What WikiLeaks revealed to the world in 2010

I'm not a WikiLeaks fan because they've basically said they'll publish anything. Most of the cables released did nothing other than damage to discretion that diplomacy needs. Other releases are the same, they hurt without enlightening.

Except that they have held things back at the request of the US Gov't and there are all those significant news stories in my post above.

Except that they have held things back at the request of the US Gov't and there are all those significant news stories in my post above.

I don't view, "because people are curious" as justification for the behavior. If there is legitimate wrong-doing, sure, but not just because if released it would be "news". From my reading of the articles on the cables, 99% of them had no useful public value. What this type of behavior does is just discourage documentation. Don't send a cable, call somebody and talk to them. No paper trail.

I don't view this as helping government transparency. I view it as an Assange ego trip. His agenda is to become the news, not a legitimate journalistic desire to uncover wrong-doing.

What this type of behavior does is just discourage documentation. Don't send a cable, call somebody and talk to them. No paper trail.

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I don't view this as helping government transparency.

Assange may be a bit of a nut case. He has stated that his purpose in repeatedly releasing confidential US government internal data is to disrupt the flow of information between and within the various US bureaucracies, thereby making efficient administration of the American Empire impossible.

Hey, I don't make this stuff up, I just repeat it.

That is sort of my view on his motives, but I hadn't heard him say it. I had read that when asked if there was anything he wouldn't release, he said no.

If he acted with journalistic intentions, I could respect it. I don't believe he does.

Assange views any organization or association that conducts business in a less than transparent manner as a form of conspiracy.

"He [postulates] that the most effective way to attack this kind of [non-transparent] organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer [operate effectivly]." source

Not unlike the way the CIA repeatedly savaged and purged itself in the 60's in response to a never found KGB penetration that may (or may not) have actually existed. Or the way the Nixon administration turned on itself in an effort to root out the source of very real leaks. Or the way a Mafia family is disrupted by the suspicion that one or more of its members have been turned by the FBI. Non-tranparent organizations don't tend to react well when forced to operate in an open enviroment.

Interesting.

This reminds me of a friend I once had. He had _no_ social skills. He was a computer hacker that went to college at 15 I think. Brilliantly smart, socially crippled in many ways.

He couldn't understand the social 'white lie' or the fact that everyone wasn't brutally truthful with everyone all the time.

I always thought it was sort of a kneejerk response of his. "I can't cope with figuring out what is reasonable to say, so I'm going to decide that people who don't say everything are bad."