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

somebody was just saying something

what is it?

Um, about 92,000 classified first-hand reports from Iraq and Afghanistan leaked.

http://bpent.webs.com/YungRoLeak.jpg

there was a pretty thorough article in the New Yorker a bit back, very interesting stuff.

I don't like the way Wikileaks packages and promotes its material. They edited the Reuters photographer video to make it more damning and titled it "Collateral Murder." That seems to contradict their mission to promote transparency and accountability. How can they claim to be the antidote to spin and selective information when their product does the same? They ought to just publish the material and let it speak for itself.

^^^ Exactly my thoughts after the New Yorker piece. They present themselves as activists with a particular political slant until they get criticised, at which point they throw their hands up and say they were just putting data out there for other people to interpret how they like. Towards the end of the profile, Assange says that he thinks in retrospect he should have gone with the Reuters video's more neutral original title, Permission to Engage, so he's not unaware of this contradiction.

--- Subject: Press Conference - WIKILEAKS, Midday, Monday 26 July, at the Frontline Club

Julian Assange of Wikileaks is holding a press conference at noon today at the Frontline Club following the release yesterday of a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, described by the Guardian as the biggest intelligence leak in history.

Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1JG
---

I don't like the way Wikileaks packages and promotes its material. They edited the Reuters photographer video to make it more damning and titled it "Collateral Murder." That seems to contradict their mission to promote transparency and accountability. How can they claim to be the antidote to spin and selective information when their product does the same? They ought to just publish the material and let it speak for itself.

― Super Cub, Monday, July 26, 2010 2:38 AM (3 hours ago)

this is dumb. the unedited video hardly added any context to the killing and it was made clear that there was a "short version" and a "long version" - released simultaneously and on the same page

i can't remember this so well but the long version was also edited. we did a whole thread about it iirc.

n e ways i don't have a big problem with them but calling it 'collateral murder' was kind of dumm

but the main thing with the new leaks is surely that they aren't that surprising?

guardian editorial:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-guardian-editorial

We today learn of nearly 150 incidents in which coalition forces, including British troops, have killed or injured civilians, most of which have never been reported; of hundreds of border clashes between Afghan and Pakistani troops, two armies which are supposed to be allies; of the existence of a special forces unit whose tasks include killing Taliban and al-Qaida leaders; of the slaughter of civilians caught by the Taliban's improvised explosive devices; and of a catalogue of incidents where coalition troops have fired on and killed each other or fellow Afghans under arms.

which parts of this are really new? obviously it provides a lot more detail etc, but "the existence of a special forces unit whose tasks include killing Taliban and al-Qaida leaders" is the kind of thing one would have expected in 2001, let alone today.

i'm struggling to see what part of the info motivated the whistleblower - it's that kid who's been arrested, right? he said there were "almost criminal political backdealings", does that mean the isi/taliban link? the guardian is a bit dismissive about the intelligence reports on that.

grateful to nick davies for revealing that the leaker used blank cds labelled as lady gaga to smuggle the info out though.

this seems new:

9.55am: I've just been speaking to Jon Boone, the Guardian's Afghanistan correspondent, about the revelation that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles (Stingers), which were used to down a Chinook helicopter over Helmand in 2007 , killing seven soliders. Boone told me it was the most significant piece of information in the leaked documents and something that has not been reported previously, as the cause of the Chinook fatalities was covered up:

"It is significant because Stinger missiles were part of the story of how the Russians were beaten in the 1980s [in Afghanistan] and it's always been said that if the insurgents got these weapons it would do immense damage to the counter-insurgency campaign because air power is so significant - it's the power we have that the insurgents don't. My sources always led me to believe they did not have this technology and that it's impossible to get this stuff on the private market. It would be a huge move if a surrounding state had given this technology to the Taliban, even if it hasn't had as much of an impact as anticipated.

"After the Russian withdrawal the main business of the CIA was a Stinger buyback programme . Although they didn't get them all, it was thought that those remaining were ineffective because of flat batteries etc. Maybe some of those old Stingers have been brought back into operation but maybe, more significantly, a neighbouring country has provided these."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/jul/26/afghanistan-war-logs-wikileaks

Not bigger than the Pentagon Papers, surely? I heard on NPR the stuff isn't even Top Secret. [Val Kilmer gif]

Still, kudos to the heroes who leaked them.

i think it's just on sheer size. pentagon papers = 7000 pages. wikileaks = 90,000 documents. assange was saying at the press conference that wikileaks/guardian/nyt/der spiegel have only gone through a couple of thousand of them so far, so there might be something else to come.

1. Ask yourself: Why didn’t Wikileaks just publish the Afghanistan war logs and let journalists ‘round the world have at them? Why hand them over to The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel first? Because as Julien Assange, founder of Wikileaks, explained last October, if a big story is available to everyone equally, journalists will pass on it.

