What A Maroon!
Peter King wants to have a new Alien and Sedition Law: Key GOP Pol: WikiLeaks a Terrorist Group
The incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says WikiLeaks should be officially designated as a terrorist organization.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the panel’s next head, asked the Obama administration today to “determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization,” putting the group in the same company as Al Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas on the Tokyo subway.
“WikiLeaks appears to meet the legal criteria” of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, King wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reviewed by CNET. He added: “WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.”
WikiLeaks released memos that demonstrate that the US Department of State is staffed with people quite capable of recognizing reality, no matter what the official propaganda line du jour is.
So far it has been confirmed that Yemen didn’t really have an air force capable of precision bombing hiding under the sand for years; that Iran makes its Persian Gulf neighbors nervous; that Iran hasn’t been helping the Taliban or pursuing a nuclear weapon program; that the Iraq War did not make Israel feel safer; that the Israelis are paranoid; that Vladimir Putin is still in charge in Russia; that governments around the world routinely lie to their own people.
There are no startling revelations in what has been released. People who have spent any time thinking about these issues already knew this. Diplomats have always “gathered intelligence” in one way or another since the beginning of time, and everyone knows it. They are supposed to tell their governments what is going on at their posts.
The revelations are embarrassing, not a threat, and, if anyone spent any time looking into it, it would be noted that the probable source was a “secure, undisclosed location”. It’s not like they haven’t done this sort of thing in the past.
There were five media companies involved in this. Why aren’t they included in Congresscritter King’s call?
15 comments
Maybe this display of willful ignorance of relevant information will get King bumped from consideration for the HSC. Let’s call and express our concern about the possibility of this loose cannon having access to sensitive information 🙂 202-456-1414.
McClatchy – http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/28/v-print/104404/officials-may-be-overstating-the.html
“[L]egal criteria”? You mean… there are criteria for being designated a terrorist organization, other than “the President says so,” or “Congressman King deeply believes they are terrorists”?
If there were legal criteria for much of anything these days, criteria actually observed and enforced, I’d have a lot more hope that our nation could return (?) to the rule of law. As I see it now, what we laughingly (well, sort of laughingly) call a “government” is a group of jerks whose motto is best expressed in four words: “Because we say so.” That direction lies Hell, and the trip shouldn’t take long.
King is a whacko from Long Island who deeply regrets that his district does not include Lower Manhattan, so he could be a real martyr. He jumps in the middle of anything that might include a microphone or camera pointed in his direction.
There is no legal criteria for the label terrorist, otherwise certain governments which have King’s approval would be on the list. The State Department adds names for vague and unclear reasons, often at the request of Israel.
I feel certain that King will be pushing for another bill of attainder targeting WikiLeaks to convince people that he deserves another interview on Fox.
Oh, Ame, you can’t trust Nancy Youssef because she is a flagrant practitioner of journalism who asks hard questions and wants facts, not opinions. She thinks that people should know what their government is up to, works hard to find out, and then writes stories based on what she has found. I mean, how can you trust reporters who go around and actually do their job. 😈
WikiLeaks says it will release stuff on the Banksters. Now THAT could be real interesting reading.
There are questions being raised in the Irish Senate about bank regulation, and the British have discovered that auditors were told to ignore problems by the government, to avoid problems with “confidence” concerning banks.
It will be interesting to see if the media will cover the Bankster leaks.
I love the Wikileaks boys! Go Aussies! 😀 😆 They’ve been around for quite awhile. But the USA has always been a bit on the slow side to catch on (even when their noses are firmly rubbed in it!) 😉 😛
I knew about them whilst I was a card-carrying Amnesty International Human Rights Defender causing as much trouble to those who deserved as as could until a few years or so ago. I still do stuff for AI, but I’m out of the field stuff these days (Hey, what else could someone with my background do *legally* in ‘Civilian World’. 😉 *shrug*. Anyway, I did get a notification that WikiLeaks had won the 2009 Amnesty International human rights reporting award (New Media). They have won other awards also. 🙂
There are a couple seriously big expose’s coming, they are just warming up! Some peep’s in WDC are gonna need a few set’s of spare panties, and some a defib handy! 😈
LOL WaPo seems to think that Julian Assange could be charged under the ‘Espionage Act’! LMAO Ummm… no… no he can’t! Talk about maroons!! Big, bright ones! 😆
WikiLeaks founder could be charged under Espionage Act
Ahhh… This whole thing is the best laugh I’ve had in day’s! 😆
What an idiot. There is a lot to embarrass in the leaks but little that really surprises. The info concerning China’s views on Korea are interesting though
Let’s see. A foreign citizen, in a foreign country, receives documents from a U.S. citizen and publishes them on the World Wide Web. Said foreign citizen is not in the United States, has not been in the United States for quite some time because he fears being arrested (for good reason), is not under the jurisdiction of the United States and thus not subject to U.S. laws even if they were applicable to this situation and… err… yeah, I realize that some folks think Australia is, like, the 52nd state of the United States, except with kangaroos, but … definitely ROFL territory :).
