Wikileaks

[Beavah]

Nah, still not terrorism, JoeBob. Has da Wikileaks staff blown up a few hundred people in a half dozen different subways? That would be terrorism. Let's not confuse irresponsible journalism with murder.

 

Have yeh actually read the released memos? I haven't yet. In fact, yeh must not have because it's foreign critical infrastructure that was listed in da State Dept. memos, eh? I haven't seen anything on domestic infrastructure.

 

From what da popular press has reported so far, there's nuthin' there of substance. I thought it was goin' to be secret U.S. safehouses and staging areas overseas. Instead it's just a list of foreign strategic assets that anyone with half a brain could find online. I don't think we need Wikileaks to tell us that the Strait of Gibraltar is a vital shipping lane, eh?

 

Close as I can tell the MSM is just hypin' this stuff because it's otherwise a slow news season. It is more entertaining than watching Obama's pre-emptive caving in to congress.

 

Unfortunately, the media hype is gettin' the stuff into the heads of bad actors in ways that Wikileaks on its own never would have. Maybe CNN is the real terrorist!

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[eisely]

I have not looked at any of the leaked documents and do not plan to do so. Based on the commentary I have read, we have seen once again the tendency to over classify banal information. I agree that the leakers are not themselves terrorists, though they may be enabling some terrorism in the future.

 

I am shocked --- shocked to learn that our diplomats were instructed to spy on other countries' diplomats!! Good lord Charlie Brown, that is what diplomats are supposed to do. It would cause me much more concern if our diplomats were instructed to refrain from such activities.

 

This information dump will harm the United States, and the perpetrators should be identified, apprehended, charged, convicted, and punished in accordance with the law. As Beavah has pointed out, treason is off the table, but there are plenty of other things the perps can be charged with.

 

I do not have a great regard for the competence of our intelligence agencies. So I am not greatly surprised that someone found it feasible to pull this off.

[JoeBob]

Here's an excerpt:

 

"Some locations are given unique billing. The Nadym gas pipeline junction in western Siberia, for example, is described as "the most critical gas facility in the world". It is a crucial transit point for Russian gas heading for western Europe.

 

In some cases, specific pharmaceutical plants or those making blood products are highlighted for their crucial importance to the global supply chain.

 

The critical question is whether this really is a listing of potential targets that might be of use to a terrorist, our correspondent says."

 

The cable contains a simple listing. In many cases towns are noted as the location but not actual street addresses, although this is unlikely to stop anyone with access to the internet from locating them.

 

There are also no details of security measures at any of the listed sites.

 

What the list might do is to prompt potential attackers to look at a broader range of targets, especially given that the US authorities classify them as being so important.

 

Beavah, my question is: What is the positive reason for Wiki to leak this information?"

 

 

[vol_scouter]

Have to agree with Beavah here. It is not terrorism or treason. Assange is clearly an enemy. The reason for the leaks is that he is a leftist who would like to see the USA destroyed. It is difficult to envision an easy way to deal with him since to try to remove him by some manner, either legally or by covert means violates what we stand for. It would also make us much like Russia dealing with Alexander Litvinenko by poisoning him with 210Po.

[BS-87]

If he's an enemy whose aim is to see the US destroyed, how is he not a terrorist?

[Beavah]

I'm not sure there's evidence to suggest that he's an "enemy"; certainly not that he wants to see the U.S. destroyed. He's a leftist that might dislike our sole superpower status and who believes we should be held accountable or "checked" in some way. Or the fellow just doesn't believe in governments or big businesses keeping secrets.

 

Even so, just because someone is an enemy doesn't mean they are a terrorist. For da many years of the cold war the former Soviet Union was an enemy. We were engaged in ideological conflict with them in areas around the world. But they were not terrorists, at least not on the international stage (domestically, it's arguable...). Despite our enmity, we negotiated treaties with them and by and large they lived up to their treaty obligations. They (and we) financed revolutionaries and dictators around the world, but those were revolutions and dictatorships, not terrorism. They (and we) engaged in wars ... them in Afghanistan, us in Korea and Vietnam, but just because we engaged in wars does not make us terrorists (though we all would agree that wars do come with pain and some atrocity).

 

Da IRA in Northern Ireland didn't want to see Great Britain destroyed, yet they were terrorists, eh? They deliberately targeted innocent civilians for indiscriminate mass murder.

 

It's important not to inflate the nature of the offense just because yeh happen to be mad at someone. That way lies monsters. Because if yeh allow it to happen to others, the government can do it to you. Refuse to submit to a pat-down and mouth off at the obnoxious TSA official? Terrorist! Protest too vociferously at an anti-abortion rally? Terrorist!

 

Not every bad behavior or lapse of judgment makes yeh equal to Osama bin Laden. Or even to Nikita Kruschev.

 

Beavah

 

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[eisely]

The word "terrorist" is used way too loosely and such usage devalues the word. Unless someone has evidence that the people involved in the leaks have plotted or carried out specific acts of terror, I submit they are not terrorists. One can argue that they may be ennabling terrorism, but they are not terrorists.

[BS-87]

You're suiting the context of the situation to fit your needs and avoid being refuted.

 

The word terrorist doesn't necessarily mean blowing up people or buildings. Some would say that the founding fathers of the US were terrorists. In the case of causing the establishment harm for ideological reasons, we call these people revolutionaries.

