Wikileaks founder framed for rape?

[Raithe]

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Assange said that he had been contacted by Australian intelligence with a warning that another intelligence service was planning a smear campaign against him http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2...5529927326.html

 

The trouble I always have is that Al-Jazeera is about as biased and manipulative as Fox News, if noy more so.. It's so damn hard to take news networks seriously these days with the amount of control they put on just how news is told to suit whatever idealogy they have..

 

Or maybe I've just become ridiculously paranoid and cynical over it..

[Walsingham]

The accusations that wikileaks are to blame for civilian or miliary casualties are probably complete bogus. I believe its aboslutely essential that the general public is aware of just how dirty war really is, wether its screw-ups or intentional malevolence.

 

 

1. Confirm the notion that publishing lists of local informants has not resulted in deaths directly from those lists, because I think it's fairly ****ing sensible to presume the opposite

2. Dirty? Dirty how exactly? That civilians have died has never been denied. That special forces are involved in hunting and killing leading Taliban surprised absolutely no-one. It's not even a new tactic.

 

What has the leak achieved that is positive?

 

EDIT:

 

The principle of leaking as some sort of heroic act is the bogus notion here. I think there's a tremendous double standard here from some of you chaps. What if someone in the police, or your ISP, or your doctor's office decided to publicise an aspect of your life that was potentially damaging because they felt a personal virtue in that information being made free to your spouse or business competitors? You'd be livid, and you'd want to know by what right that decision was taken.

 

Vigilantism is fundamentally and inescapably wrong in a democratic society.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Walsingham

[Orogun01]

1. Confirm the notion that publishing lists of local informants has not resulted in deaths directly from those lists, because I think it's fairly ****ing sensible to presume the opposite

2. Dirty? Dirty how exactly? That civilians have died has never been denied. That special forces are involved in hunting and killing leading Taliban surprised absolutely no-one. It's not even a new tactic.

 

What has the leak achieved that is positive?

 

EDIT:

 

The principle of leaking as some sort of heroic act is the bogus notion here. I think there's a tremendous double standard here from some of you chaps. What if someone in the police, or your ISP, or your doctor's office decided to publicise an aspect of your life that was potentially damaging because they felt a personal virtue in that information being made free to your spouse or business competitors? You'd be livid, and you'd want to know by what right that decision was taken.

 

Vigilantism is fundamentally and inescapably wrong in a democratic society.

The comparison really doesn't stand since what most individuals do has a limited impact on the world. The attempt was misguided and naive but it has brought back the subject of the war on everyone's radar and people need reminding that there is still a war out there that we are involved in. On a more personal note I believe that i'm somewhat entitled to know what my government is doing with my money; as long as it doesn't put lives in danger.

[Volourn]

"and people need reminding that there is still a war"

 

Oh come on. It's not like people forgot about it. I know the internet geekz what to claim everyone else is dumb, but people aren't gonna forget about stuff like that.

[Orogun01]

"and people need reminding that there is still a war"

 

Oh come on. It's not like people forgot about it. I know the internet geekz what to claim everyone else is dumb, but people aren't gonna forget about stuff like that.

The fact that some people have started calling it the secret war and that this country seems more focused on a Mosque and beating down Obama rather than on the War. The media has forgotten the war. Is not that they have completely forgotten it, is just that is sitting on the back of their minds and this is still an issue.

[Walsingham]

Orogun, I think you've thrown a wide ball there, I'm afraid. Forgotten about the war? Possibly. Did the leak remind people that there was one in any useful way? Don't be daft.

[Gfted1]

Lol, I like the part where the Australian Intelligence Agency, having nothing better to do, sent their close personal buddy a heads up that a smear campaing was underway from "another intelligence agency". Suuuuuure they did. I sure wish they would tell me where the radar traps are setup on my way to work.

