loquitor---

so wait a minute: if i am argue that in the context of certain political actions it is ok to violate the law, your response is to say that therefore all rule of law is out the window and we'll on a downhill trail toward barbarism?

strange, but the motivation (as i understand it) for leaking alot of these documents--on afghanistan & iraq in particular--was that you have a political regime in the united states that's all sanctimonious about the rule of law except when it restricts the united states itself. as hegemon, the rules that the little people live by don't apply. all that matters is that the violations be kept secret (the procedure for "reporting" torture instituted by rumsfeld springs to mind, but then again alot of the criminal actions of the bush administration spring to mind)....and when documentation comes out that blows the lid off these sanctimonious claims about the "rule of law" you start talking about the "crime" of trafficking in stolen information?

seems absurd to me. like the sort of thing that'd be political/theatrical suicide to try to act on for the united states.

this newest leak is perhaps more easily actionable because the information is, up to now, less explosive because the obama administration seems to actually have a bit less cavalier attitude toward law and other such than did the bush administration.

but the same logic applies.

i would think the damage done to american credibility by trying to prosecute wikileaks would far outweigh any possible advantage.

and you can't get around the point about rhetoric. at the moment, where's the bluster about criminal action and prosecution coming from?
this isn't rocket science.

Indeed, they are over-classifying. That it's to be expected of bureaucracy does not mean that it's admissible, though. State secrets are inherently anti-democratic and historically are often used in the service of injustice. One of my favorite JFK quotes seems to speak to the issue:
In an open and free society (yes, yes, that's a very vague term, but I think you take my meaning), that which is classified should only be done so in the most dire of situations. Much of what was leaked of the classified diplomatic cables is petty and stupid (a.k.a. normal behavior of high ranking government officials) and would never endanger anyone, rather simply bruising a few egos and showing how diplomatic sausage is made.

Let me ask you this: if a job not being done by those tasked to do it is important enough, can it not be argued that someone else not tasked with doing said job is excused, to a certain degree, in doing it? In other words, are there not instances where the question of legality is trumped by the issue of the common good?

I can appreciate somebody trying to fight the good fight against the US govt, striking a blow for the little guy, standing up to the man and all that but we do need to draw lines and their should be penalties for crossing them. If we don't there would be no way any information could ever be classified or made confidential, which for better or worse is a necessity.

I agree that the US government needs to be more transparent and in a way they are bringing this sort of thing on themselves but simply leaking information at random with thought or concern for the fallout or ramifications is just irresponsible. There needs to be some sort of consensus somewhere over what can and can't be released and there does need to be safe guards against potentially dangerous or damaging info falling into the wrong hands.

Perhaps these leaks will get the ball rolling in the direction of more transparency and ultimately wont cause any harm but there is no way we can continue to abide by this sort of thing happening over and over again.

i think this "there ought to be some kinda prosecution" business is funny.

meanwhile, the rules of the game internationally, and the notion of what investigative journalism is and how it's organized, is getting changed by how wikileaks is operating.

WikiLeaks a media game changer - Keach Hagey - POLITICO.com


no wonder fox et al have their panties in a bunch. they loose.

It does make sense that something like wikileaks would come along after it's clear that traditional media is broken in a way that they can't fix themselves.

and notice the cooperation with us government authorities prior to the release in the redacting.

so what's all this nonsense about compromising security and endangering lives exactly?
and the point of calls for prosecution?

And this sort of thing is going to happen more frequently as long as the media continues to ignore its responsibility and the us govt becomes needlessly more secretive. I do however see glaring problems in encouraging random people to dig up dirt on the government and get it out there for the sake of getting it out there, but as long as people are adhering to the law then its no big thing.

If laws were broken in the process of getting/publishing this info then prosecute if not then let it be.

Well there is now an Interpol initiative for his arrest... :sad:

The rape charges are childish and even if successful will ultimately only make Assange into an even more powerful personality.

Here's a great interview with Noam Chomsky on this topic. It's worth a read.

