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.
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.