Author Topic: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)  (Read 13215 times)

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Offline Galemp

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
The problem I have with indiscriminate publication of information is that some of it may actually be information pertinent to ongoing criminal investigation, law enforcement operations or lawful military operations, which may actually cause real harm to these processes.

The problem with this is that A) nobody has been harmed over the last batch of document leaks, as has been confirmed by a number of mainstream news services, and B) the documents from this leak were redacted once, sent to the New York Times, who sent them to THE WHITE HOUSE for ANOTHER round of censoring, and THEN published.

There's no lives at stake here except for Assange's.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
If you don't trust the person you elected, then why did you elect him?

We don't elect people. We vote for people. The ultimate outcome of the election is disproportionately influenced by elites and by blind trends. Enfranchisement doesn't end when you step out of the booth.

You talk about electing an official based on the assumption that he or she is capable of doing a job, but a lot of people will find themselves voting for someone who seems least incapable, least untrustworthy, least harmful. Even the people who designed the US government intentionally handicapped it.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
It's just not clear whether he's actually a street sam or an attention whore.

Have you actually read any of his press releases? The man promises big things, like releases about Russia, videos of Afghan civilians being massacred by US troops, leaks from inside BP with 'the good stuff'. It never comes. He calls US diplomacy a "tyrannical organization" when it's pretty clear reading the stuff he's leaked that it's anything but. His organization always uses the most inflammatory language possible.

Either he's in it for the attention, or he has the worst judgment ever. This is no crusade for transparency. It's pure sensationalism. And sooner or later, WikiLeaks is going to start making it all up. They may have already; some of the stuff in this most recent set of revelations is hardly a secret, and some of it bears a sharp resemblance to things that occurred in the past.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
It's a possibility that definitely worries me, yeah. But I'm still not ready to come down on one side or the other.

 

Offline Klaustrophobia

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
i didn't think it was in question that this was sensationalism/attention whoring.  i thought the debate here was "he's a dick, but he's got a point" vs. "he's a complete asshole and needs to be shot"
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
i didn't think it was in question that this was sensationalism/attention whoring.  i thought the debate here was "he's a dick, but he's got a point" vs. "he's a complete asshole and needs to be shot"

Not necessarily a bad way of putting it.

 

Offline achtung

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
I think his plans are working flawlessly.

He draws all the "dickhead" flak, and the other people of wikileaks go on about their business.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
I guess my main concern over this most recent round of releases is my belief that there are certain aspects of diplomacy, perhaps even the majority of them, that should remain under wraps.  It's sort of the cost of Getting Things Done...there needs to be that confidence that neither side will go blabbing about the particulars, or else the mutual trust that enables many diplomatic maneuverings simply won't exist.  I don't really see how making the whole process transparent truly benefits anyone: it makes the diplomats' jobs that much harder, and the general public simply gets riled up over a bunch of out-of-context information they didn't really need to know in the first place.

 

Offline Bobboau

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
If you don't trust the person you elected, then why did you elect him?
because the alternative was Sara Palin?
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Offline Topgun

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin weren't the only names on the ticket.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin weren't the only names on the ticket.

In terms of tactical voting they were.

 

Offline MR_T3D

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin weren't the only names on the ticket.
No one else has a chance, so you might as well of thrown away your vote.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
Hell, in the midterm election a month ago, the Rs and Ds were the only names on my ballot.  There aren't really other viable options.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
I guess my main concern over this most recent round of releases is my belief that there are certain aspects of diplomacy, perhaps even the majority of them, that should remain under wraps.  It's sort of the cost of Getting Things Done...there needs to be that confidence that neither side will go blabbing about the particulars, or else the mutual trust that enables many diplomatic maneuverings simply won't exist.  I don't really see how making the whole process transparent truly benefits anyone: it makes the diplomats' jobs that much harder, and the general public simply gets riled up over a bunch of out-of-context information they didn't really need to know in the first place.


Ultimately, secrecy only enables one thing, one thing that is unfortunately the basis of the current political system based on national states: All governments are tasked to advance their own country's interests, and not anyone else's.

With fully open dealings, this would become much harder to accomplish.

Of course, this tangent can further be extrapolated to a direction where we would start arguing whether or not national states are a viable means of managing the human population of Earth (it is my belief they are not), and how long will it take for the power of national states to diminish and a capable world wide system of governance to develop.

Because the fact of the matter is that as long as national states spend vast resources in their petty squabbling rather than resolving the real issues, our limited resources will diminish that much faster and the worst case scenario is that at some point, the overall standards of living will no longer be capable of rising, but they start to drop, regardless of advances in science and technology after that point.

Case in point - Iran wants a nuclear bomb [citation needed] when they could use the nuclear material as fuel in reactors to generate power - to have some kind of foil to a supposed nuclear threat from the west, or to have a first strike weapon though I doubt even the Iranians would be rabid enough to do that aside from Ahmadinejad. The fact they think they need a nuke can have three reasons - either they think someone would be ready and willing to use a nuke against them and they think they need a deterrant by entering MAD doctrine; or they want to have first strike capability; or it's strictly a political game with neither sides willing to actually ever use the nukes outside negotiations table as a chip for taking them seriously, or something.

