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US Prosecutors Have a Sealed Indictment On Assange, Say Leaked Files
beaverdownunder writes with news from The Age that "Leaked e-mails from private U.S. intelligence agency Stratfor indicate that American prosecutors have had a sealed, secret indictment drawn up against Julian Assange as early as January, 2011." From the article: "The news that U.S. prosecutors drew up a secret indictment against Mr. Assange more than 12 months ago comes as the WikiLeaks founder awaits a British Supreme Court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden to be questioned in relation to sexual assault allegations.
Mr. Assange, who has not been charged with any offence in Sweden, fears extradition to Stockholm will open the way for his extradition to the U.S. on possible espionage or conspiracy charges over WikiLeaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked classified U.S. reports."
it is impossible to invent theories to indict them [Assange/Wikileaks] without simultaneously criminalizing much of investigative journalism
The emperor reacts violently when without clothes.
Criminalizing investigative journalism is exactly what they intend to do.
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As far as I remember, Australia did look into this matter and they found out that he can't be prosecuted. Now if what you say is true, then this shit is getting out of hand. I mean how far they are willing to go with this? At one point they will transform him into a living 'martyr' and then they would have accomplished nothing by bringing him down. You do not eliminate your enemies by taking them down this way, you eliminate them by making them irrelevant.
Who are the tax payers who do? Can I get a list?
Well, the sad thing is that when US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed with a missile without the slightest pretense of judicial due process, most polls suggested that about 65% of Americans approved, including substantial majorities of self-identified Democrats and self-identified Republicans. So by all appearances, US citizens don't actually care about whether the government follows its own rules.
This is obviously a scary fact, but something many totalitarian rulers discovered a long time ago is that the masses are generally fine with government oppression so long as they keep them distracted (with TV, iPhones, etc), target minorities that are small enough that they can't fight back (e.g. Japanese-Americans or German Jews), or create a subset of the population that thinks of themselves as privileged (members of the political party, following an established religion, dominant racial group, etc) and will fight to defend that privilege. Hence this comment from the 1930's: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."
I am officially gone from
Should Terry Jones be extradited to Afghanistan for burning the Quran?
Any arab would say that burning a Quran should be illegal pretty much everywhere.
Your argument, however, is nonsensical. Being a US citizen doesn't mean you're allowed to go to Germany and break their laws
I bolded the relevant point. Extraditing Assange to the US for breaking US law is like extraditing one of use to Germany for Holocaust denial. You don't have to like the act or the actor to understand that such an extradition would be unjust.
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Your argument fails. To continue your German theme, if you are in the USA and you buy some Nazi memorabilia, you have probably committed a crime in Germany but you have not committed any crime in the USA. You are not a criminal for buying the items, even if you subsequently go to Germany, because when you bought them you were not subject to German law. Even if you bought the items from a German you are free and clear (although the German guy may not be).
A person cannot be expected to know the law in all 200 or so countries and abide by them all. Much as many USA folks seem to believe otherwise, US law is not enforceable worldwide.
You're right. Manning did aid the enemy. Anyone who cares about freedom of information, exposing war crimes, and holding the powerful responsible for their atrocities is now an enemy of the United States. If that's treason, thank god for treason.
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He abused his position, broke his oath
There is also a case that could be made that he had a moral and legal obligation under international law (to which the US is subject), to expose the crimes he saw.
There is a larger debate that should be had about how much of that information really should be secret, and if so from who, and then for how long.
I think this question is already answered that most, if not all, of the information leaked by Manning should not have been secret. From what I've seen the information falls into basically two categories, either it's innocuous, or it reveals immoral and often criminal behaviour. Neither of these should have been kept secret.
Even if we assume that Manning was doing 'the right thing by [caring] about freedom of information, exposing war crimes, and holding the powerful responsible for their atrocities , his acts are those of a vigilante. Thus, his methods subvert his cause.
Calling him a vigilante is quite a stretch since he didn't really punish anyone other than exposing what they were doing.
If he did what he did and blindly uploaded to wikileaks... well then that's the end of it. He's a naive fool who thought his cause of the week was worth the risk. Maybe he still feels that way?
I would hope that preventing war crimes and exposing government wrongdoing is more than just his "cause of the week". Maybe you believe the things he exposed were just not that serious? In my opinion killing civilians should be taken very seriously, and it should be punished appropriately instead of covered up.