Quote Originally Posted by El Kabong View Post
Quote Originally Posted by miles View Post
The person who stole them took them illegally. If I am working for the government then I am obliged to keep to a confidentiality agreement that I signed up to. Assange has never agreed to keep anything confidential, so I struggle to see why he is at fault. He has never worked for the US government, so has no reason to keep things hushed. That distinction is sigifiicant.

Are we to force journalists to sign a contract with the government and be forced to say only good things about their country? No they SHOULD be (though usually aren't) independant and be seeking the truth. If that means governments are forced to look foolish at times, then so be it.

I honestly have no issues with these releases whatsoever and encourage them to continue. As I say, I am VERY interested in seeing what the Bank of America has to say about what has gone on over the past 3 years or so. We have a right to know what those within corporations who have bankrupted the worlds economy and have been given free money really think. The diplomacy thing is not so much my bag, but the economy is and I want to know what has been going on behind the closed doors.


No one is saying that investigative reporting (if that even still exists, thank you left wing news media) is bad. However revealing state secrets at a time where we're already at war and certain nations (Iran and North Korea) are amping up their military and in North Korea's case going so far as to deliberately attack South Korea (miles) I don't think that airing dirty laundry that may exacerbate things is a good idea in this political climate. Assange says he wants to end all government....the only way I see that happening is via the mass use of nuclear weapons. Will we be a happy world after that?
I would argue the complete opposite. Revealing state secrets whilst immoral wars are taking place is extremely neccessary as it continues to reinforce the realisation that terrible acts are being commited and being subsidised by taxpayer money. In fact I want to see more leaks and I want these government acts to be shown for what they are and be known by more people. The US government is currently trying to spin that the war in Afghanistan is going according to plan when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The number of attacks has increased and the number of US troops killed this year has risen significantly. If we were to only listen to government press releases we would be thinking that economic good times are coming back and that the Afghan war is going swimmingly. All utter tosh. In that regard I think the prior releases about the wars were significant and useful.

Iran is amping up its military because of Wikileaks? Iran has been put on the defensive for a number of years now, Wikileaks simply told them that other nations have a vested interest in seeing them destroyed. I don't think it is a bad thing for people to realise the two faced nature of some of these regimes. They will say in private something far different than what they will tell their own populations or what their own populations actually believe to be true. North Korea is nuts, but they didn't shoot those rockets because of Wikileaks.

Like I say, it would be better for all parties if there was no dirty laundry and if there was more transparency in politics. The very fact that the Iraq war was even allowed to happen and the way the US media blindly drummed up support for it shows that there are huge problems with the existing model. Power centres have pretty much been free to do what they want with no checks or balances. Anything that can influence it the other way is acceptable IMO.

These leaks aren't causing the damage, the damage is already being caused by unnacountable elites with unchecked power.