New Wikileaks Dump is Unconscionable

You're living in a fantasy world if you truly believe Assange's goal is not US-centric.

Difficult not to do, given that Assange goes out of his way to be fixated upon.

Oh, find me a bucket I think I'm going to be sick. You truly believe Manning believes in "truth". That his violations of his oath and his bond with his fellow servicemen is about some higher purpose? Come on...

 

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Everything that we have gained in the quality of human life in the last 10,000 years is based on practical applications of Idealism. It seems that science created the prosperity but to motivate engineering first criminality had to be stopped to create an environment in which people get to keep the proceed of their labor.

The law and order people think they are the force that stops criminality. They are wrong, they are just mindlessly ritualistic people who enforce obedience to convention and authority. The law and order people never stopped accepted forms of criminality; only idealists do that. It was idealism that stopped the criminality that is natural among animals but which disables large investment in engineering and tools.

We don't need criminality as a balance to idealism. We need competition as a balance to idealism because idealism tends to impose it's theories on people while competition Imposes the result of what is essentially a scientific experiment as the trial and error of competition is superior to theory at revealing certain types of truths.

The difference between criminality and competition can get confusing. the Ten Commandments was a good start but situations arose in which the Ten Commandments failed to show the edge between criminality and competition.

Jesus sought to clarify this with ‘"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: y‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 zOn these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Love leads to the desire to alleviate suffering which is the foundation of idealism. "God" trumps law and is a stand in for "everything" and includes the future generations but "God" is not necessary for idealism.

Force is needed because people chose criminality over the idealism that Jesus taught. Using love to understand the ten Commandments make their meaning clearer but still does not eliminate the unclarity of the boundary between competition and criminality.

People are selfish and power hungry and self deluded and neither Jesus nor Communism can construct a world without human character flaws. Greed motivates and motivation is good. Competition lets the efficient or correct techniques grow and kills the inefficient and incorrect techniques therefore competition is good even though the losers feel bad do to their own hurt pride. Jesus and Buddha warned about pride.

How to tell competition from criminality? In this complex economy this question is more important than ever. I think I found the answer. Using your own strengths is competition. Using somebody else's weaknesses is criminality. The distinction between using your own strengths and using somebody else's weaknesses can be very subtle at times but I think it holds up.

A lot of currently legal and accepted practices would become criminal by my definition.

If you are fighting with criminals should you refrain from using criminal tactics? Maybe not but you should at least know you are using criminal practices when you are using criminal tactics. If my country wants to use criminal tactics then I want my country to do so openly. We voters need the option to decide on a case by case basis whether our nations use of criminal tactics is justified and whether our country is serving us the people or is serving special interests who have hijacked the government. This government secrecy is a danger to democracy and promotes criminality by eliminating the punishment of government criminality.

The secrecy costs more than it is worth.

 

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What is your oath, countezero?

What do you value and serve, higher than truth?

Yes. I think so.

 

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@nirakar

I think that in biblical quotes the Golden Rule might be apropos:

+3

 

My general problem with Assange and Wikileaks is that they tout proudly how they like to crush bastards, but they never put the asterisk next to that statement to indicate that they only crush bastards when it's convenient for them to do so. Their so called "investigative" reporting has been nothing short of abysmal. They luck into stuff, and post said stuff. That's about all I gather. Sometimes we get absurdly pretentious statements on their site about how 'AMERICANS LEARNED GEORGE WASHINGTON NEVER LIED, TOO BAD EVERYONE ELSE AFTER HIM LIED, HUH AMERICANS?'

There's a general sense I get from their exploits that they think they are doing something that is unquestionably a service to the world, but they don't seem to show a whole lot of care or understanding of the potential ramifications of certain leaks. They treat it as though they're getting one over on people they just don't like, under the assumption they've "beaten" the bad guys and saved the day, but they haven't beaten anybody, they've saved no one, and shit goes on regardless of whatever they post. It does look pretty self-serving when viewed from afar.

