Diplomatic WikiLeaks

[eatyourveg]

Now if as a species we were bright enough to bring population under control and divert our aggressive energies in other directions, well, who can tell. As it is forget the colonial guilt crap.

lol you can't just ignore it because it happened a long time ago! This is a legacy and a burden that we must carry, until we hit reset and no longer benefit from the rape and pillage of the last 200 years.

Whilst we still benefit from the proceeds of worldwide imperialism, we must acknowledge it and apologise to all those enslaved by our forefathers greed. We wouldn't have anything today without the wealth of other nations that mostly gave it for "shiny -shiny".

I am ashamed of our history sometimes. My wife visited India and was made most welcome by those that had nothing, and it was nothing. A guide that took her around the Taj Mahal showed her a wall which was "encrusted with jewels until the British came". Of course, they were there because the Indians had no value in them, but we did. Stealing a ruby from the Taj Mahal was pointless for a poor Indian as he couldn't eat it and had no one to sell it to, but the British did. So I believe every word he says.

I see the parallels here with a common argument as to why Peak Oilers buy gold.

We only apologised for slavery a year or so ago, was it really that much of a big deal to finally say "Sorry"?

When I'm as poor as the poorest in the world, only then I'll stop saying sorry for what my country did.

OK I'm sorry, now if that guy who sold me a goat dinner in Mauritania 3 years ago would like to apologise for the stringiness of the meat (I'm still picking bits out of my teeth) then we are straight.

More seriously, we really can't go around apologising for these things, otherwise our entire conversations with others would consist of 'sorry' and variations of sorry. Africans spent far more time enslaving each other than we ever did and for a much longer period.

My point was that we are as a species grossly underperforming considering our intellect. We, en masse, behave just as any other animal out there does plus some (We take more than we need), and ultimately, will find ourselves in the same position as yeast.

The school report card might read 'Must learn to use brain more effectively'.

[eatyourveg]

Amazing how far off topic things go here

[emordnilap]

When I'm as poor as the poorest in the world, only then I'll stop saying sorry for what my country did.

Don't you mean, "when we're all as poor..."?

[Lord Beria3]

Why don't the Arabs apologise for slavery?

Why don't the Indians apologise for their historic maltreatement of 'untouchables' (which still carries on)?

Why doesn't Africans leaders apologise to their people for their chiefs selling of their own people to foreign slaveowners?

Why doesn't the Muslims apologise for their Islamic crusades against Christianity?

I could go on... lets leave the past the past.

[contadino]

I could go on... lets leave the past the past.

Lets refuse to learn from the mistakes in history, eh?

[Guest]

EDIT

[Lord Beria3]

http://tbrnews.org/wordpress/?p=251

Interesting insider account of within the American ruling elite on the fallout.

“There is now a growing, genuine terror in the American power elite, that the on-going devastating Department of State secret cables released by WikiLeaks will spread to the American business community with fatal results. America is not controlled by the Jesus Freaks, big labor or the AARP but is solidly under the iron control of a genuine power elite comprised, in the main, of major American business interests. They have controlled American for decades and they control it now. These people decide who is going to represent their interests in Congress. They put up the money and instruct the media what to say and when to say it and Hey Presto! We have a new face in Congress and, more important, a new vote. The daily procession of limousines with darkened windows that daily plies its way to the Hose and Senate office buildings remind one of endless funerals. Inside the black limousines are the lobbyists, often former Congressmen or high level government officials, very many of whom were forced to retire due to financial peculations or such delightful things as buggering Congressional pages in the lavatories of that House of Finance. And in the cavernous trunks of these sleek vehicles are bags and bags of hundred dollar bills. It’s encouraging that so many of our legislators, and the judicially as well, love to collect the patriotic, engraved images of Benjamin Franklin. They much preferred the portrait of Salmon P. Chase, once Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, but he was on the ten thousand dollar bill and these have been withdrawn to prevent their use by another criminal association, the global drug peddling groups. Reinstating Salmon P. Chase would be such a worthy step in promoting cooperation between America’s major business enterprises.
These entities, the United States government’s, financial supporters; major banks, insurance companies, the oil industry have combined or separately, immense assets. They exercise huge and almost total control over most legislative and , almost equally important academic institutions and so-called “think tanks.” With these bought-and-paid-for influencers of public opinion, it is obvious that an all-encompassing flood of daily disinformation in favor of or against individuals or legislation that these power elites see as necessary to their continued profitable existence or a threat thereunto gushes out what is essence is a corporate-controlled sewer.

