UPDATE AGAIN: HuMcCulloch left this link in the thread below. Larry Sanger, cofounder of Wikipedia says:
“The very problem with WikiLeaks, in my opinion, is that it’s irresponsibly dangerous,” Sanger said.
Check the full story in the link above.
UPDATE: Steve McIntyre has posted his take on the issue and Ross McKitrick left this on the Climate Audit thread.
What a pair of blowhards. They were obviously unnerved by the question. They evidently like leaks that embarrass their political opponents, but in this case they found themselves tagged with a leak that had damaged the side they like; and since it seems to be more about political warfare against governments they dislike than some impartial ideal of transparency and freedom of information, they were stuck scrambling to make up a story about how it really served some nobler purpose. Of course they should simply have said that they weren’t the source of the leak, that it was in full circulation long before anyone looked to them for a copy and they didn’t know much about the details of what followed. But that would have been too humble, especially in front of a room full of simpering hero-worshippers. So they pretended to be insiders and proceeded to deliver a few minutes of sheer drivel.
While I was in the UK last fall, there was brief interest by the UK tabloids in the Russian angle, and an article appeared in the Daily Mail speculating that Russian intelligence officials had hacked the UEA and stolen the emails. But nobody took that line seriously and the story died within 48 hours. If Assange has a shred of evidence to support his lunatic theory he should release it. What’s with these secret communications between him and UK intelligence: out with it, Mr Wikileaks! Bloody poser.
On this issue at least they are nothing but fakes and cretins. Saying that UEA released all the background emails and whatnot to provide the full context is beyond idiocy; and Assange’s discussion of the “trick” is just painful to watch.
R. de Haan left the video below in the comments thread of reporters asking WikiLeaks why “they” published the CRU emails. I hate the leftist wikileak SOB’s already anyway and think they should be locked up but the equally leftist reporters and the wiki jerks stand around the microphone declaring all the climategate press as mistaken reporting. The blond guy paid particular focus on a trick to hide the decline, followed by patting themselves on the back for their consummate honesty. They also mentioned American bloggers who took the leak out of context. I bet he doesn’t know we were already discussing the “trick” here and at CA over a year before the email came out.
What a bunch of lying worthless sacks of garbage, the applauding press, the wiki-freaks and those who listen to them. How do losers like this keep getting the world stage.
the Air Vent 
Well Jeff – we may not agree on the utility and achievable efficiency of growing algae on CO2 for making biofuels, useful chemicals etc., but we sure agree on this one. What outrageous dishonesty! This proves Assange and his cronies suck big time.
The most odious lie is that WikiLeaks was actually responsible for releasing the emails. The emails were already being analyzed and indexed on other sites long before WikiLeaks got them posted.
“those of you involved in maths will know ‘trick’ just means a cool technique, it doesn’t mean anything mendacious”
I think he’s confusing ‘maths’ with ‘skateboarding’.
Heh, a leftist journalist out there has proposed that Julian Assange is just a dupe for Dick Cheney because the document drop supports the NeoCon view of the Middle East.
Ooh, the ironies, they do something.
================
I am surprised and disappointed that you, of all people, make such a blanket criticism of the WikiLeaks leak.
Here’s James Taranto in today’s WSJ on the NYT coverage:
Wikileaks lied about Climategate, I don’t like liars. I never asked for the files to be dropped here. The stuff being released by wikileaks every few weeks now is actually dangerous to human lives and that is disgusting. The effect these attacks on US only cables, is not good for this planet. We cannot pretend in these situations that the US position on many of these issues isn’t critical to the safety of this planet even though our positions get dumber by the minute.
The US is the primary stabilizing force in too many areas of the world. Perhaps though, like forest fires, it would be better if the US just let it happen. People might learn something — that is likely naive though — probably not. Wikileaks is a leftist group attacking specific efforts around the world, they are not an unbiased information broker as evidenced above.
There are also people who claim, just as fervently, that the Climategate leaks are dangerous to human lives. I don’t believe that, myself, and even if true, I don’t care to use lying science to save lives.