It seems pretty unlikely that Wikileaks is going to continue to be able to leak high caliber classified data after this. All of this came from one guy, from "Collateral Murder", through the War Logs, and now this. Once it's used up, there will likely be no further major leaks. Wikileaks doesn't have a future fighting the imperialist power, they have a moment in the spotlight exposing its dirty laundry. I'm sure they will get pieces of things here and there, but I highly, highly doubt they will ever get information as significant as this again, or anything even close.

This is the correct response to pretty much everything hypewaders posts.

What kind of "great evils" do you think will be subverted by the release of this information? I think we'll see a some ruffled feathers and awkward political maneuvering, but then it will die down, and life will go on as scheduled.

 

watup esse, so we chillin tonite homes?

 

Thats an incredibly naive statement - I predict you will see more leaks not less as data becomes increasingly easier to compress and save in binary. And while it may be possible to arrest those who are within the jurisdiction of the US, what are the Americans going to do with all the Chinese and Indian hackers out there?

 

He could not release anything without those who leak the information to him from the inside. He is only the messenger

 

No, you are living in a fantasy world if you think Assange's goal is US-centric other than the fact that the US is everywhere. This is about democracy and freedom. I can relate to Assange and you can't so which one of us is more likely to understand his motives?

The US government is both democracy's biggest friend and democracy's biggest enemy.

 

In my personal opinion, this is one gigantic dis-information campaign. I don't understand how the Government can immediately shut down websites when they're illegally posting copy-written material, but they appear helpless when their alleged classified dirty laundry is being aired on the "internets"?.

 

I was speaking of Wikileaks specifically.

I'd wager all else will remain the same, though. Technology doesn't factor much in high profile compromises like the one Manning pulled off. Just because the Internet exists now doesn't mean their frequency will increase. It happens only once in a while, when one of the literally tens of thousands of people with access to the information decides to go off the reservation. The damage is done, the furor blows over, and security practices improve accordingly. Look into the story of the Walker spy ring sometime. The fallout of its discovery was the DoD completely overhauling its COMSEC guidelines as well as a crash development of newer and massively improved crypto gear. You can bet something similar is already underway within the DoD today. Manning is this war's John Walker. He'll probably serve the rest of his life for his antics, too.

 

Not necessarily. A lot of guys I grew up with who came from upper-middle-class families joined the marines. Now granted, none of these gentleman were exactly college material either, more like thrill seekers looking to "blow shit up".

As for my personal experience, I was going to enter the Airforce, I went through the recruitment process all the way up to M.E.P.S. And let me tell you, like 99% of the recruits who were there looked like they grew up on the other side of the tracks if you know what I mean. With that being said, a lot of those down trodden looking recruits scored extremely high on the ASVAB.

 

Yes, as journalism. It's shoddy. No analysis. No context. No sense of scale or propriety. But then as you go on to note, the "dump" is all that matters to them, isn't it? That is why I have said from the beginning that this is little more than cheap activism built on flawed thinking and that these people are not really capable of the high-minded moralizing others are trying to give them credit for.

Sure, there is a lot of puerile "us against them" behind wikileaks, and this comes from Assange's background as a hacker. He's a kind of anarchist, fighting the man. Nothing more. Throw his obvious love of the limelight and you really do lose the grand scale people want to believe is there.

I cannot remember who, but someone commented that it seems like the stuff is being parceled out for dramatic effect and that the well is indeed running dry. Whether all this pub encourages another lackluster govt. or military employee to attempt another theft remains to be seen, though. But yeah, I tend to think that this has a limited horizon -- and we're already seeing a huge downgrade in the usefulness of material. This latest dump is completely un-newsworthy, except in terms I've already mentioned.

Assange claims he swung an election in Kenya? That's hysterical...

Oh, come on Bells.