[Humodour]

Aussie intelligence agency? Hmm. The Defence Signals Directorate? The Australian Secret Intelligence Service? The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation? The Australian Federal Police? The Defence Intelligence Organisation? The Office of National Assessment?

 

I love the names they give these entities.

[Zoraptor]

The accusations that wikileaks are to blame for civilian or miliary casualties are probably complete bogus. I believe its aboslutely essential that the general public is aware of just how dirty war really is, wether its screw-ups or intentional malevolence.

 

 

1. Confirm the notion that publishing lists of local informants has not resulted in deaths directly from those lists, because I think it's fairly ****ing sensible to presume the opposite

Hoho, prove a negative, good argumentation there. Prove your positive, that's the way it works. Shall we then presume that because the CIA hasn't produced names these murdered informants don't exist?

2. Dirty? Dirty how exactly? That civilians have died has never been denied. That special forces are involved in hunting and killing leading Taliban surprised absolutely no-one. It's not even a new tactic.

Oh please. Seemingly every time there were civilian deaths it was obfuscated. They didn't stop for a roadblock. We didn't kill civilians, we killed militants (and if there were children amongst them that is just more evidence of Islamic Terror Babies). It wasn't a wedding party, it was a terrorist celebration. Our informant didn't decide to enact some petty revenge on a rival.

The principle of leaking as some sort of heroic act is the bogus notion here. I think there's a tremendous double standard here from some of you chaps. What if someone in the police, or your ISP, or your doctor's office decided to publicise an aspect of your life that was potentially damaging because they felt a personal virtue in that information being made free to your spouse or business competitors?

There's a fundamental difference between exposing something about an individual and something about a government. In 99.9% of cases unless it is criminal it's none of your business what someone else does. Most of the 0.1% left over relates to, surprisingly, public figures and public interest.

 

Vigilantism is fundamentally and inescapably wrong in a democratic society.

Oh please^2. You could as accurately apply the 'vigilantism' tag to "coalition death squads" and "airborne assassins" acting on the say so of some informant hiding behind a shield of anonymity applying summary and final justice in the full knowledge that a proportion of those they are killing will be innocent and guilty of no crime other than having pissed an informant off. Yes yes, emotionally loaded language, in stark contrast to describing leaking documents as 'vigilantism', :rolly eyes:. Sheesh, leaking another country's secrets isn't even illegal which disqualifies it from being vigilantism (so too for the "coalition death squads", natch).

 

[Edit to short circuit the inevitable: "coalition death squads" is not intended literally and anyone taking it as such will be laughed at]

Edited August 23, 2010 by Zoraptor

[Orogun01]

Orogun, I think you've thrown a wide ball there, I'm afraid. Forgotten about the war? Possibly. Did the leak remind people that there was one in any useful way? Don't be daft.

I guess i'm a bit of an optimist.

 

Still is sort of nice to have a backdoor into what the government is doing, the way the America media is, they could be gang-raping the Afghans and we wouldn't know about it.

[Walsingham]

Zoraptor, I hope we're not going to abandon each other in disgust here, but I have my doubts.

 

1. The Taliban has directly threatened the persons included in the files, and the threat has been assessed by multiple sources as credible. LINK Moreover the Taliban routinely kill persons they feel are informers or collaborators.

 

2. No one at all inside Afghanistan, including standard news media, had any illusions that civilians were being hit in airstrikes and at cordons. If you failed to pick up on that prior to the wikileak then frankly you weren't remotely informed.

 

3. Governments are indeed a special case, distinct from private citizens. Violating personal data can lead to losing your job, disgrace, suicide. If government data is violated then it can lead to lost battles and lost wars. The fate of nations, and thousands of casualties can be consequences.

 

4. If you feel you should have the right top publicise any government files you happen across then you should not sign multiple commitments to the effect that you will not do this. The filthy scrote at the centre of the leak (whoever he is) was not a conscript they were a professional. If they had concerns they could have gone to their CO or to Congress. Instread they felt tehir own judgement was sufficient. It's bull**** and it makes me extremely angry.

