While Wikileaks makes headline this week for releasing thousands of diplomatic cables, clueless journalist Tom Chivers of the telegraph does a roundup of “Wikileaks’ 10 greatest stories“. He lists this without realizing that Wikileaks was late to the party started on Climate blogs, including Climate Audit, The Air Vent, Climate-Skeptic.com, Lucia’s Blackboard, and WUWT.
More than 1,000 emails sent over 10 years by staff at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit were posted on Wikileaks after being accessed by a hacker. They appeared to show that scientists engaged in “tricks” to help bolster arguments that global warming is real and man-made. One said: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The report was described by sceptical commenters as “the worst scientific scandal of our generation“. The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, stepped down from his role in the wake of the leak, although following a House of Commons inquiry which found that he had no case to answer he was reinstated.
This reporter’s lack of research aside, the Wikileaks issue and it’s damaging impacts are summed up quite well in this article from the Globe and Mail by a former diplomat who was responsible for reporting on human rights violations:
It’s not just the militant activist in Guelph, Ont., reading the cables. It’s the military dictatorships and the secret police in capitals all around the world. In the days and weeks ahead, people who dared to share information with U.S. diplomats will be rounded up. And thousands more who may have been willing to pass on pictures of tortured bodies will keep them in the desk drawer instead.
Three reasons for this problem with WL:
One; The US Government went from paper to digital classified documents
Two: The US Government reaction to 9/11.
Three: a significant lost of allegiance to the US government by its citizens.
Causes easy access and distribution of US Government secrets.
Perhpas it isn’t clueless so much as calculated?
Never waste a good crisis; how many will read this misinformation and believe that WikiLeaks invented “Climategate”?
A potential reimaging begins.
If this happened back several centuries ago in the uk. then the author of Wikileaks would be doing the Tyburn Jig very shortly after being caught.
The Telegraph has some good reporters and some that write first without checking the whole story.
The Telegraph also blundered a few days ago when it implied that a collection of new journal articles published by the Royal Society support wartime-style rationing.
Only one person mentioned in the news article – Kevin Anderson – supports this measure. He has done so for years. I have found no discussion whatsoever of rationing in the 14 Royal Society-published papers.
Kevin Anderson: The Ration Card Man
Part of the “problem” here is that our “State Department” consists of many very FOOLISH PEOPLE.
In a way, this is a good thing, as working with “fools” is not a bright idea.
I notice that Wiki-leaks has not accessed MI-5’s information nor the Isrealie intelligence group’s work. Hopefully, both of those have the Mafia equivalent of “cement boots” for those who would betry their inside information.
How does someone so totally incompetant keep his job ?
This isnt a small mistake. Every journalist and editor in the world know all about Climategate. The *EXTREME* efforts they went to, to cover it up, proves that they knew exactly how important it was and how big it was. If they were just “slow” to get to the story, one could believe they didnt know much about Climategate, but the levels they went to cover it up, can only prove they knew all about.
Then, you get someone like this? Either he`s deliberately trying to give credit to WikLks, or he is the most incompetant journalist in the world.
It just about sums up the lack of journalistic ability in most newspapers these days.
So leaks are OK when scientists are behaving badly but not OK when goverments are behaving badly? It is absolutely true that climate science should be more open but we should also know more about how our governments operate. If there is a huge gap between what officials say publicly and privately (if they lie), there is something wrong.
I don’t like double standards. Just read what is inside the documents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak
In my opinion whoever leaked them to Wikileaks is a hero.
What the media is reluctant to investigate is Assange and WikiLeak’s connections to Pirate Bay and the Russian Business Network with whom they share servers. The Pirate Bay was being funded by a very wealthy business heir who was also a financier of extremist racist groups. The RBN are involved in the distribution of child porn, viruses and trojans, identity theft and sale of stolen credit card details.
Suits Assange just fine though. He runs wikileaks more for personal fame than as a source of leaked documents and is drip-feed releasing various bits and pieces every time his face disappears from the papers for more than a few days. He’s just a media wh… er, he likes the exposure, despite claiming that he’s in constant danger of assassination. A narcissist, in other words. He’d be equally at home strutting the world stage as a politician.
[…] In the days and weeks ahead, people who dared to share information with U.S. diplomats will be rounded up. And thousands more who may have been willing to pass on pictures of tortured bodies will keep them in the desk drawer instead.”
We argued the hypocricy of the NYT’s treatment of the two leaks a few threads back and several commenters touched on the consequences of of both leaks. The Globe and Mail article cited above points out the real consequences of the leaks of the diplomatic chatter. Chilling, yes? In contrast, it’s my opinion that the Climategate leak will save lives, as it may have prevented many countries from prancing down the primrose path to economic ruin.
We’ll watch as the consequences of both leaks play out.