“It’s counterintuitive,” he said then. “You’d think the bigger and more important the document is, the more likely it will be reported on but that’s absolutely not true. It’s about supply and demand. Zero supply equals high demand, it has value. As soon as we release the material, the supply goes to infinity, so the perceived value goes to zero.”

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/07/26/wikileaks_afghan.html

i like how he looks like a 'die hard' villain ^_^

http://news.antiwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/assange.jpg

i can't remember this so well but the long version was also edited. we did a whole thread about it iirc.

― pieter brogel the elder (history mayne), Monday, July 26, 2010 6:16 AM

2010 in Iraq

I'm not reading 900 pages much less 90,000 but so far the summaries seem kidna underwhelming/unsurprising

gets rly good on page 65,340 btw

Interesting:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Analysts-Find-Little-New-in-WikiLeaks-Afghan-Docs-4457

That 'endangering lives' section is the important bit imo. When stuff is secret it's most likely to protect who the source is, not the actual content.

Interesting:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Analysts-Find-Little-New-in-WikiLeaks-Afghan-Docs-4457

― gato busca pleitos (Eazy), Monday, July 26, 2010 5:12 PM (6 hours ago)

the too-cool crypto-conservative "we already suspected most of this stuff already, jeez wikileaks thanks for WASTING MY TIME" coming from a lot of people is...well, not surprising, but sad

how dare they! gg said that it was important

ilx's leading conservative weighs in

kevin is right -- just because we "know" that civilian killings etc happen afghanistan doesn't mean that details of actual events of such things going on aren't important

Man, fucking Mother Jones, so fucking Conservative.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/wikileaks-afghan-documents-and-me-source

i don't think it's crypto-conservative... just needlessly cynical

hey k3v, got any other patronizing dictionary definitions to throw my way?

i mean that mother jones post boils down to "some murders are more boring than others"

also i think that what wikileaks does is important, regardless if every single one of their releases doesn't shake the country to its core

MJ:

I'll keep running through to see if there's anything else of importance. But most of this information is tactical nuts and bolts, devoid of context, and largely useless for a war narrative; what would be far more valuable than this stuff is the strategic/political data: military info that's TOP SECRET or above, which I haven't seen yet; or stuff from the State Department or provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs).

often the significance of the act may trump what's actually being leaked

"this is not important, because tons of military personnel have seen it already"

I didn't say wikileaks doesn't do important things, just don't think there's much value in calling people cynical crypto-conservatives for disagreeing with you over the value of a particular leak, esp when as far as i can tell k3v doesn't have any particular personal experience in gauging the value of military leaks and deciding whether they are important or not. presumably he read a dude who told him they were important and now i'm ILX's biggest conservative because i'm more skeptical than he is.

like i said, i don't agree that it's conservatism -- it might be conservative in the literal, non-political sense of the term, but i don't think ppl for the atlantic or mother jones are, you know, placating the GOP or something

tbh goofball i haven't even read any analysis of this, just read the NYT articles about an hour ago xp

of course the IMPACT will be minimal, America is still debating Inception

so are you

xp k3v, suggestion for future: when you don't know shit about something don't call people conservatives because they disagree with your one hour old opinion, k?

esp when as far as i can tell k3v doesn't have any particular personal experience in gauging the value of military leaks and deciding whether they are important or not.

― Mordy, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 12:03 AM (4 minutes ago)

you're using a different metric for "importance" than i am, you realize.

or 'value', rather

right, i'm using the gauge of whether they bring to light new information we didn't already have, spark discourse that wouldn't exist without them, or have a more undefinable impact -- since we have no idea about the second two yet, we can only evaluate the first, and since i'm not an expert (nor have the time to read all of the leaks myself), i have to rely on heuristics. generally reading analysis from a few different places. you apparently go with whether believing their valuable makes you feel good or not.

they're*

If a poll is taken within the next week and shows a huge spike in war unpopularity, or something else quantifiable that can possibly be traced back to this leak, I might be willing to say that the leak was important, even without any huge new revelations. My hesitance would be how shitty most polling is and how little they generally can tell us, but that's pretty much the only way you could say that these leaks were somehow "important." Trying to saying so without having that is just making shit up.

xp k3v, suggestion for future: when you don't know shit about something don't call people conservatives because they disagree with your one hour old opinion, k?

― Mordy, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 12:09 AM (1 minute ago)

yes, the fact that i haven't served in the military or have had my thoughts on intelligence leaks previously published disqualifies my opinion that disclosing this information is a good thing, regardless of its impact. and i hardly need your view on this to think you're a conservative

xp yeah there's the thing - you wouldn't know it but there's this crazy thing called principle, mine says uncovering secret shit that governments and militaries do is awesome, whether the info is interesting or mundane, whether it 'has an impact' or not

Ah yes, the uncovering secret shit is good principle. I believe Kant wrote about that in his Critique of Practical Reason.

