Wikileaks « POWIP

12Dec/106

Assange, Privacy and Rape

In the process of excoriating Naomi Wolf for her argument that rape allegations against Julian Assange are obviously a trumped up attempt at punishing him for the WikiLeaks, Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon says something eminently sane:

But just because a story smells a little off, that doesn't make it completely rotten. It shouldn't anyway -- unless you're Wolf, who, in a snippy open letter to Interpol this week, decided Assange had been a victim of "the dating police," because he'd been "accused of having consensual sex with two women." Actually, among other things, one of the alleged victims accused him of having decidedly nonconsensual sex with her while she was asleep, and the other has accused him of "using his body weight to hold [her] down in a sexual manner."

Oh no, not our Julian! Instead of considering the veracity of the claims, Wolf quickly pieced together a tale in which "both alleged victims are upset that he began dating a second woman while still being in a relationship with the first," a drama of "what appears to be personal injured feelings." Or maybe not, given that the charges arose when one of the alleged victims contacted the other, and the two compared their apparently very similar stories. They have also retained the same counsel.

In short, it would come as no surprise that Assange is persona non grata with various intelligence agencies and their governments, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's not a douchebag.

For the past couple of weeks, we have watched the left intelligentsia argue that governments that they don't like have no right to private correspondence. At the same time, we are fully aware from our time blogging on the internet that, in cases where people with the correct opinions are involved, there is an absolute right to privacy. Anyone who doesn't have the correct opinions who's outed a particularly nasty troll has learned that it's so. Indeed, you can point people toward a publicly available bit of information on the tubez, and discover that your behavior is shockingly beyond the pale, even though classified documents relating to matters of national security are, to use the Plame expression, Fair Game.

The Obama Administration had plenty of warning that Assange and company were going to spill a vast array of classified intelligence, and its response was tepid, to say the least. After the dump, an Italian diplomat, with Italian hyperbole, chose to call the leaks the 9/11 of international diplomacy. My reactions were a bit more like Claire Berlinski's, but that doesn't mean that I don't believe that everyone involved, up to and including MSM outlets who gleefully dumped the material, in stark contrast to the way they treated the East Anglia Climategate material, ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do I demonstrate my own duplicity regarding the East Anglia leaks by saying so? Not really, in my opinion, because the East Anglia leakers were motivated not only by the systematic fraud that was going on inside the institution, but also by the institution's open disdain for information requests to which they were under legal obligation to respond. What we can say without fear of error is that the Administration has expended a great deal more time, money and effort suppressing access to Obama's school records than it did trying to deal with the leaks, as newly minted Supreme Court Justice Kagan can confirm, whether or not she personally represented Obama or did so merely through her office.

Hayden and other Sixties radicals have copped to the fact that one of the principal attractions to guys of Sixties radicalism was easy access to chicks, whose provision of Free Love might or might not be voluntarily offered to The Cause. No matter how valid your beef, it would have been uncool to go to the pigs. And we see the same dynamics among the starry-eyed who troop off to represent the righteous Palestinian cause, only to discover the omerta imposed by fellow leftists in the wake of violation and even forced marriage to their abusers.

That stuff's no more newsworthy than the Pigfrauds.

Regarding privacy issues, Jerry Wilson has a stimulating post about employees' and potential employees' online lives.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Tagged as: assange, journalism, kagan, Obama, privacy, rape, Wikileaks 6 Comments

29Nov/100

Priorities? Anyone?

While I don't necessarily think shutting down the wikileaks site would actually prevent the leaking, there's a lot to be said for the apparently confused priorities of the Obama Administration. The sad irony is that if Assange had been giving away pirated copies of, say, Lady Gaga, he'd have been shut down a long time ago.

Frankly, Manning should be hung from the gallows. Or drawn and quartered. As someone who has access to various levels of intelligence, I find his breach of trust to be unforgiveable. I assume any execution would be private, so I propose a backup punishment. A very public life sentence in the form of a reality series called "Leavenworth." It could be produced and filmed by Armed Forces Network, allowing aspiring directors and producers to cut their teeth. Any money made from syndication could be given to wounded veterans. TLC might pick it up.

Maybe one of our artists could come up with a logo for the show?

Adam Wells

Living life at 84 mph and 7000 feet. All I ask is that you don't block traffic, act like a professional, and don't act all surprised when your actions have consequences. Oh, and don't complain about the refs; trust me, they don't care if your team wins or not.

Tagged as: assange, Bradley Manning, Obama, Wikileaks No Comments

28Jul/102

Wikileaks “outs” hundreds of Afghan informants

Via the publication of the 92,000 some classified intelligence reports. And I don't mean forcing them to come out of the rhetorical closet either!

It turns out that the same reports that people keep saying reveal nothig new, provide no big surprise to Americans who've been keeping up with the news from the AF-Pak theater, or as Cap'n Ed keeps quipping, read Long War Journal, actually do contain some fresh revelations; the names of hundreds of people who are either cooperating with, or acting as informants for, US forces!

Hundreds of Afghan civilians who worked as informants for the U.S. military have been put at risk by WikiLeaks' publication of more than 90,000 classified intelligence reports which name and in many cases locate the individuals, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.

The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.

One specific example cited by the paper is a report on an interview conducted by military officers of a potential Taliban defector. The militant is named, along with his father and the village in which they live.

"The leaks certainly have put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans," a senior official at the Afghan foreign ministry told The Times on condition of anonymity. "The U.S. is both morally and legally responsible for any harm that the leaks might cause to the individuals, particularly those who have been named. It will further limit the U.S./international access to the uncensored views of Afghans."

One former intelligence official told the paper that the Taliban could launch revenge attacks on "traitors" in the coming days. [emphasis-ed.]

Well, this is sure going to make it hard to recruit people to take the places of those "outed", eh? Not only because their names might be printed in a newspaper somewhere, rendering them ineffective anyway, but because of, er, peer pressure; you know, the fact that they'll probably be effin' killled! That's some reward for sticking their necks out to help US forces, especially when the Taliban already thinks it can outwait us until next summer when Obama will begin ordering the troop withdraws in order to fight a more important battle; with the Rethugs! during campaign 2012...

But, Mr. Obama is not the focus of my anger today, especially after reading this story. No, that is reserved for Bradley Manning, the "inside" source for the leaks; just what the heck was he thinking anyway? Clearly this is treason. He violated his oath, and needs to spend the rest of his days at Fort Leavenworth where the other inmates can constantly "remind him" of the especially loathesome nature of this traitorous act. YMMV.

My very special, white hot, OUTRAGE! though is reserved for that asshat Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Because, as Cap'n Ed points out, although Manning provided the information, Assange is the one who chose to publish it. And his cheap publicity stunt will effectively become a death sentance for Afghan collaborators. This piece of sh*t will have the blood of any and all victims of Taliban reprisals on his hands, as well as of the US troops killed in the future due to the local's reluctance to step forward and cooperate.

Of course, this weasel is worried about his own skin:

Julian Assange, the Australian founder of Wikileaks, has said he has been warned by "inside sources in the White House" not to return to the US as he could be arrested.

Yeah...Inside the White House. If this putz wasn't such a weasel, I might be able to get a little h8te going over that statement. Too bad "the company" doesn't specialize in "wet work" anymore. Maybe they can get a contractor to do the job. Or maybe, just hack his site and put up a post declaring a new Mohhamed cartoon drawing contest...

That would surely get results.