aggressive interrogation methods: Torture.
alien unprivileged enemy belligerent: A person who is not a US citizen.
endanger the troops: Publish the truth.
enhanced coercive interrogation technique: Torture.
extraordinary rendition: Abduction, usually followed by torture.
honour the troops: Keep fighting.
The Afghanistan documents released by Wikileaks were criticized for not having enough material redacted. The Iraq documents are criticized for having too much redacted. The US government says there is nothing interesting or newsworthy in any of the information. The US military says the information contains important secrets that the public should not know. Some members of the public say they contain important secrets that we all desperately need to know. Have we all completely forgotten?
The medium is the message.
Recently, I watched a scene from another time in history, a set piled high with paper, where professionals in business suits scurried through rooms with dollies stacked with boxes of paper, all stamped, signed, and distributed in huge amounts of copies. Everything was tabbed and filed beyond all comprehensibility, people were flipping madly through binders in a race against time, no one agreed on any of the facts or could find any, and the end result was a mop of perspiration and a guess at the facts in most cases.
Extradition has been a touchy subject between Canada and the US at various times in history. During the Vietnam War, the US was infuriated by Canada’s refusal to return draft dodgers, but those were the days when Canada had a very liberal government that annoyed the US and stood up for widely held Canadian values whenever they thought they could get away with it. Times have changed.
This summer, while private citizens around the world are facing the most privacy eradicating laws and policies ever enacted, some media have been trying to get people outraged about the publication of secrets from public organizations. I’m not feeling it. Government secrets are not our secrets. Military secrets are not our secrets. Industry secrets are not our secrets. None of these secrets benefit society.
I have been mostly rolling my eyes at all the talk lately about ‘hacktivism’ and ‘hackers’ as a distinct culture. Even though I remember thinking that programming was the only job I could ever have in business, and the feeling of belonging to a very exclusive club with our own secrets and jokes, I know a lot of engineers, physicists, physicians, etc., who feel the same. But watching the current clash between computer geeks and journalists has caused me to wonder; is there really a completely different core philosophy here? And what will be the result of this clash?
Julian Assange, David Aaronovitch, and Jonathan Dimbleby debated this topic in London today. I wasn’t there, and there was no live feed, so this is all based on comments tweeted by the audience, mostly City students. In retrospect, this may have been the interesting part, since the speakers seem to have just recycled old topics. This time we get an insight into what the audience thought. So here are what the predominant tweets said, and my opinions as answers.
Another limb has been severed from the Wikileaks body. Another strong willed, opinionated, brave and presumably hugely talented insider has left, or been asked to leave, and come forth into the media spotlight full of ideas of how the organization ought to be run. He says there are more to come soon. Wonderful news, I say.
After reading the horribly written NY Times advance review of ‘Obama’s Wars’, I have been wondering what the point is. When the NY Times comes out with their ‘official view’ articles, the ones full of spin, choppy quotes, and third party innuendo, the ones which allow no reader comments, there is always a point. What is it we are being set up to accept this time?
For anyone currently looking at the foreign and domestic policies of the USA, and feeling confused, sick, and disoriented, I highly recommend a reading or re-reading of the amazingly prescient Hunter S. Thompson’s novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It explains everything. Only by imagining a large percentage of the US population (and many elsewhere) in a paranoid, delusional, occasionally euphoric high, seeing shoe bombing Muslims and pothead Canadians around every corner, can I begin to understand the people supporting US policy.
When you hear these four magic words, think; am I about to be emotionally manipulated here? Is someone perhaps going to use my visceral reaction to these terms to push something past me that I would never usually consider? Because probably, yes.
The Wikileaks activist was arrested in absentia, not arrested, investigated but free to leave, defamed but not actually charged, with rape, sexual molestation, and plain molestation in various combinations over the last few weeks, by two women who did not know they were assaulted until they discussed it days later with their lawyer. That is not the curious part.
Many people around the world are calling for us to fight for freedom of the press. I don’t think so. Freedom of speech, freedom of information, and accountability of the press would be what I am looking for.
When I was in high school, there was a book on the required reading curriculum called The Chrysalids, written by John Wyndham in 1955. Like 1984, it was a pretty interesting book that has come to take on the significance of a history book … for the future.
A public organization is, by definition, an organization where all information is to be kept completely available to the public, unless very exceptional circumstances can be proved. Democratic governments are public organizations.
A private citizen has, by definition, the right to keep all information private unless very exceptional circumstances can be proved.
About this huge, world wide war that most of the population doesn’t seem to have realized we are in yet. An elementary overview.
The military industrial complex against the anonymous cloud, with an ignorant populace as the prize.
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