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Wikileaks. Any comments?

gumboot said:
As it turned out a couple of Reuters reporters were with this group. They had been in the area covering unrelated matters, but when they heard of the gunfight
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How do you know that? Because Reuters said that? You'll note that the report I linked above contains a Reuters article. It doesn't state that. But it does contains much misinformation. For example, it states that a witness Reuters interviewed said "The aircraft began striking randomly". It also indicates the two journalists were killed when the van was hit (clearly untrue based on what we see in the video).

gumboot said:
Were they not insurgents interested in battle at all but just locals who had armed themselves for protection?
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Yeah. With RPGs. :rolleyes:
 
gumboot said:
Since we've dredged up the Apache shooting video, I just thought I'd point out something that was often ignored in the previous discussion and is also being ignored here, which I think is central to why this shooting occurred.

The Apache was called in as close air support for a military ground unit actively engaged in combat operations. A group of people, some armed, were identified approaching the area of combat. This was (understandably) interpreted as hostile intent (i.e. reinforcements for the gunfight) and the helicopter crew were given permission to fire by the ground commander at the time engaged in combat.
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I don't recall that they were "approaching" anything. It looked like they were just standing around. I'd have to watch it again, though.

As it turned out a couple of Reuters reporters were with this group. They had been in the area covering unrelated matters, but when they heard of the gunfight, like all good reporters, they decided to go check it out. A dangerous move, no doubt - reporters in warzones are a particularly brave or foolhardly sort (depending on how you see it).
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It didn't appear a gunfight was going on. So they weren't necessarily "going to check a gunfight out", although I guess that's possible. But again, they were just standing around.

Likewise the people rushing up in the van to recover the dead and wounded. Citizens simply helping their fellow man? Insurgents looking to retrieve bodies so the authorities couldn't use them as evidence?
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The latter possibility certainly doesn't justify killing them. Use them as evidence for what, BTW?

The fact is, terrible outcomes can come from the best intentions. Never moreso than war. Which is precisely why the Iraqi Government has told its citizens to never get involved in any combat, but to get the heck out of the way. It's not cowardice, but mere prudence. When the enemy look like everyone, everyone's liable to be mistaken as the enemy.
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I can see the initial shooting being debatable, but none of that justifies the second shooting.
 
Turns out the diplomats of the american government are two faced and are now upset that their two facedness has been exposed, a good thing in my opinion.
Wikileaks is a good unless you've got things to hide like say the routine torture and killing by the american state in pursuit of other nations resources. You can see why the web site is being shut down and our access to information shut off.
 
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cornsail said:
I don't recall that they were "approaching" anything. It looked like they were just standing around. I'd have to watch it again, though.
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I suggest you do because the video clearly shows them "approaching" the position where US forces were located. They moved towards the street where the cameraman took a picture of a Humvee as it came around the corner a block away. They moved there with RPGs in hand. That's not the behavior of an innocent or someone only there to "protect" the cameramen.
 
I went to a pretty wild and crazy school for my bachelor's degree. In fact, the year before I began attending, playboy magazine rated it as one of the best in their list of the ten best party schools.


This place had quite a problem after dark with young women being raped and young men being assaulted and/or robbed. There were lots of dark alleys and nooks, no police presence to speak of, and a lot of fraternities that were pretty much unmonitored, and had lots of drunken parties. The student code regarded this as an internal procedural matter rather than a criminal matter. Dealing with it internally meant no criminal charges, and no reporting of statistics.

The powers that be in the faculty were aware of what they needed to do to fix this, but also aware that if they publicly admitted they were having a problem it would hurt enrollment, and they'd have no choice but to start some expensive and socially awkward projects. It was cheaper to keep an internal 'student court' system, expel the offenders and pay off the victims to keep them from talking about it too much.

