bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 Yup, of course only your opinion is correct, I should've known that one LOL When one opinion is that emails concering matters of state is the same as an individuals' private, personal emails, and another person disagrees, then obviously the second opinion is correct. No one is saying they are as important or the equivalent, but the moral aspect of publishing private correspondence without consent is the same. It's not even close to the same "moral aspect." Not the same planet. I'm having trouble beleiving you're serious. Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 Exactly. He's the champion of transparency, claiming there's nothin that needs to be a secret. Ironically, he didn't want the address of the house he's currently staying at to be made public. So not only is Assange a creepy stalker/rapist, he's also a giant hypocrite. Leaving aside that you consider him guilty already for entirely politicized reasons--which is the formulation of the Commissar--no one, including Assange, has made any claim that "there's nothing that needs to be a secret." It's about what government does, and it's about matters of State. That you can't see the difference (which is blindingly, uncontroversially obvious) is really sad. Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
dre Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 When one opinion is that emails concering matters of state is the same as an individuals' private, personal emails, and another person disagrees, then obviously the second opinion is correct. It's not even close to the same "moral aspect." Not the same planet. I'm having trouble beleiving you're serious. Once again, this coming from the same bunch of folks that go on and on about personal freedom and privacy, and barely even recognize the government as a legitimate entity. Now theyre all like... "If people get to have it then the government does too!" If I was that stupid Id shoot myself in the face. Quote I question things because I am human. And call no one my father who's no closer than a stranger
dre Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 Leaving aside that you consider him guilty already for entirely politicized reasons--which is the formulation of the Commissar--no one, including Assange, has made any claim that "there's nothing that needs to be a secret." It's about what government does, and it's about matters of State. That you can't see the difference (which is blindingly, uncontroversially obvious) is really sad. He CAN see the difference, but hes lying. claiming there's nothin that needs to be a secret That isnt wikileaks position and he knows it. Put quite simply, hes a liar. Sorry if saying that violates the TOU here, but thats just a fact. Quote I question things because I am human. And call no one my father who's no closer than a stranger
kimmy Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 But in this case the boss IS the general public. We pay their salaries, and how is representitive government supposed to work if the government can arbitrarily hide whatever activity they want from the voters? That's not really true. The general public could be argued to be the boss of politicians, but that argument can't be made for everybody who works for the government. If the cops show up at Dr Greenthumb's grow-op, he can't fire them and send them home. -k Quote (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Friendly forum facilitator! ┬──┬◡ノ(° -°ノ)
kimmy Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 On the issue of public tittilation over breaches of individual privacy maybe, but she seems just as lame as you when it comes to discussing public concern over breaches of state secrecy. I'm not opposed to whistleblowing. But I am opposed to the notion that since "the government" is actually "the people", the people are entitled to know all the details of what's going on and that there shouldn't be any such thing as private communications amongst government employees. -k Quote (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Friendly forum facilitator! ┬──┬◡ノ(° -°ノ)
bush_cheney2004 Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 On the issue of public tittilation over breaches of individual privacy maybe, but she seems just as lame as you when it comes to discussing public concern over breaches of state secrecy. ...and you seem just as lame for trying to set boundaries on the topic to suit your own agenda. Either data can be private...or not. Quote Economics trumps Virtue.
