I really don't know whether they a) harbor terrorists b) are evil.
Perhaps you should do some basic reading about the Taliban's view of human rights, their treatment of women, their view of corporal and capital punishment and the crimes for which these punishments may legitimately be given, and their views on education and the role of women in society.
Anybody who can, in 2010, say that they "don't know" if the Taliban are evil is engaging in willful ignorance - it is not as if there is a lack of information available that you can use to judge for yourself. If you've reviewed the available information and concluded that they are not evil, that's your choice, and I'd disagree with that conclusion. But to say "I don't know" just smacks of laziness.
Want to know why I don't care that I can't load flash content on my iPhone?
Because I can't think of a single site I visit regularly that does not work just fine, and I can think of numerous occasions where Flash has crashed my browser (or I've received the "Flash has barfed!" popup) - usually from an advertisement - on both Windows and Mac OS X. That behavior prompted me to run FlashBlock in my browsers on both Windows & Mac OS, incidentally.
While you don't like having the choice taken away, there are a lot of people for whom losing Flash isn't a big deal, or is actually a positive thing... iOS devices might not be right for you.
Unless they take so long to get it working well that everybody ends up using the term "Flash" as a geeky punchline.
Given the high profile nature of the debate over Flash, that Adobe released something that performs this poorly is really pretty bad, they're simply underlining Apple's points. It'd be nice if it had "time to mature," but if the overwhelming experience of using Flash on mobile devices starts driving users away while Adobe is "maturing" Flash, there won't be any point in continuing it's development for mobile platforms, because in the meantime, designers will have found something else to fill the niche, and right now, that "something else" mostly looks like HTML5, or native apps for each device.
So yes, they are attempting to have us believe that 'some one else' at least will be responsible for the deaths of these informants.
Yes, you're definitely confused about what a false flag operation means, and why it doesn't apply to the scenario you're describing. False flag requires secrecy on the part of the entity who engages in the operation, allowing them to create the belief in the public that another entity (government, government agency, the illuminati, whoever) actually performed the operation in question.
The Pentagon saying that "The Taliban" killed these people because "Julian Assange" leaked their names lacks the element of subterfuge and misdirection required for it to be a false flag - a false flag operation would require the Pentagon to put people in Taliban uniforms and send those people to go kill the informants themselves, and then if they really wanted to be good, arrange for video from a Predator showing those "Taliban" guys getting shredded by a bomb, but miraculously, notes from the Wikileaks entry survived incineration - thus "proving" to the public that, a) the Taliban did it; b) Assange helped them by identifying ; and c) they're the good guys because they killed the people who killed informants.
That's false flag. Simply accusing someone of an act without evidence isn't. Accusing someone of something when "BobMcD don't believe it for a second!" isn't, either. There's a difference.
You're doing it again.
Doing what again, Bob? Asking you to stop being a hypocrite? Guilty as charged. I'd love for you to simply say on the record that if Assange is going to make accusations of crimes being committed, he should be held to the exact same standard as anybody else - namely, that he should provide some supporting evidence for his accusations, or be criticized as a sensationalist media manipulator for making baseless accusations.
Did you likewise miss how our own money was used to attack NATO forces? Isn't abetting terrorism on the list of 'bad things' to do?
And the particular civilian deaths would have to be *shown* to be a war crime, not just "unreported," because there is nothing in the Geneva conventions that says the death has to be reported. If there is evidence that any of these deaths was in fact criminal, i.e., they violated the laws of war, not just your sense of propriety about what "acceptable" levels of collateral damage are, then you need to cite that data, not just say "underreporting is a crime." Because it's not.
This is yet another tangent that I'm sorry I brought up, but if you feel there were genuinely no revelations in the data, then I have to begin to be suspicious of your motives. You've ruled out 'discussion' a while back.
Bob, I've been trying to discuss with you this entire time. You have been - figuratively - putting your fingers in your ears and humming in response. If it makes you feel better to believe that I'm immune to reason, that's your deal, not mine. You have not presented anything but speculation and opinion, and maintained that your speculation and opinion should be given the weight of facts. Again, that's your deal.
Yes, Bob, I explicity veered off that topic in my first post - that should have been a clue that the point was tangential to the original statement.
wherein Assange's 'disappearance off the radar' is not warranted, and yet the allegation of harm is.
I don't know how you're interpreting statements I've made to be the *exact opposite* of their stated meaning. But you keep doing it. It's almost as if you are intentionally being intellectually dishonest.
I've already pointed out how that allegation isn't relevant to me, mostly because I believe the point is a false-flag and also because the data should be in the public eye where we can decide for ourselves.
You are hopelessly confused.
False flag operations are designed to convince "the public" that "some other entity" was responsible for the operation in question. For example: if the CIA had actually blown up the World Trade Center, and had fabricated evidence that pointed to the Canadian military as the culprits: that is a false flag operation.
Are you asking us to believe that Mr. Assange is working with the CIA to make us believe "someone else" is responsible for the war crimes? Or is "false flag" your self-comforting way of saying "I can believe anything I want without any proof of anything, because I have these prejudices and biases?" It's nice that his allegations are "irrelevant" to you, but the truth of them is not irrelevant to Mr. Assange's credibility: if you make an accusation, and it turns out to be false, that's generally considered to be bad form, and somebody who's in the habit of doing this sort of thing certainly loses a lot of credibility and starts looking like a standard conspiracy theorist nutjob.
Assange has made allegations. He has provided no concrete evidence to support those allegations, just an additional assertion that the data that he is leaking "contains" that evidence. He should be greeted with a "[CITATION NEEDED]" just as firmly as the GP poster you responded to was in response to his allegations that Assange was getting people killed.