What a timely excuse to censor the internet. Maybe that’s why Wikileaks was devised.
Even though he was late to the Climategate emails, Perhaps Assange could do something beneficial to society rather than destructive and use his hacking skills to seek out and publish the many more emails that must still remain. If he does that, he will have more than mitigated the damage he has done to international relations. Perhaps then it will only be the bad guys who are after his head.
Climate Gate is bad and Wiki Leaks good as they respectively play into advancing the agenda of the Progressive Socialist… a) massive wealth redistribution b) imposing their moral absolutism c) weakening the US d) weakening democracy worldwide e) killing Americans.
Assage should not suffer so lightly to get a silenced bullet in the night, I think a Sicilian Necktie is in order. I remember when the CIA had balls.
barbarausa says:
December 1, 2010 at 3:55 am
Perhpas it isn’t clueless so much as calculated?
Never waste a good crisis; how many will read this misinformation and believe that WikiLeaks invented “Climategate”?
A potential reimaging begins.
Completely agree. During a press conference in July 2010 they were asked to defend their release of Climategate emails in a manner that sounded as if they were responsible for the leak from both the reporter and themselves.
Their perceived honestly will be used against an unquestioning public when they decide to release their biased joker card, perhaps during the next election?
Fools and their cables are soon parted.
‘Nuff said.
Given the no-doubt apparent best investigative efforts by HM Constabulary into an alleged crime, can we expect an announcement on progress anytime soon? An update even? Or is it all still subjudicial or can’t comment/won’t comment?
54 weeks since, and counting….
Very hard to compare the two leaks, climate gate and government gate. The climate gate leaks disclosed misbehavior of scientists misusing taxpayer monies to forward their political agenda or for their personal enrichment by falsifying the record keeping and or data collection for climate study. This has to be intentional due to the refusal to allow the distribution of method and model algorithms. The wiki leaks was a disclosure of sensitive documents concerning negotiations and national policy. While one will possibly endanger lives because of purposefully corrupting the data and results of publicly funded scientific study the other will endanger lives directly by disclosing intelligence gatherers and sources of intelligence. Perhaps the founder of Wiki-leaks should understand the possibilities that while the US was targeted the results will concern governments world wide. If I were Mr. Assange I would definitely be wearing body armor even in my sleep. Sooner or later someone will be very interested in shutting down his operation on a permanent basis. I hope his insurance is paid up and beneficiary named.
Bill Derryberry
You can take some stuff in the Telegraph seriously. Seems to me this reporter just plays fast and loose:
…posted on Wikileaks after being accessed by a hacker.
It’s pretty well established that the email package wasn’t a hack, but a leak. As much by the lack of personal messages as the subject itself.
Hackers hack, they dont sort and collate.
Later he does call the incident a leak. All well, what difference to the yokels reading it?
Someone should tell Norfolk police. They’ve wasted a year and a lot of taxpayers money looking for the hackers!
I feel sorry for the average UK citizen, who has lost the right to vote on their sovereignty, and who has to support freeloaders like this.
Long time reader says:
December 1, 2010 at 4:27 am
So leaks are OK when scientists are behaving badly but not OK when goverments are behaving badly? It is absolutely true that climate science should be more open but we should also know more about how our governments operate. If there is a huge gap between what officials say publicly and privately (if they lie), there is something wrong.
I don’t like double standards. Just read what is inside the documents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak
In my opinion whoever leaked them to Wikileaks is a hero.
This is naive as hell. Those with any kind of intellect, do know how governments operate, and illustrates perfectly why Assange must be stopped. The diplomat is exactly right; intelligence agencies around the world have just been give a huge gift – corroboration and the filling in of the blanks of a thousand suppositions. Yes, absolutely, people will die, families will be threatened, and many will live in fear for their lives. In and of itself, any one cable may be innocuous, but the collective value is immeasurable to those who strategize. Useful(less) idiots continue to believe that we can all get along and will destroy their own beliefs in their ignorance.
How I’d love to see wikileaks post documents from international climate talks among governments and NGOs…
>>Three: a significant lost of allegiance to the US government by its citizens
We have the same problem in the UK. There is a whole strata of society who hold British passports, but hold allegience to other, often highly unstable, regimes. You could not trust them with sensitive information, or to support the nation in a time of crisis.
.
Long time reader, you’re going to have to be a bit more explicit. So far, I haven’t read anything coming out of the diplomatic leak that was even news, the closest being that China may be getting as tired of North Korea antics as everyone else and concluding that NoK is no longer worth the trouble as a client state. If anyone’s found any scandal, they aren’t calling attention to it. And Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source, if the subject is in any way political.
Both the military and diplomatic leaks damage the US’s ability to conduct foreign policy, and are of classified material. The ClimateGate leak wasn’t of classified material, and did reveal a real scandal.