If a poll is taken within the next week and shows a huge spike in war unpopularity, or something else quantifiable that can possibly be traced back to this leak, I might be willing to say that the leak was important, even without any huge new revelations. My hesitance would be how shitty most polling is and how little they generally can tell us, but that's pretty much the only way you could say that these leaks were somehow "important." Trying to saying so without having that is just making shit up.

― Mordy, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 12:16 AM (7 minutes ago)

i mean this paragraph just makes me want to vomit. that shit is laaaaaaaame wikileaks, you shouldn't have even published this, fuckin attention whores. way to distract me from more important issues such as what crazy comment rush limbaugh made and what color john mccain's poop was today

Quotation marks of random shit you wrote, how fun!

Free availability of information & transparency of government seem bedrock values of any democracy worth the name & that hardly seems like a controversial thing to assert in my opinion - what immediate measurable good is done by these values seems rather beside the point

Of course THE SHADOW HOME SECRETARY has said in the commons he's only being pursued because of whistleblowing against the USA. I fucking despair.

She's useless. Corbyn seems beholden to her for some reason.

If you'd had an affair with someone but never actually fallen out with them, there's no reason why you wouldn't keep them close as a trusted ally in the future given how well they know you.

In similar news, I'm sure the relationship between Seumas Milne and Jennifer Robinson is only a coincidence and has nothing at all to do with the front bench policy.

I don't know who Liz Crokin is, but...yeah.

Liz Crokin is "beyond ecstatic" and on the verge of tears at the news that Julian Assange was arrested, because it means that Pizzagate will finally be proven to be real. pic.twitter.com/nYKobiOW2E

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) April 12, 2019

what's with her fingers? :-/

Apparently she lost several digits in a surfing accident, which she naturally blames on Marina Abramovic and the Clintons:

“These people that I expose engage in witchcraft,” Crokin said. “You know, the people like Marina Abramović, the people like Hillary Clinton, [the people] from the deep state articles that are getting ready to write a hit piece on me right now. Well, look it up. Look it up. Do research on Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and their trip to Haiti and how—I think it was on their honeymoon—they admitted to doing voodoo there together. Research Marina Abramović; she talks about the rituals she does, she’s an occultist. All these people dabble in witchcraft and spirit cooking,” she added. “So, do these people do witchcraft against me? Of course they do. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were casting spells on me the night before.”

oh no! maybe they got her brain too.

Lol, i think assange should definitely have stood trial in sweden, still should. But let's not pretend this has happened because of the rape allegations, or because of skipping bail 7(?) Years ago. Nobody of importamce in this business cares about the rape allegations, (or Sweden, word to Mattdc)

I mean, i think it's pretty funny that he's going to get to visit trump's america after all he did to help get him elected.

one reason putin-izing usa works is because some people will wonder if trump somehow got this to happen so he can get him here and pardon him lol. it wouldn't avoid impeachment except when it does indirectly lol

he needs help locating the p. tape

I’m a little surprised that trump wants him extradited, assuming he had any knowledge of this at all. what happened to reciprocity?

Ola Bini, who also works with Wikileaks, was arrested in Ecuador yesterday - with a minister alleging he was ‘working with Assange to destabilise the Ecuadorean government ‘.

Rafael Correa has had his Facebook page (with 1.5m followers) blocked after making further corruption allegations against Moreno. Facebook has justified it by saying it prohibits sharing the financial records of other users.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of his asylum / detention, the idea Ecuador just got sick of him being a bad house guest, which a lot of the tabloids and Vice have been pushing, is clearly very silly.

idk trying to out your host's misdemeanours is bad guest behaviour

That and smearing your shit on their walls.

at least smeared shit washes off. some pissed up bad guest of mine once poured honey into my television.

Tonight over 70 parliamentarians stand with victims of sexual violence, and are calling on both the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Sec to urge them both to be champions of action to ensure Julian Assange faces Swedish authorities and is extradited there if they so request: pic.twitter.com/uaJMM984Cc

— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) April 12, 2019

signed by john woodcock, somewhat undermining its message

yes.. even CHUK didn't want to taint their brand with that slimeball.

abbott’s response

British government should grant extradition of Julian Assange if authorities reopen rape allegations, Diane Abbott says in letter to colleagues. pic.twitter.com/2qY1Yctrt7

— Ashley Cowburn (@ashcowburn) April 13, 2019

Wikileaks started out with a noble purpose of complete openness, but in the last few years Julian Assange sold out to Russian interests and betrayed the trust of innocent whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden (though Snowden still seems to be operating under the delusion that Assange actually gives a damn about him). Manning needs to be released as soon as possible, now that Assange is in custody. Also, I used to defend Wikileaks but when I was expressing my support for Manning I found a whole host of transphobic tankies who didn't give a shit about her. Fuck Julian Assange and fuck Wikileaks; transfer whatever useful is left of the project to a secondary source and destroy the whole site.

