U.S. goes after Assange
Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 04/20/2017 - 9:09pm
Wednesday "WikiLeaks will show illegal actions by the CIA"
Friday "US prepares charges to arrest Assange"https://t.co/7zRy5A2ZAH— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 21, 2017
The CIA continues to flex it's political muscles.
Less than two weeks after Wikileaks made a major dump of CIA secrets, which caused CIA Director Mike Pompeo to say:
“It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.”
He then muttered some misleading slander about Edward Snowden.
Nevertheless, one week after that this happened.
US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.
Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward.
During President Barack Obama's administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn't alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.
The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents.
"Dates back to at least 2010" huh? Looks like Assange wasn't paranoid after all.
Called a "non-state intelligence service" today by the "state non-intelligence agency" which produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet.
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) April 14, 2017
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that Assange's arrest is a "priority."
"We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks," he said. "This is a matter that's gone beyond anything I'm aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious. So yes, it is a priority. We've already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.
Comments
Hello, dead-man's switch
But this administration doesn't know anything about subtlety.
The best yet ever explanation!
Dead mans switch.
Our government (actually no government) knows what's out there.
Somebody's going to make a massive dump. And shit will literally hit the fan.
Yet most will never see it.
Well done.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Better they should arrest Clinton!
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
only a lawyer could fancy that the US has any
jurisdiction over what somebody outside the united states does with information given them by somebody else, regardless of how that information was obtained by that somebody else. it would be like the US trying to prosecute a canadian for sitting in his living room smoking hawaiian marijuana.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Marc Emory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Emery
Sure. He peddled legal seed across the border. Paid taxes. Outstanding citizen of Canada.
Sucks that he was in the time of Harper.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
well, like i said, only a lawyer -- and lawyers run the
judicial systems.
nonetheless, the difference between my example and Emery is that Emery was actually selling marijuana seeds into the US, even though he himself never left Canada, which at least provides some sort of intelligible argument for extradition. in my example, i'm imagining a Canadian using Maui Wowie purchased from an American who has brought it across the border. it's simply not comprehensible -- to any mind other than one steeped in the nonsensical "epistemology" of jurisprudence -- that said Canadian would be subject to American prosecution, UNLESS said Canadian had orchestrated the delivery from an American origin. That may be the case the Americans are going to try to make against Assange -- that he conspired before the fact with Snowden to "steal" the secrets, or to smuggle them out of the US after they'd been stolen. A sufficiently dumb-ass bunch of American jurists could probably be persuaded to convict -- but what really disturbs me is that jurists are in fact SO dumb that even if Wikileaks knew nothing about Snowden until he was already outside of the US with the data, they might imagine that American classified information laws are somehow applicable to people handling that information who are not Americans, are not in the US, and did not obtain it through any conspiracy that operated partially within the US.
This is a very dangerous game these agencies are playing, because if they win -- if they manage to crucify Assange and Wikileaks -- then the next angry leak isn't going to be restrained and constrained by a *cough* judicious review of the materials by a dedicated leaking organization -- instead, it's just going to go out into the world without redaction of any kind. The agencies don't seem to realize that Wikileaks is a safety valve that works in their own interest, when contrasted with the alternative.
As a postscript, Emery is clearly highly-principled, and willing to pay an enormous personal price for resisting the laws he doesn't like, but he is nonetheless a libertarian jackass.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Assange needs to avoid airplanes
Or cars. Or easily-poisoned food. Or mysteriously appearing handguns.
Something tells me Assange is vulnerable to an accident.
Man, every time I think of Assange, sitting in that same apt,
day after day, caught in some bizarre limbo created by the Western imperial governments who are the puppets of the global financial elites, I just feel for him personally and take my hat off to someone so committed to truth and justice as he is.
He's a great man in this epoch, in which massive deceit has gone unchallenged and caused one of the hugest gulfs of inequality the world has ever experienced.
These guys/gal Chelsea Manning, Ray McGovern, John Kiriakou, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown, et al, are truly fucking heroes. As one of my favorite activist t-shirt says, "whistleblowers set us free."
I hope there are some heroic, magnanimous civl liberties/human rights lawyers like the late, great William Kunstler who will step up to form a wall around him. He deserves major international support. I know that Kunstler's wife, Margaret, has been part of a team of defense lawyers working on his behalf.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Did they set us free, though?