And not ALL of the WikiLeaks leaks are dangerous to human lives. Maybe some are, and those should be treated accordingly, but most of what we’ve seen in the news is just dangerous to the duplicity of politicians. That’s why I expressed dismay over the blanket condemnation. I think you need to nuance your condemnation a bit.
‘Dangerous to the duplicity of politicians’? Son, diplomats are supposed to lie for their country.
=============================================
#8 I don’t see wikileaks as a balanced attack – as shown above. My guess is that info is filtered for political purposes before we see it from them. There are only a few ‘American’ blogs they could be referring to. It’s hard to imagine tAV isn’t right near the top of their list. They want to appear that they are only about transparency while receiving info from only one country. Their efforts are about fame and discrediting the US imo and with the lies blatently stated about my favorite blogs above, they can go screw themselves.
Jeff, they used to have lots more information up than what they do at the moment, but I think they’ve been having problems keeping their servers up and running.
I’ve seen a lot of information on the early wiki-pages that had pretty much nothing to do with the US (insofar as that’s possible since they mostly deal with government leaks).
You can check some of their leak-history at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
And I don’t think their leak-history supports your “they’re a leftist group attacking rightists” beef.
I haven’t seen the video yet ( at work ) but I’ll check it out later to judge for myself if he’s lying or just ignorant of the situation and just saying what his analysts have told him.
If you’ll check the funding, amabo, you’ll find it is leftist, and from ‘He who must not be named’.
=====================================
Leftist or not, Wikileaks guys show in the video they are shameless liars with their self-attribution of climategate.
Jeff Id:
Hey dude, do you notice you’re frothing at your mouth? I don’t even remember being this incensed when the SwiftHack thing came out.
Now, now, now, when you’re done regurgitating the talking points which have been drummed into you by Fox News and what not, you may want to consider the following facts:
Fact #1: Phil Jones didn’t send minions out to steal UN officials’ DNA and frequent flyer numbers.
Fact #2: Phil Jones didn’t send minions out to kidnap a supposed ‘terrorist’, lock him up away for months, find that they got the wrong guy, and then pressure the German government not to prosecute them.
Fact #3: Phil Jones didn’t get soldiers to mistakenly shoot two Reuters reporters in Iraq and laugh about it.
You’re so obsessed with bogus trumped-out ‘conspiracies’ that you can’t see the real conspiracies that are in plain sight. You’re being angry at the wrong people, dude.
— frank
So what if the Wikileaks guys lied about climategate? (I didn’t catch any lies in the video, though the statement about the “trick” is debatable.) But so do a lot of other people lie about climategate. That isn’t any excuse for a blanket condemnation of what they did and for the calls for violent and/or extralegal action that we’re hearing in so many quarters. Most people who go against the establishment are going to have weird personality flaws and character defects — maybe outsized egos and martyr complexes. That doesn’t mean they should be put down.
Have we learned absolutely nothing from the Clintons’ attempts to put down dissidents during the 1990s? Some of you people seem to be intent in providing the government with weapons that can easily be turned against you.
Jeff Id:
Oh, and… you read reports of extralegal kidnappings, of illegal spying, of bungled shootings, and what you’re most concerned about is that Julian Assange didn’t properly give credit to your blog?
That’s some totally wonderful perspective you’re showing there.
— frank
Oh man, the topmost comments on YouTube are hilarious. 2 references to the real issue behind the ‘trick’ and the person who posted the video desperately tries to shoot them down while at the same time not mentioning the issue at all.
Wikileaks didn’t appear on that chart by Profero mapping the Climategate key players.
Now we know the chart is mostly trash but even they couldn’t have missed out Wikileaks if they’d played a main role. And that was showcased on a lefty web site! Fortunately the internet never forgets and when the rewards are handed out for climate common sense, Wikileaks won’t be among the prize winners.
And in reply to frank — Decoding SwiftHack. Wikileaks may go down in history as starting WW3, Climategate wouldn’t even be a footnote.
They can post whatever gossip they like about Prince Andrew or David Cameron but releasing stuff relating to Iran and North Korea is just mad.
