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Who has the moral authority to hold Jake accountable? He exposed the truth. By contrast, Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld gave us Gulf of Tonkin II, the meretricious con

by Rod 16y ago

Who has the moral authority to hold Jake accountable? He exposed the truth. By contrast, Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld gave us Gulf of Tonkin II, the meretricious congressmen gave the executive branch all the power it wanted, we know that we invaded a country based on lies, 100,000s have died, and noone has been held accountable. What's the rule here? You kill 1 it's a tragegy, but if you kill 1,000,000 it's a statistic?

Gianteye 16y ago
I concur. Additionally I think it's interesting how blame is being specifically ascribed to Jake and Julian, the most visible speakers for wilileaks, when the number of people contributing, editing, managing, and supporting wikileaks is in the hundreds. I feel it might be part of an urge people have to latch on to concrete and explicable causes for events they feel an emotional repulsion to, ie: "You, specific human being (Obama, Bush, Jake, Jesus, what have you) are to blame for the evils in the world." as opposed to "You, complex social phenomenon that may or may not be capable of being influenced by any individual action, are to blame for the evils of the world."
rick888 16y ago
"Who has the moral authority to hold Jake accountable? He exposed the truth. By contrast, Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld gave us Gulf of Tonkin II, the meretricious congressmen gave the executive branch all the power it wanted, we know that we invaded a country based on lies, 100,000s have died, and noone has been held accountable. What's the rule here? You kill 1 it's a tragegy, but if you kill 1,000,000 it's a statistic?" So you claim nobody has the "moral authority" to hold the people from wikileaks accountable, yet you want to hold Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld accountable (it's interesting you would use only republicans as examples btw) for their actions? If I intentionally gave out your address to criminals and told them when you wouldn't be home (and they robbed your house), would you hold me accountable? I'm just "exposing the truth" This information has the possibility of getting thousands killed. On a side note, I'm hoping I can get jake's full address and phone number so I can give it out to some people. I'm sure he won't mind. I'm just "exposing the truth"
- Gianteye 16y ago
  I think a more apt example would be if you knew of the address of a meth lab. Meth labs are often heavily defended. You give the address of the meth lab to the police, knowing that when busting it some police officers may lose their lives. Would you be accountable for the deaths of the officers?
- gloob 16y ago
  When the Americans kill civilians ("Collateral Murder"), Wikileaks gets blamed for being biased. When the Taliban kill civilians, Wikileaks gets blamed, even when they tried to contact the White House so they could remove information about informants. Perhaps I'm just out of touch, but I normally would put most of the responsibility for these things on the warring parties. Blaming a third party that doesn't have an army, a militia, or guns seems self-serving or disingenuous, depending on who's doing it.
  - rdtsc 16y ago
    You wouldn't really expect the White House and Pentagon to sit and watch as a bunch of "kids" are revealing their dirty laundry !? All the classified "dirty laundry" -- not security related stuff, like nuclear launch codes, but rather "shameful" acts. They are very good at propaganda and so went full steam with it. A couple of themes emerged from that effort. 1) "Obama knows about these problems and is already handling it". This is a great use of propaganda. It both makes the leaked documents "un-interesting" and it makes Obama look good. I've heard this one on the radio and in a couple of other sources. It is often regurgitated verbatim without any supporting evidence how Obama has improved the situation. 2) "This will hurt our troops". This is also a great propaganda line because it plays on the existing framework of "support our troops". Nobody wants to hurt the son or husband of their neighbor in their small town. Wikileaks is not exposing cover-ups and mis-management of resources, death of civilians, it is "hurting our soldiers". This appeals to the middle America. "Those Wikileaks kids might as well just shoot our boys in the back" kind of feeling. 3) Now, in the Defcon case. They just hope to scare any hackers or anyone thinking of contributing or collaborating with Wikileaks. The implication is that "you might also get a visit from FBI" or "You might get randomly search everytime you fly. Are you prepared to make that choice?" Again that is very effective. Now I am not saying that there is necessarily a unified, centrally controlled propaganda campaign, it could be just an emergent behavior from a bunch of govt. agencies.
nir 16y ago
1. Why are these mutually exclusive? I think it's possible to believe that both Iraq/Afghanistan and Wikileaks' release of these documents without checking to see if they put people's lives at risk are irresponsible. 2. If exposing the truth is always the best alternative, one wonders why Assange & co are so secretive about their own operations & movement. Clearly they have good reasons, for example Wikileaks tries to maintain the secrecy of their sources so they don't end up on jail. If they really exposed Afghan sources in these documents, the outcome for them will most likely be far worse than jail. Personally I think WL is important and has great potential, but I wouldn't automatically consider them the good guys in every situation. It's more complicated than that.
- Rod 16y ago
  I never claimed that they are incompatible. I merely claimed that those who invade a sovereign country that posed no threat, leading to 100,000s of deaths (5,000 of which U.S. soldiers) have no moral authority and cannot claim that their irresponsibility is even remotely comparable to the irresponsibility of revealing possible informants' names.
- corruption 16y ago
  There are no good guys. Is there such a thing? From what I understand WL offered the US government the chance to clear names of informants. They refused. They obviously wanted to pressure wikileaks not to release the information.