Now if you feel proof is absolutely necessary to criticize Mr. Assange, but that Mr. Assange needs no proof to accuse others of war crimes, then that's fine - we can then agree that you're a hypocrite, and move on from your willful dishonesty. If you're not a hypocrite, then you must agree that Mr. Assange should be held to the same standard posters on slashdot are expected to adhere to - namely, that when you make an allegation, you should expect to be called out on it unless you have some evidence to back up your allegation.
There really is no third alternative here, unless you can point out for me the specific entries in this data that Mr. Assange has cited for us that contain the evidence for his war crime allegations. I'll grant that it's *possible* I missed them in a news cycle, but it's not likely, as I do follow the news rather closely. (But, if you can provide even a single citation that Mr. Assange has given, I'll even gladly concede that I was mistaken!)
You are arguing as if there are only two possible positions that can be held here:
-- Assange needs to back up his allegation;
-- Assange should be able to release this data;
These two positions are, in fact, two mutually-compatible positions in response to two completely orthogonal questions: 1) Should he have to back up accusations with proof? If so, why? If not, why not? 2) Should he be able to release this data? If so, why? If not, why not?
As you apparently have failed to notice, the answers to these questions can actually vary quite a bit, and have a lot of nuance and complexity to them, but answering one does not make the answer to the second a foregone conclusion. In saying that he should have to provide evidence to support his accusations, I AM NOT also saying "and he shouldn't be allowed to release this data" - no matter how hard you might wish that I've said that, I have not.
I've never said that he shouldn't be allowed to release it, and in fact, if you bother reading what I've written here, you'll see that I actually agreed implicitly that he DOES have the right to release it: "He shouldn't have rushed to release it, and done a better job of review & redaction before release." Key words: before release.
So, I think we're down to a single disagreement, wherein you feel I've said something that I have explicitly not said, and I feel that you're acting like a raving lunatic for insisting I've said it when I've pointed out repeatedly that I have NOT said it.
Holding Wikileaks to a higher standard than any other non-court entity isn't intellectually honest.
I fail to see how this is asking them to behave to a "higher standard" than any other non-court entity. You are either completely mischaracterizing what I'm saying, or deliberately ignoring it.
Mr. Assange is making accusations. He is providing, as "evidence," a data dump which he *claims* supports his accusation. When asked for specific details on what parts support his accusations, he hasn't provided any, and has basically said that it's up to "the world" to find his evidence for him.
So how, specifically, is asking him to either provide evidence to substantiate his allegations, or admit that he has no proof for his allegations, and that he's just speculating about the data he's releasing "holding him to a higher standard"? We are being told that this data contains evidence of widespread and persistent war crimes. And yet nobody making that accusation can provide a single example? Where I come from, that's called "talking out your ass", and people lose credibility for doing that.
If I made a claim (like original-GP poster did), that Assange has caused deaths, I would be challenged to provide evidence of that, and rightfully so. But when Assange makes a claim that war crimes are being committed, he is somehow held to be above the petty needs of "showing evidence"?
I am NOT saying he shouldn't be allowed to release this data, and I've never suggested that. I am saying: 1) He shouldn't have rushed to release it, and done a better job of review & redaction before release; 2) If he's going to editorialize about the content of the data, he should have some evidence FROM that data to back himself up;
...and you are taking a flippant phrase and trying to leverage it into a change of subject. Use whatever words you'd like in place of those, the point is unchanged.
Once again: You are putting words in my mouth. I fully understood that your 'flippant phrase' was not intended to represent my specific word choice. The problem is, "any other words i'd like in place of those" doesn't characterize even the spirit of what I said, much less the letter, unless you want to make the logical leap that "I never said Assange should be punished" means "I said Assange should be punished."
Attribute whatever words you like in there, but please make sure I actually said them, at least in spirit, if not in letter, before you attribute them *to me*. I'm sorry you think that my objection to your use of a straw man is "changing the subject" - perhaps you'd like to go debate with somebody who *actually* holds the position which you've suggested is my belief.
This would be the point of posting it. Don't ask me, go and see for yourself. Again, the material itself is available to anyone. Go, then, and make your specific case against it. Prove that everything inside is innocuous. You HAVE the data. All that's stopping you from making your iron-clad case against the worth of its release is YOU.
"There's some data here that may or may not prove the assertion I'm about to make. It's up to you to prove you're innocent of the charges I'm making, otherwise, I think we can all agree that you're guilty until you find a way to prove otherwise."
Sound like a good way to run a legal system? Sound like a reasonable standard of proof? Because that's exactly what you're suggesting - the onus isn't on the accuser to prove a crime was committed, it's on the accused, and the accused is guilty until and unless they can prove themselves innocent. Make no mistake about it - when you're slinging around accusations of "war crimes," those charges ultimately stick to a person (or small group of people) who committed the "war crime". The defendant isn't "the military," or "the government." If there are war crimes, there are real people who are responsible, and real people who will bear the punishment for it, so making such life-altering allegations should absolutely carry with it the expectation that there is evidence to support those claims.
That's what the Taliban does. Why is it that our side gets a free pass, by way of "war is bad, hmmkay?", and yet if the Taliban even THREATENS to kill someone, then Assange must hang?
You're putting words in my mouth - I never suggested that "Assange must hang," and I've never declared him guilty of anything other than lax editorial standards in his pursuit of his agenda, and in fact all I'm suggesting is that Wikileaks be held to the same standard (i.e., providing proof of accusations) that his detractors are being held to (i.e., providing proof that their assertions are coming true) - I think both sides should be both willing and able to provide evidence to back up their accusations, and not just point to a pile of raw data and say "Go ahead and prove me wrong."
