Julian Assange's current leak of classified cables has not helped America or saved any American lives or helped improve the war on terror in any way therefore I rebuke the release of those documents. I argue that these leaks have done harm, and have made countries more distrustful of each other and given dangerous elements the information they need to be more difficult to find and educated about the Western worlds’ weaknesses.
First I think it is perfectly reasonable to challenge the credibility of the Julian Assange.
His intentions appear to be good. But his grandiose and overwhelming disregard for the principle of diplomacy is dumbfounding. State's spend money to keep secrets. . .because secrets save lives. Who is this man to hold court over America and our private opinions of the world? I don't know. I do know that I spent three years of my life learning that we as Americans have built our government and system of law on the principle that if someone would like the impose moral judgment on us then we have the right to challenge their moral integrity and then challenge the appropriateness of that judgment. The Puritans (yes I’m referencing the settlers despite the fact that I’m morally opposed to them and their slaughter of Native Americans) left England because they were tired of being religiously oppressed. They were also tired of being told what to do by a morally bankrupt monarchy. If I was a 350lb chain smoking, donut eating, beer in the morning drinking, lard swallowing, twinkie and bacon snack making, cake for brunch every day having, deep fried butter loving, chili cheese fries for lunch, and McDonald’s for dinner every day like clock work inhaling, my own special on the learning channel having bitch, then you MIGHT gawk if I gave a critical expose of your eating habits. Even if I have a full library of healthy eating novels and I have taken several classes on the subject. The source matters. It is my right to FIRST look at the source and after I make sure the source is credible/reputable then I look at the information and judge its credibility. Why do I get to critique Julian? (1) I’m an American (2) As an American I could be harmed by the information he released (3) He is critiquing my country. Australia is still a mess. Go fix your country then come to mine and try to work out our problems.
His intentions appear to be good. But his grandiose and overwhelming disregard for the principle of diplomacy is dumbfounding. State's spend money to keep secrets. . .because secrets save lives. Who is this man to hold court over America and our private opinions of the world? I don't know. I do know that I spent three years of my life learning that we as Americans have built our government and system of law on the principle that if someone would like the impose moral judgment on us then we have the right to challenge their moral integrity and then challenge the appropriateness of that judgment. The Puritans (yes I’m referencing the settlers despite the fact that I’m morally opposed to them and their slaughter of Native Americans) left England because they were tired of being religiously oppressed. They were also tired of being told what to do by a morally bankrupt monarchy. If I was a 350lb chain smoking, donut eating, beer in the morning drinking, lard swallowing, twinkie and bacon snack making, cake for brunch every day having, deep fried butter loving, chili cheese fries for lunch, and McDonald’s for dinner every day like clock work inhaling, my own special on the learning channel having bitch, then you MIGHT gawk if I gave a critical expose of your eating habits. Even if I have a full library of healthy eating novels and I have taken several classes on the subject. The source matters. It is my right to FIRST look at the source and after I make sure the source is credible/reputable then I look at the information and judge its credibility. Why do I get to critique Julian? (1) I’m an American (2) As an American I could be harmed by the information he released (3) He is critiquing my country. Australia is still a mess. Go fix your country then come to mine and try to work out our problems.
Second. I’m OVER non Americans shitting on our country. I’m also over Americans helping non Americans shit on our country unless there is some tangible and measurable domestic benfit (read: our country not our president [nation not personality]).
Unless you live in Switzerland take care of your own government Keep your critiques to the op-ed page. When your critiques take on life then I become a mother wolf with red, white, and blue teeth waiting to tear your throat out unless you can give me a good reason not to. IF your government is Mr. Clean spotless THEN come and use mine as a port-o-potty. You’ll remember that when Bush was president I was NEVER for anyone taking a dump on America. I’m a first generation American. My parents fucking hauled ass to get here. My grandmother worked her fingers to the bone to bring six children here. I’m going to die here. My children will be born here and while I love Jamaica my kids will also have a very proper and somber respect for this the greatest (yes greatest) country in the world.
Unless you live in Switzerland take care of your own government Keep your critiques to the op-ed page. When your critiques take on life then I become a mother wolf with red, white, and blue teeth waiting to tear your throat out unless you can give me a good reason not to. IF your government is Mr. Clean spotless THEN come and use mine as a port-o-potty. You’ll remember that when Bush was president I was NEVER for anyone taking a dump on America. I’m a first generation American. My parents fucking hauled ass to get here. My grandmother worked her fingers to the bone to bring six children here. I’m going to die here. My children will be born here and while I love Jamaica my kids will also have a very proper and somber respect for this the greatest (yes greatest) country in the world.
I believe that if you have a problem with American than you should work to fix it and you should love her while you are critiquing her. It’s the principle of “I can talk about my Mom but the second you do I will punch you in the face” Not a hard concept to understand it’s also not particularly mature or logical but it’s pretty universal. If you don’t want to do that in a constructive manner then get the fuck out. I’m serious, go to France. Stop taking up the space and jobs and air of people who risk their lives for a chance to make it here.
