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

xxp much too generous to wikileaks. they clearly have an agenda. the idea that they are agnostic about the information it's releasing is preposterous. and they obviously wants to have an impact, if only to further that agenda. in that respect its mostly doing a terrible job.

waut @ Iceland, that is actually the coolest thing about this whole shebang

if the biggest impact of this leak is that it ruins Hillary's political chances going into the future, that'll be a bummer.

Seems like Wikileaks does exactly what you'd think it does, it leaks information. It doesn't stop the war and it doesn't expose some completely unknown scandals. The Wikileaks site didn't have a front page saying THIS LEAK WILL CHANGE THE WORLD with a big count-down clock on it or something. If you're upset that there aren't any "important changes" resulting from all this then perhaps you should lower your personal expectations.

um please to note that SOMEONE ELSE implied that important changes were going to be borne from these leaks, not me. And sure while this latest batch has only been out for a few days (and appears to be largely inconsequential), the previous stuff has been out for months.

Iceland thing is interesting. kind of hard to predict how it will play out and whether it will be a success. I'll be surprised if anybody from that bank goes to jail tho fwiw.

and yeah caek otm

this could happen:

http://www.slate.com/id/2276190/

The sort of drool David Broder writes. No wonder the WaPo and Slate are sister publications.

agree with Alfred there, that's overstating the case. it's taken as a given that countries' diplomatic corps' function this way - unless some unforeseen horrible breakdown with a major ally ensues claiming that Hillary's days are numbered seems like overheated hyperbole to me. Obama seems plenty happy with her so far.

did someone post this?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/wikileaks-just-made-the-world-more-repressive/article1818157/

fart

the two guys toing and froing on the economist blog are doing a really good job imo

Amazed by that Shafer article. I don't see Clinton losing her job over this at all.

LOL, I was unaware that Wikileaks had recently tweeted "The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Sneakersmovie.jpg

ha that's almost friedman-y

xp

my parents love Sneakers.

The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined

lol

consequences will never be the same

julian aykroyd

Kind of curious about the 'history' part. Maybe Wikileaks is building this all up to a reveal of real proof of Atlantis.

hope it's about 9.11

Well, hey, the Pentagon Papers kind of redefined the Vietnam War, didn't they?

nothing released yet at that level

They're going to drop the truth bombs w/r/t the aquatic ape theory AND the peopling of the Americas by boats.

nm I suppose that's global prehistory...

The central goal of WikiLeaks is to prevent the world's most powerful factions -- including the sprawling, imperial U.S. Government -- from continuing to operate in the dark and without restraints. Most of the institutions which are supposed to perform that function -- beginning with the U.S. Congress and the American media -- not only fail to do so, but are active participants in maintaining the veil of secrecy. WikiLeaks, whatever its flaws, is one of the very few entities shining a vitally needed light on all of this. It's hardly surprising, then, that those factions -- and their hordes of spokespeople, followers and enablers -- see WikiLeaks as a force for evil. That's evidence of how much good they are doing.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/30/wikileaks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+salon/greenwald+(Glenn+Greenwald)

specious reasoning there glenn

I know I'm a broken record with this but over the last few years Greenwald went from an intelligent commentator to an author of some of the dumbest shit ever.

you mean over the last 22 months i think

since i've been reading him since 2007 i don't know why i'd mean 22 months but thanks for your pedantic dumbass bullshit anyway cheers :)

(sorry, i'm upset about rl stuff, i'm not gonna post anymore while this stuff is going on cause i'm just gonna be a jerk)

jk

anyway i don't think this is what you're saying exactly but i doubt 2007 gg would have a different position on wikileaks

i really would rather not talk about glenn greenwald though

I don't mind Greenwald at all, except when I do.

haha yeah, that's basically my ish with him. when he's right, he's right.

which to me is fifty percent of the time and okay with me.

His arguments re: the media speaking as the voice of the post-9/11 Security State are pretty convincing, and he seems to tie that into most of the stuff he talks about these days.

So what differentiates this dude from the usual garden variety anarchist? Aside from his platform and prominence?

http://www.interpol.int/public/data/wanted/notices/data/2010/86/2010_52486.asp

The central goal of WikiLeaks is to prevent the world's most powerful factions -- including the sprawling, imperial U.S. Government -- from continuing to operate in the dark and without restraints. Most of the institutions which are supposed to perform that function -- beginning with the U.S. Congress and the American media -- not only fail to do so, but are active participants in maintaining the veil of secrecy. WikiLeaks, whatever its flaws, is one of the very few entities shining a vitally needed light on all of this. It's hardly surprising, then, that those factions -- and their hordes of spokespeople, followers and enablers -- see WikiLeaks as a force for evil. That's evidence of how much good they are doing.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/30/wikileaks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+salon/greenwald+(Glenn+Greenwald)

On a gut level my problem with this kind of thing is the seeming asymmetry of it. Unless you're going to have equal-sized disclosures for every government in the world, you're sort of single out the United States for the kind of secrecy every modern nation practices. If there's information that's especially damning like the Pentagon Papers I'm all for releasing it. But I don't see the benefit in getting behind-the-scenes diplomatic communications and opinions otherwise, unless we're going to get the same from all sides.

Unless you're going to have equal-sized disclosures for every government in the world,

Well US is proportionately always gonna be of more global interest than, what, 97% of other countries?

So you think the right has a point -- that the leaks acquire validity if, say, Chinese and North Korean "secrets" emerged too?

(no sarcasm intended)

who me? got no other opinion, certainly no informed one, tbh

Julian Assange is great
for me to leak on

no -- Hurting

phew

From the comments section in this article

You have to admire someone who can seriously annoy just about every government on the planet. On the other hand I feel sorry for his parents.

On a gut level my problem with this kind of thing is the seeming asymmetry of it.

The only way asymmetry arguments hold up, IMO, is if Assange declined to leak from China/Russia/etc. - which seems unlikely, since some of the current leaks are pretty damning of Russia and China themselves.

Older but very interesting piece on the potential criminal liability of Wikileaks.

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/09/public_class.html

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/activate-reston5

― first as tragedy, then as favre (goole), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 11:52 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol

ladies and gentlemen, last night we came under attack by means of a direct denial of service attack. we had no choice but to *emperor assange removes his glasses, rubs his eyes... for a moment you are reminded that he is human... like us* we had to activate Reston5. may god forgive me.

people who claim that wikileaks is politically neutral forget the existence of collateral murder

Just had my first look at the actual leaks, seems like these cables are gold for "unusual details" stuff; here's from Astana:

¶10. (C) HOW TO ORDER LAMB. Idenov insisted the Ambassador order a bottle of wine for their dinner but then never touched his first glass. Instead, he gulped three cans of Coca-Cola while inhaling his food. When both he and the Ambassador ordered lamb chops, Idenov advised, “Well done, never rare -- this is Astana, not London!”

(Fun fact: the (C) at the start means that this paragraph is merely "Confidential", as opposed to (S) "Secret", which is the overall classification of that particular msg.)