well you can't really blame the messenger, I may not like the guy but he really didn't do any of the dirty work, just another asshat who now has the power to filter what he wants seen.. the leak happened getting back to what peeps are saying about oil.. oil is imo the bane of all evil in this world.. I've seen what guys in oil do- they are basically evil incarnate you couldn't get me to work in oil.. it's a bunch of ****s sucking on a never ending nipple that can't dry up and they make up prices as they see fit.. there is no supply and demand the holier than thou attitudes are really funny too..it's easy to shovel all your problems off instead of dealing with them asshat here released names and places in the last leak.. now he's deciding what the world sees.. you know I wouldn't doubt if he did rape women in sweden- it sounds about right
Wikileaks: UK allowed US to use cluster bomb 'loophole' There has been a lot of debate regarding the point of leaking these cables as they could be regarded as just a necessary part of international diplomacy. However when you read headlines like the above, it reminds you just how undeserving our governments are of any such benefit of the doubt.
Whistleblowers are motivated by conscience, not self-interest. In terms of partiality their motives are purer. And don't buy the hype: this is not going to change world happenings --neither the Pentagon nor the UN think so. It may make people more informed voters. And that is not a bad thing. So we should allow bad or incompetent people to hide their badness and incompetence because if we call them on it they may become more bad/incompetent? I don't think so. Courts take time and money most civilians don't have, while governments have seemingly inexhaustible supplies. Moreover you can only challenge in court the secrets that you know of. Wikileaks reveals the secrets you didn't. As Rumsfeld said: there is a big difference between known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
I know huh.. get a lawyer to find a way to weasel out of anything- storing bombs on our own ships offshore doesn't sound so bad.. that kind of stuff happens a lot I bet I don't think going after the guy is going to do anything to stop leaks.. he didn't actually do anything on that end and can't see why he would be such a target when the fixes have to come from inside.. just don't like seeing someone like that take all the credit and he's basically done nothing any one of us could do if we were swede rapists.. plus the control of the information he has the chinese I'm sure have lots of information taken but not shared.. it's a in house problem they'll have to hire some new people to tighten it up in the department that leaked the information they should just hire a bunch of tsa goons.. feel up the government employees / backscatter and go through their laptops.. maybe 2 fingers in their rear two times in a backroom to make sure they aren't hiding usb sticks.. heck they are paid by us- do it right maybe 3 fingers
Self beliefs versus self interests. Doesn't seem to make much difference. If people's feelings on what's right and wrong were always acted on we'd have a very different world. Wanting a better system to come from within because the current one is broken and has too many holes to hide in is bad? It's counter productive to keep attacking a system which will simply try harder and harder to defend itself. Both parties end up wasting more resources. Not entirely true, you can make a request at little cost and have it processed like normal, regardless of whether what you're requesting exists or not. Lawsuits only start occurring when people believe that information was illegally withheld. Check some of the stories on the link, a woman made requests about a non-existent submarine base and documents showing her father to be the creator of scientology, multiple times in fact. Additionally, civilians may not have enough money to take every case to higher courts if they feel wronged by the results of their request, but an organization like WikiLeaks could certainly rally funds and fight for open government through legislation. But of course, using the whole checks and balances system which has kept the country together for the last couple hundred years would make too much sense when you can just press buttons and see what happens.
For those who haven't seen it, the man himself talks to TED at the Global2010 conference in July: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html The amount of weight behind the machine at this point is quite amazing for just one guy. Seems the thirst for power amongst the corporate and governmental elite is becoming more and more shameless these days. They used to be a lot more discrete!
"The population needs deception, so deceive them." "Be strong in your ignorance." “Who is to judge what is right and what is wrong? Great and powerful foes surround us; unknown miscreants gnaw at us from within. We are threatened with total annihilation. In days such as these we can afford no luxury of morality.” You can apply space marine quotes to almost any situation ^_^ Nic
I was reading one today about how Afghanistan snuck off and signed the cluster bomb treaty after telling the US they weren't going to and now the US is trying to convince the Afghans to interpret the treaty with as big of loopholes as possible. I was reading another today about the Spanish case against the CIA for rendition. The US embassy's policy is to say as little as possible because no one told them what was going on at the time, but if they say that no one will believe them. EDIT: It's also nice that the State dept people can write and have a sense of humor. The Iraq and Afghan reports were SO dull Some of these are absolutely hilarious like the one about how the Turkmenistan Presidents car stopped hard to avoid a cat crossing the road and the head of the diplomatic protection detail got fired because it could have been an assassination attempt! The one about how Canadians have an "inherent inferiority complex" and should vote for a government based on who would would be most cooperative with US policy was good too. If anything should be considered for staying secret I think it might be the diplomatic traffic, but given that this is the ONLY window we have right now on much of our own foreign policy, I applaud wikileaks for releasing it. EDIT: Damn, the site is down again.
