Reply With QuoteConspiracy theorists will find a reason to justify their conspiracies. Argument is futile.
Nope you're not misremembering, if you go and read the Lamo chat logs and some of the reporting on it you see a pattern developing in which WL are pretty careful about what they do and Manning is not particularly so:
blablabla.bradass87: they have decent opsec… im obviously violating it
bradass87: im a wreck
bradass87: im a total fucking wreck right now…
Manning: im a source, not quite a volunteer
Manning: i mean, im a high profile source… and i’ve developed a relationship with assange… but i dont know much more than what he tells me, which is very little
Manning: it took me four months to confirm that the person i was communicating was in fact assange
Lamo: how’d you do that?
Manning: I gathered more info when i questioned him whenever he was being tailed in Sweden by State Department officials… i was trying to figure out who was following him… and why… and he was telling me stories of other times he’s been followed… and they matched up with the ones he’s said publicly
Conspiracy theorists will find a reason to justify their conspiracies. Argument is futile.
Haha, oh yes, if you can't trust those anonymous authoritative U.S sources, who can you trust? Who could ever be misled by such a thing? Nobody. 100% track record of being "proved fucking right" as Judith Miller might say.
The sarcasm tag is sorely needed here.Originally Posted by djotefsoup
I'm probably more the lazy internet arguer, but only when up against someone that isn't open to seeing a different perspective no matter what (for example i fully understand the evil (in the biblical sense) reveal wikileaks exposed about our (usa+british) governments + militarys (guided by our governments) actions in relation to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but i fully suspect you won't agree on that documented and proven issue).
Assange had the newspaper 'The Gaurdian' as one of his principle allies when things were hot, he also had 'The New York Times' stateside etc. Now i'm not sure on the exact details of why, but he fell out with the most important senior figures that had been his allies in those kind of places, which is why he ended up in the Ecuadorian embassy, as these allies he had previously were no longer that sure about him (and they may be right).
The 'rule of law' thing you mention is about what exactly? There is no warrent for Assanges arrest due to him breaking any laws? Although there is some evidence that the 'usa' is building a legal case vs assange:
http://www.solidarity.net.au/47/us-d...ds-on-assange/
But no overt claim has ever been made by the usa interest, so who knows? It does seem likely somehow that it will be going on behind the scenes, i think most people can see that(or maybe not?). Still i'm not convinced a legal case even need be built. Gitmo and rendition has shown ample evidence you don't need any evidence to inture and torture any random person for years without evidence. You might not like this other bit of documented and proven true evidence either? But it is what it is.
Even the rape issue is not about that, the breaking of any laws:
10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010...assange-sweden
http://gawker.com/5936600/julian-ass...th-free-speech
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/02/...they-go-along/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...ileaks-sweden/
Now what ever the wider situation of Julian Assange needing to go to sweden to face all this, and he and his current supporters have said he would be good t do so IF statements were made that he won't then get handed over to usa bodies:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...r-embassy-safe
'Ecuador's government says it never intended to prevent Assange from facing justice in Sweden. It has said that if he received written guarantees from Britain and Sweden that he would not be extradited to any third country, then Assange would hand himself over to the Swedish authorities.'
So all that would suggest something is a bit odd, as it all could be solved quite easily, but those parties (Sweden, the UK and the USA) are making it more difficult than they really need to. Why? The non lazy person might look around the issue, investigate various sources and not just follow the main stream (american) media version on this, if they so wished or were not afraid of what they might find perhaps?
Last edited by Zak Gordon; 08-26-2012 at 04:05 AM.
Again, they can't promise that. The judiciary are required to consider valid extradition requests. There are very, very good reasons for this.
I like to pretend that I have an ignore list that DawnFalcon is on, so please help maintain that fiction as long as possible - but, did you read the Greenwald piece on that or what? There was a nice update to it recently where after contacting 4 different legal experts someone thought to look on the Swedish government's website and found
Which would seem to headshot the zombie New Statesman line.If the Supreme Court finds that there is any legal impediment to extradition, the Government is not allowed to approve the request. The Government can, however, refuse extradition even if the Supreme Court has not declared against extradition, as the law states that if certain conditions are fulfilled, a person "may" be extradited - not "shall" be extradited.
