WikiLeaks Begins Release of 2.5m Syrian Emails 322
judgecorp writes "WikiLeaks has started publishing 2.5 million emails from Syrian political figures and other bodies. The material will embarrass Syria, as well as other governments according to Julian Assange (still hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London). As well as revealing the behaviour of the Syrian regime, the emails will also expose the hypocrisy of other governments and companies, Assange has said."
Re:And this is why (Score:5, Informative)
The Bank of America data (along with some other interesting stuff) was deleted by Daniel Domscheit-Berg [huffingtonpost.com].
Re:And this is why (Score:4, Informative)
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-18/world/venezuela.radio_1_venezuelan-president-hugo-chavez-venezuelan-law-press-freedom?_s=PM:WORLD [cnn.com]
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/02/venezuela_prohibits_sales_of_guns_ammunition/ [salon.com]
Of those twelve seconds, I spent three picking out sources from the "liberal media". Just for you.
Re:And this is why (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, I should have said more evidently. I thought I was being obvious, but obviously I was not :P
Despite the legions of posters on this site (and every other site I have been to so far) who seem to feel that because Wikileaks DARED to releas US Government secrets that were submitted to them, Assange should be hung, drawn and quartered in public for having the temerity to do so, I think that Wikileaks serves a very valuable service to the bulk of humanity who might be interested in the things their governments are doing in their name and often keeping them from knowing. Releasing the emails from the Syrian government might prove to be very important and have a useful bearing on what is and has been going on there. Without some organization like WL we wouldn't see this stuff at all as members of the public. Moreover, the legion of journalists that will descend on this stuff wouldn't have the ability to root through it and summarize the key information they come across, and then disseminate to us in a more readable format.
Assange may be an egotistical ass, but the legion of the same posters above who are willing to see him tried and convicted of rape, without charges, without a court deliberation after a trial etc is getting rather annoying to me at least. If he's guilty then let him be charged and tried etc. Until then, he's innocent, just as anyone else who hasn't been charged is innocent. Stating otherwise is just ad hominem attacks that serve no purpose other than to show the poster's personal bias/agenda. What he is doing is a remarkable job of staying in the news, and thus advertising Wikileaks though. He's a figurehead that garners a lot of attention - or an attention whore in other words, and he's doing that very effectively. I have a feeling his greatest crime in the eyes of most US posters though is that he dared to do something that might reflect badly on the US, and "my country tis of thee" etc, they don't want to see a foreigner criticize the US, I guess only US citizens can do that without rancor it seems.
I think the world needs to do something about the situation in Syria. This information might give us a chance to be better informed on what has happened there and what is happening there, how can that be a bad thing in the long run? Unless of course it turns out that US Government agencies and US Corporations are implicated in the massacre of civilians there - then those same people I mentioned above will only have more ammunition for their arguments as to why Assange should be tried, convicted of treason (against a country he is not a citizen of) and then executed.
The problem with moral relativism (Score:4, Informative)
They're all SOMETHING, and differ in degree, but the US and the principles for which it stands, however imperfectly throughout history, can definitely not be generalized as "evil". I can't say the same for totalitarian states — throughout history, or now.
Saying it's all "just different kinds of evil" shamefully ignores the countless tens millions of people who have died under the repression, tyranny, and selfishness of totalitarian regimes.
Yes, be vigilant. Yes, identify injustice. Yes, call out abuse. But as soon as you start believing the US is "just as bad" (or some similar sentiment) as any other government, but "just in a different way", you have lost all perspective on the realities of history and the world in which we live.
List of Releases (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And this is why (Score:4, Informative)
Care to cite any evidence? As far as I know, elections in Venezuela are closely watched by thousands of UN observers, and they never declared any significant fraud since Chavez is in power. Check this [cartercenter.org].
Which is more than you can say about Baby Bush's first election...
Re:You're talking to the wrong crowd (Score:4, Informative)
You would be wrong. The entire video does not show the crime, it shows the context for the crime that takes place in one specific part of the video.
When the van pulls onto the scene in the video, you can hear the gunner begging for permission to open fire. And then lying to his CO over the radio, claiming that the people were collecting guns and bodies, when they were very very clearly only retrieving the 1 wounded survivor. Wither or not there was some mistaken identity earlier is debatable. but that specific instance with the van? That is most definitely a crime.
Re:You're talking to the wrong crowd (Score:4, Informative)
Iraq Body Count is one of the lowest estimates out there. There are three peer-reviewed studies on it (IBC is not among them): the Iraq Family Health Survey, the Lancet survey, and the Opinion Research Business survey. The Lancet's value of 655k dead by June 2006 (601k from violence, and of those, 181k from the coalition and 276k where the killer was unknown) is the middle one of the three. They also have had the most feedback on the paper and the best sampling, so if anyone is going to cite just one work on the subject, it should probably be them.
Re:And this is why (Score:3, Informative)
citation 2 [fas.org]
citation 3 [cpj.org]
citation 4 [blogspot.ca]
citation 5 [guardian.co.uk]
citation 6 [rsf.org]
citation 7 [laht.com]
citation 8 [globaljournalist.org]
citation 9 [utexas.edu]
citation 10 [cpj.org]
Okay, there's 10 citations for you. Begin your spin, denouncements, deflections, justifications, and outright lies.....