Originally by: Professor Tarantula

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Probably worth noting at this point these leaked documents are pretty much just US diplomats trash talking other diplomats and countries, and don't really endanger national security, unless you count people getting upset that US diplomats are two-faced, which they probably knew already.

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Originally by: Riedle

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Have they endangered national security? No, not likely.
Have they damanged the USA? undoubtedly.
How? They have disclosed a lot of people in war zones that are friendly to the US and western interests. The enemy can read and take action and this will make it much harder to recruit CI's in the future.

That's why things stay classified. No one has the RIGHT to read this stuff. It's classified to protect the USA's national interest the same reason that every other country on earth classifies certain things. Anyone saying this is a freedom of speech issue needs to have their head checked - STAT. Freedom of speech, like all other rights is NOT absolute - and I'm saying that as a HUGE fan of freedom of speach. Every country in the world has classified information. That doesn't mean that's it's covering up some nefarious crimes or anything.

But yes Tarantula most of this stuff is just boring banter but there is no doubt that Assange WANTS to damage the USA. What he is really doing is exposing people to vengeance from the Taliban and/or Al Quaeda. That's the nexus of it.

Apparently Assange doesn't care.

It's also apparent that a lot of people's political leanings are preventing them from seeing what is blindingly obvious.

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Originally by: Riedle

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It's also apparent that a lot of people's political leanings are preventing them from seeing what is blindingly obvious.

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Originally by: Riedle

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It's also apparent that a lot of people's political leanings are preventing them from seeing what is blindingly obvious.

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Nothing given out so far will result in world war three, or terrorist attacks.

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Also the leaks are not just digging out dirt on the USA.

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It turns out that Blair decided to go to war in Iraq 18 months before the parliment vote which blows everything he said at the inquest out of the water. Now we hear he has been ordered back to the inquest to answer further questions.

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Originally by: Riedle

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It turns out that Blair decided to go to war in Iraq 18 months before the parliment vote which blows everything he said at the inquest out of the water. Now we hear he has been ordered back to the inquest to answer further questions.

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lol who cares?

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Originally by: Sokratesz

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Originally by: Riedle

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It's also apparent that a lot of people's political leanings are preventing them from seeing what is blindingly obvious.

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sorry but

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Scott Gilmore
WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive
Scott Gilmore
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2010 5:00AM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2010 7:35AM EST
298 comments Email Print Decrease text size Increase text size I am an aid worker, the kind who rants about transparency, open governments and reforming the United Nations. But, I used to be a diplomat and I used to write secret cables, like the ones being released by WikiLeaks. And I said some very frank and nasty things in those cables.

Why? I was posted to Jakarta. My job was to find out as much as I could about the human rights abuses being committed by the Indonesian military, and to help apply whatever pressure we could to make them stop. I wrote cables back to Ottawa that would raise the hair on the back of your neck, describing abuses that still make me sick years later. These cables gave the Canadian government the ammunition it needed to lean heavily on the Indonesian leadership at the UN and at summits like APEC.


Allow me to illustrate with an example. Every few months, I would visit a little whitewashed school in the hills of Indonesian-occupied East Timor. The young teacher who ran the school would cheerfully bring me into her office, and we would chat about small things while her uniformed students would serve us homemade buns and strong coffee in chipped porcelain. Once the students left and the office door closed, the teacher would open her desk drawer and with a shaking hand give me horrifying photos of disinterred bodies. The Timorese resistance would dig up the fresh graves of torture victims, take photos for evidence, and pass them through their underground networks to this teacher, who would then get them out of the country through me and other diplomats. With that information we knew what the Indonesian military was doing in secret. We could better confront Jakarta, and we could assert more pressure on them to stop.

When we sent the reporting cables back to the Department of Foreign Affairs, they were secret for a reason. If they were published in The Globe and Mail instead, I would have been thrown out of the country in 24 hours and the Indonesian officials would not have permitted a replacement. The local politicians would have hired a rent-a-mob to stone the Canadian embassy. Their leaders would have told the Jakarta media I was a liar and would have blamed the Timorese for feeding me calumny. And the police would have arrested and killed the young teacher before the week was out.

