You think the US should try and assassinate Assange and/or his family members?
You are taking the US Gov’s word that these releases put lives in danger. This claim has been made about all previous large Wikileaks releases, and has been proven untrue.
Your post is kind of disturbing.
So you think it makes a country strong to assassinate and intimidate people who seek government transparency? I’m chalking it up to an inability to stop the leak rather than virtue per se, but it’s surprising that you (not being Vladimir Putin or a North Korean spokesman) would talk shit about a reluctance to murder in defense of people embarrassing you.
Aw yiss. It’s really unprecedented for a government simultaneously so obsessed with secrecy and its image as a freedom-loving democracy to be unveiled in flagrante rather than years later.
I don’t think you have to be naive, just reasonably humane to be shocked by what governments will say or do when they think they can get away with it. Sure, there’s always going to be the faux realpolitik crowd that embraces brutality because they misinterpret the ten quotes from the Prince they’ve read and think it makes a country strong to be ruthless in and of itself, but not being deluded is hardly their strong suit.
And if it causes political unrest all over the place then was it really necesary to dump this stuff out?
If it causes political unrest then speech should be rated unnecessary?
It’ll be interesting to see.
Is it going to be interesting or boring fodder for the naive?
[CENTER]
“Da Komrade Putin! Ve vill take care of zis pesky vikileaks man. MOO HOO HA HA”[/CENTER]
That’s why I deleted the post, I wasn’t really looking to disturb on a Sunday morning. You guys are fast off the draw, though.
The veracity of the US government claim is a huge caveat, it’s true, and I’m not one to endorse any government’s word or action.
Aw :( Well that’s no fun. This is P&R, dude! Toss the lit cigarette on the gasoline trail and walk away from the thread in slo-mo as it explodes! That’s how we do things here!
That’s not what I said, and besides even that kind of agreement is the result of centuries of warfare and treaties, which goes to show that it is counter-intuitive.
Wikilkeaks has recently tweeted:
We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.
El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down
So, looks like tonight is when the bomb gets dropped.
via Nabeel
Yup, here we go people. Most interesting to me (being a backward Brit) is, quoted from BBC news:
A journalist with Britain’s Guardian newspaper said the files include an unflattering US assessment of UK PM David Cameron.
OooOooOoh I can’t wait!
I’m just wondering how a fucking private first class had access to all this shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in intelligence and had clearance, but just because KFC trusts a fry cook doesn’t mean that corporate gives him the keys to the secret recipe. What happened to need to know and compartmentalization? Embassy cables are the purview of the State Department, so why does some PFC in the Army get to read them?
It may be they had other sources but since Manning’s screwed no matter what, they’ll just let people assume it’s from him.
What I don’t get: If they have a special, secure channel for “top secret” messages, why don’t they just use for everything they don’t want the Internet to read?
So are we taking bets on who is DoSing wikileaks?
I don’t know much about these types of attacks, but I hope they can be back-traced by the cyber police…
At least they already gave out all of the info to various news organisations.
I saw a timetable online where it said that they will spread it all week long, each day with different themes. Thursday being US/Canada relations and the canadian inferiority complex. Sunday will be the last day, and it will be China. I couldn’t find a link so take this with a grain of salt until confirmation.
Is the fryer attached to a network with the recipe?
The Guardians coverage us up:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-us-embassy-cables
Some highlights:
Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton’s name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to leaked US diplomatic cables that describe how other Arab allies have secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.
The revelations, in secret memos from US embassies across the Middle East, expose behind-the-scenes pressures in the scramble to contain the Islamic Republic, which the US, Arab states and Israel suspect is close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Bombing Iranian nuclear facilities has hitherto been viewed as a desperate last resort that could ignite a far wider war.
The Saudi king was recorded as having “frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme”, one cable stated. “He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah’s meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.
Hopefully there will be something about the Sasquatch in there. The world needs to know.
Huh. We’re Batman. Who knew?
Day one and we have already seeing a diplomatic shitstorm of unseen proportions.
I even wonder if the US could recover form this. Formal policy to collect biometric data on other world leader? Bullying countries into submission? Spying on the UN?
Say what you want, but this is a dark day for the US. If there was ever distrust for the US in the world, this will multiply it tenfold. And I was I were overreacting here.
And this is just day one…