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Wikileaks - Gone too far?

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☢☢Zombies Galore☢☢

Supernova
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Check out War Diary. It's a compilation of 75K leaked classified documents concerning the current US conflict in Afghanistan. Personally, I think this is truly, in the literal sense of the word, awesome.

Seriously.

Opinions? Do you think Wikileaks has gone too far?
 
I think they are some of the most awesome people we have, though I do worry about the life of their founder. I don't think he'll be long for this world, especially so as he's been in the states for interviews and such.

It's also nice to see these leaked videos that the TV 'news' stations butcher to make them seem less bad, if that makes sense. The raw videos help put things into perspective.
 
The joy of the internet is it gives EVERYONE an outlet to say whatever they want. Typically, this is just bloggers ranting about their opinions on all and sundry. All too rarely, someone decides to use their power of soapbox to REALLY destabilize things. It's sites like wikileaks that will change how the world works in a major way, and I love it.
 
<EDIT: I'm talking about he soldier who obtained and gave the info to wikileaks>

That guy....you know, who technically committed treason....is going to probably get off with just a slap on the wrist.

There is too much pressure on the military by the press and gay rights activists.

As for your point Seraph, anyone can say what they want, but leaking classified documents, which pertain to where, how, what, and when, soldiers do the things that they do causes pointless deaths, cause I'll bet my life that you have some jihad crazed dude combing that website seeing what he can find and use against us.

Just saying.

As for the actual guy who runs wikileaks, let him do whatever he wants. Just leave military stuff out of it.
 
That guy who "technically committed treason" is not a US citizen. The person who leaked those documents to Wikileaks, I don't think he'll get off with a slap on the wrist when he's found. The person who leaked the video of that helicopter shooting civilians is in jail for a long time. Not just jail. Military prison. They don't fuck around there.

I think that crazy jihad dude would probably be trying to kill US soldiers anyways, so it's kind of a moot point. I've gone through a couple of these reports and I'm not seeing the names of soldiers. What bothers me is that I'm seeing the names of a lot of civilians. I worry about them more; they have less to protect them. Faulty body armor is better than no body armor, right?
 
So it quickly devolves into "WUT ABOUT DEM TURRURISTS?!" in less than 10 posts.

Look, the US lets things get leaked all the time. Asking anyone working for the DoD about the mile wide security flaws in their internal networks. China regularly 'takes' all sorts of classified information all the time. And the people who fix these issues get fired.

The technicalities of the leaked information is that the leaker did commit treason when he gave the information over to Wikileaks. He knew he could be caught and did it anyway. He obviously wants the public (either American or international) to know what secret/scandalous/obscene things that the US government is doing... knowing if caught, he'd go to some level of criminal confinement.

I just get excited to see people doing this because there are many things the US government does that would be classified as criminal. I like knowing what shady shit my tax dollars get spent on, not that I have a say once tax is paid, but knowing where it ends up ultimately makes me a little happier. So I get great pleasure in seeing the government quickly trying to cover its naked body when someone does something like this. I just wish the info was more interesting than about how we're going to further oppress Semites in THEIR country for no other reason than to squat on oil and poppy fields.
 
In Tath's defense any enemy of the USA in the Afghanistan has been labeled a terrorist as they tacitly ally themselves with the Taliban, the hardcore of Al Qaeda, by shooting at US soldiers. Not saying they necessarily self-identify but that's what ends up happening. I think that Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is a lot more muddled than simply oppressing them in their own country. I don't see it talked about in the media a whole lot but the fact of the matter is it was the actions of the USA in supporting the mujahideen that lead to our current fuck-up.

Quick recap of history; Russian invaded Afghanistan, the US supported religious extremists (the Taliban, lit. the Students (they picked up the name because it was a bunch of theological students who suddenly went, "Fuck this shit, dude.)) and they beat Russia in one of our little Cold War proxy wars.

However, after Russia was expelled, we dropped Afghanistan like it was hot. Our country's foreign policy and governments have largely ignored Afghanistan like you ignore the cousin you who you accidentally made brain damaged when you gave him bad coke. What ended up happening is that a lot of Afghan people were struggling due to linguistic conflicts--15 commonly spoken languages--as well as conflicts over ideology and territory. There's this method of organizing in Afghanistan based first off your mother tongue, then your region, then your tribe, then your extended family, then your immediate family. A lot of the groups of the time were based off of this style of organization. So while persons A, B or C might have been involved in Jamiet-e-Islami at the time--Islamic Society, more moderate than one would think--chances are they knew little about the ideology of their group and were there because they were fighting next to people they cared for and trying to protect their land.

