Wikileaks

please include the url.

sorry - http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4415037/NZ-way-down-the-WikiLeaks-queue

General Yo to y'all....
Keep it sweet, Pete. Disagree all you want with someone's opinions...just do so without disparaging the person posting those opinions.

If you wanna get an argument that's all personal and ugly, that's cool.
Just shag on over to Dave's ESL Cafe, hold your nose, and start blasting away!
Not doing this stuff is part of what distinguishes US from...shudder...THEM.

And we just plain ol' ain't gonna become THEM.

Also...might want to show some restraint when talking about other countries and their leaders. You never know...we might just have members from those countries.

no offence to any russian people with my pre-edit post

i like russian people whatever i think of your government (i'm not a big fan of any government tbh....

I think Assange has done the world a favor.  I'm sure some negatives will fall out of this data dump, but the harm it prevents is immeasuable.  The U.S. gov't for one, has been overturning governments, assassinating leaders and generally been a wart on the ass of self-determination for over a century.  If they think what they do might now be revealed to the general public some day...great.  I'm sick and tired of the meddling our presidents have done in the names of people like myself and so many others without accountability let alone repercussion.

good summary of the fallout (so far)

http://waxy.org/2010/11/wikileaks_cablegate_roundup/

I was wondering some about the difference between wikileaking and real journalism.  Real journalism has a better title, anyway.  (Seriously, "wikileaks"?)  Real journalism is measured, paced if you will, revelatory in stages.  It also usually has some relatively direct relationship to news as it is currently happening.  Real journalism has an editorial voice too.  The cables being released at present are being chosen, but are they being presented in context?    (Well, when I say "presented in context", I mean are they part of some story which has a definite journalist's voice.  The answer to that is no.)  It's embarrassing stuff, but all journalism embarrasses to some extent.  Or at least, that's what they'd have us believe.  It seems really what wikileaks does is break the conventional relationships the fourth estate has with the actual powers that be.  Wikileaks, like Dear Julian himself, is antagonistic by virtue of not developing some more positive protagonistic role.

That actually might be a good thing.  It suggests Dear Julian doesn't want to be Dear leader.  If he wanted to be in charge, he'd at least try to make some kind of relationship with the little people.  Instead he's all about "the truth", for better or worse.

That makes him an anarchist?  Probably not.  He seems to believe that truth creates order.

And his mum loves him.



And rape.

I was wondering some about the difference between wikileaking and real journalism. 

I think the question is "Does Assange's data dumps bring us closer to what good journalism used to be?".  Much, if not most, of these facts would be known by journalists in the 'old days' when journalists actually made and developed sources.  For various financial, political and other reasons that just doesn't happen today.  Instead they parrot what they're fed by the institutions that they are supposed to be watch-dogging to begin with.  What we get is controlled press releases masquarading as investigative stories and embedded correspondants totally beholden to the people they cover.  A crazy "Stockholm Syndrome" has set in where the journalists get chummy with those they are covering because to make them mad would mean they would be cut off completely.  Add to that the consolidation of media outlets and you have so much profit at stake and so little diversity that the result is a mere echo chamber of talking points put out by the targets of the "investigations" themselves. 

THIS JUST IN:

Julian Assange Fired From IT Job At PentagonDecember 1, 2010 | ISSUE 46•48
Article ToolsEmail EmailTo:
From:
 
ARLINGTON, VA—With officials describing his publication of sensitive U.S. State Department documents as "the last straw," Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was asked to resign from his position as the Pentagon's IT coordinator Monday. "We gave him his first warning after the whole Iraq and Afghanistan war diaries thing, and strike two was when he forwarded that video montage of Nicolas Cage yelling to the entire staff," Defense Department human resources director Curtis Shannon said. "But we just can't overlook this latest offense. Even if he's the only one who knows where the spare USB cables are." At press time, Assange had already been invited to interview for an IT position at the Central Intelligence Agency.

