struggle4progress
struggle4progress's JournalThat's a reasonable reaction from Carr. Assange is a fugitive, who skipped his next appeal
and instead jumped bail after the UK courts ruled against him
Assange has regularly claimed the Aussie government won't help him, but in fact they sent representatives to his hearings; and when he repeatedly moaned they had abandoned him, they contacted him to try to set up a meeting, which he declined
Assange's present circumstances result from his alleged conduct in Sweden, his refusal to return there for prosecution, and the upholding by UK courts of Sweden's warrant for his arrest: he managed to turn that into a three ring circus by convincing Ecuador to allow him to hide in their embassy, but the issue is still primarily Swedish and secondarily a matter of UK jurisprudence; Ecuador's actions merely distract from the original question
Assange seems to believe that he can escape Swedish prosecution by dragging additional parties into the case -- say, the United States or Australia -- and so he and his supporters spin conspiratorial fantasies, which they think will offer opportunities for ever-more-complicated narratives, but the factual basis for such narratives is thin indeed. Although Assange and his supporters will cite every mention of Wikileaks during Manning's prosecution as yet more evidence of nefarious US plotting against Assange, Manning's case can scarcely be discussed at all, if there is to be no mention of Wikileaks
So it is not even slightly surprising that when Manning is tried for the largest document dump in US history, his relationship to the Wikileaks will be scrutinized: he delivered the documents to Wikileaks in several large discrete installments, and he discussed the deliveries which someone at Wikileaks who provided him software for the delivery. The scale of the release will have raised all manner of possible concerns, such as whether the Wikileaks releases represented a deliberate distraction, covering some other espionage activity. Other known details, such as the fact that an Assange associate seems to have attempted to sell some of the released material in Russia, have no doubt also raised flags. So in the Manning case, the prosecution may be proceeding (at least in part) on the theory that Manning was not the only one deciding what documents to download and release. I do not know whether such a theory could be supported convincingly by facts
The court-martial is (in any case) trying Manning, not Assange, and the principal question seems to be: whether a soldier, who transfers large numbers of restricted documents to an organization that specializes in highly-publicized large-scale document dumping on the internet, and who has been warned that official enemies (such as al-Qaida or the Taliban) may comb the internet for information, should or should not then be held accountable for the possibility that those official enemies might actually learn about the document dump and obtain usable information from the dumped documents
The outcome of Manning's case cannot affect Assange's prospects, for Assange has not been charged with any crime in the US; if Assange were somehow charged and brought to trial, he would be prosecuted in civilian court under civilian law, not under military regulations in the military justice system; and no verdict of a different court, that Manning had engaged in some conspiracy, could translate directly into the legal conclusion that Assange was guilty of such a conspiracy
The US has already inquired whether Manning's actual releases affected Aussie interests, and the official answer seems to have been negative
So Manning's trial may not involve any Aussie interests, in which case the Aussies need not follow it closely
Let's do some math. Manning arrived in Iraq in October 2009 and was arrested in May 2010,
and he took a two week leave to the US in January 2010: there remain about 32 weeks in Iraq. Sometime during that time, he downloaded and sent to Wikileaks about 750 000 documents
Suppose that 7 da/wk during that 32 week period, Manning spent 12 hrs/da doing nothing but selecting and downloading the 750 000 documents. He was then selecting and downloading 23K+ documents per week, or 3300+ documents per day, or 275+ documents per hour, or 4+ documents per minute. That is, he cannot have spent on average even 15 seconds per document: (1) to read the document, (2) decide it should be released, and (3) download it for delivery to Wikileaks
In fact, he cannot have spent nearly that much time per document. Since Wikileaks began its distribution of the State Department cables in mid-February 2010, so Manning's activities must have occurred between the beginning of October and mid-February; subtracting his leave, there remain about 18 weeks in Iraq. So actually Manning was selecting and downloading over 41K+ documents per week, or over 5900 documents per day, or about 500 documents per hour, or over 8 documents per minute. That is, he cannot have spent on average more than about 7 second per document to: (1) to read the document, (2) decide it should be released, and (3) download it for delivery to Wikileaks
This is not a picture of a thoughtful citizen deciding, after careful review of material, that his conscience demands he make the information widely available: we are dealing with a confused and naive ideologue who chose to dump data without discrimination
Former WikiLeaks Employee James Ball Describes Working With Julian Assange
by James Ball
May 30, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
... A pro-Putin outlet got in touch to say Shamir had been asking for $10,000 for access to the cables. He was selling the material we were working to give away free ...
