Wikileaks Founder Advised To Avoid American Gov't 632
eldavojohn writes "Media darling Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has been told by his lawyers to avoid the United States on the grounds that the US military would like to ask him a few questions about his source of the Collateral Murder video. Assange claims to be holding yet more video (of a US attack on a village that allegedly killed 140 civilians in May of 2009), as well as a quarter million sensitive cables relating to the current foreign war operations from the US State Department. Assange surfaced for the cameras in Brussels while speaking about the need for the freedom of information. Can he build a high enough profile to protect himself from danger?"
The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Insightful)
The best thing he can do is get as much press as possible, make as many speeches as possible, engage in as much public activity as possible, and stay in a group at all times (no late night strolls alone). If the general public and press don't know who he is, the U.S. government can just grab him and quietly throw him in a secret jail cell somewhere (or even render [wikipedia.org] him to a country willing to get their hands dirty torturing him with more than a little waterboarding).
It would be nice to live in a world where whistleblowers were rewarded and praised for their efforts. But the truth is that whistleblowers almost always suffer for their sacrifice. At best, they lose their jobs and/or are harassed. At worst, they end up in a filthy jail cell with electrodes on their balls.
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Don't you mean dead in a ditch somewhere?
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No, that's simply a likely outcome of the "filthy jail" option.
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Interesting)
Or perhaps a bathtub in a motel [bradblog.com].
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Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>He's not a US citizen.
>>>He's got damning information about their spying.
>>>He's about to release it.
>>>I'd say more his life is in danger.
I'll be happy when we get rid of that damn Bush so these things stop happening. Oh. Wait.....
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Expiring the Patriot Act would have had severe political results (aka political suicide).
As I recall, the Miranda Act issue was the removal of applying them to terror suspects (revoking their citizenship, therefore American law did not apply), introduced to Congress by Senator Lieberman. The other issue was a SCOTUS ruling that the Miranda warning did not need to be read.
Unfortunately, the way politics work, to get some actions through that are not favored by th
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Expiring the Patriot Act would have had severe political results (aka political suicide).
And yet, being a leak coordinator like Julian Assange puts his own life and livelihood at risk far worse than political suicide.
It's clear that in a group of people consisting of the last 10 U.S. presidents, including Obama, plus Mr. Assange, only one of them is a true leader in character versus a leader just because of some election.
If you fail to play political politics correctly, it becomes a nasty war, where there is no forward progress, but there are lots of long winded speeches before Congress about why your way is right.
When the overwhelming majority of acts of congress revolve around taking rights away from people, I say GREAT: fewer chance for those stupid bills to actually become law.
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They don't even need real dirt on a politician. If the word gets out that a politician was sleeping with an intern, even with a blurry photoshoped picture, it can be enough to ruin a career.
Consider the U.S. Representative Gary Condit (R - California) and Chandra Levy. She went missing in 2001, and her remains were found in 2002. Mainly because of the implication that he may have been involved, fed by the media, not investigators, he lost his 2002 re-election bid. He was in
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Drones are more cost effective to run than actual manned flights. They're cheaper to build, cheaper to operate, and if one goes down, you don't run the risk of a pilot being interrogated/tortured, and revealing any information to the enemy.
Like I replied to someone else, politics are rarely about the wants and needs of the people. They are a bartering game. You can cherry pick any set of votes from any representative to show how good or evil they are. The reality is you ha
Exactly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Torture is usually worse than death for the victims family because it involves loss of honor even if the individual is left alive. Framing the individual for a bunch of crimes, or framing the individuals family members for all sorts of crimes is an example.
Besides they wont want to kill Julian anyway. They want to know what he knows and find out who his sources are not kill him. They need him alive and chances are they'd put him in a super max prison or a secret prison which has 23 hour lockdown and basica
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Insightful)
He's also using it to continually detain a man proven in court to be innocent, Mohamed Hassan Odaini, who has been wrongfully imprisoned for the last 8 years, in defiance of a court order that he be released. Why? Because mid-term elections are coming up soon.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/21/pundits/index.html [salon.com]
The US government and MIC are monsters dressed in the stars and stripes and I thank %deityOfChoice% that there are sites like Wikileaks, and governments like Iceland who are beginning to see the light that is cast by transparency.
