, though.
No. Non-public communication and record keeping is a necessary part of running a government. It's absolutely productive to point that out and recognize that it's true. The argument being passed around, here, is that nothing the government does should be out of instant, continual public reach. That's wrong in principle and in practice. It's not that I don't like how some frank discussions were revealed... it's that I don't like the contention that no diplomats should be allowed to have frank discussions at all. That bit of absurdity is so sophomoric that it has to treated as a troll.
Secrecy destroys the fundamental power of the people by hamstringing their AUTHORITY over the government.
The inability for government to secure some information leaves it unable to perform its duties. A government cannot protect its borders, deal with things like currency, ensure anonymous voting, or deal with criminals unless it can conduct some activities in a non-public or covert manner. A government can't hire police officers, counter-espionage people, or even a payroll clerk at a federal court building without being able to keep some records from being available to anyone with a web browser. You know this, but you're pretending it's not true.
And which of those secrets relate to tasks he has been officially elected to do?
What's your point? That people elected to do things like secure nuclear weapons or to move dissidents who've escaped from North Korea or to bust kiddie porn rings or to tend to health care records or bank information... shouldn't be allowed to secure information, but Julian Assange should?
A soldier with a conscience decided his government should fess up and released all the documents
Ah, so because you don't like how a particular combat event played out, you think it's appropriate for diplomats dealing with very difficult foreign governments to not be allowed to frankly discuss the situation with their co-workers, out of the public eye (and away from monitoring by the very government being discussed)? You don't think that an important protest and opposition figure in Iran should be able to retain his anonymity while discussing circumstances inside that regime's thugocracy, because... what, it's better he's dead at the hand of that government than that he rely on non-public communication with foreign diplomats and supporters? So glad you have the big picture, here.
Freedom of press is fine as long as the government likes it. Thanks for making that clear. Stalin is proud of you.
Ah, and so the secrets that were kept specifically in order to counter Stalin's villainy... that was naughty, too? The secrets necessary to allow a vicitim of Stalin's repression to escape from under his thumb, into the west, and to help combat Stalinism... just too bad, huh? Better to let Stalin kill another person than to use clandestine methods to help him live? No? OK, let's say that even you can imagine a situation where secrecy is necessary in order to do something important. There should be no consequences for someone who decides, unilaterally, to make that information available to Stalin? Are your ethics that situational?
no one is keeping a cache of documents for the purpose of blackmail, but for the purpose of their own security
Which is exactly why nations, including the US, keep secrets. For their own security. Your contention seems to be that only someone like Assange or the NYT, with a specific political agenda, has the moral fortitude to keep the right secrets, or to keep them for just the right length of time between very calculated, cash-motivated press releases.
Secret encryption codes. Secret cash flow to some of his editors. Secret travel plans. Secret negotiations with media outlets prior to making public announcements. Secret relationships with document thieves. Secret financial sponsors. You know, secret stuff.
There's nothing ironic about it. He's blackmailing out in the open, but it's still blackmail because only he and the targets of his blackmail know what's in the documents he's using for leverage. That's the "black" part of this. Threatening to disclose something secret in order to make somebody do something is a pretty well understood concept. Letting spectators know you're doing it is just a sign that the blackmailer is a raving attention hound... which, of course, Assange certainly is.
Being part of the free press, or being anyone who enjoys the protection of the first amendment, doesn't give you cover to work with a person who is illegally stealing and transferring classified documents. Period.
The NYT (and the other media operators) didn't get into a chat with the guy who stole the docs. Nor are they stashing a special encrypted cache of stolen docs which thehy are overtly using as blackmail leverage. These are completely different types of activities. Assange is not acting like a member of a free press. He's an ego-maniac with a specific political agenda who is directly soliciting illegal activity, and even offering help with legal costs for those that commit it. People who think he's being a jackass aren't totalitarians... Assange himself, on the other hand, is really enjoying his King For A Day power trip, and is so far removed from "press" to make it laughable when people use that term to describe him.
didn't the PS3 and Xbox 360 cost more to make at launch time than they were selling for? Maybe GM is on to something...
GM won't be selling the electricity that makes these vehicles useful, in the way that Sony and Microsoft make money off of the sale of what the PS3 and Xbox are actually all about: after the fact software and services. Once GM loses money by not charging enough to pay for the batteries they're using, that money is lost forever. This is all a PR stunt designed to make the use of tax dollars feel less capricious and (in the case of the way the GM bailout was crafted specifically to screw investors and to give huge paybacks to politically active labor unions) to provide political cover.