Your well constructed point puts a fine veneer over the fact that the Pentagon has taken no action. As in my werewolf example, the former party is acting in good faith to represent what they are claiming, while the latter is doing absolutely nothing whatsoever.
This assumes that we know everything that is happening in the Pentagon, and that the military is not, in fact, taking steps to secure people identified in these documents. I'd like to think that they would take steps to secure people identified in the data, and I would definitely agree with criticism of them if they didn't take steps to do this.
However, I'll point out three alternatives I can think of off the top of my head:
C) The people who have been offered relocation & asylum have declined it, because they don't feel they are in danger, or they simply don't wish to leave their land, friends, and family. D) The Pentagon doesn't have the manpower and money to relocate & secure all of the people identified. E) They are working on assembling the list based on the data leaked, but they have been unable to complete that review yet.
I think those are all perfectly reasonable possibilities, but lacking any evidence, it's impossible to say, and so anything we engage in here is speculation. And when there's no evidence, we'll inevitably conclude that the point that matches most closely to our perception of the world will be the one that "of course makes the most sense." And then we can go back and forth here for weeks arguing over whose speculation is more accurate, and never reach a real answer to that question until some evidence is offered to decide the matter one way or another.
Which is why I'm suggesting that it'd be preferable if both Mr. Assange, and his detractors, would step back from making accusations until they have some evidence to support their accusations. Arguing over speculation & belief is pointless, because it will turn into a holy war.
The article's title? "Wikileaks and 'War Crimes'"; Subtitle? "Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.org, says he wants to protect civilians. In fact he's endangering them."
Irony aside, the best citation you can come up with is "let's google those keywords?" Let me guess, the lack of any serious exposé is because of a conspiracy to suppress analysis, too?
And the organization that is too dumb to prevent leaks of these documents in the first place is also so amazingly adept at manipulation of the worldwide media that nobody has reported on the hundreds of war crimes documented therein?
A) The posting of original source material and calling attention to it by making accusations.
And does the "original source material" support the accusations being made? Or is it speculation based on the predetermined conclusion that "war is bad, hmmkay?" It is possible that there is data in there which supports the assertion... if there is, it should be presented, not left up to "the public" to prove his case for him.
B) Fact-less assertions.
The Taliban have stated publicly that they are reviewing the data, and will take steps to "punish" anybody found to be cooperating with the NATO forces. I'd say that speculating that harm could come to people identified in that leaked data is certainly a reasonable conclusion you could draw if you know the data contains names of people who have cooperated; that does not mean "it is" or "it will" happen, but it *could*, and those people are now subject to some non-zero level of additional risk.
Both sides are making assertions and accusations, and providing very little fact or analysis to back up those assertions and accusations. Perhaps, as I said, BOTH sides should spend more time reviewing their facts and building their cases.
I'm honestly surprised that you feel there is such vast gulf of difference between the two parties. In summary: 1) Assange asserts: "This data is evidence of war crimes." So far, we have seen no evidence of that assertion being true. In fairness, "haven't found it yet" doesn't mean "never ever will be found."
2) GP poster asserts: "This data causes harm to informants." Pentagon states that, so far, they have seen no evidence of this assertion being true. In fairness, "hasn't happened yet" doesn't mean "never ever will happen."
Both are making assertions without providing any data to support their assertions. Both should be challenged to provide that data, or modify their statements to be more in-line with the reality of the situation. In your scenario, slander/libel laws allow us to resolve the situation in court in either circumstance: either your video *will* or *will not* show that I have committed a crime; either I *will* or *will not* be able to produce evidence that you are a werewolf. Both accusations require proof to stick.
I think you're missing the larger point, which is this:
1) WikiLeaks has asserted that there is evidence of war crimes in this data; 2) They (and the rest of the crowdsourced investigative journalists who are no doubt combing through the data) have been unable to produce any evidence that supports their assertions;
Shouldn't they be held to the same standard you're holding GP poster to? Both groups should either provide evidence, or shut up with the accusations and rhetoric until they have evidence to support their assertions.
Please cite the crimes being hidden that have been revealed by this raw dump of intelligence data? I think I must have missed those news stories about how wikileaks blew the lid off the war crimes being committed, despite my careful attention to multiple news services.
Has Wikileaks provided any citations or evidence of all the war crimes that they've asserted the documents they're releasing "may contain evidence of"?
What, you mean both sides are making shit up, and people are believing the side that fits their assumptions and view of the world?!
I'm shocked. I thought the internet was a bastion of reasonable, careful, and deliberate thought. Next you'll be telling us that MSNBC and Fox News are BIASED!
It's amazing how perceptive you assume yourself to be... it's even more amazing in light of how dead-wrong every single one of your assumptions about me are!
Just sayin'.
You jumped in looking for a fight, and now you have the nerve to claim that I'm the one killing "civility" and "discourse"? Please.
She was the laughingstock of the media after a few short months as the VP candidate. Her behavior & rhetoric since then have done nothing to change the general perception of her as a member of the lunatic fringe.
If she won the Republican primary, the Democrats would have to field a truly, mind-numbingly AWFUL candidate to lose the white house to her - as in, they'd have to actively go out looking for the worst possible candidate they could find.
As the "tea party" rhetoric gets more shrill, they keep losing more and more support, and their "unfavorable" numbers keep climbing. At this point, I'd be willing to stake pretty serious money on the fact that Sarah Palin is not going to be a credible candidate for the Presidency in 2012, unless we discover that Pres. Obama is actually Usama Bin Laden in disguise, and the Democratic Party knew it when they supported him.
That doesn't mean that the Democrats *can't lose,* but Sarah Palin is a still-noisy also-ran with no hope at achieving a national office short of some miraculous transformative redemption that she shows no sign of having undergone.
