The motives of Wikileaks' Julian Assange


sjw

Recommended Posts

All the guns in the world won't make up for a loss of moral authority.

Shayne,

And all the moral authority in the world will not stop a bullet.

For me, it is not either-or. You need both against thugs.

Michael

Of course it's not either-or. I never said we should disarm. I said we should claim moral authority by committing ourselves to the principles of individual rights. That would make us strong, and what's better, would lead to the transformation of the rest of the world for the better.

Shayne

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 140
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Folks, I have to say that I am quite suspicious of Julian Assange and his motivations. I can perceive his release of these US documents as very damaging to my nations security and as seriously placing our forces in jeopardy as well as some of the devils that we apparently have to cooperate with to defeat the global enemies that we face.

However, I also see the tremendous advantages to transparency with our centralized government which is frankly, more statist than limited right now.

I am torn as whether to see him as a useful ally or an extremely dangerous idealist with a brilliant technological mind.

I was impressed with this interview that TED conducted with him earlier this month.

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

I empathize with his use of whistle blowers and protecting them in order to rectify wrongs. We used whistle blowers extensively in building up F.A.M.I.L.Y., Advocates. We received original memos from inside the Family Courts bureaucracy which we were able to exploit to effect real change. One memo was signed by the Presiding Judge of one of NY States County's Family Courts which specifically directed the Clerk's Office to "sanitize" any files requested by F.A.M.I.L.Y., Advocates or it's members.

That led us to the revelation that there were interior notes made by the Hearing Examiners or Judges that directly established an anti male bias on the part of the "objective trier of fact". It allowed us to set traps for the system which when sprung, established our case.

It was one of these traps that went all the way to the NY State Supreme Court and established the right to counsel for all litigants in contempt cases which was selectively not used for males in child support contempt hearings.

So, even though I err on the side of protecting this country, I am reserving my judgment on Mr, Assange.

Watch the TED video, it is quite edifying.

Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is getting quite interesting!

Assange calls for Hillary's resignation...

"Hillary Clinton, Julian Assange said, 'should resign.' Speaking over Skype from an undisclosed location on Tuesday, the WikiLeaks founder was replying to a question by TIME managing editor Richard Stengel over the diplomatic-cable dump that Assange's organization loosed on the world this past weekend. Stengel had said the U.S. Secretary of State was looking like 'the fall guy' in the ensuing controversy, and had asked whether her firing or resignation was an outcome that Assange wanted. 'I don't think it would make much of a difference either way,' Assange said. 'But she should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she should resign over that.'"

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2033771,00.html#ixzz16oy2bWIZ

Julian Assange facing growing legal problems around world

    Interpol-poster-for-Julia-006.jpg Interpol wanted notice for Julian Assange The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is tonight facing growing legal problems around the world, with the US announcing that it was investigating whether he had violated its espionage laws.
    Assange's details were also added to Interpol's worldwide wanted list. Dated 30 November, the entry reads: "sex crimes" and says the warrant has been issued by the international public prosecution office in Gothenburg, Sweden. "If you have any information contact your national or local police." It reads: "Wanted: Assange, Julian Paul," and gives his birthplace as Townsville, Australia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-wanted-notice-julian-assange

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Judge Napolitano & Congressman Mack:

http://www.foxbusine...ylist_id=157991

Nice to hear some sanity.

Shayne

Let me propose a hypothetical case. Suppose the Soviet spy scientist Klaus Fuchs, instead of turning the details of how to make a plutonium bomb over the agents of the Soviet government, turned the data over to Nation Magazine. And suppose further that Nation Magazine published the material complete with diagrams. Should the management or employers of Nation Magazine been prosecuted for espionage or treason?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let me propose a hypothetical case. Suppose the Soviet spy scientist Klaus Fuchs, instead of turning the details of how to make a plutonium bomb over the agents of the Soviet government, turned the data over to Nation Magazine. And suppose further that Nation Magazine published the material complete with diagrams. Should the management or employers of Nation Magazine been prosecuted for espionage or treason?

Gee, that's a good argument, Bob.

I know, because I already made it two days ago:

One doesn't, for example, get the right to sell stolen property because someone else is guilty of the theft. If done by a foreign power this would be an act of war. Some pervert in a hat doesn't get immunity from releasing stolen secrets that will result in the loss of life because he calls himself a "journalist." I suppose the Rosenbergs' mistake was in handing the secrets they stole to Russia, instead of the Daily Worker.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let me propose a hypothetical case. Suppose the Soviet spy scientist Klaus Fuchs, instead of turning the details of how to make a plutonium bomb over the agents of the Soviet government, turned the data over to Nation Magazine. And suppose further that Nation Magazine published the material complete with diagrams. Should the management or employers of Nation Magazine been prosecuted for espionage or treason?

