Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys
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I think half the problem with my conflicted feelings about secrecy are that I can see a case for it during war. But that becomes a problem if your government is never not at war. The USA's "Gates of Janus" haven't shut in my entire lifetime. In fact, they've even broadened the definition of war so that they can make war on concepts rather than nations, such as Drugs, and Terror.
It's not healthy for society to be constantly at war. It degrades the meaning and true importance of war, which is still something I believe nations must be prepared for.
The refreshing thing about the Wikileaks is the simple banality of what has become secret. Most of the cables are "Ah, I thought so, good to hear it confirmed" moments, although there are still some eye openers.
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Glenn Greenwald lays it out. Dissent is not welcome. Assange is not a nice person but he is up against murderers and war criminals who we voted for. Shouldn't we know what they are up to?
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No one has laid it out for a long long time.
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It degrades the meaning and true importance of war,
True importance...true importance.... Na cant get there.
which is still something I believe nations must be prepared for.
But we invented SPORT! Trouble being, I guess, is the increase in slothful nationalism mebbe leads to an unrequited blood lust which wants ..ahem... requiting.
Anyway there seems to be a few nations around the world placing a lot of importance on securing their borders, you could say its all the rage in the political landscape. Of course we're all ghouls now, to some one else. -
giovanni tiso, in reply to
But we invented SPORT!
We need to invent a sport in which the winner seizes control of the loser's oil fields.
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True importance...true importance.... Na cant get there.
Well, I'm hinting at "something that should be undertaken only under dire threat, as a last resort" as opposed "something we always are doing, usually against people who have no capacity to harm us, and we always claim it's in their interests".
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You sound like a peacenik Ben. We all know The USA had done absolutely nothing to provoke a terrorist attack such as we saw on 911, and that with the terrorist network responsible levying fallacious charges on the US, we by definition as part of ANZUS were an inevitable target, a very real threat to our nation's security was quite rightly headed off at the cattle stop by the indomitable Helen Clark and history was made.
This war in Afghanistan is of paramount importance to preserving the New Zealand way of life. The 50,000 or so Afghanis killed are unfortunate necessary collateral damage in the quest to break the balls of international terrorism and its hellraiser Obama Sin Laden, And really, who could argue that the world is not a better place and New Zealand not a safer country for our part.
The fruits of our progress in security enhancement will be self-evident when the RWC comes round. In striking contrast to whatever it was that came before, this is really living.
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Greg Dawson, in reply to
I’m hinting at “something that should be undertaken only under dire threat, as a last resort” as opposed “something we always are doing, usually against people who have no capacity to harm us, and we always claim it’s in their interests”.
That I was thinking along the same lines is why your previous post reminded me so much of just war theory.
TBH, it's been a couple of thousand years, I still don't think there is a satisfactory answer to the problem.
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Now the Swiss bank that closed Assange's account has been taken down in another DDoS attack, this time at the hands of some people calling themselves Operation Payback, who are presumably Wikileaks supporters, unlike the people who took out Wikileaks itself.
I dislike weenies of either stripe pulling these stunts -- it's about ego, basically -- but I expect we might have to get used to it. The Internet doesn't always extend the reach and power of individuals in good ways.
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"a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination.
So when are we at "already -existing domination" ? And you do know armies dont march out onto battlefields and face off anymore.
We need to invent a sport in which the winner seizes control of the loser’s oil fields.
A rep from each country mano y mano to the death. Oh.... its been tried...centuries ago. Bugger.
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I dislike weenies of either stripe pulling these stunts – it’s about ego, basically
I find that a little disparaging Russell. The same insults could be leveled at countless soldiers and leaders from time immemorial. this wasn't a random Twitter hack. This is a war, lack of firearms and violence doesn't negate intent, conviction or justification.
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My capacity to feel sorry for a bank is minuscule. And a Swiss Bank?! Nazi gold = good, pocketing holocaust victims money = good, money laundering = good. But a media organization funded by grassroots contributions? It has to be stopped.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Yup yup yup, on all points.
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Assange hands himself in to London police station, is arrested.
Caroline Overington publishes a preview snippet of his op-ed in The Australian, available in full from midnight their time.
Mr Assange begins by saying: "In 1958, a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: `In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win'.’’
It goes on to say a few more things about freedom of speech; the `dark days’ of corrupt government in Queensland (where Assange was raised); the Fitzgerald inquiry; and it says much about his upbringing in a country town, ``where people spoke their minds bluntly.’’
