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Pentagon Demands All WikiLeaks Documents That Have Not Yet Been Publicly Released
More headlines, this time from Reuters. Again, think of the savings... Alas, all will go toward paying retainers for bounty hunters, charged with tracking down those who break news and stuff. And yes, one could call this an escalation in the whole Wikileaks thing.
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Yeah man, I am into, uh, like speaking truth to power, and down with The Man and all that as much as the next psuedonymous netizen.
But it is not just "breaking news" when an employee of the government or a member of the armed services abuses his security clearance to obtain information he should not have, and then--illegally--gives out the information to be published.
Power to the people, flower power, peace, etc.
Where I work, you can find all sorts of "for limited viewing purpose" documents on the T:\ (shared temp) drive. The best thing I've yet found is a spreadsheet containing information about stock option grants for all employees.
Be careful. A former colleague got canned for finding just such a document and spreading the word around....
I came across such an xls when I worked at a startup before. I bet you were surprised to find the huge discrepancy between what the serfs get and what the VP's on up get. In my case, 5-10k vs. 200-300k.
The answer is to find the leaker and prosecute them. That's all they can do. Wikileaks is decentralized.
Though I'm not sure what authority the Pentagon has to "demand" things from anyone foreign or domestic. The Justice Department maybe. The Pentagon, not so sure....
Well I guess if someone breaks the law, that must mean they did something terrible, right? Hey, who cares if the actions exposed are hundreds of times more atrocious than the leak itself, that doesn't matter anyways...
Can you please provide some references to these atrocities?
You are a fool for not believing that releasing these documents is reckless and will ultimately prove costly for US forces and innocent Afghanis. It has done nothing to lessen the bloodshed in Afghanistan or end the war. It will only complicate the relations with neighboring countries.
What is Assange trying to prove? So far he has done nothing more than create controversy, and there are a lot of fools who like controversy.
'Create' controversy? More like he is providing evidence to back up the controversy. Why should we all be on board the train to forever-wars? Why does it cost a zillion dollars, thousands of soldiers' lives, and 9 years to take out a few arab guerillas?
You know what would save the lives of US & allied forces, reduce bloodshed in Afghanistan, and simplify relations with neighboring countries? Getting out of there. We shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Correct.
There's plenty of evidence for violations of US law, the USCMJ, and international law within those documents. Rather than relying on second hand press reports, the public now has undeniable evidence of thousands of crimes.
And they see that there is no action from the political class.
That's what's valuable about this. It shows that the death machine is beyond good and evil, and strips it of plausible deniability.
You must have a short memory... The US entered Afghanistan because of Sept 11th
We are there *does not equal* we should be there, simple math guy
please my friend get yourself informed. the debate has moved beyond the official reasons for invading afghanistan. its an illegal war based on spurious evidence which has long been disproved. the same as iraq.
is is not a war. it is something else. hmmmm what is the word......or descriptor but war - no.
boiow :
"illegal war"? No, much more like a police action to keep the eventual pipeline routes from the north open, and safeguard the recently disclosed rare earth potential. An amazing display of hubris, considering the fact that Afghanistan has been known as the graveyard of civilizations for eons. The tribal warlords, some of whom we currently consider worthy allies, are loyal only to their tribal ties, as Alexander the Great discovered...Consider Kipling's picture of Afghanistan, lightly disguised as Kafiristan. in The Man Who Would be King; there are some interesting Masonic tropes therein as well.
Again - 9 years, untold amounts of money spent, thousands dead...for what? To prevent a handful of rich arabs from making us look like fools? I wonder who is having the last laugh.
spent more on the inquiry into clinton's blowjob than 9/11. still a mystery how that other building holding all those enron documents just fell down.
Do you have those numbers?
oops
exactly, not to mention it was an illegal "war" in the first place too of course.
whereismyorange,
You need to focus your attention on Chet's avatar. The counter to your argument was very, very well explained in the Watchmen...
Well there sure aren't any troops or innocent Afghanis being killed right now..... I don't really give a shit what his motives are, it is fairly irrelevant, end result is still the same. We should not be there and we should not be sheltered from seeing what our military does. If it is just part of war, then its not a big deal to let it be known, right?
The references are in the leaked docs, do your own homework.
Since we already know you are a fool, I will be direct as possible.
Do your own homework, last I checked innocent civilians were being killed, and mostly by insurgents.
http://tiny.cc/k02h6
The military censors information for national security. One reason these documents were not released is to protect the sources that are named within. There is no military in the world that releases every piece of information, and for good reasons, but I wouldn't expect you to understand.
You are correct, your intelligence is obviously so far beyond mine I simply can't understand what you are saying.
