The higher principle involved in the U.S. persecution of Wikileaks

Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings recently interviewed Julian Assange, head of Wikileaks, who pointed out a huge problem with the government's legal position:

The U.S. government is trying to redefine what have been long-accepted journalistic methods. If the Pentagon is to have its way, it will be the end of national-security journalism in the United States . . . They're trying to interpret the Espionage Act to say that any two-way communication with a source is a collaboration with a source, and is therefore a conspiracy to commit espionage where classified information is involved. The Pentagon, in fact, issued a public demand to us that we not only destroy everything we had ever published or were ever going to publish in relation to the U.S. government, but that we also stop "soliciting" information from U.S. government employees. The Espionage Act itself does not mention solicitation, but they're trying to create a new legal precedent that includes a journalist simply asking a source to communicate information.
Here's one more quote from the above article:
When you shake something up, you have a chance to rebuild. But we're not interested in shaking something up just for the hell of it. I believe that if we look at what makes a civilization civilized, it is people understanding what is really going on. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, the end result was that people who knew something of what was going on could convey that information to others. And as a result of the Internet, we are now living in a time where it's a lot easier to convey what we know about our corner of the world and share it with others.

Continue ReadingThe higher principle involved in the U.S. persecution of Wikileaks

Wikileaks exposes “shadow CIA”: Stratfor

See this new report on the most recent revelation by Wikileaks:

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today started to publish more than five million confidential emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor. . . . Among the allegations to emerge is that Stratfor's claim to be a media organisation providing a subscription intelligence newsletter is a front for 'running paid informants networks' and 'laundering those payments through the Bahamas, through Switzerland, through private credit cards'. Stratfor 'is monitoring Bhopal activists for Dow Chemicals, Peta activities for Coca-Cola', WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed at a press conference in London today. However, what could cause the greatest embarrassment for the U.S. government is his suggestion that information is also being gathered by paying contacts from agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
It appears, then, that a for-profit enterprise engaged secret shady dealing is being exposed by the non-profit Wikileaks, whose mission is to make harmful information public. Many more stories are expected to emerge based on the release of five million emails from the private intelligence firm, Stratfor. Until today, I had never heard about Stratfor. That's about to change, big time, based on the Wikileaks releases. The suggestions that Stratfor has numerous ties to paid U.S. government sources is extremely troubling. We'll see what happens to those profiteers. As I recall, Bradley Manning never made a penny when he released U.S. cables, but he has been imprisoned ever since, and often tortured by the U.S. government.

Continue ReadingWikileaks exposes “shadow CIA”: Stratfor

Expansion of police powers- now are you upset??

In the years since 9/11, America's police state has been expanding rapidly. The "Patriot Act" gave nominal legal approval to a vastly expanded surveillance and detention authority, but in some startling new cases, police are not even seeking legal justification for working in areas that are clearly illegal and unconstitutional. The latest abuses come courtesy of the New York Police Department. New reports indicate that the NYPD has been surveiling and profiling Jewish and Christian communities and individuals, often in areas that are far outside of NYPD's jurisdiction, including Buffalo, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. As always, the bogeyman of "terrorism" is cited as the justification for these acts. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingExpansion of police powers- now are you upset??

The real reasons for the protests in Afghanistan

Are the people who live in Aghanistan taking their protests to the streets because they resent our "freedom"? Are they angry merely because of isolated infractions by American soliders? Glenn Greenwald says no.

[J]ust imagine what would happen if a Muslim army invaded the U.S., violently occupied the country for more than a decade, in the process continuously killing American children and innocent adults, and then, outside of a prison camp it maintained where thousands of Americans were detained for years without charges and tortured, that Muslim army burned American flags — or a stack of bibles — in a garbage dump. Might we see some extremely angry protests breaking out from Americans against them? Would American pundits be denouncing those protesters as blinkered, primitive fanatics?
We are spending $2 Billion dollars every week doing more of the same in Afghanistan, while claiming ten years of success in a campaign that lacks any discernible objectives other than serving as a make-work program for American military personnel and their high-priced private contractors. BTW, more than 400 of these American contractors died on the job last year. And then consider that the U.S. is propping up a massively corrupt regime in Afghanistan, we are (whether we like it or not) part of a system that distributes record amounts of opium and our own "infrastructure" money for Afghanistan has been largely wasted. To facilitate this unimaginably large waste of American taxpayer money, the U.S. military has fed Congress and the public an unceasing stream of lies that things are going well over there. When one also considers that dollars are fungible, and that these warmongering dollars could have been used to house, educate and feed Americans, the military occupation of Afghanistan ranks as one of the most immoral enterprises in the history of the United States.

Continue ReadingThe real reasons for the protests in Afghanistan

Matt Taibbi: GOP gets what it has coming

Matt Taibbi sums up what the GOP has been offering to America:

[W]hile watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster. Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi: GOP gets what it has coming