Here is another comprehensive link

New York Times - The War Logs

Yesterday in the paper the stories were that this was either incorrect info, or old news.  Seems like alot of "blowing my own horn" from the guy at the center of the "leaks"

If it's old news, how come we didn't know  much of it? And the same people who say it's old news also say that letting it out endangers our soldiers. How could it endanger our soldiers if it's old news?

As for incorrect info, we hear that it's incorrect from people who have a long record of feeding us incorrect information.

Speaking of feeding us incorrect information, more below:

DND computers used to alter jet fighter information

*bump*

so, new information is about to be leaked and the government is scrambling.  do you think it will be published this time around?  would you spend your life in prison to leak these documents?

I doubt very much whether i would have the courage to do that. But that's the point we've been brought to.  1984 has arrived, It arrived a long time agoi,

And in the latest release ....

Diplomats fear WikiLeaks will expose U.S. brickbats aimed at Canada 
     Globe and Mail, November 29, 2010

But the fear of real damage is accompanied by another concern in Ottawa – that snippets of private talk by U.S. diplomats might include sharp words that could stick in the mind of a Canadian public that is often sensitive to how they are seen in American eyes. Ottawa officials worry about references to a Canadian inferiority complex, biting criticisms or belittling comments.

I'm sorry, but I can't type any more due to uncontrollable laughter....

This is dangwerous material, for one main reason. It's partial. It's not history, it's nothing but journalistic voyyeurism. All the usual suspects, as evidenced above, will claim their biases are supported, which is a load of codswallop. 

The events of history can only be interpreted in retrospect and through the journals and publications in their entirety, not is some partial, leaked and indefensible method which screams "Up Yours".  

Gee, so we shouldn't have news at all. Or news commentary. Because you can't know history until it gets real old.

Anything from the past is history. That'swhy George bush's biography could be listed as history. Of course, events from the past can only be interpreted in retroxpect. That's why what has happened is called history - and you can 't interpret it before it happened.

The leads are biased? What? You mean the leader wrote all half million of them?

You have to read the journals and publications in their entirety. Well, I'm an historian. And I've never even heard of such a thing. For opereners, all the jouranlis, letters, pictures, don't exist. You work with as much as you can get. You never have close to all of it. All information is partial.

If you think it's okay for governments to keep secrets from us,, then you don't have much faith in democracy. For example, we now know the US has been using drones in Yemen. We now know the arabe states have been pushing for war with Iran. We now know that Netanyahu when he said how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon. We're not getting some of the truth about torture - truth our news mediak including the sainted New York Times and The Globe kept secret rrom us.

You say it's all a load of hogswallop? In addition to have brilliing insights into foreign affairs, you must be one hell of a fast reader to get through a half million documents - and to draw conclusions from them.

Or maytbe you just prefer to be fooled. It's easier that way.

Reporters are just voyeurs?  Oh. So where do  you get your information?

Mainstream journalism is SO much about making and breaking celebrities, airing press releases and petty ripples in the most inconsequential areas of politics and economics partly because of Rupert Murdoch's marketing genius in replacing inquiry and "public interest" with the vacuity of stenographic journalism and entertainment... and new technologies that allowed the mass layoffs of writers, researchers and, most critically, proof readers and gave the world the trash-saturated British tabloid and cheque-book journalism about the sexual antics of soccer "stars". Wire services killed off overseas bureaus and journalism schools (faced with funding needs to fill classrooms and keep courses short to boost the turnover) churn out hordes of job-hungry, often idealistic but desperately naive cannon/canon fodder to plug the holes between the ads. Subediting is now being increasingly taken over outsourcing to agencies who underpay work-from-home freelances. Local papers tend to be filled with easy-to-get crime trivia from police blotters and courts. The internet has opened the floodgates to amateurs and anyone with attitude issues. At the same time, the looseness of journalistic standards has exposed news  to ever-greater, more sophisticated manipulation by vested interests. The net result has been that it's become very difficult to find professional, analytical, serious news coverage.

 It's the entertainment industry that's boomed.

The Wikileaks scream for serious-minded analysis but have set off a frenzy of competitive cherry-picking trivialisation. By the time the serious analysis of the hundreds of thousands of documents -- an information avalanche -- is really able to tell us what's important, it won't matter because it will be found "boring" and old hat by most entertainment-hungry audiences... and the real world will have moved on. 

That said, there are some attempts at looking for depth and undercurrents in the material but they are swamped by the rush to go to air, get into print and titilate mass audiences.

