Obama smacked in the mouth

[Gob]

Wikileaks: Saudis 'chief funders of Sunni militants'

Saudi banker counts new riyal notes (2007) The cables said militant groups had used front companies in Saudi Arabia to fundraise


US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last year in a leaked classified memo that donors in Saudi Arabia were the "most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide".

She said it was "an ongoing challenge" to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority.

The groups funded include al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, she added.

The memo, released by Wikileaks, also criticised efforts to combat militants by the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for the founder of the Wikileaks website said he was holding back secret material for release if anything happened to him.

He told the BBC that a rape case being prepared in Sweden against Julian Assange, an Australian national, was politically motivated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11923176

[Lord Jim]

Meanwhile, a lawyer for the founder of the Wikileaks website said he was holding back secret material for release if anything happened to him.

So now we can add "black mailer" to Asswipeange's list of fine achievements....

[Sue U]

Meanwhile, a lawyer for the founder of the Wikileaks website said he was holding back secret material for release if anything happened to him.

So now we can add "black mailer" to Asswipeange's list of fine achievements....

You have a very strange definition of "blackmail" in addition to "treason."

[Gob]

Wikileaks: Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's account

Wikileaks has moved its website to a Swiss host

The Swiss post office's bank, PostFinance, has frozen the accounts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The whistle-blowing website says the freeze includes a defence fund and personal assets worth 31,000 euros.

Wikileaks has published hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables, angering the US government and triggering moves by several companies including PayPal and Amazon to end their services.

Meanwhile, a warrant for Mr Assange's arrest has reached the UK authorities.

Sources have told the BBC that the European Arrest Warrant for Mr Assange arrived on Monday afternoon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11929034

Hello? The only thing the guy is charged with (so far) is an accusation of rape, and a very dodgy one at that, in Sweden, and teh Swiss have frozen the website's bank accounts?

Is that normal practice?

And people believe the US / CIA isn't behind all of this?

Odds on this making the US even less liked abroad?

[loCAtek]

Is that intended to suggest that it is possible Assange, who owes no allegiance to the US, to commit treason against the US? Or are you just wandering again?

My position was that he was a terrorist. Attacks from within are treason; attacks from without are terrorism.

[loCAtek]

So now truthfully reporting to a population what's being done by a democratically elected government put in place by the people is a form of "terrorism"? Is there no end to how far that word can be stretched/perverted? FWIW, the same could be (and has been) said of any investigative reporting exposing secret governmental/political actions.

Not just now, been this way for quite some time;

Wiki
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular classes of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation. There are typically several levels of sensitivity, with differing clearance requirements. This sort of hierarchical system of secrecy is used by virtually every national government.

...

Government classification

The purpose of classification is ostensibly to protect information from being used to damage or endanger national security. Classification formalises what constitutes a "state secret" and accords different levels of protection based on the expected damage the information might cause in the wrong hands.
...


Classification levels

Secret

Such material would cause "grave damage" to national security if it were publicly available.

[Sue U]

Just because the government claims something, by virtue of being secret, would damage national security if exposed, doesn't make it true. They tried the same arguments with release of the Pentagon Papers.

[loCAtek]

What came out today in the news has me convinced it's terrorism; it's a veritable 'Where to strike for maximum damage' textbook. This is not political, nor remotely in the interest of transparency; he's gone too far.

[rubato]

Terrorists pick targets which make sense to them. Telling them which targets we are most afraid they will strike may be of no use to them. They may not care about that at all.

The WTC and the Pentagon were chosen because of their symbolic importance to Islamic terrorists not because they would cause the most harm. I can think of many ways that 4 jets with full loads of fuel could have been used to cause more destruction and loss of life. Crashing them at ground level into some sort of pattern could have caused a firestorm which would destroy a much larger part of NYC.

The Okla. city federal building was symbolically important to right-wingnuts who read "The Turner Diaries" not because it would cause the most damage.

Projecting your own fears onto others just confuses and distracts you from trying to understand what they want; and it is knowing that which helps us to protect ourselves.

yrs,
rubato

[Sue U]

What came out today in the news has me convinced it's terrorism; it's a veritable 'Where to strike for maximum damage' textbook. This is not political, nor remotely in the interest of transparency; he's gone too far.

In the first place, release of information, whether or not classified as "secret," is not terrorism (unless information somehow terrifies you?); it is simply not "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncomabtant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." See 22 U.S. Code s 2656f(d)(2). It is not violence aimed at creating fear or influencing actions among persons beyond its targets.

Second, figuring out "where to strike for maximum damage" is hardly rocket science, nor (as rubato points out) is it necessarily the goal of any particular terrorist organization. Since 2001 the press, politicians and general public discussion have regularly suggested what targets might be especially vulnerable to attack causing catastrophic damage and/or public fear (e.g., chemical plants, nuclear plants, refineries, transportation infrastructure, commercial centers, etc.). Google Earth conveniently shows, with fairly up-to-date imaging, where all such potential targets are.

Finally, exposure of confidential diplomatic communications is at least in large part an exercise in illuminating the machinations of government in crafting and implementing public policy. Rightly or wrongly it is clearly "political" and contributes to "transparency" of government.

I take no position on whether Assange and Wikileaks have "gone too far." But hysteria doesn't further any rational discussion of the issue.

