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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.
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.
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.
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!
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...