I admire their bravery and willingness to suffer to get the truth out more than I can say, but did they set us free?
Snowden's revelations led to a change in the law. However, around 2013 something came during the Obama administration about the administration having a secret interpretation of the some law or other, maybe the Patriot Act. So, what's to prevent an administration from having a secret interpretation of any new law or any amended law? So did anything but a law on paper change after Snowden? And how would we know?
These people are so opaque, it's scary.
@HenryAWallace For all their
For all their incredible bravery and morality--and, in Snowden's case at least, serious smarts--they are operating under the assumption that revealing information will bring about change. The idea is, some heroic person reveals the info, then people get outraged and take action--mostly just actions like petitions, boycotts, rallies, running new politicians against corrupt insiders, lobbying for changes in the law, civil disobedience.
Back in the 70s and perhaps also in the 80s, that could have worked. Back then, there was a political and legal structure that had to respond if large portions of the public were pissed off--otherwise they'd get thrown out of power. Now that the politicians don't answer to us, not so much. It would require much more difficult, costly behavior on the part of the informed to affect the system now. Even civil disobedience (as in, getting arrested for a cause) doesn't leave a mark. When people put their bodies on the line, as in Standing Rock, they are removed. It sometimes takes months, but ultimately it doesn't do anything to the system except, well, two things: there's an additional security cost for the thugs they send out to hurt unarmed people, and, if word gets out, their example makes resistance look possible (that's the part the establishment doesn't like, but if such efforts are snuffed out without effect, it doesn't do much lasting harm to them and their interests.)
So in this very ugly age we live in, the whistleblowers' actions, though heroic and admirable, don't have a lot of effect, because in order to act on their information there would have to be millions, perhaps tens of millions, of people willing to take Snowden-like risks.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Being in reality is usually good.
Imagining that a whistleblower set us free when nothing significant changed is not good, IMO.
Again, I have the greatest respect for whistleblowers and am happy to praise them lavishly, but that is a different issue.
@HenryAWallace Their point of view
Their point of view seems to be that, having taken such horrendous risks, their part is over once the information is revealed.
That's a reasonable position, but it puts the ball in our court in a way that doesn't deal with the primary problem of tyranny.
And yes, telling oneself unrealistically positive stories about resistance efforts isn't a good thing. Understandable, since people are tired of despair, but dangerous. Basing your politics off a fantasy world isn't generally a good thing, especially if you're opposing, as Einstein the talking motorcycle puts it, "Bad Mothers."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
in fairness, to whistleblowers....
It's not that they blew the whistle and retired. Look at all that Snowden had to give up--his whole life. Okay, now he has his girlfriend with him, but I'm not sure he knew that was going to happen. He got the law changed. And he's still speaking out. I can't fault him.
Thomas Drake's life was almost destroyed and he speaks out all the time.
Kirakiou was in jail until 2015. He engaged in activism from prison. Then, when he got out, he did this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou
If every one of us did as much as any of them did, things might be different. Then again, they might not. Anyway, none of them failed anyone. If anything there was not enough response from the general public. I don't know if a lot would have done any good, but there wasn't much.
@HenryAWallace I don't think
I don't think they did fail anyone. I think they made enormous sacrifices, took enormous risks, and gave us valuable information.
I think they may harbor--or have harbored--and unrealistic idea of what the impact of those revelations might be. That doesn't mean their work has no impact. It's still vitally important; I wouldn't want to be without that information, and I appreciate their work and bravery.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I was responding to this from your prior post, which was
about whistleblowers.
I'm say that I don't think that is their point or, more important, their conduct, at all. They make the revelation and they keep up activism afterward--much more activism than most, in fact.
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
But widely presenting documented facts of provable abuse and criminality among government officials/parties does legitimize protest and 'regime change' among an aware population both locally and on an international basis.
The pretense of infiltrated/rogue government 'legalizing' abuses and indisputably criminal behaviours does, when accepted, have a pronounced psychological effect among the law-abiding - and when the government(s) involved also pose a global threat, everything helps in the recognition and elimination of such threats.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@HenryAWallace And you're right about
And you're right about the secret courts with secret interpretations of the law--basically a shadow legal/jurisprudence structure.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Since the Obama administration admitted it had a secret
interpretation of the Patriot Act, I'd love to see someone claim I'm wrong.