The third most common topic in the WikiLeaks cables is human rights, with American diplomats doing the same thing we were trying to do in Indonesia: Make the world a little better.

ThatÆs hard to swallow for the cyber mob that is celebrating the embarrassment being inflicted on the U.S. government this week. But the damage done to Washington is nothing compared to the pain that is about to be inflicted on the confidential sources in Russia, China and Sudan.

cont'd next post

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Originally by: Riedle

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lol who cares?

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ItÆs not just the militant activist in Guelph, Ont., reading the cables. ItÆs the military dictatorships and the secret police in capitals all around the world. In the days and weeks ahead, people who dared to share information with U.S. diplomats will be rounded up. And thousands more who may have been willing to pass on pictures of tortured bodies will keep them in the desk drawer instead.

Ironically, WikiLeaks is inflicting the same collateral damage it so loudly abhors. The ôCablegateö release is not a real victory for a more open world. It will lead to a more closed world, where repressive governments will be more free to commit atrocities against their own people and the people who try to stop them will have even less information to help prevent this. Thankfully, for the Timorese at least, WikiLeaks did not exist in the 1990s.

Scott Gilmore is a former Canadian diplomat and the founder of Peace Dividend Trust, a New York-based charity that finds, tests and implements new ideas for improving aid and peacekeeping.

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Originally by: Wendat Huron

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Originally by: Riedle

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lol who cares?

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This, to all your posts.

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Originally by: Kalle Demos

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Isnt sex without consent ****?

Oh and dont give me that crap that "he had sex with someone when they were asleep", if you have ever had sex you would know how it would literally be impossible (without drugs / medical issues) to have sex with someone while their asleep.

Example, so I am at a friends and we have fun and after we are talking dirty and im like "you know what would be a funny way to wake up" and he is like "what" and im like "if you ****ed me awake", anyway he never did, but a few days after he did and GUESS WHAT, I woke up literally straight away.

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Originally by: Riedle

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Have they damanged the USA? undoubtedly.
How? They have disclosed a lot of people in war zones that are friendly to the US and western interests. The enemy can read and take action and this will make it much harder to recruit CI's in the future.

...yes Tarantula most of this stuff is just boring banter but there is no doubt that Assange WANTS to damage the USA. What he is really doing is exposing people to vengeance from the Taliban and/or Al Quaeda. That's the nexus of it.

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Originally by: Professor Tarantula

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Originally by: Riedle

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Have they damanged the USA? undoubtedly.
How? They have disclosed a lot of people in war zones that are friendly to the US and western interests. The enemy can read and take action and this will make it much harder to recruit CI's in the future.

...yes Tarantula most of this stuff is just boring banter but there is no doubt that Assange WANTS to damage the USA. What he is really doing is exposing people to vengeance from the Taliban and/or Al Quaeda. That's the nexus of it.

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The TV likes to say it's put operatives and CIs in danager, but there is zero evidence of that. Something the media isn't very keen to repeat is that the US government got an advance copy and did request certain things be omitted before it was released, and wikileaks obliged them with some things, but not everything.

And it's not just boring banter, it's very embarassing to certain people because it's so unprofessional. With some luck, exposing it to the light of day will cause them to strive to be more professional in the future. But as it stands right now, they're just shifting all the blame to the messenger, wikileaks, and pretending they don't like the release because it endangers the US.

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The TV likes to say it's put operatives and CIs in danger, but there is zero evidence of that. Something the media isn't very keen to repeat is that the US government got an advance copy and did request certain things be omitted before it was released, and wikileaks obliged them with some things, but not everything.

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And it's not just boring banter, it's very embarassing to certain people because it's so unprofessional in its arbitrarily demeaning nature towards any and all groups they deal with. With some luck, exposing it to the light of day will cause them to strive to be more professional in the future. But as it stands right now, they're just shifting all the anger off themselves and onto the messenger, wikileaks, and pretending they don't like the release because it endangers the US.

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Originally by: Riedle

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I just posted evidence of it - see my story above from a peace envoy. People are not going to open up to anyonw that has ties to the USA. This is problematic and dangerous.

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don't see much that the USA needs be embarassed about and I didn't see anything unprofessional either for that matter. How people talk outwardly and inwardly to allies is different. This would be the same for any country.

