WikiLeaks' International Man of Mystery 116
AcidAUS writes "The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow the whistle. Here's a detailed profile of the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, by Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald."
Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:4, Insightful)
You gotta hand it to the CIA. When they attack something like Wikileaks, they really take the long view.
First, show how Wikileaks is somehow providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information [newyorker.com]. Now, set the founder up for more publicity, implicitly encouraging violence upon him.
It's a chilling effect on anyone who might be initially inclined to provide information to Wikileaks under their cover of anonymity.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:5, Insightful)
If that article was intended to show that Wikileaks is "providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information", then that article failed on numerous accounts. I won't list them here - it looks like the people commenting on that article (although going off the deep end in another way) have already taken that bother. I highly doubt that was its intent anyway as it goes more into the general topic of what you see in a video and what the actual circumstances were. It still fails even at that, but it's not really directed at Wikileaks.
Re:there's another australian creator of edgy cont (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:there's another australian creator of edgy cont (Score:3, Insightful)
And this coming from the folks who gave us Rupert Murdoch? I'm going to have to politely disagree.
Re:there's another australian creator of edgy cont (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I can see why Slashdot might give you that impression, do remember that the reporting on here is usually quite sensationalist.
Australia doesn't yet have an internet filter (hell, the Bill hasn't even been introduced into the House yet, and even if it passed there would face near-certain death in the Senate), and it's been aggressively fought every step of the way. Contrast this with China, which obviously has a well-known filter (and one far, far more intrusive than the simple URL blacklist proposed in AU). Contrast this further with other countries have introduced an AU-like filter quietly and without much debate (most recently, New Zealand).
If anything, it shows that the democratic process is working well in Australia, the fact that you are hearing and seeing so many stories (read: so much opposition) to such proposals.
The other kooky story you are likely to have heard out of Australia in the last 12 months is the lack of an R rating for computer games. There's been quite a breakthrough on that front, with the one man primarily responsible for blocking the introduction of the R rating retiring as South Australian Attorney-General. His replacement has publicly stated they are in support of an R rating for games. So it appears we'll get our R rating within the not too distant future, bringing us into line with the classification systems in the US and EU.
Australia has problems like any country. But I don't think they are anywhere on the scale of China, or even on the scale of other Western countries like the UK (far more surveillance there than in AU). The US overall has a good record on such matters, but it too is not perfect (witness the whole warrantless logging/tapping of public phone conversations debacle etc.). The problems might be ~different~ in other countries but they are no less serious.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:5, Insightful)
But they did and do present the data in a biased way.
Look at the prologue they added to the video. Just what does a picture of the dead reporters son holding his fathers picture have to do with truth?
That is a classic case of "what about the kids" that gets so often bashed on Slashdot when it is convenient.
For the most part what I have seen of Wikileaks they are the Nation Enquirer of the internet. They present the data in the most inflammatory way possible and it is often incorrect, incomplete, and biased.
They do not just present the data but comment on and embellish.
I am not for taking them down but my goodness they need to clean up their act. Between releasing all sorts of personal data they got from the 9/11 pager traffic to the prologue and added commentary they added the the Apache video just released they show that they don't care anymore about being unbiased or responsible than Fox news does.
Just watched the wikileaks video (Score:1, Insightful)
if you haven't already watched the "collateral murder" video on wikileaks, you must. It will open your eyes.
Its scary how the American gunner is just begging for excuses to execute people. He invents an excuse that the guy who is obviously just holding a camera has an RPG. They quickly escalate one implausible gun sighting (which was clearly a shoulder bag) into the fact all the people are carrying AK-47s when they are clearly empty-handed. They even followup by shooting an obviously unarmed ambulance team that includes kids, which turned up after just to help the injured.
This is what Americans are actually doing abroad. This is how the world sees America.
Its scary that the army can put such crassly stupid and vicious people in charge of such powerful killing machines. Its scary that the army are defending these killers and the army are clearly beyond the reach of the law.
This is our country doing this. We are the bad guys. To all those that think America is honorable, and right to be in Afghanistan, watch this video then think again.
It's a warzone. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually such things are inevitable in a warzone. That's why you should never start wars lightly[1]. Lots of bad stuff will happen.