 

~

 

I'll say it again, nice and clearly, no-one gained an iota from the release of these files except the Taliban. An outcome that is ****ing obvious and precisely why we have official secrets.

Edited August 24, 2010 by Walsingham

[Zoraptor]

Zoraptor, I hope we're not going to abandon each other in disgust here, but I have my doubts.

Nah, I just find your language overly emotive and obviously, for want of a better term, biased. I mean really, of course everyone in Afghanistan knows the Coalition kills lots of civilians but are you seriously suggesting an internet leak site is aimed at Afghans? It's clearly aimed at the western public which has been fed a steady diet of PR sanitised "we only kill terrorists, if we've killed someone they are terrorists" propaganda for the last X years.

 

There's probably a dash of me also liking, well, open government which doesn't actively lie to its population and expecting such as a bare minimum of acceptability involved too.

 

Personally, I give the guy who leaked the stuff a huge :salute: and wikileaks a big :salute: for publishing them. If for nothing else, for the guy who stopped to help the injured and got woohoo lit up yeehah in 'Collateral Murder', a hero undeserving of being labeled a terrorist by some PR cretin sitting in Washington sipping lattes.

[Walsingham]

I'm not sure if that last dig was at me, since I don't work in PR, I'm not in Washington, and I hate latte. I only suspect it was pointed at me because you called me a cretin.

 

I'm also not sure if you understood my point about the information being freely known in Afghanistan. My point was that any journalist in country would know about the civilian casualties. Something you can tell for yourself by looking at any big newsfeed and checking to see how many stories about astray missiles, convoys getting hit etc you see.

 

The real story regarding civilian casualties is that insurgents cause the vast majority. Nearly 75%, according to the UN, and rising. Where the **** is that story?

 

In any case, I'd love to hear your actual rejoinder on the direct victims of this leak - the persons and families who are fighting the Taliban in Afghan.

[Meshugger]

Don't worry fellas, the authorities will find child porn on his computer within the near future.

[Rostere]

But even documents 6 month old can reveal things.. Like potential informants, how things are structured... things that keep going even a year or three down the road. That's what can lead to potential deaths and further troubles.

 

All the Afghans who worked with NATO in those documents are now under a death sentence from Taliban thanks to those ****. Even all the human rights organizations have said so, but I suppose they're all US agents also.

 

All names of civilian informants et.c. are cut out in the wikileaks documents.

Where are you getting that information from? Every report I've seen stated the contrary.

 

http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

 

It's on the front page on wikileaks' site for the Kabul War Diary. Scroll down to the video and Assange says it himself somewhere about halfway through.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Assange also claimed he contacted the Pentagon about making sure he doesn't release any harmful information, but Pentagon denies the whole thing. I guess it depends on who you believe.

[Rostere]

Assange also claimed he contacted the Pentagon about making sure he doesn't release any harmful information, but Pentagon denies the whole thing. I guess it depends on who you believe.

 

I thought he contacted Pentagon to double check, but Pentagon did not want to cooperate with him.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Pentagon denied it. This is the story that I've read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/10/a...m_n_677048.html

 

Edit: Here's another article on this, specifically stating that most released documents were not edited: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...2010309,00.html

Edited August 25, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Wrath of Dagon]

Apparently there's still an investigation going on: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100825/pl_nm/...weden_wikileaks

[Zoraptor]

I'm not sure if that last dig was at me, since I don't work in PR, I'm not in Washington, and I hate latte.

I know perfectly well you're British and that you've been in the army. As such you're pretty much immune to accusations of sitting behind a desk in Washington swilling overpriced coffee derivatives of any form. That jab was aimed squarely at exactly what it appeared to be, the PR goon in Washington who decided it was expedient to label that incident as job well done.

 

I only suspect it was pointed at me because you called me a cretin.

