Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

to be fair she was george w bush's national security advisor

Her utterly meager 'thank you' at the end was hilarious

this Wired chat logs controversy thing is O_O conspiracy insanity

It seems to be settled now since the Wired folks have indicated that none of what Lamo has been saying to the press lately is actually in the logs they have.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/2010122971637433801.html

Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Religion and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam

that greenberg essay is specious, credulous rubbish, loaded with weasel words -- pretty much like everything else he's ever written for slate, as far as i can remember.

CBS News does an excellent public service, linking to everything revealed by WikiLeaks.

i'm sure that will be illegal soon too

WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops
US embassy cable recommends drawing up list of countries for 'retaliation' over opposition to genetic modification

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.

In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops.

"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits.

"The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices," said Stapleton, who with Bush co-owned the St Louis-based Texas Rangers baseball team in the 1990s.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops

Some nonsense in here, but worth a read.

I think it's a damn shame Manning is in solitary.

I think the US govt is making a reactionary punchline out of itself.

I think we've wasted a lot of time and money in the last couple of months treating web pages in the same way the pope treats sacrament crackers (it's just information if you read it at home, if you read it at work - IT'S THE BODY OF SECRETS)

I think this will produce some myopic policy flim flam in the short term, but in the long term, it's kind of like what J Blount said ages ago about social conservatives. Gay people are going to get "married," people gonna smoke weed, folks gonna be weird colors and you can't stop any of it no matter what you do.

The classification process and marking rigor are based in a hard copy world, and hard copy world has met ragnorok. We - intelligence, law enforcement, et al. - need to learn a lot, very quickly, from the private sector, about how to protect sensitive data from adversaries and risky business. Ye Olde walled garden has been Ye Olde since Hanssen at least, and the movie they make about Manning isn't going to make this shit show look any better.

This post has been an excellent example of writing as a thought exercise. Thank you ILX! Also, everyone in the entire world should read this speech (has nothing to do with the thread but I like it):
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

hi tombot

Hey Tom! Been waiting fr your take on this :)

(as someone who is ex-dealing with classified old school myself, I find this shit p interesting)

"I think this will produce some myopic policy flim flam in the short term"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40916433/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in_security/

"Office of Management and Budget suggests that agencies use psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the 'relative happiness' of workers or their 'despondence and grumpiness' as a way to assess their trustworthiness. The memo was sent this week to senior officials at all agencies that use classified material."

7000-word Vanity Fair piece on The Guardian's dealings with WikiLeaks

Not really the place for it, but a man appeared on the local news the other day called "Tom Bott".

Its interesting Control z's link starts with "the Obama administration" rather than "the US government".

I don't know if journalists really say "the Obama administration" more than they said "the Bush administration"!

Oh wasn't suggesting they were! Just find it an interesting angle.

presumably "the X administration" is heard/emphasized more in the u.s. not for politically motivated reasons but because it's not a westminster system, so you need to distinguish the executive from the legislature

Yep

the vf piece digested http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/06/assange_guardian_wikileaks_leak/

Assange is such a pompous arse.

Nevermind him or what an evil man we're supposed to think he is. What's in the leaks is all that matters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/08/us-twitter-hand-icelandic-wikileaks-messages

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/07/twitter/subpoena.pdf

good overview & updates here too:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/07/twitter/index.html

Nevermind him or what an evil man we're supposed to think he is. What's in the leaks is all that matters.

― StanM

Correct - there will continue to be a deluge of ad hominem attacks on Assange and his supporters. Distraction from the content of the leaks is the sole intent.

feel like it would be harder to distract people from the content of the leaks if anyone made a strong case for what we should do with the leak information. instead there's always this unspoken action i feel like we're expected to take (esp wrt greenwald's posts on this -- 'they just want to distract you from the important issues') but i understand the problem. the question of how to effect change / or move to action are always a trickier question than getting angry. the natural consequence of information is always a call to action, and without that action the information just dies. would be interested in seeing greenwald be more of an activist but a) maybe he's not so interested in that (tho he is playing an important role in Manning's defense so maybe he is and b) he would probably have to move back to the US for an extended period of time.

serious question; I've read many of the leaks, many articles that illuminate particular leaks, etc, etc. I believe that the leaks are accurate and in some cases very interesting. now what? if there's nothing else to do after reading them, maybe we should talk about the ad hominems. it's about as productive as just ignoring the wikileaks entirely. at least it keeps the story alive (even in a bastardized even less useful form)

some typos. i'm tired.