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 You can't blame a guy for trying. However, the part about using her license plate to obtain her personal information seems a little stalkerish. Isn't that something only law enforcement agents are allowed to do? Or are things just a little different in Australia? It is creepy, I agree. However, being the radical lunatic that I am, I choose not to indict the man even for the creep factor on assumptions posted for political reasons by US Security State sycophants. Isn't there a reasonable expectation of privacy when you're at work as well? Should government officials, bureaucrats, and so-on, entitled to communicate privately about their work? To some degree; but without rehasing, at the moment, the argument about whether leaking the informaiton was correct or not, there's a monumental world of difference between the two types of "leaks." I'm honestly having trouble understanding how people cannot know this. It's not difficult. Personally, I would not want the threat of public reaction to prevent government agents from discussing matters that are important to their jobs. I understand this, but it's far more complex. As even the "Wikileaks is a terrorist" screechers have reluctantly conceded, the amount of secrecy is now so great as to defy all rationality--particularly for representative democracies. And there is no political movement afoot to stop this. Sicne we're talking about the US in this case, let's all note that no Democrats want less secrecy, no Republicans do either, Independents have never mentioned it, and the Tea Party voices are more furious at Assange than anyone, perhaps because their sense of patriotism boils with an intensity that is somewhat...perverse, frankly. So, without leaks, unwarranted secrecy continues. Period. One would think that "limited government" conservatives would appreciate this, but they are clearly the most outraged, belying their suspicion of Big Gub'mint. (To them, "Big Government" means...taxes. Oh, and leftish politics.) They're Security fetishists, and at bottom, a surprising number of them are reflexively obedient to Power and to Government reach. At any rate, when representative governments become too secretive (and no doubt there are plenty of Canadian secrets that would curl one's hair, too), and no rememdy is on offer, then like all forms of government abuse, there will be rebellions of one sort or another. Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 (edited) And in this case we have ... apparently Julian Assange being the guy who decides whether there's a compelling need. And his decision is always "no", right? -k I think You're overstating the case. Wikileaks is a lot of people...and Assange is not the leaker, in any case. Unless he's withholding information that he deems politically inconvenient to his own beliefs--and I've heard nothing of the sort from anyone--your statement isn't quite right. As Dre said, Its the WHISTLE BLOWERS that are uploading documents to wikileaks that are the guys making the decisions, and its regular news networks that actually decide what gets shown to the public. I'm not opposed to whistleblowing. No? Then what is the formulation in which you don't oppose it? It's always under somebody's expectation of secrecy (rather misconstrued here as "privacy"). Have you devised metrics and measurements for what kinds of whistleblowing are proper? How precise do these measurements need be? Or is it, as the pro-censorship voices have famously had it, "I know obscenity when I see it"? Edited December 18, 2010 by bloodyminded Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
jbg Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 why are you deflecting, Professor? I just searched... but feel free to correct me... I have a total of 2 MLW posts related to the content of the wikileak emails - both have to do with the U.S. using it's diplomatic corps to spy on UN officials. If that's your definition of "relish" - hey, have at er. Now back to the original question you're deflecting from - I expect you have at least a brazillion MLW posts concerning the content of Hackergate emails (also feel free to correct me here). Again: I thought you save your multi-color nesting specials for your climate posts. Quote Free speech: "You can say what you want, but I don't have to lend you my megaphone." Always remember that when you are in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it. - J.J. Reynolds. Will the steps anyone is proposing to fight "climate change" reduce a single temperature, by a single degree, at a single location? The mantra of "world opinion" or the views of the "international community" betrays flabby and weak reasoning (link).
bush_cheney2004 Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 I thought you save your multi-color nesting specials for your climate posts. Quote Economics trumps Virtue.
dre Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 That's not really true. The general public could be argued to be the boss of politicians, but that argument can't be made for everybody who works for the government. If the cops show up at Dr Greenthumb's grow-op, he can't fire them and send them home. -k Dr Greenthumb is an individual. Its the public as a whole that is the "boss", and the ones that write the checks, and make no mistake about it, if the public at large felt strongly that the police should leave Dr Greenthumb alone thats exactly what would happen. Im not necessarily saying that the public should have a live camera in the office of every civil servant, but the government through their own abuses has put itself at risk of that. For now though I would be happy if the freedom of information act had real teeth and that ALL government correspondence should be available unless an independant review has concluded it poses a real danger to national security. Eventually all that information should see the light of day, otherwise the voters have no information with which to evaluate parties and candidates besides canned campaign speeches and infomercials. You dont have to put public servants on live TV, but they SHOULD operate knowing that eventually the people that write their checks will be able to evaluate their actions. Im not talking about anything radical here. This is what various freedom of information acts were designed to do in the first place, but they failed because the government still gets to decide what documents are available. A third party needs to decide that, then well be all good, without any radical changes to how civil servants work. Quote I question things because I am human. And call no one my father who's no closer than a stranger
eyeball Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 I'm not opposed to whistleblowing. But I am opposed to the notion that since "the government" is actually "the people", the people are entitled to know all the details of what's going on and that there shouldn't be any such thing as private communications amongst government employees. -k These are not just private communications amongst government employees discussing things like office gossip or making lunch dates, they are working reports created for politicians and senior public officials on public business that contain amongst other things very important information about our allies torturing and murdering people. It's been a long long time since I was deluded enough to believe "the government" is actually "the people". That's almost as quaint a notion that a "diplomatic cable" is a "private communication". Quote A government without public oversight is like a nuclear plant without lead shielding.