And remember when Obama said, while campaigning, that he'd fix his FISA vote once he became President?
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/white-house-admits-secretly-coll...
Then again, that's when he said a strong public option was essential.
Good times.
I liked a lot about 2007-08 Candidate Obama. Too bad he never became President. Sigh.
The onus falls on us to follow through.
But yeah, in the post-9/11 surveillance/police state and War Of Terror fear propaganda, social movements today are up against a whole different fascistic force, designed to have people happily giving up their freedom for the perception of a little security, much to Franklin's chagrin. I don't know if it's an inert public, beaten down by propaganda that breeds apathy and futility, or a police state out in force to crush any brave souls calling attention to the soul-destroying system of unbridled capitalism and all of its manifestations, or both. At some point, something has to give.
History shows us, however, that all of these "moments" in time gradually coalesce into something of a shift of consciousness, which ultimately results in the kinds of legislative change you're talking about.
It does seem futile at times, up against this seemingly nebulous behemoth unaccountable to any form of democratic rule. So I take vestige in the small acts. And given the incredible far-range of social media we've just begun to grasp the potential of, I feel like any act of real resistance/dissent can be amplified to a public starting to get more and more restless that things aren't what they seem. We have to appeal to the consciences of those who are similarly, increasingly disaffected, that it's within each of us to find and honor some elemental truths that we've started from in a system designed to keep us from recognizing.
I'll choose to look for more instances such as the following to give me hope. From the Free Thought Project, New Statue in Germany Illustrates Just How Much the Rest of the World Opposes the U.S. Police State
This one guy's commitment, inspired by Snowden's actions, is a powerful testament to
Thanks also, to Oliver Stone, who of late has really awakened to the higher duty calling of the Artist, in bringing us both "Snowden" and "The Untold History of the United States." Artists are the seers, and wield tremendous power in helping to develop a shift of consciousness.
Each one of us has to come to terms with determining to what extent we will make our individual contribution. As Hedges often reminds us, no small act is in vain. All change is possible, often only after countless hundreds of thousands and millions of small acts that we finally turn the tide. The tide will be turned, one way or another.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
That is a different issue from the one I addressed.
If you read my posts on this thread, I am not faulting any of the whistleblowers or diminishing what they did. Just the opposite. However, I don't think claiming they set us free when we are not free is good.
As far as following through, as I posted to CStMS, there was nowhere near enough follow up. However, I'm not sure it would have done any good if there had been.
To my knowledge, nothing has changed
The surveillance state continues on apace. My TL;DR is that they've changed the names and some of the tactics so that they can spout legalize like, "We are not collecting intelligence on American citizens." That they don't say is, "But our British partners do and we exchange information with them freely."
That is why the 5/7/9/15 eyes program is and always will be an abomination. It's sole purpose is to do an end-run around domestic privacy protections.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
So what can we do? Including
So what can we do? Including those of us who aren't much good for anything except petition signing and making snarky comments?
We have to make a sizeable stink and let them know the global public won't tolerate this final red line being crossed by the Psychopathic Class infiltrating US government.
There are war journalists on drone kill lists supposedly because of algorithms and now they're going to arrest foreign publishers in other people's countries of documented and factual evidence against them which belongs to the American public?
There are no depths too low for them to go - they've proven that but they want to cover it up by further illegal and immoral actions, also yet again breaking international law, I should think.
And going after Julian Assange - who Hillary wanted to drone - symbolizes their pathology in this additional step so far beyond the pale that the world must rise in protest and, at long last, say, 'Enough is enough!'.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The possibilities are endless.
Turning off MSM is a good place to start.
Cut the cable if possible.
Get involved in local government. The national government begins at the local level.
Above and beyond, don't fear your government. They should fear you.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
@Pricknick
I actually don't watch TV, haven't for years apart from (rarely) the odd movie or bit of news - and all corrupt governments fear the people. The US government (among others) fears the public knowing what they do, which is why they're repressing, arresting and even torturing whistleblowers - indicating that regime change is desperately needed.
I think we should tell Trump that he needs to bomb his own government before he starts bombing any others. But it needs to be made evident that they cannot get away with threatening/arresting/murdering Assange, who is a globally respected hero for his courage in exposing governmental/military corruption, idiocy and crimes.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
redacted - I don't need to be impolite /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
Found this somewhere on the site tonight
An apparently non-US site where one can donate for 'Justice for Assange' - though feeling that doing so will be relatively easily surveilled:
https://justice4assange.com/Donate.html
Yet it looks authoritative; also has a non-net address.