I support international critique. Like right now I want to kick Barry in his knots for letting this leak happen on his watch. He’s also handling both these wars MONSTROUSLY and his health care bill is bullocks in its entirety. BUT anyone who betrays our country like Pfc. Ham-ass-face-shit-for-brains doesn’t get any accolades from me. I hope Pfc. Dickfacenuts gets court marshaled for treason and erased from American History. I hope he becomes an urban legend. I hope he lives on like La Llorona, The bogeyman, Banshees, the Dupey Man, the Easter Bunny, and the fucking Jollyman (google him).
He. Gave. Up. State. Secrets. *blink * *stare * <
And he didn’t even give up good ones.[i] I don’t know if Cher, Mario Lopez, and Madonna are Aliens (and the basis of the TV show The Event).
I don’t know who shot TuPac and Biggie. I don’t know where Osama is. I don’t know what our contingency plan is when (yes when) North Korea collapses like a black hole. I have NO idea how we are going to deal with the blossoming pandemic that is HIV/AIDS. I don’t know what our gov’t is doing about the erosion of Russia’s democracy (just that there is one). I don’t know how realistic Taiwanese independence is at the current moment. I have no idea what the shit is going on with the removal of uranium from Pakistan (oh wait I do. Because Pfc. Ineedattention alerted the world to the fact that we ARE removing uranium from reactors in Pakistan we’ve had to halt those operations).
I don’t know who shot TuPac and Biggie. I don’t know where Osama is. I don’t know what our contingency plan is when (yes when) North Korea collapses like a black hole. I have NO idea how we are going to deal with the blossoming pandemic that is HIV/AIDS. I don’t know what our gov’t is doing about the erosion of Russia’s democracy (just that there is one). I don’t know how realistic Taiwanese independence is at the current moment. I have no idea what the shit is going on with the removal of uranium from Pakistan (oh wait I do. Because Pfc. Ineedattention alerted the world to the fact that we ARE removing uranium from reactors in Pakistan we’ve had to halt those operations).
“Oh yeah, and the dump will do real harm. Everybody knows that the Obama administration is worried about loose nukes in Pakistan, but not everyone knew that a U.S. technical team was trying to remove highly enriched uranium from one particular research reactor. Until now. A WikiLeaks cable quotes the U.S. ambassador as warning that “if the local media got word of the fuel removal,” it would scuttle the operation.”[ii]
I did get a whole lot of water cooler gossip though. [iii] I know that Paris Hilton (Italian President) the Situation (Russian President) like to party with each other and are international liabilities. Well yippie ki-yi-ya mutherfuckers. I read the New York Time, bbcnews, the Washington Post, and Slate magazine. This is not in fact new news.
Then why is Chris so mad?
Oh. . . becaue he did burst wide open some secrets didn’t really want everyone and then suicide bombing mama to. So hats off to private first class dickface nuts. I’ll send your mother an edible arrangement basket. After the government sends her to a secret camp in Yemen for re-programming so that she doesn’t even remember she had a son. They’ll hopefully erase Pfc.’s dickfacenuts birth certificate, his school records, all pictures of him, and every trace of evidence that he was every on this earth. I’ll send his mother a welcome home gift basket because she’ll think she was at a training seminar. Gosh I hope she likes chocolate covered strawberries.
Oh. . . becaue he did burst wide open some secrets didn’t really want everyone and then suicide bombing mama to. So hats off to private first class dickface nuts. I’ll send your mother an edible arrangement basket. After the government sends her to a secret camp in Yemen for re-programming so that she doesn’t even remember she had a son. They’ll hopefully erase Pfc.’s dickfacenuts birth certificate, his school records, all pictures of him, and every trace of evidence that he was every on this earth. I’ll send his mother a welcome home gift basket because she’ll think she was at a training seminar. Gosh I hope she likes chocolate covered strawberries.
My concern with the Wikileaks organization and most specifically with the most recent release of diplomatic cables is that their release does not help us domestically in any discernable manner. I’m selfish. My family lives in NY and I’m over anything that creates even a slight increase in international discord. Because the more attention we have to pay to stroking hurt egos and smoothing down diplomatic ruffles the less attention we have available for other more pressing matters. I have family and friends serving in this country right now so anytime anyone releases documents that could put them at harm I will assume the worst until the alternative is proven.
Lastly Wikileaks did my country more harm than good, therefore I will not glorify Julian Assange in anyway regardless of how good his intentions are. So here is the argument: the leaked information can do one of three things (from a domestic standpoint): it can (1) Help us; (2) Hurt us; (3) Do nothing.
We know that it has done not done nothing. So it has to be option 1 or 2 (or a combination of 1 and 2). I argue it is MORE 1 than 2 which makes Julian Assange a threat to MY safety and thus fair game to be hunted down and prosecuted.