With the SCOTUS decision yesterday, the US can just put Wikileaks on the list of terrorist organizations, and Mr. Assange won't even be able to get a lawyer in the US, assuming he's still alive. The US government, or its people at large, don't care about rights of US citizens, who can now be extra-judicially assassinated (i.e. murdered). What do you think anyone would say if some Australian journalist disappears?
Only sites like Wikileaks can save us from ourselves. Getting the genie back into the bottle is a difficult task, indeed.
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:4, Insightful)
A little information and suddenly you think it's all brand new. The transparent stuff that we know about today was stuff that got people labeled as crazy gun nuts 30 years ago. Just because most people didn't know about it it's not like it wasn't happening. And happening a lot more than it does now.
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Wow, I clicked on the wrong article! I was reading the headline about William Shatner being on the shortlist for Canadian Governor-General, then read your post about waterboarding him and rendering him to a country to be tortured. Yeah, his attempts at singing were bad, but give the guy a break!
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Insightful)
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How can you guarantee anything while everything is still classified?
The law of averages. He grabbed communications in bulk, so he didn't verify all of them were of 'wrong-doing'. Perhaps I should say 'practically guarantee'.
That said, something can be embarassing yet still worthy of remaining classified. Unless they are all evidence of criminal wrong-doing (according to a guy who himself breaks the law and gets in fist-fights), I would still say he should be prosecuted for that crime.
I agree that it's a burden of trust, but do you have an alternative system that protec
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Interesting)
> The reality is that there's a lot of information that doesn't belong in the public domain, and it's in the best interest of the
> country/corporation/individual to keep secured.
For an indivudual, or a corporation sure. However, a corporation has share holders and/or trustees. There is no legitimate reason for a "corporation" to withhold information from them. They are the owners, the final deciders.
With a government, or at least, any organization that I am willing to consider as such in a legitimate fashion, the people are the share holders, we are the board. There is no legitimate reason to hide information from even the lowest of us. We OWN IT. It is OUR SECRET.
Keeping information (with the VERY narrow exception of individuals personally identifiable information like tax, employment, or social security records) is corruption. plain and simple. Justice Roberts claims the government deserves a lot of "leeway" in "national security" matters. I argue it deserves no leeway at all, ever, in any circumstance.
The single most important function of government is to provide checks and balances against its own corruption. Even defense should be secondary.
-Steve
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:4, Insightful)
With a government, or at least, any organization that I am willing to consider as such in a legitimate fashion, the people are the share holders, we are the board. There is no legitimate reason to hide information from even the lowest of us. We OWN IT. It is OUR SECRET.
And the problem is that some people are really shitty at keeping a secret. If we have the right to know all these secrets, then they won't be secret anymore, and not just within our country. Instead it's a privelege to those who need access to these secrets and have shown they can be trusted to keep them.
That said, the system does need more protection against abuses. Any idea how? If not, I qualify this as an unfortunate, yet necessary evil.
Enough of this crap. (Score:3, Interesting)
All you people out there who think Wikileaks is just fine and dandy need to ask yourself a question.
Do you believe that government should have NO secrets at all?
Think before you answer.
This means troop movements, battle plans, agents of any kind, anywhere.
It means no more sealed federal records of any kind. If you did your sister in 7th grade, we will know about it.
IRS records (they are government records) are open for all to see, communications between you and your Congressional representative, communicati
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US, we DO have a legitimate government, in the sense that the majority of voters have chosen it. That is as true today as it was when anyone else was president.
Whether or not YOU voted for this government doesn't alter its legitimacy.
This doesn't mean that everything the government does is wise, good, admirable; it just means that we, the people, have chosen those who are responsible for making our laws and making the decisions that "the government" must make.
Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the need to keep things secret, and I understand that in war shit happens...but that doesn't mean when things go awry, we the people shouldn't know about it. For the same reason why I think uncensored war footage should be shown on the nightly news, maybe if the average civilian actually saw what goes on in war, the public would be less likely to stand by idly while our government spends billions on killing people on the other side of the planet.