The comments here illustrate someone who has a problem with authority.
You might be surprised to learn that I get along quite well and quite happily with the overwhelming majority of my colleagues, young and old, in positions of authority and in positions of inferiority.
I take your points, and I certainly understand where you could draw those conclusions based on what I've said, but you also failed to recognize a few of the things I mentioned: "I work with lots of guys who are 15-25 years older than me; some are quite bright, excellent problem solvers, and their experience is tremendously valuable."
And: "The former group tends to explain their proposals in such a way that it is immediately obvious why their approach is a technically superior alternative."
What I am specifically speaking of here is the sub-category of "old bullies," who essentially want nothing to disturb their precious status quo, but can't articulate or define a reason why the status quo is better than any of a host of suggestions for improvement. Arguments of "That's how we've always done it, what you're proposing is too risky," - "What are the risks that I'm overlooking?" - "You just don't have the experience to see them."
My management (and co-workers, when 360-degree ratings have been used) have generally given me quite favorable ratings in my leadership, followership, cooperation, and "gets-along-with-others"-ness in my years of work. I am remarking specifically on that subset of older colleagues who simply are, as I described, inflexible, cantankerous pains in the ass.
The core issue has nothing to do with who is 'best' or 'smartest' or any of that.
The core issue is developing the best solution for the problem, which is the entire reason for the existence of the group. When we are sitting around in a meeting, and 4 people suggest the same thing, and the "senior" guy shoots it down with a "you guys don't understand that's not how we do things," but then cannot articulate why "that's not how we do things," the solution that will inevitably result is going to be "the senior guy's solution" - and if he can't articulate why a particular choice is better or worse than an alternative that's been proposed, it is a pretty sure thing that the solution resulting is not "the best" solution the group was charged with creating.
See, when I am in a professional situation, I understand the whole "it's not personal, it's business" mantra. I don't care if somebody else has a better idea, I'm happy to incorporate it if it's a good one. When I see people on my team doing the opposite of that because their ego refuses to let them see that "it's not personal," I do have a problem with that.
Do you correct your boss's spelling? In front of others? I'm just curious.
This is a remarkably simplistic reduction of the argument. First: no, because it's not my job to correct his spelling, and it has no bearing on the engineering solutions we're working on, unless he is literally misspelling something that is critical for the operation of that solution. Second: I'm more than aware that embarrassing someone in public leaves them no face-saving way to correct their position, and so only hardens their opposition. Third: The statement you're responding to with this question is essentially the same "it's not personal, it's business" idea that I mentioned previously: an idea is an idea is an idea - if it's good, it doesn't matter who came up with it, it will stand on its own merits.
I never said sexism wasn't a problem, I agree with your statements here - there's plenty of it in IT.
Given that the discussion at hand was mostly about "ageism," I limited my comments to that topic - doesn't mean I have no opinion about the other topic.
"I work with lots of guys who are 15-25 years older than me; some are quite bright, excellent problem solvers, and their experience is tremendously valuable."
Or did you forget your reading glasses at home, so you couldn't quite make that out?
You came at me looking for a fight, chief. If you want to deliberately ignore what I wrote in favor of the straw man which you'd prefer to attribute to me, then by all means, don't let the facts get in your way.
But if you'd rather go back and re-read what I wrote without all your emotional "ageism" baggage attached, you'll see that I made a very clear distinction between "people with valuable experience" and "people who are inflexible, calcified douchebags."
I pointed out that the guy I was responding to is engaging in his own "ageist" rhetoric whilst proclaiming how awful it is that he's a victim of "ageism" (all while completely missing the humor in eldavojohn's comments, incidentally). I also pointed out that the guys who engage in this behavior are generally the people with the least valuable experience to share, and they fall back on "I have 20 years of experience" to justify why they're right, rather than the technical merits of their proposal.
Fully agree - I've trained up new hires myself in the role I'm in several times now, and thoroughly enjoy it.
In my experience, the people who complain the loudest about "ageism" from their co-workers also engage in it themselves ("those young punks" just don't "understand that I have experience"), and do a piss-poor job of relating to other people in general.
Management & HR departments might engage in a more systematic practice of "ageism," but in the trenches, the guys who are smart, and understand how to work with other people in a constructive fashion, get plenty of respect, and their contribution is valued greatly. Two guys on my team in particular are pretty much the resident gurus - when you have a question, you go ask them. When you need advice, you go ask them. When you want to get your design blessed, you go ask them. And when they speak in meetings, people listen.
Contrast that with the input of the guy who I mentioned earlier, who's spent the better part of the last 10+ years burrowing into his little niche by copying & rewriting (with minor modifications) the same old code, and who loves to remind people "how many years" of experience he has, as if volume will make up for the fact that he's still doing largely the same thing that he was doing 15-20 years ago, and struggles to keep up every time a new version of Solaris gets forced upon him by our system administrators. He's largely viewed, as I described, as a cantankerous, stale pain in the ass.
You'll continue to be treated like a child so long as you cling to your childish view that, all other things being equal, you're his equal.
It's a good thing I never said "all other things are equal" then! In fact, I specifically said that the QUALITY of the experience you have is what matters, not the QUANTITY or length. It's trivially obvious that if you have 20 years of "quality" experience, that experience outweighs 5 years of "quality" experience.
But it's not so trivially obvious that 20 years of rewriting the same application and making the same mistakes in the same way is better "quality" than 5 years of creating something new, is it? And yes, I work with a guy whose sole contribution is to constantly make copies of code that someone else wrote 10+ years ago, make a few platform- or business-specific changes to it, and call it a new application.
It's almost like you didn't bother to read what I wrote, and instead just jumped right to the part where you get to insult me! Way to show your open-minded, patient, even-tempered, and adaptable nature, old guy!
