I don’t know about you but I’ve been changing my mind about Wikileaks on an hourly basis. On the one hand, the team behind the whole thing have done us a huge service and deserve a medal. On the other, they’re a threat to civilisation as we know it and should be locked up.
Thankfully, Debategraph offers all sides to the story (and you can get in there add new strands or weight existing ones).
Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… I’ve [...] read our review »
Short answer: very little, other than he enjoyed the environs of Hillsborough Castle, enjoyed working with the local politicians, and has Gerry Adams to thank for Bobby his dog. Peter Mandelson’s book The Third Man has captured media headlines in recent weeks as the Times serialised the most juicy bits. But what did he have [...] read our review »
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
Ah yes… without the EU, there would be no peace in Europe. Therefore, the alternative to the EU is war.
Indeed, without the EU, Germans wouldn’t get to sing in a French choir and dear old MV’s eyes would be deprived of a tear or two becase, as we all know, people couldn’t travel before the EU…
Ergo, Irish taxpayers must transfer several hundred bilion worth of their incomes to wealthy bondholders because if they don’t then war will break out and MV’s dear old eyes will dry up.
Some folks can’t even smell the bullshit that is heaped upon them.
“I know all the limitations of the EU project : however neither France, Germany or Italy forced that economically challanged clown Lenihan and the bunch of incompetents around him that are collectivly termed a government, to bail out Anglo Irish and the others.”- MV
Incidentally, that takes the prize for the most misinformed nonsense posted on this thread. Well done. Next you’ll be telling us that the government begged for the IMF/EU bail-out against intense opposition from the EU.
It’s called systemic risk or contagion, old boy, and the policy is to stop it spreading through the eurosystem by containing debts in the borrowing state rather than allowing them to default to the lending state.
Like MV I welcome the compliment Organized (Mick). Tis even better when others enjoy something one has penned in not too subtle an anger.
They’re called statists… and, if course, europhiles. They’re people who fear their own freedoms, and duly become their own worst enemies.
You may be right there Alias. They also however remind of my old uncle. A man who met his match at the bottom of the bottle he never seemed to be able to finish. The scourge of our kind so they say. I can recall the mail piled high on his hall table every time I visited. He perished with not a penny to his name. Those letters and bills stacked like a pyramid of paper at the end. His ostrich routine had him warped into not believing he wasn’t in debt if he didn’t see a bill. So those envelopes remained unripped, there was no problem to fix so long as you couldn’t see one.
I can at least understand the actions of those like Clinton and Liberman who have something to protect. Hell I can even stretch as far as seeing the rationale of those journalists who have prostituted themselves, who have decided to work at keeping the game going, instead of poaching the truth from under their noses. Many of them now lionizing the late Richard Holebrook. Those who not only embedded themselves in the back of a Humvee, but embedded themselves in the cocktail party scene, just to get close to the history makers. For me they are no better than those doctors flown into the black sites in places like Kazakhstan or Diego Garcia, whose job is to keep alive the human wretch before them for just a few more days of torture, thus perpetuating the fear and the hurt…and the anger. Like their brothers in print, long gone are the idealistic days of youth, they have become part of the machine, they have forgotten why they became what they did, all for some pieces of silver, or a chance to rub shoulders with the great and not so good. I can at least see some kind of rationalisation at work with those kind of people and the Faustian pacts they have made.
But what one cannot fathom, is why an ordinary joe, the plumber, the policeman, the teacher…. a guy who has no vested interest to protect..why would he defend the indefensible. Would seek to protect that which treats him as a serf. Don’t fool yourself into thinking the idea of democracy you have is that which is shared with the people at the top. We may think they serve us. But for them, we ‘enjoy’ the freedoms they allow us to have, we drink the beer they have taxed, and pay further taxes in service and in thanks for the Hobbesian benevolence they shelter us under their wing with. The words of James Madison are worth noting….
‘The people can never err more than in supposing that by multiplying their representatives beyond a certain limit, they strengthen the barrier against the government of a few. Experience will forever admonish them that, on the contrary they will counteract their own views by every addition to their representatives. The countenance of the government may become more democratic, but the soul that animates it will be more oligarchic [because] the greater the number composing, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings.’
(Federalist Paper 58)
Perhaps it is fear, or the opium of ignorance which they desperately seek to shelter themselves in again, that motivates such people. Or an aversion to taking a position which would have them in agreement with those they dislike. If such people are not willing to trouble themselves to read those brave journalists who dare to peek behind the curtain, be it the likes of Pilger or Fisk, at least read some novels or watch some movies which demonstrate the dangers of such a laissez-faire among the populace, theres any number of them out there. But don’t, please don’t, try and keep in the dark that which needs brought to light.
Alias : “….Incidentally, that takes the prize for the most misinformed nonsense posted on this thread. Well done. Next you’ll be telling us that the government begged for the IMF/EU bail-out against intense opposition from the EU…….”
Do not get your knickers in a twist just yet Alias: sorry, my fault, I should have made it clear I was speaking of the first bail out when Lenihan did a solo run. It was his choice, he still had some leeway back then.
We had a bank debt, it is still a bank debt, Fianna Failure turned it into a sovereign debt and straddled the country and future generations with a debt that they did not create or did not owe.
“…….It’s called systemic risk or contagion, old boy, and the policy is to stop it spreading through the eurosystem by containing debts in the borrowing state rather than allowing them to default to the lending state…….”
Full agreement in that. Back then when it was a bank problem, it could have been made a European Banking problem and if they did not sort it out in that context, then with the bondholders burned as they should have been, the Russians Government would have probably been good for 25 billion or so.