Just my $.02
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
Any of the "good things" that might possibly come out of war can also be done without war.
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Sadly, I disagree. Some things can't be solved without resorting to violence. But, gladly, most things can -- almost everything. We should work toward that goal.
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Any of the "good things" that might possibly come out of war can also be done without war.
Pol Pot ...
Hitler
Hussien
Mugabe
Al-Bashir
Kim Jong-Il
Sayyid Ali Khamenei/Ahmadinejad
Castro
Stalin
Mao Tse-Tung
Milosevic
and many many more...
None of these dictators could have been/can be removed from office without the use of force. No amount of talk, sanctions, or shame will cause these evil men to willingly give up their power. War is the only answer sometimes. Yes, war is a horror unto itself, but it is nothing compared to the wasted lives and absolute horror people are forced to endure every day under tyr
Re:Good on him (Score:4, Informative)
None of these dictators could have been/can be removed from office without the use of force
Pretty much all of the dictators on your list came to power as the result of war. So your list is kind of...pointless. And one, Ahmadinejad, isn't even close to be a dictator - he's a figurehead for the clerics that hold the actual power.
Indeed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, several of them weren't removed through war, despite actual wars being fought against their regimes.
A rather pointless list that.
Re:Good on him (Score:4, Informative)
Considering how expensive, brutal and dehumanizing a war is, you'd have to come up with more than simple assertions to convince me, and hopefully most others, that there is absolutely no other workable recourse.
Re:Mod UP! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
Like in Vietnam.. News covered how the Americans were butchers, killing women and children. And how they were unrefined even killing their own officers.
Yet the truth was that GI's were fragging officers because they would order them to kill the children or the scumbag enemy were forcing women to fight or they would kill their children (Sounds like the current cowards), or put the team in un-necessary danger... Oops 4 grenades went off in Lt. Dan's tent.... He must have been depressed....
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You may use the excuse for the first time they opened fire, even though the RPG excuse is lame at best.
However, when they shot at people trying to help already wounded people, they committed murder, plain and simple.
Re:Good on him (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand the need to keep things secret, and I understand that in war shit happens...but that doesn't mean when things go awry, we the people shouldn't know about it
Which is why in the US with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press one had to find a professional journalist and convince him/her and the editor and publisher that breaking a secret story was worth the potential penalties. With Wikileaks this process is reduced to a snickering game of airing dirty laundry just for the sake of doing it. One day truly serious info will be released and cause the bad sort of trouble that will make the Rosenbergs look like common gossips.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me, what is the worst that could be released on Wikileaks? Total schematics for the F35 aircraft along with source code? What would the Afghans do with it? Build one out of moistened sand? How about the Chinese? Trust me, the so-called free-world has nothing to fear from a poorly injection-molded plastic F35.
The military might of the US lies in its industrial output, not its secrets. Secrets only protect the US regime from its own population.
No sir (Score:3, Interesting)
"The military might of the US lies in its industrial output, not its secrets. Secrets only protect the US regime from its own population."
The military might of the US is primarily about two things: the quality and training of its troops, and its lead in military technology over adversaries. Industrial output means nothing, as our focus is on small numbers of advanced weaponry. We have 20 B-2 bombers. That's it. We'll have 187 F-22 fighters. That's it. Whether it's wise or not, the US is counting on technolo
Re:No sir (Score:5, Informative)
Industrial output means nothing, as our focus is on small numbers of advanced weaponry. We have 20 B-2 bombers. That's it. We'll have 187 F-22 fighters. That's it. Whether it's wise or not, the US is counting on technological superiority, not the sheer numbers of industrial output.