Gee, that's a good argument, Bob.

I know, because I already made it two days ago:

One doesn't, for example, get the right to sell stolen property because someone else is guilty of the theft. If done by a foreign power this would be an act of war. Some pervert in a hat doesn't get immunity from releasing stolen secrets that will result in the loss of life because he calls himself a "journalist." I suppose the Rosenbergs' mistake was in handing the secrets they stole to Russia, instead of the Daily Worker.

it was a question, not an argument. Why do you jump to conclusions?

My opinion on this hypothetical is that anyone who reveals military secrets to another power, such revelations being detrimental to the U.S. cause should be stood up against a wall and shot dead. For example the Walker's who revealed the entire U.S. order of naval battle to the Soviets.

I know what my opinion is . I was querying for the opinions of other folks. Or didn't I make that sufficiently clear. Apparently not. You got confused.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Judge Napolitano & Congressman Mack:

http://www.foxbusine...ylist_id=157991

Nice to hear some sanity.

Shayne

Let me propose a hypothetical case. Suppose the Soviet spy scientist Klaus Fuchs, instead of turning the details of how to make a plutonium bomb over the agents of the Soviet government, turned the data over to Nation Magazine. And suppose further that Nation Magazine published the material complete with diagrams. Should the management or employers of Nation Magazine been prosecuted for espionage or treason?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Judge Napolitano is a judge. It's an occupational hazard of judges to focus on the legal code to the extent that natural law is ignored or dismissed, and he's doing that here (in spite of the fact that he is often very good on this point). According to him the law says that if you steal a secret then that's a crime, but it's not a crime to publish it. On those grounds he'd throw Manning in jail but let Assange go free as a simple matter of interpreting the law.

Napolitano deserves criticism for that. The right way to analyze it is that your government is lying to you and Manning took the matter of justice -- your right to know -- into his own hands. It's not a simple matter of theft, nor is it a simple matter of interpreting the law. Surely the proper analysis of this depends on what was stolen. If these were atomic secrets that could be used by Iran, well that'd be a different thing. They're not. They're (in part) a revelation of systematic lying and deception by government. Also in part they are simply diplomatic cables that should have remained private. So there are two cases to be made here. I think in this age of escalating government deception and usurpation of power, the case for Manning/Assange is very strong.

I think the "sanity" of Napolitano is the notion that we have a right to know what our government is doing. The way he argued for this wasn't quite right.

Shayne

Edited by sjw
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let me propose a hypothetical case. Suppose the Soviet spy scientist Klaus Fuchs, instead of turning the details of how to make a plutonium bomb over the agents of the Soviet government, turned the data over to Nation Magazine. And suppose further that Nation Magazine published the material complete with diagrams. Should the management or employers of Nation Magazine been prosecuted for espionage or treason?

Gee, that's a good argument, Bob.

I know, because I already made it two days ago:

One doesn't, for example, get the right to sell stolen property because someone else is guilty of the theft. If done by a foreign power this would be an act of war. Some pervert in a hat doesn't get immunity from releasing stolen secrets that will result in the loss of life because he calls himself a "journalist." I suppose the Rosenbergs' mistake was in handing the secrets they stole to Russia, instead of the Daily Worker.

it was a question, not an argument. Why do you jump to conclusions?

My opinion on this hypothetical is that anyone who reveals military secrets to another power, such revelations being detrimental to the U.S. cause should be stood up against a wall and shot dead. For example the Walker's who revealed the entire U.S. order of naval battle to the Soviets.

I know what my opinion is . I was querying for the opinions of other folks. Or didn't I make that sufficiently clear. Apparently not. You got confused.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I am not accusing you of being wrong. Just of stealing the same idea I posted two days ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not accusing you of being wrong. Just of stealing the same idea I posted two days ago.

I stole nothing. I never read that posting.

As I told you before you don't know what I have read and what I have not read. You confuse your suppositions with fact, apparently.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited by BaalChatzaf
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reaction to this, a white house review and a criminal probe, is laughable. The creep's actions amount to an act of war. The state department should be demanding he be immediately arrested and extradited. Any state harboring him is at war with us.

Wikileaks didn't steal anything, they published it, just as a lot of other news organizations around the world are doing right now.