The young Irish State bailed the Soviet Union out when they were financially cornered and Internationally blacklisted, there were a few other occasions where despite cultural and political differences, and relative sizes, both countries co-operated.
Chinas Government are also very interested in this neck of the woods, if there was a prospect of the Chinese providing the twenty five billion and gaining a foothold in what the Yanks regard as their ‘sphere of influence’ then the Yanks would have found a way to sort out the problem in jig time.
It was a National and International financial crisis and a political problem. Lenihan and Fianna Failed did what they do best, kicked the problem down the road, lied, kicked it some more, lied yet again and borrowed time. All this achieved is what started out a bank problem involving at most a few thousand investors ended up a National problem involving over four and a half million people, or possibly ten to twelve million if generations yet unborn are factored in.
Whether from choice, incompetence or arrogance, Fianna Fail became, Fianna Faillean : The ‘Soldiers of Destiny’ ; turned into the ‘Soldiers of Destitution’
RS, that post was good, thoughtful post. A large part of the “laissez-faire among the populace” comes from the complexity of the issues that they would be required to consider if they were to be otherwise and their own inability to process the information into any meaningful or consistent narrative, so they default to those who can offer that narrative in a simplified format, and that is what governments can do via official lines and claims of acting in the national interest. That would be a good solution if governments told the truth and did act in their national interest, and for the most part they do, but it leaves a blind spot for when they don’t and that’s where all the shit happens. There is nothing that you can do about that human failing since human beings are not designed to cope with this much information other than tell your own version of the truth as you see it and hope it helps a little even though you know that a little is not enough. Above all else, avoid ulcers. I like Bob Dylan’s line “I used to care but things have changed.” I think he still cares but he has learned how to avoid the ulcers.
MV, the policy of bailing-out the eurosystem via a blanket guarantee was directed from Frankfurt via a telephone conversation between Lenihan and Jean-Claude Trichet. A government minister, John Gormley, admitted this to Vincent Brown a few weeks ago – not that the world and its aunty didn’t already know. The ECB is the currency’s lender of last resort and it also has full executive control of the Irish Central Bank under the Maastricht Treaty so it wasn’t possible to decide how to deal with troubled banks without the agreement of the ECB. They call the shots, and Mr Lenihan has no sovereignty over the monetary system or the banking system. He has to do what the sovereign power tells him to do as he can do nothing by himself. To do otherwise would be to cripple the banking system, and to be out of the EuroZone the next day. That’s what he should have done but they’re all europhiles.
So some get the point, this isn’t about serving the establishment or Orwell in reverse. Query: why do we have the attorney-client privilege, the doctor-patient privilege, and the spousal privilege? Because those relationships won’t work if the party needing to make disclosure has to fear that the substance of any such disclosure may be revealed to third persons?
And you can filter out noise, but you can’t pull the truth out of thin air. Think of it this way, pain in the butt but you can remove the jigsaw pieces that don’t go with this particular puzzle. Try completing the puzzle, though, without a significant amount of the pieces for that puzzle.
And that’s why some need to be able speak freely without any fear of their words being blabbed to the world at large.
And the Orwell in reverse is nonsense, since Eric Blair himself would agree on the need for confidential communications between certain representatives within a govt and between certain representatives of two or more govts. For how absurd and preposterous is your position, I find this to be one of the rare occasions when I actually agree with Hillary Clinton:
And so despite some of the rhetoric we’ve heard these past few days, confidential communications do not run counter to the public interest. They are fundamental to our ability to serve the public interest.
Just as the attorney-client privilege, the doctor-patient privilege, and the spousal privilege are fundamental to our ability to serve the public interest.
Lastly, it would otherwise help if some understood Orwell. Orwell wasn’t so much concerned with govt as Big Brother. Orwell was concerned with thought control, for the purpose of ending what he called, an intellectual life. There is nothing in any of the Wikileaks material that shows that Assange’s target, the US, has done any of that. And, Stones, what beggars belief is that you are apparently too dim to understand that the folks you quote were speaking to INFORMATION IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Like when Google ceded to China’s wishes and so if you were in China and you Googled, Tiananmen Square, you wouldn’t get any search result showing that anyone ever constructed a Goddess of Liberty there. The souls you quoted were NOT, repeat, NOT speaking to information that was and is intended to be confidential, was stolen, and then published. The other examples are, well, I’ll take just one, DPRK radio, with only the one channel on the fixed dial, so you can’t possibly get Radio Seoul as the radio dial can’t be turned but is forever set to Radio Pyongyang. That’s what they are talking about. And they spoke to corporations or business in general, who went along with the scheme, as Google did in China, because that’s where the money is. For irony, in doing so, the souls you quoted are in favor of Orwell and against the Party in ’84, since they advocate all of the public domain sources be made available so that some might engage in the intellectual life of discovering external reality and objective truth. What they don’t advocate is that you and I and Mr. Assange steal other people’s mail, read it, and then post it on the web.
Where, over the long cold weekend, did I read a piece making a link between wikileaks and past revelations (the ghost of Philip Agee and Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers were invoked)?
In my view, because those previous “outings” revealed the rotten heart of US policy-making and named names, such a comparison torpedoes the essence of slappymcgroundout @ 9:22 am‘s argument. For wikileaks merely exposes the trivia, the banality of “diplomatic” chatter. Nothing much has changed since Kennedy sent the Great Economist (and so self-important) JK Galbraith as ambassador to India, only to find the verbosity of his “reports” taxed everyone’s patience, without greatly adding to the sum of knowledge.
Banality?