THE ONION

THIS JUST IN:

Julian Assange Fired From IT Job At PentagonDecember 1, 2010 | ISSUE 46•48
Article ToolsEmail EmailTo:
From:
 
ARLINGTON, VA—With officials describing his publication of sensitive U.S. State Department documents as "the last straw," Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was asked to resign from his position as the Pentagon's IT coordinator Monday. "We gave him his first warning after the whole Iraq and Afghanistan war diaries thing, and strike two was when he forwarded that video montage of Nicolas Cage yelling to the entire staff," Defense Department human resources director Curtis Shannon said. "But we just can't overlook this latest offense. Even if he's the only one who knows where the spare USB cables are." At press time, Assange had already been invited to interview for an IT position at the Central Intelligence Agency.

THE ONION

Or maybe THE ONION can hire him to start up

....wait for it.....

Wikileeks.org

 

Did you see the Daily Show about this where they say not to get wikileaks confused with wookieleaks and showed a picture of chewbacca pissing on a car. Heh heh heh.

(Not to mention the hilarious fact that they keep calling it a "data dump" which makes me giggle like a 14 year old.)

WikiLeaks and the Perils of Oversharing

^ people write such shit sometimes.  A lot of communication occurs outside the mind so the inner life ceases to be?  

I'm puzzled.  Western culture, or the broader public morality that goes roughly with speaking English, includes transparency as a value.  And also includes the need for privacy in diplomacy?

Actually, I'm still not getting the idea of diplomacy.  Convenient omission of detail for the greater purpose of smoother communication (combined presumably with an earnest promise to oneself to at some point come back to the omitted detail and incorporate it somehow into the way things work)?  Such a program works for some, I guess.  Probably it works for those who do indeed make (and make good on) that earnest, yet secret, promise to come back one day to what was skipped over.

Does diplomacy ever come back to the truths it smooths over?  When exactly do we get to call some countries murderous and some right?  Long after it has happened?  Who makes the record so we can remember?

Meh, it all seems treacherous.  I know it's legitimate.  And it plays into the strengths of some kinds of people and some kinds of projects.  And this is or isn't the same as saying it undermines the efforts of other kinds of people and creates opportunity for corruption elsewhere?

its doublethink

so now lying to everyone is called diplomacy, so the word diplomacy is meaningless. it's like the word 'values' is now meaningless. it's ok tho, language and humanity are way way ahead of them

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill

On the other hand, there can be stuff one is not ready to say yet.  Such as, say, when conferring with a partner on how to deal with the people on the other side of the negotiating table.  I only just now remembered that one may sometimes want to allow that such privileged communication can exist.  And I guess that's where governments can rightly say Wikileaking is, well... mean-spirited, I guess.

So lets talk principal-agent conflicts.  In theory, we, the people, are the principals, and our governments are our agents.  Naturally, they don't work just for us.  We may have elected them to their positions, but now their positions are theirs, not, it would seem, ours.  So....

Meh.  I don't know.  If we are to know what they're doing, someone has to tell us.  Or we have to seek the information ourselves.  Or do enough government work of our own to be entitled to know what they're up to.  Or just let them do what they do.

But wikileaking lets everyone know.  Not just the principals in one or two countries.  Leaking secrets removes from the secret-holders some measure of power.  Pragmatically it's better that our side have at least as much power as is needed to keep our side viable.  Maybe even enough power to keep our side prosperous.  But could eschewing the power of secrets and embracing the apparently crippling effect of openness in fact make us stronger?  Strength in principle is one thing, and perhaps not a good thing if it entails weakness in practice.  So....... has Julian ruined us all?

Keep in mind that Assange withheld much information he considered to be threatening as did the news outlets.  This was not just a data dump of ALL material as is being said in many quarters.

Yes, I agree some secrets need to be kept, but I'm glad to see him flush out the system once lest the diplomats get too comfortable in their shroud of secrecy and self-importance.