Is this backlash against WikiLeaks a case of killing the messenger and ignoring the message?

Yes. I predict an even larger uproar to come in the following days, when incriminating documents outlining the falsity of this recent war come out. Julian Assange will be tried as a criminal, with the laws of his land and ours changing so that he can be incriminated.

Going forward, we will lose more of our rights as citizens for the sake of national security.

Amen. has a nice effect, no?

What’s the message? I think there’s as much anti-government nonsense around as there is government nonsense. Wikileaks, since there seems to be so little editorial discretion, editorializing in general or evaluation of importance, seems to me to be more or less total anti-government nonsense.

So, what does this portend for the future? Oh, great things, no doubt. More secrecy from government, more rigorous prosecution of leakers and whistle-blowers in general, even more circumspection in general, and weasel-words meaning nothing. Great times for all.

And of course, as @squirbel pointed out, more loss of rights for the sake of National Security. But that pretty much goes without saying, no matter what is happening. This is just a convenient and obvious pretext, fronted by an unlovable troll.

@CyanoticWasp so you would rather the video of the journalists being gleefully strafed by American hot headed nut job helicopter pilots were discreetly buried for ever.

@mammal Sounds like it, huh? ‘Hide the truth from those it will not help anyway’ is the mantra so oft heard these days.

@mammal Honestly, that sounds more like a panic reaction than it does hot-headedness or maliciousness.

There was no panic in that video. The soldier was eager, shouting “Can I shoot them? Can I? Can I?” from his superior.

Panic, my—-. Censored, not ladylike.

@squirbel Perhaps we’re looking at different accounts. Mine was from a Guardian article about the leaked Wikis.

I actually watched the video several times before it was taken down, so I’m giving my account. The unabridged version which was some 4 hr 38min long.

@squirbel maybe it is some kind of coping mechanism, because i can’t make sense of it, kind of an exaggerated sense of bravado. but then i’ve never been in a war.

Personally and as an aside i think Julian Assange is the sexiest, geekiest thing to come out of generation X and the age of Aquarius in general. If i were a woman i’d rape him.

For anyone interested, Democracy Now’s broadcast today was flooded with questions from around the world for today’s debate over WikiLeaks actions and the U.S. and allied government’s historical over-reaction to it, all the way up to elected officials calling for incitement to commit murder in saying Assange should be executed. I have no agenda in asking this question or sharing information and thoughts about this, other than being an older American who knows through reading (availability of information) and a once great public school system that it ain’t supposed to look like this. The thing I increasingly find the most disturbing is the abject apathy and cynicism in the United States. Sheep for the slaughter, in my opinion.

@mammal .. I think so, too, and thanks for making me laugh!

@mammal if you had read for comprehension then you might have understood that I don’t consider Wikileaks’ puking out ‘every government intercept it can find’ as much of a ‘message’. If the leaks in question had been edited so that ”the video of the journalists being gleefully strafed by American hot headed nut job helicopter pilots” (if it even exists as you portray it… which I have learned from experience here to disbelieve) were evaluated as being somewhat more newsworthy than some State Department flunky’s stereotyping of “the typical Iranian psyche”, then maybe, just maybe, the thing would have some ‘news’ or ‘message’ value.

As it is, there’s no more ‘message’ in Wikileaks than there is in a landfill. Is that simple enough for you?

@CyanoticWasp Where are you finding news about this on which to base your opinion? I looked for it on American television news and found, as usual, the same old celebrity news. In the United States, we’ve been denied access now, again, to even read the cables for ourselves and discuss them amongst ourselves. If you’re really interested what the messages are, and how they’ve been received all over the globe, here’s a link to a live news blog releasing statements and filmed responses from governments all over the world.
www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates

As one who’s done a lot of homework on this and I’m still asking questions, I know a closed mind vs a researched or thought out answer.

@Ivy I was reading the actual leaks on Wikileaks several days ago, and they were boring to the point of stultification. Beyond belief that anyone would be interested in them. If there’s video of murderous helicopter pilots—of any nationality—then that’s newsworthy, and should be investigated at least. To puke it all out as equally worthy is just a waste.