I have a young boss who has turned out to be an Assange cultist and is convinced there's been a "dead drop" of "explosive information" that's been released post-arrest, including "proof that white genocide is real." Might be time to go job hunting.

huge if true

Not sure what I thought about wikileaks at the time but have ended up thinking it's a bit too good to be true: the hacking and leaking of State A's secrets is just too good a technique for States B and C not to buy in/take over, surely? So it would just end up being used as a tool by one state against another rather than being some objective watchdog/truth-teller.

Wikileaks massive file release. A quick scan shows newsworthy files on Microsoft, Steve Jobs, Guantanamo, US torture briefings, Vatican bank, and much more. https://t.co/x6D79rh6hE

— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) April 14, 2019

lol BIlderberg meeting reports 1956-1980

surely this is....everything?

Note: https://t.co/q9lDUo7sSn is not a release, insurance dump, or response to Assange’s arrest. It is the page where published documents are available for bulk download so that people can create mirrors, access publications offline, or use the raw data. It has existed for years.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 13, 2019

sad trombone

i am reading the scientology docs anyway

Mueller Report: Julian Assange Smeared Seth Rich to Cover for Russians

Julian Assange not only knew that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer wasn’t his source for thousands of hacked party emails, he was in active contact with his real sources in Russia’s GRU months after Seth Rich’s death. At the same time he was publicly working to shift blame onto the slain staffer “to obscure the source of the materials he was releasing,” Special Counsel Robert Mueller asserts in his final report on Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

“After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking,” the report reads. “According to media reports, Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”

...

With Assange behind it, the Seth Rich hoax moved into the almost-mainstream, spawning a quickly-retracted report on Fox News, and a series of “investigations” by Assange ally Sean Hannity. It also wreaked havoc in the lives of Rich’s surviving family, particularly his anguished parents who later begged perpetrators of the charade “to give us peace, and to give law enforcement the time and space to do the investigation they need to solve our son's murder.”

Even as he was ruthlessly framing Rich to protect himself, the GRU, or both, Assange was privately communicating with his real sources to arrange the transfer of the second election leak, material the GRU stole from John Podesta’s Gmail account.

Fuck. This. Guy.

Came here to post exactly that

yup

whistleblowers are still very necessary and they shouldn't be punished, but this guy: fuck him.

50 weeks in chokey

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48118908

Sy Hersh: “Today Assange. Tomorrow, perhaps, The New York Times and other media that published so much of the important news and information Assange provided.”

— Jeffrey St. Clair (@JSCCounterPunch) May 24, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jun/13/julian-assange-sajid-javid-signs-us-extradition-order

myeah. he may be a cnut but free press and whistleblowing should still be possible too

I already said that. anyway.

Sorely tempted to say ah fuck it in this case.

Nah, it's important he goes to Sweden. Rape needs to be punished.

Lol he'll get punished alright

According to several sources Mike Pompeo told Ecuador's El Universo newspaper that Assange will definitely be extradited to the US: for instance,
https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/07/21/mike-pompeo-affirme-que-julian-assange-sera-extrade-vers-les-etats-unis_1741282

However, when looking for what he said (not that I speak Spanish or anything, but go to the El Universo site, type "Pompeo Assange" and then click Buscar = search, right?
finds this article: https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2019/07/20/nota/7434186/mike-pompeo-secretario-estado-eeuu-llego-guayaquil-reunirse-lenin
that only has one paragraph mentioning Assange and it's only something like "he will have to defend his actions before a court"

?

There doesn't appear to be a dedicated Chelsea Manning thread? She's recovering following a suicide attempt.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/11/chelsea-manning-suicide-attempt-hospital

just saw this, amazing news if it's true:

BREAKING: Chelsea Manning ordered released from jail, where she has been held for over a year for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury. Her testimony "is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose." https://t.co/Q1vC1VsrBn

— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) March 12, 2020

If I understand correctly, she still owes the court 250k in punitive fees, but I'm sure a fundraiser or two will take care of that if so.

Speaking of which:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-chelsea-pay-her-court-fines

BREAKING

Julian Assange NOT extradited because of suicide risk.

— Latika M Bourke (@latikambourke) January 4, 2021

key witness admits he may have lied a bit

https://stundin.is/grein/13627/

Not Wikileaks, but new major leak:

BREAKING: massive, global leak of the targets of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware. *huge deal.*

Forensic investigation by @AmnestyTech
in collaboration with @FbdnStories reporters.

We @citizenlab conducted peer review.

Here's an explainer THREAD.https://t.co/TasFCy5EGW pic.twitter.com/rGGKAkfSry

— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) July 18, 2021

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-pitched-trump-officials-plans-130727657.html