Julian Assange still hiding

[Chris Brady]

Because when you find out that your government is party to war crimes, that's kind of important, and attempts to bluster about how that information should have been kept secret from all of us are uninteresting. (I notice you avoid that uncomfortable stuff to bluster about diplomatic cables instead, but the cables disclosures also revealed some rather festering secrets that quite probably should not have remained secrets -- like systematized human rights abuses being kept under the rug in regions as diverse as Eritrea and the Punjab for the sake of diplomatic protocol. The argument that we needed all this secrecy or the world would end is a lot harder to sustain now, and certainly not possible to sustain without actually grappling with the meat of the disclosures.)

Really, and how much do you REALLY care?  Do you care enough to take up arms against it?  Or actually DO something about it?  Or will you just nod your head and wait for the next bit of the headlines comes along to distract you?

[Callie Del Noire]

Because when you find out that your government is party to war crimes, that's kind of important, and attempts to bluster about how that information should have been kept secret from all of us are uninteresting. (I notice you avoid that uncomfortable stuff to bluster about diplomatic cables instead, but the cables disclosures also revealed some rather festering secrets that quite probably should not have remained secrets -- like systematized human rights abuses being kept under the rug in regions as diverse as Eritrea and the Punjab for the sake of diplomatic protocol. The argument that we needed all this secrecy or the world would end is a lot harder to sustain now, and certainly not possible to sustain without actually grappling with the meat of the disclosures.)

Underlined by me for emphasis

Okay.. I'm sorry. I realized that I had missed putting in my comments on that.

Did Assange post any of the follow up memos in the US State Department, phone conversations with the rulers of the region, the use of Diplomatic pressure on trading partners, allies and/or neighbors. The minutes of meetings with other first world nations, the UN reps and so on?

Oh yeah..those weren't found or disproven. You don't KNOW that there might have been action outside the small envelope of geography and time the leak disclosed. That is a huge amount of data.. but not EVERYTHING generated at the time.

Once again.. you have the odor which is rank.. but not any of the long time planning that mgiht have been going on behind doors. You get a peak with the leaks.. but not the whole story.

If I pull out two or three chapters of a story and you only read those chapters.. can you get the whole train of events?

Furthermore, revealing those events in the memos.. did he do the course of diplomatic measures in play any good? Will the people who did the atrocities enjoy reading what the State Department knows/thinks about them? Does revealing the awareness of these events tell the doers that someone is 'talking out of house'?

Jimmy Carter was in talks with the Revolutionary Guard during his run for his second term, to get the hostages home. Word was that someone in the Reagan campaign interferred with the negotiations or made a hint or two towards the RG that made them stall the release till after Reagan was sworn in months later. Would Carter have even gotten them to talk to him, given the vitriolic rhetoric Tehran was putting out at the time if he had been KNOWN to be in talks? Could Nixon and Kissinger have set up diplomatic measures with China if they were publiclly known?

No. Secrecy lets leaders do both good and bad. In the cases I cited you had men doing acts that congress and the popular opinion of the time would have NEVER allowed go on.

Assanges release of the cables might have shown what we knew.. some of what we were doing.. but not the whole story.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Really, and how much do you REALLY care?

Enough to get informed and vote against anything in my own country which seems tainted by militarism, war profiteering and similar shenanigans. Does that qualify, or would you really rather I went out and shot somebody?

Callie: thanks for the response to the post above. We can talk more about context later, I just hope it's clear in the meantime that that post was a reply to Chris Brady, not to you.

[Callie Del Noire]

Enough to get informed and vote against anything in my own country which seems tainted by militarism, war profiteering and similar shenanigans. Does that qualify, or would you really rather I went out and shot somebody?

Callie: thanks for the response to the post above. We can talk more about context later, I just hope it's clear in the meantime that that post was a reply to Chris Brady, not to you.

The question still stands.. if you don't know the whole of the events is it still right to call what you do know as being evil? Wihtout knowing what pressure/events being done in the process that aren't in the data that you were shown.

[Cyrano Johnson]

The question still stands.. if you don't know the whole of the events is it still right to call what you do know as being evil? Wihtout knowing what pressure/events being done in the process that aren't in the data that you were shown.

While I don't think that particular question stands necessarily -- frex a murder is a murder, if the "Collateral Murder" video had been of Taliban gunners shooting American civilians that wouldn't even be up for debate -- there is valid question as to how much context can ameliorate some of these issues. Unfortunately I don't have time to get into that right at the moment, I'll have to come back for that.

[Callie Del Noire]

While I don't think that particular question stands necessarily -- frex a murder is a murder, if the "Collateral Murder" video had been of Taliban gunners shooting American civilians that wouldn't even be up for debate -- there is valid question as to how much context can ameliorate some of these issues. Unfortunately I don't have time to get into that right at the moment, I'll have to come back for that.

I was speaking of the events in the Punjab and Etirea. You have only proof of awareness of the events.. not the course of events at the highest levels of government and how they were handling them (or not). You said it was evil to condone it.. but if you don't know the whole course of the government's handling of events.

[Cyrano Johnson]

As I said, stay tuned.