WikiLeaks

~jet said:
Well, Reagan did do a pretty good job of dismantling the middle class. Working stiffs who see more of that have every right to disdain.
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Middle class has been dying for some time since before Reagan. The middle class was more of a part of history because of specific industrial instances, the middle class is actually being developed in places like China and India right now where the money is being spent and invested in industry.
 
Urtehnoes said:
I positively repped you because I do agree with the majority of the post, but I also disagree with it a bit.


There are people with evil intentions out there, and some of them(others, not myself,would say most) are in the government. They may not want to hurt us, so they may not be evil in that sense, but some honestly do not know what they are doing. For example, (and I am only taking this on hearsay of what others have told me) if people in congress really did sign in the healthcare bill without reading it, then I would say they have no idea what they are doing. And in that sense evil, as in detrimental to my view of society.

But I do agree with you that we do not need to know everything, and I personally don't need much transparency because while ignorance may not always be bliss, I hate knowing I have a problem and being powerless to do anything. (For example: Something corrupt is happening and I have no say in stopping it) we do not need to know every little detail.
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Oh don't get me wrong, the government is not completely clean. My view though is the the vast majority of people involved with at the very least have good intentions with things aren't out to destroy the world for the sake of destroying the world.

I can understand why people in congress didn't sign the healthcare bill without reading the entire thing though, it was well over 1000 pages long of legals peak. You'd have to have a steel trap of a mind to be able to read that entire thing quickly and with total focus. Of course I am willing to bet some people in congress just had a knee jerk reaction to things, and said no or yes depending just because of the title. That's the issue I have with a lot of this whole wikileaks thing, they hear one single word that has a ton of preconceived notions attached to it and then jump to a baseless conclusion.

I don't share the same reasons behind you not wanting to know though. It's not that I don't want to know, I'd very much like to. It more that if I am not supposed to know something due to security reasons, then that is how it is and that is how it is going to be. When it comes to corruption I do think that it needs to be known to the public for sure. The issue with wikileaks is they takes it one step to far, they indiscriminately release reports in their intirety and don't keep stuff withheld that needs to be withheld.
 
Everything has its place. Some info shouldnt be shared with everyone and some should. Once wikileaks becomes an actual problem it will be shut down. For now it is a mere nucence (SP?).
 
Billy said:
Its funny to watch normally rational people tear into Sarah Palin as though she was the second coming of Reagan to dismantle liberal socialist policies everywhere. Well... then again she does excite people especially the people who are growing in numbers right now like the Tea Party, who was supposed to be a blip on the radar but effectively dismantled Obamas plans by pressuring congress. But watching people tear into her, foaming at the mouth talking like school children, very interesting to watch.
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I just said she seemed dense, I wasn't talking about her political views, though forgive me if this isn't the case but you came across rather high and mighty in your post which I didn't think was quite necessary.
 
DimensionX said:
I just said she seemed dense, I wasn't talking about her political views, though forgive me if this isn't the case but you came across rather high and mighty in your post which I didn't think was quite necessary.
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I'm sorry that I came across high and mighty, but you and several others seemed really petty and personal when it came to talking about someone you don't even know.
 
Onto the subject. Yea, my moral compass doesn't allow me to think this site is cool or needed. There are ways to get information and just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Everybody likes to think that it must be instant access and whatnot but there is a process to get information. I never agree with someone taking things into their own hands like this because you never know where their morals are and where they will stop. A man without honor is no man at all and stealing is without honor no matter how you spin it.

As for Palin...no comment
As for Reagan(yea I know he was just a figurehead)...I call him the economic anti-christ. Remember the Savings and Loan scandel?--the shifting of property that really only benefited the wealthy which I still believe is reverberating thru our economic system. Many years ago, 20 or so, I made a statement about what would happen when companies became too big to fail and now we see the consequences of lessening regulations that begin with Reagan and continued with the Bushes. Government bailouts of large corporations.
 
IndigoSensor said:
I understand why people want to know what the government is doing at all times with 100% transparency. Nevertheless there are lots of bits of information that is kept private for a very big reason, and I find it rather pathetic that so many people can't just take that sitting down. In particular when it comes to detailed military information. The public doesn't have a "right" to know its intimant details. I really have absolutely no understanding why so many people think governments are nothing but one big giant conspiricay like out of 1984. Come back to reality people, real people just like us run it, they largely aren't evil with ill intentions, there human too.
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...Wow
 
IndigoSensor said:
Oh don't get me wrong, the government is not completely clean. My view though is the the vast majority of people involved with at the very least have good intentions with things aren't out to destroy the world for the sake of destroying the world.
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Oh sure; government is what you make of it, after all... if you fill it with people who believe government is a force of compromise and collaborative power, then you have a good government. If, instead, it is comprised mostly of people who think government is going to be a bad thing, then it's going to be a bad thing, and they then get the benefit of pointing to it and saying 'See? What did I tell you!'

