Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 266 posts

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#141

Post by nir »

drusenko wrote: post #121
nir wrote: post #120

As someone who grew in the Mideast and spent some time in the US/EU/Aus, I was often amazed how completely detached Westerners are from the way the rest of the world works. Left wingers or conservatives, so many guns & money have been sheltering the past 2-3 generations from reality that they genuinely believe most people share their values and goals, and that the world operates similarly to their own surroundings. I…

"how completely disconnected Westerners are from the way the world actually works" Would you like to explain that, or are you just going to throw a nebulous assertion out there and expect it to mean something?

Sure (btw, reworded it a bit, hope it's less inflammatory).

A good example is the Iraq war: the pro-war side just assumed that, given the option, Iraqis will be happy to adopt the Western liberal democracy model. On the other hand, the anti-war side uses the "illegal war" argument, as if it has any meaning - the world isn't a modern nation with the UN as supreme court, determining the legality of various wars.

Another example: Afghanistan. First we go in. Then we realize Taliban not only has a completely different notion of values, but of time itself - they are perfectly happy to continue fighting for 20 more years if need be. Now we're thinking, "let's just pull out and forget about it" - as if it's possible to just start off of a clean slate, no consequence.

Another example, Iran in the Middle East. The documents "reveal" what anyone should have known - Arab regimes are horrified of the option of a nuclear Iran. This is because the deepest rivalry in the Middle East, that shed the most blood, is the Sunni-Shiite (and Arab-Farsi) - see the >1m dead in the Iraq-Iran war - rather then the Israeli-Arab obsessively covered by Fox/CNN/Reddit/Beck/Stewart.

Finally, a personal favorite of mine: my wife often tells me how her (expensive Ivy League) university professors bring up various UN treaties nearly all nations but the US have signed. They seem to actually believe the various dictatorships that signed these documents will not ignore them completely the second they become inconvenient.

I'm not claiming to have a good idea on what to do with Iraq/Afghanistan/Iran/etc. Just that I think the level of discussion is ridiculous.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#142

Post by Alex3917 »

GHFigs wrote: post #132
flyt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09manning.html?pagewant... > friends said his social life was defined by the need to conceal his sexuality under “don’t ask, don’t tell”

I'm not disputing that he is gay, I'm asking for a source for the supposed "fact" that he was being discharged for it.

Here is the source: http://boingboing.net/2010/06/20/was-alleged-wikileak.html

We know that the military knew he was LGBT and he was waiting to be discharged, although the timeline and causation isn't entirely clear. That is, it's possible that he already leaked the documents first and then it was Lamo who outed him after the fact. My bad, I should have qualified my original comment further, though flyt's quote shows that it's a complex issue.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#143

Post by dkl »

nir wrote: post #141
drusenko wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how completely disconnected Westerners are from the way the world actually works" Would you like to explain that, or are you just going to throw a nebulous assertion out there and expect it to mean something?

Sure (btw, reworded it a bit, hope it's less inflammatory). A good example is the Iraq war: the pro-war side just assumed that, given the option, Iraqis will be happy to adopt the Western liberal democracy model. On the other hand, the anti-war side uses the "illegal war" argument, as if it has any meaning - the world isn't a modern nation with the UN as supreme court, determining the legality of various wars. Anothe…

> On the other side, the anti-war side uses the "illegal war" argument, as if it has any meaning - the world isn't a modern nation with the UN as supreme court, determining the legality of various wars.

The left used this argument because it was the handiest they had. I think your criticism of it is absurd. It's like you're saying the left was right for the wrong reason, as if there is one reason all on the left opposed the war in Iraq.

How about this: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and therefore there was NO reason to attack them??

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#144

Post by brc »

d2viant wrote: post #5

Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?

even more OT, but an interesting story about decryption and leaking of cables is the Zimmerman telegram - the cable that was decrypted and leaked and caused the USA to enter the first world war - from a time when cables literaly went over the cable. This is from the days before computers, when intelligence and human decryption were used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

So the decryption and leaking of cables is nothing new, but this is a whole new scale. Sometimes I wonder if Wikileaks is now doing the bidding of governments without realising it. It's unlikely now but maybe in the future will be so.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#145

Post by gnosis »

potatolicious wrote: post #138
gnosis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good would assassinating him do? He's not the only one who runs Wikileaks or has access to the information. They'd need to "snatch" everyone who has access to it, which might be a very difficult proposition, not to mention a complete public relations disaster, considering Wikileaks is in the public spotlight right now. I very much doubt the CIA is holding back out of the goodness of their hearts. No. What we are…

He is clearly the leader though. While assassinating him will do nothing about the information WikiLeaks already possesses, it may well throw the organization into disarray and thus irrelevance. Assange is only a viable target if there is no other leader waiting at the wings if he dies. Our impression of WikiLeaks' organization structure is that no such "Assange" exists yet.