Bad analogies. Unlike phones (where there are companion services and licensing deals to sell), and unlike game consoles (where there is a huge, high-margin follow-up market in software and services), GM won't be selling the electricity that powers these cars. There is a structural defect in the price, and they know they can't sell them if they charge enough to pay for the batteries. This is, indeed, a political thing.
organizations which are widely considered to be evil
Yes, widely considered to be evil by people who widely consider ripping off copyright protected entertainment to be virtuous behavior. So, sure, I suppose that making their service a fraction of a degree less accomodating to content leeches might be considered Being Evil by those people. That's the thing about ethics. At some point you have to talk about what actually makes up the moral framework on which your ethical system is based. A moral framework that considers ripping off entertainment to be a good and noble thing to do is, of course, going to give rise to an ethical system that's at odds with many other people (especially the ones who actually create things).
irritants like someone else deciding what I may search for
Why are you so fussy about details? You obviously don't care that the move in question has absolutely nothing to do with what you can search for, doesn't impact search results, links, or anything else. So when you're entering a phrase that expressly means you're looking to leech some copyrighted content, you'll still get a nice, clean results page from Google. Relax.
just trying to get you from accidentally insinuating that the record companies are the creative force in the music industry
Most artists are terrible business people. Some of them, after a period of working in a given industry, start to "get" the underlying realities, and some of them form their own business entities in order to engage with that market in a way they think best. Many, many record labels are formed by artists that think they have a better angle on spotting future talent, a better recipe for producing recordings and promoting them, etc. And many of those artist-born labels do the sensible thing, and leverage larger associations to handle certain annoying tasks (like lobbying, or handling the logistics of annual trade shows and publications, or dealing with legal issues that impact all of them, and such).
The creative people and the labels aren't so far apart, and in many cases, the label IS a group of creative people who've formed a company intended to leverage their experience and creativity in a way that lets them grow in the business without having to do ALL of the creative work themselves. Some of them just want to give emerging fellow artists a different option, or better treatment. Regardless, I cited the labels in the way I did, on purpose. There are hundreds of busy small labels for every one large monster organization.
He's saying I said, "You are instead saying that young people in disputes with businesses deserve to be 'spanked.'"
When, of course, what I actually said (and you, also, are carefully avoiding it) is that people who leech entertainment are in no position to complain about getting called out on it. He knows I said that, and so do you, but you're both trying to pretend otherwise. Embarassing, for you, to try so hard to avoid the actual issue at hand, which is leeching copyrighted material.
Meaning you believe he does not have the perspective to form an opinion.
No, meaning that his opinion is incorrect, and seems to be based on a completely ridiculous understanding of reality. I'm encouraging him to form his opinion based on what it means to run a business like a recording studio, a label, etc., and not based on hipster anti-business groupthink, which makes it fashionable to bash The Man as and the people He works with actually go about creating the very products that are being leeched by the people that say they hate them. Too funny.
Slashdot Mirror
That the nations of the world are acting like states in a one world government.
Other than the fact that they're not, I guess, sure. Or are you referring to things like treaties, by which some nations agree on how to handle issues like reciprocal defense costs/operations or extradition? Otherwise, your analogy is absurd. The US states operate as a federation, under a constitution that they all ratified. They form a constitutional republic. The US and, say, Poland (or Sweden, etc) operate under no such common framework.
Or are you just refusing to believe that two different countries might each realize that having some grandstanding activist like Assange playing the extortionist with diplomatic cables is bad for each of them? You don't have to be part of the same government to arrive at the same conclusions.
Kind of like when the state governments in the U. S. happen to have similar interests in being able to communicate, right?
What's your point?
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.
no smoking gun about ... a fascist conspiracy to kill democracy
Though there is a lot of stuff in there about our interaction with places where non-democratic fascists are alive and well, and spilling the beans about those opposing them is not always particularly helpful.
And so your solution is to have Julian Assange decide which government activities should and should not be protected from global disclosure?
I'd also point out that all the spying in the world has utterly failed to deal with things like organized crime
... they should be Google-able so that their murderous former spouse or other associates can just look them up, since information wants to be free, blah blah blah? Give it a rest.
Really. So all of the organized crime types that are locked up in jail because of undercover operations would be better off (for all of us) out pushing more heroin, shaking down businesses, importing sex slaves, counterfeiting goods, running real estate scams and all the rest? And everybody who currently sends us tips about trucks full of illegal immigrants or contraband, they should be exposed to the people doing the crime? And people who are in witness protection programs
That is a flat out lie. WikiLeaks has redacted all names that are not well know or public figures. To say otherwise is to lie.