@mammal So if it had come out in a neat little package, easily readable for the average American’s fifteen-minute attention span, it would have been less ‘a waste’ in your opinion? It isn’t a journalist’s job, nor a publisher’s, to do anything but report and/or publish the news. And like it or not, this is news. Why do you think its being withheld in America? In a free society, shouldn’t we be able to read whatever we want, when we want, and demand that our elected officials be held accountable for crimes against the American people and the world? I’m sorry, but you can’t find a message in even that itself?

Of course, that time in America obviously no longer exists, and more obviously, doesn’t seem to matter to the American citizenry .. opps, we don’t use that word anymore, do we? The American taxpayer is the term for us now, isn’t it? Or is it still the American consumer? Main Street? Joe the Plumber? Or as the world now seems to refer to us, a nation of foolish dumbasses ~ more or less.

I’m not confused by the documents, why they’re coming out now, or the agenda of those blocking freedom of information. I’m confused about what’s required of a citizen of the United States of America now aside from bearing the brunt of bailing out the wealthiest and turning out the most vulnerable, two million more right before Christmas. I’m confused how so many outspoken Americans talk about their love of country, and how proud they are to be an American, and do nothing to restore what those of us old enough learned in civics class and sunday school 101. If you’re one of those proud Americans, could you ‘splain it to me?

Exactly, rather than work to fix up an agency and foreign policy that is dependent on war and dirty tricks, the trump up charges on the company’s leaders, and cyber attack the web site. I was hoping for better after the utter defeat of the neo-con candidates so I am severely disappointed by Obama’s reactions and attacks.

Here’s the thing about these most recent cables that were leaked: as far as the effect on individuals around the world from the contents of these documents, there’s very little contained within these documents that couldn’t be easily inferred from a basic understanding of the geopolitics of the day.

In fact, the leaked documents are being so heavily discussed because the media have nothing better to talk about – in actual controversy terms there’s not a whole lot going on here. A whole bunch of individual people’s opinions is not the kind of leak that has to be leaked. There’s nothing here that changes anything, no big secrets that need uncovering.

I’m fully in support of freedom of information, but there’s two things to consider here:

1. Wikileaks don’t have obligation to leak everything. If Assange and whoever else want to paint a certain picture they are able to.

2. If these leaks continue governments will still always have secrets. That’s how it works, because that’s how every individual behaves (we all lie, a lot, but often it’s for other people’s happiness: ‘Do I look fat in…’). They will just find another, more difficult way, for people to uncover the consequential ones.

I think that if Assange and his friends want to play spies they’re more than entitled to. But people acting all dignified in protecting Wikileaks for what it does need to remember that Wikileaks is hardly performing a valuable service in leaking documents that don’t actually have a whole deal of content. People just want something to complain about. The more Wikileaks produces content that doesn’t have a “terrible secret”, the more diluted their message will be when they actually do uncover something serious.

And really the “video of the journalists being gleefully strafed by American hot headed nut job helicopter pilots”? If you bother to watch the full video (unedited by Wikileaks) you will see how different the actual situation was. Most people who have seen the true video agree that Wikileaks’ analysis of that video was very poor and the release 100% politically motivated

This is my gripe. 100% independent transparency would be a great thing to have. But it’s impractical because people don’t always get along. People supporting wikileaks should also never deal with people they don’t like in a friendly manner, because that’s essentially what these leaked cables are about. But even then, Wikileaks is not some independent leaker – there’s a clear anti-US and anti-government sentiment from the leaks, which is fine except for the fact that Wikileaks controls what you see and don’t see. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is anything more than the mainstream media or the government themselves, in fact in many ways… it’s worse.

Don’t rely on Wikileaks any more than you rely on your government or your media. When you want answers, start digging. If everyone did this governments would already be more open.

@Ivy I sense that your latest question, directed to @mammal, was probably intended for me, so I’ll answer with that in mind. If I’m wrong, then you can ignore.

