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United States22883 Posts
On November 26 2010 17:22 blomsterjohn wrote:Show nested quote +Wikileaks and their informants take a "risk" of being publicly criticized and possibly encarcerated, meanwhile the names in their reports, who weren't voluntarily outted and won't receive benefits from the report, have their names and their family's names on an execution list. I thought they blacked out all names etc, no? Where is this "execution list" your mentioning? Can you show a incident where this caused civilian deaths or something or is it all theoretical? has there been one death directly linked to this? (no rhetorical questions, genuinely curious since so many people still use it as the main argument)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?scp=1&sq=assange&st=cse
A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan using the pseudonym Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone interview that the Taliban had formed a nine-member “commission” after the Afghan documents were posted “to find about people who are spying.” He said the Taliban had a “wanted” list of 1,800 Afghans and was comparing that with names WikiLeaks provided.
Newsweek had a report a while ago about a village chief that had been executed and others being threatened.
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United States22883 Posts
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On November 26 2010 17:03 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 03:26 Dagobert wrote:
Yap, that's the way it is. Spread lies among the populace and you make a lot of money, speak the truth and you must run for your life. I'm glad the people over at wikileaks and their informants take the risk and fight for the truth. Just so you're aware, hundreds and possibly thousands of low level informants are now having to run for their lives because of the Wikileaks reports. Wikileaks and their informants take a "risk" of being publicly criticized and possibly encarcerated, meanwhile the names in their reports, who weren't voluntarily outted and won't receive benefits from the report, have their names and their family's names on an execution list. Assange's response on the issue has been pretty weak, and makes him come off as a false moralist bastard. There was no reason for them not to scrub that data, but they didn't, and now they say it's for the good of the people.
Well said and it's pretty much my sentiment. The entire wiki-leak thing over these U.S. files is doing more damage than it can ever do as good.
People going "oh has there been any deaths about people being killed as a result of the release". Obviously you guys are not thinking about this stuff, there are actually parts of the world where people do get killed for releasing information. There is a reason why these names are held secret, to guarantee their safety
Wikileaks is pretty disgusting doing this and putting people in harms way, people who help us track bad guys.
This is coming from a European by the way.
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On November 26 2010 16:22 RBF wrote:Great honest video dude, from a great and honest source. why, of course AL JAZEERA has no agenda at all
When you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you should just say nothing.
Why don't you educate yourself on Al-Jazeera before spouting ignorant sarcastic remarks ?
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On November 26 2010 17:53 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 17:22 blomsterjohn wrote:Wikileaks and their informants take a "risk" of being publicly criticized and possibly encarcerated, meanwhile the names in their reports, who weren't voluntarily outted and won't receive benefits from the report, have their names and their family's names on an execution list. I thought they blacked out all names etc, no? Where is this "execution list" your mentioning? Can you show a incident where this caused civilian deaths or something or is it all theoretical? has there been one death directly linked to this? (no rhetorical questions, genuinely curious since so many people still use it as the main argument) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?scp=1&sq=assange&st=cseShow nested quote +A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan using the pseudonym Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone interview that the Taliban had formed a nine-member “commission” after the Afghan documents were posted “to find about people who are spying.” He said the Taliban had a “wanted” list of 1,800 Afghans and was comparing that with names WikiLeaks provided. Newsweek had a report a while ago about a village chief that had been executed and others being threatened.
That is actually informative. No proper sources in the article though, but it is a different story from others I've heard. Wait actually it has no sources or evidence listed at all (just references to index pages on topics/people).
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On November 26 2010 18:09 Acid~ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 16:22 RBF wrote:Great honest video dude, from a great and honest source. why, of course AL JAZEERA has no agenda at all When you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you should just say nothing. Why don't you educate yourself on Al-Jazeera before spouting ignorant sarcastic remarks ?
The job of all NEWS agency's is to create drama. While Al-Jazeera is a little bit better about this, they are no different than other news. They all have their own agenda.
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I hate how whenever Wikileaks makes a huge release, revealing lies and crimes commited by governments, it is never the content of that leak that is being discussed by the media. Instead the media focuses on the love life of one of the people working at Wikileaks or about what possible side effects of releasing the documents might be. Those points have negligible journalistic value compared to the actual contents of the leaks.
It would be like a scientific journal commenting on Albert Einsteins family life and which font he used in his publications in 1905 and completely ignoring the implications of his new theories. It might be that no crimes were committed and no lies were made in Afghanistan, but before we are sure of that, the contents of the leaks should be the main focus of the media.