According to your article, we "only" killed about 600 innocent civilians in 2009, 28% lower than 2008. Wow, that is so great, we should really be proud of ourselves!! So the "insurgents" killed 1,630 innocent civilians in 2008, why not join the party? How many were they killing before we tried to take over their country?
As for the military sensor, I can sensor my own fucking information - this isn't every detail into the innerworkings of our defense system. The only reason that this information is not made public (other than the names) is because it makes us look bad, and it does and for good reason.
You are wasting your breath arguing with a zombie. His orange, by the way, is up his ass, along with his head.
Thank you. I was actually upset until you brought me back to reality. Zombie. Thank you.
I will quote you again,
No need to thank me for correcting you.
Yes, civilians have been unintentionally killed by Nato and American forces, while insurgents target civilians directly. There is a difference, but again, I don't expect you to understand.
You realize that was sarcastic, no?
The difference is they do it on purpose and we just don't care...dead is dead in the end.
Ugh, see GoldSilverDoc's comment above...Can't fix stupid I guess.
Says the fool
Why do you hate America?
Wouldn't it be better to ask why you hate the United States government? Every branch of it lies and the corporate owned news media reports everything they say as truth. Wikileaks looks like the only real news media out there. I hope they go after every department in the US government.
I agree with you. That was a bit of "turnabout is fair play" in regard to whereismyorange and his posts.
The secrecy of the US military is for the purpose of duping its own citizens - and judging by the above comments it is very successful. Assange is courageous to take them on - he's not a flag-waving patriot.
Hmmmmm - are you on the ground there? Hmmmmmm - you speak as if you are "in the know" but your words show that you are clearly not. "National Security" - that is funny. Innocents are being killed by US soldiers also. That is fact. Our military is not exactly this "wonderful" "ethical" super-organized bunch of people that you see to tout it being.......Some in are - and some are something else altogether. Please with the National Security and calling people fools. Your own language just shows ignorance of truth.
Do your own homework, last I checked innocent civilians were being killed, and mostly by insurgents.
"We really ask a lot of our young service people out on the checkpoints because there's danger, they're asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it."
"That doesn't mean I'm criticizing the people who are executing. I'm just giving you perspective. We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, April 2010
Quote
last I checked innocent civilians were being killed, and mostly by insurgents
EndQuote
A civilian living in the state of Afghanistan can hardly be presumed to be innocent.
I fail to see why you give so much credit to the insurgents.
Until the citizens of Afghanistan learn to give up their religion and way of life and form a modern industrial economy with an equivalent of the the FRN they will be slaughtered by the joint workings of US and insurgent forces. Nobody likes them much.
In no war waged in the Modern Era has transparency been the norm. I date the Modern Era from 1789, but many would move it back much farther. Spies were well known, and punished accordingly, by both the British and the U.S. during the Revolution.
Indeed, I can only think of one period wherein transparency was more or less the norm, and that was during the period of the early crusades, especially the ill-fated Peoples' Crusade and Childrens' Crusade.
As sad as it is that some of our forces may be jeapardized by these leaks, we as a nation need to come to terms with the fact that we are in a war that does not have the possibility of victory, in countries run by narco/petro/islamofacist thugs, promulgated by western corporate interests to generate revenue for said corporatists. We need to get out of there.
After a good deal of soul searching and discussion with friends on this topic, I have to say that I want the people who got us into this, and the people who keep us in this, and especially the people who fiendishly profit from this, exposed and made to face the music. I hope that over time more truth will come out, light & truth are parts of the foundation of liberty. This country needs to look to it's roots and hold the military to the highest standards as they have the power to do unimaginable horror to families in places no one here much cares about. When you know, as I do, someone who's family has been slaughtered without cause or recourse by US forces 'defending freedom', it is a lot harder to just wave the flag and shout 'my country right or wrong'. As a great man once said, 'America will cease to be great when it ceases to be good'. We are at a tipping point in that area IMHO.
narco/petro/islamofacist thugs? Is that not us? I am pretty sure that is us. Maybe not "us" us but it IS us....
Please adjust your undergarments. You're Fox News is showing. What is an Islamofascist? Isn't that just a propaganda word made up, quite cleverly, by some nameless, faceless psychologist employed by the Bush administration to scare people, keep people docile? It is quite effective, isn't it? A juxtaposition that links the religion of Islam, without much basis as far as I can tell, to the detested Axis powers of WWII. You can throw it at anybody who prays facing Mecca and it will stick; something that can readily be used when it is scapegoat time. I think the actual fascists roost quite a lot closer to home and are much more immediately scary than a people who have, in some cases, not even really graduated from tribalism into nationalism. Please use a little critical thinking before swallowing whole what is fed to you.
