WikiLeaks strikes again -- U.S. diplomacy stripped naked

Oh, come on. You cannot be serious about that. I'm not talking about preferences in lifestyle here but of political and social views. You can do better than that. There are already too many unfitting comparisons and analogies in this thread. No need to add one more :rolleyes:

And if you read my text carefully, then you realized that I'm not suggesting that anyone here is sharing Hitler's mindset, but that you can get quite close to it, when you let personal feelings of anger dominate over your rational mind. You don't need somebody like me to tell you that, or?

Also it's symptomatic how everything I wrote is completely ignored and only the one point is being picked, where an attack seems possible.

godwin%27s%20law.jpg


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What is war if not a large-scale armed conflict?
I guess my real point is that WW2 mobilized the simple fabric of the whole American nation. The war on terror is nowhere close to it. It's nowhere near.

Every history book I've ever seen sets the first day of the war as September 1st, 1939 - not September 3rd.
The invation of Poland started September 1st, but I'm inclined to agree it didn't become a world war until September 3rd. A conflict between Germany and Poland isn't a world war. That said, I don't think it became a world war before December 7th 1941 anyhow, that's the moment when pretty much every continent were involved in war in Europe, Africa and the Pacific at the same time, the time when the lines got linked, you might say.

Russia wants Assange to get a Nobel.

Care to open up your diplomatic cables Russia?
Give their cables to Assange, and he'll publish'em. Too bad he didn't get his hands on Russian cables first. Then the US would give him political asylum and not a single company or bank would mess with him. Isn't it funny?

Imagine if he'd released cables from Iran, and some whacky islamists threatened his life? What would that debate be about then? Eh? Someone have an idea? I do. It would be the Mohammed charicatures all over again in the western world.

Those who ask for Assange's head on a plate are equivalent to those idiots in Iran that issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, or those who wanted a Danish artist dead.

No one would accept it from them. And rightly so. But I'm shocked to see someone in this thread shares that sentiment.
 
The US have several layers of intrinsic security measures, consisting of encrypting of data with complicated algorithms created by some of the brightest minds of modern counter-intelligence and state of the art computer software and hardware. All to conceal the simple fact, they're full of shit.

The Russians have a different approach. They don't even try to conceal the fact they're full of shit.

So I don't think leaking those documents would be any shock to the world :D
 
Oh, come on. You cannot be serious about that. I'm not talking about preferences in lifestyle here but of political and social views. You can do better than that. There are already too many unfitting comparisons and analogies in this thread. No need to add one more :rolleyes:

And if you read my text carefully, then you realized that I'm not suggesting that anyone here is sharing Hitler's mindset, but that you can get quite close to it, when you let personal feelings of anger dominate over your rational mind. You don't need somebody like me to tell you that, or?

Also it's symptomatic how everything I wrote is completely ignored and only the one point is being picked, where an attack seems possible.
First of all, i was dead serious in my Godwin accusation.

Furthermore, i got my hands full with replying to other people with whom i strongly disagree, so i simply ignored the part of your post i largely agree with :p

But that's not the war on terror there, what are you talking about? All operations were deemed finished in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's just occupation now, and the US is still scared shitless of terrorists, or so they seem to be. So it's not "won" or "lost" cos the actual war on terror is still going on. The illegal war on Iraq is a totally different thing and I think you should not mix, in this case, not apples with oranges, but more like rotten apples with cashews.

Three things. First of all, i am talking about both the War On Terror and Iraq. While different in many aspects, they are similar in that they a) are both wars and b) are both wars of questionable legal and moral status.

Second, you are, all the time, using a vocabulary of warfare, maybe even of war crimes, as in "occupation", for example. You yourself said that the "war on terror" is an "armed conflict", so it's not part of civil society, which means normal laws can hardly be applied. But if you say it is not a war, you can't accuse anyone of war crimes. Which is what you do the whole time, maybe even rightly so: accusing the USA of war crimes. Unwantingly, you support the logic behind Guantanamo Bay: It's not civil life, so there's no need to treat the prisoners like normal criminals with Miranda Rights and everything, but it's not a war either, so the prisoners are no POWs under protection by the Geneva Convention. Is this really what you want?

Third, if a war ends in a defeat or a win and even if it's declared a win if all goals once set are reached, has nothing to do with it being a war.

Anyways, the non-smoking vegetarian mentioned above just arrived so i'll leave people being wrong on the internet alone for the night.
 
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Perhaps I'm not a journalist either? Perhaps a doctor isn't a doctor if he's got a political agenda? And what about authors? Are they authors if they're maoists? No? What about neocons?

It's not up to him, it's not up to the US government and it's not up to anyone to define a journalist negatively.

I never stated anything opposite to what you are going off about. I was just stating that someone else defined journalist differently. I also don't think the definition of what Wikileaks is excludes the protection granted under law. I also never stated that having an agenda discredits any profession. If my poor ability to write has created that misconception then I apologize.
 
The invation of Poland started September 1st, but I'm inclined to agree it didn't become a world war until September 3rd. A conflict between Germany and Poland isn't a world war.

Not a world war - but a war nonetheless.
 
I never stated anything opposite to what you are going off about. I was just stating that someone else defined journalist differently. I also don't think the definition of what Wikileaks is excludes the protection granted under law. I also never stated that having an agenda discredits any profession. If my poor ability to write has created that misconception then I apologize.
And I should have specified that I was referring to said journalist. :)

Not a world war - but a war nonetheless.
Yeah, a war.
 
First of all, i was dead serious in my Godwin accusation.

