Anonymous Declares "Infowar" on Wikileaks Opponents

[jpoon]

I'm absolutely with Anon on this one. Wikileaks needs to be able to speak, however they wish. GO GO GO!

 

[Ih8pkmn]

Isn't it great we live in an age where free speech is supported so much by the governments of the world?

I mean, gee whiz, it's not like anyone is imprisoned for 11 years for speaking out against their government, and wins a Nobel Peace Prize during that time, and isn't even allowed to attend their own ceremony!

Isn't it great that we can tell the truth about our governments and what they think about other countries without fear of prosecution? And even if we did, hypothetically, we would get a fair trial! What a great world we live in!

Sorry, am I layering on the sarcasm too thickly?

And even if they don't get the head of wikileaks on this whole mess, they'll probably rig the court so that he gets jail time over his rape charge.

Anyway, I'm rambling. But I'll bet that, before the end of next year, Anon is a registered terrorist group because of this.

 

[The Seldom Seen Kid]

Like a choke chain on a dog.

He has no divine right to do this, nothing that makes him above the law. But someone had to.

And that's why he's doing the right thing, he's deliberately NOT being the hero, allowing himself to be hated by the majority of the populace so that there can be some accountability.

That's what will make him a martyr for truth. A watchful protector. A silent guardian. A dark knight.
That just happened.

Damn you, I saw that quote coming half a mile away. But I was just like "Oh, no, he won't do it."
But you did.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Wow, America is really trying to show the world how big it's dick is by going after this one guy?

Let's see if they can do it, if so, there's something wrong with the world.

 

[Octorok]

I'm sorry but to hell with this rapist. His alleged sexual-assault crime aside, the man has exposed HIGHLY classified material on the damn internet. No, I don't mean historical documents concerning the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Those documents are history are fully protected by the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press, look up the Pentagon Papers for a similar case involving the Vietnam War and government leaks. I know the man is Australian, but I'm going to judge him by the American legal system.

However, what is NOT PROTECTED is divulging secrets that pose a national security threat. Like say the locations of HIGHLY IMPORTANT sites according to Homeland Security. If I was a terrorist (be it for Al-Qaeda, Neo-Nazi, IRA, etc.) then a list like that is essentially a travel log of where to commit the most horrific result. That's not freedom of the press, that's putting people's lives in danger. So please do not act all surprised when you see politicians in my country calling for his head, he's not some righteous savior...he's a fucking asshole

"Asshole" doesn't really cover that. Exposing the security threats that he did, he's broken the meaning of Free Speech.

See - I can hold a rally in my country for people who, say, want to Save the Gay Whales. That's my right to voice my opinion in public and demonstrate my commitment to Saving Gay Whales.

My rights do not include the ability to publish classified information about a war that is currently going on, endangering lives and breaking insane numbers of laws.

Putting aside the rape charges - I really don't see why he can't be arrested for Wikileaks alone. The public do not have the right to freedom of all information. Of course all governments are shady here and there. The US wouldn't be such a big player on the world stage today if it never tortured a guy, or covertly had someone assassinated. They're just facts, that underhand business goes on behind the public's back, pretty often. I accept this. Other people seem to see him as some kind of Crusader For Good by revealing that *GASP*, sometimes countries will discuss other countries in private and not be very nice about them!

Speaking Morally, Legally and with a sense of decency and respect to governments around the globe, this man deserves to go to prison for a long, long time.

 

[incal11]

My rights do not include the ability to publish classified information about a war that is currently going on, endangering lives and breaking insane numbers of laws.

I agree with you on the endangering lives part, this is why I said that what wikileak does should sometime be done more responsibly.
However I think retarded laws should be broken whenever possible, but thats assuming ones know what laws really are retarded and why, plus this brings the discussion on the whole social contract stuff...

I really don't see why he can't be arrested for Wikileaks alone. The public do not have the right to freedom of all information. Of course all governments are shady here and there. The US wouldn't be such a big player on the world stage today if it never tortured a guy, or covertly had someone assassinated.

Ah, but everyone should have freedom of all information so that in the future governments do not need to be so shady in the first place. As history has proven, humanism isn't a slipery slope, but totalitarism is.