You're serious aren't you?
Here's some reading material:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Wikileaks.shtml
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/07/wikileaks-resistance-genuin...
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/07/wikileaks-resistance-genuin...
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-wikileaks-iii-wed-like-h...
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-wikileaks-iv-world-witho...
So someone out there is actually exposing the truth showing the war to be more gruesome and pointless than formerly thought and you attack not the government that performs the acts of occupying and killing...but the person who reveals this?
Truely PERVERSE.
oh but there brown people half way around the world so they dont really count as "people" do they?
Some references of atrocities below (note that many atrocities go unreported:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-militar...
" How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada."
"At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.
Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack."
So someone out there is actually exposing the truth showing the war to be more gruesome and pointless than formerly thought and you attack not the government that performs the acts of occupying and killing...but the person who reveals this?
Truly PERVERSE.
oh but there brown people half way around the world so they dont really count as "people" do they?
Some references of atrocities below (note that many atrocities go unreported:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-militar...
" How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada."
"At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.
Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack."
I saw the point of leaking the Iraq helicopter video and think he was very courageous to do that. However, I'm not sure I understand the point of leaking 10's of thousands of documents just for the sake of leaking something.
Anyone else notice that if you are a whistleblower against a corporation, the government makes you rich by paying you a percentage. But if you are whistleblower against the government you get thrown in prison for the rest of your life.
"But it is not just "breaking news" when an employee of the government or a member of the armed services abuses his security clearance to obtain information he should not have, and then--illegally--gives out the information to be published."
Isn't the oath on the Constitution and not on the gOVERNMENT?
Exactly. And, I haven't heard that the military is now swearing allegiance to Herr Hi... uh, I mean Obama yet either.
You act as though today's problems are caused by 'troublemakers', and not the systemic expansion and abuse of power by the government.
I generally think that using the ends to justify the means is a shaky way to get things done, but in the case of fighting government propaganda, I think all bets are off. This government is too big and too abusive, and must be fought. Almost by definition this means the fighting will be legally questionable, if not downright 'treasonous' from the point of view of government.
Just for fun, maybe we should research who leaked this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu7KpJADrL0&feature=related
MEMRI concentrates primarily on discrediting Palestinian and Arab nationalists and was co-founded by the neocon Meyrav Wurmser (married to David Wurmser, Cheney’s Principal Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs) and Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence. “Besides Carmon, several MEMRI staffers are former Israeli intelligence specialists. Especially troubling are suspected links between MEMRI and the current Israeli intelligence establishment,” Lawrence Swaim of InFocus wrote in 2007.
“MEMRI is a main arm of Israeli propaganda,” explains professor Norman G. Finkelstein, a well-known scholar on Israel and Palestine. It is “a Mossad operation pretending to be a media translation service.” Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA case officer, says “they (MEMRI) are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme-right of Likud.”
http://www.infowars.com/dhs-takes-seriously-claim-militias-may-collabora...
Demands the papers or what?
As soon as the Pentagon takes the gun out from under the table, what happens to them?
Does Assange actually have faith in democracy? I should think he's sophisticated enough to know otherwise.
Thus, Assange posted "insurance" on wikileaks.
Very sophisticated guy, afterall.
Hey Pentagon, good luck with that! Bwahahahaha!!
Watch out, these fuckers fly to every country in the world, pick you up and after the 5th night of waterboarding you WILL sell your mother.
Watch out, these fuckers fly to every country in the world, pick you up and after the 5th night of waterboarding you WILL sell your mother.
Watch out, these fuckers fly to every country in the world, pick you up and after the 5th night of waterboarding you WILL sell your mother.
You see! Echo's already
if the military would simply make an example out of the PFC who leaked the other stuff, then it would do more damage to wikileaks than this demand for unreleased documents
This isn't about secrecy or some private.
This is about oppression of your rights to protect those taking them away.
It isn't even a sure thing that Bradley Manning was the leak. He might be the scapegoat though.
Actually, all of this much-a-do is fantastic for wikileaks.
Thanks to everybody at the White Castle and Pentagram for giving this so much attention. Love you guys! Really outdoing yourselves.
Built into your statement is the assumption that whatever the government says you should not have, you should not have. I do not share your faith in the goodwill, honesty, and integrity of the government.
The issue isn't whether you trust them.
The issue is do you want to see the USA collapse?
How fucking cracked do you have to be to not want the government to collapse?
Apostate
Cracked enough to not want thousands of people die needlessly.
Those who want government to collapse have no conception of the utter devestation and havoc that would result. They also fail to understand that the next one would not be better. That their heads would probably wind up on the block just for spouting the conception of change.