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Originally by: Professor Tarantula

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Edited by: Professor Tarantula on 08/12/2010 20:34:47

Originally by: Riedle

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I just posted evidence of it - see my story above from a peace envoy. People are not going to open up to anyonw that has ties to the USA. This is problematic and dangerous.

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They don't mention anything in the documents which does what they're afraid of, its just a hypothetical. Maybe even 'concern trolling'.

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don't see much that the USA needs be embarassed about and I didn't see anything unprofessional either for that matter. How people talk outwardly and inwardly to allies is different. This would be the same for any country.

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This is US diplomats trashing their supposed 'allies' on official channels. Any and all people they deal with are roundly mocked and insulted. Has nothing to do with the tasks at hand, it's completely pointless. Of course it's embarassing and unprofessional. And contrary to what you seem to think, it's not something every country does. It is possible for countries and the diplomats to respect one another without it just being an act.

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Originally by: Sokratesz

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It so happens to be that 'my' country is one of the US' most loyal allies.

I believe that truth is more important than comfort, and the fact that so many things have been swept under the rug and that the public has been actively misled on so many issues has convince just makes me say 'bring them down'.

I wasn't laughing because just another conservative tool like you is defending the opposite. That sort of thing is more deserving of pity.

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Originally by: Othran

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You know the thing that REALLY annoys me?

Its morons saying he should be tried for espionage.

OK lets look at this in your (US) legal system :

1) Did he induce or coerce anyone to provide the info - no;
2) Did the transfer of info take place on US territory (includes embassies/bases/etc) - no.

So how in the hell is it espionage or as some of your more illiterate journos/bloggers are calling it "Treason"?

Get a grip. Have you any idea how you look to the rest of the world?

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Originally by: Malaclypse Muscaria

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Edited by: Malaclypse Muscaria on 08/12/2010 18:39:09

Originally by: Astenion

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No, I think information should be released even if it highlights some people in a way unbecoming to them. My only problem is that people say this is freedom of speech, as if John Q. Public has a RIGHT to read classified material simply because he's curious. No, classified material exists for a reason, and that's to protect the public as well as our national security.

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Astenion, WTF are you trying to get at?

You seem to be engaged in some sort sterile mental fap about "rights". Well, here's the thing: all "rights" are a human convention, an invention. They don't exist out there in some sort of objetive and absolute form and they don't have some sort of divine origin.

We generally agree on upholding them because it's "nice". Some are pretty obvious and very few people would disagree on them, but many go into gray areas, and depending on the jurisdiction / context / situation / who's involved, etc... they may vary wildly.

So what we have here is an organization claiming they have a "right" to keep their secret stuff secret, versus citizens claiming they have a "right" to publish and read those secrets, particularly since the former organization has many powers over them and is prone to abuse these.

No side is right by "divine right". Period. You simply pick your side, what you yourself believe is "right", and defend that position. Do you support what Wikileaks is doing? Do you side with the US government in shutting them down and arresting Assange? Or you just don't give a f*ck about any of it all, and they could all go diaf for all you care?

That's what matters. Those abstract discussions about "rights" you are going into is just that, masturbation, particularly since we are talking here about many different countries with many different jurisdictions and understandings of "rights".

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Originally by: Astenion

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On top of that, the flow of information will dry up

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Originally by: dr doooo

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Are you trolling here? Freedom of speech only applies to things a government doesn't deem CLASSIFIED? Even a 12 year old idiot could see the problem with that. If a government or nation wants to keep some things classified, then that's up to them to manage their own security and keep that information safe within their own jurisdiction. Outside of that jurisdiction, people have no obligation to honour their interpretation of 'classified in the interest of national security', be that Mugabee's police death squads, or the duplicity of diplomats.

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Originally by: Nyu Shin

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Originally by: Astenion

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On top of that, the flow of information will dry up

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Maybe it's intentional ?

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Originally by: Astenion

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ABSO****INGLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH FREE SPEECH.

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Originally by: baltec1

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Originally by: Astenion

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ABSO****INGLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH FREE SPEECH.

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You are right. Its to do with a free media.

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