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On November 26 2010 18:18 BeJe77 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 18:09 Acid~ wrote:On November 26 2010 16:22 RBF wrote:Great honest video dude, from a great and honest source. why, of course AL JAZEERA has no agenda at all When you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you should just say nothing. Why don't you educate yourself on Al-Jazeera before spouting ignorant sarcastic remarks ? The job of all NEWS agency's is to create drama. While Al-Jazeera is a little bit better about this, they are no different than other news. They all have their own agenda.
I think what he's saying is that RFB is assuming that Al-Jazeera is some fundamentalist tv station because it is based in the middle east, when in fact it is one of the more reliable, moderate stations covering international news.
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On November 26 2010 18:18 BeJe77 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 18:09 Acid~ wrote:On November 26 2010 16:22 RBF wrote:Great honest video dude, from a great and honest source. why, of course AL JAZEERA has no agenda at all When you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you should just say nothing. Why don't you educate yourself on Al-Jazeera before spouting ignorant sarcastic remarks ? The job of all NEWS agency's is to create drama. While Al-Jazeera is a little bit better about this, they are no different than other news. They all have their own agenda.
WRONG. The original job of news agencies is to provide objective infromation to the public so the public can make informed political decisions (i.e. elections). Sadly, however, most news agencies provide one-sided infotainment (more so in the US than in Europe since EU countries often have public media that HAS to be neutral).
Wikileaks is the natural result of media not doing its original job. Someone has to inform the public and when the media does not do it, other ways will be found. Always remember: in a democracy the goverment works for you. hence you are entitled to know whather its dopng a good job. If governments withhold information that evaluation is no longer accurate. In other words, if you were the boss of a company and your subordinates would not let you know whether they are making progress with an important project and tell you its in your best interest that you do not know, would you smile and agree or fire them?
To all those that think wikileaks put people in danger...err, sending people to war puts them in danger in the first place?
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United States22883 Posts
On November 26 2010 18:30 Electric.Jesus wrote:
To all those that think wikileaks put people in danger...err, sending people to war puts them in danger in the first place?
It's irrelevant to my point. I don't disagree with the goal and method of Wikileaks, nor do I think the character assassination that's gone on is fair and i agree that WL fills a useful void left by incompetent media outlets, but it was just incredibly stupid and thoughtless to include names and villages, and it's unsettling that they've been unapologetic about it.
The names provide zero context or value to anyone outside of Afghanistan. The only reason I can think of including them is to harm the intelligence networks and prevent future informants. You can argue that doing so hurts the war effort, and thus might be a good thing, but you're still throwing lambs to the slaughter to reach your goal, which is just another weak consequentialist argument.
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On November 27 2010 01:50 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 18:30 Electric.Jesus wrote:
To all those that think wikileaks put people in danger...err, sending people to war puts them in danger in the first place?
It's irrelevant to my point. I don't disagree with the goal and method of Wikileaks, nor do I think the character assassination that's gone on is fair and i agree that WL fills a useful void left by incompetent media outlets, but it was just incredibly stupid and thoughtless to include names and villages, and it's unsettling that they've been unapologetic about it. The names provide zero context or value to anyone outside of Afghanistan.
Point taken. A differentiated approach such as yours would certainly improve the general discussion. I think we can agree that the idea behind publishing the secret material is important but that - at the same time - all infromation that is not quintessential should be anonymized.
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On November 26 2010 18:03 BeJe77 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 17:03 Jibba wrote:On November 26 2010 03:26 Dagobert wrote:
Yap, that's the way it is. Spread lies among the populace and you make a lot of money, speak the truth and you must run for your life. I'm glad the people over at wikileaks and their informants take the risk and fight for the truth. Just so you're aware, hundreds and possibly thousands of low level informants are now having to run for their lives because of the Wikileaks reports. Wikileaks and their informants take a "risk" of being publicly criticized and possibly encarcerated, meanwhile the names in their reports, who weren't voluntarily outted and won't receive benefits from the report, have their names and their family's names on an execution list. Assange's response on the issue has been pretty weak, and makes him come off as a false moralist bastard. There was no reason for them not to scrub that data, but they didn't, and now they say it's for the good of the people. Well said and it's pretty much my sentiment. The entire wiki-leak thing over these U.S. files is doing more damage than it can ever do as good. People going "oh has there been any deaths about people being killed as a result of the release". Obviously you guys are not thinking about this stuff, there are actually parts of the world where people do get killed for releasing information. There is a reason why these names are held secret, to guarantee their safety Wikileaks is pretty disgusting doing this and putting people in harms way, people who help us track bad guys. This is coming from a European by the way.