I think Ross McKitrick’s post hits the nail on the head, but as I noted at CA I favor most leaking about public “secrets” and I think we have to keep in perspective the spin that those who publicize the leaks put on them and separate the information provided from the spinning. The reaction to the hide the decline email is pretty much a standard gauge to apply in determining the extent of the spin being placed on the emails. Like I said I do not need the NYT, the Wikileak guy, Gavin Schmidt or the rabid defenders of the consensus status quo on AGW to interpret the information provided by the leaks.
Frank,
Are you complaining about military action existing at all, or that it will never accidentally kill the wrong people? Or are you complaining that anti-terrorist activities are not worthwhile because they sometimes get the wrong guy? Or are you complaining that the people whos jobs are to protect and serve american interests are trying to figure out where various world leaders stand, what their personal proclivities are, etc.? I don’t see anything wrong with any of this, other than “it looks bad”… all warfare accidentally kills people, some people are incorrectly arrested, all countries spy on all other countries. What has been done (purposely) that was counter to US interests? Nothing.
You, on the other hand, think that climate scientists colluding, lying, and engaging in conspiracy is OK because the US government engages in worse acts. Well, guess what? Science is supposed to be objective and disinterested, whereas diplomacy is exactly the opposite. The US government screwing someone over to help US interests is positive to US citizens (at least) and negative to others, just as Jones/Mann making stuff up is positive to those with a stake in climate regulations progressing and negative to others. The difference is that Science is, should be, is supposed to be, pursuit of the truth…. there is no fairness or truth on the world stage: every country is trying to gain more power in whatever way possible.
You are probably not a US citizen. But if you are, look in the mirror and ask yourself why you’re happy about the attempt to destroy your own country, your own defense against terrorism, your own ability to know/understand/influence the world… and then ask yourself why you are making excuses for fraudulent scientists who, through deceit, could ruin the industrialized world. I don’t know if you can do this, make sense, and finish with the same firey views you currently appear to hold.
FYI: I am not beyond the opinion that higher ups in the US released this stuff on purpose. This view only makes sense in light of the information on Iran and North Korea…
Iran:
-saudis, egyptians, jordan, UAE, etc., say “go ahead and attack them, and do it NOW”
-leaked proof that they are smuggling arms to lebanon, gaza, iraq
-leaked proof that the nuclear technology is definetely going to be used to make nuclear weapons (doesnt take a rocket scientist to have assumed this one); if Iran gets the bomb, all other major arab players will start developing nukes as well.
-supreme leader has terminal cancer and may die soon
North Korea:
-Possible collapse of country when kim jong il dies; handoff to son may fail [this was disputed]
-China has been and continues to lose faith in North Korea as a ‘buffer state’; rather, they are a dangerous and annoying embarrassment that they’d rather see go.
-China is not opposed to a united korean, ruled by Seoul, so long as US troops don’t base themselves past the 48th parallel
-China describes north korea as a “failed economy” and has made contingency plans if they become a “failed state” as well, describing plans for absorbing or containing hundreds of thousands of expected refugees.
These items all seem like things that were designed to strike fear into the hearts of the average iranians and average north koreans (if they can even get this news), and provide more justification for a US strike or counterstrike against these countries in the average americans’ mind.
All the other items are nothing but damaging to US interests. So, who knows who did it, but it hasn’t been entirely negative for US interests.
Yes, Gaba, Julian confirms Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ and that the Arabs are more concerned about Iran than Israel. I can’t stand it.
===================================================
Personally I infer the following.
Julian Assange is by no means an expert computer hacker. I’ve watched/listened to most of his interviews and looked closely at his educational/work history (what little there is). Nowhere is there any evidence that he is actively involved at a technical level in deep systems hacking or even understands it.
Assange is a deeply suspect character morally and intellectually. The unusual life history, the comments wof his son, the wilful exposure to risk of death of numerous brave people that flowed freely from Wikileaks Afghan and Iraq data releases and finally the crassly cynical use of a ‘Dorothy Dix’ questioner at the recent interview solely for the purpose of perpetuating the egregious lie that Wikileaks masterminded the CRU emails data dump and allowing him to ‘big note’ himself on the world stage paints the picture of a man now heading out of control (of his handlers).