You haven’t been paying attention. For instance, Wikileaks demonstrates that Israel is aligned with all of the Sunni Arab world against Iran and that Egypt is cooperating with Israel in isolating and destroying Hamas. That isn’t banal. It explains why Netanyahu is in our American face with no sign of backing down. He’s been empowered. The leaks however put our Sunni Arab friends in a bind, since maybe like the homosexual, they didn’t want to be outed quite yet. Iran now knows that it wasn’t imagining things, since apart from the clueless Western left, everyone else in the region and the West wants to see that regime either gone or disarmed. Perhaps you might want to invest in a travel agency, booking flights out of Iran, since with this revelation, some will surely want to get the f out of Dodge before the feces hits the fan in Iran.
Lastly, there an rather more diplomats than Galbraith. When you have JFK saying that about some more appreciable number of souls you might have a point. I could easily argue that the soul who shouted Fire in a crowded theater means we can’t have free spech.
Almost forgot, but rotten is in the eye of the beholder. Sorry, but I’m not Michael Vickery, so I don’t serve as apologist for the Khmer Rouge. I’m also not John Pilger, so I don’t blame everyone but the Vietnamese Communists for the Vietnamese Boat People. And I’m not that fellow at the NY Times who back in the day suppressed the info on the Great Russian and Ukraine famine that killed tens of millions.
I do, however, to borrow from Willie Frazer, have a lot of time for Uwe Siemon-Netto, who wrote back in ’79:
Having covered the Viet Nam war over a period of five years for West German publications, I am now haunted by the role we journalists have played over there. Those of us who had wanted to find out knew of the evil nature of the Hanoi regime. We knew that, in 1956, close to 50,000 peasants were executed in North Vietnam. We knew that after the division of the country nearly 1 million North Vietnamese had fled to the South.
Many of us have seen the tortured and carved-up bodies of men, women and children executed by the Viet Cong in the early phases of the war. And many of us saw, in 1968, the mass graves of Hue, saw the corpses of thousands of civilians still festively dressed for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Why, for Heavens sake, did we not report these expressions of deliberate North Vietnamese strategy at least as extensively as of the Mai Lai massacre and other such isolated incidents that were definitely not part of the U.S. policy in Viet Nam?
What prompted us to make our readers believe that the Communists, once in power in all of Viet Nam, would behave benignly? What made us, first and foremost Anthony Lewis, belittle warnings by U.S. officials that a Communist victory would result in a massacre? Why did we ignore the fact that the man responsible for the executions of 50,000 peasants, Truong Chinh, was — and still is — one of the most powerful figures in Hanoi?
What made us think that he and his comrades would have mercy for the vanquished South Vietnamese? What compelled, for example, Anthony Lewis shortly after the fall of Saigon to pat himself on the shoulder and write, ‘so much for the talk of a massacre?’ True, no Cambodian-style massacre took place in Vietnam. It’s just that Hanoi coolly drives its ethnic Chinese opponents into the sea. That’s what Nasser threatened to do to the Israelis, no massacre intended, of course.
Are we journalists not in part responsible for the death of the tens of thousands who drowned? And are we not in part responsible for the hostile reception accorded to those who survive? Did we not turn public opinion against them, portraying them, as one singularly ignoble cartoon did in the United States, as a bunch of pimps, whores, war profiteers, corrupt generals or, at best, outright reactionaries?
Considering that today’s Vietnam tragedy may have a lot to do with the way we reported yesterday’s Vietnam tragedy; considering that we journalists might have our fair share of guilt for the inhuman way the world treats those who are being expelled by an inhuman regime which some of us had pictured as heroic, I think at least a little humility would be in order for us old Viet Nam hands, Mr Lewis included. And if I did not strongly believe in everybody’s right of free expression at any time, I would even admonish him to keep quiet about Indo-China, at least for a while.
And if Uwe’s mea culpa isn’t enough, how about Robert Elegant’s:
Nowadays, Jean Lacouture, Anthony Lewis, and William Shawcross (among some other “Viet Nam veterans”) clearly feel deceived or even betrayed by the Communists of Indochina; yet surely, they voluntarily adopted the ideological bias that allowed Hanoi to deceive them. The Vietnamese Communists—unlike their Cambodian confreres—had, after all, openly declared their intention of imposing totalitarian rule upon the South. Why, then, were the “critics of the American war” so genuinely surprised by the consequences? More crucially, why did a virtual generation of Western journalists deceive itself so consistently as to the nature of the “liberation” in Indochina? Why did the correspondents want to believe in the good faith of the Communists? Why did they so want to disbelieve the avowed motives of the United States? Why did so much of their presumably factual reporting regularly reflect their ideological bias?
Equally lamentable was the failure of the Western press to cover with any thoroughness the Army of the Republic of South Viet Nam, which over the long run was doing most of the fighting. Correspondents were reluctant to commit their safety to units whose resolution they distrusted—sometimes for good reason, more often because of a kind of racist contempt—in order to get stories that interested their editors so little. Coverage of Vietnamese politics, as well as social and economic developments, was sporadic—except for military coups and political crises, and those were often misreported.
Examples of misdirected or distorted reporting could be amassed almost indefinitely. The war, after all, lasted some twenty years. A former Washington Post and New York Times correspondent, Peter Braestrup, has published a two-volume study of the coverage of the Tet Offensive of 1968. Quite significantly, it attracted little interest compared to, say, William Shawcross’s Sideshow or Michael Herr’s Dispatches.
The obvious explanation is not as ingenuous as it may appear: the majority of Western correspondents and commentators adopted their idiosyncratic approach to the Indochina War precisely because other journalists had already adopted that approach. To put it more directly, it was fashionable (this was, after all, the age of Radical Chic) to be “a critic of the American war.”