I don't feel much respect for governements, including my own. I do feel respect for the persons who make good changes happen.

 

[Zenode]

Im sorry but i don't see how Wikileaks is any good. Yes its nice if they expose something disgusting that the government/military/whatever have done to people.

Some of the documents reveal military plans, volatile targets and other things which have been kept hidden because they basically protect people.

There is Freedom of Information and there is goddamn international safety concerns, Wikileaks is naming suspected terrorists and who are being watched....I'm pretty sure if you saw yourself named as a suspected terrorist and you WERE a terrorist it would be highly goddamn convenient to know that people were watching you so you didn't make some stupid move which exposed yourself.

Or a document exposing the movement and intended travel logs of highly Important VIPs. Imagine the headline
"President killed due to travel log being exposed via Wikileaks" wouldn't seem so necessary now to see all this TOP SECRET stuff now would it?

Im sorry, but I do believe in some information being oppressed for safety concerns.

I really dont care about the sexual assault charges or anything like that but people who think that ALL this stuff needs exposing really needs to not be so thick and remember that some things are kept hidden for a reason.

 

[Therumancer]

Like most internet discussions, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm not looking for a fight, but I like looking for high minded discussions to force me to analyse my arguments and motivations in depth. That implies being open about the possibility of being wrong, I understand that's not everybody's cup of tea
This is issue is a bit new to me, so my opinions on the details is not set in stone.

Negotiation and Compromise are not the solution to every problem. Indeed, a lot of our problems today come from too much compromise and it preventing anything from getting done as it is.

That and polite discussions would be enough if only everyone were mature and responsible, I can only regret that it's not the case.

Oil is one of the big issues in the media, but it also applies to everything else from minerals to wood. (...) there isn't enough resources for our exploding populations to all have a decent standard of living, especially at the rate of increase. A lot of it comes down to being unfair, but pragmatic. (...)
This is incidently one of the big reasons why I mention that the population needs to be reduced (probably though war) and then stabilized, followed by a world unity and space travel to obtain more resources and living space. Without that, we're done as a species.

Yes, really, our world is now like a big Easter island, about to have every trees cut down, warring tribes too preoccupied by getting the wood for hauling down those big inward looking statues. Funny that each tribe used to think they would be the ones to prevail in the end...
Following your vision, extinction is more likely than space travel.

Diplomacy exists mostly to keep allied nations with similar vested interests together, and keep an eye on differant groups to prevent them from selling each other out. Not to mention to act competitively with third parties to get them to give us what we want as opposed to the other guy, which of course resorts in a lot of very frank comments, and underhanded dealing.

This is how it's been working since the dawn of times. I know I'm a hopeless dreamer, but wouldn't it be nice to evolve from this ?

As "bad" as it sounds, humanity actully benefits from that because the sooner we see a major power unify everyone (I won't go into the potential details) the sooner we can see resources invested in obtaining more resources. Of course the guys being kept down and exploited aren't going to EVER see things that way at the time it's going on.

The ones not holding the big guns are not about to share your opinion if they are wiped out in the process. This is a dangerous view you have, because basically you are calling for a repeat of past mistakes, maybe you can guess which ones I'm thinking about.

A form of world union could come about someday, there will be hitches in the road of course, but force and cynism are not what will make it happen.

The thing is that time is of the essence. One can't hope for the world to unify "some day" with a constantly expanding population, and dwindling resources. A failure to take action and unify the planet is going to result with everything on the planet being used up, and then being trapped here, unable to obtain more resources, until our sun finally dies billions of years from now. It's really something we need to see happen within the next century tops, and given that people can live 80 or more years that means a single generation and you need to start seeing the motions in that direction now.

Truthfully, I think the spread of ideas is going to do a lot of it. A lot can be said for the US conquering the wold with the Big Mac and Starbucks (as some people have pointed out), but in the end there are cultures like China that just aren't going to get with the program even given a couple of decades. This ultimatly means that war is inevitable. Not to mention the simple fact that we need less people on the planet, and other than a war, what are we going to do? Hold a murder lottery? Nobody is going to volunteer to be culled, and in the end we'd wind up fighting "wars" against the rioters anyway. We had our chance to embrace Zero Population Growth, we failed, we don't have the time to see a slow reduction in global population since we'll deplete the planet before it happens.