I think it behooves all of us to understand that privacy is the major part of freedom. When privacy is taken from us, that’s one thing, but when we give it away at every turn is another. When we give our privacy away, we give our freedoms away. I used to get on the internet and post comments in this or that blog. I don’t anymore. I don’t twitter or facebook. Nor do I visit or post on any of these entities. And the blogs I comment on have been much reduced.
Likewise, our government has been giving away our national privacy by lax use of electronic media.
Interpol is on the case. Julian should be nabbed shortly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-wanted-notice-julian-assange
Philip Thomas at 5:10, interesting point by “pettyfog says:
December 1, 2010 at 5:25 am
You can take some stuff in the Telegraph seriously. Seems to me this reporter just plays fast and loose:
…posted on Wikileaks after being accessed by a hacker.
It’s pretty well established that the email package wasn’t a hack, but a leak. As much by the lack of personal messages as the subject itself.
Hackers hack, they dont sort and collate.
Later he does call the incident a leak. All well, what difference to the yokels reading it?”
So, maybe another facet to the determination by some to relentlessly refer to the leak as a hack?
Assange is a master hacker who does sort and collate, right?
I wonder what the accepted truth will be for the true believers shall be next week? Month? Year?
Or as you aptly note, next election?
The Telegraph piece simply confirms the degree to which journalism has sunk into the gutters. It is no longer about factual reporting, just about filling column inches and to heck with fact or even accuracy. In fact, facts often get in the way of sensational headlines – so the heck with fact and accuracy!
kramer says:
December 1, 2010 at 5:53 am
How I’d love to see wikileaks post documents from international climate talks among governments and NGOs…
=========================================================
Yes, me too !
It is the fact that, so far, no climate related documents have emerged from the vast amount of material released that is making me suspicious.
That a subject so-vital-to-the-existence-of-mankind should not ‘get a mention’
at all is a bit disturbing.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
December 1, 2010 at 4:28 am
“What the media is reluctant to investigate is Assange and WikiLeak’s connections to Pirate Bay and the Russian Business Network with whom they share servers. The Pirate Bay was being funded by a very wealthy business heir who was also a financier of extremist racist groups.”
What on earth are you on about? There’s no link – just the fact that they all have to use servers in places where they won’t be shut down by Western governments, even if for very different reasons. Your slur on Piratebay is just bizarre – would you like to clarify? Or is it just total nonsense?
As we know AGW is the most important issue of our time. Therefore I am very interested to read what the state department has to say about it. The Wikileak documents must be full of information about the climate politics of important countries like China. Please, WUWT, show us. What I have seen up to now is this:
From the disingenuous NY Times:
Hypocrites.
The Telegraph seems to suffer some sort of bipolar malady. It employs Louise Gray, who writes some of the silliest, unscientific and unsabstantiated rubbish one can find in the meeja, but it also employs Mr Dellingpole, who is at the opposite end of the spectrum and whose writing is witty and insightful, however one regards the content.
And to me, exposing Climategate was entirely justified in the interests of truth and accountability for the Revenue while the Wikileaks cannot be justified as they genuinely put the lives of informants in peril and seems to be based on the same sort of morality as bonking to promote chastity.
While its true that Wikileaks weren’t first to break the Climategate files, the site did make the files available to others that aren’t readers of great sites as mentioned above.
Just like science, politics must be transparent for good of its citizens. Sites like Wikileaks are actually doing the job that the media is supposed to do. Unfortunately, most of the media is tied up in corporate interests and has failed in its role as the Fourth Estate. The mainstream media’s biased global warming coverage is a prime example of journalistic integrity taking a back seat to corporate interests.
It would be very hypocritical to admonish people like Assange for the leaked diplomatic cables while applauding the leaking of the Climategate files from the heroic whistle blower. Its best not to act like the NY Times with its corporate influenced example of hypocrisy.
Remember that a lot of these private discussions have led to treaties that undermine the constitutions of countries and in essence, erode the rights of citizens living in these countries.
What would the Founding Fathers do if they were alive in today’s society?
Well, the competence of the journalist aside, Assange actually takes credit for the release of e-mails. Why anyone gives this lunatic the time of day, I’ll never know. We don’t even know if the cables he’s released are accurate. Remember the film footage he released showing U.S. soldiers gunning down allegedly un-armed civilians? He edited the weapons the insurgents out. Assange is a person of horribly flawed character.
I picked this link up from CA…. this is Assange taking credit for releasing the e-mails.
Pamela Gray says: “…When privacy is taken from us, that’s one thing, but when we give it away at every turn is another. When we give our privacy away, we give our freedoms away…”
Or more accurately you give up a portion of your freedom whenever you allow anybody else or any other body to assume your responsibilities for something. By shifting your responsibilities to others you are giving them power over you, which erodes your own freedoms.
