Wikileaks and the Law

This is something I exclusively mentioned in my first post, the question of whether or not Wikileaks is able to act within the parameters of the law with specific regard to first amendment rights. Julian Assange has been distinguished as Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year' but is this rightly so? US congress passed The Espionage Act of 1917 in 1917 (appropriately) the act states:

1)      Any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States...or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy.

2)      To convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. This was punishable by death or by imprisonment for not more than 30 years or both.

If this does not demonstrate Wikileaks’ conflict with the law allow me to elaborate. This is basically demonstrating that anything that may compromise the US military is by law espionage. Although some may beg to differ we need to realize that since this passed congress it is now law, and it has been tried and proven. In law it is the student’s duty to recognize the importance of precedent:

1)      Schenck v. United States, 249, U.S. 47; an anti-war socialist spreading anti-conscription pamphlets during World War 1, the basis of the act.

2)      Gorin v. United States 1941; here the Supreme Court ruled that the leaked information did not have to be directly used against the USA.

3)      Ethel and Julius Rosenberg v. United states 1950; sentenced to death for selling nuclear secrets to the USSR

4)      Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo v. United states 1971; publishing classified pentagon documents (the pentagon papers) to The New York Times, released but not acquitted

5)      The New York Times v. United States 1971; trial dropped, although Supreme Court Justices agree that the defense was in violation of the act.

6)      Alfred Zehe v. United States 1983; a Non-American tried under the act, plead guilty and served an 8 year sentence (was later exchanged with four other East Germans for twenty-five Prisoners in Eastern Europe)

7)      Johnathan Pollard v. United States 1986; selling information to Israel

8)      Samuel Loring Morison v. United States 1985; sold satellite photos of Russian nuclear weapons, convicted of espionage and two accounts of theft of government property.

9)      Kenneth Wayne Ford jr. v. United States 2003; former NSA officer who withheld classified documents in his home for years after leaving the NSA.

I believe from the above list of precedents, which is only a handful of the conviction under the act, we can recognize the illegality of what Assange is doing. The number one counter arguments have been simply reduced firstly is that the law is immoral. Immoral laws are passed all of the time, but whether or not the law is moral we need to abide by it as global citizens, it is a romantic and foolish notion to think we supersede legal procedure. Secondly people question because he is an Australian citizen, but we just look at Alfred Zehe v. United States, an East German sentenced to prison in the USA for leaking United States documents. Also if the leaked documents had not been used directly against the USA, the case of Gorin v. United States of 1941 confirms that the information need not be used to be considered espionage. If we can conclude that there is precedent and law prohibiting the actions of Julian Assange. We need to also look at the actions of Bradley Manning who was convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice articles 92 and 134 specifically: "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system in connection with the leaking of a video of a helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007," and "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source and disclosing classified information concerning the national defense with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States." Considering there is this much precedent set to what extent can we say that Julian Assange is not guilty of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and consenting to Bradley Manning’s violation of The Uniform Code of Military Justice? Simply put we cannot. And hereby I return to my original point in my first post: “Wikileaks is not currently capable of acting in the interest of democratic societies or within the parameters of their laws.”  

Obama and Chavez

This is the problem with freedom of speech, some people really don't need to spread their ideas. Mike Whitney is an pigheaded, uninformed blight on the Global Research web page, he has not considered the contextual applications of the very different presidents. Barack Obama has the misfortune of being in charge of a government where the balance of power is held by his opposition; this greatly limits how much he can do in terms of is party policy. Meanwhile Chavez presidency is in a country which is mostly homogeneous, furthermore if we wins a majority he can begin to 'rule by decree' something democracy opposes. Furthermore, Chavez can be reelected and infinite number of times. Can we agree upon the fundamental differences here? Did you know what Chavez's past political involvements have been? Multiple Military Coup D'Etats. He tried for years to kill the president of Venezuela! The man was a violent revolutionary. Meanwhile Obama was an editor for the Harvard Law Review in his first year, this is the most prestigious position in the ivy league schools.

     In terms of Chavez's opposition of major companies; this is because he is able to do so while Obama cannot. Venezuela is still growing and therefore it is an easy time to root out companies getting major influence in your nation. Meanwhile the oil industries and Coca-Cola have been rooted in the USA for decades, to remove any of these industries would shake an already unstable economy. One needs to be aware of the circumstance and political climate of a nation before they can even begin to  make claims like this, I am not doubting Chavez's ability as a president but I am doubting how informed Whitney is in writing this article. When we begin to toss ideas like this one around we need to realize that some individuals' opinions are more pertinent and more valuable than others, for example my opinion on evolutionary biology (a field i know little about) is not pertinent compared to say that of Richard Dawkins. I would contend that Whitney's opinion, although informed on Chavez, is not contextually informed on both sides of the argument and is not even worth further discussion.

In terms of Chavez being a good man and an ardent guardian of democracy I would just like you to observe who he is speaking to here:

Bank Bailout

To set my argument in motion we need to come to terms on several things. Firstly is that we need to agree on the necessity of the financial stability within the banks in Canada, I'm not only saying this because of the obvious reasons like: the bank needs money; but what I'm trying to communicate is: we need the bank. Secondly, we need to agree upon the necessity of the bailout, we need to realize that as a capitalist society; the banks are a must-have. So to continue I would like to point out some key points to this collection of research.

      To begin we need to recognize that this 'research' is biased in nature, and in my opinion it loses some validity as a result. It acknowledges the obvious points too expected extent and then begins to open fire on the government. Let me establish; I am not a conservative, I will never be one. But the added emphasis on the quotes is a petty attempt to overwhelm the readers focus and read only what they want them to. The actual substance of this argument is lacking without its 'shock and awe' font style. Furthermore the writer point of view is clearly anti-conservative or anti-governmental, in his argument he talks about the fact that there was no parliamentary debate, and here is where his points begin to lose ground.