Excerpt:

"Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"
Chomsky

In a national broadcast exclusive interview, we speak with world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky about the release of more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks. In 1971, Chomsky helped government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg release the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret internal U.S. account of the Vietnam War. Commenting on the revelations that several Arab leaders are urging the United States to attack Iran, Chomsky says, "latest polls show] Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent," Chomsky says. "This may not be reported in the newspapers, but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments and the ambassadors. What this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership." "

The rest of the article can be found here:

Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"

So some writer who apparently lives in China, might have written an article or two about politics, and has a blog is a credible expert on the operations and qualifications of the diplomatic corps. Somehow I think Sarah Palin might have more credibility than this guy.

Two questions.
Just who is this 'apparatus' accountable to? Who is she accountable to? Hint: It's not George Bush.

---------- Post added at 08:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:02 PM ----------

The report about exposing how the Yemen govt provided cover for a US military operation is one example of what could be a problematic disclosure. One article I read described how this was ammo for Al Queda, telling Yemeni citizens their government lied and couldn't be trusted.

I read another article about how people who had been giving tips to the US, expecting that information to remain secret may no longer be willing to do so because that info might show up on Wikileaks next. So now the US might miss out on useful information.

From the news reports I read, quite a bit of this material is stupid, juvenile commentary. However, if someone is provided enough bits and pieces of seemingly disconnected information, they can draw a complete picture from that info.

Once of the bits of corporate nonsense I get to deal with about once a year is a mandatory information security class where they warn us about stuff like discussing even bits and pieces of confidential info in public because people can start putting the pieces together. I don't think the story is much different with governments, politics and intrigue.

---------- Post added at 08:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:50 PM ----------

This guy can dream about how powerful he is while he's spending time in jail. I note with some interest his unwillingness to have his personal info disclosed all over the internet.

Unless they turn out to be true, of course. Swedish cops don't exactly have a reputation for going off half-cocked on things like this, and if the CIA (or God Forbid the FSB, GIGN or Mossad) wanted him dead or discredited, he'd either be dead already or have been caught red-handed with the proverbial "dead girl or live boy."

As for Mr. Chomsky, while I admire his style and verve nobody has ever been able to convince me that Democracy is a -good- thing. As a consequence, I cannot see why a "hatred for Democracy" should perforce be an inherently bad thing. I personally detest Democracy: Democracy gave us the French Revolution, Bill Clinton, George Bush (take your pick) and the current imbecile, with all their attendant lunacies: in return it took Socrates and Lysander Spooner and Henry Thoreau and Ralph Emerson and Hunter S. Thompson, whom it either murdered with glee or buried with false tears and the reward of cultural castration. I don't call that a fair trade.

I read an article about how Wikileaks went to the State dept asking for assistance in redacting this information and got turned down.

The Obama adminiration would be even more of a clown show if they assisted with redacting in light of all the public protesting they have been doing over this.

---------- Post added at 08:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:54 PM ----------

Why not? Protection of classified information is the responsibility of the agency that owns it. Every single agency in the executive branch reports to Obama. So it's not George Bush's fault, it's not Bill Clinton's fault. It's the fault of he current president for not insisting this information be protected properly.

Yes, there's more to it than keys. Logged access to protected files, no confidential info on computers with removable media or internet connections, etc, etc. Obama failed.

I'll just leave this here. The Swedish cops aren't really involved beyond an investigation which has lead Sweden's chief prosecutor to state, "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape." Not only that, but there are substantial holes in the stories of the accused which have not been reconciled.

This really doesn't explain why the fact that it happened during Obama's administration is so significant. It could have happened anytime during the last few decades. Just saying, 'he's the president, so he takes the blame' doesn't really say anything substantive or unique against the guy. Being that it could have happened to any one of several different presidents. Where's the fun in that?

Bit behind the times, aren't you?