... The NGO Index on Censorship sent a string of questions and some photographic evidence, suggesting Shamir had given the cables to Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Europes last dictator. Shamir had written a pro-Belarus article, shortly before photos emerged of him leaving the interior ministry. The day after, Belaruss dictator gave a speech saying he was establishing a WikiLeaks for Belarus, citing some stories and information appearing in the genuine (and then unpublished) cables.
Assange ... blocked any attempts at investigation, and released public statements that were simply untrue ...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/30/exclusive-former-wikileaks-employee-james-ball-describes-working-with-julian-assange.html
Let's Get It Right: No, Bradley Manning is NOT facing the death penalty
The Holy Saint and Blessed Martyr Julian of Assange, featured on Democracy Now! today, claims:
Um, no. Let's get it right
Under the definitions of the Manual for Courts-Martial (800+ pp!),
Capital case means a general court-martial to which a capital offense has been referred with an instruction that the case be treated as capital ... Capital offense means an offense for which death is an authorized punishment under the code and Part IV of this Manual ...
See MCM p II-1. On the next page II-2 appears
Bradley Manning is charged, among other things, with an Article 104 violation. Discussion of Article 104 begins in the MCM at page IV-41. An Article 104 violation is indeed a "capital offense" under the MCM definition above, meaning that in some circumstances a death sentence might result from conviction for an Article 104 violation. HOWEVER,
Bradley Manning's case is NOT a "capital case" under the MCM definition above, meaning that Manning CANNOT receive a death sentence if convicted -- because Manning's case was not "referred with a special instruction that the case is to be tried as capital"
... An Army spokesperson confirmed that Almanza endorsed proceeding with the case precisely as prosecutors urged. "The Investigating Officer also recommended against seeking the death penalty in this case" ...
Investigator urges court martial for WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning
By JOSH GERSTEIN | 1/12/12 3:09 PM EST
FORT LESLEY J. MCNAIR, D.C. After reviewing the investigating officers report of charges under Article 32, Uniformed Code of Military Justice, the recommendations from the chain of command, and the case file, the general court martial convening authority, Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, referred all charges and specifications to a general court martial today in the case of US vs Pfc. Bradley E. Manning ... If convicted of all charges, Manning would face a maximum punishment of reduction to the lowest enlisted pay grade, E-1; total forfeiture of all pay and allowances; confinement for life; and a dishonorable discharge ...
General Court Martial Conveyning Authority Refers Charges Against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE #12-02
DATE: February 3, 2012
Report on CIA rendition reveals massive scale of European assistance
Open Society research assembles long roster of nations willing to help the Bush administration with extra-legal program
Tom McCarthy
Tuesday 5 February 2013 14.24 EST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/cia-rendition-help-european-leaders
The Open Society Initiatives report lists the two known cases (Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery ) in Sweden, rendered in December 2001. These cases provoked public outcry in Sweden. According to the report
The UK has been less forthcoming regarding its apparently longer term and more substantial involvement. The report indicates there is evidence implicating the UK in the renditions of a number of people, including Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna (2002), Binyam Mohamed (2002), Omar Deghayes (2002), Sami al-Saadi (2004), Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq and his wife Fatima Bouchar (2004), and in several of these cases the UK also seems to have been involved in the torture. According to the report:
Wikileaks Greatest Hits: the UFO Cables
Wikileaks has done so many great things by now -- such as reporting that Steve Jobs died of AIDS, attempting to extort cash from anyone who might have exchanged emails with Freddy Balzan, feeding the rightwing's phony Climategate scandal with East Anglia emails, faking a NYT column, or helping the dictator of Belarus identify his domestic enemies -- that it's getting hard for Assange fans to remember it all!