The Wikileaks group was set up by Assange and associates with the financial backing of some sort of forward-looking well-heeled power elite who wanted to gain control of the major global sources of politically sensitive information as it would (inevitably) arise from various lone hackers, whistle blowers and malcontents (both genuine and nutcase) as the Internet grows and became more extensive more pervasive. It is simply a timely recognition and exploitation of the fact that the Internet is largely out of the control of governments and major organisations. The history of hacking and whistle blowing leaks shows that this was not a far sighted act of genius by one very flawed rogue Aussie.
IMHO it is simply just another subtle power play on the dark and devious chessboard of modern history.
Only time well tell whether it is a gambit as powerful, as nicely controlled and as successful as the fabulous ‘Star Wars’ shell game that Ronald Reagan and his cadre of smart advisers (way, way smarter than GWB’s bunch of stumblebums) cooked up to bankrupt the Soviet economy though excessive military expenditure and put an end to the Cold War. That gambit (which at worst risked a minor nuclear exchange with a dying Soviet empire) set the benchmark of success for all previous (20th century) and subsequent power plays (read chess moves).
I doubt that this (genuinely 21st century) gambit of Wikileaks is going to be in the same league!
Hhhhmmmmmmm, now about that Goldman Sachs/Leyman brothers collapse and bailout ……(;-)
These WikiLeaks folks are so incredibly immoral jerks. They deserve a proper thrashing.
Not only they completely lie about the origin of the finding – the ClimateGate e-mails – that has nothing to do with their cheap agency whose only comparative advantage is the lack of any ethical regulation, rather than the ability to investigate something.
They also lie about the content of the e-mails, e.g. about the word “trick”. Sure, it’s just a clever technique. And the term “hide” means to “honestly show everything”, doesn’t it?
BTW, if you want to find out how deep the Wikileaks weirdness runs, try reading ‘Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier’ a 1997 book by Suelette Dreyfus, ‘researched’ by Julian Assange. Then get a real expert to review it.
The issue with Assange’s twaddle is that he telling lies about the origins and provenance of the Climategate emails (and the role he & WikiLeaks played in their release). That what he has said is untrue is easily discernible. Steve McIntyre gives a brief recounting the of timeline involved; his points are easily checked if you doubt their veracity or accuracy. More detailed accounts are readily available, which support his point (and the point made more bluntly by Ross McKitrick).
Assange initially implies (at about 1:18-1:19 of the clip) that Wiki was responsible for the release / propagation of the emails (the questioner herself seemed to operate under the same misapprehension and is not corrected). In fact, all Wiki did was become one of several on-line sources for the material – and rather belatedly at that. He then gets into the wild speculation that the Russian intelligence services were somehow involved (an issue that was raised contemporaneously by the British tabloid press, based, it would appear, on the location of one of the original anonymous upload servers). Here, he becomes more specific with the implied claim that Wiki was the source of the email release (i.e., the method by which the released emails were propagated), saying that British intelligence were feeding those claims to the British press, in an attempt to link WikiLeaks to Russian intelligence sources. That certainly DID NOT reflect any discussion at the time. Given the minor role that Wiki played in the matter, he’s totally off in fantasy land.
The problem here, though, is that Assange is telling a whopper, when he didn’t have to. He has blown out of proportion his role in the release of the Climategate emails. That he would so readily lie about this is the worrying aspect of the discussion. It makes it difficult to accept his claim that he is seeking to be a purveyor of “bullets of truth”.
In general terms, I think the current release of confidential cables to be ill-judged. They reveal no massive inner conspiracy and no massive cover-up that cries out to be exposed. They’re pretty run of the mill stuff, with some salacious (by international diplomacy standards) comments and personal assessments. No different than you’d read in the FO archives every nation. Their release seems intended to embarrass rather than expose; they complicate, rather than improve, the situation.
The NYT’s determination that its coverage is in “the public interest”, is crassly self-serving. A more honest assessment of their behaviour is thus: (1) if we don’t make use of this opportunity, someone else will; (2) this will sell newspapers. Oh, and (3) we think we can rationalize it… With respect to the Climategate email release, they were prepared to take a far more “ethical” stand, in large measure because coverage one way or the other wouldn’t materially impact circulation.