[Ludwig]

We raped and robbed just about every country on the planet at some point or another.

So we did. Then we grew up (at least a bit).

No we didn't, we just couldn't afford to run the Empire any more.

[Guest]

EDIT

[woodpecker]

Well it might be, if the 4chan/Anonymous crowd actually knocked things out for longer. They managed it with the Swiss bank (which was probably woefully unprepared for DDOS) but not for Paypal (except the blog), which would have been much more aware of the issues in my view.

Why this has happened: I think because some of the Pirate Parties in different countries have been asking people to stop DDOSing copyright-related sites (in order to pursue things through legitimate channels), the 4chan crowd decided to refocus on WikiLeaks... for now.

[PS_RalphW]

It seems to me, that the wikileaks thing is simple revenge - public bullying by TPTB to prevent future repeats.

Governments are extremely angry, not because of the contents of the leaks, (Most of which were reported as suspicions by the media at the time) but because it removes all plausible deniability from Western diplomacy. Western governments are as craven and self-serving and two-faced and full of hypocrisy as we all knew they were all along.

Now the diplomats cannot use public opinion to pressure countries like China - they will be laughed out of court.

I think this DDOS counter-attack will be used as after-the fact justification for taking down wikileaks and locking them up - see they were dangerous cyber-terrorists all along!



[edit]

It seems the accusation - no formal charges yet - is that he employed emotional or other non-violent coercion to have non-violent sex with two women.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11946652

This would not be an offence in UK law in most cases .

[nexus]

because it removes all plausible deniability from Western diplomacy. Western governments are as craven and self-serving and two-faced and full of hypocrisy as we all knew they were all along.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Ralph.

[caspian]

At Salon, Kate Harding explains what Julian Assange is actually being charged with, why the claims that his accusers have CIA ties are pretty damn flimsy, and wraps it all up with a nice reminder that we can support what Wikileaks does and question the timing and handling of these rape accusations, all while simultaneously NOT diving off a cliff into victim-blaming, slut-shaming, or any other shameful treatment of two women who—for all we know—really were sexually assaulted.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/07/wh ... ulian.html

[JohnB]

because it removes all plausible deniability from Western diplomacy. Western governments are as craven and self-serving and two-faced and full of hypocrisy as we all knew they were all along.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Ralph.

Western governments claim to take the moral high ground when fighting wars and in their dealings with other countries. WikiLeaks has exposed the hypocrisy that we knew was there, and destroyed the credibility of TPTB, so it's no wonder they're a bit miffed.

I think WikiLeaks, and some of the other leakers, have gone too far in some ways. In the world we live in there do, unfortunately, need to be secrets, and internal correspondence will always have comments and opinions that are strongly worded, not in line with official (or unofficial) policy, or can be taken out of context. What's important is exposing the hypocrisy of the decision makers, and the actions they take. If TPTB need to keep secrets, they should prove to the rest of us that they are doing it in our best interests, and they've blown it.

I'm not sure if this will lead to a better and more open world, or the opposite. What I care about is the vast majority of the 6 billion people on this planet, who quite reasonably want to live a fairly free and happy life, and how this affects them.

[woodpecker]

If TPTB need to keep secrets, they should not put the information on a gigantic system accessible by millions.

If Manning hadn't passed the info to WL, he would have passed it elsewhere.

And if it hadn't been Manning, it would have been some other - ahem - equally high-ranking bod.

This really was an accident waiting to happen. And yet whenever information experts question the creation of gigantic data stores of sensitive information accessible by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, they are always told that 'we're different/it won't happen to us/we have the technology'. Same old same old. It's not about the technology, it's about human beings and lip-synching to Lady Gaga and all that social engineering jazz.

(And in this regard, in the public sector, see negligent data losses in any Western nation e.g. HMRC; the previously proposed national ID database, the proposed NHS patient data system, the various childrens' databases proposed in the UK, various plans by UKG to warehouse all our communications data, and a very long etc. Although it might be argued that governments don't give a fig about protection of their citizens' personal data, given how they handle it.)

What bothers me somewhat is the extra-legal/judicial approach that the USG seems to be taking; due process seems to have gone out of the window.
And there certainly seems to have been some 'if you scrub my back, I'll scrub yours' in the MasterCard and Visa cases.