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I haven't browsed through much of Wikileaks, butt I was under the impression that they do leak documents from many governments, not solely the US or GB. Howeve

I haven't browsed through much of Wikileaks, butt I was under the impression that they do leak documents from many governments, not solely the US or GB. However, is it a surprise that the documents that get the most press are US-related? And, after all, the bigger the government, the bigger the paper trail / surface area for leaks.

BWStearns 13y ago
There are pathetically few documents on WL from governments with truly atrocious human rights records. There are more documents from fucking fraternities than oppressive governments. Governments are pretty reliable, there are documents even in the most dysfunctional governments. Wikileaks is less interested in publishing these than anything that is embarrassing to the US/UK. I know I'm throwing HN Karma down the toilet here, but really, while the behavior of the USG is far far from ideal, the behavior of Wikileaks is also so, and in a more insidious manner since its silence on more oppressive governments gives them validation. Also for those downvoting, please see my other posts. I am not blindly pro-USG or anti-whistleblower. I have more complicated feelings regarding Snowden but wrt Wikileaks I have been disappointed in their focus. I feel this is a valid concern as the obsession with taking the US down a peg also gives validation to those oppressing their own people. Taking the US down a peg and denouncing real atrocities should not be incompatible. I feel that Wikileaks has sacrificed the more valuable duty of the latter in favor of the former.
- vidarh 13y ago
  You are jumping to a lot of conclusions regarding WL's agenda, when it is quite possible the reason most of the documents are from the US/UK simply because they are reasonably easy to get leaks from compared to more brutal regimes.
  - BWStearns 13y ago
    This is no doubt true (it's easier in the US than NK), but as I commented below, they posted that they had some stuff on Russia, and then shut the hell up about it. What is the takeaway?
    - algorias 13y ago
      Sometimes, painful compromises need to be made? Pick your battles, fight one bad guy at a time. Would you rather have Snowden in jail? Also, as a non-US citizen, I think it's justified targeting the US specifically, because they have an inordinate amount of influence on global policies (basically, they force their laws on everybody else through so-called trade agreements)
      - mpyne 13y ago
        The change in WikiLeaks's tune regarding Russia far predates Snowden. Assange was using Russian state media (RT) as a mouthpiece for a television show of his before Snowden as well. I believe one of his first interviews was with the leader of Hezbollah, of all people.
        algorias 13y ago
        I stand corrected. My general point still holds, though.
  - speeder 13y ago
    I think.being anti-US is fine, since it is the most evil.country ever, that including disappeared people here. Sometimes I think.US will stop.being assholes and would return the friends of my writing teacher for example, but I know this is impossible, they were thrown out of a helicopter.over the Atlantic sea... I wonder when our government will bother digging those corpses up and counting them.
- varjag 13y ago
  Here, have an upvote. I am a citizen of Belarus, and disgusted by Assange. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/79749/wikitargeted http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/79749/wiki... He clearly has an agenda, which can be summarized as anti-American and pro-not-giving-a-fuck-about-anyone.
  - belorn 13y ago
    Manning leaked documents to Wikileaks, and Wikileaks gave the documents to a journalist, seeking help in selecting what information could be safely given out to the public. The journalist then gave out the password in a book, making all documents available to the public, which then caused problems for people named in the leaked documents. Please point out which people in those steps of events you are disgusted by, and what you would have done instead in their shoes.
    - varjag 13y ago
      Where does it come from? His anger at any attempts of editing out parts of the cables is well documented by different people he cooperated with: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.htm... "He was angry that we declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared — rightly, as it turned out — that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets. " Also, I would go as far as to say that his deputy's trip to KGB HQ in Minsk was totally unnecessary.
      - foobarqux 13y ago
        The redactions Assange objected to were those that implicated corporations and political figures. The Guardian claimed that they made the redactions from fear of libel lawsuits. Only after Leigh published the password for the cables, effectively making them public, did Wikileaks post them to its website. If you have evidence that Assange systematically published cables of informant names before the password was published by Leigh please share it.
- phaemon 13y ago
  > There are pathetically few documents on WL from governments with truly atrocious human rights records. So what? I seriously don't understand your position. I don't really care that there's nothing about North Korea on Wikileaks simply because: 1. Everyone knows North Korea has an appalling government. "North Korean Government Official Caught Accepting Bribes" would quite possibly be the stupidest news story ever. 2. I don't live in North Korea. I care about what the UK government is doing, because that's where I live! I take it you're from the USA. Wikileaks are telling you what your government is doing, and instead of thanking them, you're annoyed that you can't ignore what's going on? You're more concerned about some weird "embarrassment"? Seriously, WTF?
  - rtpg 13y ago
    Everyone knows that the NSA spies, but having all the physical proof of exactly what happens helps the cause doesn't it? NK might not be useful, but in countries with some amount of information exchange with the rest of the world like Russia, imagine if there were more solid cases of corruption against specific people in power? We say that WL helped trigger the Arab Spring, so why not the same in Russia?
    - belorn 13y ago
      > Everyone knows that the NSA spies, but having all the physical proof of exactly what happens helps the cause doesn't it? I guess that is why anyone who mention said knowledge was labeled as conspiracy nut and tinfoil hat. /sarcasm Please lets not rewrite history. People did not know that US diplomats was used as spies, or that NSA planted bugs in EU buildings, or had secret deals with mail and social networks that gave them privileged information under secret terms. People did not know about secret assassination lists. Surely a lot of people suspected things, but knowing is an other cup of tea here.
mpyne 13y ago
They used to leak documents from many governments, back when WikiLeaks was still a real wiki. After their redesign in winter 2008 (2009?) the focus of the site shifted entirely, to direct attention to the flaws of the USA and UK instead. The goal seems to now be to improve the world by disrupting the state (the largest Western ones being those of the US and UK), as opposed to the goal of a "world without secrets". This fits neatly with Assange's worldview (he has said in August 2013 that of the American politicians he is most fond of the libertarians of the right-wing Republican Party).

