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Nothing at all in the US Constitution about forbidding the armed forces to operate on their own soil. There is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that forbids the armed forces from being used locally in law enforcement duties (ie. with the intent to pursue and arrest people).

The Navy and Marines are similarly forbidden by their own DoD directives.

However, just like the Geneva Conventions there has been some white anting of these principles in the name of homeland security, with Army units being delegated to help deal with unruly crowds in the event of a WMD terror attack.

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Lemme see... this so called quote by Assange is contained within a book that's recently been published no doubt with a view to maximise sales, which we all know, is helped by sensationalism. The actual text either side of this alleged quote from the book, reads as follows from your link...

So, lets look at this article with a critical eye. Firstly there were supposedly a bunch of international reporters present when Assange made this alleged statement yet I haven't managed to find one of them who has independantly published a story honing in on this highly inflammatory statement. Something I would have thought any jounalist worth their salt would do seeing as it's such a sensational allegation.

Secondly, the article makes mention of these being "allegations" yet somehow it's now being interpreted by yourself as being a cold hard FACT.

Thirdly... there's mention of the good 'ol Guardian yet again who published the book. They seem to really have a hard on for good ol' Julian don't they.

It appears to me that critical thinking skills have all but disappeared from certain posters on this board.

Regards

KR

You seem to think that critical thinking means dismissing anything that challenges your preconceived notions.

It is true that we do not know for an absolute fact that he said those exact words. But that doesn't therefore mean we should assume he didn't, especially given that they are consistent with a general carelessness about the fate of the informants he has expressed before. As quoted earlier in the thread:

he claimed that many informers in Afghanistan were "acting in a criminal way" by sharing false information with Nato authorities;

he said the White House knew that informants' names could be exposed before the release but did nothing to help WikiLeaks to vet the data;

he insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information.

Link

Of course, given your mad critical thinking skillz you will have no trouble coming up with reasons why The Australian must have made that **** up.

Perhaps you have not noticed, but there are quite a number of people who have had close personal dealings with Assange that have lately been saying a variety of unsavory things about him, some of whom share his political leanings. It takes a certain amount of bullheadedness to think they must all be lying while only Assange, pure as the driven snow, is telling the truth.

Oh by the way, did you hear about the book deal Assange signed in December? If you are going to be consistent in questioning the Guardian's motivations you now have 1.3 million reasons to question Assange's.

Regards,

VAB

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I was not aware that anyone was saying that he is not a tad strange. And yes he and the Guardian newspaper had a well-known fulling out so there is no love lost there.

But Assange being strange does not mean Wikileaks is a bad idea.

Gandhi slept with young girls, Churchill wandered around the house in the nude - not that strange but it is if wou have staff working in the house. Now if we are to attack everybody who is a little strange ....

As for informers deaths. I disagree with redacting on the basis that it is a slippery slope to pressured to remove names because you are paid to, or you fear for your life.

However I am not totally wedded to the idea of non-redaction, but censorship is a tricky thing, Consider if I put my life on the line to provide some pretty shattering news and then find Wikileaks have removed the names! WTF.

As I say a tricky one.

BTW did the US, with the foreknowledge granted, save their informants? Have I missed a link on what actually transpired?

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According to the officials, the U.S. military rounded up many of those named and brought them into their bases for protection. But, according to one military official, "We didn't get them all." Military officials tell NBC News a small number of them still have not been found.

Link

The subject of the OP was Assange himself more so than Wikileaks, so that's what I commented on.

It's not just informants' lives that Assange's "strangeness" has possibly endangered. How many US and Allied service men and women are alive today because some local Afghan or Iraqi approached them to warn of an ambush or IED? If these releases put a chill on the collection of such information how many US and Allied soldiers will die that otherwise would not have? We will never know, but it is a valid question and a valid concern for anyone who actually cares about the people fighting over there. That would include me, but obviously not Julian Assange. Forgive me if I don't find his strangeness altogether harmless.

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The guy Assange was talking to from Private Eye is Ian Hislop. From WP

As editor of Private Eye Ian Hislop is the most sued man in English legal history, although he is not involved in as many libel actions as he once was. The most famous libel case involving Hislop and Private Eye was brought by the publishing magnate Robert Maxwell. After the case he quipped: "I've just given a fat cheque to a fat Czech." However the magazine's attacks on Maxwell were fully vindicated by the revelations of massive fraud that followed his death. On another occasion, when ordered to pay £600,000 in damages after being sued for libel by Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, Hislop told reporters waiting outside the High Court: "If that's justice, then I'm a banana." The award was, however, dropped to £60,000 on appeal.

Yes, he gets sued a lot but it's not due to a lack of integrity but due to sometimes pushing the boundaries of satire. Think The Daily Show rather than Fox News.

I'd trust his word over Assange any given day. In fact, if Hislop invented this I'll eat my hat.