Decisive in the case of the Americans, who set the tone, was the normally healthy adversary relationship between the U.S. press and the U.S. government. American newspapermen have often felt, with some justification, that if an administration affirmed a controversial fact, that fact—if not prima facie false—was at the least suspect. As the lies of successive administrations regarding Indochina escalated, that conviction became the credo of the press. The psychological process that began with the unfounded optimism of President John F. Kennedy’s ebullient “New Frontiersmen,” who were by and large believed, ended with the disastrous last stand of Richard Nixon’s dour palace guard, who were believed by no one.
The reaction against official mendacity was initially healthy but later became distorted, self-serving, and self-perpetuating. A faulty syllogism was unconsciously accepted: Washington was lying consistently; Hanoi contradicted Washington; therefore Hanoi was telling the truth.
You can read the rest here:
http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietnam/Readings/elegant.htm
And you can explain why you view the imposition of a totalitarian communist regime on the millions of South Vietnamese as good policy, whereas US opposition to that totalitarian regime is viewed as “rotten heart” policy. If there’s any justice, the Buddhists will be right, and you’ll have to come back as one born and living in the totalitarian paradise that surely must be south Viet Nam.
You might also read this:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/vietnamese-dissidents-trial-mockery-justice-20100120
Wonderful folks, your Red Viet friends. Pity that they don’t have our “rotten policy” of free speech, free press, and this thing called democracy. But, never mind, right, as they were “liberating” heroes. I’ve no time for such “heroes”.
Slappy : 20 December 2010 at 12:54 pm
Good to see your detailed response and your contribution to this debate. As somebody who was a Paralegal for more than a few years, I note and appreciate your points on privilege. Undoubtedly there is a dichotomy there.
If this guy Bradley is the document source, then unfortunately yes, there appears to be a psychologically flawed and troubled young man involved. However I stress the word ‘appears’ as I have no doubt that State officialdom is already at work in the mis- information and dis information game regarding this individual. There is also a question over the hacker that turned him in, was this a one off or is he a paid FBI informant ?
Let us localized these privacy and privilege issues to Southern Ireland for the moment !
We have as you know come through the most horrendous child sex abuse revelations here and they are still ongoing, in fact the latest revelations indicates for the first time that there was a paedophile clerical sex ring involved. The country and public was kept in ignorance on this as all these cases, such as were prosecuted, were ‘In Camera’ and the details never made it into the public arena.
While supposedly this was done to protect the child, de facto it allowed the various vested interests establishments to carry on behind closed doors and it is only following intensive judicial enquiries that some of this horror got out into the public domain.
Michael McDowell was one of the mast forceful and combative personalities ever to occupy the Minister For Justice office, he was a well experienced debater from student days, larger than life public personalities, a barrister of long experience and a senior council. A private detective the late Billy Flynn send in hundreds of letters to the Dep of Justice and the Garda Hq regarding the activities of a corrupt division over a four to five year period detailing complaint after complaint.
Mike as Minister For Justice could not get access to all these letters, the Department Of Justice simply refused and Michale McDowell as Minister for Justice had to come like a thief in the night to Billy Flynn private house under the cover of darkness to read copies of letters send to to the former Minister Of Justice.
( Works the same way accross the pond : when Michael Foot got into government he was denied access to the file that the Security Services held on him ! )
I as a paralegal but the small team together that had so called Free Legal Aid as doled out at the discretion of the Department Of Justice declared unconstitutional. Prior to this a Legal Aid Panel when ‘assessing’ the suitability of the applicants for free legal aid, de facto tried the case and imposed a settlement. If the the parties did not agree they backed the most compliant one, gave them legal aid which left the weaker party and victim without legal representation or the means to aquire it.
The judicial system went along with that and back to their well tended suburban rose gardens while leaving what in most cases were victim women further victimized. Any attempt to publicize this was met by the ‘in camera’ rule and the journalist or press concerned were hauled before the court. The issues of privacy and privilege were used to deny a public right to know and injustice was knowing perpetrated.
How many lawyers refused to operate the old system ? Not one bloody one ! Now it is fathers and mens rights that are trampled on by the courts on a systematic and ongoing basis and again the ‘in camera’ rule is uses to prevent a full and free publicly informed discussion.
Our first major scandal enquiry of modern vintage concerned the Beef Tribunal, I was approached by a US East Coast Network TV to help with the research on that one, and shadowed at every meeting and indeed for six weeks round the clock during that period, by Special Branch. Millions of public money ‘went west’ and was wasted.
The enquiry brought no results either only another fudge. The only conviction and jail time was that of Susan O’Keeffe the journalist who broke the story as she refused to reveal her sources that led to the enquiry.
It now transpires that the Minister Of Finance in the current banking crisis is the village idiot of European Finance Ministers. not one figure he has given for anything has been accurate or even in the ballpark. He has also lied and fudged his way through to date. The night of the crash he visited a financial journalist at his home to ask for advice and it appears that at that stage the saying ‘headless chicken’ is apt.
David Mc Williams disclosed the contents of that meeting disclosed the Brian Lenihan mood and views at that privileged meeting. It was the first and to date one of the few real insights we got into the behind close doors thinking and based on that it is hardly surprising that the establishment want to keep the lid on that particular pot.
There will always be a dichotomy between a public right to know and an individual or institutions’ right to privacy. Both parties can make absolute arguments for their stance and the only certainty is that there can be no absolutes, or at least very, very few such as Attorney/Client privilege. However one has only to look at the Watergate issue to see how that was abused right, left and centre…….. by parties who perpetrated and covered up and who were in the main lawyers.