(I had my own problem with this; the secret arbitration and payout encouraged accusations of rape. I was at one point one of a quite large group of men that had been accused of rape by another student who was hoping for a payout. This was apparently a pretty frequent occurance, and the third time this individual had made a group accusation. This went nowhere in my case as I'd been in a dentist's chair having a root canal while I was supposedly gang raping someone on a pool table in a public dorm lobby. I went to the real legal system and got an injunction against them requiring them to file a police report if they were accusing me of a crime, and they backed off and made it disappear. Neither the 'victim' or the school wanted there to be an actual trial, with actual evidence.)

They didn't do anything constructive until some of their internal discussion on the matter was leaked to some local papers. A student had been beaten to death with a baseball bat by some other students, and it had happened pretty much right out in the open, on the lawn behind the administration building. In the resulting furor, lots of internal stuff leaked out.

Now they have lots and lots of streetlight, police call boxes, an active and well staffed police department, a reworked policy on student conduct, active oversight over fraternity behavior, and a fraternity row that is out in the town rather than right on campus where it can be monitored by the local townie police as well. Campus officers were upgraded from students in the criminal justice program doing extra credit and work study to actual officers, who are authorized to act both on campus and in the town.

You can walk around after dark now without being assaulted, robbed, or raped. If you are the victim or perpetrator of a crime, there's an actual framework to meaninfully investigate it and do something about it. I think this is a positive outcome. This is not an outcome that would have happened by the choice of the people in control. It was forced on them when their decision process was made public, and was seen to be unacceptable.

Public scrutiny of the decision process makes the decision process better. Keeping secrets prevents the process from getting better and if people aren't ethical, can make it a lot worse.
 
TraneWreck said:
Look, I have no idea how legitimate the allegations are. I have no interest in learning. I trust the judicial system of Sweden to deal with things fairly.

I'm simply pointing out that the reason it looks suspicious is because of the timing.

Let's say the US pushes Sweden to go after Assange on weak charges (again, I have no idea) when Sweden would usually pass on a case like that. Once he's in custody, the US goes after under some nebulous "national security" charge.

We've already held people who we knew were innocent:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece

It's not like Obama has done much to change the system that allows such abuse to occur.

It's plausible that the rape charges are bogus. I agree that the fact that Sweden is the one issuing charges gives me added confidence that it's a legitimate investigation.

I was merely explaining, not defending. If he raped or assaulted those women, I hope he is brought to justice regardless of my opinion concerning the leaks.
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Was that a misstatement?
 
TraneWreck said:
They didn't. They had cameras that were mistaken for RPGs.
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No, there was at least one RPG. It was quite distinct from the camera. The cameraman was embedded with insurgents.

TraneWreck said:
And carrying a gun in such a dangerous area is not unusual. If we killed everyone in Iraq with a rifle, we would have killed everyone in Iraq.
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It's not legal to walk around with an assault rifle in Iraq, and incredibly stupid to do so near a firefight, unless you're actually a participant. And no civilian carries around an RPG for personal protection.

eta: here's a better look at the RPG, it certainly isn't a camera:

rpg_guy.jpg
 
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quixotecoyote said:
I wouldn't mind a government where every meeting is taped and transcribed, whether committees, office visits, or donor fundraisers.

I wouldn't mind a government where diplomatic cables are almost always public knowledge.

I wouldn't mind a government where the absolutely only information that wasn't completely transparent and accessible to citizens were wartime documents relating to current/impending troop movements/dispositions and similar immediate security concerns.

I'm with the right in that I don't trust the government, but I think they tend to try and destroy the helpful parts and keep the authoritarianism and corporate welfare state alive.

I'm with the left in that that I see the government as a series of expressions of the will of the citizens, in whole and in parts, but I can't decide if it's gutlessness or hypocrisy that keeps them from actually delivering on any of the hope and change that is often promised and never delivered.

I like representative democracy, but I don't feel like there's anyone in state or federal government right now that represents me or the interests of me and people like me.