 

Something tells me Assange takes pleasure out of thinking himself a revolutionary...

[Beavah]

Yah, hmmm....

 

This took another turn toward da strange today, with the U.S. State Department pressuring PayPal to not accept WikiLeaks donations or payments, claiming that Wikileaks is engaged in "illegal activity".

 

First, the State Department has no business interferin' with a domestic business, nor should it be assuming what is the proper role of the Justice Department. Second, the government should not be able to disrupt private banking transactions being undertaken by citizens without a court finding.

 

So I've now moved firmly over to WikiLeaks side. Yeh should never let the Executive Branch take the livelihood or liberty of private citizens without due process and the considered judgment of the Judicial Branch and a jury of citizens. Otherwise the Executive can simply "defund" people with opinions it doesn't like, by curtailing their access to the private banking system. This sort of abuse by the Obama administration is unconscionable.

 

Beavah

 

[Proud Eagle]

Do the actions of WikiLeads fully conform to the Scout Oath and Law?

 

 

 

 

No?

 

 

 

Then it should receive no support, nor aid, nor comfort on these forums.

[scoutingagain]

Nor do the actions of the government in this case.

 

SA

 

 

[Beavah]

Yah, ProudEagle, I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

 

As SA says, if the actions of the government and the actions of a private citizen are both contrary to sound judgment and proper behavior, then it's the government that you should worry about, because it has more power to do real harm. Da bigger the government, the greater the potential harm.

 

The Executive should not be allowed to curtail the livelihood and liberty of individuals it disagrees with by international lobbying, political pressure, and interference in the private right to contract.

 

We can all point to an occasional anti-abortion protester who crosses the line, eh? Are yeh ready for the Obama administration to tell PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa that they can no longer accept and forward donations to the National Right to Life because the administration doesn't like them, or they maybe did something that we really can't even make a criminal case about but we felt was "harmful to our interests"? Are yeh ready for the Obama administration pressuring web services providers to disable all of the Tea Party websites and block access internationally because they are critical of the president and one Tea Party member posting might have said something that could possibly have been interpreted as a threat against the President?

 

That's what we're talkin' about here. We defend the liberty of even those who don't follow da Oath and Law because it is our duty to God and Country to defend Liberty.

 

Beavah

 

 

[CalicoPenn]

So news reports out have "supporters of Wikileaks" taking credit for a cyber-hack attack on the website of Mastercard because Mastercard will no longer allow their cards to be used to provide support to Wikileaks.

 

Does that change anyone's mind? Can cyber-attacks be classified as a form of terrorism? Does this strengthen or weaken arguments that Wikileaks is or is not a terrorist group?

 

As for the goverment putting pressure on companies not to help fund Wikileaks, ever hear of OFAC? Thats the Office of Foreign Assets Control. It administers and enforces our trade sanctions around the world. One way it does that is to maintain a list of individuals, companies and organizations that it is illegal to do business with. It's been in existence in one form or another since 1940, so this is not a new thing created by the Obama administration. During the Bush 2 administration, the list grew by leaps and bounds with the addition of hundreds of individuals and organizations of and for Muslims and Arabs. Want to donate $20 to the Kuwaiti-Cambodia Orphanage Association? Can't - its on the OFAC list - and doing so makes you liable for criminal prosecution, all because someone decided that they may be involved in illegal activities or it was against our best interests. I don't hear a lot of screaming about the OFAC list - perhaps because most people don't know about it. Or maybe because it's just Muslims and Arabs and they're terrorists so it doesn't matter.

 

Now I'm not saying it's right - I'm opposed to the OFAC list. In a free country, we should have the right to send our money to whomever or whatever we want - thats real freedom and liberty. But that list exists, and until we can get rid of it, until we can rid this country on the mind-set that having such a list is consistent with liberty and freedom, then I just can't get that incensed about the Government suggesting to companies that it might not be in their best interests to do business with a foreign organization that may be involved in illegal activities.

 

And don't think it's just a foreign thing. Want to get rid of communists? Make it illegal to be a member of the communist party and give money to the communist party in the US. Our government did just that.

 

 

[OldGreyEagle]

well, the good news is no one said they were using Gestapo Tactics or that anyone was a Nazi

[CalicoPenn]

I had missed this:

 

"First, the State Department has no business interferin' with a domestic business"

 

The phrase that pops out is "Domestic Business". On the face of the statement, I would have to agree that the State Department has no business interfering. But...the sentence is about Wikileaks, and I'm not sure that Wikileaks is a Domestic Business.

 

Perhaps it's part of a new internationalism that we need to figure out. I know Wikileaks has (or had) servers in the US, but they have servers in many countries. It's headquarters is allegedly in Sweden, and it allegedly is operating under Germany's charitable laws. So are we prepared for this kind of company? One that proclaims they operate with no real structure, no office one can point to definitively, just a collection of people working for a common goal, with a titular head (Assange - the public face, but is he really the guy in charge of Wikileaks?), in many different countries? I don't think you can call it Domestic. International perhaps, but not Domestic. It seems that the legal ties are mostly in Europe.

 

Come to think of it, now that I've typed that out, the structure seems to resemble other organization structures that we've seen - Al Qaeda springs to mind.