So now we've got this society where people have banded together in armed groups to fight a common enemy, now the common enemies are gone and they realize they have all the power. There were those who fought to protect their personal power, their people's power, the tradition of the Jurga (the former pantribal system of management for the Pashton people of Afghanistan), federalism, autonomy, establishing drug connections, ect., ect. What ended up happening is that the group with the broadest appeal--the Taliban--floated to the top and protected most of the people from, say, Hezb-e-Islami--Party of God--which is run by a bloodthirsty psychopath by the name of Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. As time went on more and more extreme leaders came to power within the Taliban and they started booting scholars from their country and shutting down universities.

tl;dr; bitches be crazy. US fucked up and now we're paying for it. In 1989 we sowed the seeds of what we reaped in 2001.
 
dramamine213 said:
So it quickly devolves into "WUT ABOUT DEM TURRURISTS?!" in less than 10 posts.

Look, the US lets things get leaked all the time. Asking anyone working for the DoD about the mile wide security flaws in their internal networks. China regularly 'takes' all sorts of classified information all the time. And the people who fix these issues get fired.

The technicalities of the leaked information is that the leaker did commit treason when he gave the information over to Wikileaks. He knew he could be caught and did it anyway. He obviously wants the public (either American or international) to know what secret/scandalous/obscene things that the US government is doing... knowing if caught, he'd go to some level of criminal confinement.

I just get excited to see people doing this because there are many things the US government does that would be classified as criminal. I like knowing what shady shit my tax dollars get spent on, not that I have a say once tax is paid, but knowing where it ends up ultimately makes me a little happier. So I get great pleasure in seeing the government quickly trying to cover its naked body when someone does something like this. I just wish the info was more interesting than about how we're going to further oppress Semites in THEIR country for no other reason than to squat on oil and poppy fields.
Click to expand...

No, I didn't try to make it about DEM TURRURISTS.... I know that shit gets leaked, but it's different when someone is purposefully trying to leak it. That guy who pretended to be a soldier was/is a shitbag, no doubt in my mind.

As for what the government does that could be classified as criminal???
There is plenty, and it is a small price to pay for everyone getting to live the way they do. Everyone (for the most part) gets to live their lives in relative comfort. People should really stop bitching.

He obviously wants the public (either American or international) to know what secret/scandalous/obscene things that the US government is doing. Tell me this, why the hell does everyone in the world want to know Americas dirty secrets??? God knows that every other country has its skeletons in the closet.
 
Because the rest of the world is trying to figure the US out as we're the noobs in the global scheme of things. We're like the new kid doing dumb shit all the time and they're just trying to figure out if our stupidity is benign or malicious. I would like to know this myself.

The guy who got the info is a much bigger hero than you will ever be. Stop being jealous. He's trying to expose the bullshit you fight for so the rest of the world (but more importantly, US citizens) can learn what the US government is up to. Everyone wants to protect their people and would love a heads up if the US is trying to do something in their neck of the woods. It's about time the US gets knocked down a few pegs for the dumb shit we, the citizens, allow to continue on. If Americans paid more attention, we'd have quite a few lynchings of political individuals.

And are you saying that it's okay that our government intentionally commits crimes because is some how lets us live in comfort? I don't see how torturing mentally disabled would defend the Constitution. I don't see how committing fraud would protect my freedom. I don't see how stealing and disarming your citizens helps you protect your homeland. I would love to know what criminal acts you deem okay for the US government to commit and still think it's all good.

The only countries I want to know about (their skeletons, mind you) are the ones who have a war-like mentality as they're always going to be more dangerous. North Korea, China, and the US are pretty high on my list. Why? Because N. Korea is ruled over by a nut job with an itchy trigger finger, China is an incredibly huge country with some insane laws to further a dictatorship that's fairly unstable, and the US because our government is starting to get too big as it further erases the line between a democracy should have been and dictatorship. You see the trend?

Ah, and I forgot Israel. Those little fuckers have been causing so much god damn trouble for the US that I'd like to know what the hell is going on there. They commit all sorts of fraudulent Palestinian attacks on Israeli people all the time to give Israel an excuse to kill even more Palestinians. Have you seen what they teach their children? They teach hate for EVERYONE except other Jews. They throw out the Holocaust card whenever they don't get their way and the US has loads of people damn near worshiping the pack of dicks. I would certainly be interested in what the hell they have going on in the bowels of their government.

EDIT: Removed some words that made no sense, fixed a typo.
 
Tathariel said:
U.S citizen, and something tells me you've watched Charlie Wilsons War. lol
Click to expand...

There are these things called "books." I like to read them. I suggest you read The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, by Neamatollah Nojumi (former mujahid who participated in the war), Clash of Fundamentalisms by Tariq Ali, Bin Laden by Yosef Bodansky, The 9/11 Commission Report and The Osama bin Laden I Know by Peter Bergen. Just as a side note, the The 9/11 Commission Report is cheap ($10 new) and very informative. It contains a step by step breakdown of the communications and actions taken by the military, FAA and individual airliners on 9/11 as well as a pertinent history of the US interaction with Osama bin Laden. If you only read one of those books read The Osama bin Laden I Know. Peter Bergen is a fantastic journalist and it gives an interesting perspective on bin Laden--definitely doesn't try to vindicate or demonize, either way--it's a collection of interviews with people who grew up with him or were around him for extended periods of time. This is everyone from his bodyguard, his family, his middle school teacher, former mujahid, people who worked in his aid organization. Incredibly interesting.

