Let me ask you this Christa

Do you think US undercover allies in the middle east will want to help the US after these leaks became public?
Do you think some might fear that future leaks could jeopardize their safety and identities?

I do.
I did check out your links.
Opinion remains unchanged.

Let me ask you, alyb45, do you think that the US, which stands to benefit from any undercover allies left in the middle east, is at all interested in whether or not the safety and identities of any undercover allies are jeopardised?

Prior to publication, Wikileaks gave the option to the US State Dept to redact any sensitive names in the documents. There was no response.

I make a point of stating 'any undercover allies left in the middle east' because after ten years of living in a war zone the only sentiments any sane person will express is not undercover alliance with anybody, the primary thought will be 'how do I stay alive through the next ten minutes?'

A bomb is a bomb--when it is exploding near you the only thought is survival. All thoughts of alliances, undercover or not, go out the window.
The only people who can think in terms of undercover alliances are those who are at a very safe distance behind the front-lines.
What a luxury to have others on the front-line facing the bombs--and I am referring to the ordinary citizens trying to live out their mundane lives in a war zone here----- to give that safe margin of distance for a few thought experiments on the absurd notion of 'undercover alliances.'

The US buys its allies with cold hard cash, political favours, preferential trade agreements etc. Always has. Do you seriously think that the people having to survive in the war zones have not figured that one out, in the occasional lull between exploding bombs?
Constant, imminent danger of death has a way of focusing the 'figuring out faculties' of the human mind like no other circumstance.
Life is what happens around you, it is not a John Wayne movie. In the middle east, or any war zone, it isn't seen or experienced that way.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2010 06:52PM by Stoic.

Have seen some impartial military experts interviewed, and they said operational details pretty much have a 24-hr time window. Which means that old information being revealed is not a threat to them.
Much of the outrage are propaganda scare tactics, meant to silence dissent and open debate. Most of that so-called secret information should NOT be secret in a "democracy" in the first place. A democratic government is supposed to be open, which of course it isn't.


But Assange aside, Wikileaks is an important service for cult-investigators. Otherwise, where are former insiders going to leak the cult documents? Any typical corporate website, will remove any document with even a whimper of criticism, without checking it out. They just remove it.
So without websites like Wikileaks, no secret cultic information is going to make it onto the internet for very long.

'Which means that old information being revealed is not a threat to them.'

As an aside, I think an earlier point was made that the persons to whom the threat of exposure is a real problem are the low-level local employees of the US/UK/etc. military machine, the local interpreters, chefs and cooks, local suppliers who are at risk from their fellow locals taking revenge/retributive justice for the perceived collaboration with the occupying forces.
Old information that has previously been suppressed is a threat to the carefully contrived and judiciously managed public perception of this 'noble effort'

Much of the outrage are propaganda scare tactics, again, carefully contrived and judiciously managed for general public consumption, just like a coca-cola ad can make the whole world sing the same tune, in perfect harmony.

[www.youtube.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2010 10:54PM by Stoic.

Quote
alyb45
Let me ask you this Christa

Do you think US undercover allies in the middle east will want to help the US after these leaks became public?
Do you think some might fear that future leaks could jeopardize their safety and identities?

I do.
I did check out your links.
Opinion remains unchanged.

Unsurprisingly, alyb45, you missed my point, which is that the US government does not particularly care about the safety of foreign nationals whose secret assistance to our government becomes public. To object to the Wikileaks disclosures on those grounds is, in the government's case, disingenuous; in your case, doctrinaire.

Since Wikilieaks is on-topic for this forum but the wisdom or unwisdom of choosing to collaborate with a foreign government is not, I will point out just two facts.

One: collaboration is fraught with risk, including the risk of discovery, and undercover allies did not need to follow last week's news coverage to learn that. They already know it; no one so naive as to not know it would possess any skills or knowledge of use to a foreign government.

Two: regardless of the risks inherent in collaboration, in the case of WikiLeaks, blame for the release of names lies almost entirely with the high-ranking U.S. officials who ignored Assange's request to tell him which names to conceal from print. Not only because, as I've already asserted, they don't care, but because the argument that WikiLeaks endangered foreign assets always gulls the naive into thinking that the whistle-blower is a bigger threat to public order and human rights than the government.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2010 12:18PM by Christa.

In a perverse way, the powers-that-be probably think they can turn the wikileaks leaks into their advantage.
Now they can just make everything secret, and close everything down even more.

Its interesting that so many cultish groups operate using secrecy and deception of the public, and deception of their own members. When the Leaders of the sect are often very well of the real facts, unless of course the sects leaders are nuts.
But secrecy, lies, and deception of the pubic, are a very powerful tool they use.
One would have to say that more open transparency in both sects, groups, cults, as well as governments and other organizations is in the public interest.
As opposed to the "cults" of secrecy and deception.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2010 10:37PM by The Anticult.

There was an interesting report and analysis released today from a professor at the London School of Economics on the cyber background to the Wikileaks story that made such sensational headlines last week.

The professor makes the pertinent point that anyone studying how to defend themselves against cyber attacks such as DDOS, gains all the knowledge and expertise that they need to mount an attack themselves, the difference is whether or not the defender has the political will and motive to put that knowledge to nefarious use.
His point is to de-sensationalise the hoo-haa around the Anonymous attacks and point out that only 110 service demands were simultaneously made in order to take the target server off-line for a short time.

He makes the point that focusing on such an attack, of which there were some 700,000 recorded last year, distracts from the very real threat that organised criminals and international governments spying on and attacking each other poses to national security and to individuals.

It is not yet posted online but the report covered the various interested parties to the story and why it was in their interests to maximise the story of Anonymous's cybercrime on regular terrestrial media outlets. (TV and newspapers to you and me)

I will post it once the link goes up to the news story and report.

In the meantime here is an interesting report on general cybercrime made earlier in the year from the same LSE department.

[www2.lse.ac.uk]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2010 04:11AM by Stoic.

Link to the news report mentioned above:

[www.channel4.com]

I notice that I added an extra nought to the figure of reported attacks, 700,000 made from memory above. Not sure which is correct but the article states 77,000--which sounds a low figure to me.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2010 07:05AM by Stoic.

The court has ruled today that Assange is to be extradited to Sweden. He will appeal:

[uk.reuters.com]



The court ruling:

[www.judiciary.gov.uk]

The appeal against extradition to Sweden began today in the UK High Court.


[www.guardian.co.uk]


A vocal supporter of human rights, Peter Tatchell, who has campaigned on behalf of Assange gives his take here:


[petertatchell.net]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2011 03:05AM by Stoic.