Once a world unity exists, which will happen due to a combination of ideas and conquest, then a lot of basic facts can change. Simply put as long as there is "us and them" it's impossible to be nice all the time, since in the end everyone wants the resources and the highest standard of living for their own people, and that means those resources come at someone else's expense since there just isn't enough stuff.

As far as my attitude that "violence solves problems" goes, I think a lot of the "major mistakes" are mistakes largely when viewed from a position of modern morality. Not one of pure pragmatism. Indeed in most cases where people talk about how situations involving extreme violence failed, it's oftentimes a matter of the aggressor not going far enough, oftentimes because of developing morality, or the distaste in the deeds themselves.

If you look back at Rome and it's attitude of "Total War" it pretty much operated on a principle that you either became part of Rome, or you died entirely. By this I mean wiping cultures out completly. Kill or enslave the women and children to be bred out of existance, salt the earth, hunt down the survivors. Entire peoples were erased this way.

Rome fell not because of it's extreme militarism, but because it STOPPED employing it. Once Rome got big enough it got decadent, nobody wanted to fight or do what was nessicary anymore. The outlying provinces which had just been added ceased to fear the Romans and broke away, the Legions became a shadow of their former selves because who wanted to join the military to die or engage in slaughter?

The Romans convinced themselves that Rome would be forever, because it controlled trade. What nations they hadn't conquered needed Rome's markets, and everyone including the meanest barbarians used the roads built and maintained by Rome, so who was going to get rid of them given all the benefits they provided?

You might have heard the term "Barbarians At The Gates", that comes from the simple fact that Rome became so moralized and so detached from reality and the bottom line that even with hordes appearing outside the walls, Rome refused to take action because "oh well, The Barbarians must just be here to train". The Legions weren't near the cities so they wouldn't get in the way (and weren't what they used to be), and everyone believed problems could be resolved by trade and diplomacy. They were wrong.... Rome burned, and the entire Empire fell.

A lot of comparisons are made between the USA and Rome, though for obvious reasons they aren't perfect. The USA went from being a massive global force, and a military power that everyone feared and respected, to a giant marketplace, defended by a military that won't even deploy it's own weapons to their full capacity even when someone launches a decapitation strike against the nation for moral reasons. Due to the limitations we put on ourselves and the objectives we set for moral reasons the US military might not have been defeated (yet) but we also haven't won a serious armed conflict since World War II (which we won by pulling out all the stops and being the bigger bastards).

Such are my thoughts, but as I said, we will have to agree t disagree here.

 

[incal11]

as long as there is "us and them" it's impossible to be nice all the time, since in the end everyone wants the resources and the highest standard of living for their own people, and that means those resources come at someone else's expense since there just isn't enough stuff.

There is a ground of truth to what you say, but you are being overly alarmist, and use this for a call to world domination through force. This is absolutely logic, but only because this is the primal way. You should reflect more on the history of Easter island, I don't think you got it. The earth's ressources are bigger than we can conceive, oil is just one of them and not even the best, but the most convenient to us.
Where we disagree is because you say "us or them" and I "we the human race".
I'm not asking for everyone to be nice all the time, just a bit less xenophobic and self-centered.

Rome fell not because of it's extreme militarism, but because it STOPPED employing it.

The fall of Rome was slow, complicated, and very different than what most think. To begin the growth of the Roman empire stopped because they could not possibly get enough soldiers to watch the borders, let alone continue to expand. The romans certainly did not become soft-hearted, especially toward the barbarians. Rome was burned down several times, and it was because the wheels of power had spun. The lesson here is that Rome achieved nothing in the end but pave the way to the dark ages and decorate the landscape with it's ruins.
In modern times a few countries have dreamed themselves the new Rome, they were not democracies.

Force and/or trickery will only perpetuate the viscious circle resting on instincts of territorial domination.
Idealism, for what it is, is still what we owe most of our rights to, so I say let's go that way...
Please take some time to reflect on this, instead of just agreeing to disagree.