Also, totally seconding Dramamine. The US does a lot of crazy shit in this world for reasons that are sometimes completely fucked. Like when we put fucking Saddam Hussein into power (yes, he was batshit then to) and that psychopath the Shah of Iran (which lead to the Ayatollah taking power, FYI). Our glorious government also supported Jean-Claude Duvalier while he was in exile from Haiti in the early '90s after using the country's piddling tax revenues to party hard until the peasants revolted. There is a quote by one of the first historians that I think you should bear in mind when you think about our government and its actions, "Government: an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself."
 
Not sure how the government committing atrocities or breaking its own laws somehow makes my life better.

In fact, over the past ten years, my life has gotten harder and bleaker and less comfortable, more paranoid and less free, whereas the government went around fucking over everyone, foreign and domestic.

So, if I'm expected to pay a price, and that price is already being exacted whether I approve of it or not, shouldn't I get what I involuntarily paid for? If your proposition, that it's a small price to pay, is true, then I've paid my price, so give me what that little piece of my soul buys.

If it were true (which it's not) and if it were a choice (which it isn't), then I would say no, living a more comfortable life is not worth having a corrupt and duplicitous government. I cannot remember the writer who described a total progressive utopia, but described it as only achievable if somewhere, there was an innocent child suffering alone in the dark. Comfort (if I got any from the powers that be, which I don't get from anyone but my own efforts, so fuck that justification) is not worth the price of injustice.

You want to talk patriotism, this nation was founded to get away from the excesses of power and military-backed dictatorship. It was anti-corporate and anti-authorotarian. The Boston Tea Party was as much against the East India Tea Company as it was the Crown's taxes. If Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, et al, could see how the country they founded was acting in the world, how they were so deferential to big business and money over the welfare of the populace, they would be the biggest radical opposition leaders you could hope to see. They would be (because they historically were) in favor of total transparency in the governmental process, so all the corruption and lawbreaking and atrocities could be seen by everybody, and could therefore be extinguished. And Fox News would call them communists and Marxist Nazis, because they want to give power to the people more directly. And that's anti-American, by modern standards.

"Small price to pay." Fuck that.
 
Well, I can't change your opinions.

No matter what, I can't fault anyone for thinking what they want to think. It's all perspective.

Does criminal necessary equal evil,
and vice verca?
Some people think that some evils are necessary. I happen to be one of those depending on what someone would call evil.
I think that it's simply how the world works.

Others don't want it to be like that.
 
I agree that criminal behaviors are necessary at times.

I disagree with any person or organization too chickenshit to own up to their behaviors.
 
Criminal is a matter of law. I think we've seen in the past 10 years that legal is not necessarily right, and illegal is not necessarily wrong.

Evil is trickier, but I've posted an essay on the topic.

My point is, no organization should consider themselves above the laws they set themselves. Sometimes it happens, and maybe sometiems it's necessary (though more likely it's just a mistake), but you own up to the fact afterward and take your justice, you don't try and sweep it under the carpet because it's embarrassing.

What I object to is the idea that we should just roll over and take it when the people we put in charge do the things they say we can't do and get away with it. Any organization that considers themselves above justice is poorly suited for actually judging justice. Nobody ought to get away with murder. The fact that people do should not be blithely accepted as the cost of doing business, and any kind of government where that's allowed is not a just government.

I'm not talking killing in combat, or taking out declared targets (killing one leader can save a thousand soldiers, for one example). I'm talking machine-gunning civilians, or losing a billion dollars in government money off the books (a BILLION! Do you even realize how much that is? A BILLION).

I know it happens. I know mistakes happen, and evil people get in positions of power. The idea that I just have to accept it rankles, and the idea that IT IS SOMEHOW WHAT I HAVE TO ACCEPT TO CONTINUE MY WAY OF LIFE is outright wrong. Look at me: I'm not accepting it, and my life is unchanged.
 
You have not accepted it, and like you said your life is unchanged.

Sure, people don't accept that the evils of the world have to be the norm....but have they actually done much?

(not just you specifically, but everyone in general)
Protests?
Petitions?
Donations to caues/groups?

Did you punch your local congressman in the face?
Tried to organize a coup in the south?
Have you spread the truths and evils of the government to the people?
Do you deny government services?

Do you tell the government that you won't pay your taxes?
Will you leave the states in protest???

I mean if all most people ever do is just declare online or to their friends that they do not in fact accept the system, then all your doing is just whining, and well....no one likes a whiner.