I find it interesting that you bring up planes here, because the numbers directly contradict your claims. Take fighters, for example:
USAF/Navy:
F-16 - 1250
F/A-18 - 750
F-15 - 600
F-22 - 175 (your 187 figure is the planned count)
Total: ~2800
Russian AF/Navy:
Su-27 - 410
Su-24 - 320
MiG-29 - 200
MiG-31 - ~200
Su-33 - 23
Su-30 - 12
Su-35 - 12
Total: ~1200
PLAAF/Navy:
J-7 - 470
J-8 - 180
J-11 - 100
J-10 - 80
Su-30 - 90
Su-27 - 70
Total: ~920
The above three countries top the list of those with biggest air forces. As you can see, not only US is #1 in that list, but it actually has more fighter planes than China and Russia combined.
Furthermore, if you split by technical specs, US leads even more, because e.g. it is the only country to field a 5th gen fighter at all, much less 180 of those (neither Russia nor China could afford this even long-term).
If you look at other things, you'll see similar numbers. Pretty much all other military plane categories - check. Warships - check. When it comes to main battle tanks, China has two times less than US, and Russia has about twice as much, but if you only consider those which are readily operational (maintenance is a huge problem for Russian armed forces), US still has more - and note that practically all of those are various variations of Abrams, while the majority of Russian acounts is ancient stuff like T-64 and T-72.
It's true that US army has fewer men enlisted in it, but that's about the only major number on which it is smaller. In terms of equipment - which is what correlates with industrial output - it is the biggest in the world. And if you look at how US did in wars since WW2, it shows - for the most part, American strategy is to steamroll over the enemy by throwing large numbers of superior tech at him, from tanks to cruise missiles.
Re:Good on him (Score:4, Insightful)
"One day truly serious info will be released and cause the bad sort of trouble that will make the Rosenbergs look like common gossips."
Any half-competent engineer can build a gun-type nuclear weapon. Should we censor all information about U-235 neutron cross-section because of this? Or maybe require a government-issued license to read particle physics journals?
The fact of life: you need large industrial base to use any advanced technology. And only state-level actors have it.
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I might agree with you, except for the fact that people don't want to put themselves in those situations. Eventually the military won't have enough boots on the ground to get involved like that.
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But there are already systems in place to handle these issues inside the DoD. This guy isn't who they want. They want the person in their midst leaking information, going around the chain of command and leaking things to the press, so they can nail their balls to a wall and retrain them on proper procedure. They (DoD/JAG) have to follow the law even if they don't like it.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are already systems in place to handle these issues inside the DoD.
And those systems are obviously broken. Top Secret information must cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if leaked. This information leaked, and has caused no damage to national security. The only person who deserves their balls nailed to a wall is the person who classified this inappropriately.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
For the same reason why I think uncensored war footage should be shown on the nightly news, maybe if the average civilian actually saw what goes on in war, the public would be less likely to stand by idly while our government spends billions on killing people on the other side of the planet.
Just my $.02
Hey, I'm good with that. Lets bring all the troops home, stop spending money "killing people on the other side of the planet", and only show the footage of the what other people do. How's that grab ya?
Just think, we can have hours of news footage daily of the plight of Muslim women alone. Being arrested for having a suntan? Being beaten, caned and stoned to death. Marital rape being legal? How about footage of rapes before their beheadings? How about child marriages? How about female castrations as punishment?
Would you like to talk about kids being strapped with explosives? That'll be juicy footage. How about bombs set off in weddings and funerals? How about 7 year old kids being murdered because their grandfather spoke out against the violence of the Taliban?
The point is that you're so quick to condemn the military on this situation. And if they were actually knowingly murdering innocent people then they should be condemned. But the fact is that you dont have all the facts, and yet you want desperately to see them all hanged along with the entire US military establishments. You casually ignore the attrocities commited around the world, many of which we have military might in place to help prevent. But the world media is so complicit that they don't report on those things, except for a by-line here and there quickly denouncing the act and distancing themselves, governments, and religions from them. It's glossed over as if to say "Yeah, that's a real shame... So anyway lets get those US Soldiers and hang 'em high!".
You think that we should show the world how brutal we are? Fine. As soon as we show the world how brutal the WORLD is I'll be right there with you. As soon as we start showing people WHY we are in many of the places we are, instead of shielding everyone here from the horrible acts that people outside our rubber-bumber nation commit then we can start showing them how all people compare. You don't want to show both sides. You don't want to give context. You don't want people here to see how bad some of these dictators and regimes are because you know it will do nothing if not ensure the resolve our nation has for kicking the crap out of some of the nutjobs out there.