And more important things are happening... climate change is something the media have totally botched; the unresolved conflicts put in place by the Korean War have been allowed to become the status quo. The arms trade, military spending and the militarisation of space and Western consciousness are largely out of sight. The plight of Africa, the sources of incitement to conflict and the rip-offs of its resources... the causes and complexities are written off superficially (and in racist terms) as local corruption, and the revolting perception has been allowed to take root is that it's endemic and pan-African. We have very little good coverage of the changes taking place in China and India, beyond what a "threat" they pose to "our" economy. Every window of hope is painted over by sensationalism and self-absorbed introversion. In Canada, we get a little piecemeal coverage of the erosion of democracy that's threatening a mudslide but nothing on, say, the real picture of criminality (as opposed to unanalysed crime stats), the disaster in our prisons or the shady areas of organised and white collar crime. Stories like these take time and staff that few newsrooms can afford.

Of course, news has ALWAYS been selective, partial and often incompetent... but these are the aspects of it that seem to have flourished. Where quality journalism exists it is in small pockets of barely sustainable circulation, so even that side of the industry is resource hungry, and the pressures to compromise are considerable.

The Wikileaks? A firecracker. Colourful but ephemeral. Watch the damage control take over.

I was some thirty years a writer for newspapers and magazinen, and a broadcaster for radio and TV. They are all they Mike says, and worse.  That includes CBC which runs scared of Harper cuts.

That's why I enjoy having a blog now. For the first time, I'm free to tell the whole truth. I could never do that in the commercial media. And that's the case not just with bad media, but also of most of those considered quality in North America.

I am glad for Wikileaks -- it will make many people think more carefully about what they are saying, and, hopefully, in the thinking discover correctable errors in their thinking.  It will expose, imperfectly, some of the truth about their governments and other governments.  Some of them should push tired and retired activists to up their participation in organizations dedicated to building a better world.

Best of all, it has exposed some of the deficiencies and inadequacies of the American bureaucracy, and make many people feel vulnerable and less omnipotent.

And few of the news media will public any important parts of it.

I think it's great. In a free society info. about what the govt. says and does should be common knowledge. If it genuinely endangered lives, i.e. troop movement in real time, that couldn't be allowed, but most anything short of that should be.

"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

--Morpheus

"We are as gods, so we may as well get good at it."

--Stewart Brand

"...people to become basically digitally literate, for people to start looking at these tools as things made by people with certain biases rather than as preexisting conditions...if you look at money as a medium rather than as something from G_d, you say 'Omg, who made money, when did they make it, why did they make it like this and you find out this is a very particular kind of money...and there was once other kinds of money and an economic ecology..."

--Douglas Rushkoff

Wikileaks under attack.

And right here, also.

The games that we have been living by for quite some time now are changing...and the rewards are as well.  We all come born with a moral sense, an innate curiosity, to fiddle and explore...to make this topical for this site, I think that to live out the Christ's message (agape, repeat) requires one to be a programmer, a fellow co-creator in the World...universe has a wonderful sense of humour and gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want.

 Douglas Rushkov's new economic ecology seems to be lagging a bit in Canada. The BIG wealth is with the "old" families.... the Thomsons, the Irvings, the Westons, the Rogers... yawn...

 Anyone watch "The Agenda" with Steve Paikin on TVO last night? (Dec 3) Perhaps TVO (TV Ontario) is not seen in other parts of Canada and that is a pity. Anyway, the panel of 3 which included Janice Stein of the Munk School of Foreign Affairs, Heather Hurlburt of the US National Security Network and Gareth Porter, a US investigative historian,  ended up condemning Julian Assange and Wikileaks as dangerous.

Perhaps we need to take a close look at this because there are valid points on both sides. Revealing secretive info about national security and putting the lives of diplomats in danger is not something most people would accept. On the other hand, the public has a right to know what goes on behind the scenes when governments make decisions. This is especially important because the media either does not have the resources or is unwilling to give us the whole story.

Apparently if you can't silence someone by hacking, then cut off the funds....

PayPal cuts WikiLeaks from money flow   Associated Press

LB

Nixon: I think what is very important in this is to find a way to get some strong language – like a massive breach of security – things of that sort, so that we can get something in the public mind – we’re not just interested in making the technical case for the lawyers.

The National Security Archive:  Nixon Tapes: The Pentagon Papers Case

Exactly whose life is endangered if we learn that Canadian soldiers turned over children for torture, or that American drones, controlled by Americans were used  to bomb Africans, ro that Israel has been lying for years about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear weapon?

If we had an honest press (and honest politicians) we wouldn't need Wikkileaks.

Reporters Without Borders.

Look what happens when people's worldviews are challenged.  It doesn't have to be dramatic gnashing of teeth.

And the effects keep on rolling.

What will the Empire do to protect itself?  How far will it go to enforce it's worldview that we all live in?  Should people still expect the Empire to provide for them?

