WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

Context is king.

You were sending me unsolicited Private Messages Rockhead. Sometimes several within an hour and I never understood what you were on about (you would see something I said somewhere on the public boards and say something cryptic to me in a PM about it and I had no idea what post you were referring to).

I told you I had no idea what you were on about and didn't really want the PMs.

Many disagree with that assessment, oh nameless one.
That is your opinion.

And as for :


That depends on whether you accept the prosecution's case or not.
It is hardly squeaky clean & is also quite flawed, if you take the time to read up on the details.

Originally the two women concerned (when they made their complaint) simply wanted him to take an STD test.
They were NOT accusing him of rape. One of them refused to cooperate with the police after the prosecution became involved. But, as I say, read up.

I am not at the moment seeing why A2k could not support a sub community of open minded truth seakers.....sure this is a massive downgrade from what A2K once was. As robert is finding out changing the culture through brute force from the dictator is not easy...the old tends to live on for a long time under the radar. Until he goes so far as to make us undersirables invisable to all newcomers he is going to have a hard time getting where he wants to go. I suspect that he will soon auto block all those who reach a threshold of blocks, that we heritics will soon not be visable with out an opt in. Roberts need to censor while perpetuating the fantasy that he is not the cause of censorship has yeilded some interesting results for sure.

I think you are exaggerating the role Wikileaks plays in this kind of thing. It was just a medium for some epic leaks, they don't go get them they setup an open wiki and asked for people to give them and a few people gave them some really big scoops.

Journalists then did vetting and curating that made it accessible and popular (most people never have got information directly from Wikileaks).

Many organizations continue to be an outlet for information and continue to pursue investigative journalism but you can't expect leaks of this magnitude to happen all the time, and the limiting factor is just not the outlets but the sources of leaks. There are only so many Bradley Mannings. There are tons of people who want to break a juicy story or who want to promote transparency and secrets, that just isn't what this process relies on at all.

we should be able to opt in or out of your bullshit.

"heretics" everywhere feel insulted now...

Once again, I really don't want to argue politics with you, msolga, but I hope that you have a great day!

I may well....I don't know much about the process and don't have any fish to fry in this one and havent investigated enough to know what my fish would be if I had them....t hough I would imagine that if something becomes as famous as wikileaks it then attracts people who have something to leak and it becomes somewhat self-propelling?

The level of melodrama here is reaching nauseating proportions.

Don't argue or engage with me, by all means.
No worries about that.
I don't have any desire to engage with you, either.
But you could at least consider some inconvenient facts about the prosecution's case when posting here?

you need a barf bag, big boy?

nice to see you here...

The leaks certainly help get their name out as a place for leaks. But things of that magnitude just don't come along all that often time, they are things like the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, they are nearly generational in frequency. Smaller leaks of smaller magnitude continue to happen every day, just like they always have.

Wikileaks didn't do a lot of the heavy lifting, the journalists who were chosen to help did. I'm sure wikileaks is getting plenty of people sharing information with it but there's really not much work to do other than wait for another big bombshell to drop in your lap and then do the legwork (which is usually left to journalists).

I thin the work that Assange did that he can take the most credit for is being a good sales person for the information. For example, he figured out that just putting it out there didn't attract much attention so with some editorializing and with collaboration with select journalists (who value the exclusivity) he was able to maximize the attention the information got, he was adroit at managing this and trying to generate the maximum amount of press possible.

This is why they'd trickle it out etc, he showed a good understanding of the news cycle and sold wikileaks and its information well. I think he was good at shopping the info around and being a bit of a information lubricant, if you will.

Doubt there's any melo in the feelings of those involved. It's genuinely awful for most when this stuff happens.

Yup.

I take your point re the journalists......

Do you know if the leaks you speak of are mainly going what I imagine to be the traditional way, to journalists, a la Watergate, or is there increasing tendency to use the net, a la wikileaks?

I know I would have major trouble knowing how to find a journo I could trust if I decided to leak something?

I have considered them msolga, and have drawn very different conclusions than you have. I wish you would let it go, and not insist that I face the "facts" you insist to shove in my face. We don't have a disagreement about "facts" we have a disagreement about conclusions. Together with a healthy inability on your part to accept my attempts to agree to disagree.

Please allow me to agree to disagree with you. I do not see why you must insist on trying to argue with me like a dog with a bone.

Knowing who to trust is just inevitably going to be hard, it's not like Bradley Manning knew who to trust either (one of the hackers he confided in, Adrian Lamo, turned him in).

Anonymous and other hackers have been trying to hack at information (but a bit indiscriminately as hacking is largely a crime of opportunity) and dump it online but events like the Bradley Manning leaks are rare enough that a trend is hard to make of it.

I personally think that the current trend is for direct leaks on social media platforms but I do not have broad data to confirm this suspicion. But basically, if you wanted to leak information to the internet it would be childs play for you to setup an anonymous twitter account and have at it, for example. How you connect to twitter is the same challenge you'd face connecting to whomever you decide to trust, but anyway my personal suspicion is that more and more leaks will break through the increasing use of social media directly that way.

Journalists are spending more and more time these days with their fingers on the pulse of twitter etc and getting their breaks from users. If there is any trend happening I think this is it. The information is not just easy to post on those mediums but it can reach a tipping point more easily too. The users are helping sell the information as well, directly.

No, certainly there is nothing mellow about it. This has been, mostly an interesing thread. A thread deteriorates, though, when the usual suspects show up to climb on their preferred soap box and start ranting, and ranting about something which is not the topic of the thread.

Which ones, exactly?
It is a FACT that the two women originally did NOT accuse Assange of rape.
You can't deny that. It's on the record. They simply wanted him to take an STD test. When one of the women discovered that he would be accused of rape as a result of their original contact with the police, she refused to cooperate further. That is a FACT, too.
It is also a FACT that the "case" against Assange (by the prosecution) was dismissed after his cooperation & he was informed he had no charges to answer. And that he was free to leave Sweden, having met all that was required of him.
But then (FACT, again) the prosecution changed it's story after he'd left the country for England.

I have absolutely no problem with you disagreeing with me, but it would certainly help if you got your facts straight!

It would appear to be the order of the day in "news" cycles nationally.

http://youtu.be/aCcfRz_al18

Msolga, I again invite you to avail yourself of the opportunity to agree to disagree. I do this because we don't tend to have fruitful discussions and I can't imagine how I can continue to beat this horse with you with no ill-effects and additional hurt feelings. I do not wish to argue with you, we do not disagree on any facts we disagree on conclusions. Let's live with having drawn different conclusions and move on. I can see no profit in continuing to argue when there are plenty of others with whom you can discuss this and upon whom nature saw fit to bestow more generous portions of patience, grace and inter-personal compatibility.

I'm off to more edifying, less frustrating, pastures. Cheers!