So let's refresh our memories about the UFO cables!
WikiLeaks: new diplomatic cables contain UFO details, Julian Assange says
New leaked diplomatic cables set to be published by Wikileaks will contain fresh details on UFOs, according to the website's founder Julian Assange
By Andrew Hough
11:00PM GMT 03 Dec 2010
The 39 year-old Australian, who is wanted by Interpol over a charge of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, said there were some references to extraterrestrial life in yet-to-be-published confidential files obtained from the American government ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8180528/Wikileaks-new-diplomatic-cables-contain-UFO-details-says-Julian-Assange.html
Julian Assange: UFO details found in WikiLeaks cables\
Saturday 4 Dec 2010 8:55 am
... It is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs, he said. Assange also took the opportunity to praise the person who leaked the documents to the website, stating that he should be viewed as an unparalleled hero for his actions ...
http://metro.co.uk/2010/12/04/julian-assange-has-spoken-about-diplomatic-discussions-regarding-ufos-598503/
WikiLeaks' UFO Cables: More About Raelian Cult Than Alien Life
Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff
2/07/2011 @ 2:20PM
If WikiLeaks didnt already have the attention of the worlds conspiracy theorists, its founder Julian Assange grabbed the X-files crowd by their tin-foil helmet antennae in December, when he mentioned that the site plans to publish leaked cables that reference UFOs ...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/07/wikileaks-ufo-cables-more-about-raelian-cult-than-alien-life/
Julian Assange Talks About WikiLeaks UFO Disclosure Cables
WikiLeaks May Offer No New UFO Files or Evidence of Disclosure in Cables
The Portland Journal
Feb 9, 2011
... Even when questioned by Pierre Brunet in the WikiLeaks Roundtable video, Julian Assange seemed very coy with his answer regarding UFO files and any cable leaks ...
http://voices.yahoo.com/julian-assange-talks-wikileaks-ufo-disclosure-7815578.html?cat=15
WikiLeaks UFO Cables: Assange Admits Hype, Cover up?
Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, admitted today his previous claims about secret UFO cables were largely exaggerated. Two months after he stirred the hopes of UFO researchers worldwide, he is now stating the cables contain only small passing references to UFOs ...
http://www.theblackvault.com/m/news/view/WikiLeaks-UFO-Cables-Assange-Admits-Hype-Cover-up
What a guy!
There are differences between your views and mine, but I suspect you and I do not even agree
on exactly what the differences between our views are
First, we do not use the term "religion" in exactly the same way.
I think you wish to make general claims about "religion" without having any really good definition of it. I find "religion" as a sociological category to be a vague and ill-defined concept: having trained as a mathematician, I do not believe meaningful generalizations can be derived from vague ideas, so when "religion" is used in a sociological sense, I am often inclined to look sociological descriptions that seem to be more useful.
When I use "religion" as a theological category, I am referring to something rather like "the foundations of a person's being," and in that sense I expect everyone has a "religion" of some sort -- and I am sure you dislike any comments I make in that sense. "Religion" in this sense is not necessarily harmless in my view: people often behave rather badly for various reasons, springing from their choices of what will be important to them, and they are often quite good at providing high-minded-sounding rationalizations for their bad behavior, but their actual "religion" (even if they describe themselves as "religious" may not involve any traditional "gods" and their rationalizations do not necessarily involve any "god talk" -- the actual "gods" they worship (for example) may be themselves, and their actual "religious practice" may be their self-interested greed or it may be their own self-righteousness. In other words, I use the theological category "religion" to include a number of ways of being, many of which I regard as idolatrous and harmful, but in that case the conceptual overlap between your use of the word and my use of the word is rather slight
Second, we do not approach the sociological category "religion" from the same perspective. My development here was influenced by Marx, who is currently unpopular, despite his having had some rather profound insights:
A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
Perhaps you have little interest in Marx, but this passage shines as a brilliant landmark in atheistic humanism. Marx is not content with the observation that religion is man-made, and he is not content simply to strip away religious belief: he wants to understand the actual source of religious belief, without losing his ethical stance and without losing his scientific perspective. His idea is to regard religious belief as a psychological projection, that allows people to discuss their hopes and disappointments in a fantastic language that represents both their current suffering and their protest against that suffering. Thus Marx maintains his sympathy with the oppressed in part by decoding their discussion of their oppression. He is not interested so much to destroy their illusions but rather to eliminate the conditions that necessarily produced the illusions
This provides an established atheistic-humanistic approach to the study of problems posed by various "religious" manifestations -- namely, one asks: What is really going on here? What are the underlying conditions that spawned this? That approach has the advantage of focusing attention on genuine material problems that real humans need solved
Third, I think I see interesting problems where you see none. When (for example) communities with a long history of religious tolerance splinter into violent competing factions, I think you feel everything important has been said once you have blame "religion" for the strife -- but since such "solution" seems glib and uninformative to me, I still want to know what has happened
Listen: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange
Posted on May 5, 2013
... audio excerpts from their extended conversation in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London ...