Thank goodness for the SNAFU principle.

But we don't.  We have press and politicians who are people and therefore just like us.

What Wikileaks, the Pentagon Papers, Watergate etc. consistently show is that those in power differ little from those that don't.  Their comments and focus are often on the petty and trivial just like the average Joe's.  They remind us that generals and diplomats are like our neighbour Joe and we wouldn't let Joe use our snowblower unsupervised much less lead a tank division or country.

So far, and I have not nor will I ever wade through it all, what I have seen in Wikileaks corroborate other news stories I have read.  So that information was out there, it had been reported, it just hadn't made it to the front pages or mainstream media.  The "Big Story" now pushes these into prominence.

So perhaps what we need is not honesty in the press and politicians, but critical readers and viewers as well.

LB

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.

     Charles Eliot Norton

I've got a bias; entheusiastically 100% for who I think is a great hero of the age: Julian Assange.

I think he is doing a signficant good. World wide. Quite a trip. 

Attacks against him are loud, strange and weird. I'm facinated. This is scheduled to go on for weeks -- we just may get used to knowing what going on - more clearly, more starkly, perhaps. Will attention be payed? This could be a revolution. Interesting, these times...Of course he could be caught and thrown in solitary as as been the case with 'the leaker' -- no family visits for him! )

Hot diggity! 'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men....' Bwa ha ha hs hs...

admittedly, an off-hand opinion, I guess I could change my mind.  

Amazing. Somebody else who rememberes The Shadow, alias Lamont Cranston, young man about town.

Oh where oh where is Margo Laine!

(used to listen to a local station 'Owl Prowl' by Jack Cullen where he'd, nightly, from 9-11pm, play the tapes that he had recorded of radio programmes when he was much younger...I Love a Mystery's 'Temple of the Vampires' still scares me)

For those of you having trouble finding Wikileaks, go HERE.  Download the stuff onto your computer and have fun.  I've had fun reading some fnord NOFORN stuff...

Apparently, it is now confirmed that the major source of money for Al Quaeda was Saudi Arabia. I can remember coming across references to that at least a half dozen years ago. How we know that the American government knew it, too. And they knew that the royal family was involved. (We also know that most of the 911 bombers were saudis, and that it was planned in Germany and the US.

So - why are we in Afghanistan?

Thank you for that wikkileaks list. I suspect we are watching the most important event of a least a century. I very much fear it will destroy whatever lingering trust most Americans have in any government - and that will take us over the edge into an openly police state - at least in the US. Quite possibly in Canada.

It's really been there for some time. It will be just more public now.

I was just about to nod in agreement, when Assange pulled out his portection bomb "I've given some material for your editing and redacton pleasure, but screw with me and I'll release everything, names dates, addresses, 1.3 gigs worth, presently under 256 bit encryptian in a thousand locations...

Has any politician every said the word 'transparancy'  seriously?

========

per yer news criticism; had a few decades of that. Guity on all charges.  On my office door: "If it happens -- it's news to us"

Always a pleasure reading your posts!

Jack, Doc and Reggie! Lessee it has been ...uh...71 years ! Golly, it seem like only....uh...60...or so...(Every time I even think of something that long go..my think box goes...'say WhAAAT?')

For those of you having trouble finding Wikileaks, go HERE.

Link no workie.

Google findee

I agree.

It gets destroyed over and over again...but sword play is now minimally employed.... 

More likely moving us away from that edge...

Today's story is Ossange saying if you prosecute me for Rape I'll release it all.

SO the stuff is his get out of jail free card?

I am curious about what if anything has been done to whomever originally stole the material.  I was away so perhaps this has already come up,

the rape charge apparently originates with a Cuban exile who has been employed by the CIA for terrorism in the past. He was involved in the explosion of a Cuban airiner that hkilled over seventy people. He now lives, a hero, iin Cuban Miami - and the US has refused to extradite him for trial.

I must say, I am wondering about why we are in Afghanistan.  The Saudi connection has been suspected for years.  But I also think it not the government per se but private individuals (now some of those private individuals may be high in Saudi ranks, part of the royal family, that is quite possible).   The Saudi government has made some efforts to tone down the violence--they did strip Osama bin Laden of his citizenship and according to a book I read about the family, various bin Ladens tried to talk him into dropping the whole terrorist thing but he wouldn't listen,

What the Saudi govt is doing is funding the teaching of Wahhabism, an extremely intolerant and rigid version of Islam.  This is a sort of "gateway drug" for certain people, into terrorism. Omni knows all about it.   It all goes back to a deal made long ago that the Wahhabi-believing tribes would put manpower in  the Saud families campaign to take over the peninsula (including Mecca) in return for official support.  The deal still holds.