As to whether people are paranoids, conspiracy theorists, whatever - I think there is an unhelpful strain of connect-the-dots shit (look at this lady who at some point didn't like Castro - ...and... ?! the head of their law firm is the same guy who approved renditions at MOJ! - bla bla). Which is pretty lazy stuff. There are however things like, I dunno, where to start - let's say, this one
or this little lot
or the Australian Government taking that pretty seriously
which rejecting out of hand would basically mean assuming that everyone they have ever annoyed has decided to spend rather a lot of effort going after them, then, just forget the whole thing suddenly. We all like a good smear piece but "pay gateway bans/ddos attacks cease", "grand jury disbands", or indeed some kind of lack of media activity that for instance runs lengthy quotes from the ego-less and entirely respectable founder of openleaks (who could guess it would achieve so much in such a short time?) vs Assange, blabla, would probably be a more convincing line to drop in. Just a lack of unprecedented activity against Wikileaks in general. Or we could talk some more about Assange rather than Manning and then complain that everyone is for some reason talking about Assange rather than Manning - I like that one.
What the Swedish government think is not what the law says, or caselaw says.
The rest is just as accurate.
What governments think about extradition is the only thing that matters, since they are the only ones that can carry out an extradition.
Sorry, to be clearer - what the executive think isn't what matters, but what the law actually says.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
That tendentiously driving a narrow legal point as though there is some kind of inviolable respect for the law - especially international law (ha ha) - on the part of the people he has annoyed is rather missing the point. If you were talking about another different entity that wasn't somewhat infamous for deciding that the law is whatever the guy in charge puts in a secret memo this week, then fine, sure we could have a conversation about the proper legal process and it would be meaningful in some way. Or perhaps if there was some fine tradition over the last decade where the US respected the rights of non-US citizens and whistleblowers (let alone both) that they'd like to take action against. Or perhaps if the GOS's word, the US's word, assurances extracted from the CIA, etc, that someone would not be tortured in custody had any example to show that they were worth shit.
But there isn't any of that, and that's why it's so noticeable that the argument from one side is "prove we're secretly conspiring against WL, using only our public statements, not hacked data and FOI requests showing what we've been working on". Not "prove this would be different from usual". It's "prove we're not doing the same shit as usual". Why don't you get on that instead?
Off course not. Or you probably don't want to know, both work just fine. Or what djotefsoup said, whatever you feel most comfortable with. Or i don't think i can be non-lazy enough for you, so just carry on as normal and don't worry about it :)
And just for Ed, as it is part of what i was trying (but failing) to explain to him:
'US troops punished for Koran burning and urination video'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19394154
The 'troops' were Officers. Not grunts or lowly knuckle draggers (as they were affectionaly called in my time). I could not imagine a british Officer doing this shit, ok in my time they would not do this shit (although they may 'allow' lower ranks to get their hands dirty), but maybe they would now? Although i have a hard time believing it would change so quickly and so massively in the last decade or so. We don't get all religious fanatical in the uk though, which might be part of it to.
And sorry this is not assange related, but i just wanted to help Ed understand what the rest of the world is concerned about (for america etc), and what i was meaning up above, it is ALL this kind of stuff, which is why Assange is rightly so jumpy. Rule of law means jack in this brave new world.
Have to say I'm the one with no idea what you are trying to say now - perhaps you could diagram exactly which institutions involved in that incident would have anything to do with Assange.
No this article has nothing to do with Assange, like i said. What it does have to do with is the wider brush i was painting for Ed when i gave all those links above and talked about the general push to something 'not good' by the american government/military, which does relate to Assange in what he is concerned about in terms of his own safety, and also the safety of whistle-blowers in general.
So in short the article above has nothing to do with Assange, but it does have everything to do with what wikileaks was wanting to expose about our governments and military and the way they go about business in the wider world today. This is especialy important for people like Ed that seem to be unable to see this shift of policy or what it is about or where it leads (which is all about the danger to american democracy, and world democracy etc). The more real (as opposed to 'Fox News' version etc) information about this people like Ed have access to, the safer world democracy is.
In that context it is important for organisations like wikileaks to be able to carry on doing what they are doing, actually protecting that democracy. However when you succeed in creating a world of hatred and fear, you seek to persecute those that try to stand up for true democracy.