War sucks. It's horrible. It's ugly. It changes people forever. But quite frankly, better that than live in a world where everyone's too afraid to stand up and fight the tyrants because it's not politically correct. You can hope for flowers and bunnies all you want. But there will always be people who really don't care what you hope for and are willing to crush any dream you ever had for your kids. And I'll always be supportive of us not standing there watching and doing nothing, while shielding our citizens because it might damage their delicate psyche's.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of what I posted was to point out that if you want to condemn the US Military for its brutal activities, be consistent and be fair. If you want to display the evil of our soldiers, display the evil of all soldiers. If you want to prove how bad we are by display all information, then display all information about how bad those we fight are too. Give all the info, and let people actually make some self-judgements rather than expecting us to just swallow the spoon fed self-loathing of the far left.
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Give all the info, and let people actually make some self-judgements rather than expecting us to just swallow the spoon fed self-loathing of the far left.
Like the no-bid oil contracts [nytimes.com] that everyone wanted to keep quiet? I don't argue that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein have done horrible things. I do, however, argue that the United States' reasoning for being in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is not as virtuous as you would like people to believe. The U.S. is there to profit from the war. The fact that occassionally positive side effects will come from it allows for the PR position that you take.
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"How did the US Military bring about Sharia Law?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban's_rise_to_power#Allegations_of_connection_to_United_States_CIA [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia-United_States_relations#Cold_War_.26_Soviet_Containment [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Good on him (Score:5, Informative)
But, do you agree with editing exculpatory footage out of videos and then treating the video as the whole story?
Except that you have no evidence of that other than the Pentagon's say-so, and they aren't known for their honesty and forthrightness. Furthermore, the footage you're talking about is not the least exculpatory: it purportedly shows the same gun crew that asked permission to shoot and kill the good samaritans who were aiding the wounded victims of their previous attack, and then shot and killed the good samaritans who were aiding the wounded victims of their previous attack, did not kill another group of completely innocent people previous to shooting and killing the good samaritans who were aiding the wounded victims of their previous attack.
Only in the mind of someone deluded or evil would not killing innocent people prior to killing innocent good samaritans who are aiding the victims of your previous attack count as "exculpatory."
As to the rest: yeah, we'll stop killing them when they stop killing us; and they'll stop killing us when we stop killing them. Sounds like the security-industrial complex is going to be a major profit center for America for decades to come, building all that deadweightloss gear so young American men and women can go off to kill and be killed. Not a bad gig: getting taxpayers to fund the wanton destruction--body and soul--of their own children, all in the name of bigger profits for Lockheed, Haliburton and Blackwaster(Xe).
Why should Iraqis hunt Saudis? (Score:3, Interesting)
Had the USA invaded Saudi Arabia, I would be less inclined to disagree with you.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
I will feel sorry for the people on the other side of the planet just as soon as they start hunting down and killing the people on their side of the planet that are sending people to this side,
It might be news for you, but Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. Zero, Nada, Zilch.
I also find it a bit hypocritical to complain about a few missing minutes (in which likely nothing of interest happened), when the military is censoring the whole fucking war. We are not taking about minutes of footage here, but months or even years of footage then ended up on the cutting floor or never being released in the first place.
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You fucking moron (Score:5, Insightful)
I will feel sorry for the people on the other side of the planet just as soon as they start hunting down and killing the people on their side of the planet that are sending people to this side, to this country, to kill us.
The US and Britain have had a constant military presence in the middle east since the end of WWI. That's about 90 years. How many middle eastern nations have a military presence in the United States or UK?
I will feel sorry for them when they stop supporting people who say I should die because I don't believe in their religion of murder and conversion at the point of a sword, or barrel of a gun if you prefer.
And they will feel sorry for you when you stop sending armies over to kill them and take control of their oil resources. Especially when you stop supporting murderous local dictators and monarchs who conspire with Western powers to suppress democratic movements in exchange for piles of money.