[link]http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/18/interpol-arrest-warrant-julian-assange-wikileaks-rape[/quote]

[link]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/01/julian-assange-rape-inves_n_701578.html[/quote]

But all this is really irrelevant. I should probably set aside this threadjack. Sorry, folks.

Not at all. No charge has been laid against Assange, he's simply wanted for questioning.

righto. the reason it is significant that this is happening under the obama administration is that the ultra-right imagines there's a benefit to be derived from it. that's all there is to it. if it were otherwise we'd be talking about these leaks in context and linking the actions of this administration to the largely criminal actions of the bush administration and finding that the obama administration, while centrist and problematic for that in many ways, is a VAST improvement over the clownshow that was the bush administration. but that discussion would not rebound to the benefit of the right, so they want to impose a different conversation, one based on not remembering things and false premises and, basically, stupidity. but that's how the right rolls. stupid shit for stupid people. like a pie made from stupid.

i'm not going to waste my time on most of dogzilla's nitwit points...the exception is: i think the shangai scrap blog piece is interesting. i think it raises an interesting angle. it's something to consider. *but* i also noted it was a blog piece (duh)...and i also noted that all i know about the writer is the self-identification he provides (duh)...and i posted the piece with the caveat that it is an interpretation (duh) based on information this person has access to anecdotally (duh) that allows for the cables that he specifically cites to be situated and various plausible meanings or implications to be drawn from them. so it's a maybe window onto why state is reacting as they are.

but rather than address the information and/or reasoning, you, dogzilla, attack the source in a one-dimensional way as if that's adequate.

it isn't.

try a bit harder.

sheesh, the intellectual laziness that's acceptable amongst conservatives...amazing....

it's also kinda funny, in a stomach turning kinda way, that the right feels it's ok to attach assange personally as if that takes care of the content of what wikileaks has released. facile, stupid business it seems like to me. like you'd rather believe that he is personally responsible for the information in the way people used to think walter cronkite personally made up the news. because he's the face of delivery.
fucking grow up.
jesus.

there's some speculation that the data dump was deliberate. Do you think the people running State now are that clever?

This whole thing reeks as a mass psyops on our society by government to use as a scapegoat as leverage to censoring the internet. Land of the Free, my ass. Considering Homeland is already seizing domains, guess that's not really news.

it could be. what this does is reframe some central debates. for example, it entirely displaces the center of the debates about iran, which had previously been centered on bush administration dick-waving to the total exclusion of persian gulf countries (israel is not one of those)...it changes the public perception of pakistan in an interesting way as well, making it far more complicated and problematic (assuming that you haven't been looking...) than it may have been perceived as being. it's interesting to think on it that way.

i wouldn't say deliberate...but i would not be surprised to learn that it was known and approved of in a tacit way. tacit in the sense of "dont ask me any questions about those documents that you are releasing officially because i cannot have any position except but to oppose them...o take out that name would you? not good if she's outed...""

I doubt it. Next thing you know you'll be blaming the government for 9/11. And let's just be honest: that's silly. :expressionless:

No computer connected to the internet is secure. There are other secondary networks, but that seems to be encrypted and secure.

This problem started 30 years ago when the first desktop computers came on the scene. Papers are very well secured, and you would have to drill out a safe, or just be able to grab a few reports at a time. Now with large capacity USB drives that are pretty small, someone can download hundreds of thousands of documents and not even look for anything or care what they got. If there is a cover-up, a 9-11 inside job (is anything about this in these cables?), corruption, or any abuses of power that is one thing, but this isn't the right way to do it.

The only thing Obama failed at was preventing the release of these documents once he knew they had been released. If Wikileaks 'went away', I think that would send a strong message against doing this in the future. But, at the same time, it is needed because regular news won't do anything like this, the right-wing news is so biased that even if they are right it sounds like they have ulterior motives, and documentary films take years to come out and still don't get to the bigger questions.