by Rod 16y ago

Gianteye 16y ago

I concur. Additionally I think it's interesting how blame is being specifically ascribed to Jake and Julian, the most visible speakers for wilileaks, when the number of people contributing, editing, managing, and supporting wikileaks is in the hundreds. I feel it might be part of an urge people have to latch on to concrete and explicable causes for events they feel an emotional repulsion to, ie: "You, specific human being (Obama, Bush, Jake, Jesus, what have you) are to blame for the evils in the world." as opposed to "You, complex social phenomenon that may or may not be capable of being influenced by any individual action, are to blame for the evils of the world."

rick888 16y ago

"Who has the moral authority to hold Jake accountable? He exposed the truth. By contrast, Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld gave us Gulf of Tonkin II, the meretricious congressmen gave the executive branch all the power it wanted, we know that we invaded a country based on lies, 100,000s have died, and noone has been held accountable. What's the rule here? You kill 1 it's a tragegy, but if you kill 1,000,000 it's a statistic?" So you claim nobody has the "moral authority" to hold the people from wikileaks accountable, yet you want to hold Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld accountable (it's interesting you would use only republicans as examples btw) for their actions? If I intentionally gave out your address to criminals and told them when you wouldn't be home (and they robbed your house), would you hold me accountable? I'm just "exposing the truth" This information has the possibility of getting thousands killed. On a side note, I'm hoping I can get jake's full address and phone number so I can give it out to some people. I'm sure he won't mind. I'm just "exposing the truth"

Gianteye 16y ago
I think a more apt example would be if you knew of the address of a meth lab. Meth labs are often heavily defended. You give the address of the meth lab to the police, knowing that when busting it some police officers may lose their lives. Would you be accountable for the deaths of the officers?
gloob 16y ago
When the Americans kill civilians ("Collateral Murder"), Wikileaks gets blamed for being biased. When the Taliban kill civilians, Wikileaks gets blamed, even when they tried to contact the White House so they could remove information about informants. Perhaps I'm just out of touch, but I normally would put most of the responsibility for these things on the warring parties. Blaming a third party that doesn't have an army, a militia, or guns seems self-serving or disingenuous, depending on who's doing it.
- rdtsc 16y ago
  You wouldn't really expect the White House and Pentagon to sit and watch as a bunch of "kids" are revealing their dirty laundry !? All the classified "dirty laundry" -- not security related stuff, like nuclear launch codes, but rather "shameful" acts. They are very good at propaganda and so went full steam with it. A couple of themes emerged from that effort. 1) "Obama knows about these problems and is already handling it". This is a great use of propaganda. It both makes the leaked documents "un-interesting" and it makes Obama look good. I've heard this one on the radio and in a couple of other sources. It is often regurgitated verbatim without any supporting evidence how Obama has improved the situation. 2) "This will hurt our troops". This is also a great propaganda line because it plays on the existing framework of "support our troops". Nobody wants to hurt the son or husband of their neighbor in their small town. Wikileaks is not exposing cover-ups and mis-management of resources, death of civilians, it is "hurting our soldiers". This appeals to the middle America. "Those Wikileaks kids might as well just shoot our boys in the back" kind of feeling. 3) Now, in the Defcon case. They just hope to scare any hackers or anyone thinking of contributing or collaborating with Wikileaks. The implication is that "you might also get a visit from FBI" or "You might get randomly search everytime you fly. Are you prepared to make that choice?" Again that is very effective. Now I am not saying that there is necessarily a unified, centrally controlled propaganda campaign, it could be just an emergent behavior from a bunch of govt. agencies.

nir 16y ago

1. Why are these mutually exclusive? I think it's possible to believe that both Iraq/Afghanistan and Wikileaks' release of these documents without checking to see if they put people's lives at risk are irresponsible. 2. If exposing the truth is always the best alternative, one wonders why Assange & co are so secretive about their own operations & movement. Clearly they have good reasons, for example Wikileaks tries to maintain the secrecy of their sources so they don't end up on jail. If they really exposed Afghan sources in these documents, the outcome for them will most likely be far worse than jail. Personally I think WL is important and has great potential, but I wouldn't automatically consider them the good guys in every situation. It's more complicated than that.

Rod 16y ago
I never claimed that they are incompatible. I merely claimed that those who invade a sovereign country that posed no threat, leading to 100,000s of deaths (5,000 of which U.S. soldiers) have no moral authority and cannot claim that their irresponsibility is even remotely comparable to the irresponsibility of revealing possible informants' names.
corruption 16y ago
There are no good guys. Is there such a thing? From what I understand WL offered the US government the chance to clear names of informants. They refused. They obviously wanted to pressure wikileaks not to release the information.