Shocking. Some people who participate in organizations that the United States recognizes as terrorists are United States Citizens. Citizens have helped the Taliban, have helped Islamist attacks in India, and have helped the IRA. So: what if India or the UK decide that we don't care about those people, but instead only the al Qaeda or IRA activities that target US assets?
There, I've summed up the new leak.
Naturally, that's not how WikiLeaks sums it up. They're not bound to the actual text, but rather to the contours of the narrative they're trafficking in; in that narrative, it's not random crazy Islamists or Irish Nationalists joining terrorist causes, but rather the US "exporting" it. In the document, the word "export" occurs only in a quoted label, and is predicated --- 'if the US was perceived as an "exporter of terrorism"' --- because of people's perceptions of random crazy people in a country of 300 million people.
According to the WaPo's last investigation, 850,000 people have some form of "Top Secret" clearance. It's a wonder everything labeled "Top Secret" isn't leaked. This isn't even that; it's "Secret: Don't Circulate To Foreigners" (as it concerns foreign policy and perceptions).
I think the unnamed official speaking to NBC summed this up nicely: 'This is not exactly a blockbuster paper'.
Does anyone have a good argument as to why I should take wikileaks any more seriously than, say, the drudge report, or the enquirer? In comparison even BoingBoing seems like a greatly more legitimate unbiased, hard-news organization.
With WikiLeaks you get the original documents. Please show me _any_ news organization that provides original source documents for inspection by the public.
Wikileaks deserves some critical commentary, granted. But comparing it to "news organizations" like boingboing just makes it seem like it's falling out of favor with the "internet intelligentsia".
Sure, so that makes it possible to tell when their link-bait headlines are "not backed by evidence" (aka full of shit). However, these are confidential sources that nobody has access to and may or may not be confirmed in public. That moves the problem one level of indirection. How do we know if/when wikileaks decides to make things up out of whole cloth? How do we know if/when wikileaks' sources decide to make things up?
The point I think I'm trying to make is this: what value does wikileaks bring to the table that, say, pastebin or dropbox doesn't? Increasingly it's looking like that value is actually negative. Which is important to make note of, and disconcerting.
I'm possibly the person on HN who is most vocal about their (current) failings, and even I don't think they're just making things up. I do think, however, that it was a calamitous decision for them to start editorializing. It wasn't a small mistake; it's been devastating to their credibility.
Even in a case like this, the subtexts are all wrong. Why is Wikileaks summarizing anything about this release? Why are they playing it up anywhere? Anyone can read it and see that it's not newsworthy (the issue of reciprocity in extradition isn't just years old, it's decades old!). It's not that any of their sources are false; it's instead the issue that who knows what they're not publishing? Surely, nothing that hurts their narrative!
Sure, I don't believe they're making things up either, yet. But my point is, how do we know? How can we tell?
Their editorializing makes them much more vulnerable to being gamed by people who are willing to make things up (even CBS had this problem). Again, I'm wondering what the value-add of wikileaks is. The access? That seems very outmoded in today's hyper-connected age.
Their value, despite spinning thir leaks, lies in publishing original, often secret, sources after all and also in exerting distinct pressure on certain players who have something to hide from the public (e.g. government, julius bär case etc). The public is much better off for the existence of the Afghan War Logs. No need to trust embedded journalists or the government anymore, but access to direct source material.
It is far from clear that the public is better off for the existence of the Afghan War Logs. The claims in favor of them are about as credible as the claims against them.
Maybe they're a revelation on the same scale as the Pentagon Papers. Or, maybe they're a raw running transcript of a phenomenon (AfPak becoming a counterproductive slog) even the government itself acknowledges.
Maybe they're putting tens or hundreds of informants who worked against the Taliban --- or even people who just have similar names to those people --- at risk of assassination. Or, maybe that's never going to happen and Wikileaks did a good enough job sanitizing the release.
It's also one thing to suggest that we shouldn't trust "embedded journalists", and another to suggest that there is no value in filtering, contextualization, and summarization by experts. Maybe most of our "mainstream" experts suck, but I think you'll have a hard time with the argument that all of them do, or with the idea that people in general will do a better job with "the raw feed". Look at the Tea Party, the Cordoba House controversy, and the "Obama is a muslim" meme for evidence that backs up my side of this argument.
WL is very agenda-driven. It's easy to see. It's not the same agenda as we see in traditional US media, but it's an agenda all the same, and it's not altruistic. Assange and co. attempt to paint WL as a puppies-and-rainbows bastion of human rights. Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?
Maybe you shouldn't be reading Wikileaks at all. If you can't distinguish Wikileaks from the Drudge report or Boing Boing then I'd say you're not the kind of person who would benefit from reading leaked copies of classified documents. Instead, I'd suggest you stick to articles in the New York Times or Washington Post or other major newspapers that are based on Wikileaks data. I mean, since all the big papers have been publishing articles that heavily use Wikileaks data, presumably they find WL to be somewhat trustworthy. Or do you have difficulty distinguishing between the NYT and the Drudge Report as well?
Maybe you missed the official acknowledgment that a priority of the US Government is to continue widespread extrajudicial "detention, transfer and interrogation" of "suspects", with the valued co-operation of foreign allies - without any kind of reciprocal agreements, of course.