I believe that this is an inside operation that is aimed not only at improving Israel’s image in the world at a time when she really looks quite bad but also as a means of blackmailing the United States government into going to war against Iran,” Mark Glenn said in an interview with Press TV.
The best way to judge the “seriousness” of the Wikileaks matter is to assess the actual action taken by the US Government regarding the whole thing. OBJuanCan’tOB and the CIA and the State Department and the Defense Department and the FBI and the Attorney General and Everybody Else have done NOTHING. Soooooooo… it’s either DOESN’T MATTER, Orrrrrrrrr… it’s all part of a great TOP SECRET Operation to do something about something, or the present administration is the most incompetent and stupid in the history of the United States of America. In any case, it really doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything anyway. Right? Left? Hi Diddle Diddle Down The Middle? Surf’s Up!!!!
Tom Chivers is a lightweight, he used to work for the Grauniad(sic) and even they seemed to have sussed out that he’s an ill educated copy and paste merchant. He must have a silver tongue to have landed a job at the Telegraph or maybe his dad knows the editor?
The pride you so obviously take in your role in disseminating a few, cherry picked, quotes out of context from an enormous amount of hacked private email with the probable intent of disrupting the Copenhagen climate talks is really….touching.
*http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/07/findings-muir-russell-review
http://www.research.psu.edu/news/2010/michael-mann-decision
“The Government agrees with, and welcomes, the overall assessment of the Science and Technology Committee that the information contained in the illegally-disclosed emails does not provide any evidence to discredit the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change. We note that similar findings were returned by both Lord Oxburgh’s and Sir Muir Russell’s reviews. In particular, we note the findings of the Muir Russell Review: that the rigour and honesty of the scientists are not in doubt; that there is no evidence of bias in data selection; that there is no evidence of subversion of peer review and that allegations of misusing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process cannot be upheld.”
In your defence you’ve probably ensured that a large amount of pretty incomprehensible data has now found its way into the public domain for ‘citizen scientists’ the world over to misinterpret at their leisure.
Like Geoffrey Lean, for example.
Sadly the telegraph is not the paper it was. Cannot think of a decent UK newspaper at all.
Tim Williams – troll, I assume?
As thousands of others have noted, there was nothing ‘cherry picked’ or ‘out of context’ about Climategate, nor were they in any way, shape, or form ‘private’ emails – they were work product of government employees.
Both the Oxburgh and Muir Russell panel were stocked with UEA cronies and folks with a track record of alarmist positions, and both were patently (and perhaps intentionally) incompetent.
The Mann whitewash gave him a pass not because his science is right but because he’s a rainmaker for the university he’s at.
You’re suggesting that we’re better off leaving the misinterpretation of the data to Mann, Jones, et al? Jones can’t find his data with two hands and a flashlight, and the only thing ‘incomprehensible’ about it are the undocumented adjustments and statistical fiddles applied to it by NOAA, NIWA, Mann, etc.
Go away, troll, and do your research.
barbarausa says:
December 1, 2010 at 3:55 am
such a proposition can easily be checked against the facts.
It looks like a journalist who simply hasn’t bothered to put any effort into looking at the facts.
Neither did the gross error get past the editor.
@max Hugoson
This leak came from the US Department of Defense not the US Department of State. This is still related to PFC Manning and his passing of information to Wikileaks. See this link from a few months back: http://www.examiner.com/pop-culture-in-hartford/evidence-ties-wikileak-documents-release-to-pfc-bradley-manning.
This is a result of information sharing across agency boundaries and the “disgrunteled employee” willing to put people at risk to show how cleaver he thinks he is and to punish his employer (the U.S. government). A selfish act rather than selfless, foolish only in that the USG gave that level of trust and responsibility in PFC Manning.
Trev says:
December 1, 2010 at 8:14 am
There is one. The FT
That is because you are only reading the superficial content of the leaked material. Intelligence agencies will be cross checking and collating that information against thousands of bits gathered by other means. It is that cross checking and assembling a picture from hundreds of bits of information where the damage will come.
Agent x told them 2 years ago that a certain fact was true. Now they have an independent confirmation of that event. If they match no big deal. If they do not match Agent x has something to worry about.
There are lots of things that are classified not because they are “secret” but because by classifying them you deny confirmation of the truth of rumors. By denying confirmation, you increase uncertainty and force the other side to expend more resources and time to verify information. You increase the noise level and lower the confidence in each bit of gathered data. Highly sensitive information can be compromised by trivial details.
For example a story running around in the 1990’s was that a top secret Soviet military operation was once compromised by an intelligence analyst noticing that a certain small town in the middle of no where in the Soviet Union was suddenly doing very well in local soccer games in the local news papers. That led him to find out why and the result was that those improved soccer scores were due to a sudden influx of very fit military people who were working on the project.
