The focus of a large portion of media coverage here in the United States since the cables were released has been on the political response to Wikileaks' action, on the allegations of Wikileaks' criminality, on the severing of ties with the organization by major corporations in response to Lieberman et al., and on Assange and his legal woes. All of that is newsworthy, but it has come at the cost of focusing on the stories told by the cables themselves. The things said and done by US agents, in the name of the American people, have been, to judge by the cables I've read, sometimes good, sometimes innocuous, and sometimes unconscionably unethical and criminal. I'm all in favor of any action that brings the focus back where it belongs, and tries to defeat what I suspect has been a deliberate, massive US campaign of noise and distraction, albeit a campaign that increasingly seems of a rather dated style. I'll be massively impressed if Anon can achieve anything close to those stated ends. I understand people's skepticism, and even the occasional condescension, but I'm not ready to dismiss a phenomenon I don't really understand just because the participants are unseasoned and untutored in the art of studied apathy.
And yet, note that this comment continues the discussion-about-the-discussion, rather than focusing on the specific 'unconscionably unethical and criminal' details.
Nothing wrong with that in this context, but it highlights how hard it is to do anything else. It's easier to talk about the reactions and dissemination and censorship and rhetoric. Those are actually more universal topics, and they're unfolding now.
The nitty-gritty of the cable revelations is subject to a interpretation and even more acrimonious rehearsed-roles debate, so (as here) it often just gets mentioned in passing, with a hand-wave and nod to its importance.
Of the cables' revelations, many that people are 'shocked, shocked' to hear are what was already assumed to be true or partially reported -- covert military strikes in other countries, attempts to downplay fatalities or wartime actions in error, frank assessments of shady regimes.
And it seems to me many people are just seeing what they wanted to see. If they already bought into a Chomskyite view of the US as the scheming amoral fount of all evil in the world, there's enough in the cables to feed that view. If they think the US is just another powerful but bumbling country pursuing its interests, fighting several wars, striking balances with sordid situations not entirely under its control, there's enough in the cables to feed that view, too.
What's the one or two things in the cables you found most surprising?
I personally was surprised to read that Shell has a significant foothold within the Nigerian government. It caused me to wonder how true the claim is, and whether similar situations exist in other countries with other corporations, perhaps even the US.
Agreed, reading about a Shell executive boasting they've infiltrated every single branch of the government is pretty amazing. Also in Nigeria, there was also a cable about a guy from Pfizer telling the US that they were threatening the Attorney General with bad press to get him to drop a multi-billion suit (that was eventually settled for $75).
One of the great benefits of the publicity surrounding Wikileaks is that it's encouraging people to look into issues they previously might not have considered.
That said, the role of the oil companies in the Niger Delta unrest isn't exactly unknown, not many people labour under the delusion the Nigerian government isn't to some extent corrupt, and the page you linked to isn't even a particularly damning one, as governments do have a legitimate interest in monitoring activities of rebel groups and the effects on multinationals they target. The smoking gun would be finding documents suggesting that events like the Odi massacre were planned (and possible oil company collusion)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odi_massacre
What's been released recently seems to be the sort of thing that might cause discomfort to a few diplomats who've made rather unflattering and speculative (but in many cases justified) comments about their host countries but it's less than earth-shattering. The half-hearted attempts to discredit Assange feels like an attempt to appease the leaders they've privately insulted; perhpas they have more reason to be concerned about what hasn't been released.
I was surprised that after a private talk between the presidents of Mexico and Spain, the latter went back and immediately gave a summary to the US ambassador in Madrid.
Or at least told the U.S. that privately. Which is different, as this could just be what he thinks the U.S. wants to hear, while he can say something different to his people in public.
I doubt he said that because it's what he thinks the US wants to hear. I would imagine he is deeply concerned about Iran creating a destablising influence in the region. You are right about saying something different in public to his subjects though, as such a view would be hugely controversial in the Arab world and a major embarrassment to the king. It seems he wanted the US to strike against the Iranian uranium enrishment program:
What surprised me the most is the apparent willingness of my representatives to share information and cooperate with the reprensentatives of the United States in a way that seems to undermine the sovereignity of their own country.
