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the war logs
This is a post all of its own, because it's important.
It's not just about what's really going in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) and why the Taliban is stronger than it's been since 2001 despite all the money we're spending and all the lives we're losing.
It's also about the nature of journalism. It's been a long time since we've had a leak event of this scale, and it's arguably the most significant one we've had in the age of digital journalism, i-reporters (damn you, CNN!) and the like.
The documents, which were released simultaneously to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel a few weeks ago with a simultaneous embargo to prevent anyone from scooping anyone else, come from an organization known as WikiLeaks that seeks to "combat unethical behavior by governments and corporations."
Of course, some argue that WikiLeaks endangers the privacy of others for the sake of self-promotion. Others wonder, even if that's true whether it matters and should instead be considered an acceptable price for honesty about a war the general public has never quite understood or paid enough attention to.
We spend a lot of time as a culture and as an Internet culture talking about The Media as if it is a single, large, amorphous machine with specific, agreed-upon and unwavering agenda. In the age of marketing the media as entertainment (not a new phenomenon at all, merely one we've cycled through to varying degrees of obviousness for centuries), this isn't totally wrong, but it also contradicts everything I understand and believe as someone who has trained and worked both in and about the media.
If you talk about The Media like it's a single entity -- like the guy who won a bunch of awards for coverage in Rwanda didn't sit across from me way back when with a bottle of booze in his desk just like every fucking journalism movie cliche you can think of -- it's time for you to do just a little more work than usual.
This matters. This is about the young women and men fighting in our name in Afghanistan and a war that may be doing anything but keeping us safe or helping the Afghan people.
This is also about the practices of companies like BP, before and after shit breaks.
And this is, potentially most critically, about the future of journalism.
Read this. Pay attention to it. Form some opinions. Talk about them.
Civic duty, folks. I'm not even kidding.
It's not just about what's really going in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) and why the Taliban is stronger than it's been since 2001 despite all the money we're spending and all the lives we're losing.
It's also about the nature of journalism. It's been a long time since we've had a leak event of this scale, and it's arguably the most significant one we've had in the age of digital journalism, i-reporters (damn you, CNN!) and the like.
The documents, which were released simultaneously to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel a few weeks ago with a simultaneous embargo to prevent anyone from scooping anyone else, come from an organization known as WikiLeaks that seeks to "combat unethical behavior by governments and corporations."
Of course, some argue that WikiLeaks endangers the privacy of others for the sake of self-promotion. Others wonder, even if that's true whether it matters and should instead be considered an acceptable price for honesty about a war the general public has never quite understood or paid enough attention to.
We spend a lot of time as a culture and as an Internet culture talking about The Media as if it is a single, large, amorphous machine with specific, agreed-upon and unwavering agenda. In the age of marketing the media as entertainment (not a new phenomenon at all, merely one we've cycled through to varying degrees of obviousness for centuries), this isn't totally wrong, but it also contradicts everything I understand and believe as someone who has trained and worked both in and about the media.
If you talk about The Media like it's a single entity -- like the guy who won a bunch of awards for coverage in Rwanda didn't sit across from me way back when with a bottle of booze in his desk just like every fucking journalism movie cliche you can think of -- it's time for you to do just a little more work than usual.
This matters. This is about the young women and men fighting in our name in Afghanistan and a war that may be doing anything but keeping us safe or helping the Afghan people.
This is also about the practices of companies like BP, before and after shit breaks.
And this is, potentially most critically, about the future of journalism.
Read this. Pay attention to it. Form some opinions. Talk about them.
Civic duty, folks. I'm not even kidding.
Simplified explanation to your post
*WWII was waged as "Total War". And after the Allies won the "War" such actions such as when Nazi insurgents would snipe at occupying Allied troops in cities, towns, ect ... the Allies (be it American, British and so on ...) would pull out of said town and shell it for 24 hours. They would then return and if insurgents continued attacks on them, they would repeat aforementioned until it stopped.
Re: Simplified explanation to your post
Awesome explanation.
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The NY Times and Guardian coverage seem to be very thorough, and the live updates here were very helpful. I certainly don't have a full understanding of everything that's going on, but it seems like another case in which the US tried to cover up war crimes to perpetuate the illusion that we're a bunch of do-gooders just trying to help some people out over there in the vague Middle East area. Which I've never believed for a second. I have some kind of wacky theories about what might be going on with some of the monetary transactions, but they're just that: wacky. I need to read some more before I say anything else.
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2. i've been paying more and more attention to wikileaks, even before this last round. it's weird. the hacker culture angle, the connection to iceland, it's all so ... a bruce sterling novel.
3. it's also really important, as you say. i was listening to npr's reflections on daniel schorr this weekend -- his leaking of the pike committee report on illegal cia activities to the village voice seems echoed here.
4. a high school friend of mine works for the NYT primarily as a software engineer. he's on the byline for this story: he helped build tools they used to analyze this data. *that's* an interesting redefinition of journalism right there ...
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there's also a "holy shit, someone i knew at 14 is involved in the biggest intelligence leak story of our generation" reaction. because wow!
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When the best thing a poorly equipped and poorly supported demoralized foreign force in hostile territory can find to say about their military operation which accidentally killed children is that the fight didn't also accidentally take out a place of worship...
...God, this is just absolutely and sheerly ****ed.
"It's like, er, we killed your kids--but we managed not to destroy your mosque?"
Who is writing these talking points, trained monkeys? (Arguably, all humans are trained monkeys...the overworked, underpaid, exhausted soldier who probably wrote this stuff was probably trained to kill people in a faraway place--but ended up at 6:30 am trying to find good things to say about a raid that killed kids, instead. Shittastic, all around).
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In general, yes, I agree. However, having been placed in a situation where a former employer's "transparency" allowed somebody to cyberstalk me at my current place of employment, I find myself squinting a bit sideways.
I mean, if there is wrongdoing that can be proven, perpetrators should not have an expectation of privacy. But sometimes people who had nothing to do with the original incident get sacrificed on that alter of transparency.