This is the sort of “that is odd” observation that will come out of detailed examination of the leaked material.
Everyone knows that internal advisers in country ABC do not think well of one of our diplomats but now that we have direct reports about what was said in confidential cables, those reported events can be compared to intelligence reports coming from other sources at the time. Like in mystery novels where the bad guy is tricked up because he says something that could only be known by a direct participant of an event, there are now outside independent confirmation of hundreds of thousands of minor details which over time will point to certain individuals as the only possible source for information. That is where the harm lies, not in the superficial details that diplomat A thinks diplomat B is a fool.
Larry
By the WAY! One other thing I thought about…
CODING! (Sorry to go on twice about this..)
But I remember, during my “Civil Air Patrol Days” being on an air base and seeing a document labeled “TOP SECRET”. I informed an AF officer who properly secured it.
He did come back to me and say, “Did you see anything?” I noted it must have been some addressing or labeling as it was “random numbers”. He laughed and said, “That was an ENCODED document, and is only DECODED for the recipient and then DESTROYED…”
HUM….laziness anyone?
Max
Pascvaks says:
December 1, 2010 at 7:15 am
I vote for incompetent.
I notice a number of comparisons between the fact that State Department Info WAS leaked but MI-5 and other INTELLIGENCE agencies info was not leaked. Is there really a comparison here?? The US State Department, although working with very sensitive information at times, is USED by security agencies, and NOT TRUSTED by them!!!
The US State Department is a Bureaucracy that had outgrown its usefulness decades ago!! It has worked against the Congress and Executive numerous times. How any President doesn’t come into Office and simply dissolve the mess I do not know.
Wikipedia co-founder and Ohio State alum Larry Sanger distances Wikipedia from Wikileaks in an article published this morning in the OSU Lantern, at http://www.thelantern.com/campus/alum-speaks-out-against-wikileaks-1.1813044.
According to the interview, “A ‘wiki’ is a website that lets Web users edit and create linked pages. WikiLeads has strayed from that definition, as it can be edited only by WikiLeaks employees.”
The interview does not mention Assange’s Climategate claims, but with reference to the diplomatic leaks, it reports that “On Thursday and Friday, Sanger wrote a series of Tweets saying that WikiLeaks is an enemy of the U.S. and should be dealt with accordingly.”
“‘He’s an international outlaw,’ Sanger said. ‘He keeps doing things that directly attack … perfectly legitimate government operations.'”
[Also posted on CA and tAV].
Tim Williams says:
December 1, 2010 at 7:41 am
The pride you so obviously take in your role in disseminating a few, cherry picked, quotes out of context from an enormous amount of hacked private email with the probable intent of disrupting the Copenhagen climate talks is really….touching…. Blah, blah, blah…
Tim-bob – if you’d like a copy of the original dataset from the Russian servers, I’d be happy to forward you a copy – send me an address through Anthony – you can read them ALL, at your leisure. Come back when you’re done for remediation. Quoting that string of vacuous links only demonstates you have no critical thinking ability, or are just plain lazy.
Hotrod Larry – “…It is that cross checking and assembling a picture from hundreds of bits of information where the damage will come….” Absolutely.
I don’t really understand the criticism of the Telegraph here. They don’t seem to have an editorial agenda and more or less just let their contributors get on with it.
Compare this with the Guardian that not only doesn’t allow any dissent from it’s agenda but actually inserts insults into it’s contributers pieces in order to stir the pot.
The poisonous influence of GuardianEco
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/11/29/the-poisonous-influence-of-guardianeco.html
“Someone should tell Norfolk police. They’ve wasted a year and a lot of taxpayers money looking for the hackers!”
Have they ? I doubt it.
They probably realised rapidly (with the help of the anti-terrorist group that was sent in to help them) that it was not a case of intrusion. Then they were told not to make any statement about it since the political powers that be wanted to let “illegal hacker” smears distract from the content.
It is now being blamed on WikiLeaks so as to weaken public support for Assange.
Copenhagen was not his fault , it’s because of him that we could not save the planet (what a bastard). The billions of people that will now die when the glaciers are gone in 2035 will be BLOOD ON HIS HANDS, I tell you.
Long time reader says: December 1, 2010 at 4:27 am
So leaks are OK when scientists are behaving badly but not OK when goverments are behaving badly? ……In my opinion whoever leaked them to Wikileaks is a hero.
———————————————————————————
Long time reader: Get real. The first responsibility of any government is to defend the nation. This means that it has to take actions that are unpalatable under normal civilian conditions such as gathering intelligence (and nastier) to achieve this. It has happened since time immemorial and always will if that nation is to remain. That is why secret documents remain so (and should) until well after the event. (Consider what Churchill and Roosevelt did and said during WW11) You simply cannot compare the two situations.
Douglas.
MartinGAtkins
Your point about the Guardian well made.