Oh yeah. There are good guys (=us) and there are bad guys. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this sort of thinking has put millions in harm's way in the past few years. Why don't you throw in a "9/11 changed everything", and then your journey to the dark side will be complete.
If it's disgusting to operate within the gray zone, then the pure among us are going to destroy this world. It's not worth expanding on; just think about it. But, hey, telling the story about a war of choice that's claiming hundreds of thousands of lives is wrong, because some people might possibly be mistaken for "bad guys" by those who claim to be good guys. Or maybe you'd like to focus on the Afganistan war, 'the good war'. It's a very similar story.
Assange draws the line (regarding the blacking out of names) where he draws the line. Maybe there's a handful of people who genuinely care about the lives of a -let's be honest here- relatively small band of collaborators, but your claim that "The entire wiki-leak thing over these U.S. files is doing more damage than it can ever do as good. " is entirely baseless. Moreover, most critics (you included) merely betray their enthusiasm for the 'enlightened' US/NATO war projects by using the slight moral ambiguity regarding the leaks of military files to beat the meaningful contributions of actors like wikileaks to death.
"This is coming from a European by the way."
Gee, good for you. You must be well informed, entirely unbiased and have a firm grap of basic morality.
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On November 26 2010 04:25 Risen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 04:05 wadadde wrote:On November 26 2010 03:41 Risen wrote:The only problem I have with all of this is that people are too stupid and prone to sensationalism, so despite all the good things happening, people will focus on the few bad things and crucify a nation. I swear most people in the world are ignorant when it comes to how much the US does for other countries. Arguments can be made that US help in Africa has sometimes hurt more than helped (free food destroying farmer profits, etcetc) or that our help in other areas has harmed more than helped. Sometimes I just WISH those in power would remove our aid for one year. I realize that just because the aid may be unpopular does not mean that it is wrong, though. I'm truly afraid that one day those within the US will become too disheartened by what our media shows when the rest of the world holds these demonstrations against us, and at that point we will withdraw leaving those in need of our aid screwed. This view probably seems patronizing, and in some regards it is, but I think it's a pretty commonly held one. And maybe the US IS being a patronizing bastard and we should withdraw our aid, but it's worth the risk imo. Probably strayed a little off-topic, I just saw the increasingly hateful trend towards the US and its policies. Edit: On November 26 2010 03:26 Dagobert wrote:
Yap, that's the way it is. Spread lies among the populace and you make a lot of money, speak the truth and you must run for your life. I'm glad the people over at wikileaks and their informants take the risk and fight for the truth. And I find that people who speak like you do have watched/read way too many mystery/thriller movies/novels Crucify a nation? Lawl. Facepalm. What!? On the subject of the immense generosity of the US of A : Give me a break! Yes, another one. Of the 'developed' nations the US isn't exactly the front runner when it comes to international aid (as opposed to weapons sales/donations and gifts of military training) . I'm guessing that you're either a little young, or just a little too ignorant for my taste. I'm all for nuance. I'm all for pragmatism. I'm all for love, but the stuff you refer to as "hate" isn't generally the result of blind antagonism; quite the contrary. I'm guessing you're not all that familiar with the US record (the government record) of inflicting terror and death in just about every region of the world in the past 60 years. My suggestion: turn off that damned TV, and shut up those damned idiot pundits, and go read a book! Normally, people who make arguments based on the character of the person they're arguing against instead of their points are ignorant themselves. We actually are the frontrunner, so we are EXACTLY that. If you're referring to %GDP those numbers often neglect much of the private aid citizens give (Christian fundamentalists may be nutzo but I'll give them charity for the most part). Even if we aren't the highest %GDP giver, we certainly are the highest in terms of numbers. (I don't know the numbers on %GDP given, but you must since you so boldly claim the US isn't, I'd like to see your sources) Here's mine... http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-doners-of-foreigner-aid-map.htmlActually, the stuff I refer to as hate IS blind antagonism. Those in the Middle East have often held such blind demonstrations, along with peoples in other parts of the world with little other rhetoric than the US caused this whole situation, it wasn't that we were too weak and unable to help ourselves, it's the US' fault. I'm perfectly familiar with many of the atrocities committed by the US. Unfortunately you fall under the category of people I described earlier when I said, "people will focus on the few bad things and crucify a nation".