It can and must come down to a case by case basis. If Blair and Bush mislead the public and broke the law to foist this war for manufactured and bogus reasons on the public, then the public has a right to know how and why. This is about as close as we are likely to get in finding out as to what really was and is going on.
I may be living under a misapprehension. Maybe a lawyer or a paralegal can help out. As an officer of the Court, I thought a lawyer is obliged to turn over any direct evidence he uncovers that would prove his client’s guilt. which is why a lawyer would never ask his client ” Did you do it?”
A solicitor has absolute client / Lawyer privilege where there can be free and total communication in confidence, save of course as in Northern Ireland where many such communications were bugged ! There have also been Southern allegations of the same thing happening.
As with a priest in confession, where there is a mass murderer involved, to give an extreme example, and there is a very real possibility and probability that such people will again kill, then there is a grey area there where the obligation to the individual must be balanced against the obligations to society. This is ‘Slappy’ country and I will hand over to him!
A barrister is in another area, they are briefed by a solicitor knowing the facts on the best possible defense and there is supposed to be a forensic legal condom there in that a barrister believe their clients innocence and their guilt if any is never discussed. If they learn of a clients guilt they can only advise and plead on mitigation.
Explains a lot about our Barrister Minister Of Finance and his ever changing perceptions of reality !
When joeCanuck @ 3:44 pm and others start implying “guilt”, I get puzzled.
Guilt of what? And where?
The sexual assaults involve Swedish jurisdiction; but it wasn’t the Swedes who appealed against giving Assange bail — it was the London government. Mmm, odd that. Even if Assange is returned to Sweden (which might, indeed, be his least-worst option), it’s going to take the US authorities some effort to overcome the 1961 extradition treaty which excludes political crimes. Surely, if there is a “crime” in US terms, it is a political one.
Then we’d need to consider the state of play in the US. At the very worst, Assange would need to be arraigned as a “co-conspirator”. It would probably be impossible to charge him with leaking secret material: that was what the newspapers did in publishing the wikileaks stuff. Then there’s the Supreme Court decison of 1971 over the Pentagon Papers [http://openjurist.org/403/us/713/new-york-times-company-v-united-states]. That one went 6-3 against the government, with Justice Hugo Black writing the First Amendment exculpation:
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
At some stage, then, the Supreme Court might need to review the federal court decision on US v Morison, a disturbing case which President Clinton managed to hoof into the long grass with his final-day list of pardons. There’s a legal opinion on the whole can-of-worms, prepared by the Congressional Research Service, accessible at http://www.scribd.com/doc/45111105/WIKILEAKS-LEAKS-TO-THE-PRESS-OF-CLASSIFIED-INFORMATION-RARELY-PROSECUTED. That title in itself speaks volumes.
Malcolm,
I wasn’t in the least referring to any implied guilt in the Assange case. I was querying the absoluteness of the client/lawyer priviledge. Just seeking information.
joeCanuck @ 5:51 pm:,/b>
Noted. I’m sorry if I suggested anything else.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/20/rundle-police-procedures-ignored-in-assange-interviews/
So some get the point, this isn’t about serving the establishment or Orwell in reverse. Query: why do we have the attorney-client privilege, the doctor-patient privilege, and the spousal privilege? Because those relationships won’t work if the party needing to make disclosure has to fear that the substance of any such disclosure may be revealed to third persons?
What an utterly ridiculous and asinine comparison. To begin with, what is said between one man and his doctor does not have an impact on the lives of others, does not have the potential to lead to the deaths of millions. Nor is the doctor elected to represent. And in any event, for it to even be analogous to governments keeping secrets, it would require the doctor/solicitor to be keeping secrets from his client.
And, Stones, what beggars belief is that you are apparently too dim to understand that the folks you quote were speaking to INFORMATION IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
More nonsense. For another example of the hypocrisy of the US govt, you probably missed it, but one of the stated aims of current govt was to ‘Protect Whistleblowers’…specifically….
Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda
And Liberman’s VOICE act seeks to do amongst other things…
supports journalists who take great risk to report on political events in Iran, including those surrounding the presidential election;
So if Iran has secrets it wants kept, you’d be happy to see those brave journalists ‘dealt with’? You think Liberman would hand back iranian state secrets? Catch a grip.
Lets not kid ourselves here folks, Slapp would not be crying foul if it was Iranian or Chinese secrets being laid out in the open, the problem is its his own govts (or one he likes) whose skidmarks are now on show.
“Alias, is extradition really just a formality inside the E.U.?” – Joe
Yes, and thousands of EAWs are now issued by foreign states for British citizens every year on the most frivolous of charges, who have no idea that they have been duly stripped by EU law of their former rights as British citizens under British law to be protected from unjust arrest and imprisonment or unfair trials in foreign states.
Under the EAW procedure, the British courts have no right to consider if there is prima facie evidence against an accused person. Instead they are required to have confidence that the requesting state has good evidence and is acting in good faith irrespective of whether or not there is any foundation for that confidence. Ergo, Mr Assange must simply be arrested in the UK and handed over to a foreign state with no consideration possible by a UK court of the merits of his arrest, detention or extradition or whether it is simply a bad faith attempt to detain him while the US decides how it can deprive him of his freedom by malicious prosecution in its territory.
The UK has surrendered its sovereignty over its extradition procedure, removing this fundamental protection from its citizens, in order to assist a regime that has devised the EAW as an Orwellian tool to supress liberty and free speech in the EU by making all people within its member states fear the possibility of arrest and extradition for flimsiest of transgressions that now looms over them.