Yeah I'm not sure it's really the best example to use of that either. Reading the link makes the Koran burning sound less like a tee-hee-hee-fuck-you-guys kind of affair and more like bloody minded clueless incompetence resulting in a kind of miniature Sepoy revolt (as was the case there). I don't think that's even close to the worst thing in recent memory you could find the US military doing and largely getting away with, or even comparable to what WL has put them on the spot for in the past.
He is trying to say "I am Dawn Falcon".
I imagine you could find any number of Irish Catholics who would be happy to entertain you with similar stories of religious disrespect and/or vandalism by the British forces (including officers), and a quick Google will net you as many as you care to read about from Iraq, India, Palestine, etc.
My point is not to call the Brits out as monsters or even to try a "well everyone else does it too!" defense, but to point out the pervasive nature of this type of thing. If you put a quarter-million 20-somethings in an unfamiliar (and hostile) culture you're going to get similar incidents, even if the army is as professional and disciplined as the US or UK forces.
The difference is that instead of hearing about the incidents twenty years after the fact when emotions have cooled, we have a YouTube culture of near-real-time reporting that encourages instant exposure.
Well yes you can put anyone you like on 'ignore'. The cowards option is always available ;)
All true, the wikileaks reveal of the evil (in the biblical sense) is way more important, but this was new information in that kind of sphere, so more new examples of the rot that is currently eating at the insides of the usa administration and military and wider society (imho).
Ok well the IRA stuff was before my time, and having worked alongside guys that were involved in that (at the nasty end), yes that was all shades of exactly the same evil crap the usa military seems to be all about currently, and for sure there is that element in the uk forces too currently.
But whose idea was the 'war on terror'? As that is when the crazy button was flipped and our armies behaving like terrorists (in effect) became ok, even encouraged from top down. I suspect my little uk just followed orders of the usa's lead in this current situation, and there is no excuse for that.
Evil (biblical sense) is evil, the bible makes it very clear, as does normal intuition of right and wrong, and even the Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions and your basic Rules of Engagement. To break or disregard all that, and so completely is so short a time span (ten years approx) is quite something!
One thing the expose about the culture of fanatical christianity at West Point has revealed is that any previous standard of discipline and professionalism our armies once had, is at a low ebb, and more insidious than that, the wikileaks reveals have painted a picture of our boys acting like brutal murderers for the eyes of the world to witness. The big issue is now that that particular genie is out of the bottle, how do you go about putting it back? Can you even? or is it a one-way road to.......even worse stuff in the war zone and wider society? Are those jack boots on the horizon for us all?
I apologize, but does this carry a specific meaning or is it just trying to portray the evil as something grand or large? The only reference I could find was "knowing" someone in the biblical sense, or various exercises in numerology related to evil.
I assume he means that if you capture a town you're supposed to kill all the men, women and children. Though he might mean your not supposed to mix wool and linen.
Well, if Zak really is DF, it's likely the latter ;)
I am starting to believe this to be true.
I Was So Far Down In The Pile It Hurt... My Ribs Started To Crush
Well each time one uses the term evil, i gets called, so the aim of using (biblical) was to stop that, which it hasn't done....so there you go. I'm not one to waste my time on semantics, so when i say evil i mean evil (as in good vs evil as the portrayal in the bible of Gods battle with the Devil symbolizes).
The killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children, the endemic torture, the 'from top brass' encouragement to target civillians, the use of private death-squads, the use of undercover spec-forces to plant bombs and spread terror etc.
All of the above is Evil. More so when you understand it is just so the richest guys in the world can get even richer (see the awesome article on that in one of the threads here). Evil.
And nothing in the bible (old or new) is going to save the souls of those with a hand in it. When you do the devils work you get your reward. Pleading ignorance, or having been tricked into doing it is not going to save you.
But to get this back closer on topic, even though all the above is what people like Assange and wikileaks are trying to warn us about, here is some latest assange info:
'Julian Assange saga continues as Hague holds talks with Ecuador':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...-talks-ecuador
Last edited by Zak Gordon; 08-30-2012 at 02:13 AM.
No, Zak is Zak. He's a very different personality to DF, who is back on this board as Starlight.
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