(A) Wikileaks has helped by :
a. showing weaknesses in our diplomatic cable communications. I appreciate that. It’s a form of critique that will only make our communications stronger.
(B) Wikileaks has hurt by:
a. Highlighting certain information re: world leaders/politics that we didn’t necessarily didn’t need other countries to know. (we all agree people may have “known” but now there is documented confirmation which is just obnoxious) [iv] Some of the main points are
Point 1: The U.S. is worried about loose nuclear materials in Pakistan but can’t do much about it.
Point 2: American leaders are “thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea” and hoping China will accept a reunified peninsula. Bullet
Point 3: Washington is “bargaining [with various allies] to empty the Guantanamo prison.”
Point 4: There are “suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government.”
Point 5: The Chinese regime hacks into foreign computers.
Point 6: Rich Saudis still fund al Qaeda.
Point 7: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are tight.
Point 8: Syria arms Hezbollah, but lies about it.
Point 9: The U.S. tried to get Germany not to prosecute CIA agents accused of kidnapping.[v]
Oh yes did I mention he leaked a lovely list of important/critical locations around the world that America relies on for international security. [vi]
The point is even if we “knew” this information now that we see it written down world leaders have to come out and be “angry” like the Hulk about it. German Chancelor Merkel knows she’s tepid and lukewarm and doesn’t like confrontation. She may know that she likes to surround herself with people who aren’t as smart as her to make herself look good but now we’ve PUBLISHED that to the world. SO that (A) the rest of the EU knows it and (B) she has us to thank for that and (C) she has to prove the opposite or (D) do her damndest to ignore it and pretend like it didn’t exist and it’s not true and like everyone isn’t looking at her like she.
(C) Julian won’t spark a national uprising calling for more transparency in government.
I will tell you why he won’t. He will not set loose a virus of curiosity to cure America of it’s crippling apathy because the disease multiplies like a cancer and he hasn’t focused his treatments enough to target the expanding cells. We have been overrun with a paralytic agent that has us barely holding on the status quo. Things were so bad in this country that a black man actually had a chance to/and did win the Presidency. He inherited an enormous ball of foolywang because the country was so helter skelter that the citizenry was like “well shit. . he can’t do any worse”.
Julian picked a terrible time to ask American people to rise up on an intellectual level. He needed to find something basic and guttural to connect to the American psyche. He needed a simple message that is accessible to a mass of individuals who have at the very highest an average intellect of a 4th grader. We are busy. We are lazy. We need the google maps/wikipeadia version of these documents. Bullet points Julilan. Bullet points. Highlights. Watch ESPN for a minute and thenyou’re your argument into the modern American citizens cognitive framework.
It is hard (if not impossible) to be intellectual when hunger is on the brain. Americans’ basic needs are not being met. When basic needs aren’t being met uprisings come from domestic issues not international ones. Unless the international cables show us exactly how to get some mother of 4 how she can get her kids more food stamps she’s ignoring it totally and completely. We are in a recession. 
(this is a group of people waiting for public housing applications)
(this is a group of people waiting for public housing applications)
A depression. All those pictures we saw in history books of people living during the 20’s that’s how people are living now only we can’t see it because whether we want to admit it or not we are living various degrees of a Gatspy (*choke* *gag *) lifestyle. We live above the masses. Unemploymen is at 10% . People are loosing health insurance, kids are going to school to eat, people are losing their homes. I could take a poll of every person that walks through legal aids doors for the next 3 months and I guarantee that maybe 7 of them know or care who Julian Assange is. These people however aren’t protected from the negative fall out. I can go to NY and ask the same type of people and they won’t know or care who he is either. But they do care (whether they know it or not) about how much information we are providing those who would do us harm.
Addendum:
Julian says that he has damaging information about Bank of America. Now this. This I’d like to hear. This information helps us domestically. We need to know what our banks are doing. I don’t believe this information will lead to economic terrorism but I do believe it may help the average man ask more questions about his lender. AH HA! How does this differ from the international leaks? It differs greatly because if Bank of America has been doing shady dealings and betraying American citizens then these are things Americans will want to know about. Every homeowner who lost his or her home, every homeowner with a mortgage, every person with a 401k cares. This hits home. This is something that can be boiled down and easily understood and will ultimately help my fellow citizens.To be sure, some of the things that Julian releases are helpful but some of the things he releases aren't helpful and are actually hurtful. He has gambled and if he looses then that's the risk he takes. Every great game changer has suffered for it. History will judge and as it sees fit.
[i] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/29/holy_wikileaks_batman
[ii] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-29/wikileaks-diplomatic-document-dump-is-banal-sabotage/
[iii] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-cables-us-embassy-seven-key-things
[iv] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11914040
[v] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-29/wikileaks-diplomatic-document-dump-is-banal-sabotage/
[vi] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11923766
God. Bless. America. and anyone who threatens America can lick a taint.
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