> In other words, you can't name any egregious errors.
I'm not your monkey, and I don't want to do work that's already done.
If you really need an additional error that wasn't mentionted in the annotated transcript
No, I don't need an additional error. I need
"egregious errors." If you're not my monkey, then the least you can do is attempt to make your case. That's why you're here, isn't it? I'm not the only one on this board who has come away unimpressed from a reading of Assange's gloss.
Yet again, everyone that doesn't share you opinion is an idiot
Which only begs the question: just what IS my opinion on the subject of "principled leaking"?
Do you even know? (Yes, I know you'll probably respond that you couldn't care less, but it happens to be highly relevant.)
As far as the "Informers need to die" comment ascribed to Assange by some journalists at The Guardian, let's scope back a bit from the He-said-She-said aspect of that since it's unresolvable here, and look instead at a couple of things that are NOT in dispute.
1. Assange has said that hackers should be anarchists, not hawks.
2. Assange's hacker name, invoking noble untruthfulness, though partly ironic, alluded to his sense of mission as a noble hero battling villains. (Both 1&2 hint at the possibility of what Ball calls "noble cause corruption")
3. Assange shows himself to be fairly blase about the lives of those who collaborate with the US government in some way - not conflicted, but blase. (See below)
4. Assange misrepresents the facts: when asked why so many [of his left-leaning associates!] have faulted the inadequacy of his so-called (loftily named) "harm minimization process", he blames the Pentagon. Read for yourself:
The question of harm minimization: You came in for a lot of criticism of that, that you were in your initial conversations not concerned.
That's absolutely false, and this is a typical rhetorical trick --
Why does this keep coming up? Why are there people out there that are saying that you didn't care if informants were killed?
It's absolutely false. And I'll explain to you why it keeps coming up. First of all, this is the bog-standard tactic of the Pentagon. Whenever they are or expect to be criticized for slaying innocent civilians, thousands -- in the case of the Afghan war diaries -- [of] people killed documented in this conflict, over 20,000 in our material. Whenever they come under that criticism, they use the bog-standard rhetorical trick which is to turn the precise criticism that you expect back on your opponent.
So the criticism that they were expecting is they were involved in the situation that has led to the deaths -- that documents deaths of over 20,000 people. So what do they say? They say we might have blood on our hands when their own records document that broader military conflict killing 20,000 people.
Now, if we go to the detail about names, it is right to name names. It is absolutely right to name names. It is not necessarily right to name every name. We're dealing with a situation where we have in Kabul radio stations, who are meant to be independent, who are funded by USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], taking PSYOPS programming content, psychological operations programming content, to be played on their radio stations as news, but it is actually propaganda. Now, the names of those people involved, do the Afghan people have a right to understand which one of their media channels are propaganda and which one is the true independent? Of course they do.
So here we have Assange dismissing questions about his judgment as DoD agitprop when he knows full well that much of comes from his own Wikileaks people and investigative journalists he's collaborated with. He also makes it sound self-evident that anyone who collaborates with the US government is fair game. (How is the above so different from Nick Davies' recollection: 'If an Afghan civilian helps coalition forces, he deserves to die.' He went on to say that they have the status of a collaborator or an informant.")
In the above-quoted transcript, I don't hear the murmurs of someone who ever wrestles with his conscience or agonizes over gray areas, do you?
DO YOU???
Assange was never trained as an investigative journalist. Although he sometimes likes to ally himself with that cause ("We, as all good investigative journalists do, name names") he doesn't talk like an investigative journalist because he doesn't THINK like one.
And he sure as hell doesn't act like one.
Bill Keller, New York Times:
[Assange] was angry that we declined to link our online coverage of the [Afghan] war logs to his website, .. we feared – rightly- that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets. “Where’s the respect?” he demanded. “Where’s the respect?”
Assange comes across to a lot of people who know him and who've worked with him as someone who can get more exercised over respect for him than respect for the lives of others.
Why is that? And how do YOU know that no one was harmed. Does the Taliban send you email updates? How about dictators?
I guess that's why they invited him to host a Q&A on a documentary by Belarusian dissidents... Can I see the evidence? Oh, you only've got hearsay from people who hate Assange? Nothing was ever substantiated? Noone ever harmed by those mysterious cables? Strange.
Careful or someone will mistake you for Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair. It's usually considered appropriate to wait for an answer rather than to supply yourself.
Here's some evidence. Not the sources. Do you see any right-wing rags among them?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/20129410312450511.htm l
http://gawker.com/5889863/uk-mag-links-julian-assange-and-wikileaks-to -brutal-european-dictator
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/02/wikileaks-belarus-and-israel- shamir/
The latter link to index on censorship includes a set of questions posed to WikiLeaks that were met with a terse non-reply from "a representative":
‘We have no further reports on this “rumour/issue”.
Another Wikileaks representative told Index “obviously it is not approved" [Whatever that means]
Sounds like a friggin' representative from Monsanto, doesn't it? So much for transparency, dude. Must make you feel real good being an apologist for Assange.
Here are the questions that Assange & co refused to answer:
We would be grateful if you could look into the following, and the following questions:
a) What is the official status of Israel Shamir at Wikileaks?
b) Is it true that Mr Shamir has released additional cables from the US embassy in Minsk (i.e. other than the five already on the website) to the Belarus authorities? If so, do you know which cables?
c) How many cables from the US embassy in Minsk are in Wikileaks’ possession in total?
We are especially concerned that cables which outline funding relationships between foreign bodies and the Belarusian government may be used to prosecute opposition activists for “commercial crimes”; therefore could you answer the following 2 questions:
d) Other than the five cables already released on the website, can these be provided to Index on Censorship and or other groups? If so, which cables and when will they be available and to whom?
e) Have any of the cables relating to Belarus been redacted by WikiLeaks?
Index on Censorship, as you know, has been broadly supportive of Wikileaks on the question of free expression and freedom of information. Our overall mission is to promote free expression and safeguard the rights of those seeking to exercise their free expression. The actions of the Belarus government, by any standards violate those freedoms.
We look forward to hearing from you as a matter of urgency.
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