1. I was talking about what your government gives in aid. Yes, the GDP route is the intellectually honest one. I don't feel like anything else matters. Secondly, aid is generally used as a political tool. It's not uncommon for other major countries (the European ones, Iran,...) to hand out candy to reward, or cement obedience. I'd say it's the norm, so it's not obviously a good measure of "help" to supposedly sovereign peoples.
2. As much as I loathe the media in the West, I think it's fair to say that the media in the Middle East is pure (government-run) conspiratorial shit. Add religious fanaticism, poverty, domestic oppression, deadly genuinely American-backed projects,... to the mix and it's easy to see why "Those in the Middle East have often held such blind demonstrations".
I simply don't see how anyone could confidently assert that the world would be hurt if under-informed Americans would force their government to retreat from the international arena, instead of getting all blindly patriot-imperialist-'progressive' on our asses.
3. I'm just going to quote you here. Guess which part of it renders me speechless.
"Those in the Middle East have often held such blind demonstrations, along with peoples in other parts of the world with little other rhetoric than the US caused this whole situation, it wasn't that we were too weak and unable to help ourselves, "
Oh, and feel free to get all specific. I'm up for a bit of opinion torture.
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Can't wait for this new data release. should be fairly interesting if ppl say countries are gonna be embarrassed. Hopefully now Turkey won't ever be added in the EU for supporting Al Qaeda.
Glad this website exists because i doubt the US would have said anything. Assange hwaiting!!
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On November 27 2010 01:55 Electric.Jesus wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2010 01:50 Jibba wrote:On November 26 2010 18:30 Electric.Jesus wrote:
To all those that think wikileaks put people in danger...err, sending people to war puts them in danger in the first place?
It's irrelevant to my point. I don't disagree with the goal and method of Wikileaks, nor do I think the character assassination that's gone on is fair and i agree that WL fills a useful void left by incompetent media outlets, but it was just incredibly stupid and thoughtless to include names and villages, and it's unsettling that they've been unapologetic about it. The names provide zero context or value to anyone outside of Afghanistan. Point taken. A differentiated approach such as yours would certainly improve the general discussion. I think we can agree that the idea behind publishing the secret material is important but that - at the same time - all infromation that is not quintessential should be anonymized. The Pentagon themselves have admitted that Wikileaks contacted them before the first leak and asked for help to remove any names they would find that would be put in danger if published. The pentagon refused.
I'm too lazy to dig up the source, it's too deep inside my twitter stream. But shouldn't take too long to find it on google if you want to.
edit: here it is:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/wikileaks
The 'official' position from the pentagon changed a few times. But many pentagon representatives said at different times that wikileaks did indeed asked them for help to redact the documents.
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NATO and the AP disagree that any Afghani informant has been proven to require protection after the leaks*. The Department of Defense concluded that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods were revealed, either. From a more recent article than the NYTimes one:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/17/wikileaks
...Incidentally, that "village chief" that Wikileaks allegedly murdered was probably put on the Taliban hit list a month before Wikileaks published. Nor was his name ever mentioned in the Wikileaks documents. Newsweek's implication that his death was due to Wikileaks**...well, leak...is hardly airtight. Especially in a region where assassination and death threats are a weekly occurrence.
*The NATO official one is simply "required protection or relocation due to the leaks". Nothing about proof.
**Read the Newsweek article. Despite the grim and fearful tone of the article, their assertion that the village chief was murdered solely lies in the fact that the man was killed a week after Wikileaks released their documents. By this logic, Old Spice commercials are, at the very least, partly responsible for every death in the Iraq War.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/02/taliban-seeks-vengeance-in-wake-of-wikileaks.html
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LOLOLOLOLOL
And you Americans give crap to China for banning websites.
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On November 27 2010 01:50 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 18:30 Electric.Jesus wrote:
To all those that think wikileaks put people in danger...err, sending people to war puts them in danger in the first place?
It's irrelevant to my point. I don't disagree with the goal and method of Wikileaks, nor do I think the character assassination that's gone on is fair and i agree that WL fills a useful void left by incompetent media outlets, but it was just incredibly stupid and thoughtless to include names and villages, and it's unsettling that they've been unapologetic about it. The names provide zero context or value to anyone outside of Afghanistan. The only reason I can think of including them is to harm the intelligence networks and prevent future informants. You can argue that doing so hurts the war effort, and thus might be a good thing, but you're still throwing lambs to the slaughter to reach your goal, which is just another weak consequentialist argument.