The association of America and Democracy causes hatred and laughter across the region for a very good reason: we've been doing our best to destroy a nation's right to self determination for decades. Look at the Kurds for chrissake. One one side of the Iraq border, we give them monetary and military support in exchange for their political support inside Iraq. On the other side of the same border we supply the Turkish army with the weapons to kill Kurds and suppress Kurdish popular movements.
The reason you don't know any of this is because none of it is reported, but you just swallow the same bullshit lines over and over again. Yeah, a bunch of people halfway across the world just woke up one day and decided they hated freedom, so instead of attacking democracies on that side of the earth, they spent millions of dollars to attack the United States because they are "evil." But that's okay, we're "good" so in response to the murder of 3,000 of our citizens, let's start two wars and kill and maim a few hundred thousand Muslims on their home territory. Let's send the cradle of civilization back to the stone ages, since it's the only place in the region where women have something resembling equal rights. That should alleviate the tension between our two cultures!
You fucking moron.
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Evidently, my point is somewhere you are not.
In what world does an oil spill in the Gulf cause starvation and deprivation in Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, etc.? Last I checked, regional warlords, backwards traditions and culture, totalitarian states, and the like tend to cause such symptoms.
Yes, he should. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because, he could probably be arrested and tried for espionage.
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And it won't help him. It is just as easy to abduct & trial him regardless of location.
Pretty much every country will either ignore that or will even cooperate.
High Profile? (Score:2)
"Can he build a high enough profile to protect himself from danger?"
Could JFK? Could John Lennon?
Re:High Profile? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you buy into conspiracy theories, they were killed by lone nutters. The assassination of someone with a high profile wil draw a lot of unwanted attention on the way the US conducts this sort of business, as well as an public outcry.
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I think that would build him a higher profile, actually. I can't even imagine what kind of mad dash would happen to find out who owns Wikileaks...
"quarter million sensitive cables" (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I missed that update, but last time I heard WikiLeaks never confirmed they had any sensitive cables, in fact, so far they have denied it.
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Like they would tell the truth about such a thing?
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I give up.
What exactly IS a cable?
"State Department cables"
Are these memos? Orders? Operating procedures? What?
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Um, isn't this [wikileaks.org] one of them?
"Free Assange" t-shirt (Score:2)
I'd like to preemptively buy a "Free Assange" wikileaks t-shirt. It doesn't exist yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time before it's necessary.
Attention whore (Score:4, Insightful)
By teasing over the alleged videos and documents, he's shifting the focus of attention to himself and how he's treated by the US.
So. Fucking. What?
His story is utterly, totally trivial next to the things that he's allegedly holding back.
So publish already, or shut up. Or publish, then shut up. Either way, just shut up, as Wikileaks itself is rapidly becoming a distraction from the real stories that it ostensibly exists to publish.
Re:Attention whore (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileaks itself is rapidly becoming a distraction from the real stories that it ostensibly exists to publish.
Wikileaks is becoming one of its own valid stories: They're harassed at the international level by a government that keeps stating publicly that it supports freedom of press.
The leaks they have are only half the story, what people are willing to do to stop the leaks is the other half.
Re:Attention whore (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks is desperately attempting to become a story. By doing so, they're detracting attention from the actual important stories that they run. What are we debating here: the mass murder of innocent civilians, or Wikileaks?
No. No, they are not. You've bought Assange's story. There is no evidence, other than his assertions, that he is being "harassed" at any level, let alone the international. Remember when he claimed his passport had been "seized", and it turned out to be that all that happened was that it had been pointed out to him that it was due to expire?
He's been threatening to release these videos and documents for months now, in what has become a rather pathetic attempt to get some attention from the Big Bad US. That shows that he's more interested in becoming a cause célèbre than in actually doing what he set out to do: publish and damn their eyes.
The man has or had good intentions, but now he's pulling a Jimbo Wales, and getting delusions that he's bigger than his creation, when he needs to be as anonymous as his sources.