Let us not forget also that the Guardian is one of the agents assisting in sorting through the leaked documents before they are published on Wikileaks, so you can be certain that they will be applying their usual leftist filter to whatever they offer for publishing.
funny to see everyone’s panties all twisted up!
Wikileaks is obviously an intelligence operation….the telegraph, cnn, and the nyt are simply running a marketing campaign for CIA/Mossad, or whoever is behind them…and whoever is behind them.
if Wiki-Leaks employees take their job seriously, one of them should leak Wiki-Leak internals about the background of all their own untrue statements, the misleading of the public and why Climategate was so neglected.
It is surprising the number of bloggers who think Wikileaks is exactly what it says on the tin.
Here is some pause for thought.
http://stream.adamdodson.org/items/view/3071
Blunder Anthony?? Blunder?
I knew this wikileaks thing was all just bullocks from the moment it appeared on EVERY mainstream media outlet known to man.
But I did not know what their agenda was.. why do this?
This article makes it all so clear.
Its all just Hegelian Dialectic..
The leaks have proven to be a problem.. so you create a leak yourself.. and control the situation.
Now all leaks are from wikileaks?? what?!?
None.. I repeat NONE of this wikileaks bullocks is real.
If you read “Charlie Wilson’s War” you learn all the major secret services work together, supposed friends or foes. They work for reasons other than us or at least not the majority of us. What if Assange is but a script that is being played out for the majority?
I think the threat to expose a major US bank will break their neck, as I suppose that many of their anti US friends are also connected with big money.
From what I’ve read in the released cables, I haven’t learned anything that I didn’t already know, or surmised…..”China doesn’t know how to control North Korea,” “Arab leaders want Iranian nukes taken out” etc.
I agree with many that foreign sources in China etc. will probably end up with the bullet behind the ear, they play for keeps over there (unlike the US!).
Well I donated to wikileaks yesterday. I think the world is a better place for having a wikileaks in it. Secrets are dangerous and the world has far too many of them. And courts the world over are far too quick to declare things secret and attempt to control what Journalists can and cannot say. There is a lot of corruption and nastiness hiding out there that needs to be exposed to the light of day.
These huge US government leaks have actually been the worst thing that ever happened to wikileaks. The site itself is now barely functional, and the huge cache of other useful smaller leaks blowing the lid off corporate corruption or govenmment misbehavior all over the world are now difficult to access.
Several wikileaks founders have left and are trying to split off an alternative site or sites. I fear that wikileaks itself may not survive. But hopefully like the hydra – ten new wikileaks will arise from the ashes of the first as the concept has clearly proved itself a success.
The Telegraph’s website is to go behind a pay wall shortly. That should ensure that this once esteemed newspaper diminishes even further in terms of its influence. The Times is said to have lost 95% of its traffic since it took similar action a couple of months back. I suspect that the MSM are desperate to get themselves out of the line of fire from bloggers such as yourself, Anthony.
REPLY: Doubtful, the truth is they are starving for revenue. The old ad model for newspapers has been dying. – Anthony
REPLY: Doubtful, the truth is they are starving for revenue. The old ad model for newspapers has been dying. – Anthony
That is a good point. It doesn’t work anymore. Perhaps if they offer good articles, good reading, and , last but not the least, change sides (this will be the more painful part), they will get readers again.
Now that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has done a political aboutface and wants WikiLeaks shut down (after the damage is done and a new majority is in the House), public attention should turned to the potentially even more disasterous legislative garbage which the Democrats may try to pass in response to this crisis.
An analysis by Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano:
“The whole post-911 mantra was the need to share, the need to share, the need to share,” says Heritage Foundation foreign-policy expert James Carafano. “All that is going to be great, until some share gives up to an al-Qaida operative all the intel he got from DHS.
“This was going to happen eventually,” he tells Newsmax. “… The need to share is far more important than all the [intelligence] compromises.
…Stopping leaks is difficult, when so many people have access to the information, he says.
“If you want to roll it back to where we have strict compartmentalization, you can do that,” says Lowenthal. “Now we’re back in the situation where everyone is in these little silos, and nobody knows what everybody else is doing. This is the problem with the world we live in – those are your choices and they aren’t pretty.”
Lowenthal, like Carafano, would rather err on the side of stopping the next major terrorist attack. Newsmax
Neither would I be surprised if there were some kind of back door effort at increased controls over the internet, similar to this:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/censorship-internet-takes-center-stage-online
nobby –
there are two tom chivers and i’m not sure this one ever worked for the Guardian.
however, it seems Louise Gray did a brief spell at the Guardian after leaving The Scotsman (where she covered social and political affairs before touching on CAGW with Bjorn Lomborg – see below) and before joining the Telegraph.