Similar adages: it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
These usually hold true in IT - doing *something* this week is (most of the time) better than doing *nothing* except thinking about the problem for 3 months. No problem domain will be completely understood until you play in it, and understand the limits & constraints of the solution & the problem itself.
You'll never hit perfect on your first attempt at anything much longer than "Hello, World!" However, you can iterate the hell out of a 70% solution and make it better as the problem becomes clearer to you. And all that experience is how you learn - the stuff that didn't work the first time can be improved upon the next time, and in future iterations of your first attempt.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you should do some basic reading about the Taliban's view of human rights, their treatment of women, their view of corporal and capital punishment and the crimes for which these punishments may legitimately be given, and their views on education and the role of women in society.
Anybody who can, in 2010, say that they "don't know" if the Taliban are evil is engaging in willful ignorance - it is not as if there is a lack of information available that you can use to judge for yourself. If you've reviewed the available information and concluded that they are not evil, that's your choice, and I'd disagree with that conclusion. But to say "I don't know" just smacks of laziness.
Want to know why I don't care that I can't load flash content on my iPhone?
Because I can't think of a single site I visit regularly that does not work just fine, and I can think of numerous occasions where Flash has crashed my browser (or I've received the "Flash has barfed!" popup) - usually from an advertisement - on both Windows and Mac OS X. That behavior prompted me to run FlashBlock in my browsers on both Windows & Mac OS, incidentally.
While you don't like having the choice taken away, there are a lot of people for whom losing Flash isn't a big deal, or is actually a positive thing... iOS devices might not be right for you.
Unless they take so long to get it working well that everybody ends up using the term "Flash" as a geeky punchline.
Given the high profile nature of the debate over Flash, that Adobe released something that performs this poorly is really pretty bad, they're simply underlining Apple's points. It'd be nice if it had "time to mature," but if the overwhelming experience of using Flash on mobile devices starts driving users away while Adobe is "maturing" Flash, there won't be any point in continuing it's development for mobile platforms, because in the meantime, designers will have found something else to fill the niche, and right now, that "something else" mostly looks like HTML5, or native apps for each device.
Yes, you're definitely confused about what a false flag operation means, and why it doesn't apply to the scenario you're describing. False flag requires secrecy on the part of the entity who engages in the operation, allowing them to create the belief in the public that another entity (government, government agency, the illuminati, whoever) actually performed the operation in question.
The Pentagon saying that "The Taliban" killed these people because "Julian Assange" leaked their names lacks the element of subterfuge and misdirection required for it to be a false flag - a false flag operation would require the Pentagon to put people in Taliban uniforms and send those people to go kill the informants themselves, and then if they really wanted to be good, arrange for video from a Predator showing those "Taliban" guys getting shredded by a bomb, but miraculously, notes from the Wikileaks entry survived incineration - thus "proving" to the public that, a) the Taliban did it; b) Assange helped them by identifying ; and c) they're the good guys because they killed the people who killed informants.
That's false flag. Simply accusing someone of an act without evidence isn't. Accusing someone of something when "BobMcD don't believe it for a second!" isn't, either. There's a difference.
Doing what again, Bob? Asking you to stop being a hypocrite? Guilty as charged. I'd love for you to simply say on the record that if Assange is going to make accusations of crimes being committed, he should be held to the exact same standard as anybody else - namely, that he should provide some supporting evidence for his accusations, or be criticized as a sensationalist media manipulator for making baseless accusations.
First, this wasn't "revealed" by the wikileaks documentation, this was reported on at least as early as 2007: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/08/27/19232/iraqi-insurgents-taking-cut-of.html
Second, "bad things to do" =/= "war crimes".
Involving civilian deaths: Again, already known, already reported, at least 6 months ago: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18001
And the particular civilian deaths would have to be *shown* to be a war crime, not just "unreported," because there is nothing in the Geneva conventions that says the death has to be reported. If there is evidence that any of these deaths was in fact criminal, i.e., they violated the laws of war, not just your sense of propriety about what "acceptable" levels of collateral damage are, then you need to cite that data, not just say "underreporting is a crime." Because it's not.
Bob, I've been trying to discuss with you this entire time. You have been - figuratively - putting your fingers in your ears and humming in response. If it makes you feel better to believe that I'm immune to reason, that's your deal, not mine. You have not presented anything but speculation and opinion, and maintained that your speculation and opinion should be given the weight of facts. Again, that's your deal.
Cheers.
Hint: they're making fun of you. They "care" because they are enjoying poking fun at you. Not because you made an interesting comment.
Yes, Bob, I explicity veered off that topic in my first post - that should have been a clue that the point was tangential to the original statement.
I don't know how you're interpreting statements I've made to be the *exact opposite* of their stated meaning. But you keep doing it. It's almost as if you are intentionally being intellectually dishonest.
You are hopelessly confused.
False flag operations are designed to convince "the public" that "some other entity" was responsible for the operation in question. For example: if the CIA had actually blown up the World Trade Center, and had fabricated evidence that pointed to the Canadian military as the culprits: that is a false flag operation.
Are you asking us to believe that Mr. Assange is working with the CIA to make us believe "someone else" is responsible for the war crimes? Or is "false flag" your self-comforting way of saying "I can believe anything I want without any proof of anything, because I have these prejudices and biases?" It's nice that his allegations are "irrelevant" to you, but the truth of them is not irrelevant to Mr. Assange's credibility: if you make an accusation, and it turns out to be false, that's generally considered to be bad form, and somebody who's in the habit of doing this sort of thing certainly loses a lot of credibility and starts looking like a standard conspiracy theorist nutjob.