I think it would help if we could shine a bright light on everything that happens in government. The citizens should know what America is saying, doing, planning, and who it's doing it with. Why? Because it's our country and we need more of a say in it than we're getting right now.
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It seems to me you are against diplomacy in general, a big chunk of which is when in public saying good things about very bad people while trying to throttle them behind the scenes.

Look at the flak Bush got for his "axis of evil" comment... does anyone doubt it was true? The outrage was that he said it publicly, and thus greatly decreeased the chances of diplomacy working.
 
Cleon said:
One thing that occurs to me is that the situation in Korea has now changed significantly. It's been speculated that China has been seeing North Korea as more trouble than it's worth, and now it's been confirmed. And if North Korea didn't already know, they sure do now - and more than that, they know that everybody else in the world knows, too.

I wonder if we won't see Kim suddenly becoming "very ill" in the near future.
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This should be taken with a grain of salt, it's basically hearsay from a S. Korean diplomat, who heard it from somebody else.

Remember, these are similar sources and methods to what lead us to believe that Iraq had WMDs.
 
If someone outed the internal communications of private businesses, those businesses would not be able to negotiate with other business or parties.

Those "outed" businesses would be screwed.

And that's what Assange is doing to the US.
 
Oh,

Assange has packaged all the documents, unedited it seems and is spreading them via torrent sites.
The files are encrypted, but if he's arrested, the password will be published.

He's blackmailing now.

I'm starting to hope we'll never see him again.

ETA:

A site as controversial and savvy as Wikileaks has plenty up its sleeve, like the mysterious encrypted file labelled 'insurance', which is believed to have been posted on Bit Torrent and is rumoured to contain all the leaks.
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Apparently this is just a rumour.
 
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But we're not paying our Diplomats to make insulting judgements of other leaders. We're paying them to work. And if they're wasting this time by sending France a memo saying 'what does sarkozy and garlic have in common? LOL!' then we ought to know.

Wikileaks' latest leak has the potential to redefine how governments operate. I'm exited to be alive during this, it's amazing to watch it unfold.
 
BobHaulk said:
wikileaks is back, hooray
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Yes, and I see it still is spouting lies about the 2007 attack. It states:

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. ... snip ... The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
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All of the highlighted statements are proven LIES. Now why wouldn't a website that claims to be interested in the *truth* correct these lies? Hmmmmmm?
 
Eddie Dane said:
He's blackmailing now.
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Considering the way he's being hunted down - people calling for him to be killed (after due process or not even that), government pressure to bring down his website, being placed on Interpol's "most wanted"-list on suspicion of rape ( a) a crime that does not usually land people on that list, and b) the charges were first dropped months ago as unsubstantiated.) I'm ok with him taking an "insurance-policy".

The leaks so far place several governments and some specific persons in a less than flattering light.

But I find the witchhunt to get mr Assange the most shocking and disgusting aspect of it all. I have downloaded his insurance.aes256, and plan to make a contribution of € 100 to wikileaks. Anyone who takes that kind of flak for exposing the truth about corruption, incompetence and collusion deserves support. No matter if he's an unpleasant person with an agenda.
 
Hellbound said:
And this, IMHO, is the problem. Do you trust this single, self-appointed person to be the one making that redefinition?
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Good question. Let me first answer two others.

Do I trust the way the US government conducts foreign policy? Considering they have a trackrecord of starting a war based on lies, wasting money/corruption in foreign operations and misleading the public about them, my answer to that question is a resounding "No.".

Can we rely on the conventional media to keep the US government honest? Consider the New York Times reported on cablegate documents showing the US and UK suspecting Iran had procured missiles from North Korea capable of hitting Europe. What the NYT did not report, was the same documents showed Russian diplomats provided detailed evidence this is not true. So again, my answer is "No".

Then with all its faults, mr Assange's wikileaks is one of the very few organizations trying to keep the US government honest. He may be an ass, he may be self-appointed, but he's also fulfilling an essential role for those of us who care about honest government.

edited to add: Speaking for myself, of course.
 
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