...Thousands are already dying needlessly.
Governments collapse all the time without such horrors occurring. Markets are extraordinarily resilient when liberated. Those are just scare stories.
Here you go dumbfuck; more "stories".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_Yugoslavia
Honestly, there are a lot of morons on ZH, but you take the prize. You and your "libertarian", "Ayn Rand" dogmaticism.
Its easy to talk shit from the comfort of lower Manhattan; real world; its not what you think it is. Its a cruel place populated by monsters.
Oh, and this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_Massacre_of_Children_1993
and this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide
But your stupid American ass probably doesnt give a shit because those are "savages" or whatever you liber-tards call them.
In short, you and your "hypothetic outcomes of XYZ process" can go fuck yourself.
Am I clear enough ?
Cheeky,
I don't know if the parallels are correct though I do understand your point very clearly. Do you think that a political collapse in the USA, meaning loss of faith in the political leadership, will lead directly and inevitable to utter chaos and loss of control throughout the USA?
The religious, ethnic and social tensions already present in Yugoslavia, Bosnia and so on were barely under control by the polictical leadership and were released when the top was taken off. The bottle was already under extreme pressure. Do you think the same pressure is present in the USA?
Reminds me of an interesting story while I was in undergrad... The day after 9/11 a few of our international students of middle eastern descent thought it would be a good idea to pile into an old pickup truck, drive down the main street on campus, while dragging a burning american flag. Instantly, literally every man woman and child piled out of nearby administrative buildings and rushed for the vehicle. We're talking orca fat people with the diabeetus running 8 second 40s to get a piece. Needless to say, the fire was put out and all of the gentlemen in the truck received some good ol' american medical treatment at the hospital.
Ummmmm.......
I'm talking about a nation of people who have lost faith in their government and turn against it. I then ask if there really is that much chance of the entire nation plunging into chaos as per the examples Cheeky already gave of socially, ethnically and politically unstable countries coming apart at the seems when the cap is removed.
You're talking about a nation of people who, through the use of a false flag attack, have been convinced that they individually and collectively have been surprise attacked in a most vicious and brutal manner. And then this is rubbed in their noses by some people who are not "one of them", resulting in a mob attacking said nose rubbers.
And this is similar?
CD, burn a little vacation time somewhere at least 500 miles away from Manhattan, Chicago, or LA but still in the lower 48. Don't bother with the resort crowd or the drunks at the local bars; go out and meet real people in day to day life. Mingle with the local people; let them talk to you. Feel the pressure here in the good ol USA.
Normally I avoid responding to you because it's rarely productive.
a( Despite my avatar, I'm an anarchist, although I've certainly been influenced by Objectivism
b( I've lived all over the city (and the world), but I'm in an immigrant outer borough neighborhood now
c( How much do you know about the influence of NATO in accelerating the conflict there?
The former Yugoslavia was a special case relative to the rest of the former Warsaw Pact states. I don't think that they're entirely savage, there. I'm not sure how you could blame the results of hyper-nationalism, the decay of a synthetic state, and the aftereffects of centuries of civil strife on libertarianism.
If you have a solution to keep the state running, by all means, volunteer your services to the Treasury Department or the SEC.
If anyone else wants to respond to you, they'll have to do it. I dislike rewarding ill-informed personal attacks with a response.
this is the single dumbest post i have ever seen on zh.
if you want to swap wikipedia links on who has commited more atrocities between governments and groups of people who have found themselves governmentless , your gonna lose.
in fact its difficult to have atrocities without a government or at least a government in waiting.
Bingo.
Talk about neocon clichés. Yikes.
"Its a cruel place populated by monsters."
Thank the Lord we have the all-powerful, benevolent, and omniscient State (peace be upon it) to protect all of us little sheep. How much of my freedom and money does it need so that I can feel safe again?
(Apostate, don't you know that without politicians we'd all be drinking blood from the hollowed out skulls of our neighbors? Duh.)
Contrary to popular belief, the "Wild" west was remarkably civilized -- after all, most folks were carrying firearms, and could theoretically take the Law into their own hands at any time, so yeah, no drinking blood (not very tasty at any rate).
It's a sad state of affairs when 95% of the population's knowledge of our nation's history consists of what they saw in cowboy movies.
Every time I hear someone say, "If everyone was armed, there would be shootouts in the streets at high noon just like the Wild West." Only problem is, THAT IT NEVER EVER was like that. That generalization is a complete Hollywood fabrication.
There was ONE documented "high noon shootout" documented. ONE.