And yes the media does have problems, yet I don't want to have to read 250,000 pages to find out what is one possible truth. Yes, media researchers should have an oversight role to keep the government honest and accountable, yet throwing everything out and letting the bad people in the world know what we are planning and thinking isn't the right way to do it.

I learned a long time ago that one of the first things you do is look at the background and credentials of the person posting the article. There's very likely little value in reading say an article on nuclear thermodynamics written by Jessica Simpson.

Similarly, there's little value in reading an article posted by a blogger with little or no interaction with the diplomatic corps describing one or two incidents in China and extrapolating that to the whole State dept.

This isn't the first time I caught you posting a dubious article and claiming it was representative of the whole or that it was the gospel truth.

So much for 'intellectual laziness'

i framed what i said pretty tightly. this is far from the only such information concerning the professional/permanent levels of state being out of touch in problematic ways...and if you think about the Problem that's raised by the release of this material, it originates with and goes back to the middle-to-upper levels of the state department, so to political appointees and the permanent staffs.

in the blog entry, the case is clear cut. in many other situations, it's not so. there are good people who do good work. there are people who lack language skills required to do more than skim over the surface of where they are, to sort out true from false and so forth. it's a problem, but it's a problem for anyone working for any government, really.

i spent a few years living in france. it took quite a while to begin to figure out how folk actually live and the longer i was there the less i knew (because the modes of generalizing i started with no longer works and because i knew actual people instead of types...you know the drill...) so maybe there's a problem with rotating people through assignments.

this is not an everything sucks line of argument btw. it is a speculative line that's aimed at trying to understand something of the chicken little act we've been getting since monday, particularly from those professionals of chicken little on the right.

this link:

http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

takes you to an essay by julian assange, "state and terrorist conspiracies."

it tells you alot about how the political world operates in assange's view, the role and possibilities of tactical operations like wikileaks etc.

the idea is to disrupt the functioning of an "invisible government" which he talks about using the language of conspiracy (for better or worse) but which could just as easily be described using categories like oligarchy.

an excerpt:

but see for yourself.

this essay:

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010...y-%E2%80%9Cto-
destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/

is pretty good in drawing out the implications of assange's piece and connecting it to wikileaks as a tactic.
and this goes a long way to understanding what's happening with this.

here's another piece:

http://workwithoutdread.blogspot.com...striction.html


i'm far more interested in wikileaks now than i was.
watch and learn, folks. watch and learn.

Thanks for those links. It makes the event(s) much more clearly understood.

I can understand qualms about upsetting the status quo. To an extent. But I think it's important for those folks to know exactly what it is that they are rejecting and, as a consequence, what they are accepting.

Knowledge is fundamental.

there's a footnote in assange's essay (which is garbled btw in the pdf...it looks like there are two copies of the first 5 pages of part one that were confused with the second 5 pages of part two...) concerning complicity. you've heard similar things before, but the gist is: if you witness corrupt actions and do nothing, you become yourself corrupt. the endless boredom that greets revelations of war crimes or "collateral damage" or these cables (which is admirably dissected in the article from "work without dread" in the last paragraph by way of a bolano quote) is the same as acquiescence. and maybe, as the same entry concludes, exposing that boredom is in itself a salutary political action.

here's a good piece that develops another angle from simon jenkins:


US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian

I only read part one of the Assange essay. I thought the 'zunga' analysis written in context of the diplomacy leak to be more relevant.

Like you've said, I find myself to be much more interested in Wikileaks now that I've read these articles. It's not about whistle blowing, but about revolution. And a potentially peaceful one at that. I'm afraid I'd have to throw the full weight of my support behind that.

I think everyone should read them. I assume that alot of the concern, at least among reasonable people, is that with these leaks we are heading into unknown territory with unknown consequences. That fear, even if I don't accept it, is something that at least I can understand. But in reality, if we are going along not knowing whether what we see and hear - what we are told - is real or not, is that really so much of a different place to be? Myself, I prefer to know the truth.