Better hurry. In the days when Snowwald was new news,
the Obama administration got paypal to stop processing donations to wikileaks. Amazon was somehow involved too. I closed my paypal account then, but was too selfish to close my Amazon account.
@Creosote.
Thanks! Unfortunately, my monthly stipend doesn't actually cover my expenses and is gone the instant I get it, so I can't donate money even if life depends on it. Do agree that anyone donating is likely to be surveilled, (as though we all aren't anyway) but arresting/harassing people over that might bring on that global revolution the Parasite Class has been so justifiably worried about...
I'd like to register a protest and can't even physically protest - it's very frustrating...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
WTF does this even mean?
The DNC isn't a part of our government, it's a private organization and Wikileaks doesn't hack anything. It "leaks" information that someone gives to them.
And they "believe" that investigators found proof that they played an active role in helping Snowden disclose a massive cache of classified documents?
Belief isn't proof, it's conjecture. But I'm sure that people won't pick up on this.
I agree that this country has no authority to arrest Assange or anyone involved with Wikileaks. The hubris of our government!
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Were
the "US victims" he refers to Bernie Sanders' donors?
Again, if a crime is revealed to have been committed by persons in power, the response is to say the leaker committed a crime by revealing it.
CIA believes that whatever information it collects
belongs solely to CIA, and may be published only at the discretion of CIA. This applies whether the information was collected legally or not. Frequently of course and as everyone knows, it was not.
The case against Wikileaks, as personified by Julian Assange, seems extremely weak. I don't see how the State would have a legal leg to stand on. If they did try prosecute him however, it would make for a fascinating spectacle. Pompeo seems almost stupid enough to go ahead with it -- but if he did, I think he'd be certain to lose very badly in the court of world opinion. And they wonder why RT and other alternative media are winning the propaganda wars? This is an example of why.
native
It means that USians should not have accurate info before voting
for President. Therefore, anyone who makes available accurate info about a Presidential candidate's campaign is bad.
Oh, and, it also means that the First Amendment needs to be repealed because it gets in the way of lest prosecuting those who make public accurate info about an establishment candidate.
I wonder what the ACLU is saying about this.
" this country has no authority to arrest Assange..."
Great comeback by Assange
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Oh good lord! Guess what site is happy with this?
Wasn't there a time when they were happy with Assange for leaking shit about the Bush administration? Yes there was, but the comments there are unbelievable. And of course anyone who says something in favor of Assange is dawg piled on.
These are some of the worst ones I read, but it's 99-1 in favor of people cheering about this.
The last comment has no basis in reality because Assange has always been the front person of Wikileaks.
I'm amazed at how the people who used to have critical thoughts processes have totally lost the ability to use them.
ETA one of the most asinine comment posted. This person thinks that it would be okay for our military to attack a sovereign embassy to remove Assange from it.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Some idiot wants us to fight England again?
That didn't turn out so well the last time we tried it (1812-1814). The only real "victory" on our side came after a peace treaty had been negotiated and signed (but before the combatants had heard about it).
All in all Britain benefited more from that little fracas than we did - they got to put freshly blooded troops in the field against Napoleon, and we got...Andrew Jackson.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
All we can hope for, and I surely do
is that these idiots are forced one day to eat their own stupidity and I hope it gives them all a massive case of acid-reflux. And I hope their own children get to see that idiocy on display and hit them hard on that hypocrisy. I am so glad I've never been tempted to go back to that hell hole, my head would surely explode from the stupidity. Thank you for doing that for us, it is always necessary to see what the enemy is doing.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
They have no values on TOP
They've given them all up for "Go Blue Team Go".
Any "value" they do defend is strictly strategic.
Which means, of course, that they only have one value
"winning". Winning is what matters. Everything else is too flexible to be considered a "value". Everything else can be sacrificed on that alter... poor, blacks, women, children... all of it.
They are rehabilitating Henry Kissinger. For me, that is real life caricature of all they've become.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Double post
.
"Who’s next? Rachel Maddow?"