Learning more about Wikileaks everyday (Score:4, Interesting)
While the idea of Wikileaks is still quite popular; with more revelations about Wikileaks, Assange is no longer the media darling with everyone taking a more critical view of the man behind Wikileaks.
America's oldest whistleblowing website Cryptome which Wikileaks described as a 'venerabe anti secrecy organization' has collated the most details about what happens within Wikileaks. Cryptome has published all of Wikileaks founder Assange's chats over a few years as well as Wikileaks insider details about how they need $55,000 to run servers but as much as $200,000 is used by the men who run Wikileaks for business class travel, hotels etc.
Read Cryptome to see that despite its idealistic mission, at some level Wikileaks behaves like another secret Government department with a couple of people deciding what is public interest.
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The New Yorker had an interesting piece on Assange & the publishing of the video recently. It discussed how he rented a house in Iceland for the process, the number of people helping make it all happen smoothly, etc. The fact is, doing that kind of stuff costs money. I'm sure he's no saint, but I think it's a good thing to have a site like Wikileaks out there as a check on excessive government secrecy. $200k isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
Re:Learning more about Wikileaks everyday (Score:4, Insightful)
While the idea of Wikileaks is still quite popular; with more revelations about Wikileaks, Assange is no longer the media darling with everyone taking a more critical view of the man behind Wikileaks.
Yeah, because when you out corrupt business practices, everyone but the criminals you're exposing can get behind that and you're everyone's pal. When you're outing soldiers for gunning down unarmed children in broad daylight, there are some people who think you're attacking the military.
they need $55,000 to run servers but as much as $200,000 is used by the men who run Wikileaks for business class travel, hotels etc.
Goodness me, they have other expenses besides server costs in their efforts to do real journalism? Those evil bastards!!!
Read Cryptome to see that despite its idealistic mission, at some level Wikileaks behaves like another secret Government department with a couple of people deciding what is public interest.
Seems like a no-brainer that it takes some effort and restraint to remain credible while publishing these important stories. You can't just publish any unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, then publish a real story and expect anyone to take you seriously.
Speaking as a donator... (Score:4, Informative)
Paranoia (Score:2)
After reading the comments in this post, I think I am going to go buy stock in Reynolds Aluminum. I never knew how many foil-hatters there were in the world and on the internet.
Assange should be paranoid (Score:2)
Dead man walking (Score:2, Troll)
Our US thuggery is fairly predictable. I'm sure the CIA or equivalent has already been given hit orders. It will be made to look like an accident (small plane crash, car crash, mystery disease, etc). Such is necessary for plausible deniability.
Poor bastard, he will be missed.
Re:Dead man walking (Score:4, Insightful)
Our US thuggery is fairly predictable. I'm sure the CIA or equivalent has already been given hit orders.
You've seen a few too many movies.
More than likely, Assange is having his lawyers try to get some kind of amnesty deal in turn for testimony and/or returning the materials. The only danger to Assange is that he be arrested, held and tried like any other person who breaks the law. He may even get off at trial due to Constitutional protection of freedom of the press.
Playing up the danger does get Wikileaks more press, so bonus points for good guerrilla PR for Assange.
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Our US thuggery is fairly predictable. I'm sure the CIA or equivalent has already been given hit orders.
You've seen a few too many movies.
Before attempting to dismiss other's fears as being mere fantasty, do a little research:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/license-kill-intelligence-chief-us-american-terrorist/story?id=9740491 [go.com]
This article demonstrates that not only do 'hit orders' exist, but they are not prohibited from using such orders against citizens who are constitutionally guaranteed to stand trial.
So while parent may have seen too many movies, you, dear friend, have seen too few congressional hearings.
Dead Man Walking x 5 (Score:2)
x 5 because Assange may have U.S., British, Canadian, Australian and others looking to do a Mossad action on him as a warning to the others who have anything whatsover to do with Wikileaks.
Play in the bear cage? Better be the biggest bear.
Let us chat awhile. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, there was a time when this simply meant what it says. Now, the guy could end up getting water-boarded at some US secret prison in a third-world country - or New Jersey (shudder). Of course, the US doesn't torture people. Paying other people to do it is another matter.