and the annoying thing is... they're nearly always right and justifiable. Space Marines being how they are are so "Right and True" that they're incorruptable with their faith... usually. Actually getting some of the lines tattoo'd on me soon
Whoever did their domain registration dumped them (claimed too many DDOS attacks). If ever there was a case of "Quit making the other side right", this HAS to be it!
To be fair it's different than what some of the media are reporting. Heck, the Guardian and BBC are both being misleading. Their article's headlines on this are saying it's the registrar that's dumped them, but this isn't true. Wikileaks' DNS company have dumped them. Their domain name registrar (Dynabot) haven't taken any action. Hence the domain itself is absolutely fine; it's just that there's now a 'missing link' (the DNS; which is easily replaced) between the domain name and its servers. Anywhoo, a DNS server itself would actually be massively affected by a DDOS. A DDOS (or any abusive traffic) will easily flood the network of a server provider and/or DNS server provider and will in most cases lead to service being cut off. This is fairly normal, as shown by a quick search I just done on WebHostingTalk.com for threads on this subject solely in the past fortnight: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1001112&highlight=ddos http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=999174&highlight=ddos http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=999009&highlight=ddos http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=999917&highlight=ddos Hence whilst I don't doubt that there's things going on behind the scenes, the action of EasyDNS is completely normal. Multiple DDOS attacks (on a non-specialist network) will get any website kicked from a dedi and/or DNS provider - be it a tiny website or a large site like Wikileaks. All that Wikileaks need to do (and indeed, are currently doing) is either move their DNS to their own servers, or hire a DNS company which specialises in DDOS protection. But yeah, a dedi and DNS provider kicking off a website that keeps getting attacked is very, very common (Hence it makes me wonder why Wikileaks are saying on Twitter that this move was anti-freedom of speech, since websites get kicked off networks for DDOS attacks on a daily basis).
One in which there would be nothing to leak. Asymmetry of information always leads to assymmetry of power. We do not employ government to keep secrets from us. We employ them to represent us and run our country for us. We would not expect our doctor to withhold information about our illness or treatment "for our own good"; we'd certainly would like to know if our doctor's medical decisions about us are informed by self-interest, such as kickbacks and inducements from pharmaceutical companies, or unnecessary referrals to colleagues to line their pockets with consultation fees. Big Pharma distorting and hiding negative research data on their products? We want to know about that too. Price fixing amongst airline or oil companies? We applaud the incisive journalism that reveals it. Woodward and Bernstein revealing corruption at the highest level of government? They were journalistic heroes. Photos of atrocities in My Lai and Bang Trang? Nobody thought those ought to stay secret. But all of a sudden government is sacred. When did that happen? Some time in-between 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan we lost our spine, and our head with it. It's counterproductive to expect a dysfunctional system to change without challenging it. And Wikileaks is not the challenge; it is just the consequence of the actions of a dysfunctional system. It is simply the harvest of what that system sowed. We, the people, are the challengers. The system's actions have been revealed to us; there is a bit more information symmetry. Now what are we going to do with it? Yes, entirely true. The law is not equal. Governments can piss about at nauseum, as we have found with the Iraq enquiry right here in the UK, and in the cluster bomb legal loophole leak described above. You cannot challenge what you don't know about --only fire shots in the dark (like non-existent submarine bases) and hope you hit something. And just how well those checks and balances have been working is currently being revealed. That is BS, sorry. The medical world has checks and balances. Science has checks and balances. Politics has checks and balances, as does the law. Yet doctors and whole hospitals act unethically, Big Pharma falsifies its results, politicians are corrupt, judges are just plain prejudiced and scheister lawyers get off criminals every day that any right-thinking person knows should be locked up for life. If you will have a look at the world outside recently, you'll notice that those checks and balances aren't working that well. Because the watchers are not being watched. Again, in the words of our governments: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Live web chat at 1300 on the Guardian with Assange, IF he can get net access sorted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-julian-assange-online Yesterday's press briefing with Assistant Secretary of State PJ Crowley is here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/12/152291.htm This is particularly revealing. They're coming for him. It'll be interesting to see what happens either way.
