[Noisebridge-discuss] Jacob Applebaum detained upon arriving in U.S.

[Quinn Norton]

On Aug 2, 2010, at 3:14 PM, Curly Wurly wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 10:55 PM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
> 
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/world/02wiki.html
>> 
>> his laptop was returned to him, but three cellphones were not.
> 
> 
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/07/29/128848467/fears-for-afghans-cited-in-wikileaks-leak:
> 
> "Will one result of WikiLeaks' unauthorized data dump of 90,000
> classified documents related to the Afghanistan War be reprisals
> against Afghans identified in the leaked material as helping NATO?"
> 
> I don't know how anyone involved with WikiLeaks can sleep at night
> knowing that their actions will likely result in someone's death.
> It's immoral and irresponsible.  Just because someone has the smarts
> to set up something like WikiLeaks doesn't mean they have the wisdom
> to think through the consequences.  This is something newspapers
> wrestle with though, so perhaps in the future those involved could
> simply ask the NY Times, LA Times, or Washington Post "Would you
> publish this?"

ah, what the hell. i haven't had a good list drama in ages. 

...and the whole we invaded two countries and killed hundreds of thousands to over a million innocent bystanders part lets us sleep like babies? dead, whole families dead. randomly, from a targeting center in podunk, SD. sometimes, more personally, we dug bullets out of young mothers to cover our crimes. if there's a 'we' here, we did that. paying someone else to dig bullets out of innocent women doesn't actually make us less guilty, it's kind of even more icky. that's us, you and me, we're icky people that shoot mothers and dig the bullets out of them and pretend we didn't.  

yes, journalists wrestle with this sort of thing, but sometimes even in more straightforward journalism you decide that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. there was also a danger of discovery which each and every person who worked with the occupiers, and it's the job of the US MIL to have alternative plans to get all of those people and their families out of danger. but they don't, because they don't care, institutionally. those people are made disposable by the US MIL, not wikileaks or journalists or the taliban. 

i have problems with how wikileaks has done a few things, but can we go back to blaming people that shoot people for them dying of, you know, gun wounds?

grumpily,
quinn