29 Sept 2006: Scotsman: Louise Gray: Climate change is good for Scotland –
professor
Climate change in Scotland will lead to ‘fewer deaths from cold’ Professor
Lomborg argues reducing carbon emissions will have little effect Professor
accuses lobbyists of ‘scaremongering’ leading to public ‘hysteria’..
http://news.scotsman.com/climatechange/Climate-change-is-good-for.2814470.jp
Louise’s long list of alarmist pieces for the Tele ends with the Guardian article below:
Journalisted: Louise Gray
1476 articles (since February 2008)
http://journalisted.com/louise-gray?allarticles=yes
18 Feb 2008: Guardian: Louise Gray: Green worker
Booking a business trip? Think about the transport you choose
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/feb/18/green
this April 08 piece was possibly written prior to Gray moving to Tele, but published after she moved:
28 April 2008: Guardian: Green-eyed monsters
Is your workplace full of eco-refuseniks, forever hindering your best
efforts to save the planet? Or, asks Louise Gray, could it be possible that
they have a point?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/28/workandcareers
except for the April 08 Guardian piece, Louise has no links at the Scotsman or the Guardian after the time she appears at the Tele. if Louise wishes to dispute the above, she is free to do so.
the Tele has Lean and Gray for alarmism, Booker on Sundays for the sceptics and a Delingpole blog. however, the weight of articles leans (no pun intended) heavily towards the alarmist side. CAGW is not a left/right thing.
Ian H – I’m of two minds on wikileaks.
First off, they’re under no particular obligation NOT to publish something that falls in their lap. They might elect to do so out of various ethical concerns, but that’s about it.
If they go out in pursuit of material and bomb, bait, or bully someone like PFC Manning into providing it, then that might be a different story.
Now, Private Manning on the other hand has pretty much violated every principle of conduct he’d signed up to, and if he were shot at dawn I’d have no particular trouble with it.
As for the content of the material thus far – I see little that brings discredit on the US, and much that reinforces the need for a robust political and military posture overseas.
Remember, the Community Organizer and Great Reformer in Cheif stands ready to help with all your speech and internet needs.
1. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a 47-page bureaucratic plan for the “Reinvention of Journalism” that outlines a series of taxes and also
establishes a journalism division of AmeriCorps with government underwriting the training of young journalists, provides tax incentives per news employee, increases funding of public broadcasting, and proposes a 5% tax on consumer electronics and/or assessments on users of public airwaves.
2. The Obama administration has announced plans to regulate the Internet through the Federal Communications Commission, extending its authority over broadband providers to police web traffic, enforcing “net neutrality.”
Last week, a congressional hearing exposed an effort to give another agency—the Federal Election Commission—unprecedented power to regulate political speech online. At a House Administration Committee hearing last Tuesday, Patton Boggs attorney William McGinley explained that the sloppy statutory language in the “DISCLOSE Act” would extend the FEC’s control over broadcast communications to all “covered communications,” including the blogosphere. reason.com
3. “Information freedom supports the peace and security that provides a foundation for global progress. Historically, asymmetrical access to information is one of the leading causes of interstate conflict. When we face serious disputes or dangerous incidents, it’s critical that people on both sides of the problem have access to the same set of facts and opinions.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
More good laughs from The Telegraph, from an AGW crisis parrot who seems to have been eating stale crackers at Cancun:
“Cancun climate change summit: small island states in danger of ‘extinction’
Protect us from becoming an ‘endangered species’ say small island states as UN report shows devastation from sea level rise.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8170075/Cancun-climate-change-summit-small-island-states-in-danger-of-extinction.html
As many of the commenters – who are almost all snickering at this article, at Cancun, and at the whole AGW tall tale – on this article have noted, that story has been totally debunked… even in the BBC was forced to admit that.
But, quoting the infamous Patchy de la IPCC, this parrot gives us some hope:
“Cancun climate change summit: UN considers putting mirrors in space
UN scientists are to consider moves such as putting mirrors in space and sprinkling iron in the sea in an attempt to cut global warming, the head of the IPCC said.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8169039/Cancun-climate-change-summit-UN-considers-putting-mirrors-in-space.html
Thank goodness for the UN!
And more laughs from an unidentified parrot:
“Polar bears spotted swimming with cubs on back
It is thought the practice is new and the result of the bears having to swim longer distance in the sea because of reductions in the Arctic ice in the summer.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8168213/Polar-bears-spotted-swimming-with-cubs-on-back.html
On the bright side, the comments on all these stories reveal that this Emporer has no clothes and, judging by the level of ridicule, the cold has created significant shrinkage.
4. Obama Surrendering Internet to Foreign Powers, the UN
“For years, the international community has been pressuring the United States
to surrender its control and management of the Internet. They want an international body such as the United Nations or even the International Telecommunications Union, (an entity that coordinates international telephone communications), to manage all aspects of the Internet in behalf of all nations.