Assange has made allegations. He has provided no concrete evidence to support those allegations, just an additional assertion that the data that he is leaking "contains" that evidence. He should be greeted with a "[CITATION NEEDED]" just as firmly as the GP poster you responded to was in response to his allegations that Assange was getting people killed.
Now if you feel proof is absolutely necessary to criticize Mr. Assange, but that Mr. Assange needs no proof to accuse others of war crimes, then that's fine - we can then agree that you're a hypocrite, and move on from your willful dishonesty. If you're not a hypocrite, then you must agree that Mr. Assange should be held to the same standard posters on slashdot are expected to adhere to - namely, that when you make an allegation, you should expect to be called out on it unless you have some evidence to back up your allegation.
There really is no third alternative here, unless you can point out for me the specific entries in this data that Mr. Assange has cited for us that contain the evidence for his war crime allegations. I'll grant that it's *possible* I missed them in a news cycle, but it's not likely, as I do follow the news rather closely. (But, if you can provide even a single citation that Mr. Assange has given, I'll even gladly concede that I was mistaken!)
What, exactly, am I evading?
You are arguing as if there are only two possible positions that can be held here:
-- Assange needs to back up his allegation;
-- Assange should be able to release this data;
These two positions are, in fact, two mutually-compatible positions in response to two completely orthogonal questions:
1) Should he have to back up accusations with proof? If so, why? If not, why not?
2) Should he be able to release this data? If so, why? If not, why not?
As you apparently have failed to notice, the answers to these questions can actually vary quite a bit, and have a lot of nuance and complexity to them, but answering one does not make the answer to the second a foregone conclusion. In saying that he should have to provide evidence to support his accusations, I AM NOT also saying "and he shouldn't be allowed to release this data" - no matter how hard you might wish that I've said that, I have not.
I've never said that he shouldn't be allowed to release it, and in fact, if you bother reading what I've written here, you'll see that I actually agreed implicitly that he DOES have the right to release it: "He shouldn't have rushed to release it, and done a better job of review & redaction before release." Key words: before release.
So, I think we're down to a single disagreement, wherein you feel I've said something that I have explicitly not said, and I feel that you're acting like a raving lunatic for insisting I've said it when I've pointed out repeatedly that I have NOT said it.
Fair enough?
I fail to see how this is asking them to behave to a "higher standard" than any other non-court entity. You are either completely mischaracterizing what I'm saying, or deliberately ignoring it.
Mr. Assange is making accusations. He is providing, as "evidence," a data dump which he *claims* supports his accusation. When asked for specific details on what parts support his accusations, he hasn't provided any, and has basically said that it's up to "the world" to find his evidence for him.
So how, specifically, is asking him to either provide evidence to substantiate his allegations, or admit that he has no proof for his allegations, and that he's just speculating about the data he's releasing "holding him to a higher standard"? We are being told that this data contains evidence of widespread and persistent war crimes. And yet nobody making that accusation can provide a single example? Where I come from, that's called "talking out your ass", and people lose credibility for doing that.
If I made a claim (like original-GP poster did), that Assange has caused deaths, I would be challenged to provide evidence of that, and rightfully so. But when Assange makes a claim that war crimes are being committed, he is somehow held to be above the petty needs of "showing evidence"?
I am NOT saying he shouldn't be allowed to release this data, and I've never suggested that. I am saying:
1) He shouldn't have rushed to release it, and done a better job of review & redaction before release;
2) If he's going to editorialize about the content of the data, he should have some evidence FROM that data to back himself up;
Once again: You are putting words in my mouth. I fully understood that your 'flippant phrase' was not intended to represent my specific word choice. The problem is, "any other words i'd like in place of those" doesn't characterize even the spirit of what I said, much less the letter, unless you want to make the logical leap that "I never said Assange should be punished" means "I said Assange should be punished."
Attribute whatever words you like in there, but please make sure I actually said them, at least in spirit, if not in letter, before you attribute them *to me*. I'm sorry you think that my objection to your use of a straw man is "changing the subject" - perhaps you'd like to go debate with somebody who *actually* holds the position which you've suggested is my belief.
"There's some data here that may or may not prove the assertion I'm about to make. It's up to you to prove you're innocent of the charges I'm making, otherwise, I think we can all agree that you're guilty until you find a way to prove otherwise."
Sound like a good way to run a legal system? Sound like a reasonable standard of proof? Because that's exactly what you're suggesting - the onus isn't on the accuser to prove a crime was committed, it's on the accused, and the accused is guilty until and unless they can prove themselves innocent. Make no mistake about it - when you're slinging around accusations of "war crimes," those charges ultimately stick to a person (or small group of people) who committed the "war crime". The defendant isn't "the military," or "the government." If there are war crimes, there are real people who are responsible, and real people who will bear the punishment for it, so making such life-altering allegations should absolutely carry with it the expectation that there is evidence to support those claims.
You're putting words in my mouth - I never suggested that "Assange must hang," and I've never declared him guilty of anything other than lax editorial standards in his pursuit of his agenda, and in fact all I'm suggesting is that Wikileaks be held to the same standard (i.e., providing proof of accusations) that his detractors are being held to (i.e., providing proof that their assertions are coming true) - I think both sides should be both willing and able to provide evidence to back up their accusations, and not just point to a pile of raw data and say "Go ahead and prove me wrong."
This assumes that we know everything that is happening in the Pentagon, and that the military is not, in fact, taking steps to secure people identified in these documents. I'd like to think that they would take steps to secure people identified in the data, and I would definitely agree with criticism of them if they didn't take steps to do this.
However, I'll point out three alternatives I can think of off the top of my head:
C) The people who have been offered relocation & asylum have declined it, because they don't feel they are in danger, or they simply don't wish to leave their land, friends, and family.