Another example would be the incredible waste of human resources that goes on in strictly islamic countries in the Middle-East and Africa; roughly half of the population is refused real work, real education and real human rights, which causes incredible voluntary reduction to the productivity of the country, standards of living of the population at large, and also increases population growth to strain the already limited resources further - all because the religious and/or ideological leaders of the people want to stay in the position of secular authority, and they well know that all three factors - better education, higher standards of living, and more resources for fewer people - would reduce people's adherence to their authority.

Even in western industrial countries, the question whether national states really have a justification to exist on a wider perspective is valid.

National states require a degree of self-interest from their governments - by definition, the governments are tasked to do what is best for the country (whether their definition of "best for the country" agrees with the rest of the country is another question). In democratic states, the governments are elected and given mandate to govern the country as they see fit, but that doesn't mean they should be free of scrutiny during their tenure. That's called dictatorship (see the original definition of dictator if you are confused by this).

I don't know if the US system has any equivalent of this, but in Finland we have this so-called vote of no confidence. It means that if the government does something, and the members of parliament disagree with it, they can call a vote of no confidence against the government, and if it passes, a new government will be formed from the pool of members of the parliament.

But if the government is allowed to classify information indescriminately, simply because they say something is classified, that would mean the parliament might never find out they've done something that would warrant their removal.

Personally I would love for the bill preparation phase to be more transparent in Finland. Currently, bills are usually prepared in relative secrecy - especially the controversial ones such as the so called "mandatory media lisence" which sparked a lot of public opposition when it finally did come into public knowledge, but they did try to get it approved on a rather short schedule. Similarly I would love to know what kind of stuff was considered in the EU when they passed the edict that basically bans incandescent light bulbs in favour of so-called "energy saving" lamps - I have my suspicions about what were the real motivating factors behind that directive. Things like this I would very much love to have more information of.


In general, I would classify (heh) the information in the following groups:

Things like information about undercover intelligence operatives - I personally have no interest in, but I also think such things are fundamentally needless and are only necessitated by the existence of national states and their competition with each other. If not for the national states, national intelligence operatives wouldn't exist, and thus "national security" would not be threatened.

Things like information about unethical business practices - I would welcome, if only to make educated choices as a consumer and to show my contempt or support to different corporations.

Things like information about ongoing lawful military operations, ongoing criminal investigations or other law enforcement operations - I have no need to know this, and Wikileaks publishing this type of information I would not approve.

Things like information about screwed up military operations or illegitimate military operations, I would like to know about.

Things like information about people's private lives I have no interest in and it's none of my business either.


Can anyone think of other classifications for information?
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
Case in point - Iran wants a nuclear bomb [citation needed] when they could use the nuclear material as fuel in reactors to generate power - to have some kind of foil to a supposed nuclear threat from the west, or to have a first strike weapon though I doubt even the Iranians would be rabid enough to do that aside from Ahmadinejad.

I would point out to you that he gets a lot of flak from the ruling councils as far too moderate. Those are the people who would be sitting with their finger on the nuclear button, not the elected (sort of) officials of the Iranian government.

Things like information about undercover intelligence operatives - I personally have no interest in, but I also think such things are fundamentally needless and are only necessitated by the existence of national states and their competition with each other. If not for the national states, national intelligence operatives wouldn't exist, and thus "national security" would not be threatened.

This is naive at best. If you had a world government today, Radical Islam would not go away. They would still oppose any world state. I could also point to narcoterroristic groups such as are currently overrunning Mexico, people like Timothy McVeigh, groups opposed to the current form of government (Europe's had a lot of them).

Unless you can stop humans from disagreeing, this need will never truly go away.
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
I would point out to you that he [Ahmadinejad] gets a lot of flak from the ruling councils as far too moderate. Those are the people who would be sitting with their finger on the nuclear button, not the elected (sort of) officials of the Iranian government.

I am not too familiar with Iranian internal politics so I'll take your word for it.

Quote
If not for the national states, national intelligence operatives wouldn't exist, and thus "national security" would not be threatened.

This is naive at best. If you had a world government today, Radical Islam would not go away. They would still oppose any world state. I could also point to narcoterroristic groups such as are currently overrunning Mexico, people like Timothy McVeigh, groups opposed to the current form of government (Europe's had a lot of them).

Unless you can stop humans from disagreeing, this need will never truly go away.


Indeed. Though I was referring to matters of national security; national intelligence offices would have no business spying on other nations, if national states didn't exist.

If there was one capable world government, things like radical islam would be matters of global security rather than national security, and instead of national intelligence services we would have global intelligence services, tasked to take care of such things.

Point still being that it's a waste of resources to spy on other nations, and is only necessitated by the existence of national states. If not for that, those intelligence resources could be redirected to investigating actual global and local threats like terrorists, insurgents and other unsavoury elements of societies.

I may have been unclear on this.
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Offline Klaustrophobia

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
nations exist for a reason.  they will never, and should never go away.  arguments of "it wouldn't be necessary if..." are really irrelevent.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
nations exist for a reason.  they will never, and should never go away.  arguments of "it wouldn't be necessary if..." are really irrelevent.

Oh pooh. There are scenarios of varying probability in which nation-states become irrelevant.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
nations exist for a reason.

extrapolate

Quote
they will never, and should never go away.

justify this argument
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Crap, 4chan's at it again (Wikileaks related)
The nation state as it exists today is an incredibly recent construct. I doubt it will remain unchanged for the rest of human history.