Only a person with a statist conception of journalism would single out Wikileaks in the face of hundreds of other journalists leaking the same information. An individualist conception would recognize that if person A gives something to person B to publish, then it doesn't matter if A is the original leaker and B was Wikileaks, or if A was Wikileaks and B was the New York Times, in principle the same event happened. So, if Wikileaks should be prosecuted, then so should a hundred other journalists.

Shayne

Interesting point, but isn't there a difference when someone is the first to publish this type of information?

Bob

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting point, but isn't there a difference when someone is the first to publish this type of information?

Bob

That's why Manning has been jailed. He published it to Wikileaks. In a sane justice system this would be about whether he liberated stolen goods or not (our right to know what our government is up to; non-citizens right to know what our government is up to concerning issues where they have been deceived).

Shayne

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I told you before you don't know what I have read and what I have not read.

Yes, or written, or said, apparently, given you contradict yourself from post to post.

Can't wait for your review of Harriman.

What contradiction?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's very self-righteous Peter. And maybe you are righteous. So what are you (and others like you) actually doing about situations like this:

http://briandaitken.com

Shayne

Just to keep you up to speed on Brian's case:

The New Jersey 2nd Amendment Society is hosting a BRING BRIAN HOME FOR CHRISTMAS rally. The FREE BRIAN AITKEN rally will be held on Sunday December 12, 2010

at the American Legion Post 129

on 2025 Church Road in Toms River, NJ

Please show your support and attend! We need to free this innocent man. See the Summary of Facts as prepared by Evan Nappen, Brian's attorney, and see Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll's plea to the Governor to pardon Brian Aitken here.

Join FREE BRIAN AITKEN on Facebook today!]

I also found it interesting that his "do gooder" social worker Mother brought the cops into the picture by sticking her intrusive nose into his life.

"Sue Aitken, a trained social worker, decided to play it safe and called police, but she hung up before the 9-1-1 dispatcher could answer. Police traced the call and showed up anyway, and found two handguns in the trunk of Brian's car. And now Brian, her middle child, a graduate student with no prior criminal record, is serving a seven-year prison sentence for weapons charges."

http://briandaitken.com/

Edited by Selene
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also found it interesting that his "do gooder" social worker Mother brought the cops into the picture by sticking her intrusive nose into his life.

Yeah, the same thing crossed my mind. I wonder if she learned any lessons.

Shayne

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ron Paul’s championing Wilkileak’s respectability is misplaced. His attempt to give Wikileaks a veneer of protecting an individual’s right to an open government, is *context dropping*. It mirrors Ron Paul’s calls for isolationism in a world of mentally and religiously unstable terrorists. He is wrong.

Take Paul’s argument to its fast-forwarded, logical extreme (which could technically have already been reached by the still UNRELEASED Wikileak’s documents.)

Should the techniques for recreating weapons of mass destruction be on the internet or should it remain secret?

Should the location of people in the witness protection program, who have risked their life to put organized crime figures in jail, be released? Should informants who are fighting terrorism world wide, or crime, as in Mexico, have their name’s disclosed?

Should there even be laws against invasion of privacy or laws against electronic bugs? After all, the public has a right to know, according to Ron Paul. What about trade secrets and copyrights?

Diplomacy could not be successfully conducted if there were no privacy. State Secrets need to be kept secret, though a time limit could be placed on a secret’s release. A legitimate government that protects individual’s rights should be mostly transparent but in the full, long - term context, certain things should not be immediate public knowledge.

Some facts also fall under the concept of *emergency situations.* Should war or battle plans be available to the enemy?

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon:

In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).

I understand Ron Paul’s argument but it is context dropping and it is dead wrong.

Peter Taylor

Independent Objectivist

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shayne referenced the debate, “Is WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange a Hero? Glenn Greenwald Debates Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News.”

Here are a couple of quotes from the debate.

In the debate, GLENN GREENWALD said:

And WikiLeaks is really one of the very few, if not the only group, effectively putting fear into the hearts of the world’s most powerful and corrupt people, and that’s why they deserve, I think, enthusiastic support from anyone who truly believes in transparency, notwithstanding what might be valid, though relatively trivial, criticisms that Mr. Aftergood and a couple of others have been voicing . . . . WikiLeaks does not have a cavalier or indiscriminate approach to disclosure, contrary to accusations often made against it. They’ve certainly made mistakes in the past. I criticize them, for instance, for exercising insufficient care in redacting the names of various Afghan citizens who cooperated with the United States military. They accepted responsibility for that, and in subsequent releases, including in the Iraq document disclosures, they were very careful about redacting those names.