Maybe I missed that because that's not what the document says. But of course, the fact that Wikileaks posted it and pasted that summary on it is why we're having this discussion, not because of the document itself.
I fail to see how the Wikileaks summary is misleading.
Contrary to your statement, the word "export" occurs multiple times and often outside "a quoted label". The start of the answer to the primary question posed by the document is:
"Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon..."
The document itself plainly states that there is an American export of terrorism. Indeed, the entirety of the document is about the implications of knowledge of the fact that some terrorists do come from America and affect other parts of the world: exported.
Perhaps the narrative you're tracking in is the one where Wikileaks is bad, and therefore you've decided to interpret their summary as if they claimed the U.S. had a policy of exporting terrorism. Clearly the Wikileaks summary made no such claim, and instead is a fairly accurate summary of the leaked document itself.
The memo is there for everyone to read. It is only 4 pages. Wikileaks can say whatever it wishes and by the way so can you or whatever commentator. The memo is there to read, uncensored I would think.
It is not merely the fact that some crazy person joins some vile organisation, it is more important in regards to the implications. It mentions cases where clearly one sidedness is shown. Why was that person not allowed to testify in a democratic court? Why must the US not be subjected to the same requirement it demands of other democratic countries in regards to extradition. It is not for lack of reason that the case of the Hacker in the UK keeps making front page news.
The leak I believe is a service to humanity. It is a shining light to reason amongst the dark pits of greed.
21 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 43.3 ms ] threadThere, I've summed up the new leak.
Naturally, that's not how WikiLeaks sums it up. They're not bound to the actual text, but rather to the contours of the narrative they're trafficking in; in that narrative, it's not random crazy Islamists or Irish Nationalists joining terrorist causes, but rather the US "exporting" it. In the document, the word "export" occurs only in a quoted label, and is predicated --- 'if the US was perceived as an "exporter of terrorism"' --- because of people's perceptions of random crazy people in a country of 300 million people.
According to the WaPo's last investigation, 850,000 people have some form of "Top Secret" clearance. It's a wonder everything labeled "Top Secret" isn't leaked. This isn't even that; it's "Secret: Don't Circulate To Foreigners" (as it concerns foreign policy and perceptions).
I think the unnamed official speaking to NBC summed this up nicely: 'This is not exactly a blockbuster paper'.
Wikileaks deserves some critical commentary, granted. But comparing it to "news organizations" like boingboing just makes it seem like it's falling out of favor with the "internet intelligentsia".
The point I think I'm trying to make is this: what value does wikileaks bring to the table that, say, pastebin or dropbox doesn't? Increasingly it's looking like that value is actually negative. Which is important to make note of, and disconcerting.
Even in a case like this, the subtexts are all wrong. Why is Wikileaks summarizing anything about this release? Why are they playing it up anywhere? Anyone can read it and see that it's not newsworthy (the issue of reciprocity in extradition isn't just years old, it's decades old!). It's not that any of their sources are false; it's instead the issue that who knows what they're not publishing? Surely, nothing that hurts their narrative!
Their editorializing makes them much more vulnerable to being gamed by people who are willing to make things up (even CBS had this problem). Again, I'm wondering what the value-add of wikileaks is. The access? That seems very outmoded in today's hyper-connected age.
Maybe they're a revelation on the same scale as the Pentagon Papers. Or, maybe they're a raw running transcript of a phenomenon (AfPak becoming a counterproductive slog) even the government itself acknowledges.
Maybe they're putting tens or hundreds of informants who worked against the Taliban --- or even people who just have similar names to those people --- at risk of assassination. Or, maybe that's never going to happen and Wikileaks did a good enough job sanitizing the release.
It's also one thing to suggest that we shouldn't trust "embedded journalists", and another to suggest that there is no value in filtering, contextualization, and summarization by experts. Maybe most of our "mainstream" experts suck, but I think you'll have a hard time with the argument that all of them do, or with the idea that people in general will do a better job with "the raw feed". Look at the Tea Party, the Cordoba House controversy, and the "Obama is a muslim" meme for evidence that backs up my side of this argument.
For some reason you appear to have not seen the document that you claim doesn't say what it does say.
Contrary to your statement, the word "export" occurs multiple times and often outside "a quoted label". The start of the answer to the primary question posed by the document is:
"Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon..."
The document itself plainly states that there is an American export of terrorism. Indeed, the entirety of the document is about the implications of knowledge of the fact that some terrorists do come from America and affect other parts of the world: exported.
Perhaps the narrative you're tracking in is the one where Wikileaks is bad, and therefore you've decided to interpret their summary as if they claimed the U.S. had a policy of exporting terrorism. Clearly the Wikileaks summary made no such claim, and instead is a fairly accurate summary of the leaked document itself.
I rest my case.
It is not merely the fact that some crazy person joins some vile organisation, it is more important in regards to the implications. It mentions cases where clearly one sidedness is shown. Why was that person not allowed to testify in a democratic court? Why must the US not be subjected to the same requirement it demands of other democratic countries in regards to extradition. It is not for lack of reason that the case of the Hacker in the UK keeps making front page news.
The leak I believe is a service to humanity. It is a shining light to reason amongst the dark pits of greed.