To me as a citizen the US is essentialy a foreign power and I would like it to have no say in the internal affairs of the country I live in without having obvious benefits for me. This doesn't appear to be the case and it isn't because US diplomats apply pressure to get concessions but rather because politicians yield even without pressure.
I've read the "best of" coverage of the leaked cables, and honestly, speaking as somebody who usually doesn't have a problem getting interested in world affairs, it didn't seem like there were any big revelations. The coverage was all along the lines of, "Everybody knew this, but it's humorous/scandalous/juicy that somebody got caught saying it." If Anonymous finds anything shocking in the cables, they will make the MSM look lazy and incompetent.
US-based private security contractor DynCorp, who was hired by the US to train Afghani police, was apparently supplying drugs and young boys for a sort of sex party.
The details are horrifying. The Afghani interior minister apparently went to US officials to warn them that reporters were sniffing around this story, and urged them to try to kill the story. He specifically warned that this would look bad if the connection to DynCorp was made clear (he called them "foreign mentors"). Apparently, US diplomats told him not to worry, and the eventual story was in fact watered down greatly (until now, of course) calling the whole thing a "tribal dance," rather than a party where young boys wear "scanty women's clothes" and "dance seductively" before being "auctioned off to the highest bidder" for sex.
There's also the fact that everyone knows the Afghani election was rigged but while the Canadian ambassador wanted to do something about it the US didn't.
As I understand it the point of the leaks or not the documents per se but the actual leak of them.
As stated elsewhere
According to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary.
There's a similarly interesting line of thought going through the Rubberhose encrypted file system, an earlier Assange project.
In both cases, the moral victory is not an immediate part of the action or product. It's about the secondary effects of living in a world where coercive force is no longer rational.
That revealing past secrets will somehow make governments more transparent - they'll use encryption and off-record remarks, watch what they say, ensure records are destroyed, tighten security protocols. But IMO, and it is just that, they will still keep the same secrets and have the same covert conversations and exchange the same messages.
Assanges point is that the harder you make it to be secretive the less conspiracies you will get (he uses a somewhat different definition of conspiracies)
It's not by any metrics naive it's exactly what is going on right now. Overreactions decreasing the ability to communicate. That's what Assange by his own words are after.
>Assanges point is that the harder you make it to be secretive the less conspiracies you will get
If someone wants to whisper something in your friends ear, and seeing it you step closer, does the third party whisperer quit or do they usher you friend away so that they can keep the secret?
Making it harder to keep secrets means that people are more secretive.
Decreasing the ability for people to communicate is not at all a good thing IMO. If diplomats can't do their job, acting as intermediaries and smoothing over relationships between countries then I don't think that is going to help anyone unless they desire anarchy.
>It's not by any metrics naive it's exactly what is going on right now.
Could you expand on this I'm not at all clear what you're saying.
I have seen this argument before, and I still do not understand. If the leaks have no concrete consequences, if the public does not react, doesn't that teach governments that they have nothing to fear from exposure and that they may go ahead with business as usual?
I think you're mistaken. As an example, here's coverage of how "the Embassy of the United States in Madrid wielded powerful resources in an extraordinary effort to impede or terminate pending criminal investigations in Spain".
All in all, it's been the biggest story I've had in my
five years as editor of El País, without any doubt. And
measured by its international impact, it's probably the
biggest story this newspaper has ever been involved with.
Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.
I didn't know about any of these cases in particular, but as an American I see nothing surprising (sadly) in the fact that the U.S. tried to obstruct these investigations. In two cases American acts are the target of the investigation. In the other case it is the acts of people helping the U.S. government, whom the U.S. has even more powerful incentive to protect. So I guess it was a surprise to Spaniards how much the U.S. was able to affect the investigations? I don't know enough about the Spanish justice system to know what standards to expect, but criminal investigations into another nation's actions in other countries (the first two cases) seem explicitly political to me anyway, hence naturally amenable to diplomatic "pressure."
> Most of the cables that have come to light so far have not provided new information. It was no great secret that Libya had probably put pressure on the UK over the Megrahi release, that the US was doing strikes in Yemen etc, even if no one was prepared to confirm this in public. But if this was reported by the US government - and then pushed into the mainstream of public debate by journalists for highly respected news organizations, it became common knowledge that could not easily be ignored. Not only did everyone know it - everyone knew that everyone else knew it too. This explains Rachman's paradox - why apparently banal revelations can have very important political consequences.