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 It's been a long long time since I was deluded enough to believe "the government" is actually "the people". That's almost as quaint a notion that a "diplomatic cable" is a "private communication". Zing! Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
eyeball Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 ...and you seem just as lame for trying to set boundaries on the topic to suit your own agenda. No that's what you're doing. Either data can be private...or not. I'd say content can be private...as it is in the case of Assange's creepy emails, but in the case of the information relayed through diplomats about India's treatment of Kashmiri people that content is public through and through. Quote A government without public oversight is like a nuclear plant without lead shielding.
dre Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 Either data can be private...or not. False choice. Theres nothing saying we have to treat government correspondence and personal medical records the same. Quote I question things because I am human. And call no one my father who's no closer than a stranger
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 (edited) No that's what you're doing. I'd say content can be private...as it is in the case of Assange's creepy emails, but in the case of the information relayed through diplomats about India's treatment of Kashmiri people that content is public through and through. Exactly. Or the US spying on UN diplomats..."everybody knows this goes on" it is sniffed derisively, but simultaneously we should not find it out. (?) Ditto the authoritarian Iraqi government torturing its citizens willy-nilly. Edited December 18, 2010 by bloodyminded Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
eyeball Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 Exactly. Or the US spying on UN diplomats..."everybody knows this goes on" it is sniffed derisively, but simultaneously we should not find it out. (?) Ditto the authoritarian Iraqi government torturing its citizens willy-nilly. This of course raises the question of just where the hell our governments get off thinking they have the right to keep their knowledge of our allies criminality a secret. What's really creepy though, is just how many fellow Canadian individuals I share this country with who publicly defend the government's right to keep us uninformed and ignorant. It makes my skin crawl. Quote A government without public oversight is like a nuclear plant without lead shielding.
dre Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 Exactly. Or the US spying on UN diplomats..."everybody knows this goes on" it is sniffed derisively, but simultaneously we should not find it out. (?) Ditto the authoritarian Iraqi government torturing its citizens willy-nilly. Thats the real beauty of it. The people running around screeching about WikiLeaks being a terrorist organization would have been absolutely THRILLED if WikiLeaks had leaked Iraqi documents, or Iranian documents, or Chinese documents. Theyd be having a massive circle jerk with a life size Julian Assange doll in the center of the circle. The people railing against this are quite simply blinded by nationalism, devotion, and affection. Its not that they really have any rational belief that what wikileaks does is WRONG. That would be silly... its just a bank of gawd damn servers, it doesnt "do" anything. Theyre mad simply because this time WikiLeaks came up against a particular institution, that these people have a slavering affection for, and devotion to. Quote I question things because I am human. And call no one my father who's no closer than a stranger
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 (edited) Thats the real beauty of it. The people running around screeching about WikiLeaks being a terrorist organization would have been absolutely THRILLED if WikiLeaks had leaked Iraqi documents, or Iranian documents, or Chinese documents. Theyd be having a massive circle jerk with a life size Julian Assange doll in the center of the circle. The people railing against this are quite simply blinded by nationalism, devotion, and affection. Its not that they really have any rational belief that what wikileaks does is WRONG. That would be silly... its just a bank of gawd damn servers, it doesnt "do" anything. Theyre mad simply because this time WikiLeaks came up against a particular institution, that these people have a slavering affection for, and devotion to. Unfortunately, I agree with you. I think what is going on is this (it's arguably a slight oversimplification, but I don't think it's much of one): There are, roughly speaking, two fairly distinct sides in this debate. That in itself is fairly rare. There is a narrow political class of elites, and their relatively small number of intellectual defenders (including the mainstream news media, who have been assailing wikileaks even as they profit from it)....in opposition to everybody else. The view is elitist in the extreme. I know, they don't see it that way; the Commissars always thought, on some level, they were "on the side of the people" with whom they disagreed about practically everything. One of the more telling aspects of all this has been the way the pro-government-secrecy voices are now drawing an equivalence between private correspondance that you might make to your loved ones, or a conversation I might have with my children---to people acting directly on behalf of the State. It's jaw-dropping. It's as if there's now a hundred lukins here, constructing the most tortuous arguments possible, arguments that one simply could not take seriously. Sure, it's to be expected from some of them. But there are a few surprises as well. There's a doctrinal obedience that seems to go bone-deep. It's difficult to debate at such a point, because they truly believe that the rational is just more old-time, leftist rhetoric. You run up to similar responses if you point out that the powerful Western democracies have been fully and unambiguously involved in obscene terrorist activity. They stop reading--actually, stop thinking--the very moment they hear such words. Any argument and evidence you present subsequent remains invisible. Perhaps on the wikileaks issue too, they've already Chosen Sides, and must remain loyal to that view. They Chose Sides, in fact, long before this happened; this controversy has merely exposed them. Edited December 18, 2010 by bloodyminded Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
maple_leafs182 Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 who cares what he does in his personal life. Quote │ _______ [███STOP███]▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ :::::::--------------Conservatives beleive ▄▅█FUNDING THIS█▅▄▃▂- - - - - --- -- -- -- -------- Liberals lie I██████████████████] ...◥⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙'(='.'=)' ⊙
eyeball Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 It's as if there's now a hundred lukins here, constructing the most tortuous arguments possible, arguments that one simply could not take seriously. I was thinking more like a hundred Mr Canada's all looking up to their state, like children who gaze up at their father. It's jaw-dropping. It's fucking creepy is what it is. I feel like I'm in a zombie movie. Quote A government without public oversight is like a nuclear plant without lead shielding.