D) The Pentagon doesn't have the manpower and money to relocate & secure all of the people identified.
E) They are working on assembling the list based on the data leaked, but they have been unable to complete that review yet.
I think those are all perfectly reasonable possibilities, but lacking any evidence, it's impossible to say, and so anything we engage in here is speculation. And when there's no evidence, we'll inevitably conclude that the point that matches most closely to our perception of the world will be the one that "of course makes the most sense." And then we can go back and forth here for weeks arguing over whose speculation is more accurate, and never reach a real answer to that question until some evidence is offered to decide the matter one way or another.
Which is why I'm suggesting that it'd be preferable if both Mr. Assange, and his detractors, would step back from making accusations until they have some evidence to support their accusations. Arguing over speculation & belief is pointless, because it will turn into a holy war.
Oh, delicious irony. The google link you just put up there has, as its #1 match, this link: http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703999304575399761499620310.html
The article's title? "Wikileaks and 'War Crimes'"; Subtitle? "Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.org, says he wants to protect civilians. In fact he's endangering them."
Irony aside, the best citation you can come up with is "let's google those keywords?" Let me guess, the lack of any serious exposé is because of a conspiracy to suppress analysis, too?
And the organization that is too dumb to prevent leaks of these documents in the first place is also so amazingly adept at manipulation of the worldwide media that nobody has reported on the hundreds of war crimes documented therein?
Thanks, no further questions.
Really? Where?
And does the "original source material" support the accusations being made? Or is it speculation based on the predetermined conclusion that "war is bad, hmmkay?" It is possible that there is data in there which supports the assertion... if there is, it should be presented, not left up to "the public" to prove his case for him.
The Taliban have stated publicly that they are reviewing the data, and will take steps to "punish" anybody found to be cooperating with the NATO forces. I'd say that speculating that harm could come to people identified in that leaked data is certainly a reasonable conclusion you could draw if you know the data contains names of people who have cooperated; that does not mean "it is" or "it will" happen, but it *could*, and those people are now subject to some non-zero level of additional risk.
Both sides are making assertions and accusations, and providing very little fact or analysis to back up those assertions and accusations. Perhaps, as I said, BOTH sides should spend more time reviewing their facts and building their cases.
I'm honestly surprised that you feel there is such vast gulf of difference between the two parties. In summary:
1) Assange asserts: "This data is evidence of war crimes." So far, we have seen no evidence of that assertion being true. In fairness, "haven't found it yet" doesn't mean "never ever will be found."
2) GP poster asserts: "This data causes harm to informants." Pentagon states that, so far, they have seen no evidence of this assertion being true. In fairness, "hasn't happened yet" doesn't mean "never ever will happen."
Both are making assertions without providing any data to support their assertions. Both should be challenged to provide that data, or modify their statements to be more in-line with the reality of the situation. In your scenario, slander/libel laws allow us to resolve the situation in court in either circumstance: either your video *will* or *will not* show that I have committed a crime; either I *will* or *will not* be able to produce evidence that you are a werewolf. Both accusations require proof to stick.
I think you're missing the larger point, which is this:
1) WikiLeaks has asserted that there is evidence of war crimes in this data;
2) They (and the rest of the crowdsourced investigative journalists who are no doubt combing through the data) have been unable to produce any evidence that supports their assertions;
Shouldn't they be held to the same standard you're holding GP poster to? Both groups should either provide evidence, or shut up with the accusations and rhetoric until they have evidence to support their assertions.
Please cite the crimes being hidden that have been revealed by this raw dump of intelligence data? I think I must have missed those news stories about how wikileaks blew the lid off the war crimes being committed, despite my careful attention to multiple news services.
Has Wikileaks provided any citations or evidence of all the war crimes that they've asserted the documents they're releasing "may contain evidence of"?
What, you mean both sides are making shit up, and people are believing the side that fits their assumptions and view of the world?!
I'm shocked. I thought the internet was a bastion of reasonable, careful, and deliberate thought. Next you'll be telling us that MSNBC and Fox News are BIASED!
It's amazing how perceptive you assume yourself to be... it's even more amazing in light of how dead-wrong every single one of your assumptions about me are!
Just sayin'.
You jumped in looking for a fight, and now you have the nerve to claim that I'm the one killing "civility" and "discourse"? Please.
She was the laughingstock of the media after a few short months as the VP candidate. Her behavior & rhetoric since then have done nothing to change the general perception of her as a member of the lunatic fringe.
If she won the Republican primary, the Democrats would have to field a truly, mind-numbingly AWFUL candidate to lose the white house to her - as in, they'd have to actively go out looking for the worst possible candidate they could find.
As the "tea party" rhetoric gets more shrill, they keep losing more and more support, and their "unfavorable" numbers keep climbing. At this point, I'd be willing to stake pretty serious money on the fact that Sarah Palin is not going to be a credible candidate for the Presidency in 2012, unless we discover that Pres. Obama is actually Usama Bin Laden in disguise, and the Democratic Party knew it when they supported him.
That doesn't mean that the Democrats *can't lose,* but Sarah Palin is a still-noisy also-ran with no hope at achieving a national office short of some miraculous transformative redemption that she shows no sign of having undergone.
You might be surprised to learn that I get along quite well and quite happily with the overwhelming majority of my colleagues, young and old, in positions of authority and in positions of inferiority.
I take your points, and I certainly understand where you could draw those conclusions based on what I've said, but you also failed to recognize a few of the things I mentioned:
"I work with lots of guys who are 15-25 years older than me; some are quite bright, excellent problem solvers, and their experience is tremendously valuable."
And: "The former group tends to explain their proposals in such a way that it is immediately obvious why their approach is a technically superior alternative."