“I may be living under a misapprehension. Maybe a lawyer or a paralegal can help out. As an officer of the Court, I thought a lawyer is obliged to turn over any direct evidence he uncovers that would prove his client’s guilt. which is why a lawyer would never ask his client ” Did you do it?””
Here in the US, well, at the federal level there is no rule of evidence, but a common law body of caselaw establishing and defining the contours of the privilege. At the state level, here in Hawaii, the privilege is defined by Rule 503 of the Hawaii Rules of Evidence:
(b) General rule of privilege. A client has a privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent any other person from disclosing confidential communications made for the purpose of facilitating the rendition of professional legal services to the client (1) between the client or the client’s representative and the lawyer or the lawyer’s representative, or (2) between the lawyer and the lawyer’s representative, or (3) by the client or the client’s representative or the lawyer or a representative of the lawyer to a lawyer or a representative of a lawyer representing another party in a pending action and concerning a matter of common interest, or (4) between representatives of the client or between the client and a representative of the client, or (5) among lawyers and their representatives representing the same client.
(c) Who may claim the privilege. The privilege may be claimed by the client, the client’s guardian or conservator, the personal representative of a deceased client, or the successor, trustee, or similar representative of a corporation, association, or other organization, whether or not in existence. The person who was the lawyer or the lawyer’s representative at the time of the communication shall claim the privilege on behalf of the client unless expressly released by the client.
(d) Exceptions. There is no privilege under this rule:
(1) Furtherance of crime or fraud. If the services of the lawyer were sought, obtained, or used to enable or aid anyone to commit or plan to commit what the client knew or reasonably should have known to be a crime or fraud;
(2) Prevention of crime or fraud. As to a communication reflecting the client’s intent to commit a criminal or fraudulent act that the lawyer reasonably believes is likely to result in death or substantial bodily harm, or in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another;
(3) Claimants through same deceased client. As to a communication relevant to an issue between parties who claim through the same deceased client, regardless of whether the claims are by testate or intestate succession or by inter vivos transaction;
(4) Breach of duty by lawyer or client. As to a communication relevant to an issue of breach of duty by the lawyer to the client or by the client to the lawyer;
(5) Document attested by lawyer. As to a communication relevant to an issue concerning an attested document to which the lawyer is an attesting witness;
(6) Joint clients. As to a communication relevant to a matter of common interest between two or more clients if the communication was made by any of them to a lawyer retained or consulted in common, when offered in an action between any of the clients; or
(7) Lawyer’s professional responsibility. As to a communication the disclosure of which is required or authorized by the Hawaii rules of professional conduct for attorneys.
And the add-on in the criminal context, from case law here in Hawaii:
When a prosecutor seeks arguably privileged testimony, the prosecutor must either (1) give notice to the person who might claim the privilege and the person’s counsel, so that the person or the person’s attorney can seek judicial review of any claim of privilege or waive the privilege, or (2) give notice to the person’s counsel and, if the person’s counsel does not raise the privilege and seek judicial review, the prosecutor must seek the court’s ruling on the privilege issue. 97 H. 512, 40 P.3d 914.
And, Joe, remember, my first duty is simply to advise my client on what I condider to be the best course of action given the circumstance. I simply cannot do that without knowing what, exactly, the circumstance is. And my client won’t be forthcoming with the circumstance unless the disclosure is protected. The same concern applies here.
Lastly, to more fully state my position, as the one soul so aptly wrote:
What Orwell calls the “liberal habit of mind” is the habit of mind that seeks to make one’s beliefs beholden to something outside one’s ideological preferences…For Orwell, a liberal is someone who is free to arrive at his own verdict concerning the facts, someone who possesses a “free intelligence”–a “type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls”.
So Stones knows, that’s why I called him “anti-American”. Not in the sense of bearing an animus against every man, woman and child in America, but in the precise sense of letting external reality and objective fact be damned in favor of the ideologically pure “history” of Fisk, Pilger, etc. All that 1984 is, is a depiction of our humanity discarding the search for external reality and objective fact in favor of a party-personal orthodoxy-ideology.
Here, that phenomenon has rather manifest itself by some throwing the two women of relevance under the bus in favor of their ideology that says that America simply can’t be trusted and is all that is evil in the world. In other instances, they’ll blather on about compassion, etc., for the alleged victims of rape, but in their ideological heirarchy, their usual ideology respecting alleged victims of rape pales in comparison to their ideology that America can’t be trusted and is all that is evil in the world. And for an example in classic Orwellian doublethink, they’ll forgot that they even believe in the former orthodoxy at all, at least for now, but when next time it becomes necessary, then suddenly they will recall their orthodoxy respecting the appropriate treatment of alleged victims of rape.
In the meantime, like Alias, and some others here and elsewhere, they won’t even bother to establish the law of Sweden as regards rape (who needs external reality and objective fact), as instead they’ll simply parrot the rather erroneous notion that having sex w/o a condom in Sweden is, ipso facto, rape. And that because such supports their ideology that America can’t be trusted and is all that is evil in the world.
The even more pathetic aspect to the whole sordid and sorry affair is that even when corrected, they’ll swat the correction aside as if it were as irrevelant to the analysis as is a gnat. That’s how much concern they have for external reality and objective fact, none. America simply can’t be trusted and is all that is evil in the world. Nothing whatsoever can stand in the way of that “truth”, not even external reality and objective fact. And pity anyone, including the two women, the Swedish prosecutor, and whoever else is perceived to oppose that “truth”.