bloodyminded Posted December 18, 2010 Report Posted December 18, 2010 I was thinking more like a hundred Mr Canada's all looking up to their state, like children who gaze up at their father. It's fucking creepy is what it is. I feel like I'm in a zombie movie. You're right...Mr. Canada all the way. And yes, it's unusually creepy and obedient, even by the low standards one would expect. Quote As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. --Josh Billings
kimmy Posted December 19, 2010 Report Posted December 19, 2010 I think You're overstating the case. Wikileaks is a lot of people...and Assange is not the leaker, in any case. Unless he's withholding information that he deems politically inconvenient to his own beliefs--and I've heard nothing of the sort from anyone--your statement isn't quite right. WikiLeaks doesn't decide what to publish? Are you sure? This article has a WikiLeaks spokesman claiming that they asked NATO to review files prior to publication. You guys are telling me that WikiLeaks has no responsibility for what gets published on their site, but here's "Daniel Schmitt" claiming that they asked NATO to help them go through the files before they were published so that Afghan civilians wouldn't be put in danger. Are you guys mistaken, or is "Daniel Schmitt" a big fat liar? No? Then what is the formulation in which you don't oppose it? It's always under somebody's expectation of secrecy (rather misconstrued here as "privacy"). Have you devised metrics and measurements for what kinds of whistleblowing are proper? How precise do these measurements need be? Or is it, as the pro-censorship voices have famously had it, "I know obscenity when I see it"? Do you have any definition for "whistleblowing"? Or do you feel that anytime anybody has private information that they wish to publish, it's "whistleblowing"? If anything is whistleblowing as long as person divulging the information thinks people have a right to know, then "Elizabeth" from the opening post is just a whistleblower, no different from anybody who contributes to WikiLeaks. But if you believe information needs to meet a higher standard to qualify as "whistleblowing", then let's talk about that. To me, the term whistleblowing involves the exposure of wrongdoing. If somebody becomes aware of wrongdoing, I believe they have a moral right to make it known. Some of the controversial information published by WikiLeaks certainly qualifies as whistleblowing to me. But not all of it. For example, one morning I woke up and heard about a diplomatic rift between China and North Korea resulting from Chinese officials discussing what's going to happen when Kim Jong Il dies, the potential collapse of the North Korean regime, the possibility of unified Korea under democratic rule, and so-on. I have a hard time rationalizing that as whistleblowing under any definition I'm familiar with. I'd consider that to be legitimate discussion by political officials who were probably doing exactly the job their government and their citizens employ them to do. I'm at a loss to see how the world was made a better place by that being leaked. I'm at a loss to see how leaking the names of Afghan civilians assisting NATO forces makes the world a better place. I'm at a loss to understand how things like that further the cause of justice, or qualify as "whistleblowing" in the commonly understood usage of the term. Can you help me out with that? -k Quote (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Friendly forum facilitator! ┬──┬◡ノ(° -°ノ)
kimmy Posted December 19, 2010 Report Posted December 19, 2010 One would think that "limited government" conservatives would appreciate this, but they are clearly the most outraged, belying their suspicion of Big Gub'mint. (To them, "Big Government" means...taxes. Oh, and leftish politics.) They're Security fetishists, and at bottom, a surprising number of them are reflexively obedient to Power and to Government reach. I think that everybody except the most out-there libertarians and anarchists recognizes a necessity for government. Even those who are most prone to complain about "Big Gub'mint" recognize a need for public infrastructure, law enforcement, international diplomacy, and national defense, among others. Those who believe that we the people have the right to know what our government are doing at all times (like Dr Dre, for example) do not appreciate that total transparency could in many instances undermine the duties we the people expect our government to perform. -k Quote (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Friendly forum facilitator! ┬──┬◡ノ(° -°ノ)
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