What I am specifically speaking of here is the sub-category of "old bullies," who essentially want nothing to disturb their precious status quo, but can't articulate or define a reason why the status quo is better than any of a host of suggestions for improvement. Arguments of "That's how we've always done it, what you're proposing is too risky," - "What are the risks that I'm overlooking?" - "You just don't have the experience to see them."
My management (and co-workers, when 360-degree ratings have been used) have generally given me quite favorable ratings in my leadership, followership, cooperation, and "gets-along-with-others"-ness in my years of work. I am remarking specifically on that subset of older colleagues who simply are, as I described, inflexible, cantankerous pains in the ass.
The core issue is developing the best solution for the problem, which is the entire reason for the existence of the group. When we are sitting around in a meeting, and 4 people suggest the same thing, and the "senior" guy shoots it down with a "you guys don't understand that's not how we do things," but then cannot articulate why "that's not how we do things," the solution that will inevitably result is going to be "the senior guy's solution" - and if he can't articulate why a particular choice is better or worse than an alternative that's been proposed, it is a pretty sure thing that the solution resulting is not "the best" solution the group was charged with creating.
See, when I am in a professional situation, I understand the whole "it's not personal, it's business" mantra. I don't care if somebody else has a better idea, I'm happy to incorporate it if it's a good one. When I see people on my team doing the opposite of that because their ego refuses to let them see that "it's not personal," I do have a problem with that.
This is a remarkably simplistic reduction of the argument. First: no, because it's not my job to correct his spelling, and it has no bearing on the engineering solutions we're working on, unless he is literally misspelling something that is critical for the operation of that solution. Second: I'm more than aware that embarrassing someone in public leaves them no face-saving way to correct their position, and so only hardens their opposition. Third: The statement you're responding to with this question is essentially the same "it's not personal, it's business" idea that I mentioned previously: an idea is an idea is an idea - if it's good, it doesn't matter who came up with it, it will stand on its own merits.
I never said sexism wasn't a problem, I agree with your statements here - there's plenty of it in IT.
Given that the discussion at hand was mostly about "ageism," I limited my comments to that topic - doesn't mean I have no opinion about the other topic.
She's not the vice president today, so I'd guess that it turned out pretty darned well for the Democrats, didn't it?
Did you BOTHER to read where I wrote:
"I work with lots of guys who are 15-25 years older than me; some are quite bright, excellent problem solvers, and their experience is tremendously valuable."
Or did you forget your reading glasses at home, so you couldn't quite make that out?
You came at me looking for a fight, chief. If you want to deliberately ignore what I wrote in favor of the straw man which you'd prefer to attribute to me, then by all means, don't let the facts get in your way.
But if you'd rather go back and re-read what I wrote without all your emotional "ageism" baggage attached, you'll see that I made a very clear distinction between "people with valuable experience" and "people who are inflexible, calcified douchebags."
I pointed out that the guy I was responding to is engaging in his own "ageist" rhetoric whilst proclaiming how awful it is that he's a victim of "ageism" (all while completely missing the humor in eldavojohn's comments, incidentally). I also pointed out that the guys who engage in this behavior are generally the people with the least valuable experience to share, and they fall back on "I have 20 years of experience" to justify why they're right, rather than the technical merits of their proposal.
Fully agree - I've trained up new hires myself in the role I'm in several times now, and thoroughly enjoy it.
In my experience, the people who complain the loudest about "ageism" from their co-workers also engage in it themselves ("those young punks" just don't "understand that I have experience"), and do a piss-poor job of relating to other people in general.
Management & HR departments might engage in a more systematic practice of "ageism," but in the trenches, the guys who are smart, and understand how to work with other people in a constructive fashion, get plenty of respect, and their contribution is valued greatly. Two guys on my team in particular are pretty much the resident gurus - when you have a question, you go ask them. When you need advice, you go ask them. When you want to get your design blessed, you go ask them. And when they speak in meetings, people listen.
Contrast that with the input of the guy who I mentioned earlier, who's spent the better part of the last 10+ years burrowing into his little niche by copying & rewriting (with minor modifications) the same old code, and who loves to remind people "how many years" of experience he has, as if volume will make up for the fact that he's still doing largely the same thing that he was doing 15-20 years ago, and struggles to keep up every time a new version of Solaris gets forced upon him by our system administrators. He's largely viewed, as I described, as a cantankerous, stale pain in the ass.
Dude... whoosh much?
It's a good thing I never said "all other things are equal" then! In fact, I specifically said that the QUALITY of the experience you have is what matters, not the QUANTITY or length. It's trivially obvious that if you have 20 years of "quality" experience, that experience outweighs 5 years of "quality" experience.
But it's not so trivially obvious that 20 years of rewriting the same application and making the same mistakes in the same way is better "quality" than 5 years of creating something new, is it? And yes, I work with a guy whose sole contribution is to constantly make copies of code that someone else wrote 10+ years ago, make a few platform- or business-specific changes to it, and call it a new application.
It's almost like you didn't bother to read what I wrote, and instead just jumped right to the part where you get to insult me! Way to show your open-minded, patient, even-tempered, and adaptable nature, old guy!
Similar adages:
it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
These usually hold true in IT - doing *something* this week is (most of the time) better than doing *nothing* except thinking about the problem for 3 months. No problem domain will be completely understood until you play in it, and understand the limits & constraints of the solution & the problem itself.
You'll never hit perfect on your first attempt at anything much longer than "Hello, World!" However, you can iterate the hell out of a 70% solution and make it better as the problem becomes clearer to you. And all that experience is how you learn - the stuff that didn't work the first time can be improved upon the next time, and in future iterations of your first attempt.