It's obvious to many in hindsight that it's a camera. But if you look it from the POV from a paranoid nervous young military helicopter pilot, it does look like the tube of a RPG - esp when the camera sticks out from behind the wall...
What follows after that is just what soldiers do - they kill people, and they are _conditioned_ to think it's OK to kill people. So they make up all sorts of excuses so that they can pull the trigger.
If the helicopter pilot isn't paranoid enough, he or his friends will get killed. Because there ARE people out there who are out to kill him and his friends, and yes sometimes there are children around when it happens. And yes, both sides can be relaxed and merrily joking about stuff minutes before they blow away the other side.
War is how you get otherwise reasonable people to kill strangers they have never met and would otherwise be happy to sit down and have a meal with together. You set things up so that if they don't kill the other side, the other side would kill them and/or their friends. If that doesn't happen, you kill/punish them for disobeying orders.
To me the appalling bit is not that civilians were killed because the pilot made a mistake, it's that the war was either started due to lies or incompetence.
I have to say though that the US military seem to have a reputation of being more trigger happy, and even since the WWII days - the joke goes that when a German plane flies over, the British take cover; when a British plane flies over, the Germans take cover; when a US plane flies over, everyone takes cover... ;)
[1] http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/How-to-reduce-unwanted-wars [slashdot.org]
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:3, Insightful)
For the most part what I have seen of Wikileaks they are the Nation Enquirer of the internet. They present the data in the most inflammatory way possible and it is often incorrect, incomplete, and biased. They do not just present the data but comment on and embellish.
Look at wikileaks.org [wikileaks.org]. The most recently leaked documents are reproduced in their entirety, with (usually) only one single paragraph to describe the document. The descriptions are descriptive and accurate (if you don't believe me - read them for yourself - stuff like "Quote for a US$85 million line of credit from FirstCaribbean to the government of the Turks & Caicos Islands."). How is a release of original source material along with one single descriptive paragraph "incorrect, incomplete, and biased.. commenting on and embellishing"?
they don't care anymore about being unbiased or responsible than Fox news does.
This is a ridiculous comparison. Fox News pushes opinion pieces as real news. It reproduces none - zero, nada, zilch - of its original sources. Wikileaks reproduces its sources in their entirety. They even released the original, unedited Apache video. If they did not care about being biased, then why would they released the original, unedited video? Has Fox News ever released the original source material of any contentious report? Ever? Probably not. And yet Wikileaks does this every single time as standard policy. There is a huge difference.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:3, Insightful)
I won't agree or disagree with your sentiment, but I do think the analogy is misdirected.
Wikileaks they are the Nation Enquirer of the internet. They present the data in the most inflammatory way possible and it is often incorrect, incomplete, and biased.
As far as I know, The National Enquirer does not present incorrect, incomplete, or biased information in an inflammatory way. They just make shit up. That's a pretty big difference. I could learn a lot from Wikileaks, but I can learn nothing from the Enquirer.
The apache video is polarising (Score:3, Insightful)
In my view it divides those that are happy for the troops involved to be unprofessional, disobedient, undisciplined thugs because they are on our team and those that are not happy about it - but I'm biased.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:5, Insightful)
No they don't they have one marked as the short version and one as the full version. The short version has the prologue on it and is put on the top of the order.
There should be only one and that is the unedited on with out the commentary. There is no reason for their to be two versions at all except to allow for manipulation disguised as making it clearer.
Wikileaks can not make any claim as to being unbiased. They are clearly in this case taking on the job of judge, jury, and prosecutor.
Please even the URL you posted is inflammatory. collateralmurder.com! Gee no slanting there at all.
So just how is this in your own words "doing a good job at providing unbiased information"?
This is as bad as any hatchet job by 60 minutes or Fox News. I think you need to review what unbiased really means. There is no way anything posted under the url of collateralmurder can be considered unbiased when the url and title on the page are clearly biased as to what the actions shown constitute. I can not believe that you posted a link to the url and still defend any claim of being unbiased!
Nope it is classic yellow journalism.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:3, Insightful)
And this video doesn't push opinion? Gee so you think that the URL collateralmurder isn't biased?
Showing times when they are no biased doesn't remove times when they clearly are. Even the times when they behave as you show in their examples shows bias. They have decided that that leak isn't worth pushing while this video is.
