in defense of Manning and the Assange Wikileaks dump:
Discussion of 6/12/2010, names redacted.
5. Why do you defend a shadow government, answerable to no one?
That's why we have such secrecy, to protect from public disclosure the evil things our government does in our name.
I'm saying there should be no US intelligence agents. Period. Fire them, send them home.
I don't get them in danger - they were put there on purpose to give us the excuse to do expensive dirty work which goes straight to the bottom line of the right folks.
I agree that there needs to be more honesty and oversight from all parts of our
government and less covering stuff up by them however ya cant just grant people carte blanche to violate agreements to keep stuff secret, that path just leads to sheer anarchy.
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111. I'm saying that there should be no such agreements from the beginning.
Secrecy is deception, by definition. Deception is fraud. Fraud is crime. Secrecy is crime. Do away with it.
A separate thread, 11/30/10:
He begins by positing that conspiracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand, arguing that since authoritarianism produces resistance to itself — to the extent that its authoritarianism becomes generally known — it can only continue to exist and function by preventing its intentions (the authorship of its authority?) from being generally known. It inevitably becomes, he argues, a conspiracy:
This is however, not where Assange’s reasoning leads him. He decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire:
(Assange):
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance
.
In this sense, most of the media commentary on the latest round of leaks has totally missed the point. After all, why are diplomatic cables being leaked? These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. Which is the point: Assange is completely right that our government has conspiratorial functions. What else would you call the fact that a small percentage of our governing class governs and acts in our name according to information which is freely shared amongst them but which cannot be shared amongst their constituency? And we all probably knew that this was more or less the case; anyone who was surprised that our embassies are doing dirty, secretive, and disingenuous political work as a matter of course is naïve. But Assange is not trying to produce a journalistic scandal which will then provoke red-faced government reforms or something, precisely because no one is all that scandalized by such things any more. Instead, he is trying to strangle the links that make the conspiracy possible, to expose the necessary porousness of the American state’s conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.
(Poster A) I buy all of this regarding the first release, and I am willing to guess that I will also agree that your points and Assange's apply regarding the third release. The second release I cannot condone. Whatever Assange intended, the second release was more than anything an attack on the institution of diplomacy. That ought to be added to the UN's list of crimes against humanity. I've explained why in several posts, but to put it concisely, anything that impedes complete, frank and crystal clear communications between diplomats and between diplomats and the governments they serve and also foreign governments is problematic.
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(Poster B)
You still don't get it.
There IS no complete, frank and crystal clear communication between diplomats and the governments they serve. There IS no trust other nations have left in the US. The corruption is so complete that the non-existent trust between nations cannot be said to be in danger of being eroded. Wake up, Hillary et al, we're not THAT stupid anymore.
. . .
(Poster B)
8. Your purported personal knowledge flies in the face
of the facts that have become common knowledge long before Wikileaks ever came out with their diplomatic cables.
"...complete, frank and crystal clear communications..." between thieves, professional liars and murderous power-mongers is a myth perpetuated by gullible fools.
That's only part of two threads. Not straw.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and looked so credible, etc. And the claim that she made about the law firm that the law firm said was not part of their mission.
