I do not know that last part is true. He has been swayed by the political environment multiple times. But as for being a corporatist, no shit, huh.
That he actually believes the centrist torture-friendly shit he says is another plausible possibility; mix to taste.
Wikileaks is going to release 35,000 US diplomatic cables, including one about Sen. John McCain’s trip to Libya.
And in a fuck you to anyone who ever confided to a US embassy staffer, there were virtually no redactions made at all.
WikiLeaks published some cables on its own Web site, but until the latest release, the group had also provided versions of the cables that had been edited to protect low-level diplomatic sources.
Government officials and journalists were poring over the newly released cables on Monday to assess whether people named in them might face repercussions. A quick sampling found at least one cable posted on Monday, from the American Embassy in Australia, had a name removed, but several others left in the identities of people whom diplomats had flagged for protection.
Among those named, despite diplomats’ warnings, were a United Nations official in West Africa and a foreign human rights activist working in Cambodia. They had spoken candidly to American Embassy officials on the understanding that they would not be publicly identified.
But don’t forget, Julian Assange is a noble freedom fighter who is far too busy to worry about collateral murder.
I can’t read that because I don’t have an account but that’snot the whole story, though it is a massive fuck up if it’s not intentional. And yeah he deserves massive condemnation for it either way.
According to German newspaper Der Freitag, and backed up by Der Spiegel, a spat between Assange and his spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg resulted in the accidental release of thousands of unredacted cables with an easily-obtained password. These documents include sources names which were removed from the intentionally-released cables, says Der Spiegel.
That’s referring to the release of an encrypted file + public key which as far as anyone knows hasn’t yet been decrypted. The latest dump of documents was intentional and are available on wikileaks’ website.
When Afghani sources were revealed during the Afghan war docudump Assange was on record as saying that it didn’t really bother him if innocents were harmed because, you know, on a mission of righteousness and stuff.
Wikileaks reminds me more and more of the Whale Wars fuckups who end up making me root for the bad guys all the time. That is beyond mishandled – Assange and his crew need to be locked up for good.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict yet again that absolutely no one will die as a result.
Nobody has to die for this to be massively stupid and damaging.
How about “no one will suffer in any way other than career diplomats or NGO officials?”
How about, “anyone in their right mind will now think twice about telling us anything of value?”
How about, “not redacting sources is stupid, hamfisted, petty, and pointless?”
If those are your fallbacks, sure.
Valerie Plame still being alive does not make Robert Novak any less of a dickhead.
My only concern is for more plausible rhetoric about consequences, not a defense of the Wikileaks idiocy.
Fallbacks. Nice.
I guess I prefer to give a shit. You may be right. I hope you are. But your conjecture doesn’t change the fact that the only way to guarantee the outcome you predict is to not do what Wikileaks did.
Pointing out that the rhetoric is overheated is apparently exactly the same as “not giving a shit.”
I agree that the Gizmodo statements like, “It’s virtually guaranteeing that sources and informants and their families will be killed and tortured, and have to flee their home countries,” is overheated. I also think statements like," I’m going to go out on a limb and predict yet again that absolutely no one will die as a result," and, “how about ‘no one will suffer in any way other than career diplomats or NGO officials?’” is cavalier handwaving that massively distorts the potential impact of this profound and wide-ranging breach of trust. Casual dismissal is just as ridiculous as overheated rhetoric.
Officials predicted horrible things with the approved leaks and nothing happened. I think it’s unlikely there’s much in the unapproved list that will cause problems, either, just on sheer practicality. The number of protesters who will only be caught with a diplomatic cable leak is tiny. Also, given the sheer weight of diplomatic paranoia I’m inclined to think it’s almost entirely stuff that’s just embarrasing to great power politics, not discussions I should give a shit about.
Breach of trust between who?
Past performance does not guarantee future results. Again, you may be right – in fact you’re probably right – but taking needless chances and tempting fate like this is reckless at best. I look at it like the drunk driver who safely makes it home nine times out of ten, and Assange and the gang seem perfectly comfortable handing that guy his keys.
Breach of trust between who?
Between the people who offered the information with the expectation of privacy and the people who failed to maintain that privacy. The government shoulders the bulk of the blame for that, obviously, but Wikileaks had no reason whatsoever to include those people’s names. Unless, of course, they wanted to damage America’s ability to gather intelligence, even if doing so meant someone, somewhere, might suffer or die. If that’s the case I say fuck Wikileaks for being petty thugs trying to disguise themselves as modern day journalistic crusaders.
So, to the previous point, do you also think the whole Valerie Plame issue was overheated rhetoric? No one was killed, heck, she probably made a lot of money as a result from books, articles, etc.
If you’re going to appoint yourself the lord emperor of dumping massive amounts of confidential info into the public domain, be at least responsible enough to redact appropriately. I read Assange’s/Wikileaks’ tweets, and they mentioned as they were releasing these “use the search engine, we aren’t sure of everything in them, that’s why we give you the cool page with the search capabilities.”