How much "leadership" does it take to put stuff up on a website?

Really, I think you overestimate Assange's importance to the operation of Wikileaks, and the amount of "disarray" the "organization" will be put in if something happens to him.

And, honestly, if someone chooses to leak info in the future and Wikileaks doesn't publish it for some reason, then some other website or news organization will.

The really critical people in this whole scheme are the leakers and whistleblowers themselves, and silencing Assange will do nothing to stop them. It's just shooting the messenger.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#146

Post by nir »

dkl wrote: post #143
nir wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure (btw, reworded it a bit, hope it's less inflammatory). A good example is the Iraq war: the pro-war side just assumed that, given the option, Iraqis will be happy to adopt the Western liberal democracy model. On the other hand, the anti-war side uses the "illegal war" argument, as if it has any meaning - the world isn't a modern nation with the UN as supreme court, determining the legality of various wars. Anothe…

> On the other side, the anti-war side uses the "illegal war" argument, as if it has any meaning - the world isn't a modern nation with the UN as supreme court, determining the legality of various wars. The left used this argument because it was the handiest they had. I think your criticism of it is absurd. It's like you're saying the left was right for the wrong reason, as if there is one reason all on the left oppo…

I'm sure you're not reading support for the Iraq war in my comments?

My problem is not with the anti-war point of view, but with naivety of the legality argument.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#147

Post by gwern »

drpancake wrote: post #135
krschultz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which really begs the question why they don't have some automatic monitoring on who starts accessing a hundred thousand documents not related to their day to day job.

According to The Guardian: "There have been suggestions that an alarm system to detect suspicious use of the network was suspended for US military personnel in Iraq after they complained it was inconvenient." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-...

It would be rather inconvenient if one full-text search on the name of this old possible insurgent you captured suddenly disabled your computer and led to your arrest by MPs, I agree.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#148

Post by vladocar »

ronnier wrote: post #70
StavrosK wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it okay if I link to it from historious for formatting webpages?

Yup! That's really the intended use, for others to provide links to articles from within their apps. That's what I did for http://ihackernews.com (HN for iPhone/Android).

Nice work! Can I integrate this service with my HN Mobile Front Page Reader? http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/11/hacker-news-mobile-front-page...

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#149

Post by gamble »

potatolicious wrote: post #138
gnosis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good would assassinating him do? He's not the only one who runs Wikileaks or has access to the information. They'd need to "snatch" everyone who has access to it, which might be a very difficult proposition, not to mention a complete public relations disaster, considering Wikileaks is in the public spotlight right now. I very much doubt the CIA is holding back out of the goodness of their hearts. No. What we are…

He is clearly the leader though. While assassinating him will do nothing about the information WikiLeaks already possesses, it may well throw the organization into disarray and thus irrelevance. Assange is only a viable target if there is no other leader waiting at the wings if he dies. Our impression of WikiLeaks' organization structure is that no such "Assange" exists yet.

Or it might cause a political shit-storm and undermine American credibility, while giving a moral imprimatur to future leaks.

Wikileaks is more powerful as an idea than an organization. They've legitimized the idea of web-based distribution of leaks, much like Napster legitimized file-sharing services. That genie isn't going back into the bottle. Shutting down Napster only gave rise to a host of unaccountable, decentralized services. Shutting down Wikileaks would likewise only lead to the creation of new decentralized services that facilitate leaks without any of the human editorial control that Wikileaks currently provides.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#150

Post by krschultz »

gnosis wrote: post #101
d2viant wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting they assassinate him. He's broken numerous laws and they have a pretty compelling case against him. I can't imagine that the public relations fallout from his arrest would be any worse than the public relations disaster they have with the release of these cables.

"He's broken numerous laws and they have a pretty compelling case against him." Are we still talking about the CIA? Has it become a law-enforcement agency and I didn't notice? If your point is regarding the possibility of the US government going after Assange by legal means (not via some extralegal, shadowy CIA antics), I'm certain they would if they could. The fact that they haven't leads me to believe their case ag…

And your argument is not based on the laws of the US at all.

If the US government (more specifically Obama's justice department) wanted to prosecute, surely they could, would, and would win.

There are political ramifications of that move. I would bet the negative (inflaming a lot of people against the Obama administration) outweigh the positive (not really sure what the positive is, the papers would still find their way out).

Thus, they are aiming their legal guns squarely at the guy who actually leaked this stuff in the first place.

Post reply on HN