Political Ruminations

Quote of the Day: Wikileaks Boring

Dan Drezner of Foreign Policy Magazine:

“This kind of docu-dump says more about Wikileaks and Anonymous than it does about anything else.  Wikileaks thinks it's groundbreaking that Stratfor CEO George Friedman had contact with Bush administration power-broker Karl Rove in the fall of 2011.  I read the e-mail exchange, and if you think that's groundbreaking, you need to read more interesting things on the interwebs.”

Heh.

Via  Andrew Sullivan

Morning Quote: re Julian Assange’s Women

Former Wikileaks spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, in his unreleased book, ‘Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website’ further lends credence to the opinion of many who believe that Julian Assange is a narcissistic control freak. From the book, via Huffington Post:

Julian's main criterion for a woman was simple: She had to be young. Preferably younger than 22. And it went without saying that she couldn't question him. 'She has to be aware of her role as a woman,' he used to say.

And on Assange’s paternity:

Often I sat in large groups and listened to Julian boast about how many children he had fathered in various parts of the world, He seemed to enjoy the idea of lots and lots of Julians, one on every continent. Whether he took care of any of these alleged children, or whether they existed at all, was another question

Yet more reasons to dislike this pretend hero.

Morning Quote: Matt Osborne

It takes courage to take on the issue that has the “Professional Left”, aka the Firebaggers, all agog and shrieking. Matt Osborne had that courage yesterday [he says it’s not courage, rather conviction] when he took on the topic of Bradley Manning’s treatment during his incarceration before being formally charged.

Manning has not been convicted — yet — but there is nothing especially harsh or unusual about his conditions. The Rosenbergs were isolated. Aldrich Ames was isolated. There is no 'plan' to drive Bradley Manning insane. He’s a prisoner accused of giving away his country’s secrets. Such prisoners are held in solitary confinement as standard counterintelligence protocol. Who wants a caught spy to tell the other side what you have sweated out of him in the interrogation room? Who wants him to be free to do more damage?

Thank you, Matt.

Jon Stewart on Sarah Palin’s Twitter Drivel

He takes apart her Wikileaks tweet, which was so pitifully ignorant it surprised even me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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Chez Pazienza on Wikileaks Founder, Julian Assange

I'm not the biggest fan of Julian Assange; I think he's an arrogant prick whose pious overtures are largely self-serving, and I think he's got a hard-on for sticking it to the U.S. specifically.

Deux Ex Malcontent

Wikileaks Founder, Julian Assange, is No Hero

From the New Yorker, emphasis mine:

Recently, he posted military documents that included the Social Security numbers of soldiers, and in the Bunker I asked him if WikiLeaks’ mission would have been compromised if he had redacted these small bits. He said that some leaks risked harming innocent people—“collateral damage, if you will”—but that he could not weigh the importance of every detail in every document. Perhaps the Social Security numbers would one day be important to researchers investigating wrongdoing, he said; by releasing the information he would allow judgment to occur in the open.

A year and a half ago, WikiLeaks published the results of an Army test, conducted in 2004, of electromagnetic devices designed to prevent IEDs from being triggered. The document revealed key aspects of how the devices functioned and also showed that they interfered with communication systems used by soldiers—information that an insurgent could exploit. By the time WikiLeaks published the study, the Army had begun to deploy newer technology, but some soldiers were still using the devices. I asked Assange if he would refrain from releasing information that he knew might get someone killed. He said that he had instituted a “harm-minimization policy,” whereby people named in certain documents were contacted before publication, to warn them, but that there were also instances where the members of WikiLeaks might get “blood on our hands.”

Over the past two days I’ve been listening to people defend Julian Assange. Primarily members of my own party, all caught up in this seemingly inexorable drive for “truth”. It makes me sick, honestly. In my opinion, there is no excuse for being callous to loss of human life or to the privacy of innocent people.

Those of you who are anti-war yet defend Assange are really out there. Blood is blood, whether spilled in a war or as a result of Julian Assange's need for attention.

Governments do have a right and a need to maintain certain secrets, and they have a responsibility to protect those secrets. I hope Assange and his volunteer staff are held accountable.

Finally, dumping un-redacted documents online with no context is just playing for fun; it is not journalism. And, it is not about truth. Assange is no hero.

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Adding....Assange is an attention seeking missile. Sooner or later, we will all pay in one way or another. How many will cry when he publishes social security records online, or private medical databases, and on, and on. As Kevin Drum said, we all have secrets, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Der Spiegel on the Latest Wikileaks Document Release

Embarrassment matters. In diplomatic circles, it matters a lot. Der Spiegel, emphasis mine.

Such surprises from the annals of US diplomacy will dominate the headlines in the coming days when the New York Times, London's Guardian, Paris' Le Monde, Madrid's El Pais  and SPIEGEL begin shedding light on the treasure trove of secret documents from the State Department. Included are 243,270 diplomatic cables filed by US embassies to the State Department and 8,017 directives that the State Department sent to its diplomatic outposts around the world. In the coming days, the participating media will show in a series of investigative stories how America seeks to steer the world. The development is no less than a political meltdown for American foreign policy.

Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information -- data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which US foreign policy is built. Never before has the trust America's partners have in the country been as badly shaken. Now, their own personal views and policy recommendations have been made public -- as have America's true views of them.

H/T Das Gelbe Forum

Update on Wikileaks Document Release

The New York Times has a number of documents already online for your viewing, along with several articles on the current batch of releases. One of the articles speaks to consequences for the world [emphasis mine].:

The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”

WikiLeaks Releases New Round of Documents

This is just wrong. Assange appears to be out to start World War 3.

Tweet Meme: WikiLeaks Promising Something Big

Two interesting tweets from Wikileaks. The first suggests that they are about to release more military records, albeit a much larger release than the Iraq documents which was the largest release of military documents in history.

The second tweet suggests something world changing?

And what does Assange mean by “keep us strong”? He is Australian, not American. Interesting.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: CNN reported 15 minutes ago what we already know/surmised.

(CNN) -- The whistleblower organization WikiLeaks indicated Monday that it is preparing to release a new batch of previously classified U.S. military documents.

UPDATE II [Wed., Nov. 24-2:23PM EST]: via reader X7o, Fresh Horse on the most enigmatic of the wikileaks tweets.

An informed guess as to the content of WL’s next big release would refer to the WIRED chat logs (released here by BoingBoing) which allegedly contain the record of Bradley Manning confessing to the hacker, Adrian Lamo, about his disclosures to Wikileaks. If the logs are not a fabrication, the person alleged to be Manning seemed to believe that the most important material s/he had leaked to WL had not been the SIGACTS that have been the subject of the last two high profile disclosures. Particular reference was made to the video that became Collateral Murder, another as yet unreleased video, and to a quantity of classified State Department cables.

UPDATE III [Wed., Nov. 24-4:23PM EST]: Reuters is reporting that the documents are evidently related to corruption charges.

(Reuters) - Classified U.S. diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against foreign governments and leaders are expected in official documents that WikiLeaks plans to release soon, sources said on Wednesday.

Three sources familiar with the State Department cables held by WikiLeaks say the corruption allegations in them are major enough to cause serious embarrassment for foreign governments and politicians named in them.

I'll say one thing for Wikileaks; they sure know how to get a buzz going.