It says that Australian politicians are chanting a ``provably false chorus’’ with the US State Department of ``You’ll risk lives! You’ll endanger troops!’’ by releasing information, and ``then they say there is nothing of importance in what Wikileaks publishes. It can’t be both.’’
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Just following the tweets, there's a significant group of people who are strongly of the view that the Swedish charges are entirely confected and that any extradition/trial in Sweden will simply be a prelude to him being somehow extracted to the US to face charges of terrorism etc. Perhaps, I don't know. I'm not sure how anyone could know definitively?
What troubles me though is the implicit assumption that Assange can't possibly have committed any of the alleged criminal acts in Sweden because, I infer, his political activities are those of a just man fighting the illegitimate actions of corrupt governments/corporations.
Is it not possible that he has a case to answer over the alleged sexual assaults and he's also a revolutionary?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I find that a little disparaging Russell. The same insults could be leveled at countless soldiers and leaders from time immemorial. this wasn’t a random Twitter hack. This is a war, lack of firearms and violence doesn’t negate intent, conviction or justification.
To be honest, I think all this boys-own talk about cyberwar is part of the problem.
You’re talking about a bunch of people in control of botnets assembled by infecting, penetrating and controlling the personal computers of thousands of people – and using them to attack the function of the internet. There’s plenty of collateral damage.
It doesn’t matter whether you think one party deserved it and the other didn’t. The hackers who crippled the infrastructure of Estonia in 2007 thought Estonia deserved it. I’m sure there are people who think, say, PayPal also deserves a revenge attack for ditching Wikileaks. Would that be a good thing?
No, it would not. And neither were the original attacks against Wikileaks. You really, really don’t want reciprocal DDoS attacks becoming a commonplace tactic. It’s a very, very bad thing.
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"Is it not possible that he has a case to answer over the alleged sexual assaults and he’s also a revolutionary?"
You mean, he could be just another complex human being, just like the rest of us? Only a bit more driven, a bit braver, a bit more tormented - and a bit more fascinating?? -
Russell Brown, in reply to
You mean, he could be just another complex human being, just like the rest of us? Only a bit more driven, a bit braver, a bit more tormented – and a bit more fascinating?
Uh ... what?
We still don't know what the merit of the Swedish charges really is, and they may not stack up.
But being charged with rape makes Assange "fascinating"? The cult of personality really has got out of hand.
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There's nothing that spells "fascinating" like refusing to use a condom.
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In others news, a lucid op-ed by Assange himself in The Australian – it’s interesting to see which Cablegate stories he considers the most significant.
And Cryptome’s John Young renews hostilities with Wikileaks. Young’s starting to look a bit batty.
Hendrik Hertzberg's Talk of the Town in the latest New Yorker looks at what Wikileaks is telling us about Iran and its nuclear ambitions, says:
Perhaps the two biggest secrets that the WikiLeaks leaks leaked are that the private face of American foreign policy looks pretty much like its public face and that the officials who carry it out do a pretty good job. Both are true with respect to Iran and its nuclear ambitions, to judge from the cables, which add a great deal of textural detail to what was already known.
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I think closing PayPal would be no bad thing. They're basically a corrupt pseudo-bank, and sensible countries should block their credit card issuers from transacting with them.
The effect of that would be that they would go bust and a new and more honest channel would replace them.
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No, it would not. And neither were the original attacks against Wikileaks. You really, really don’t want reciprocal DDoS attacks becoming a commonplace tactic. It’s a very, very bad thing.
There's no denying it's bad. And expending more words castigating the reactionaries than the initial attackers is a telling insistence.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
There’s no denying it’s bad. And expending more words castigating the reactionaries than the initial attackers is a telling insistence.
I was castigating the people tempted to romanticise the abuse of personal privacy and the infrastructure of internet because they like one side or the other. No one who does this is good.
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There’s nothing that spells “fascinating” like refusing to use a condom.
I think the most dreeeeeamy thing about him is the way he allegedly fucked a woman while she was sleeping. <swoon>
I would like to give massive props to this commenter at Tigerbeatdown, who says it all most cogently:
"I am SO SICK today of people who can’t see that
1) Wikileaks is important and does good work
2) Julian Assange may be a rapist
and
3) The pursuit by the authorities for the rape charges may be motivated as much by Wikileaks as by a desire to see justice done
are not in any way contradictory positions and could all be simultaneously true."
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Megan Wegan, in reply to
I think the most dreeeeeamy thing about him is the way he allegedly fucked a woman while she was sleeping. <swoon>
Word. I love that commenter too. Meanwhile (also via the TBD commenters) Naomi Wolf misses the point.
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