Between Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt July 21, 1865 in the town square of Springfield, Missouri . That's it. One guy shot another guy in a fight over a woman.
So we've taken one single anecdotal event, put a facsimile of it in endless movies, and redefined an entire time period in American History by it.
And boobus Americanus ate it right up, right along with his Cheetos, KFC Double Downs, Cold Stone PB&C's, KY Binary Lubricants, and AXE body spray.
thanks
Whoa there Cheeky, easy on the mongering . Status quo ain't workin' dontcha know; hasn't been for quite awhile. The type you are trying to align yourself with couldn't give a rat's anus whether you live or die, so why waste your time talking their game? Ever heard that ol' chestnut 'to make an omelette.."? The other one about the 'devil you know' is getting a bit too onerous to endure, the more we find out. Or is that 'looming deflation' you pet predict just not happening fast enough for your book?
I say let's etch a sketch this bitch.
Disclosure: Yes, I'm talking my book (We gots the ag-skill, equipment, and the land)
Regards
Sounds strangely like something a wife beater would say.
"You're lucky. My brother would have killed you long ago."
"You don't deserve to be treated decently. Now shut the fuck up."
"I'm only beating you for your own good."
"You made me hit you."
If you hadn't (fill in the blank) I wouldn't have hit you."
"You can't live without me."
"You don't deserve anyone else."
"Your lucky I don't kill you."
And on and on and on and on.......................
Well said Cog D.
lol, so afraid of life without Big Brother, you forgot how to think.
Reminds me of the Wild West myth.
You probably think families would split apart, too, without government glue.
Goodbye privacy and freedom of speech, hello patriot act in your bedroom.
Both are threats to national security in the war on terror for dipshits..
Anyone cracked the Insurance file on wikileaks yet ?
It's far bigger than 15,000 doucuments.
I think this summerizes it all:
<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3adw9oLBkBI&hl=nl_NL&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3adw9oLBkBI&hl=nl_NL&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>
oops.. beter give this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3adw9oLBkBI
killer clip...very well done
Here's a potential alt take on Julian Assange from Webster Tarpley where he posits the leaks are a vamp for attacking Pakistan and Iran (thus ending the war in AfghanIraq):
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/08/webster-tarpley-julian-...
talk starts @ 0:59 and the wikileaks section starts on tape 3 of 4 @ the 2:00 mark
Wikileaks has 15k unreleased Afghanistan documents. They said they have three times the original 92k Iraq documents to release and that encrypted "insurance" file.
Lots of people are running scared right now. That's why you see the paid operatives attacking Assange as a "CIA" operative or for "murdering innocent" Afghani's.
When this all ends, if ever, politicians will fall trials and investigations will be commissioned and there will be a whole new level of distrust and antipathy to BIGOV all over the world.
Whoa.... a drone in search of Julian Paul Assange.
Run and hide.. heh heh
Does anyone have any compelling reason to care what the Pentagon "demands"?
They can kill you, sure, but they don't have any legal authority. They can kill you whether you did anything or not.
The USA government/military/corporations lost it's legitimacy a long time ago. I don't give a shit what they demand. Sure, they can march me out of my house with a gun to my head and make me say anything they want me to say. Doesn't make them any more or less illegitimate than they already are now.
I meant "technically," CD.
Legitimacy is all nice hippy-trippy feelgood stuff, but even from a technical perspective, "da Pentagon" is just another Executive-branch bureaucracy.
It doesn't make any rules. It has no legal authority over anyone.
Congress (for example) may be just as illegitimate as the Pentagon, but technically it does write laws.
I understood your point, though I should have recognized it in my comment. Technically it doesn't matter. But we are rapidly slipping into the use of US Army for domestic population control.
Katrina and now Puerto Rico were the acid tests, which they passed with flying colors. When the riots begin, the average Joe will welcome a red blooded American GI Joe walking the streets. Of course, that GI Joe might just be a foreign (non US) troop on "loan".
One could say that the only legitimacy they need is simple. Might makes right.
While I agree in principle, I'm very dubious on the logistics. The US military is nowhere near big enough to hold back the population, and it hasn't been for a long time. Lots of air-power and strategic power, none of which works for domestic enforcement--what can you do? Bomb Detroit to end riots?
And that's not even to mention that the real combat forces are all bogged down at the moment.
Nor even to mention that the government would have to pay for stuff.
I suspect the US Federal government as it existed for 65 years is done. It'll take several years to disintegrate, but it looks to me like we have already turned the corner on popular sentiment. I expect Balkanization into a socialist bloc, a theocratic bloc, and an ethnofascist bloc.
Place your bets, take your pick, and book your tickets.