Side note: Wikileaks is a whistleblowing website. It has no political agenda. The fact that the US tries to paint it black might make it look white to some (for lack of a better metaphor). If there were no secrets to leak on the afghanistan war, they'd let the americans and other armies happily have their informants just the same. They're anti-secrecy (except they did black out the informant names in their leaked documents, the humane thing to do).
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On November 27 2010 07:34 Chipotle wrote:
LOLOLOLOLOL
And you Americans give crap to China for banning websites.
? Not even close to being comparable, considering its government documents that were leaked and then published vs China just controlling internet use.
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On November 27 2010 02:35 wadadde wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2010 18:03 BeJe77 wrote:On November 26 2010 17:03 Jibba wrote:On November 26 2010 03:26 Dagobert wrote:
Yap, that's the way it is. Spread lies among the populace and you make a lot of money, speak the truth and you must run for your life. I'm glad the people over at wikileaks and their informants take the risk and fight for the truth. Just so you're aware, hundreds and possibly thousands of low level informants are now having to run for their lives because of the Wikileaks reports. Wikileaks and their informants take a "risk" of being publicly criticized and possibly encarcerated, meanwhile the names in their reports, who weren't voluntarily outted and won't receive benefits from the report, have their names and their family's names on an execution list. Assange's response on the issue has been pretty weak, and makes him come off as a false moralist bastard. There was no reason for them not to scrub that data, but they didn't, and now they say it's for the good of the people. Well said and it's pretty much my sentiment. The entire wiki-leak thing over these U.S. files is doing more damage than it can ever do as good. People going "oh has there been any deaths about people being killed as a result of the release". Obviously you guys are not thinking about this stuff, there are actually parts of the world where people do get killed for releasing information. There is a reason why these names are held secret, to guarantee their safety Wikileaks is pretty disgusting doing this and putting people in harms way, people who help us track bad guys. This is coming from a European by the way. Oh yeah. There are good guys (=us) and there are bad guys. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this sort of thinking has put millions in harm's way in the past few years. Why don't you throw in a "9/11 changed everything", and then your journey to the dark side will be complete. If it's disgusting to operate within the gray zone, then the pure among us are going to destroy this world. It's not worth expanding on; just think about it. But, hey, telling the story about a war of choice that's claiming hundreds of thousands of lives is wrong, because some people might possibly be mistaken for "bad guys" by those who claim to be good guys. Or maybe you'd like to focus on the Afganistan war, 'the good war'. It's a very similar story. Assange draws the line (regarding the blacking out of names) where he draws the line. Maybe there's a handful of people who genuinely care about the lives of a -let's be honest here- relatively small band of collaborators, but your claim that "The entire wiki-leak thing over these U.S. files is doing more damage than it can ever do as good. " is entirely baseless. Moreover, most critics (you included) merely betray their enthusiasm for the 'enlightened' US/NATO war projects by using the slight moral ambiguity regarding the leaks of military files to beat the meaningful contributions of actors like wikileaks to death. "This is coming from a European by the way." Gee, good for you. You must be well informed, entirely unbiased and have a firm grap of basic morality.
I like that sarcasm on my morality. I know where my morality stands and my viewpoint, on issues like these I like to stay neutral, hell I do like it when people release this type of information, but not at the cost of being sloppy and causing people to die just for our need to "know" what is going on.
There is a time and place for everything. There is a difference between releasing some information, for instance wrongful killings of civilians, torture, or things that went wrong. Then there is a huge difference in releasing 400,000 files and not blacking out names of informants who's lives depend on having their names kept secret. Yes, it is 400,000 files, will wiki-leaks block them all out? Hell no they wont because they are not careful enough nor do they care. The only thing they will do now is scare every informant from ever giving out vital information to the military about potential threats/targets/vital information on terrorist operations because the military can't be trusted to keep things secret. Basically, wikileaks have given terrorists a pretty big advantage at this point in time.
At this point in time, I won't distinguish wiki-leaks from your general American news agency. Wiki-Leaks had a great opportunity to be "unbiased news and report the truth" instead they just flushed it down the toilet because they want to cash in.
Yeah, the job of news agencies out there has always been to give the truth to the people. But this changed a long time ago when that didn't give them the ratings i.e. income. What does give them income is creating mass panic/drama and putting fear into people. THAT is what gives them ratings and essentially what translates into income.
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EPT