I about fell out of my chair with laughter. Of course, I don't think that was the intent.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
There you have it -- pseudo-liberals and the Deep State
marching arm in arm to... I dunno what. Total Information Awareness? Neoliberal heaven?
native
@snoopydawg
And this idiot supposedly doesn't realize/care that everything that the public does is being spied on/recorded any/all of 17 (public/private) spy agencies, which doesn't seem to include the capture of phone/internet activity by police, yet believes that what public servants do against the public interest should be kept secret from the public to whom all branches of government and all such information belongs?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Nice interview with Julian...
this week on intercepted with J. Scahill (1 hour podcast and transcription)
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/intercepted-podcast-julian-assange-s...
I think they tried to kill Julian already. There was a man climbing and trying to enter the embassy last summer. Mysteriously all the police cars usually watching were not present. Luckily the break-in was foiled. I thought it was Democrats at the time...perhaps it was CIA all along.
https://www.rt.com/uk/356862-ecuador-embassy-london-assange/
https://www.rt.com/news/356697-man-climbs-ecuadorian-embassy-assange/
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
All this threat to go after Assange
by droning him or bombing the embassy or killing him in a special operations attack misses the point that Assange is reporting information provided to him by whistleblowers within the CIA, the NSA, our military intelligence, the Deep State, and the political apparatus of a campaign.
Saying all the information released by Wikileaks was given to Assange by Russia is a repeated attempt to hide the fact that there are significant numbers of people within the intelligence community who are willing to tell the American people the truth about criminal activity in our government and in the DNC.
That's not going to end because someone kills Assange. Killing Assange will only emphasize how serious the crimes are and how threatened the powerful are by the release of this information. It doesn't change the information that crimes have been committed by our government and by our political leadership! And killing Assange will not stop people from leaking such information.
Russia has become
an all-purpose scapegoat-du-jour. Whatever it is that somebody doesn't like, it's gotta be Russia's fault.
native
@Linda Wood
Also demonstrates the fact that the US Psychopaths That Be masquerading as 'democratic government officials' no longer trouble to conceal the casual way they view lawlessly silencing/kidnapping/murdering anyone revealing examples of the murderous and destructive tendencies they anyway display or otherwise fail to serve their self-interests, as with overthrowing democratic governments concerned with the public interest in oil-rich countries.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
This is a serious admission of weakness and failure.
A competent security organization would go to the source -- the leakers -- and stop the flood. Or at least take steps to alleviate the situations that compel people to leak. It's an admission of failure and weakness to go after the publisher of leaked information. The US "intelligence" community is a bunch of pathetic losers.
Yes, a bunch of pathetic losers --
and one that's been granted far too much license for its own, or anyone else's good.
native
We're the ones losing the most.
Who needs 16 or 17 Gestapos, er, "intelligence agencies" anyway?
That's how wealthy the U.S. is: our elites not only live and party in the grand style, they can afford 16 secret political thought-policing agencies.
Yep, they can piss away the country's $ trillions on untrackable "defense" spending. They can kill anyone on the planet without a trial by hitting "return" on some computer.
Wanna resist something? Resist the elites. "NO!" to the elites.
Freedom of Press on trial
link
It's a feature, not a bug.
n/t
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
Yet the same article ledes with this:
.
Notice the innuendo. I haven't seen any "mounting evidence" yet, nor in fact any substantial evidence at all.
Of such half-truths are msm memes constructed.
native
"Leak laundering" Good grief. I'd laugh, except it's scary.
Maybe the Inelligence Community
should supply itself with disposable diapers.
native
@native
If there wasn't enough bad shit going on in there to scare that shit out of insiders with courage, patriotism and survival sense, there wouldn't be anything to leak.
But of course criminals want to cover their crimes, and the larger and more numerous the crimes and the more wide-spread is the conspiracy involved in such crimes, the more desperate the response to discovery will be.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I've run across this tactic before
"Leak laundering" People have heard the term "leak" in connection with leaking classified info, which is a crime. They know money laundering is a crime. So, they make it sound as though a publisher publishing info from an anonymous source is criminal, at least if that anonymous source is Russia. In reality, publishers publish info handed them from anonymous sources every day. Sometimes, the Administration will even want something leaked, so an underline leaks it and you get "According to a White House source...." But, when wikileaks does it, it's (gasp) "leak laundering." Something innocuous made to sound sinister by making up a term.