These people just can’t get over the reality that the US does not control the Internet. Wikileaks is designed to route around problems like censorship. They are still pushing the concept that some lowly enlisted type in the Army leaked all of this stuff. If that guy had access to all of these documents it is time to retire a few generals for a total failure in communications security.
I don’t hear the calls to jail the publisher of the New York Times, an American corporation, located on US soil, selling to US citizens.
I guess we can assume that all of this stuff is real, as the government apparently hasn’t learned to inject doubt by refusing to discuss the documents.
Jams, the Chinese value stability very highly. They really don’t like disruption, and North Korea is disruptive and not playing by the rules for client states. Everyone is leaning on China to do something, and Kim Jong-il isn’t cooperating. China is also undergoing a shift in leadership, so they are dealing with internal uncertainties right now. The Party doesn’t like “interesting times”. That said, until the new leadership is established, it will be hard to know what the policy will be.
I’m wondering how these charges will be filed, since the Hedgemony spent years limiting the powers of the US courts outside the US. If the US courts don’t have power at Guantanamo, a US military facility, how can they have power over a guy with no fixed address, operating a web site on servers dispersed around the world. Peter King was one of the people who supported the Hedgemony, so maybe he would like to explain how this is supposed to work.
Ohhh… but it get’s better and better every day! LMAO ROFL
Bush Speechwriter Marc Thiessen Suggests Invading U.S.-Allied Nations To Capture WikiLeaks Founder
This is better than TDS!! (With apologies to Jon Stewart). 😆
The US has allies? Who knew? I’m fairly sure that the Shrubbery eliminated that encumbrance.
The US is still a client of the Israeli government, but actual allies? I don’t think so.
Well, the USA has lot’s of *allies*… so long as the money doesn’t run out! 😉 😀 Of course, once-upon-a-time, the USA had *real* allies that actually respected the USA. Aus is still an official ally, but that has more to do with political & economic convenience than a ‘want’ to be an ally. However, that is changing also. The USA squandered it’s political and good-will capital some time ago.
It’s quite interesting reading the various comments and the debate that this massive info dump has generated. 🙂 And I see that, as usual, a couple facts about it are being willfully ignored in the USA. One is that various news outlets around the World were given access to some of the documents wekks in advance of the disclosure, including The Guardian (UK) and NYT (via The Guardian). Wikileaks sent copies to the Obama admin & US Ambassador’s in the UK (with an offer to negotiate some limited redaction) to which the State Demanded that there would be no negotiation and all documents must be handed over, or else. Of course, it presented a perfect opportunity for feigned outrage when the leaks were finally released (feigned because they knew they were going to be released weeks in advance) and served to deflect attention to more serious concerns at home (in the USA) such as GOP blocking the extension of Unemployment benefits, and the Senate essentially holding the Government and US citizens hostage to neocon demands.
Americans have always been fascinated with superficiality and smoke-and-mirror tricks. The price the people will pay now will be huge.
ABC “The DRUM” has a couple interesting commentaries:
WikiLeaks and the ‘Handy Heel’ manoeuvre
WikiLeaks: catalyst for transparency or lockdown?
There are so many problems with this mess, and one of the big ones is the total lack of real security or accountability on the US “secure” network.
The majority of this stuff isn’t classified, and the overwhelming majority of what is classified, is at the lowest level of classification. As for the tiny minority that is more “highly classified”, much of it shouldn’t have been classified in the first place, because it is embarrassing, not a matter of national security.
I’m still waiting to see something that I didn’t already know, although, as I have said before, it’s nice to know that people in government have actually figured some of these things out. The public statements make the US look like “maroons” – totally divorced from reality.
I’ve seen nothing to convince me that the classification system is not being used to hide information from the American people, rather than “enemies”.