Really? I thought I just said I found you overly emotive and involved. If that were the main criterion for cretinism, well, I'd have been a cretin too on more than one occasion. Including the last paragraph of my previous post.

 

The real story regarding civilian casualties is that insurgents cause the vast majority. Nearly 75%, according to the UN, and rising. Where the **** is that story?

Taleban being Taleban, more at eleven basically. People hold the Coalition up to higher standards because they aren't the Taleban.

 

I always find these arguments specious in any case- "at least we're better than Hitler/ Stalin/ Temujin/ Timur/ Vlad Tepes/ Caligula/ etc" really isn't saying much.

 

In any case, I'd love to hear your actual rejoinder on the direct victims of this leak - the persons and families who are fighting the Taliban in Afghan.

Frankly? I doubt any leak could be more harm than any one of civilian casualties, rampant corruption, cronyism, warlordism, rigged elections, continuing violence, rampant drugs etc could do, and it's most likely vanishingly small compared to any one of those. From what I've seen 99% of the stuff leaked would have no practical benefit to the Taleban in any case as it is general and historic in nature, and it is highly unlikely that they're ignorant of the facts on the ground having had nine years to learn how the Coalition does things. Further, pretty much everyone admits they have very good penetration of all facets of Afghan civil and military structures even if the ISI isn't leaking stuff to them too. Nett: I doubt there's much there that the Taleban doesn't already know.

[Walsingham]

I feel actually contrite for once. Sorry for jumping to too many conclusion, Zor.

 

I'm with you on holding us to higher standards, but the problem I can see is that we forget that we are not the bad guys., and we pack up and leave the five million Afghans to the Taliban out of a sense of shame. Further, I don't believe leaks are the way to hold us to that higher standard in any meaningful sense. In extremis a leak might provoke a knee-jerk firing or policy statement, but to really keep high standards we need to make a solid sustained effort. We need regular and effective monitoring of the Armed Forces by responsible and empowered bodies, like our MPs. We need a better understanding of what makes our servicemen violate the official standards they are normally bound by, and work to eliminate those factors.

 

I follow your final point about the Taliban being really well informed. However, I suggest you are falling into the trap of assuming insurgents are boogie men*. To the best of my knowledge they really aren't. Just consider their IED placement. Huge numbers of IEDs are found and disposed of, or hit random targets. Moreover, consider the cellular structure of an insurgency. It's not as if they've got a big HQ staff collecting and collating ionformation between units. Whereas this list is solid gold plated intel all in a nice package.

 

Although of course reality I'm basing my assessment primarily on the news and views of friends who've been and are in Afghan. Mates who have a lot of respect for the poor sods on the escaped data, and probably know some of them (although I haven't asked).

 

 

*[i just spotted the spelling error, but it's a funny image]

[Nepenthe]

I think the core of the problem, is that they don't, actually, 'boogie'.

 

And the fact that people once thought that giving weapons and training to the Mujahideen was a brilliant idea.

[Walsingham]

Don't blame me, I didn't do it.

 

 

I personally think it's a mistake to confuse the Talibs with the mujahideen. Just for staretrs, many of the Talibs today weren't even alive when the Soviets left.

 

[Nepenthe]

Don't blame me, I didn't do it.

 

 

I personally think it's a mistake to confuse the Talibs with the mujahideen. Just for staretrs, many of the Talibs today weren't even alive when the Soviets left.

 

No, but the infra (training camps, operations manual) was built with Operation Cyclone.*

 

Kind of like Saddam's forces were built with the U.S. aid during the Iraq-Iran war.

 

In fact, basically all the **** we have to deal with now is the result of pumping money into 'cold war buffer zones'... Sigh.

 

 

*And AFAIK a lot of the key players were already around back then... Who cares if the mooks were born later, just shows the lasting damage

[Wrath of Dagon]

I guess by that logic we shouldn't have helped the Soviets against the nazis either.