I think you're really being optimistic if you expect any kind of insightful geopolitical analysis or even recognition from the Anon army. I doubt 99% of them even know what they're looking for in these cables.
So at what point at those organisations going to start getting heat for being in possession of classified documents?
Why is Assange taking so much heat (yes, I know he wanted to be the lightning rod)? Is it merely that it would look bad to go after 'name-brand' news sources?
Assange is getting the heat because he's purposefully seeking it out — even with the case in Sweden he fanned the flames earlier this year so that it could blow up now
This is a comment I see a lot of American forums, for those of us elsewhere though the things that our diplomats and politicans have been saying to you guys have been large revelations. Like how one of our mining companies sunk Chinese investment in one of our other mining companies, or how our government really feels about the prospects for Afghanistan. How one of our federal political powerbrokers has been feeding information to the USA about the inside tussles of his party.
The revelations won't have any kind of mind-blowing effect, but the cumulative picture they paint is VERY important.
Rather unusually, the issues covered by the media have actually been the most important ones. The battle over the privacy of information is far more important than the facts revealed by a small number of actual information leaks.
It's a really interesting litmus test of what the media have - or have not - learnt after what felt like an acquiescence during the Bush rhetoric after 9/11 regarding Iraq in particular.
Dunno about science, but this seems like it may actually further wikileaks' goals, as opposed to attacking corporations that are only defending themselves legally.
This seems interesting and a lot less 'illegal'. There has been 1 arrest so far that I know of, a 16 year old kid from the Netherlands has been arrested for being a part of the MasterCard DDoS. [0]
Indeed. Seeding the data everywhere and in plain sight has been a successful tactic in the past, especially for Anon during the Scientology raids. This is similar - government employees are not allowed to view the material, so its proliferation could actually be problematic for some people and cause more of a bureaucratic nightmare than already exists. In terms of any actual usefulness to their analysis, that remains to be seen.
I see what you did there, and wish I could down-vote you. To be clear and explicit (because my original post can indeed be interpreted wrong), when I said cult, I was referring to Scientology.
(I do find it quite ironic that you chose to troll while calling Anon "trollish" too.)
side note, the church did send out some aggressive DVD & pamphlet sets claiming anonymous was a terrorist organization to anyone they pegged at a protest.
This seems overly strategic for an internet group. They started gaining traction DDOSing small sites, taking them down, gaining publicity/support, and moving to a bigger target. Now they're using momentum provided by their huge publicity to do something useful. It's like a marketing strategists viral wet dream.
Collective consciousness is certainly more powerful than that of an individual in most cases, so it doesn't surprise me that they're coming up with a strategy to actually further their goals.
It is also worth noting that this is perhaps the first Anon initiative that the average joe will agree with (and maybe - just maybe - be inclined to help with).
Now seems like an ideal time if someone wanted to release a viral infographic video related to the material contained in the leaks. (a la the credit crisis explanation video)
I would be extremely grateful if you open-sourced roflbot. I've been meaning to learn lisp for a while, and an app like this seems like a perfect place to start by perusing its source.
Boing boing cherry picking the only thing they approve of out of the chaos? There's no evidence that any of the ddos'ers are on board with this at all.
The most amusing thing is the comments section getting bent out of shape at the use of 'gentlemen' in the image as not being inclusive to females. Talk about a culture clash.
> There's no evidence that any of the ddos'ers are on board with this at all.
And given this groups nature I don't think there will be much evidence about anything they do at all, other than initial communications, side effects and occasionally apparently an arrest.
That's the nature of the beast, and that is exactly what makes it so hard to come to terms with it for many people that would like to see 'organization'. To the extent that anon has an organization you'd probably have to name them 'core' or something like that and even that does not really do it justice. This is a fairly complex issue and even talking about it I find it hard to pick exactly the right terms without almost automatically falling back to using terms that somehow subtly do not apply.