Let me clarify. I'm not saying it will happen nor that if tried it will succeed. Only that desperate men do desperate things. And if the powers that be find their power being taken away or it simply starting to slip away, they will most likely call in the military. Whether that works or not is open for discussion.
I will say that the average Joe will follow orders and do what s/he is told. This nation is not a nation of patriots who will rise up against tyranny. We are well past that point. We are soft in the belly and in the mind. We have been brain washed and conditioned for decades. Our fighting spirit has been drugged and conditioned away (via TV) out of the gene pool. We are a nation of sleep walking followers.
We will not act like we have nothing left to lose until we have nothing left to lose. We love to believe our public myths. We just don't like to actually be required or called upon to live them. If people don't think they can affect change now, what makes you or I believe people will when the jack boot is crushing their throats?
Not being negative, just realistic. I'm constantly calling for action here on ZH. The silence is deafening. I'm an experienced local activist. The same thing happens in person. Everyone wants someone else to do something. No one wants to be responsible, everyone wants someone else to be responsible. This means the sociopaths show up and take charge.
I vigorously disagree.
If by "rising up" you mean some kind of populist violence and/or civil disobedience, I'd say you may be correct, but I think you're a bit behind the times.
"The People" don't have to rise up against anything. They only have to cease to participate--and that is well-underway as we post here. In fact, "rising up" is the worst possible approach in this circumstance. The one realm in which the US government wields a great share of power is in physical violence--they *could* kill tens of millions of Americans in the blink of an eye.
That just doesn't get anyone anywhere.
"Patriotism" doesn't even mean anything in this context. The "patriotic" colonials were the Tories, remember? The pro-Battistas, the pro-Shahs, etc.
Not many Americans have read Locke, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't understand him. I personally believe people intuitively know what's going on. There is a social compact between the government and the governed, and the governed have been holding up their side of the bargain, while government has gone completely derelict. Every Joe on the street knows this, even though they keep punching the clock and watching Jersey Shore.
The only thing that keeps our experiment hanging together at the moment is the welfare state, and there's a high likelihood that's going to collapse over the next few years. In that sense, I agree with part of what you say: keep people fed and sheltered and they won't go plant a garden.
But if those checks stop arriving, people will return to the basic bottom-up construction of a civil society.
The Soviet Union collapsed without a shot being fired. That's the historical template.
We have different opinions. Mine has come about based upon working directly in my local community as a local activist. I have found that the more people feel they have to lose, the more likely they will toe the line and go with the flow.
And the vast majority on my neighbors, who are above average in income, education and personal wealth, are unwilling to expose themselves to any significant risk what-so-ever. Many put on a false front and talk big but when it comes to acting, or to stop acting (meaning they stop participating) they are just too frightened to do so. What people want is other people to fix the problems.
I have now lived in two regions of the USA, one for most of my life and another over 1,000 miles away for the past 10 years. I have been an activist in both regions and I've found people act mostly the same way with small regional differences. The people most willing to buck the trend and to do or not do (meaning stop participating) are those with low incomes who already have nothing to lose. Everything else is lip service.
The Soviet people were long familiar with hardship and deprivation. It didn't take much to not participate in a system that wasn't supply them with toilet paper anyway. Your analogy doesn't work. The USSR didn't collapse because of it's own people not participating in the system.
The vast majority of my neighbors are poor, non-college-educated, and ain't got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.
And they know the score.
Who's talking about the bigger percentage of the population, you think? It'll be interesting to see how it shapes up. I think it's a safe bet you won't see any change coming from the pampered.
(@ Fractured Space: I'm sure smarter people than me have written far better stuff. We all do our part.)
"And they know the score."
they absolutely do.
don't think we're not keeping score, Brother.
half my neighbors are 75K a year plus bread winners. and the other half are goverment workers of some sort. we moved in summer 09 and im pretty sure my family is the poorest family on the blocked. my neighbor payed more then double for his house acrose the street in 2007. i'm in the working families area i guess. the police officer at the end of the street knows the score. His garage full of gas and ammo tells me so. every one else. still bitching about there retirement accounts.
++
I'm with you Blunder... Many many know deep down but are waiting for confirmation..
I don't know what it will look like, but I can say I believe with every fiber in my body that the American people are being grossly underestimated.. I will add that I can see how we are being underestimated.. but .. we are just a pin prick away..
I have read this comment before today
We can't organize and everyone knows it. Not unless we want to end up like that pathetic militia in Michigan or those poor naive boys in Florida a few years back, or heaven help us like the hapless Tea Party, subsumed by the Republicans. Disorganization may be the way of the future.
http://www.harrysnews.com/tgTheVirtuesofaDisorganizedResistance.htm
Perhaps there is a way for many like minded conscietious objectors to form a more organized communication venue without drawing the attention of big brother. Many are paranoid about the dire consequences of fascism in a developing police state.