The ones who do protest and march, yeah, their trying.....and there is always a pretty good gathering if the cause if important enough.

but what....5000 people at a protest vs the millions of americans who disagree/don't care........I mean.... Democracy is a bitch when the majority disagrees or doesn't care enough.
 
While I agree that sometimes something criminal can be useful or needed, it doesn't give the US government (or any other government for that matter) the excuse to not take responsibility for its actions. If they commit crimes, they need to take the punishment that comes with it. I don't get a free ride for killing or torturing and neither should they.

No one here has stated that all criminal acts are evil, besides you. If some kid is walking through a farmer's market and grabs a stray apple and takes it because he's hungry, he's not evil for stealing the apple though he should have been taught that you don't take what isn't yours. Something the grown adults who work for the government don't even grasp.

Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. (Definition shamelessly ganked from a Google search.) Necessary is defined as absolutely essential. Let's take these definitions and apply them to a few situations that the government has been in.

Mutilating the genitals of a child with acid in hopes to conjure some bogus terrorist agenda out of a suspected terrorist. That seems immoral, offensive, it causes all sorts of pain, and it seems pretty threatening. Ruining a child's chance to procreate later in life because your government thinks this man might pay us back for some of the heinous shit we do to his people? Not absolutely essential. So, sounds evil to me and by our laws, that's pretty fucking criminal.

Killing a group of Middle Eastern reporters because you have an itchy trigger finger in your armored vehicle AND then planting guns on them to make sure you don't get int trouble. Immoral, offensive, caused not only pain but death, and that is easily threatening. Taking the life of some young male adults who want to report the atrocities that the Americans are doing to their people? It would only be absolutely essential if you were trying to take over or occupy this country for a long time. Still, it's evil and totally criminal.

Teasing Afghan children with chocolate or water, coaxing them to say things that are against their society and/or religion while taping, and throwing puppies off a cliff because you're bored. Immoral? Check. Offensive? Check. Causes pain? Possibly for the kids if their parents find out and definitely for the dog, check. Threatening? Not so much. Any of that necessary? Nope. With a majority of the criteria, still evil and killing the dog in that fashion is illegal here. Teasing kids is just being a bully and a douchebag.

Please, Tath, tell me how any of those things that our precious US soldiers have done (most on video!!) that have helped me live a life of comfort over here in the US? Tell me if any of those were to protect my freedoms and how. Tell me what your definition of evil is.

(The above was written on Thursday and erred out when posting; this next part is in response to the addition replies since then)

So are you encouraging violence to solve our issues with the government?

Are you also saying it's not worth protesting if a majority don't agree/don't care?

For a member of the military, it seems like you're ready to let the government trample our freedoms and rights even further. Sure, they cut your monetary pittance as an enslaved grunt who has to beckon to their whims (unless you want to get a delightful dishonorable discharge that makes life after the military rather uncomfortable), but that's no excuse to stand up for what they do to the people YOU are supposed to be defending. By not opposing the government, you condone their actions.

If that's not the case, why don't you protest? Why don't you punch you commanding officer in the face and tell him you're not doing your duty anymore? Why don't you do something to stand against the tyranny that's being exercised upon the citizens in whom you chose to protect?

EDIT: Typo fixed.
 
I've been involved in, on average, three protests a year since I was twelve for a total of twenty-nine so far. I've signed a shitload of petitions about everything from the military budgeting for better body armor and armored Humvees to completely pulling out every last soldier. I once sat down with my local congressman (Peter DeFazio) in the seat next to him on a plane for four hours and proceeded to have a long discussion about the issue for four hours. I've spent time creating and putting up fliers to help organize protests and demonstrations about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I haven't accessed EBT (Oregon's food stamps) even when it meant dumpster diving for food. Currently I'm looking at accessing my right of return to Germany as I am a descendant of the Volga Germans.

So am I good enough to argue? Have I demonstrated that I am committed enough to have an opinion?
 
Zombies Galore said:
Currently I'm looking at accessing my right of return to Germany as I am a descendant of the Volga Germans.
Click to expand...

I have to check where my Germanic family was from, as that's something I have considered for a long time. Thank you for the reminded. ;)
 
Just a note to MM.

The Boston Tea Party came about because local merchants were pissed off at the East India Trading Companies because they were able to sell their tea cheaper then they could.

If you actually look back on American history without the blinders of patriotism you'll see that from its inception America has always been about business and making sure that its American businessmen that do best; but that's a discussion for a different thread. Just needed to clear up the notion that it was some great patriotic endeavor because of unfairly imposed taxes, nope, just that they couldn't make the type of profit they wanted.

Other groups though, they were more into the freedom bit.

To the actual discussion at hand, all I can really say is that it's nice to see Tath moving the goal post and being his usual cunt self.
 
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