What evidence would satisfy you that some people of some anonymous group are partaking in some activity claiming that they partook in some other activity ?
it's much more centralized than you're giving it credit for. the ability to focus on one site at a time is the only way they're bringing down these sites. operations run out of a specific irc network. the targets and times are ultimately selected by a pretty small core group of irc ops and others. the ddos tool they use is commonly used with a feature that allows those ops to choose or change targets for everyone with the feature on.
so to answer you question, i'd say evidence of support for the plan on the irc network, and/or a lack of targets given for hivemind.
Oh come on, the 'gentelman' is referring to the spirit of the statement, is a figure of speech and does not refer to any gender at all. In the concept of Anonymous there are no genders, faces or names, all are equal.
If they'd start to bend it to contemporary political correctness, it would loose it's meaning.
"In the concept of Anonymous there are no genders, faces or names, all are equal."
Sounds ghastly.
Edit:
Lol, so I'm at 0.
No, seriously, as an aspirational statement it sounds horrible. The elimination of difference instead of its celebration! The difference is life, and faces and names are individuality!
And the privileging of certain characteristics inherent in such sameness would itself be tyranny if carried beyond a game. Everyone is deemed a Gentleman and questioning that homogenisation is considered worthy of downmodding?
Celebrate individuality and difference, don't deny it. Fight sexism by celebrating each individual and not by pretending that gender doesn't exist and then calling everyone Gentlemen.
... if you think that that sounds 'ghastly,' I won't bother to tell you Anon's _real_ name for women. 'femanon' is a neologism.
Regardless, to actually reply to your post, you didn't get downmodded because 'questioning homogenization.' It's because you didn't actually question it: you only said two words. Your edit is much better.
Secondly, this is much deeper than 'fighting sexism,' and Anonymous isn't really out to actually destroy gender... There are, however, many groups that _are_ explicitly about destroying the concept of gender. Anarcha-feminists, people who identify as 'genderqueer,' and... well, even boring old vanilla me, for example. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Or a boy. or a girl. It's much better that way.
Boing Boing is the website where the article is, cherry picking is a cliche for "picking only the best," and there could have been an "Is" at the beginning. It did take me a minute to understand, though, if that's all you meant.
As a female, I occasionally address my other female friends as 'gentlemen' when in a group to illicit laughter. We find it amusing, and have no problem being addressed as gentlemen. Take back the night etc?
I would not be surprised by a decent response to this, plenty of Anon got out of their parent's basements to the Co$ protests. This doesn't require leaving the computer, a far easier proposition for most I would expect.
Would it confuse you to find that a decent sized portion of anon are the type of people that tuck their kids in at night in the suburban ranch-style house before returning to their personal crusade to extract justice from a system that protects the morally bankrupt?
Or, are we just deciding to play on the usual stereotype.
Also, is hanging around in a spot in meatspace with other people a more effective means to a goal than a direct action that is performed online? When you sell software, are you walking door to door? Or selling online? Would it be fair to call you "a lazy basement-dweller" since you don't walk door to door selling software?
Does this statement seem deragatory to you? "This (selling online) doesn't require leaving the computer, a far easier proposition for most I would expect."
Also, the media coverage has largely treated Anon and it's missives as a serious resistance movement loosely linked to Wikileaks rather than a collective of bored trolls and pranksters, which means they'll gain a lot of support from people that are serious about uncovering government conspiracies.
I'm curious whether anyone has researched how vulnerable a leaderless group is to suggestion by agents provocateurs. On one hand I could see the "inertia" of the group tending toward some mean purpose, but on the other hand it seems possible for a leaderless group to be pushed quite easily. I suppose it would depend on how much shared philosophy there was within the group, and whether that philosophy would have enough weight to prevent outsiders from pushing the group off track.
It makes me think of swarms, flocks, and emergent behavior.
The problem that agent provocateurs is that it's difficult to convince someone that you're in the in-group. I've been in a situation with agent provocateurs[1] and frankly, the 5'11" dude in a crew cut that's built like a house is not an anarchist. It was pretty freaking silly.
You'd think that it would be easier for something like Anon, but it's actually probably harder. The only thing you have is communication, and so it'll be scrutinized even more. Anon's humor style is incredibly deep and nested, when you really get down to it. I'm not saying that it's impossible, it'd just take some work.
Can you specify exactly what you mean by ALF? Wikipedia turns up both the Arab Liberation Front and the Afar Liberation Front, both of which mention leaders.