It is absolutely a publisher’s job to ‘edit’ the news. Otherwise our ‘news’ would be C-Span and helicopter reporting of live car chases, and not much more: live ‘happenings’ from the floor of the House of Representatives (or the streets of Los Angeles) day after day with no filter or journalistic winnowing of “what may be of interest” from “that which is simply filler”. (And we already have enough of that.) “Trial coverage” would be “court transcripts”. Who has time or interest to wade through all of that to find the nuggets that may be contained? Despite your offhand insult to “the average American” having no more than a 15-minute attention span (or maybe it’s a compliment), the fact is that a lot of us have actual lives to live and work to do (time spent on Fluther notwithstanding).

I don’t have the time or the interest to wade through all of the bureaucratese bullshit contained in Wikileaks to see if there may be a nugget or two of actual interest and relevance.

@CyanoticWasp Yes, the comment was meant for you, apologies to mammal. And for now, we can still publicly agree to disagree. Hope you like the smell of facism in the morning.

I guess you said it better than I did, @bluemukaki, because no one seems to be taking issue with your statements. And I agree with you. Now maybe they’ll come for you instead.

I certainly hope Assange is writing his book as he’s on the run. I certainly hope the manuscripts survive after the secret service eventually bumps him off.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies for a nation that can’t figure out how to protect its borders, that resists giving its citizens health care, and uses bombs instead of diplomacy, we are amazingly good at ruining people that displease the administration. This is like the Valerie Plame incident with the Bush administration. First thing they do is kill the messenger.

@Ron_C It seems entirely more likely that we can’t agree on how to do the first two on that list. Complicating matters is that there are people who don’t want the border protected, and who want to see healthcare used as a shoe-in-the-door for more government control.
It’s just silly to say that Foreign Policy = Bombs, though. A lot of the Wikilieaks issue is about the doings of diplomats.

@Nullo Since WW2, we have started more wars than anyother country. For god’s sake we attacked Granada!

Politicians start wars for many reasons including: thinking that they are the cowboys they play in the movies, distract attention from problems at home, daddy’s investments need a boost, or “I’m a sociopath and there’s nothing wrong with killing a few brown people”. Diplomats grease the run up and colalitions needed to prosecute the wars.

I can’t think of a good war started in my lifetime and I was born in 1947.

@Ron_C My point (since you seem to have missed it) is that if we relied solely on shotgun diplomacy, there’d be a lot more shotgunning.

And once again:

I completely support the exposure of lies, corruption and other illegal behavior. But the latest Wikileaks coup is unethical to say the least:

“The controversial whistleblower site published the cable late on Sunday, listing potential targets that experts told British daily The Times were a gift for terrorist organisations. The list of critical infrastructure and key resources located abroad detailed hundreds of pipelines, important data cables, and businesses belonging to international industrial and pharmaceutical giants. If destroyed, these sites could damage US interests, the diplomatic communique said.

In Germany such sites included the BASF headquarters in Ludwigshafen, which was described as the world’s largest integrated chemical complex, and Hamburg’s port. Other crucial sites include the northwestern coastal city of Norden and the North Sea island of Sylt, where two important underwater data and communication cables connecting North America and Europe reach land. The list was the result of a February 2009 order from Washington for officials to compile a list of international assets critical for the United States.

The plants of industrial giant Siemens were also listed for essentially irreplaceable production of key chemicals and the production of hydroelectric dam turbines and generators. Other companies included Dräger Safety in the northern German city of Lübeck, critical to gas detection capability, and Junghans Fienwerktechnik in the southern city of Schramberg, critical to the production of mortars. A number of German pharmaceutical companies that produce critical vaccines, medications and medical tests, including insulin and a small pox vaccine, were also included on the list.”

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101206-31623.html

There are people in Germany who live or work near these sites. And many of them are now very worried or even terrified.

This is psychological warfare. Wikileaks has become an ally of Al-Qaeda. Besides killing people, their goals include spreading fear.