Wikileaks is a psy-op.. I know nobody will believe me and think i'm nuts.. But hey.. the truth is the truth.
As soon as I saw where they state Bin Laden is hiding in Pakastan (or where ever), I stopped reading.. Bin Laden is DEAD ! Has been for a long time... They are liars.. Not to be trusted..
John Young of cryptome believes that too. I agree.I think it is a very effective way to control the dialog and eliminate leakers.
from what i understand these arent vetted intelligence reports. Just reports on the ground. it doesnt mean everything is true. So it might be someone reporting that they heard someone saying UBL was somewhere.
This is a huge delegitimisation of the military and i cant see how this would benefit them, or the government, or any agency of the government. This just breeds more distrust.
im all for conspiracy theories if they have evidence or are plausible
Like a bully on the playground.
I still remember from my Navy Law classes that you do not have to obey an unlawful order. You still might go to court martial (trial). However disclosing illegal acts by the military not to civilian authorities but to a public access media could be bad. If civilian authorities knew and failed to disclose or monitor then we have a problem Huston. His acts might be justifiable if he can be proven to be the source of leak. Course in the military whenever you screw up royally they promote you as a way of saying no problem here move on. Couple of years afterwards you are forced to retire.
That's like a man demanding his semen back after ejaculation.
Not going to happen.
HEard the rumor about Zero-Hedge being a psy-op? Not that it bothers me, but I have.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
No it's not.. But now I think you might be a gubment plant..
Hah Max.
If a givermint plant, i want to be a money plant.
:-)
ORI
I have heard this as well. And it matters not, just as it doesn't matter that The NY Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The LA Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, The Cartoon Network, MTV and so on and so on have all been accused of being psyops.
The difference being that the various shining beacons of the MSM have publicly and repeatedly admitted to being puppets of the powers that be. You just need to read between the lines. Like The NY Times holding the story about warrant-less wiretapping of households (and the true extent of "official" water boarding) until after the 2004 election cycle. Or the scant attention paid by the MSM to various planes used by the CIA for rendition flights that have crashed in various countries carrying loads of illegal drugs. And so on.
Tyler has yet to publish a specfic yeah or nay to the charges. At worst, ZH is no better or worse than the other garbage out there. And in so many different ways, much better.
I think it's much better.. If it's a psy-op, I have no idea as to what they would be netting from it..
Not to mention, I think the people leaving comments (for the most part) are far more "well read" than typical forums and/or blogs..
IF it were true, there would be plenty to net from it. When the powers-that-be can no longer keep the cover on the public pressure cooker of disclosure of "official" lies, the next stage in the political coup of civil liberties will be to co-opt the "truth" movements in order to control and spin the disclosure from "trusted" sources.
Like a good chess game, one must be thinking several moves ahead.
There is no doubt that many have already been co-opted..
I've said this before.. good time to reiterate.
Last year.. I saw an article on the Haaretz website.. Stating that Israel was calling for volunteers to scour the blogs and youtube to leave pro-israel comments to combat the increasing negative views of many on-line opinions.. They had 14,000 within the first few days..
They are already out there.. That's not counting our government with their agenda..
I think ZH would be a waste of their time.. That's my point.. They would have their ass handed to them..
Does anybody really think the "Government" is not in favor of the recent wikileaks release? Assange may not be working with the "Gov" but I'm fairly confident the "Gov" is not all that distressed about the recent "leak."
If they didn't want that info out there, it wouldn't be out there. Assange may be trying to get the truth out there, but that is not to say the "Government" isn't using this as part of their twisted scheme.
Don't tell the truth - it's CLASSIFIED. Divulging it will get you into a lot of trouble.
Only lies are tolerated around here, motherfuckers.
Are we the owners of the words in our posts here at ZH? Would any of us cry foul if TD suddenly started selling a book made up of, say, all the posts on the Zionist threads - and started making some serious money off of our intellectual output?
The words housed in the "stolen" e-mails and other documents properly belong to their authors. The authors of those words can rightly demand the return to them of control over those words (in this case, the Pentagon owns whatever its employees produce). Whether that demand is respected is another matter entirely. I would expect the courts to side with the Pentagon - or with any other author who has had his creative property stolen.
But don't the people "own" the Pentagon, pay their salaries etc... therefore whatever the Pentagon produces is the property of the people. It is in fact an offense for the Pentagon to suppress information selectively to support its own lies.
I don't think the copyright laws see it that way.