The argument advanced for those seeking international control of the Internet is that the Internet has become such a powerful, pervasive, and a dependent form of international communications, that it would be dangerous and inequitable for any one nation to control and manage it.
Just this past spring, within months of Obama’s taking office, his administration, through the Department of Commerce, agreed to relinquish some control over IANA and their governance. The Obama administration has agreed to give greater representation to foreign companies and countries on IANA.”
Elect a far left radical to the presidency and all kinds of far left radicals get appointed to all sorts of positions. Such people could easily be convinced to commit treason. Just because this Julian Ass. fellow says everything came from the one serviceman who has been caught, doesn’t mean this is the truth. In fact, you’d expect him to say that to protect his other sources. I suspect he has many sources.
The serviceman and any other traitors caught in this affair should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I believe treason is a capital offense, is it not?
Wait a minute. It’s Al Gore’s internet. We should leave it up to him whether or not we turn over control of it to other countries.
Meanwhile at Nature Magazine they have an editorial that Climategate didn’t really show any problem (again) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/468345a.html but the interesting part is the many comments, many well thought out, that take issue with the editorial. This is a real change from the standard agreement with Nature’ view that I’ve seen in the past by Nature readers.
I support the leak of the documents. We have a right to know what our governments are up to. Give them too much power and secrecy and they become more corrupt.
It’s interesting to see the roundabout ways many people are trying to justify climategate leaks and then condemn cablegate. Even more interesting to see some of the smears aimed at the wikileaks boss without any kind of evidence whatsoever.
Assange is in some serious trouble, but for something else:
from PCMag.com
“Interpol Puts Out Wanted Notice for Wikileaks’ Assange”
….indicting Assange of raping two women….”rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion,” the statement said. “To execute the court’s decision, the next step is to issue an international arrest warrant,”…..
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373645,00.asp
Assange rape charges suddenly dropped
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368099,00.asp
h/t Steven Goddard
wait a second, the date is old on the dropped charges
apparently no dropping of charges
It’s possible because of the political heat that is on Assange now the previously dropped charges were trumped back up by someone who is angry with him.
I think Americans are just about to find out how free they really are. Listen to the news of what’s going on right now – how Amazon have been ‘persuaded’ to drop server use, how 80 weblogs have been wrenched off-service without due process. Please don’t take this as US-bashing (I’m English and we know what friends we really are) but we found out long ago that despite England’s supposed ‘Mother Of The Free’ nonsense, we are kept down just like everyone else. The good US people like to believe that they are truly free, and I’m afraid they’re about to find out that they’re not. Calls for a death penalty on the leaker, and being “hunted down” remind me of the British Goons sketch back in the 1950s: “…throughout the civilised world, [and] America…”
As I said, don’t take it as US-bashing, just watch how it plays out. How close are we to the internet being controlled? It’s been truly free so far, but for how long? Whether or not you like the Wikileaks stuff, with freedom comes responsibility, but it’s a fine line. We live in interesting times.
posted by Kate: “Or more accurately you give up a portion of your freedom whenever you allow anybody else or any other body to assume your responsibilities for something. By shifting your responsibilities to others you are giving them power over you, which erodes your own freedoms.”
What she said.
Giving away our privacy and our responsibilities for our own lives to others leaves us as dependent as any communist is. So too our nation.
‘In a speech to graduates at Hampton University in Virginia, President Obama complained that too much information is a threat to democracy. “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a means of emancipation,” he opined. “All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”‘
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=555464&p=2
It may be that some people on the ‘other side’ regarded ‘Cablegate,’ as it might have been called, as their revenge for Climategate. So far, I see no indication of any improper activity on our part that would in any way justify the wholesale damage to worldwide security caused by the release of this material.
It’s begun…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8178457/WikiLeaks-website-disconnected-as-US-company-withdraws-support.html
http://www.investors.com/EditorialCartoons/Cartoon.aspx?id=555410
And someone said,
“If we want to keep our Nation’s secrets ‘SECRET’… store them where President Obama stores his college transcripts and birth certificate.”
Actually, I don’t really care about his birth certificate. Other documents he has refused to release might be interesting, though:
transcripts from Colombia, Occidental, and Harvard, his dissertation, his app to the Ill state bar, his records as an attorney in Ill, and official correspondences from his time in Ill as a legislator. That’s not all he did not release, either.
It just shows, some things are secret, and some things end up on Wikileaks.
“In the days and weeks ahead, people who dared to share information with U.S. diplomats will be rounded up.”
Unproven; but even if so, the result is that people in other countries will learn that collaborating with the empire is dangerous, and they will stop doing it if they have any sense. If you love the empire, this will sound bad. But I hate the empire, so it looks like a plus to me.
Also, generally I think the more access to truth people have, the better. Even (or especially) if it embarrasses the ruling class.