Did it ever occur to you, that Godwin's law could actually fit into a discussion instead of destroying it? :p

Of course I thought whether to post the text from "Mein Kampf" here or not. But as I mentioned, we had this very text in class, when I was in school (which was long before the internet of course) and the experience of young people wildly and openly discussing it -- agreers and disagreers made up about 50 % each --, without knowing who wrote it, kinda sticks to my mind. As do the faces of the agreers, when the author was revealed by our teacher.

Anyway, when it comes to defending freedom of press and freedom of information, it's not unfitting to introduce the worst of examples history has given us on the topic -- as a warning to not let things slip.
 
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Three things. First of all, i am talking about both the War On Terror and Iraq. While different in many aspects, they are similar in that they a) are both wars and b) are both wars of questionable legal and moral status.

Second, you are, all the time, using a vocabulary of warfare, maybe even of war crimes, as in "occupation", for example. You yourself said that the "war on terror" is an "armed conflict", so it's not part of civil society, which means normal laws can hardly be applied. But if you say it is not a war, you can't accuse anyone of war crimes. Which is what you do the whole time, maybe even rightly so: accusing the USA of war crimes. Unwantingly, you support the logic behind Guantanamo Bay: It's not civil life, so there's no need to treat the prisoners like normal criminals with Miranda Rights and everything, but it's not a war either, so the prisoners are no POWs under protection by the Geneva Convention. Is this really what you want?

Third, if a war ends in a defeat or a win and even if it's declared a win if all goals once set are reached, has nothing to do with it being a war.

Anyways, the non-smoking vegetarian mentioned above just arrived so i'll leave people being wrong on the internet alone for the night.

And you are acting like something as small as a mexican shooting an american is a declaration of war.
There are wars and peace and all shades of gray in between, it's not a black and white. If Portugal had an uprising by a group of extreme right people in arms, and Spain offered it's army to come and help, that wouldn't be war despite of Spaniards shooting Portuguese in their own soil. It seems that "cleansing Afghanistan of the terrible Talibans" falls more on this category rather than "two nations can't solve a conflict through diplomacy so they engage in an armed dispute" which is war.

The 'war on terror' is perhaps the one war out of hundreds that Americans 'declared' that is currently being fought in any fashion close to an actual war (but still not being one). War on obesity, war on drugs, war on cancer, war on AIDS, war on poverty, bla bla bla. It's just a term they love to use.
As illustrated by mr Carlin here.

Although to correct him a little bit, our anthem mentions cannons... :p
 
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"Sarah Palin has asked for this guy to be executed. Because that will stop the internet then."
- Paul Merton
 
I feel like this current thread is perhaps getting to far from the topic of Wikileaks and may best be pursued in the Random Thoughts thread.
 
Sarah Palin should just stick with porn and keep her mouth shut.
 
Why shouldn't she? Are my opinions too unpleasant for her to address? Is it difficult to understand that people have differing opinions on this issue? If you want to blow me off thats fine but understand that not everyone agrees with what is going on here and it's not because "we don't understand".

So would you mind telling me how WWII would have ended if the gov'ts of the Allies didn't work in secrecy? What about technological information? The details and plans for future nuclear plants held by the US's NRC are contained in confidential documents, should we release those to world? Should we let people know how to infiltrate the security systems of power plants, refineries, military bases, etc.? Where does it end? When can there be secrecy?

Confidential documents go beyond the cables of gov't diplomats, I will agree that a lot of them are bullshit and pointless but there are many that need to remain secret. The other issue with release documents is that of context, how can one ensure that a released document will be understood in the context of its information?

I didn't want to blow you off, the point of my post was that people tend to blow off wikileaks, because their national pride is hurt, rather than to look at the underlying facts in more detail. The WW2 example can actually be a case in point. Can I bring out Pearl Harbour? When the US government hid the fact that they knew of the impending attack, so the country could be dragged into war? So in this case, the secrecy actually cost several thousand lives of US soldiers and citizens, so my question than is who is putting who in danger with all the secrecy?

Well sure, there must be some secrets, even in government, let's think of it as government patents or copyrights, with regards to technology nuclear missiles codes and whatnot, I am not disputing that. But here we are talking about communication between government officials. Let's try think of it from a employer-employee point of view. I work in a business where all company emails are stored in databases forever and phone communications are recorded, so that our management as well as government regulators can have a look at what we are doing. On one hand, yes, if I make a f*ck up I can get easily fired because there is clear evidence of my misconduct, on the other hand, it's also an insurance policy when someone from outside the company is claiming I made a misconduct, it can be easily proven with recorded evidence that it is not true. Now the more I think about, the less reasons I see why government should be any different.
 
this argument is leaning to one side (IMO) and no matter what is said to counter the argument, its wrong. im glad people are passionate about their views on this but an open mind is a good thing. im not talking about everyone and im not going to point anyone out but ill just say that this is a pointless argument when one side is so locked and just wants to counter everyones opinion. unfair. its easy to make yourself look right when you smash down the answers/replys of the other partys no matter how relevent they are. think about that...
 
It's a question of principle. The principle is that you can't negatively define a journalist because of the awful concequences if we allow that. The state shouldn't even try to have an opinion on it. When you start trying to mock up charges against journalists to get them into your own custody, you have crossed a line.

Not that he has to be a journalist. Freedom of speech does not depend on your occupation. Everybody has it.
 
this argument is leaning to one side (IMO) and no matter what is said to counter the argument, its wrong. im glad people are passionate about their views on this but an open mind is a good thing. im not talking about everyone and im not going to point anyone out but ill just say that this is a pointless argument when one side is so locked and just wants to counter everyones opinion. unfair. its easy to make yourself look right when you smash down the answers/replys of the other partys no matter how relevent they are. think about that...

I've been seeing the arguments for both sides be countered and debated. That's how a proper debate is suppose to be conducted.
 
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