[dgs49]

Let us savor the irony.

If the U.S. were as evil and powerful as its detractors choose to believe, Mr. Assange would be "the late" Mr. Assange, or possibly be holed up at Gitmo or someplace like it.

The fact that we respect the rule of law is used to mock our powerlessness. There are dozens of American elected and non-elected officials who could have had Assange "vaporized" over the past few weeks or earlier.

Has it escaped the notice of this group that the source of much of Wikileaks' information on the State Department was an unhappy fag?

Not that unhappy fags are a security risk...

[Sue U]

Let us savor the irony.

Sorry, but I'm not seeing any irony at all.

If the U.S. were as evil and powerful as its detractors choose to believe, Mr. Assange would be "the late" Mr. Assange, or possibly be holed up at Gitmo or someplace like it.

If the U.S. were as beneficent and powerful as its uncritical supporters choose to believe, Mr. Bin Laden would be "the late" Mr. Bin Laden, or possibly be holed up at Gitmo or someplace like it.

And by the way, to what "detractors" are you referring who believe the U.S. is "evil" thereby making this case somehow "ironic"?

The fact that we respect the rule of law is used to mock our powerlessness.

Again, what is this "mocking," who do you imagine is doing it and how? It seems to me that in fact, it is the rather casual attitude towards the rule of law recently displayed by America's leadership (legitimizing torture, "extraordinary rendition," rejection of habeas corpus, secret foreign detentions, secret domestic detentions, unauthorized wiretapping, sham "military tribunals," unwarranted searches, etc. etc.) that has given critics plenty of fodder to point out (you might call it "mock"; I personally "lament") U.S. hypocrisy.

Has it escaped the notice of this group that the source of much of Wikileaks' information on the State Department was an unhappy fag?

Given the forum, I thought you'd go with "unhappy Welsh git." But then again, your particular obsession is "fags."

Edited to correct spelling error.

[Gob]

So it would appear that Assange has been arrested for....not wearing a condom during sex....

International extradition treaty, and thousands of $$$$$ of man hours of police and legal and government contact, because some woman has complained he went bareback while poking her.

Of, course this is normal.

[Gob]

The Herald has secured access to hundreds of WikiLeaks documents that reveal US embassy assessments of Australia on a range of important issues. We begin publishing today.

THE US regards the Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, as an abrasive, impulsive ''control freak'' who presided over a series of foreign policy blunders during his time as prime minister, according to a series of secret diplomatic cables.

The scathing assessment, detailed in messages sent by the US embassy in Canberra to the secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton over several years, are among hundreds of US State Department cables relating to Australia obtained by WikiLeaks and made available exclusively to the Herald.

''Rudd … undoubtedly believes that with his intellect, his six years as a diplomat in the 1980s and his five years as shadow foreign minister, he has the background and the ability to direct Australia's foreign policy. His performance so far, however, demonstrates that he does not have the staff or the experience to do the job properly,'' the embassy observed in November last year.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno ... rom=smh_sb

No wonder they are so pissed off with Wikileaks, nothing worse than your best friend finding out you've been slagging them off behind their back,....

[Econoline]

Last week I heard Hillary Clinton say that one of her (unidentified) foreign counterparts told her "Don't worry about it; you should see what we say about you Americans behind your backs!"

[rubato]

The Herald has secured access to hundreds of WikiLeaks documents that reveal US embassy assessments of Australia on a range of important issues. We begin publishing today.

THE US regards the Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, as an abrasive, impulsive ''control freak'' who presided over a series of foreign policy blunders during his time as prime minister, according to a series of secret diplomatic cables.

The scathing assessment, detailed in messages sent by the US embassy in Canberra to the secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton over several years, are among hundreds of US State Department cables relating to Australia obtained by WikiLeaks and made available exclusively to the Herald.

''Rudd … undoubtedly believes that with his intellect, his six years as a diplomat in the 1980s and his five years as shadow foreign minister, he has the background and the ability to direct Australia's foreign policy. His performance so far, however, demonstrates that he does not have the staff or the experience to do the job properly,'' the embassy observed in November last year.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno ... rom=smh_sb

No wonder they are so pissed off with Wikileaks, nothing worse than your best friend finding out you've been slagging them off behind their back,....

What do the Aussies think of us?


I'm sure that is the question that keeps the 4th minion to the buttscraper of the undersecretary of minor countries up at night.



yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Last week I heard Hillary Clinton say that one of her (unidentified) foreign counterparts told her "Don't worry about it; you should see what we say about you Americans behind your backs!"

Now that I can believe.

[Sean]

What do the Aussies think of us?


I'm sure that is the question that keeps the 4th minion to the buttscraper of the undersecretary of minor countries up at night.



yrs,
rubato

I can think of one Australian who may be causing some sleepless nights in Washington these days...

[Gob]

Anyone reading retards shite deserves the lost time.

[loCAtek]

Not hysteria Sue U, just plain anger. The smallest details can be exploited, such as using a box cutter instead of a switchblade. I'll use no further hyperbole. He's been apprehended and the damage control continues.

I've no objection to whistle-blowers, I've done it myself. His being an anarchist is a good descriptor- sowing chaos for chaos' sake. (or fame's sake) Surfing shows he's been arrested for this kind of thing [hacking] before; he's not out to accomplish anything constructive by it. It's all a showcase of his power.