Almost forgot, but for Stones, can you read the English language? There is no “whistleblowing” in revealing stolen confidential govt communciations that describe the man in charge in Belarus as “disturbed” and “bizarre”. Nor is there any “whistleblowing” in telling us that the Saudis fund terror. We’ve known that for years and it’s the single reason why some of us have been objecting to Saudi funding of Wahhabi nutcases here in the US for at least a decade now (ie., years before 9/11).
The problem you have is that you simply refuse to see that your hero isn’t limiting himself to disclosure of what he perceives as crime. Instead, he releases whatever he thinks will damage America in practice and in the image of the world. And that’s why we can read that our man in Minsk thinks that their man in Belarus is “disturbed” and “bizarre”. That isn’t whistleblowing, but an attack on America, and by extension, every American as well. And your failure to appreciate that reality is precisely why I wrote prior that you are anti-American. You haven’t even bothered to ask yourself why the scores of other regimes with far worse records than the US have not been the subject of Assange’s effort. Why not? America simply cannot be trusted and is all that is evil in the world. That’s why not.
Truly lastly, your last bit there is laughable. If my government stole secrets, I wouldn’t know about them. Why on earth would you tell the one penetrated that you have them penetrated? All that such a revelation would do is serve to have them eliminate the penetration and if this is human asset penetration and not computer hacking, such a revelation would only serve to get someone killed. Here, read up on US Senator Pat Leahy:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/pat_leahy_a_canary_in_a_data_m.html
I remember him going on the tv following that one operation, the one where his loose lips got our man killed. As another source puts that matter:
“Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, inadvertantly disclosed a top secret communications intercept during a [1985] television interview,” reported the San Diego Union-Tribune in a 1987 editorial criticizing Congress’ penchant for partisan leaks.
“The intercept, apparently of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s telephone conversations, made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered American citizens,” the paper said, adding, “The reports cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative involved in the operation.”
So as I said, if some don’t play the role of Leaky Leahy, I won’t even know that we’ve stolen the info. Protects our means of penetration, human lives included. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Unlike some, I don’t wish to throw humans under the bus, to include the two women at issue here and our man in Egypt who Leahy got killed via his loose lips that sink ships. By the way, I remember the incident on tv, because I saw it myself on original broadcast. I remember telling myself, out loud, and not so much to my mom, who was watching the show with me…what did he just say…oh Lord…
For one more, Pat is why I doubt Julian’s motives. Pat wasn’t trying to strike a blow for democracy, freedom and/or transparency. He simply had an ego to stoke, and what better way than to go on tv and divulge that we’re so smart that we had the inside goods on this one and that’s how we managed to pull it off. Wasn’t conscious on his part, I agree, as his ego simply took control and he didn’t consciously ponder the consequence of what he was saying, I mean, what fun would that be for the ego.
To relate this to Julian, you wonder why Sweden is where it is now? Because Julian is the enemy of every govt in the world. Might be the US getting assanged now, but could be Sweden next. Julian is apparently so damn narcissistic that he fails to realize that reality. An opposing govt might be gleeful at the outing of the US, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t recognize the potential danger to them that Julian poses. And so rather than posit any US conspiracy with Sweden here, simply posit Sweden thinking that maybe Julian outs them next. Harder to do that from a prison cell. And so we are clear, I am not saying that anyone is fabricating anything, simply that some are availing themselves of a legal means to make the Julian mission that much more difficult. And given that their Swedish job is to protect Swedish govt secrets, who can blame them. Might be them next. Who can say. I can’t.
Perhaps one day your man Julian will remember the good ole Appalachian saying, to wit, don’t step in nothin’ you can’t wipe off.
Slapp, you rather irrelevant cut and paste regarding attorney/client analogy has been dealt with already. But your contention that
There is no “whistleblowing” in revealing stolen confidential govt communciations that describe the man in charge in Belarus as “disturbed” and “bizarre”. Nor is there any “whistleblowing” in telling us that the Saudis fund terror.
Is rather a childish attempt to cherry pick from the stuff Wikileaks has released thus far. Not only do we have the hidden civilian death tolls from Iraq and Afghanistan, the obscene video of the slaughter of civilians by an attack helicopter, the orders from Lady Macbeth herself to illegally spy on and gather personal information, DNA etc from other diplomats, Netanyahu’s behind the scenes demand for lots of preconditions, whilst publicly denying the need for them, and most recently the revelation of Britain training a Bangladeshi ‘death squad’ (who the US even refused to train in certain areas) and many others. Im sure I left out some other juicy ones. There’s been plenty of whistleblowing, not just the type of diplomatic tittle tattle you rather cynically tried to paint Wikileaks as merely exposing. But Im sure you knew that already…right?
Your continued attempt to infer me as anti-american is not only childish but quite ignorant from the fact you also have to ask…
You haven’t even bothered to ask yourself why the scores of other regimes with far worse records than the US have not been the subject of Assange’s effort. Why not?
Could it be that a certain Private Manning was in the employ of the US defense establishment, and not the Russian or Chinese DoD’s. You must be under the illusion that Assange broke into the Pentagon or some such. If you are in receipt of classified information from somebody working inside Shell, you seriously expect them to provide classified information from Texaco as well? Catch a grip. And just to finish Slapp, but you may not be aware of it. But with all your continued attempts to infer guilt upon Assange, and I think we both agree, rape is a horrible crime, but its commonly accepted, as MV highlighted above, theres a little concept we have of ‘innocent until PROVEN guilty’. In your haste to shoot the messenger for mail being delivered that you would rather return to sender, you seem to have forgotten that.
Here is an interesting insight on Julians background that surfaced in the last couple of days. At very least it shows that there are quite complex and hidden forces at work here. It was blogger on Henrymarko.com site.