Hey we should send bounty hunters after Osama Bin Laden too! That might work! Just send some Blackwater.... oh, they are already there? Aren't they professionals? You would think that they would have caught him by now. Hey wait where are you taking me! Wait, wait! Help, help! HELP!
"Blackwater" no longer exists, that name got dragged through too much mud. It's all "XE" now.
Regards
It was great reading about the 'targeted murders'
of Task Force 373, war crimes if the United States
signed the treaty,which would bring many to the Hague courtroos, as much as reading of
Drones' Flight 101 in the Telegraph since HBO landed , the new 'models'at USD 13 million a pop, and each Hellfire rocket at 100 k a pop..
Related reading: Project Vigilante and
the government /corporate destruction of privacy
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/02/privacy/ind... privacy
I'm reading about Project Vigilant right now and stopped over here to see if anyone mentioned it in this thread. Very interesting stuff.
Now Greenwald is saying via Salon that Project Vigilant may be a cock and bull story concocted by a bunch of Homeland Security wannabes.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/05/surveillanc...
I think that wiki-leaks should capitulate and give the docs to the Pentagon....via public posting on their web site.
Absolutely.
doubly absolutely
double secret absolutely
AbsoREDACTEDlutely
In related news, I demand Natalie Portman to begin dating me.
Hmm... funny how demands work ...
Not sure?
First we read that Russia is halting grain exports. Then i read this.
Now it's true they have their own agenda, but,...care we ignore the possibilities that the U.S. Government is lying to us again. Keeping us in the dark, they tell us the "Well-is-now-closed". How fucking closed is it.
This blown-out-well has now been put in the "National Security" file.
Does that mean anyone with life saving information should keep it to themselves, because they are technically forbidden from discussing it?
BP Disaster: Russia’s Take Front page / Science / Planet Earth 27.07.2010 Source: Pravda.Ru Pages: 1Anatoly Sagalevich has added his voice to the latest controversy over the BP ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. This expert from the Russian Academy of Science was called to the Gulf by BP shortly after the Deepwater Horizon rig collapsed. And what he has to say is not very reassuring.
BREAKING NEWS The West has special logic for Russia in terms of human rights issues Dog Diagnozed with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome after Serving in Iraq More...Dr. Sagalevich’s report was drawn up and presented to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In this report, the investigator from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology and the Russian Academy of Science has stated that the ocean floor has been irreparably damaged and that the planet must prepare for an ecological disaster “beyond all understanding”.
The reason why Dr. Sagalevich was called by BP is because he is the leading world expert in deepwater exploration, having been awarded the order of Lenin for the creation of the submersibles MIR-1 and MIR-2, which are capable of diving to a depth of 6 km, the deepest-reaching submarines in the world.
For Dr. Sagalevich, the oil pouring into the Gulf is not just coming from one source, as the media have been claiming, but from 18 different places. According to the report, the Russian scientists called by the USA are forbidden to divulge their findings to the media – yet another source backing up the claim that there is a media blackout.
According to a report in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russian experts are pressing the Americans to use a nuclear explosion to extinguish the well, before it destroys the Atlantic Ocean. The USSR apparently used nuclear explosions five times (being successful on four of these occasions) to extinguish problematic oil and gas deposits between 1966 and 1981.
For Dr. Sagalevich, the problem facing the Obama administration as regards using a nuclear explosion to seal the well has more to do with the effects on the continued exploration of oil in the Gulf of Mexico than the environmental impact of the Deepwater disaster.
Russian scientists are also warning against the use of the poisonous dispersing agents by BP against the oil, due to the fact that this falls elsewhere as acid rain and is destroying all the plant life it comes into contact with.
Source and original article:
http://a7.com.mx/reportajes/3867-graves-consecuencias-del-derrame-de-la-bp.html
Translated from the Portuguese version of PRAVDA.Ru by
Ekaterina Santos
PRAVDA.Ru
He's headquartered in Sweden, right? Is receiving documents of this nature a crime under Swedish law?
If so, then take him to court in that country. Assange seems to be a little bit of a fame-whore, so he would probably opt to make such a trial as noisy and messy as possible.
If not, then JA should tell them to go pound sand with a rubber hammer.
The only way the Forever Wars are going to end is if it gets too uncomfortable for Congress to fund anymore. There's no concept of "winning" anymore, no idea what that would even look like.
So the Pentagon has been reduced to Bill Lumberg in Office Space leaving messages on Peter's machine, asking him to please come in to work on Saturday? Wow. Wikileaks, you're in deep s***. You were supposed to come in on Saturday.
Interesting SP500 chart ...
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com
There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration.I read and understand the entire article and I really enjoyed it to be honest.
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