The fact that they made a special project page for this video and of course put it at the top of the page right next to their fund raising request is not bias at all. Or the fact that they only put the edit version with inflammatory prologue on the front page isn't an example of bias on their part.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes of course because you are so enlightened that you understand these things while the unwashed masses must be guided to understanding.
It must be made clear to them because they are not as smart as you or as not as caring.
You see most people can not just be shown facts because they will not understand...
Do you really want to go down that road.
Manipulation must always be wrong if it is ever wrong.
I am sure that if they showed a bunch of solders holding their children on their laps saying how there children would never have known their daddy if the gunship crews hadn't had protected them you would be all right with it?
Manipulation and bias is manipulation and bias. You are okay with it or you are not. If you are ok with it when is supports your view then you have been enlisted as a manipulator.
Re:More info on the guy... (Score:1, Insightful)
More information on Assanage the reporter doesn't know about...
Back in the early 90's, APANA, The Australian Public Access :/
Network Association, kicked 'proff' out because he was using
their network to crack into overseas systems. APANA was
threatened with disconnection because of his attempts were traced
easily. proff was already a known kook, who was attempting to
make his system 'suburbia' (later suburbia.net) a global
CyBeRpUnK HQ, his quest being to become the ULTIMATE CYBERPUNK
who could overthrow governments (sound familiar..?) When we
kicked him out, he spammed and attempted to DDoS apana.org.au.
Sounds plausible. Do you actually have evidence to back up this claim or are you just referencing the illustrious "my friend told me" angle?
Re:The apache video is polarising (Score:3, Insightful)
A real war with professional soldiers is run somewhat differently to an action movie.
Please correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not "unteachable". Thanks for the petty little bullying personal attack to prey on the weak willed above BTW, it's a really nasty symptom of the decline of US education but with your low UID you should be old enough to know better by now.
Now get off my lawn
Re:More info on the guy... (Score:3, Insightful)
If he does, he should upload it to Wikileaks...
I say that in jest but thinking about it more, it would be a very good litmus test for the statement "He is not politically motivated. He is more concerned with truth and the quest for it."
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the prologue they added to the video. Just what does a picture of the dead reporters son holding his fathers picture have to do with truth?
Look: If you publish a video to millions of people that shows how a reporter, a man with kids and wife, is being shot from the air, tries to escape deadly wounded by crawling away, then dies while the people who try to help him (and their children) are also getting shot, and subsequently is being overrun by a tank while his killers make jokes about it, then it is only fair to give some of his surviving family members a chance to show a picture of how he looked like when he was still happy and alive. If you think that's biased, then I can't help getting the feeling that you also might be biased a bit more than average or have lost all sense of humanity.
Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun (Score:5, Insightful)
Again with an emotional plea. Of course it is tragic that this gentleman died and that his child is an orphan. But him having a child or even being a reporter has nothing to do with was the Apache crew justified in shooting or if it was a war crime.
You are using one emotional manipulation to justify another.
Suppose instead we showed vets with their kids saying how they wouldn't have gotten home without that Apache crew protecting them? You would claim that was just emotional manipulation as was the prologue added to this video.
Justice is supposed to be blind and only look at the facts. This video contains a prologue that is designed to push the viewer into agreeing with the conclusion of the people that edited the video. Even the URL that it was listed under is inflammatory. If you don't think that is biased then you don't understand the meaning of the word.
To be unbiased they should just present the video without commentary and let each of us decide for ourself. Any commentary changes it from unbiased information to editorial content that reflects the views of those making the commentary.
Even your comment that me seeing the bias shows that I am biased is just silly. Claiming I have lost all sense of humanity is just insulting.
However to be an unbiased source of news (and they are very rare) you really should let the viewer decide without adding emotional manipulation.
Let the evidence speak for it's self or admit that you are a biased source.
Re:The apache video is polarising (Score:2, Insightful)
Soldiers in a war zone develop a "gallows humor" as a coping mechanism.
THEY ARE IN A WAR ZONE. People die. Hopefully theirs and not ours. Soldiers follow orders, not determine the morality of an act.
The politicians are supposed to be the moral compass of the military. But we all know they are the "bought dogs" of avarice.