
Wikileaks promises release 7x bigger than Iraq War Logs, asks for donations - abennett
http://www.itworld.com/internet/128431/wikileaks-promises-release-7-times-bigger-iraq-war-logs
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yequalsx
One of the most disappointing things about Wikileaks is that the release of
documents about the U.S. torturing people and the war going badly hasn't had
any adverse affect on the support for the war. It's proof that people just
don't care. It's depressing.

The need by governments to keep everything secret is a bit irrational. People
don't care.

~~~
jon_hendry
The main thing about the Iraq War Logs was that there was nothing particularly
new or surprising or shocking. Details about incidents, but nothing war
critics didn't already assume had happened many times.

When someone says "We've got horrible things to reveal", your imagination
fills in the blanks, extrapolating from what we've already found out to even
more horrible extremes.

But then what Wikileaks revealed didn't live up to that. It was pretty much
more of the same things we already knew.

It's no wonder the reaction was subdued. It doesn't mean people don't care, it
just means we're too burnt out to work up a rage about the sorts of things we
already knew were happening.

~~~
forza
Do you seriously believe the whole "the leak is very serious, but at the same
time trivial"-story? It's a classic defense mechanism or tactic, depending on
who you ask, in crisis management. I don't know any good English sources for
this off the top of my head, but I it's called "trivialization",
"minimization" or "disavowal". You can also google "crisis communication",
"crisis management" or "image restoration" and you'll probably find something
interesting like <http://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/98A1/Benoit.htm>

~~~
jon_hendry
"Do you seriously believe the whole "the leak is very serious, but at the same
time trivial"-story"

All I know is that nobody looked through the leaked material and found
something beyond what we already knew about.

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iterationx
... In October the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called
the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations.

7 x 400,000 = 2.8m documents?

You don't change people's minds by releasing 2.8 million pages of
documentation, you change it by repeating your slogan over and over and over.

~~~
Eliezer
> _You don't change people's minds by releasing 2.8 million pages of
> documentation, you change it by repeating your slogan over and over and
> over._

Welcome to my quotes file. Do you want a name on that in case I use it
sometime?

~~~
iterationx
My handle's fine, I'm just summarizing Edward Bernay's ideas from Propaganda.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)>

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szpindel
I can pick up that the intent of the poster of this was to imply that this
promise was simply to gain donation money. While I don't know overly much
about how such issues are typically handled in these communities, I'd far
rather donate to Wikileaks's "secret docs coming over, keep us strong" then
Wikipedia's "look at me, I'm Jimbo Wales".

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lazugod
What's the significance of this release being seven times larger?

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davidj
I am extremely suspicious of wikileaks and its motivation. For example, they
believe that WMD were found in Iraq. I won't be surprised if we find out in 15
years the whole thing was a DOD disinformation campaign.

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promethean
Hello kind Sers,

I am having the very good pleasure of speaking to you as Head of Wikileaks
site for bad information on countries! Our previous Head has been removed for
bad touching of females leaving Wikileaks with all his 2,800,000 seekrits but
we cannot touch them!

All his seekrits are belong to you because our panel decided your are super
most trustworthy of all on teh internets. All you must be doing to access your
seekrits is by making donation first of small $10,000.00 and seekrits are in
you hard drive!