The leaks and the ridiculous knee jerk reaction to their appearance only make me suspect this is a unique, one time only, chance us nobodies will ever get to find out how some stuff really works. Sometimes the tin foil hatters were right after all, who would have guessed, eh? (attention tin foil hatters: I said sometimes. Don't use this as another one of your TheySaidGalileoWasWrongToo arguments)

The only effects they will have is that a couple of people will end up in jail for 300,000 years (x years for every document), that security will be tightened up to the extreme for this kind of communication from now on, that there will be even more restrictions on freedom on the internet for everyone and not one thing will change about the way international diplomacy/economic backroom dealings are done.

idk that the tin foil hatters were right. every terrible thing this has revealed displays incompetence and dumbassery (with maybe the exception of hilary spygate revelation) than grand conspiracy. if anything it makes it sound conspiracies are a terrible way to understand politics

Another nice Grenwald peice:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/10/fear/index.html

that security will be tightened up to the extreme for this kind of communication from now on, that there will be even more restrictions on freedom on the internet for everyone and not one thing will change about the way international diplomacy/economic backroom dealings are done

I completely disagree.
"security" in the bureaucratic sense will be ratcheted up for official business communiques, which just means that more and more bureaucrats will begin moving to idiosyncratic side channels to discuss their business because the provided apparatus will just become more and more inconvenient compared to the relative degree of secrecy and progressively weaker arguments for that secrecy's absolute necessity in every exchange.

restrictions on internet liberties become generally more impossible to enforce every day, so that's just silly.

the way that international diplomacy and "backroom dealings" are done is going to change a lot, as per my first paragraph, although the degree to which it is affected and/or how quickly is dependent on how prolific wikileaks is - both in terms of how many more incorrigible bean spillers wikileaks can attract before it inevitably fades into irrelevance, and how many committed copycats spring up, of whatever stripe or purported mission.

generally, I like to think the whole "diplomatic wire" system will eventually be replaced by a taxpayer-funded uglification of Yammer, which embassy and consulate employees will constantly update from their taxpayer-purchased red rubber tablets that literally do nothing else, not even flashlight apps.

http://mumbrella.com.au/murdoch-features-in-wikileaks-cables-38214

Wikileaks’ next target could be major media organisations, its leader Julian Assange has hinted.

In an interview due to be published by New Statesman magazine, Assange says of the leaked diplomatic cables: “”There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp.”

FUCK yes.

OK, now I'm excited.

Love to see who's gonna touch THESE ones.

The only time I have bought bottled water is when I'm caught out somewhere and it is incredibly hot and I'm dying of thirst (I dont drink soft drinks or juice). Cities need more water-bubbler fountains. Keep them cleaned as a public service - install a little filter into each one. Have em on every street corner, in parks alongside the running track.

Wonder what WikiLeaks has on Aquafina?

Oops, hahaa wrong thread. Sorry!

This is a pretty good piece on the Tsvangirai mess, also very illuminating (for me, anyway) about what's been going on in Zimbabwe recently:

In this particular case, the argument that (A) because the cable hurts Tsvangirai and helps Mugabe, (B) Wikileaks is therefore bad for democracy, and therefore (C) bad for Zimbabweans, is a set of propositions linked together by a lot of un-argued claims. For example, you’d never guess from reading Albon or Richardson that it’s not at all clear that Tsvangirai would win a free and fair election, were one to be held, and particularly unlikely to mount a real challenge in the kind that actually will be held.

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/wikileaks-in-zimbabwe-and-in-the-media/

That whole situation is so fucked up, but really it's hard to see how wikileaks could have any effect on dictatorships other than marginally strengthening the dictator's position. You've got (a) a dictator who's so evil that anything leaked on her/him is merely very much in character and (b) a democratic freedom movement that has everything to lose by copping the wrong leak at the wrong time. Result is a dictator whose position doesn't change at all and an opposition that looks flaky and hypocritical.

The fact in Zimbabwe is that Tsvangirai has always faced an uphill battle because, in addition to all the Zanu-PF propaganda and fear-mongering and such, Mugabe is still a hero to many of the people purely because of his role 30 years ago in defeating the colonials. They're the same people who genuinely believe the British are destroying Zim with sanctions. I don't really see what significant damage wikileaks could do in this case.

Prepared to be proved wrong, of course.

That whole situation is so fucked up, but really it's hard to see how wikileaks could have any effect on dictatorships other than marginally strengthening the dictator's position.

i hear the government in belarus is quaking in its boots over the next leak

Breaking news:
Tonight at 8pm GMT the Guardian will release confidential documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

wonder if this means they've patched things up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12263095

I'm guessing it's this?

Not wikileaks, afaik?

Yeah, that's why I was wondering. Just seemed odd, the timing.