I post the reference here for your information and without comment !
Julian Assange’s Ties to Nazi Cult (December 27, 2010)
( If the link is not live google henrymarkow.com and scroll down to the article concerned.)
I can see that the link did not come up active !
Google…… henrymakow.com……. as suggested…… (site name spelled wrong above)….. and scroll down to the Julian article !
Musterview @ 12:37 & 12:43 pm:
That could be the same Henry Makow, PH.D., who maintains that:
and also identified the generic link between feminism, communism and 9/11:
Sorry, Munsterview, I prefer my paranoia in smaller doses.
MV,
For some reason those writings remind me of the old saw:
To every complicated problem, there is a simple solution, which is wrong.
Yes, that could be fact and indeed is!
To deal with the Julian article first, this will take the reader directly to the article concerned. As far as I am concerned it gives some very interesting background detail on Julian himself as a child and youth and on some of the other unseen forces influncing his case.
savethemales.ca – Julian Assange’s Ties to Nazi Cult
I must say however I am somewhat surprised that you cannot separate message from messenger here. I have been an avid reader from childhood and one of the first things my National School teacher encouraged me in when directing my reading was to always seek out a contrary viewpoint and keep an open mind.
I read everything I could lay hands on regarding the Fenians and 1916, He brought me in a hefty volume on the ‘Life and Times Of Queen Victoria’ from his own library and some of Churchills writings as he did some pro Unionist books. Long before it was even considered in Irish historical sources he got me to see Cromwell apart from the Irish Massacre, to pull back and look at the big picture and see him as a progressive force in England.
In reviewing my reading with me he would switch sides in the argument and I had to give the opposite viewpoint and make the case as coherently pro as I had previously done contra. One of the reasons I contribute to slugger rather than mainstream Republican sites sites is for the wide diversity of political views here ranging from Turgon and David Vance to people like John O’Neill and my self.
Wearing my cultural hat, after a talk on aspects of W B Yeats, when asked for references
on the poet, one of these I give is……. http://www.oswaldmosley.com/william-butler-yeats.htm simply because WB also had a political outlook that for a period was sympathetic to Facism . A significant corpus of his poetry was written during this period and while his flirting with fascism is now the elephant in the academic room that is not discussed, in is never the less central to a significant body of his work.
Should I not refer people to this site because the site per se promotes fascism or should I thrust on those concerned to excercise their own judgement ?
Like Mick, Henry Makow too has a selection of bloggers with a wide diversity of views : my own bloggs on the G20 for example were reposed dozens of times and translated even into Russian. The sites that re-posted range from extreme left through centre to extreme right. and are still showing something thing like 70,000 results when googled
G20 Arrests: “Sue the Bastards!” — Sinn Fein Veteran. – henryMakow
savethemales.ca – G20 Arrests: “Sue the Bastards!” — Sinn Fein
…
What matters to me is the message got out there Internationally, not what sites it was carried on.
While I could not care less if Henry was a card carrying member of The Millitant Leauge Of Atheists, like Mick he operates a site where left wing anti- establishment views like mine get the same hearing as those of rightwing bloggers. It is the message that counts and the message stands or falls on it’s response.
Henry’s site also fulfills a very important function, as somebody of Jewish descent and a believing Jew, who had immediate relatives murdered in Hitlers Death Camps, both he and other dissenting Jews can be critical of International Zionism and openly say things about the Isralie State that if said by somebody in my situation, would have posters like ‘Alias’ waving the ‘anti-semitic’ card around and crying foul.
I do not agree with all Henry’s views no more than he would with mine or we both collectivly would with many other bloggers, yet it is a site that is seldom without a weekly article or two of interest or significance among those posted. This Julian background article is one such interesting piece of background material that raise quite a few questions.
Munsterview @ 2010 at 4:54 pm:
First, here is the hot-link:
http://www.henrymakow.com/stranger_than_fiction_life_of.html
What you will find there is one, Richard Evans, who has come up with a weird thesis.
It goes like this:
¶ Julian Assange’s mother had a second marriage to a musician. This step-father had some unspecified involvement with a deeply-unpleasant New Age group, which he promptly left soon afterwards. When this marriage went sour, Christine Assange/whatever had some difficulty escaping from the relationship, which involved heavy-duty legal actions over another child.
¶ Evans embroiders this as becoming a member of “The White Brotherhood” – aka “The Family” or Santiniketan Park Association, a private psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Melbourne Australia. The “private psychiatric hospital” was, in fact, Newhaven Hospital run by Marion Villimek, a Santiniketan member. The hospital’s dubious practices (many of which were used by NHS psychiatrists) led to its closure in 1992.
¶ That further enables Evans to spin a further fantasy involving LSD, child-abduction, group-marriage, Josef Mengele, the CIA, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
¶ Evans has to admit that Assange himself offers no detailed recollection of this business: to Evans (naturally) that is ground for further suspicion.
Quite what all that has to do with the cables released by wikileaks, or manufactured accusations of Jewish involvement and/or anti-semitism, or indeed the price of fish, needs explanation.
To this rational sole/soul it is too baroque, too over-sauced/sourced for credence. Clear-water Revival or not.
If you really want a conspiracy theory, I gather Assange has also pissed off the Scientologists.
Slappy, RS thinks the US is somewhere between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.
There will be no end to the attempts to discredit the message by trying to character assassinate the messenger.
Slappy, RS thinks the US is somewhere between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.
Not at all. I am merely aware of the fact that there is a vast, vast difference between the publically professed foreign policy aims of the US government and the policies and actions it actually undertakes. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that much Brian.