STEVEN AFTERGOOD said:

Last year, WikiLeaks published a thousand-page raw police investigative file from Belgium, investigating a case of child abuse and murder. And as one would expect, the police file included lots of unsubstantiated allegations that later turned out to be false. But by publishing the raw allegations in their original state, WikiLeaks brought embarrassment and disgrace to people who were in fact innocent. It got to the point where the Belgium government was looking into the possibility of blocking access to WikiLeaks, not as an act of censorship, but as an act of protection against libel . . . . WikiLeaks has also published what I think is probably the only actual blueprint of a nuclear fission device that has been made available online. It’s not an artist’s concept, but it’s an actual blueprint of a real nuclear weapon that they posted online. I think from a proliferation point of view, that was a terrible mistake.

end quotes

To me those excerpts are an indictment.

I read that 200 Afghan lives were put at risk for exposing the Taliban terrorists. That leak is a crime.

In Belgium, out of context, libelous and unsubstantiated statements embarrassed and disgraced people who were innocent. Just imagine Wikileaks publishing a police report saying Shayne was an unrepentant pedophile, child rapist, and as a sideline murdered people’s puppies . . . which was later proven to be a complete fabrication . . . but in the meantime, Shayne is hung by his neighbors from a lamppost. Isn’t that just too bad?

And no one will ever convince any sane person that publishing a blue print for making an atomic bomb is not a crime.

*Libel* *Invasion of privacy* *Espionage* *The moral responsibility for the death of millions of people*

This smug, rarely repentant monster, Julian Assange, is still at large. And he is ready to murder and maim more, by “killing them softly with his song.”

Peter Taylor

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This smug, rarely repentant monster, Julian Assange, is still at large. And he is ready to murder and maim more, by “killing them softly with his song.”

Peter Taylor

You're the smug statist. How about you try comparing the crimes the US government engages in alongside Wikileaks' errors (don't forget the legalized plunder of citizens, the legalized attacks on drug users, the military draft -- the list goes on and on and on and on). Then we'll see how smug you are.

Shayne

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shayne wrote:

You're the smug statist. How about you try comparing the crimes the US government engages in . . .

end quote

Up to this point Shayne, I and 300 million other Americans, will take the US Government over a lack of government, as in Northern Mexico, or Somalia.

Your list of grievances against the government, including taxation, the military draft, and the war on drugs and its resultant carnage, is well noted by all “small ell libertarians,” like myself, but I will insist that the lack of government is a greater hardship.

Take each of your three examples:

Taxation. Without government there would be payoffs, tariffs, ransoms, and tolls to pay to gang lords. If you did not pay, you would not get three years easy time in the federal pen, like Wesley Snipes. You would be beaten or murdered. The proof is in lawless places like Mexico, Columbia, and Somalia.

The military draft. US51813331 US Army, 1967 to 1969, is as close to my draft, serial number as I can remember. I think I forget a digit. I never want to see another person drafted as I was. Yet, without government there would be the conscription of young men into gangs, and the sexual slavery of women. The proof is in lawless inner city American and places like Mexico, Columbia, and Somalia.

The War on Drugs. Now there, Shayne, you have a good point. Making them illegal fuels the drug trade and lawlessness in American, Afghanistan, and Mexico. Legalized drugs is a hard sell because of the devastation that can occur in a society. How odd! I remember Britain fought a war with China to keep the drug trade flowing against China’s wishes.

Personally I take the tough love route. Those who get addicted and die will be a small number, but I would hate to see all of America turn into what is depicted in the TV show “Californication.” I would not want to live in that America and it is why I would not move to California. Many of the people there are degenerates, from drug use.

Still the world would be better without drug laws, in the long run. Let Darwin sort out the losers.

I am editing this letter to add, I saw a local news story yesterday, about synthetic maryjane. That is some bad stuff. A guy sat in his chair unable to communicate or move for six hours after using it, and he is still not right.

Peter Taylor

Edited by Peter Taylor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Peter, of course the US is among the best places to live. The point is to not only keep it that way, but make it a place worthy of its founding ideals. That will never happen so long as false patriots defend it no matter what it does, or pretend that people like me are arguing for Somalia, anarchy, etc. just because we are arguing for actual rule of law.

Stockholm syndrome: listing how good America is compared to the worse possible dictatorship whenever anyone criticizes it.

Shayne

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now