You are incorrect, and you'd know that if you bothered to read what's being released. They've specifically given away enough details to identify just the sort of person mentioned. Assange holds back a name, but is happy to point out that the person he's "protecting" with anonymmity is a UK-educated engineer from prominent Pre-Revolution Isfahan family who once owned a large factory in Iran and is a former national fencing champions of Iran, former president of the Iran Fencing Association and former vice-presidents of an Azerbaijan sports association. Why, that could be any of millions of people, right? Way to go, Assange!
Provide some evidence that this assertion is warranted.
... never mind, you're trolling, obviously.
I see. You'd rather be pedantic than face reality. That's OK. Reality really doesn't care what you think about it. Unfortunately, if you vote while disconnected from reality, that does sometimes have some impact the people around you. That you're so unable to see how a government tasked with, for example, defending its borders might need to not broadcast to the people against whom it's guarding every little detail of how that work is done
I'd like to see these assertions backed up by some reasoning and some observations.
... are you proposing that these things do not exist? Or that they do, but there's no point trying to deal with them? That there's no point keeping a covert eye on people who, for example, might want to derail a shipment of nuclear fuel, or perhaps blow up a van full of explosives at a tree lighting ceremony?
Evidence: the existence of foreign espionage agencies and organized crime. Or
I'm sure secrecy is productive any government. But is it productive for democracy?
A government stripped of the ability to conduct the affairs required of it cannot protect the environment in which the democracy lives. People who want to own the democracy don't have to worry about being caught if every action of the agencies charged with enforcing the law are telegraphed in public. You want a democracy? It requires rule of law. Rule of law means being able to actually do something about people who break it, including dealing with sneaky ones that require the work of people like undercover cops.
If anything, it's this sort of clumsy propaganda effort that discredits our diplomats.
You obviously haven't been actually paying attention to the information that's coming out. This is public disclosure of cables from our own diplomats back to officials in the US, detailing - among other things - topics like how we're interacting with foreign governments as we conduct actions against terror cells, or what sort of cover a counter-terror operation is being given by another government. Or the identity of opposition figures in Iran's population. Glad you're so glib about it, though.
No. Non-public communication and record keeping is a necessary part of running a government. It's absolutely productive to point that out and recognize that it's true. The argument being passed around, here, is that nothing the government does should be out of instant, continual public reach. That's wrong in principle and in practice. It's not that I don't like how some frank discussions were revealed ... it's that I don't like the contention that no diplomats should be allowed to have frank discussions at all. That bit of absurdity is so sophomoric that it has to treated as a troll.
Secrecy destroys the fundamental power of the people by hamstringing their AUTHORITY over the government.
The inability for government to secure some information leaves it unable to perform its duties. A government cannot protect its borders, deal with things like currency, ensure anonymous voting, or deal with criminals unless it can conduct some activities in a non-public or covert manner. A government can't hire police officers, counter-espionage people, or even a payroll clerk at a federal court building without being able to keep some records from being available to anyone with a web browser. You know this, but you're pretending it's not true.
And which of those secrets relate to tasks he has been officially elected to do?
... shouldn't be allowed to secure information, but Julian Assange should?
What's your point? That people elected to do things like secure nuclear weapons or to move dissidents who've escaped from North Korea or to bust kiddie porn rings or to tend to health care records or bank information
A soldier with a conscience decided his government should fess up and released all the documents
... what, it's better he's dead at the hand of that government than that he rely on non-public communication with foreign diplomats and supporters? So glad you have the big picture, here.
Ah, so because you don't like how a particular combat event played out, you think it's appropriate for diplomats dealing with very difficult foreign governments to not be allowed to frankly discuss the situation with their co-workers, out of the public eye (and away from monitoring by the very government being discussed)? You don't think that an important protest and opposition figure in Iran should be able to retain his anonymity while discussing circumstances inside that regime's thugocracy, because
Freedom of press is fine as long as the government likes it. Thanks for making that clear. Stalin is proud of you.
... that was naughty, too? The secrets necessary to allow a vicitim of Stalin's repression to escape from under his thumb, into the west, and to help combat Stalinism ... just too bad, huh? Better to let Stalin kill another person than to use clandestine methods to help him live? No? OK, let's say that even you can imagine a situation where secrecy is necessary in order to do something important. There should be no consequences for someone who decides, unilaterally, to make that information available to Stalin? Are your ethics that situational?
Ah, and so the secrets that were kept specifically in order to counter Stalin's villainy
no one is keeping a cache of documents for the purpose of blackmail, but for the purpose of their own security
Which is exactly why nations, including the US, keep secrets. For their own security. Your contention seems to be that only someone like Assange or the NYT, with a specific political agenda, has the moral fortitude to keep the right secrets, or to keep them for just the right length of time between very calculated, cash-motivated press releases.
Really? Which secrecy is that?