Still, concentrated resources mean concentrated power, and concentrated power will attract unwanted attention. This happens to any form of it. Government, Corporation, Military, Union. None of these constructs exist with the intent to do terrible things (the first two are largely constructive agencies and the latter two are defensive ones) but someone who wants to exploit a system for wealth or power will be drawn to them.

Military contractors who've institutionalized misappropriate and 'losing' investments somewhere out the back door. Improperly run government agencies. Unions forgetting who they represent. Corporations cannibalizing and murdering each other or otherwise fleecing the masses for the all important profit margin.

They petition one another for increased power and decreased responsibility, and the working stiff pays for it pretty much regardless of which is sitting atop the pile.

So no; government is not intrinsically bad... and right about now it's just about the only institution big enough to spar toe to toe with the recently 'crystallized' wealth given over to corporations and their CEOs (who went from 40:1 ceo|worker pay ratios just before reagan to 400+:1 ceo|worker pay ratios today, while benefits disappear, pay fails to keep up with inflation, and prices for products skyrocket.) But, given the presence of mass-media which makes it incredibly expensive for the average voter to even know your name, the only people getting elected (at least, in numbers large enough to matter) are those who are either already corrupt or willing to be corrupted.

Things are getting worse. We need things like WikiLeaks to poke holes in all of these institutions and remind them that they are not immune to scrutiny and oversight (as they seem to think they are, lately.)
 
Yes but when did you ever think that the political entity wasn't for the elite? Can the average man afford to run for a major office? We've seen the consequences of being an "outsider" as president beneath Carter.

I am all for oversight but I don't think shady internet sites are the way to go. We are teaching our population information overload and not everything you see on the net should be trusted but that message gets farther and farther away. Again, I find the internet age to be shifting a power structure (mass media) on its head and the fallout is just starting.
 
IndigoSensor said:
I understand why people want to know what the government is doing at all times with 100% transparency. Nevertheless there are lots of bits of information that is kept private for a very big reason, and I find it rather pathetic that so many people can't just take that sitting down. In particular when it comes to detailed military information. The public doesn't have a "right" to know its intimant details. I really have absolutely no understanding why so many people think governments are nothing but one big giant conspiricay like out of 1984. Come back to reality people, real people just like us run it, they largely aren't evil with ill intentions, there human too.
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I find it amusing when people who would never join the military to save their life somehow require it of the government to give them full disclosure.
 
corndogman said:
I find it amusing when people who would never join the military to save their life somehow require it of the government to give them full disclosure.
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There'd be a lot less lives in danger of needing saving if there weren't any militaries =P Then again, demeaning the peacemakers as unpatriotic and somehow decreasing world/national security... well, it was an admission of guilt made by a rather famous propagandist of the past century.
 
Barnabas said:
I see, so it is what I thought. When bombing was authorized against laos for allowing possibly supporting the vietcong.
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It was more than that; it was CIA funding the Hmong tribes to fight the Pathet Lao, recover downed airmen, and act as insurgence.
 
Kavalan said:
It was more than that; it was CIA funding the Hmong tribes to fight the Pathet Lao, recover downed airmen, and act as insurgence.
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funding the opposition of an enemy or even just hostile party has been done forever, France helped fund and train U.S. troops during the revolutionary war. Won't hear people complaining about that though and of course we were going to recover our downed airmen. Why on earth wouldn't we? Have you seen some of the pow victims of torture?
 
In short, until the abolishment of the career politician whom is only looking for prestige and the reintroduction of the mentality that elected offices are a civic duty to represent their fellow citizens the criticalness and the forced transparency via whistle blowers are justified.
 
Barnabas said:
funding the opposition of an enemy or even just hostile party has been done forever, France helped fund and train U.S. troops during the revolutionary war. Won't hear people complaining about that though and of course we were going to recover our downed airmen. Why on earth wouldn't we? Have you seen some of the pow victims of torture?
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we involved a neutral nation into a war that led to their own's government to fall. I would consider that a failure greater than the vietnam war itself.
 
Kavalan said:
we involved a neutral nation into a war that led to their own's government to fall. I would consider that a failure greater than the vietnam war itself.
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A neutral nation that was allowing a hostile nation to covertly move troops and supplies in their territory. They may have claimed neutrality but they definitely were not, they were aiding the Vietcong.
 
Barnabas said:
A neutral nation that was allowing a hostile nation to covertly move troops and supplies in their territory. They may have claimed neutrality but they definitely were not, they were aiding the Vietcong.
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Well, you'll get conflicting opinions whereas the "hostiles" were assigned to regarding sides. What a number of people have problems with is that it was hidden as if it did not happen, while it created a civil war for a Laos.
 
Barnabas said:
A neutral nation that was allowing a hostile nation to covertly move troops and supplies in their territory. They may have claimed neutrality but they definitely were not, they were aiding the Vietcong.
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Hard to enforce considered we ourself had to use deforestation chemicals to see what is moving where.
 
God, this is why I have so little hair.....
 
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