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US Military Designates Julian Assange an "Enemy of State"
First time accepted submitter Cute and Cuddly writes in with some new Julian Assange news. "The U.S. military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States — the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency. Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with 'communicating with the enemy.'"
"The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.
And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208307/Americas-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-killing-49-people-known-terrorist-Pakistan.html
That's a extreme far cry from designating anyone anything.
reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.
The article claims (and that's TFA not the summary), that technically any military personnel communicating with Wikileaks/Assange may be charged with a crime that goes all the way to death as penalty. That does seem alarming.
no; guilt by association is not recognised in common law - the United States is, when all is said and done, a common law jurisdiction.
When the most used maxim in US judicial proceedings, whether military or civilian, is "Balance of Probabilities*" over "Beyond Reasonable Doubt", then it's time to start worrying. The UK is already there.
*Balance of Probabilities: based on the testimony of "experts", in an often biased proceeding, and where the decision is often already made before the "judge" even takes the Bench, a "finding of Fact" is made if the balance moves 1% over either way of the midline. A finding does not even need a witness to events; in fact, a witness is more often than not ignored by the *single "judge"* in favour of the State who pays him. The "judge" is also jury and executioner.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
How soon we forget: New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)
It just means now that US government employees and military personnel who leak information to him would be committing a crime.
air force's Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London. ... The suspected offence was "communicating with the enemy, 104-D", an article in the US Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits military personnel from "communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy".
Or, you know, any military personnel that expresses support for Assange (according to TFA).The analyst in question wasn't charged, but it seems that he did lose his access to classified information. But why let facts get in your way.
You are a bit too patriotic in this, but the love for your military is clouding your judgement slightly. Assange is not responsible for the leak. The responsible for the leak are, firstly, the unknown people who designed and implemented a system that could allow a rogue American to amass and leak this information, and, secondly, the person who actually leaked it.
Assange has nothing to do with either the group who built the system and the policies that allowed the leak, nor is he the person who actually released the data.
Hence, the troubles the US is giving him are as illegal as they are immoral. Or vice versa.
Also, imagine what treatment by the US would get someone who leaked Soviet secrets during the Cold War. Someone who would, you know, steal Soviet property and take it to Japan or something.
Yes, Bush was the worst on this. Until Obama.
Bush never asserted the right to have US citizens killed at his own discretion (though I doubt that his not claiming that right would have stopped him.)
Obama DOES assert that right. That is an escalation.
(R) or (D) is not a factor here. It's just that what is, is.
This space available.
We're the only country in the world with a nuclear powered Navy.
Only if you don't count Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and India
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You mean as opposed to Henry Kissinger who also won a Nobel Peace Prize, while managing Nixon's assassination of Chilean President Salvador Allende, because he wasn't going to have a Socialist in the western hemisphere, even if the socialist was elected democratically. In its place we installed the Junta, who murdered, excuse me, disappeared over 3,000 people. Under the Freedom of Information Act, Whitehouse tapes now available clearly present Nixon and Kissinger discussing Chilean Assassination and CIA incompetence.
Just goes to show you what a Nobel Peace prize is worth.
Christopher Hitchens wrote a great book about the war crimes of Kissinger. This man is sub-scum level: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst1_Hitchens.html
China can out number us 10 to 1, but without the ability to project power with a blue water navy and air superiority, who cares? Give them all the guns in the world and if they are still limited to Eastern Asia it is basically meaningless. China will not invade Japan, because the US will get involved. They also will not invade Taiwan for the same reason. This is also why the US will not get involved in the Chinese occupation of Tibet.The tech edge isn't the only edge, they have a LOT of tech. China might be pouring money into its military, but they are probably decades behind the US in military tech and infrastructure and the US isn't standing still. As demonstrated in Kuwait and Iraq, superior numbers and dated tech do not win wars. Besides, China isn't interested in engaging in forign adventures, they have a HUGE population they need to keep happy. China has a tradition of violent insurrections overthrowing governments, and they are quite happy pretending to be 'communists' with a growing, rich middle class.
Also, nobody is scared of the US nuclear arsenal, because the US has made it abundantly clear that it is a deterrent tool. If you want to fight the US, you can do so without fear of nuclear retaliation, provided you don't engage in NBC warfare against them. Simply put, the political fallout over using nukes as anything other than a retaliation weapon would be catastrophic. As powerful as the US is, it cannot act against the will of the rest of the world.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I think he had a few 'trials', no?
Three to five, depending on whether you count a full hearing or just a review and then rejection - two in Sweden, three in the UK (the last in the UK being the supreme court). The ones in the UK were mainly about the extradition process, with the evidence only relatively minimally touched on. The ones in Sweden were specifically about the evidence, which stood up to review.
Also, from the sound of the article itself, its whole headline is hyperbole. They don't cite a single point in the FOI where they call Assange an enemy of state. They call an intelligence analysist attending a wikileaks rally and dealing with wikileaks supporters (of which we know Assange specifically was *not* there, since he was in the embassy) "communicating with the enemy, 104-D" because Wikileaks is ""anti-US and/or anti-military group" (which, all rhetoric aside, it most definitely is, and hardly even denies that anymore). However, the case was closed without laying charges, which could well mean that they don't think that claim would stand up in court. There's nothing at all in the article about "Assange being added to a list of enemies of state", despite the hyperbolic headline.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
Perhaps you left out Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Philippines with no special love for China in Indonesia either.
Countries here in Asia aren't as allied to China as you might think. Here's my personal opinion:
Strong USA Allies: Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea
Strong PRC Allies: Mongolia, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea
Loose or tense relationship to both PRC and USA: India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Brunei, Bangladesh, Papau New Guinea
Instead of taking an anti-China strategy, we need to do everything we need to do to woo India and Indonesia - the second and fourth largest countries in the world.
India is easy - they're practically British already, and our mutual business ties provide an easy inroad to strategic partnerships.
Indonesia? We have a sitting President who speaks Bahasa. Indonesia is the next sleeping giant and we squandered our opportunity to win Jakarta.
Now it can be treason or consorting with the enemy if it goes to wikileaks. I see no problem with that.
The only ones who view Wikileaks as enemies of the state are the ones involved in illegal activities they're trying to cover up. So we're letting those who are government-sponsored criminals warp the legal system to unjustly punish, and even kill, those who might even be thinking of revealing their wrongdoing? Yeah, no problem with that, indeed...