141–150 of 284 posts
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> They pretty much put up anything sent to them that they think is real. Maybe, maybe not. How would we know they do that?
If someone sends real leaks to Wikileaks and they don't publish, then the leakers can use alternative channels to distribute the leaks (for example, sending directly to journalists), and then accuse Wikileaks of not publishing. Has anyone already accused Wikileaks of not publishing real leaks?
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> If your perspective is that more secrets are being kept by more egregious actors than the US, the truth welcomes your contribution... If your perspective is that the US is truly the most secretive and "egregious" actor on the modern stage, then you are shockingly naive. Or, more likely, misled by the skewed "truth" you are reading.
please provide something to educate me. Who has more spy bases around the world? Who has disseminated their spy tools so widely that they have become available to 3rd parties? Who else is tapping undersea fiber? Who else is behind the SSL layer at google? I like primary documents obviously, but publications are fine too.
You're now throwing up a diversion by suggesting that surveillance be the only criterion by which to judge a state (or non-state) actor's badness (or goodness).
There is plenty to criticise the US on. I strongly recommend (and have frequently posted to HN) examples such has histories of violence against labour movements, corporate crime generally, the Johnson County War, the West Virginia Coal Wars, and more. There are authors such as Howard Zinn, or Noam Chomsky, or Mark Twain, or Upton Sinclair, or Martin Luther King, Jr., among many others, who can detail atrocities and evil done by and on account of the US.
But, in recent years, the United States hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, made a habit of hunting down and killing its own dissident journalists, politicians, and activists, as Russia has. On which Wikileaks is ... very curiously silent. An action I'll argue is markedly worse than just listening in on conversations, as it takes the value of such surveillance one step further: the acting on it with lethal force.
Has the US managed to kill people? Sure: drone strikes (of questionable validity, but against a generally defined enemy, modulo innocents slaughtered), the killing and subsequent coverup of Reuters photographers in Iraq in 2007 (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/04/05/iraq.photographers...), the friendly-fire killing and cover-up of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, massive security failures in avoiding the 9/11 attacks.
But consider then, Russia's apparently false-flag attacks on its own people (Moscow apartment bombings), the assasinations already mentioned, Syrian attacks, and more.
And from Wikileaks: an increasingly inexcusable silence.
This from a former defender of Assange, and a current defender of both Snowden and Manning.
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Before I answer, I'd like to state that I am an American citizen living abroad and I have no particular allignment to or against any country :) I don't know if the CIA did or would want to do this specific attack. But, I could grasp at straws to fit the Sony attack in line with the narrative of what I would call "1950s American Imperialism". In my view, the Americans took covert or overt actions for many decades now…
> The most blatant endgame here for the US is "NK hacked us. They have nukes! It's time to invade!". And then NK becomes a new market for the West to take over for cheap as they did in Communist Yugoslavia and so on But "They have nukes!" would be reasonable enough reason to invade. Why not work with that narrative as opposed to "They're hacking us!"? Some might say the US has a moral obligation to pursue regime chan…
Perhaps it is convenient fear-mongering and deepening of arguments. America seems to be pretty good at spreading multi-faceted arguments about why you shouldn't even _think_ about the legitimacy of a multi-polar world.
I guess my point is, the American government and official state media seem pretty content to have these multi-bullet playbooks against nations that are quite deeply fulfill the criteria of "non-western", "non-democratic", "non-capitalist", but still quite serious "economic and militaristic threats"
I've really turned on Wikileaks. Itd be one thing if all the major powers had equivalent leaks publishing, but focusing on the US basically serves Chinese and Russian interests far more than it does the citizens of the US. String obfuscation isn't stemming from some corrupt deal that needs sunlight... this is just doing a disservice to their original mission.
The truth isn't responsible for serving anyone's interests, and especially not the interests of the biggest secret keeper. The truth is not political, except that it is the natural enemy of politics which rely upon secrecy. If your perspective is that more secrets are being kept by more egregious actors than the US, the truth welcomes your contribution...
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> If your perspective is that more secrets are being kept by more egregious actors than the US, the truth welcomes your contribution... If your perspective is that the US is truly the most secretive and "egregious" actor on the modern stage, then you are shockingly naive. Or, more likely, misled by the skewed "truth" you are reading.
Please read Ghost Wars by Steve Coll or read up on the various Latin American dictators the CIA supported. The US may not be the 'worst' but we certainly have our hands bloodier than most nations.
1. The Catholic Church, particularly the 30 Years War and Huguenots (themselves not entirely blameless).
2. The Spartans and Helots.
3. England / Britain: North America, India, China, and Australia.
4. Belgium and the Congo.
5. Japan, and ... pretty much everyone in their neighborhood: Korea, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, etc., etc.
6. The Mongols.
7. Nazi Germany.
8. Putin's Russia.
9. Communist Russia.
10. Czarist Russia.
People are pretty damned good at being bloody bastards in general.
The United States certainly has a greater capacity than any other nation, state, or empire in all of history. On balance, it's been ... relatively benign. Not perfectly so by a long shot (see my comments elsewhere in this thread: Zinn, Chomsky, Twain, Sinclair, etc.). Absolutely could have been better. Should be introspected.
But in the context of "is Wikileaks anywhere arguably near unbiased", absolutely not.
It's unethical for anyone who calls themselves an engineer to do this kind of work.
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Do you hold WaPo, NYT, CNN to those same standards? Because that is mainly what American "MSM" does, selectively publish information which bebefits the agenda of American foreign policy interests. It's fair if you align yourself with American foreign policy interests, I do too, but to single out other publications that don't follow that agenda is just a case of having self interested double standards. All of the crit…
I disagree: I think there is a reasonable case to hold WikiLeaks and the NYT to different standards. I think WikiLeaks holds itself out as a much more anarchic news organisation than traditional outlets like the NYT. WikiLeaks isn't connected or have allegiance to any particular country, and will publish, let the facts speak for themselves and damn the establishment and any particular national interests that are harm…
Why is anyone holding a site meant for whistleblowing and leaking of confidential information and the website of a newspaper to the same standard?
Apples and oranges, IMO: It's not really fair to get mad at an orange for not giving you apple juice.
>Therefore, for WikiLeaks to become highly partisan is a radical departure from their original mission; moreover, it has happened without WikiLeaks acknowledging that this is the case. I think you can't same the same for the NYT.
Well said. I don't get the partisanship from Wikileaks. What do they gain by picking sides? What is encouraging (or discouraging) Wikileaks to play cherry picker?
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The truth may not be political, however the curation is. Take the US election, for example. Wikileaks has released information about Clinton and the DNC, and claims they have stuff they never released about Trump and the GOP [1, 2]. Other sources have said the GOP was hacked in the same attack that got Podesta [3]. The only person less likely to criticize Russia than Trump is Assange. Wikileaks lost any proximity to…
Do you hold WaPo, NYT, CNN to those same standards? Because that is mainly what American "MSM" does, selectively publish information which bebefits the agenda of American foreign policy interests. It's fair if you align yourself with American foreign policy interests, I do too, but to single out other publications that don't follow that agenda is just a case of having self interested double standards. All of the crit…