BWStearns 13y ago

There are pathetically few documents on WL from governments with truly atrocious human rights records. There are more documents from fucking fraternities than oppressive governments. Governments are pretty reliable, there are documents even in the most dysfunctional governments. Wikileaks is less interested in publishing these than anything that is embarrassing to the US/UK. I know I'm throwing HN Karma down the toilet here, but really, while the behavior of the USG is far far from ideal, the behavior of Wikileaks is also so, and in a more insidious manner since its silence on more oppressive governments gives them validation. Also for those downvoting, please see my other posts. I am not blindly pro-USG or anti-whistleblower. I have more complicated feelings regarding Snowden but wrt Wikileaks I have been disappointed in their focus. I feel this is a valid concern as the obsession with taking the US down a peg also gives validation to those oppressing their own people. Taking the US down a peg and denouncing real atrocities should not be incompatible. I feel that Wikileaks has sacrificed the more valuable duty of the latter in favor of the former.

vidarh 13y ago
You are jumping to a lot of conclusions regarding WL's agenda, when it is quite possible the reason most of the documents are from the US/UK simply because they are reasonably easy to get leaks from compared to more brutal regimes.
- BWStearns 13y ago
  This is no doubt true (it's easier in the US than NK), but as I commented below, they posted that they had some stuff on Russia, and then shut the hell up about it. What is the takeaway?
  - algorias 13y ago
    Sometimes, painful compromises need to be made? Pick your battles, fight one bad guy at a time. Would you rather have Snowden in jail? Also, as a non-US citizen, I think it's justified targeting the US specifically, because they have an inordinate amount of influence on global policies (basically, they force their laws on everybody else through so-called trade agreements)
    - mpyne 13y ago
      The change in WikiLeaks's tune regarding Russia far predates Snowden. Assange was using Russian state media (RT) as a mouthpiece for a television show of his before Snowden as well. I believe one of his first interviews was with the leader of Hezbollah, of all people.
      - algorias 13y ago
        I stand corrected. My general point still holds, though.
- speeder 13y ago
  I think.being anti-US is fine, since it is the most evil.country ever, that including disappeared people here. Sometimes I think.US will stop.being assholes and would return the friends of my writing teacher for example, but I know this is impossible, they were thrown out of a helicopter.over the Atlantic sea... I wonder when our government will bother digging those corpses up and counting them.
varjag 13y ago
Here, have an upvote. I am a citizen of Belarus, and disgusted by Assange. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/79749/wikitargeted http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/79749/wiki... He clearly has an agenda, which can be summarized as anti-American and pro-not-giving-a-fuck-about-anyone.
- belorn 13y ago
  Manning leaked documents to Wikileaks, and Wikileaks gave the documents to a journalist, seeking help in selecting what information could be safely given out to the public. The journalist then gave out the password in a book, making all documents available to the public, which then caused problems for people named in the leaked documents. Please point out which people in those steps of events you are disgusted by, and what you would have done instead in their shoes.
  - varjag 13y ago
    Where does it come from? His anger at any attempts of editing out parts of the cables is well documented by different people he cooperated with: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.htm... "He was angry that we declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared — rightly, as it turned out — that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets. " Also, I would go as far as to say that his deputy's trip to KGB HQ in Minsk was totally unnecessary.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      The redactions Assange objected to were those that implicated corporations and political figures. The Guardian claimed that they made the redactions from fear of libel lawsuits. Only after Leigh published the password for the cables, effectively making them public, did Wikileaks post them to its website. If you have evidence that Assange systematically published cables of informant names before the password was published by Leigh please share it.
phaemon 13y ago
> There are pathetically few documents on WL from governments with truly atrocious human rights records. So what? I seriously don't understand your position. I don't really care that there's nothing about North Korea on Wikileaks simply because: 1. Everyone knows North Korea has an appalling government. "North Korean Government Official Caught Accepting Bribes" would quite possibly be the stupidest news story ever. 2. I don't live in North Korea. I care about what the UK government is doing, because that's where I live! I take it you're from the USA. Wikileaks are telling you what your government is doing, and instead of thanking them, you're annoyed that you can't ignore what's going on? You're more concerned about some weird "embarrassment"? Seriously, WTF?
- rtpg 13y ago
  Everyone knows that the NSA spies, but having all the physical proof of exactly what happens helps the cause doesn't it? NK might not be useful, but in countries with some amount of information exchange with the rest of the world like Russia, imagine if there were more solid cases of corruption against specific people in power? We say that WL helped trigger the Arab Spring, so why not the same in Russia?
  - belorn 13y ago
    > Everyone knows that the NSA spies, but having all the physical proof of exactly what happens helps the cause doesn't it? I guess that is why anyone who mention said knowledge was labeled as conspiracy nut and tinfoil hat. /sarcasm Please lets not rewrite history. People did not know that US diplomats was used as spies, or that NSA planted bugs in EU buildings, or had secret deals with mail and social networks that gave them privileged information under secret terms. People did not know about secret assassination lists. Surely a lot of people suspected things, but knowing is an other cup of tea here.

mpyne 13y ago

They used to leak documents from many governments, back when WikiLeaks was still a real wiki. After their redesign in winter 2008 (2009?) the focus of the site shifted entirely, to direct attention to the flaws of the USA and UK instead. The goal seems to now be to improve the world by disrupting the state (the largest Western ones being those of the US and UK), as opposed to the goal of a "world without secrets". This fits neatly with Assange's worldview (he has said in August 2013 that of the American politicians he is most fond of the libertarians of the right-wing Republican Party).