Ian.
Seems to me he was making it up as he went along. If the event was already like a ‘prayer meeting’ it’s like he didn’t want to wreck the moment by saying ‘we didn’t do it’… It’s also pretty obvious that Assange already has a very high opinion of himself, knows nothing about CRU, IPCC, the emails that he thinks they leaked or the meaning of ‘hide’.
What’s most depressing of all is the fawning acceptance of everything he’s saying…
Gaba:
If you were to be kidnapped by some foreign government, put away in some hidden place for months on end with no charges brought, no contact with the outside world, no habeas corpus, no nothing, while interrogators keep hounding asking you about terrorist activities you know zilch about, and when you’re freed the foreign government decides to pressure everyone not to prosecute… will you still say ‘oh, no big deal, some people are just wrongly arrested, I’ll just let it slide’?
No?
Weird, because I thought Jeff Id’s talking point was that
So how does this work? Is this some sort of “trickle-down” theory of rights or what? If you’re wrongfully kidnapped and put away and waterboarded for months on end, it’s OK because you’ll get more human rights in return, or what?
— frank
Head for the light Frankie!
How people get so much wrongthink in their heads is beyond me.
Jeff Id, do yourself a favour and actually try to answer this question:
— frank
Wikipedia co-founder and Ohio State alum Larry Sanger distances Wikipedia from Wikileaks in an article published this morning in the OSU Lantern, at http://www.thelantern.com/campus/alum-speaks-out-against-wikileaks-1.1813044.
According to the interview, “A ‘wiki’ is a website that lets Web users edit and create linked pages. WikiLeads has strayed from that definition, as it can be edited only by WikiLeaks employees.”
The interview does not mention Assange’s Climategate claims, but with reference to the diplomatic leaks, it reports that “On Thursday and Friday, Sanger wrote a series of Tweets saying that WikiLeaks is an enemy of the U.S. and should be dealt with accordingly.”
“‘He’s an international outlaw,’ Sanger said. ‘He keeps doing things that directly attack … perfectly legitimate government operations.'”
[Also posted at CA]
Frank,
That would piss me off, but while you are asking it, ask yourself if Iran did it to an Iraq citizen would you even hear about it?
That is why you are so incredibly amazingly wrong. You can’t pick out a single incident, don’t have first hand facts and make a conclusion that the whole of the government is wrong. You really aren’t very smart Frank, not that we can fix that for you. The US is far too involved in rebuilding and helping other countries IMO. I think war should be fought won and left alone. That would send a nice message to guys like North Korea and Iran. This rebuilding of nations for the betterment of people after a war is expensive and moron leftists of the world just see it as an opportunity to slam the good bit that was done. Like picking out a video of the accidental killing of civilians and stomping around saying how evil America is. Never mind the indiscriminate killings by extremist Muslim leaders, it’s only the US that does bad.
Why I’m writing this to you is beyond my own understanding. You can’t even figure out the trick to hide the decline.
What is the date of the video?
Hu,
It was July 8 2010
Wasn’t it Wikileaks that leaked the video of the reporters getting shoot while an ambulance is trying to “help”. Then they leak information that ambulances are being used to help terrorists smuggle arms. Maybe the international intelligence knew a little more than wikileaks in that situation. Where is their accountability. It makes me think they are being less that straight forward.
As even the video mentioned here shows, Assange has a considerable sense of his own self worth/self righteousness e.g. the facile ‘hiding the trick’ comment. We also now know he is willing to use a crude self-serving stratagem such as the ‘Dorothy Dixer’ of a question which kicked the video off. We can also see that he capable of promoting with little evidence wild conspiratorial theories. All this crammed into one rather silly little video!
Well here’s a little theory.