Secret encryption codes. Secret cash flow to some of his editors. Secret travel plans. Secret negotiations with media outlets prior to making public announcements. Secret relationships with document thieves. Secret financial sponsors. You know, secret stuff.
There's nothing ironic about it. He's blackmailing out in the open, but it's still blackmail because only he and the targets of his blackmail know what's in the documents he's using for leverage. That's the "black" part of this. Threatening to disclose something secret in order to make somebody do something is a pretty well understood concept. Letting spectators know you're doing it is just a sign that the blackmailer is a raving attention hound ... which, of course, Assange certainly is.
assault on the very concept of a free press
... Assange himself, on the other hand, is really enjoying his King For A Day power trip, and is so far removed from "press" to make it laughable when people use that term to describe him.
Being part of the free press, or being anyone who enjoys the protection of the first amendment, doesn't give you cover to work with a person who is illegally stealing and transferring classified documents. Period.
The NYT (and the other media operators) didn't get into a chat with the guy who stole the docs. Nor are they stashing a special encrypted cache of stolen docs which thehy are overtly using as blackmail leverage. These are completely different types of activities. Assange is not acting like a member of a free press. He's an ego-maniac with a specific political agenda who is directly soliciting illegal activity, and even offering help with legal costs for those that commit it. People who think he's being a jackass aren't totalitarians
didn't the PS3 and Xbox 360 cost more to make at launch time than they were selling for? Maybe GM is on to something...
GM won't be selling the electricity that makes these vehicles useful, in the way that Sony and Microsoft make money off of the sale of what the PS3 and Xbox are actually all about: after the fact software and services. Once GM loses money by not charging enough to pay for the batteries they're using, that money is lost forever. This is all a PR stunt designed to make the use of tax dollars feel less capricious and (in the case of the way the GM bailout was crafted specifically to screw investors and to give huge paybacks to politically active labor unions) to provide political cover.
Bad analogies. Unlike phones (where there are companion services and licensing deals to sell), and unlike game consoles (where there is a huge, high-margin follow-up market in software and services), GM won't be selling the electricity that powers these cars. There is a structural defect in the price, and they know they can't sell them if they charge enough to pay for the batteries. This is, indeed, a political thing.
organizations which are widely considered to be evil
Yes, widely considered to be evil by people who widely consider ripping off copyright protected entertainment to be virtuous behavior. So, sure, I suppose that making their service a fraction of a degree less accomodating to content leeches might be considered Being Evil by those people. That's the thing about ethics. At some point you have to talk about what actually makes up the moral framework on which your ethical system is based. A moral framework that considers ripping off entertainment to be a good and noble thing to do is, of course, going to give rise to an ethical system that's at odds with many other people (especially the ones who actually create things).
irritants like someone else deciding what I may search for
Why are you so fussy about details? You obviously don't care that the move in question has absolutely nothing to do with what you can search for, doesn't impact search results, links, or anything else. So when you're entering a phrase that expressly means you're looking to leech some copyrighted content, you'll still get a nice, clean results page from Google. Relax.
just trying to get you from accidentally insinuating that the record companies are the creative force in the music industry
Most artists are terrible business people. Some of them, after a period of working in a given industry, start to "get" the underlying realities, and some of them form their own business entities in order to engage with that market in a way they think best. Many, many record labels are formed by artists that think they have a better angle on spotting future talent, a better recipe for producing recordings and promoting them, etc. And many of those artist-born labels do the sensible thing, and leverage larger associations to handle certain annoying tasks (like lobbying, or handling the logistics of annual trade shows and publications, or dealing with legal issues that impact all of them, and such).
The creative people and the labels aren't so far apart, and in many cases, the label IS a group of creative people who've formed a company intended to leverage their experience and creativity in a way that lets them grow in the business without having to do ALL of the creative work themselves. Some of them just want to give emerging fellow artists a different option, or better treatment. Regardless, I cited the labels in the way I did, on purpose. There are hundreds of busy small labels for every one large monster organization.
He's saying I said, "You are instead saying that young people in disputes with businesses deserve to be 'spanked.'"
When, of course, what I actually said (and you, also, are carefully avoiding it) is that people who leech entertainment are in no position to complain about getting called out on it. He knows I said that, and so do you, but you're both trying to pretend otherwise. Embarassing, for you, to try so hard to avoid the actual issue at hand, which is leeching copyrighted material.
Meaning you believe he does not have the perspective to form an opinion.
No, meaning that his opinion is incorrect, and seems to be based on a completely ridiculous understanding of reality. I'm encouraging him to form his opinion based on what it means to run a business like a recording studio, a label, etc., and not based on hipster anti-business groupthink, which makes it fashionable to bash The Man as and the people He works with actually go about creating the very products that are being leeched by the people that say they hate them. Too funny.