Simon is correct. It is the government's responsibility to protect classified information. That includes throwing people like the Wikileaks crowd in jail or in front of a firing squad when they get caught disclosing classified government information.

Also, Julian Assange's attempts to justify why he broke the law, while possibly interesting are irrelevant. If he wants to play anarchist or whatever else he thinks he is, then he should be willing to pay the price.

In what was has Julian Assange broken the law? Wikileaks is a media outlet and thus is legally allowed to publish classified information.
Prosecuting WikiLeaks For Publishing Documents Would Raise Serious Constitutional Concerns, Says ACLU | American Civil Liberties Union

I did not know this about the first amendment, thanks Will.

No problemo. I didn't know until this morning. It makes sense, though, as free speech is in part about an informed public being necessary for a free society. Knowledge is power and only through free speech can knowledge spread unhindered. It's an elegant system we have.

He's divulged classified information. If that has compromised national security or led to the death of anyone who provided that information to the US government then he should be prosecuted for that.

dogzilla: Wrong, the person who gave him the information should be prosecuted for it. There's a difference.

I have a fabulous idea.
Since we're all in our happy place making up laws to be broken so we can trot certain 'bad people' out to be shot, why not think of it this way:

How about whenever a politician stands up in front of us all and lies, tries to make something look like something its not or participates in covering up important information that it is our right to have, why don't we line those guys up in front of a firing squad instead?! are you with me?!

That way all you bloodthirsty types can still get your bang-bangs on and the rest of us can start enjoying the transparent government that we've supposedly had all along (only we haven't) making cocky little non-American types like Julian Assange obsolete.

Everybody wins!
wick, wick, whack.

/naturally, this moment of dripping sarcasm should not be confused with mixedmedia's actual sentiments, ideas, feelings or desires.

interesting. so in this scenario, government has a job and media has a job, but citizens, who are parts of a democratic polity i understand, don't have a job---like to be informed, to make informed decisions---and so have no interest really in accurate information. it's ok to lie to the polity it's ok to manage them. because american democracy really is that paper-thin. and the irony, i suppose (were there even surprise about this) is that it's the conservatives who claim to be all about democracy in america (except when it's politically inconvenient at which point democray becomes mob rule or communism somehow except when it's convenient when it becomes what the united of states stands for) who are in this place yelling: I DONT WANT TO KNOW ALL THIS STUFF I'M NOT LISTENING LA LA LA SHOOT JULIAN ASSANGE.

i dont get it.

There's no laws being made up. The guy who handed over the information broke laws about releasing classified information. Maybe it's PFC Manning, who the military will deal with soon enough, maybe it's somebody else, who should also be dealt with.

The people running wikileaks could have just turned the classified info back to the government, along with the name of the person who gave it to them if they knew that.

Or they could create a second violation of the laws against releasing classified information by releasing the documents themselves.

They chose the second and deserve to be prosecuted out of existence.

If the NY Times somehow obtained a detailed military plan for some action in Afghanistan and published that, I really doubt that free speech laws would protect them form that. I think national security law would take precedence.

---------- Post added at 07:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:42 AM ----------

Where's the outrage that wikileaks hasn't published any of Al Queda's classified information?

Or are maybe the wikileaks people a bunch of cowards who are afraid something bad will happen to them if they do that?

PFC Manning doesn't work for Wikileaks anymore than Deep Throat worked for the Washington Post. From what I've seen, the popular legal consensus seems to be that there's not a damn thing they can do about Wikileaks other than try to squash them out of existence by intimidating service providers from giving them server space. There's a lot of talk about this and that propelled by a lot of bluster, but talk is cheap. Especially in America, it seems. Which for some reason you seem to be totally comfortable with.

and there's apparently a split happening within the wikileaks group between assange, who decided to pursue a us-centered approach for tactical reasons, and the others who see the mission of wikileaks as transnational. so there are folk within wikileaks who think that megaleaks should be administered widely. so i don't see your point.

meanwhile:
American Psychosis: What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion?… | Project World Awareness