(1) The period after the age of 18 of Assange between 1989 and 2006 was characterised by a lot of time spent in Melbourne and other locations around Australia and New Zealand mixing with a tight circle of undergraduate hackers who were IT undergraduates and their linking/mentoring IT academics, several of the latter of world class repute in areas of hacking, cryptography etc. There is evidence one of the academics was deeply involved in hacking as recently as the year 2000. Most of these persons, especially the academics and (now) graduates, for ethnic reasons you might say, hold separate US and/or Israeli and Australian or New Zealand passports and spend considerable periods in the US, Europe and Israel. Some have relatives prominent in the Down Under Israel-supporting community. Some of the same people were implicated in the recent ‘illegal use’ of their Australian passports by Mossad to assassinate a senior Hamas operative in Dubai. A significant number of these persons have been deeply associated with the US IT industry both in government, industrial and financial corporations for at least 20 years.
(2) Anyone can freely trawl through the masses of stuff Wikileaks has posted at a number of well known Internet locations since 2006 (and indeed in its earlier model Cryptome founded by the (now) former Assange associate John Young back in 1996). For my part, I can’t find a single document which in any way shows Israel and its actions both public and covert in a bad light despite the numerous recent historical events closely involving Israel (and Israels relations with the US and other European nations). In particular there has never been a leaked document which relates to Mossad’s activities in any developed Western nation. The odds of this occurring are beginning to look unusual. Don’t believe me? Easy. Simply prove me wrong. It’s an open challenge.
(3) It is well established principle of covert operations that it can be very useful to play a nice fat silly rainbow trout on a line for a long time provided you know how, don’t let it get too weak (or is that wi-eak ;-)and have a very, very good reason for doing so….
It looks like Assange is in some real serious trouble:
from PCMag.com
“Interpol Puts Out Wanted Notice for Wikileaks’ Assange”
….indicting Assange of raping two women….”rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion,” the statement said. “To execute the court’s decision, the next step is to issue an international arrest warrant,”…..
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373645,00.asp
The Wikileaks guys claim to have “published” the CRU emails, which they did. They said they had no choice but to “release” the emails as it is their promise to their sources to do so, irrespective of their own political views. Good for them! They also claim that some newspapers at the time implied that WikiLeaks got the CRU emails from the FSB, and that they were a conduit for the FSB. The newspapers may well have done that, I don’t actually remember, but if they did, it certainly was an “outrageous” claim.
So, what the WikiLeaks guys claim in the video is true, unlike the misrepresentation of what they said on this blog. I guess denying the truth can become a dirty and shameful habit, even when it is right in front of you and you can press replay!
Having said all the above, I also think that if Assange (who despite his human faults is brilliant and understands the workings and code of the Internet better than 999,999 out of every million) can manage to dispel the inference that he (and Wikileaks) are a construct of Mossad (or anyone else) then he just may turn out to be the defining genius of the Internet Age.
IMO several things have become obvious from closely following this stuff over the last decade or more and they are as follows:
The old US political and economic power oligarchy is hopelessly infiltrated and manipulated by interests whose allegiances are more aligned towards Israel that to the USA.
The same oligarchy and its military arm are also today manned largely by hidebound and incompetent dinosaurs who have allowed the global IT culture to become a completely independent and anarchic ‘virtual world’ which now does not and never will again obey its imperatives. Already the old imperial ‘Star Wars’ era has become merely a mythical pipe dream.
We are heading off into uncharted but nonetheless interesting waters.
wow.. ever since he said he was going after a big bank the ‘ecosystem of corruption’ in the american financial system the people and their blogs have really come out against Assange his organization wikileaks.
I’m laughing about it right now because after writing this article we all know where your loyalties are… its not to truth and freedom of the individual, its on the side of the corporations.
I’m anxious to see wikileaks break up your sponsors on Wall Street. If you go down with them… I’ll be more than happy to watch the flames, and might even fan them a bit.
#44 I’m not sure who you are addressing but I’ll assume it was my post. These smarmy losers just stood up and lied to the adoring press to support their politics. I don’t care what they do that people consider ‘good’, dishonest brokers all get the same treatment from me.
hi
Why are they liars? Why SHOULD they lie? Why are they “garbage”? And why “leftist”?
But more important is:
Who or what do you think is the source of the mails if not wikileaks?