Comment by DominikR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DominikR | Hacker News Reader

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Fascinating, I did not know that these were Assange's goals.

I agree that there should be a way for Whistleblowers to legally leak information to the public in order to uncover illegal actions, but there should also be a process in place to prevent people from getting killed as a result.

One example why this secrecy is hurting the West and most parts of the world is what is going on in Syria. A few weeks ago the US bombed a position of the Syrian army killing 80 soldiers, while ISIS launched an offensive on that same position almost simultaneously. Russia in response bombed some bunkers in Aleppo.

What later came out was that apparently Russian soldiers were killed because they were present at the position where the US bombed and that about 30 US/French soldiers were killed in the bunker Russia struck in retaliation. (they were helping "moderate" Islamist opposition)

Secrecy only allows governments to act in a way that could potentially cause a war with Russia and it also allows them to support Radical Islamic terrorists.

Who exactly benefits from that? Not the West, not the Russians and certainly not the Syrians. I wouldn't have Millions of Arab men roaming the streets here in the EU, some of them plotting terror attacks, Syria would probably not even have had a civil war, Libya wouldn't be a large terrorist training camp and the same goes for Iraq. And people around the world want us dead for it, many parts of the world that once were safe to travel cannot be visited anymore.

I just can't see how continuing in the current direction can have any other result than destroying our civilisation.

What later came out was that apparently Russian soldiers were killed because they were present at the position where the US bombed and that about 30 US/French soldiers were killed in the bunker Russia struck in retaliation.

Where did this 'come out'? Either of these, as you describe them, would have been a major international incident.

> "Where did this 'come out'? Either of these, as you describe them, would have been a major international incident."

Just because it's not talked about at length by the mainstream media, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Take a look at these two videos:

http://youtu.be/0E0QQ6HD1qs

http://youtu.be/_grZK1hqExk

Both of these are commentaries and neither are about what the OP describes. The claim is that dozens of Russian, US and French soldiers have recently died in Syria as a direct result of Russian and US bombings. I can't find any evidence such a thing has happened.

So the US bombing and killing Syrian troops during a ceasefire isn't a major international incident, but the same situation with a few Russian or French troops mixed in would be?

Where did I say that? The poster claims French, US and Russian soldiers were killed. I don't think this ever happened. You produced some links to supposedly substantiate that claim but they don't. Now you want to outrage-pivot to something else. Did the incidents in the post take place? That's the only question I raised.

I'm suggesting to you that you're getting hung up on the wrong details. The point is that the US intentionally broke a ceasefire, killing soldiers that were fighting against ISIS. You seem to be only interested if Russians were involved in the deaths. Surely it's the breaking of the ceasefire by attacking anti-ISIS forces that's the main story.

For what it's worth, I'm not aware of any Russians who died in that attack.

No, the point was 'West suffers from secrecy because X thing happened' where X seems to have been completely made up. I don't think this is 'getting hung up on details'. You seem to want to argue about something entirely different but I'm not really interested in that, I'm afraid.

Okay, so you were more interested in the secrecy angle.

It probably helps to think of secrecy under the broader term of information management. If something isn't secret per se, but the information is suppressed so that it doesn't become common knowledge, isn't the outcome broadly the same? I'd argue that's what we're seeing here. That's how the US is getting away with arming Al-Qaeda (or at least former Al-Queda) to fight against ISIS, for example, even though they frequently fight alongside each other. If the US public was more aware of this then there's be greater pressure to stop, but that pressure is virtually non-existent due to the complicity of the mainstream media, helping to keep it away from public debate.

infowars probably

It was reported in Austria by ORF which is our national broadcasting channel. What they report is at least from our governments perspective uncontroversial.

Also Israeli media reported this.

I follow the war closely, 30 US/French soldiers were not killed nor were any Russians outside of their pilot killed while ejecting. Do you mean the the rebels or government soldiers they are backing got killed?

Can you find a link to this report? In German is fine.

wo bist du in diesen tagen?

The "invisible hand" from Adam Smith works if rational actors make decisions based on perfect information. Currently, a large part of the US rejects rationality, and our governments and corporations give us nothing like perfect information. So, not surprising that the market fails to serve the people at large well.

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