My first encounter: A friend was recording something when she got a business call. After a couple of minutes, she asked the people on the other end of the call to hold a sec while she turned off her machine. The machine had captured only her voice, not theirs because the call was not on speaker. They accused her of "wiretaping" their call without their consent. Not wiretapping, because there was no wiretap, but "wiretaping." They just made up a word that sounded illegal.
But it's working. People are buying the government's propaganda
just look at the diaries on DK. After the election there were 10 or more a day about how Russia interfered with the election, which Trump advisers went to Russia or how Russia is in control of Trump.
There still are at least 2-4 a day and the members of DK just echo each other. Anyone who speaks out against them is dogpiled .
They used to be able to see through propaganda, but because Hillary lost, they have lost their minds.
To be that caught up in a person who lied her ass off about everything is beyond sad.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
@snoopydawg
Personally, I take heart in the notion that the bulk of people still at TOP are likely predominately insiders, trolls and various self-interests or lackeys thereof and that they are not representative of the general population. On the other hand, the propaganda clearly does work to a terrifying extent on Dems - just as it has for so long on Republicans.
The behaviours seem to be all-too typical of corporate culture and of 'social engineering' - probably having a complete cable TV/propaganda radio shut-down could save America from this...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Same here.
I have no great confidence that general public opinion is accurately reflected by any of our media, and that includes Daily Kos. Msm has been peddling so much flak, it's hard to get a meaningful reading from it.
native
Could be that peer pressure
has something to do with it. There's a lot of that at TOP.
native
This so very dangerous.
Soon after the Snowden revelations, the Obama administration tried to give itself the right to define "publisher." The obvious gambit was to claim that wikileaks was not a publisher, therefore it could be attacked, er, I mean regulated, without raising First Amendment issues. On Obama's behalf, Difi introduced the bill, but it went nowhere.
By re-assigning wikileaks an identity other than publisher, First Amendment protection for wikileaks is in jeopardy. And not only wikileaks. Anyone who publishes anything could be re-assigned this way. It won't happen to NYT or Yahoo. It might very well happen to smaller sources that publish things an administration does not appreciate. The direct opposite of the intent of the First Amendment.
At the time, the Obama administration, including the D of J had already been hostile to reporters. I remember off the top of my head tapping a reporter's phone to find out the reporter's sources. When that hit the fan, they again tried to pass a law. It was in the guise of a shield law, protecting reporters from being imprisoned for refusal to disclose sources but it narrowly defined the circumstances in which the reporter would be protected. That went nowhere as well. Obviously, it was hostile to whistleblowers, too.
So much for my hope that a Constitutional law lecturer would be an improvement over Bush on Constitutional issues. I think it was then that I discovered that Obama taught only equal rights under the fourteenth amendment, not a Constitutional law course, which is much broader. However, I had already voted for him. Oops.
That's the same tactic that Bush used when he said that it
was legal to torture the men that they captured after 9/11. He said that they weren't part of a country's military , they were "enemy combatants" and therefore the Geneva conventions didn't apply to them.
I guess this is the new way that our government can get around our constitutional, international and human rights laws.
How convenient that can just make up new laws whenever they see fit to do so.
Hopefully one day there will be a country strong enough to hold our war criminals accountable.
That includes every president and Vice President who is still alive as well as any congress members who voted to authorize the illegal military actions and funded them.
Every general who was in charge of military missions and possibly the soldiers who voluntarily signed up to go into other countries and kill people who were no threat to us. It's the "I was just following orders" rules that should hold them accountable.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
New rules, "secret" interpretations of existing rules.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/sen-ron-wyden-nsa-spying-its-bad...
https://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u-s-pho...
Only they really know exactly what kind of country I'm living in.
I have only an idea, not the full story. Yet, their lavish lifestyles come in part from my taxes.
https://caucus99percent.com/content/tax-freedom-day-2017-april-23
How does that work?
They admitted they would have prosecuted wikileaks if
no one else had published Manning's stuff, but gave up prosecuting wikileaks because they did not want to prosecute others who did the exact same thing as they were about to prosecute wikileaks for?
What a strong message of collaboration between the administration and complicit media. What a strong message that a publisher might be in danger if it publishes things the administration doesn't like. Wowza.
Freedom of the Press
They think Freedom of the press allows publication of lies but not leaks of facts...we shall see what our judiciary has to say about that.
I think that information belongs to the American people...We are responsible for what our country is doing..We have a right to know the facts.