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/listen_chris_hedges_interviews_julian_assange_20130505/
Assange, here, as we should expect by now, rather carelessly misrepresents a number of matters:
Lindskog's 3 April 2013 talk at the University of Adelaide actually ranged over various legal issues surrounding Assange and Sweden, including the problems Swedish transparency law creates with respect to keeping current police investigation documents out of the newspapers and the issue of Assange's possible extradition to the US from Sweden, which Lindskog regards as more or less impossible. Lindskog's comment "It's a mess" occurs a bit after the 0:46 mark in the video, and when he makes it, he has been talking extradition, not about the Swedish criminal case. (If you decide to follow the link to the videotape, you'll want to skip the first 14 minutes which mostly show audience wandering into the auditorium)
Assange -- who (of course) had earlier condemned Lindskog's talk as absolutely outrageous (see http://www.news.com.au/national-news/julian-assange-safe-from-extradition-to-us-says-justice-stefan-lindskog/story-fncynjr2-1226612062993) -- has by now had ample time to learn what Lindskog actually said, if he were interested in what Lindskog actually said
JA: If not, thered be one in the queue, and then the other one would come in, and then it would be the plight of the home secretary to make a decision, a reviewable court decision, a politically reviewable decision, to swap the precedent for these ...
US ambassador to the UK Louis Susman was on the 20 February 2011 Andrew Marr Show, and he said no such thing. Watch it yourself: the clip is only a bit over one minute
Partial list of Assange's lawyers
Australia
Julian Burnside
Graeme Orr
Jennifer Robinson
Robert Stary
Spain
Baltasar Garzon
Sweden
Bjorn Hurtig
Thomas Olsson
Per Samuelson
UK
Susan Benn
Ben Emmerson
Gareth Peirce
Geoffrey Robertson
Dinah Rose
Mark Stephens
USA
Alan Dershowitz
Michael Ratner
WikiLeaks discover ties between Nigerian scammers and Straftor. Sort of. (Murphy | CSM)
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / February 20, 2013
... Today WikiLeaks released some new Stratfor emails (it's labeling the Stratfor dump, rather self-importantly, the "Global Intelligence Files." That caught the eye of a supporter who tweeted "New #Stratfor docs: US soldier stealing $22M from Iraq?" This was duly retweeted by the main WikiLeaks account ...
Anyone who has used email since the mid-1990s will immediately recognize this for what it is: a variant of the Nigerian scam, a con-artist come-on that always revolves around some prince/lucky treasure hunter/disgraced politician/international banker who promises you an enormous financial windfall if you'll just come to his assistance with some money up front (to facilitate the eventual transfer of the loot to his "dear friend." This isn't intelligence, it isn't even analysis. It's spam. And that's obvious to any media literate person who reads the first two sentences.
While I'm of the opinion that the odds of anything potentially dangerous being found in the Stratfor emails is very, very low, this release is a sign that there's next to no vetting going on ...
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2013/0220/WikiLeaks-discover-ties-between-Nigerian-scammers-and-Straftor
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