Not that any of this makes Assange a holocaust denier mind.

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The guy Assange was talking to from Private Eye is Ian Hislop. From WP

Yes, he gets sued a lot but it's not due to a lack of integrity but due to sometimes pushing the boundaries of satire. Think The Daily Show rather than Fox News.

I'd trust his word over Assange any given day. In fact, if Hislop invented this I'll eat my hat.

Not that any of this makes Assange a holocaust denier mind.

Hislop isn't likely to have invented it I agree. Private Eye does have a history of getting some of it's "facts" wrong though, as any regular reader of the letters page would attest :)

(Shome mishtake, shurely?)

I love the Eye to bits, have done since I was a schoolboy but as a source of accurate reportage I would look before you leap when using it as a source...

Like a lot of British institutions the Eye has a funny old way of going about things and more in-jokes than an in-joke building built to house in-jokes, but occasionally when it stumbles on something it really objects to is capable of rising to heroic heights in revealing the truth behind how the establishment operates.

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I was not aware that anyone was saying that he is not a tad strange. And yes he and the Guardian newspaper had a well-known fulling out so there is no love lost there.

But Assange being strange does not mean Wikileaks is a bad idea.

Gandhi slept with young girls, Churchill wandered around the house in the nude - not that strange but it is if wou have staff working in the house. Now if we are to attack everybody who is a little strange ....

As for informers deaths. I disagree with redacting on the basis that it is a slippery slope to pressured to remove names because you are paid to, or you fear for your life.

However I am not totally wedded to the idea of non-redaction, but censorship is a tricky thing, Consider if I put my life on the line to provide some pretty shattering news and then find Wikileaks have removed the names! WTF.

As I say a tricky one.

BTW did the US, with the foreknowledge granted, save their informants? Have I missed a link on what actually transpired?

I am still German enough to not see Churchill as a hero, anyway...no offense :)

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You seem to think that critical thinking means dismissing anything that challenges your preconceived notions.

It is true that we do not know for an absolute fact that he said those exact words. But that doesn't therefore mean we should assume he didn't, especially given that they are consistent with a general carelessness about the fate of the informants he has expressed before. As quoted earlier in the thread:

This could be generally referred to as trying to prove a negative. Good argument.

he claimed that many informers in Afghanistan were "acting in a criminal way" by sharing false information with Nato authorities;

he said the White House knew that informants' names could be exposed before the release but did nothing to help WikiLeaks to vet the data;

he insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information.

Link

Of course, given your mad critical thinking skillz you will have no trouble coming up with reasons why The Australian must have made that **** up.

The difference here is that I have made no such claims, as opposed to your post where it was clear you regarded it as fact that Assange has basically stated that he didn't give a stuff about the fate of the people whose names were mentioned in the WikiLeaks release.

Perhaps you have not noticed, but there are quite a number of people who have had close personal dealings with Assange that have lately been saying a variety of unsavory things about him, some of whom share his political leanings. It takes a certain amount of bullheadedness to think they must all be lying while only Assange, pure as the driven snow, is telling the truth.

Oh by the way, did you hear about the book deal Assange signed in December? If you are going to be consistent in questioning the Guardian's motivations you now have 1.3 million reasons to question Assange's.

Regards,

VAB

When the book is released and if I get the chance to read it I will do so with the view that it's his side of the story but not the final word on the subjects he deals with as he is too close to the recent events to be totally objective. What won't be happening is me claiming that his views in the book represents the proven facts of the matter.

Regards

KR

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I'm guessing the same would apply to 'Bomber' Harris. Understandably so I might add.

Regards

KR

Most definitely in that case....

Alexander Löhr, then Generalleutnant and commander of 4.Luftflotte was imprisoned after the war, and executed for the bombing of Belgrade...in the larger picture, much less of a "war crime" than Bomber Harris did to German cities.

Winning the war pays I guess..had it been reversed, it would have been interesting.

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An off-the-cuff observation (not directed at anyone in particular):

Since when is failing to express 100% (or as near as makes no odds) support for Assange and/or WikiLeaks equivalent to being (to put it broadly) a truth-hating, war-mongering right-winger?

Just because I personally don't think he should necessarily be regarded as a worthy-of-a-Nobel-Peace-Prize hero doesn't mean I agree at all with the right-wing presumption that he's nothing but a digital terrorist who should be strung up from the nearest tree.

As for WikiLeaks... well, I chuckle at how WikiLeaks basically indicts the US government and military for not being as transparent as WikiLeaks says they ought to be, yet WikiLeaks itself is quite un-transparent. <good-natured sarcasm> But, of course, if WikiLeaks were as transparent as it expects national governments to be, I suppose it could just be all too easily infiltrated and neutralized by agents of the very organizations it opposes. </good-natured sarcasm> *shrug*

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Quite true that, Dietrich..by the same token however, it is people like Assange, and assuming he IS "good intentioned" it is ALSO the GUARANTEE that there are others out there with less-than-good intentions, that is the reason for the government's need for secrecy, so the same argument can be applied to them. What a circle...

