With Wikileaks Releasing Syrian Emails, Will People Realize It's Not Just Targeting The US?
from the radical-transparency dept
One of the bizarre issues that came out after Wikileaks began releasing its treasure trove of US State Department cables, was this suggestion from the US government that Wikileaks was clearly an anti-US organization. However, as has been pointed out time and time again, it's not: it's an anti-secrecy organization. You can agree or disagree with that position, but the various attempts to brand Wikileaks and Julian Assange as particularly anti-American (and to even look to use Espionage Act claims against them) always seemed misguided. With the latest release of millions of Syrian government emails, it makes you wonder if those same people who were complaining about the organization being anti-American are now also complaining about it being "anti-Syrian."Randomly, this can't be particularly surprising when, as we noted a few months ago, some hackers had worked out that a large number of high level government officials in Syria used 12345 as their email password.
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Filed Under: julian assange, leaks, state department, syria
Companies: wikileaks
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Nope
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And somebody change the combination on my luggage!
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Guess they're anti-Swiss, too. /s
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Why I like Techdirt
2. "Spaceballs" references need not be explained (Ditto Star Wars).
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Probably to help maintain Iran. If you remove Syria, Iran falls in short order. Then the whole monetary and hardware support for terrorism thing starts drying up. In a couple years it leads to destabilization of a couple countries in south america. Its a bunch of domino's.
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Syria will probably take care of itself in short order anyway.
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It's a lot like the police saying they are not racist, yet they only pull over brown people. And then point to the one white guy they have a parking ticket to 3 months ago as proof they aren't racist.
I don't believe that wikileaks is after America specifically, but actions speak louder than words. You want to make people stop saying that, prove it and this kind of thing goes a long way toward that.
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Re: What on earth are you on about?
They've released plenty of stuff in the years since 2006 that is not "targeted" at the US. It's nonsense and fluff to suggest otherwise.
Even Hilary Clinton was praising Wikileaks before the US was embarassed. If the people you speak of do not hate the US and its Constitution, if they are not determined to be slovenly and negligent in their democractic duties, they should not have a problem and in fact should be pleased that the citizens of the US would be given the information needed to check and balance their government.
People in free democracies who resent hearing bad news about their own government are slovenly and negligent. People died for their freedoms. A bit of self monitoring of their own government is a small ask in comparison.
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Targetted?
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Wikileaks was so anti-USA that the US Government used its revelations to put additional pressure on the Kenyan government.
Oh, wait. That's not anti-USA at all.
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Anti-secrecy = anti- US gov't
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There's no point to life without it. We might as well stick our feet in the soil and grow leaves.
I'm with the brave ones who have taken the rap for the human race for aeons and still do. Not for me that sly, devious, murderous wheeling and dealing to fill the puny Big Guys' bottomless pit of need and greed.
Did any PhD correlate corrupt regimes with poor potty training?
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Remind me to change the combination on my luggage.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/07/hold-syria-akhbar.html
I can personally testify, that yes, the paper is staunchly pro-syrian - forget about reading any balanced viewpoints
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Now, far away from me the thought of propagating any kind of disinformation, but: a relatively reliable French site dedicated to conveying information and comments you don't find everywhere in the French-speaking world stated yesterday (without citing its sources!) that Qatar might have paid 10 million British pounds to Wikileaks for the publication of those Syrian documents – within the next two months (?)
Personally, I don't believe it, but then I've learned by now that it's not because I don't believe in something that it can't turn out to be true.
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