I support WikiLeaks
Dec. 6th, 2010 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattbellIt bothers me that the US government is trying to wipe WikiLeaks off the face of the internet. It's true that Julian Assange is insufferably arrogant, monomaniacal, dogmatic, reckless, and too focused on the United States, but I don't want to live in a world in which information embarrassing to the government is so actively suppressed.
In case you're not following along... the state department has pushed at least one college to warn its students not to even *mention* wikileaks online (even in a negative way) if they ever want a job in the federal government, and the military is promising to criminally prosecute US soldiers who read about it. This is a great way of filtering for a lack of curiosity and information-seeking among appplicants, which is not a great way of choosing who to hire. (Of course people will argue that someone who reads WikiLeaks cannot be trusted with secret information, but I think there is a big difference between being the one to leak information and reading about it once it already has made headlines around the world.) Basically, our government has been as stupid in its response to WikiLeaks as it was in response to 9/11.
All of this makes me more likely to want to stand up to a new emerging McCarthyism.
This sort of information suppression needs to be stopped, and I applaud the efforts of the various people involved in mirroring the data so that it does not disappear even if wikileaks goes down.
For now, Wikileaks still has a presence on Facebook and Twitter, and the evolution of this story can be followed there.
On a somewhat parallel concern, it bothers me that the Chinese government appears to be so much more successful at hacking our government's servers than we are at hacking theirs. China has been repeatedly attacking us, essentially declaring cyber-war, and we've simply been sitting there taking hits. If we wanted to level the playing field a bit, our government should secretly hire a team to hack into Chinese government servers and release the contents of those messages anonymously to WikiLeaks. I wouldn't even mind if the US government hacked into WikiLeaks and published the organization's internal email. (Unfortunately, the US government would likely not publish the information and would instead use it to hunt down its members) Turnabout is fair play, and more transparency on all sides will help make the world a better place.
In case you're not following along... the state department has pushed at least one college to warn its students not to even *mention* wikileaks online (even in a negative way) if they ever want a job in the federal government, and the military is promising to criminally prosecute US soldiers who read about it. This is a great way of filtering for a lack of curiosity and information-seeking among appplicants, which is not a great way of choosing who to hire. (Of course people will argue that someone who reads WikiLeaks cannot be trusted with secret information, but I think there is a big difference between being the one to leak information and reading about it once it already has made headlines around the world.) Basically, our government has been as stupid in its response to WikiLeaks as it was in response to 9/11.
All of this makes me more likely to want to stand up to a new emerging McCarthyism.
This sort of information suppression needs to be stopped, and I applaud the efforts of the various people involved in mirroring the data so that it does not disappear even if wikileaks goes down.
For now, Wikileaks still has a presence on Facebook and Twitter, and the evolution of this story can be followed there.
On a somewhat parallel concern, it bothers me that the Chinese government appears to be so much more successful at hacking our government's servers than we are at hacking theirs. China has been repeatedly attacking us, essentially declaring cyber-war, and we've simply been sitting there taking hits. If we wanted to level the playing field a bit, our government should secretly hire a team to hack into Chinese government servers and release the contents of those messages anonymously to WikiLeaks. I wouldn't even mind if the US government hacked into WikiLeaks and published the organization's internal email. (Unfortunately, the US government would likely not publish the information and would instead use it to hunt down its members) Turnabout is fair play, and more transparency on all sides will help make the world a better place.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-08 06:30 pm (UTC)A lot of the wikileaks releases are consistent with public US foreign policy, but the revelations for me include:
- The depth of the hypocrisy in several Middle East nations, who privately implore the US to attack Iran while publicly denouncing their presence in the region.
- The videos and coverups of the US helicopter killings of reporters in Iraq
- The quid-pro-quo deals to get other countries to take Guantanamo hostages
- The US paying for child sex for Afghan warlords via an American military contractor
I don't think I'm overreacting, but I am reacting strongly, because I don't want us to end up in another McCarthyist era.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-08 07:24 pm (UTC)In order of listing: 1) let me get my surprised face; 2) would be curious about the bigger story on that, it seems a bit like the Rodney King tape, there's some hella footage of him getting the crap beat out of him, but how many saw him out of control and violent before that?; 3) Been going on for centuries and U.S. ain't the only one playing that game. Not right, but tell me something I don't already know; 4) I have little good to say about military contractors... and that's all I will say on that matter in this type of forum.
Perhaps it is just a strong reaction... and perhaps I am just tired of all the overractionary tirades (the most common seems to be "_________ is Hilter!" ) which are meant to invoke an empassioned reaction, and frankly inspire the masses to froth into a thoughtless frenzied bandwagon, but actually just desensitize the masses to the atrocities ordered by the like. McCarthy was hungry for the spotlight and his own personal agenda and used the means that garnered him that priviledge to the extreme, which became his downfall and ruin... I could think of a dozen people off the top of my head right now doing the exact same.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-09 09:56 pm (UTC)With regard to the specifics
(1) I'm no middle east expert, but I think outing the uncomfortable truth about everyone's opinions of Iran will help Iran get dealt with.
(2) You can read more of the background info here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6344FW20100406
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike
(3) True, but there's a big difference between what the Obama administration said they were going to do and what they're actually doing. They're basically skirting around their own ethical restrictions, and should confront the prisoner issues directly.
One of the other big revelations is that Hamid Karzai is essentially the world's biggest drug lord and is personally taking in huge revenues from opium production in the country. Given the billions of dollars we're spending and the lives that are being lost to prop up his regime, this needs to be stopped now. (I could go into a separate debate about whether opium should be legalized, but that's a different story)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-10 03:05 am (UTC)2) I am going to refrain from comment until I speak w/ my "source"...
3) A president said something to get them elected? Where did my surprised face go? Here is an prime example of my problem with him, this is one of his platforms that was horribly naive. I said at the time, and I feel confident that it kinda went down something like, "I wanna make it better!" "Okay Mr. Pres., but here's the info you didn't have 6 months ago." "Oh shit, if I do _____, I am going to REALLY screw the pooch!!" "Uuuummm... yeeeeaaaaah..." "Okay, focus on healthcare."
That actually starts into my "What kind of new hell do you think will rain down, if we go toe to toe w/ drug lords/ legalize x-drug?" counter point... but like you said, that's a different Oprah :)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-10 03:25 am (UTC)