Every time there is a "dump" of information he is all over the news. Interviews with him are even posted in this thread. And Nirakar has him claiming he swung elections. The Ego of this man is tremendous.

 

I think the technology factor is very important because the generation that is growing up now is a tech savvy generation. And I'm not referring only to the west but to all the Asians and Arabs and Africans who have joined the geek squad. I predict information will become harder to keep inviolate, as more players jump into the foray. Speaking of wikileaks specifically, Assange is but the messenger, the real gold miners are the ones who go in there and get the data out. There will always be an Assange out there.

 

A few observations about wikileaks.

1. It actually doesn't make the Americans spooks and diplomats look too bad. They are only as duplicitous as you would expect a secret service to be.
Nothing is coming out along the lines of "Let's use Europe, and then nuke them"
Has anyone been surprised at anything revealed so far?

2. Far from making a war with Iran less likely, I think that if Iran persist on their current track, the secrets revealed will make a war more justifiable.

3. Why isn't the person responsible for this site being arrested as a traitor?
Is he/she in hiding?

 

The inflated sense of self-importance and lack of acknowledgement of harm I can see, no doubt they have many character flaws. But the "self-serving" is a bit strange. Are you not avoiding acknowledgment of the risks run, the penalties likely, the actual consequences to these guys deliberately chosen by them instead of easier alternatives?

That's of course quite possible, if by "life" you mean the current course of industrial geopolitical conflict and maneuvering.

But is that what you would prefer? Is that what you favor? Or do you as many others hope that this wrench tossing will catch hold in some more consequential part of the works?

It's information, not reportage. It's factual. It's not deceptive, not framed.

That puts it ahead of the apparent information base of the majority of US major media "journalism", right there, before the "journalism" has even begun. If the real journalists want to start doing some analysis and context provisioning, they are welcome to begin at any time.

Starting with public corrections and reframings of their former efforts, which will be a bit embarrassing possibly - if they are capable of embarrassment any more.

A good deal of US media conventional wisdom, and many expressed opinions here, have been contradicted by this stuff. Whether that has "surprised" anyone depends on personal circumstance, one would suppose.

For an example of the kinds of frames these leaks threaten:

Traitor to whom?

 

I'm not arguing with you about journalism. It's a waste of time.

But information for information's sake is not always a good thing. Hence, the word discretion. It's not hard to imagine a million personal circumstances that illustrate exactly what I am talking about. That the seriousness and importance of discretion becomes more elevated when we're talking about matters of state, security and war seems obvious.

Ultimately, this is all a bit like policymaking, and policymaking was once famously compared to making sausage. It's an ugly process with some rather dubious ingredients, making sausage. But doesn't it taste good?

Like what?

I see no major perception challenged, other than the already discredited notion that the US alone is for tackling Iran. And nothing here surprised me. Oh, I paused at the biometric stuff ... for about five seconds. Then I remembered diplomats have been building dossiers on each other for years. That it's 2010 and biometrics are now included, no doubt for espionage purposes, should surprise no one.

All of which makes the faux rage I saw vented into the five minutes of CNN I happened to overhear in a bar all the more laughable.

By any definition, the army chum who stole these documents violated his service oath and at least half a dozen legal statutes I can think of. I imagine he will get some serious time when he is tried, and rightfully so. Then, of course, there are the ethical and moral issues of his behavior.

 

I think everything must be in the open. And I know how naive is that.

Is it just me or this issue has the potential of getting bigger than 9/11 for US?

 

No, my impression is that it will have a small negative effect on the US in a few countries, and a larger positive one in other countries.
Many thought the US was far more evil than this.

It may surprise people living in the US, but you have replaced Russia and China in many country's minds as an aggressor and a threat to peace in the world.

In fact, I will predict some people asserting that the US is releasing these documents itself.

When I say traitor, isn't the man running this site an American Citizen?

Isn't revealing secret documents an offence in the US?

If he was British, I would want him in prison.