 

[Kenko]

I'm sorry but to hell with this rapist. His alleged sexual-assault crime aside, the man has exposed HIGHLY classified material on the damn internet. No, I don't mean historical documents concerning the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Those documents are history are fully protected by the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press, look up the Pentagon Papers for a similar case involving the Vietnam War and government leaks. I know the man is Australian, but I'm going to judge him by the American legal system.

However, what is NOT PROTECTED is divulging secrets that pose a national security threat. Like say the locations of HIGHLY IMPORTANT sites according to Homeland Security. If I was a terrorist (be it for Al-Qaeda, Neo-Nazi, IRA, etc.) then a list like that is essentially a travel log of where to commit the most horrific result. That's not freedom of the press, that's putting people's lives in danger. So please do not act all surprised when you see politicians in my country calling for his head, he's not some righteous savior...he's a fucking asshole

I think you got it all wrong. Its your leaders that are the fucking assholes. If they hadnt been and continue to be such grotesque fucking assholes. This would never have needed too happen.

 

[Romblen]

That doesn't surprise me, it would be too much to expect anonymous to do well, anything right.

 

[Charli]

There's too much conflicting with me here. Information is dangerous if mishandled true, but sometimes it snowballs into bigger and more devastating lies and coverups if withheld too long.

...I somewhat approve of anonymous backing them up but I'm too much of a pussy to stand on one side of the issue or the other. Why are no choices in life ever easy anymore...

 

[Do4600]

Anonymous, at heart I feel, is a glory seeker if nothing else, that community is made up of everybody from furry psychopaths to dedicated intellectuals as their quote on the OP page demonstrates. Their actions mirror my own feelings in this particular case.

My opinion is that wiki-leaks is a champion in the fight for transparency within governments and corporations. It's important to note that he only provides a forum for this information, to give whistle blowers an opportunity to expose corruption within our governments and corporations anonymously and he takes all the fallout from it.

"The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them."

This is so important right now, the United States government is quickly becoming a representation, not of it's citizens, but of the objectives and moralities of it's corporations. Exposing these practices may put us closer to a paradigm shift in the way we conduct politics worldwide.

These cables were shared on a "secured" military extranet. This particular system was started after 9/11 to increase the amount of information available to all security agencies and the armed forces. The reason I say "secured" is because access to the system exploded; whenever you're talking about security and intelligence usually the less people that know the better. The system currently has something more than 2 million users; a system is only as secure as it's users.

For everybody who has demonized Julian Assange you should really be thinking more about the even more sensitive data that is probably wandering around that leaky extranet and who can gain access to it; now think about the overall competency of our intelligence agencies; now think about how poorly the United States is rated on education.

Also for those of you who don't live in the U.S. let me share a little something I heard; apparently the head of the "Department of Homeland Security" can now be seen in Walmarts across the country on T.V. screens asking you to report suspicious activity. If that doesn't sound like the final straw before Dystopia I don't know what does.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. "

-Benjamin Franklin

 

[FinalGamer]

This entire case is fishy. And not just because of the Scandinavians XD

It's the Americans trying to crowbar into this that are the most suspect of it all. It would be just a straight-up rape accusation from an ultra-feminist who believes that a broken condom is somehow the man's fault (and not even regarding the fact that, yanno, he actually decided to put one on which makes him a pretty decent man anyway), but with the Americans in this, it feels like a bad episode of Spooks.

 

[milkkart]

this title should really read 'anonymous DDoSes websites, media coins another meaningless buzzword.'

 

[wammnebu]

this is illuminating, if i want to find howard & johnson's 500 flavors of crazy i just find a post about wikileaks. Good thing the internet didnt exist during the truman or kennedy administrations.

you guys are hillarious espouting your chants and nationalistic rants (and im not talking exclusively to the americans here)

if you think about it though anon was literally anon, doing cracks on peta and stupid things like that but now it has tacked itself onto julian's accomplishment (good or bad irrelevant)and now they are famous and an international figure too! talk about attention whores

 

[CobraX]

Give 'em Hell, Kid.

 

[Schizzy]

Anyone thinking Wikileaks is such a great idea should think again.

Thanks to them, ties between Malaysia and Singapore are yet again strained. All because of a few negative remarks about the way Malaysia is run. There are now idiots trying to rip Malaysian-Singapore relations apart.

They may not be big countries, but people live there too.