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Most definitely in that case....

Alexander Löhr, then Generalleutnant and commander of 4.Luftflotte was imprisoned after the war, and executed for the bombing of Belgrade...in the larger picture, much less of a "war crime" than Bomber Harris did to German cities.

Winning the war pays I guess..had it been reversed, it would have been interesting.

I agree. I believe the fact that there's a rather large statue in London of Bomber Harris lauding him as a war hero rather gets up the nose of a number of people with German ancestry. Imagine if Germany did something similar and erected one in Berlin of Hermann Goering! Although not quite a fair comparison I guess due to Hermanns involvement in Nazi policies including the genocide of Jews etc but the principal is the same.

Regards

KR

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This could be generally referred to as trying to prove a negative. Good argument.

First it was "critical thinking skills". Now it is proving a negative. You really need to stop using terms you obviously don't understand the meaning of.

What, pray tell, is the negative I'm trying to prove here? If I were attempting to prove Assange didn't say what the Guardian claims he did that would be trying to prove a negative (i.e. proving the absence). Of course that is not at all what I'm doing. If anything that would be rather closer to your position. If I were attempting to prove anything it would be that he did say it (proving the presence). But I'm not even doing that. Let's look at this key sentence:

It is true that we do not know for an absolute fact that he said those exact words.

In American English that means that we don't know it for a fact. The phrase "do not know" should be a dead giveaway. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that could be construed to mean anything significantly different in Queen's English. So what I actually said was nearly the opposite of what you just claimed I said. Well done!

The difference here is that I have made no such claims, as opposed to your post where it was clear you regarded it as fact that Assange has basically stated that he didn't give a stuff about the fate of the people whose names were mentioned in the WikiLeaks release.

When the book is released and if I get the chance to read it I will do so with the view that it's his side of the story but not the final word on the subjects he deals with as he is too close to the recent events to be totally objective. What won't be happening is me claiming that his views in the book represents the proven facts of the matter.

Regards

KR

Where did I claim it was a proven fact? I didn't. You just made that up. I'm quite happy to let people make their own judgment on its veracity, and quite happy to let you keep tripping over your own strawman arguments.

What I do think is that it is an accurate assessment of Assange's view, at least in the general sense, given that he has been quoted expressing such a view by two different sources that are generally regarded as reputable. That is not the same thing as claiming that any one source should be regarded as God's own word. I wouldn't have thought that would need explaining, but that's the General forum for ya.

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I do also tend to think that the multiple sources claiming he said the same thing, *likely* at least, mean that he did. If one of the sources were a "right wing" source, then I would, maybe, be inclined to look for more information...but as noted above, the sources in this case, are sources which for all other things are "left leaning" ie. "in the direction Assange is coming from"

If your enemy tells me something bad about you, I will listen, but probably with a grain of salt..if your friend, or your friend's friend, on the other hand, says something bad about you, I will tend to give it more credence...does not mean 100% acceptance, still, but yes, I would view it as "likely"

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I agree. I believe the fact that there's a rather large statue in London of Bomber Harris lauding him as a war hero rather gets up the nose of a number of people with German ancestry. Imagine if Germany did something similar and erected one in Berlin of Hermann Goering! Although not quite a fair comparison I guess due to Hermanns involvement in Nazi policies including the genocide of Jews etc but the principal is the same.

Regards

KR

I am glad someone besides me said this...thank you. It is an honorable thing for someone "on that side" to admit.

I *can* probably understand the British view of him, but yes, it is something myself or my family would not agree with.

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Is there a rash? Galliano and Assange?

BTW I always thought when drunk people were expected not to be terribly bright about what they say and do. Therefore you charged them with drunken behaviour rather than treason or some such worse crime.

I expect drunks driving now to charged with attempted murder.

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Well if he is really hanging around with someone who has a history of anti-semitic activity it is fairly plausible and even understandable that Jewish activists would be out to get him.

It is pretty clear to me that the rhetoric employed against him is very powerful, and I take anthing attributed to him or his associates with a big grain of salt.

For example, the "informants deserve to die" comment was supposedly uttered to a room full of journalists but only turns up for the first time reported in a book by a rival who had a falling out with him??? That is rather implausible to me.

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I'm not sure where this idea of a "room full" of reporters comes from. The initial Afghanistan leaks were only shared with 3 papers and the quote suggests they were seated with Assange together at a single table. It is consistent with his other quote in a different paper where he refers to the informants as "criminals".

But whatever. People can believe or not, but actions speak louder than words and Assange's actions clearly say he's more than willing to risk people getting killed over what he does. That's enough for me.

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