New Wikileaks Dump Imminent, US Goes to Extraordinary Lengths to Warn Allies that the dump will...

[longfisher]

...to charge Assange. And, that's serious stuff.

The Espionage act has rarely been used in post WWII times. It's original use was during WWI to stifle dissent, particularly the newspapers of the day.

It's been amended several times since it was initially put in place. All amendments have broadened its application.

Did you know that if Assange is charged under the Espionage Act all the newspapers that published the cable, anyone who discussed them, anyone who tweeted about them and anyone on this board who has engaged in this thread or even read this thread could also be charged with the same crime?

That's how insanely broad the law has been allowed to become. It's like the so-called Patriot Act. Anyone can be deemed an enemy combatant at the fiat of the President.

Police state, anyone?

LF

[longfisher]

...are we.

I've cautioned some on this board in the past about embracing expanded Executive Branch powers to imprison without charge, to charge without trial, to deny constitutional rights to U.S. citizens, to assassinate citizens without due process or even judicial review. I caution because such powers have historically both here and elsewhere been widely and routinely abused.

Such is the case with Julian Assange, a foreign national who is engaged in what is argueably journalism little different from that in which FOX news, the New York Times and GCCA opinion pages is regularly engaged.

Here's from the mouths of mostly Republican figures are proclamations of punishment for Assange that range from the purely idiotic to the criminal:

"Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (“I think the man is a high-tech terrorist”); former speaker of the House and possible 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (“information terrorism… [Assange] should be treated as an enemy combatant”); Republican Congressman Peter King, the next head of the House Homeland Security Committee (“…asked the Obama administration today to ‘determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization’”); former Republican senator and possible 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum (“We haven’t gone after this guy, we haven’t tried to prosecute him, we haven’t gotten our allies to go out and lock this guy up and bring him up on terrorism charges, because what he’s doing is terrorism, in my opinion”); Fox News host, Iran-Contra figure, and bestselling author Oliver North (“This is an act of terrorism. It’s information terrorism instead of a bomb going off in Times Square, but it’s still terrorism”).

And that’s just to skim the (s)cream off the top of the terror accusations boiling out of this Congress and Republican presidential ranks. It’s quite a brew, especially when you add in senators like Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein calling for Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and figures like Sarah Palin calling for him to simply be taken out as a terrorist, pure and simple (“Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”)"

This is the slippery slope about which I've warned folks here in real life action. Laws and definitions be damned, we'll just assassinate him or declare him an enemy combatant and solve the problem with Wikileaks...while we create untold greater problems for the democracy.


LF

[longfisher]

"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level."

– Leon Trotsky, Foreign Affairs Commissariat, USSR, 1917.

LF

[Bligh]

As has been demonstrated in the past, Vietnam in particular, the truth saved perhaps thousands of American lives once it was known.

Indeed, it's calculated that if the American people had known at the early point in the war when the Generals decided the war was unwinnable that they and the pols felt that way almst half of the 59,000 dead and an equal percentage of the wounded would never have happened. So, we squandered the lives of approximately 30,000 troops in that war for what now appears to be nothing at all...but secrecy.

Secrecy, presumably, to protect the precious egos of pols is just not a sufficient justification for allowing a war to go on when it's widely known by the best political and military minds that's it's unwinnable.

Every veterans day I mourn for those lost boys. Heck, I was almost one of them.

LF

Men and women in more harms way! The politicians, state department clowns and Ambassadors that are mixed up in this made the choice to get involved. Most Military men and women only offered to protect the United States of America under the watchful rules of the constitution. If our service men and women are put in harms way because of the releases then they need to put a stop to it. Longfisher you keep attacking right wingers of conservatives and lets face it this is a big egg on the face of Obama. hillary and many other so called liberal progressives. Why is it all coming out during Obamas 1st 2 years? 1 There is No way that single soldier got all this info off the mil {sipernet} internet. There have been many many small leaks out of the pentagon and state department for years from people that did not agree with the party in charge or their goals or motives. Why is this coming out now? Because they thought it would not be traced back to them during the Obama administration. Now If you think this single stupid guy that will be in jail for ever, if not put to death! is all to blame? This info came out because they thought that Obama and hillary were not doing enough to end the US involvement in the middle east? They found a patsy that would not even know? that much bigger and powerful people that probably never served in harms way in Govt jobs of trust wanted to expose our brave service men and women so that they could change political policy.

[tetepare]

Check out THE RAP NEWS. This is the funniest **** ever. Sums it up perfectly.

WIKILEAK VID 1


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