Excuse me, there's a knock on the door ...
Hey, Julian. Plan for the future. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite all the noise, the most sinister claims made about the US government are that
1) The self-confessed whistleblower, Manning, is being held "incommunicado" in Kuwait and
2) The military would like to question Assange.
Manning hasn't been disappeared, vaporized, liquidated, or what have you; there's not even an allegation that the UCMJ has been violated in his case. And there's nothing at all strange or nefarious about the military wanting to question someone who received classified material; they'd hardly be doing their job if they didn't. If I was Assange I'd certainly avoid the US, but ascribing evil intentions or actions to the US military or the government in general is at least premature.
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From what I've seen over the past few years, ascribing evil intentions to the military and US government should be our default position by now. We still haven't learned much from history yet.
Protection (Score:3, Insightful)
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But, Polanski is a famous director and a darling of European arts and elite.
This guy isn't.
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Not yet, he isn't. But that appears to be his plan: raise his profile sufficiently high that kidnapping him would raise even more questions (and virtually ensure plenty of people willing to step in and take his place).
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The U.S. government would not have to kidnap him. All they have to do is indict him and request extradition.
All the foil-hatters like to talk about kidnapping and the like. But, it is not even remotely necessary.
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Considering his movies won 6 Oscars since that event, I'm not sure that "European" is appropriate. Western, maybe.
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Yes, except for the "spying" part.
Re:Baiting a nation's military is not a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
He has balls. Bigger balls than your balls and bigger balls than my balls. I guess the point I'm trying to put across is that he has big balls.
So, even if he fails, he has shown that one man is able to wander around the world in a particular way credibly announcing he has sensitive government information without being David Kelly'd. Sure, he has to be white and rich, but that's better than nothing. If there's one thing we can learn from Assange, it's that we're mostly a bunch of fucking cowards not to stand up to Goliath, and we are getting the government we deserve. So, that's two things. Two things we can learn.
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Heh... to refine your point, I'd say we (in the US) are definitely getting the government we've asked for, whether or not we deserve it.
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I lost all sympathy for him
Just as a matter of interest, how much sympathy do you feel for the good samaritans who were going to the aid of the wounded when the Americas shot and killed them?
Re:I am not very sympathetic and here's why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, I have no sympathy for Reuters' guys because Reuters has a history of being embarrassed in that region by having its "correspondents" not only embed themselves with guerrilla forces, but often hires people who are working both sides (ex: the egg on Reuters' face when it came out that its subcontractors in Lebanon were actually members of Hezbollah).
Well, how else are we to get both sides of the story? If journalists are only embedded on one side, then we're only getting half of the story, no? Journalism should be neutral, unless you're implying that we shouldn't hear their side unless it came directly from us. At that point, it is no longer journalism. Instead, it is full blown-out propaganda.
Re:I am not very sympathetic and here's why... (Score:5, Interesting)
And you have the information to back up this "often" claim, besides the one example you claim?
I know a guy who worked for a number of years for Reuters as a communications tech in war zones all over the world, and he never "worked both sides" whatever that means to you but whose life was endangered on a number of occasions. He was paid for it and he accepted the possible consequences. However, he, along with I would suspect are the majority of Reuters employees, did not work for for Hezbollah, and didn't, as you appear to suggest, deserve a couple of 30mm shells for doing his job.
Since this is the Internet, though, people who disagree with you of course deserve death, I suppose.
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Usually if a person is making an argument the burden is on them to provide proof. That's the way it works. It's also a lot better because it keeps things grounded in fact, rather than ending up with a game of telephone where people go around repeating things they heard. You can see where the latter system leads by reading the many chain emails that go around. Consider that not everything is easy to find on Google. This is, because it was a well publicized Internet-based story that can be summarized in
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So the government is the only one who gets to edit for political impact? Both sides inevitably play the propaganda game. At least Wikileaks made the entire video(that they had) available. Only the shorter, more YouTube friendly version was edited, and they never once tried to hide the fact. That's a lot more honesty than you can expect from the US military.