     What the writer needs to recognize is that not every issue can come to a parliamentary debate; the reasoning is that we would see far too many elections. The educated citizen could tell you that if the governing party fails to pass a bill; they are dissolved and an election is called. So can we afford to see as many as five elections annually? Of course not. The reason that this never met parliament is simple; the issue was too important to have to go through the metaphorical 'cogs of bureaucracy'. Ergo the government decided to bail the banks of their own will. I can agree that it was costly and points out some issues in capitalism; but I fail to see any point in the article; it was just meaningless conjecture really.   

G20

This is basically in response to the questions of police brutality or violations of civil liberties or even fundamental human rights in the riots at the G20 summit last summer. To begin we need to establish any circumstances that could potentially effect our determinations. To what extent do our civil liberties cover, specifically if laws are violated on mass? One could easily say that out civil liberties are absolute and are not able to be violated by nature. Simply put that is wrong, our civil liberties have been disbanded before like in the 1970 October crisis. But whether or not this was necessarily correct is another issue within itself. But given the precedent we can determine that our civil liberties are not absolute or concrete.

The violent incidents within the G20 protests began with simple crimes like vandalism, and would eventually escalate; does this validate the response by the G20 police? The principle used to approach this situation can be simply described as "better safe than sorry". Given the fact that police cruisers were set on fire and there was in fact violence amongst some small anarchist groups, was it acceptable to overtake the civil liberties amongst the peaceful protesters? Let's view this from a psychoanalytical standpoint, what do we know in terms of mob mentality? We know it is infectious and we know that when it spreads it becomes pathogenic and uncontrollable. Could the police afford the proliferation of the anarchists’ mindset? On one level it is clear that they could not afford such spreading but does that give them authority to the point of violent installment of control over the people?

The number one counterargument for this viewpoint is the actions taken that could be deemed excessive or just plain brutal; take for instance the amputee and the French student. The amputee's incident seems to be a story of animalistic police brutality, I am not saying I support the actions taken here by the G20 police but I am saying that I understand them. They were acting simply as humans they were motivated by self-interest and self-preservation, what I'm saying is they acted this way to try and remove and capacity for violence amongst the protestors because they did not want to jeopardize their own well-being. Given violent actions that already targeted police can anybody honestly tell me they would act in such a way that the protestors were able to act in any way they wish including digression to violence? The issue of natural law and "what would the logical man do?" Is one frequently used in court defense, let's translate; if you were a G20 police officer would you respect the peoples' freedom to demonstrate even given some of the violent outbreaks throughout the city? If you were a G20 police officer and you knew that violent anarchist demonstrators were wearing black clothes, would you feel comfortable around demonstrators in black? If you say 'no', you're lying, you cannot contradict human nature. In terms of the arrests made at the University of Toronto, I do not condone the fact that arrests were made hand over fist but the action was understandable from the viewpoint of the police because it was their instruction to maintain control. The fact that they were armed is not able to be contested, they were a tactical response squad, a subdivision off of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) When this unit enters a building they are armed regardless of circumstance, end of question. Their instructions were to find people who matched pictures, the fact the French girl was arrested was an unfortunate coincidence. We also need to question some of the word of mouth stories on shows like The Fifth Estate. People can lie or stretch the truth so it is more lenient to them, furthermore the snips of the interview with the chief of police were skewed if not entirely quoted out of context, simply put you cannot trust television absolutely, you need to look into the issue yourself.         

Law and Wikileaks

Wikileaks, the new internet sensation has been heralded as a new face for government clarity. Wikileaks has been releasing documents that they have been given. Documents the government has decided are too sensitive for the people to see. Julian Assange is now the enemy of democratic governments and may face prosecution. Many people have jumped up in support of wikileaks and claim Julian Assange to be the new face of accountable government. But is Julian Assange the face we the people really need? After watching the Doha Debates, I can see valid reasoning to either side, government clarity is something that any informed citizen can appreciate but to the same extent, is the clarity safe or failproof? Men in the debates postulate that the clarity given by wikileaks is skewed in itself, but is skewed clarity clear? Of course not, but we also need to ask if people and democratic society can survive the clarity Assange proposes? During World War 2 Winston Churchill was quoted "if the people knew what was going on across the channel; the war would end tomorrow" can the same be said for modern society? I would agree but I do not think the public response would end at the end of war, I believe that there would be much larger repercussions, maybe even the disestablishment of government. Anybody who asks if that may be a good thing is clearly not giving it any real thought. Can we, as a people craving freedom and simultaneous order afford a collapse in government? No, civil liberties and rights are only as absolute as the government that provides them. Let's suppose Assange continues, can we afford to jeopardize the global community? In an age where governments are so intertwined, the end of diplomacy would mark the end of human flourishing.

Furthermore in terms of law are the means by which wikileaks obtains it's information, in terms of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange took classified from a private in the military, Assange then released the information. We cannot act on the assumption that Assange did not know the information he had received was classified, to that extent can we not confirm that Assange was acting outside of the law? Under what circumstances can we ignore a breach of the law? Are we saying that it is acceptable to mould law in such a way that we can have Assange's work as a golden exception to laws involving privacy? We also need to realize that Assange is not only complicating the privacy of governments but the privacy of the common people, What I am trying to say is wikileaks is not perfect and is entirely incapable of functioning within the parameters of the law or in the general interest of the people.