Space Marines is fiction. Their slogans may have a certain existential appeal but it is basically just nihilist fundamentalism and copping out of making difficult moral decisions (which is the same thing) with a sprinkling of fascist anti-intellectual ideology that action is more important than thought. If you like that kind of thing (as a story, not implying that you are thinking to adopt it as a life philosophy) then read up on the real deal: the Envoys in Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon trilogy. Makes the Space Marines sound like a bunch of reactionary teenagers.
I see no reason why I can't have their social security numbers if they can have mine. If some government employee wants my number (of any variety) I should have the right to have his. Troop movements, I agree all governemnts and militaries will sensibly keep them secret, but the importance of that information has a very short lifetime. After a few weeks at most there is no secret to be maintained anymore. As for nuclear secrets, have you tried googling recently? A chunk of enriched weapons grade material in the centre of a steel or titanium pipe, large amounts of high explosives on either side - job done. The hard part is getting weapons grade uranium or plutonium. You see my point? Most information is already out there, what isn't out there is the small amount that governments want to keep secret because they say we should trust them to keep it secret for us. But they're also using that secrecy to break the law and act immorally. And Clinton had the gall to suggest Assange is the one in the wrong here, that bitch should be sitting in a police holding cell right now for breach of treaty ordering her subordinates to break the law.
It's worse than that, Spec. I recently read a book called "Claim of Privilege" which dealt with the landmark US Supreme Court case US v. Reynolds. The case revolved around the deaths of four civilian employees who were killed in the crash of an Air Force B-29 while testing navigational equipment. The families sued the government for negligence and as part of the discovery process subpoenaed the Air Force accident report. The Air Force claimed that releasing the report would compromise national security and refused to do so. The district court judge ruled against the Air Force by default, and this was upheld by the appeals court. The military appealed to the Supreme Court and made the argument that the information contained in the accident report was so sensitive that the judge could not be allowed to see it and that the judiciary had no standing to decided what was and was not allowable in their own courtrooms! The government further asserted that only the executive of the agency holding the documents could decide whether releasing them would be contrary to the national security of the country. Sadly, the court bought that line of reasoning. Years later, the accident report was declassified and it turns out that, gee whiz, there was no secret information in there after all! What it did contain was evidence of Air Force negligence causing the death of the civilian contractors. The families took this evidence back before the court showing that the court had been liked to inn the original Reynolds case, but the court upheld the previous ruling. As it stands now, a government agency can make a lawsuit go away just by mumbling "national security". The case law holds that the presiding judge cannon see for himself if there is any validity to that claim and must accept it at face value and dismiss the case. I bought a second copy of the book (it was at the dollar store ) and plan to send it to Bob Gates with an impassioned letter about the dangers of secrecy. No doubt a waste of time, but still...
Or a person, or a business, or just about anything they don't like. "Patriot Act" works just as well. This won't bring an end to that, but hopefully it will awaken more people to what IS going on with your tax dollars and my pounds.
The more i've been reading about the whole WikiLeaks business the more i think the US actually wanted this stuff to come out. Maybe i'm excessively cynical or suspicious but come on, we've seen (or not seen as the case most usually is) many countries including the US and th UK using covert means to silene potentially damaging leaks. I simply cannot believe that, with prior warning of these articles being released, that the US wouldn't have done something if they did not either a) want them to be released or b) think that they contain nothing which would actually cause any issues. It almost swings back into the whole 9/11 conspiracy for me (i neither believe nor disbelieve that by the way) with these 'leaks' being purposefully allowed out by the US government to be used in future as an excuse for military action against whichever country. Meh, i guess i'm just a nutjob who always thinks that governments are dodgy regardless of country.
