Around 8pmest every night
Thanks to Julie Gulden, 4Freedom and bronte17 for nominating the Wikileaks Informationthread series and Wikileaks Informationthread 7 for KOscars. Thanks guys. And it's the comments that make these diaries, so thanks to all of the Informationthread "heads" who have made each of these diaries filled with amazing information. Hat tip to all of you!!
Scarce's diary with video of Judith Miller making an ass out of herself
Video:
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Disturbing NYTimes article about a cable that shows how diplomats pushed for Boeing "Diplomats Help Push Jet Sales on Global Market"
To a greater degree than previously known, diplomats are a big part of the sales force, according to hundreds of cables released by WikiLeaks, which describe politicking and cajoling at the highest levels.
It is not surprising that the United States helps American companies doing business abroad, given that each sale is worth thousands of jobs and that their foreign competitors do the same. But like the other WikiLeaks cables, these offer a remarkably detailed look at what had previously been only glimpsed — in this case, the sales war between American diplomats and their European counterparts.
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"That is the reality of the 21st century; governments are playing a greater role in supporting their companies, and we need to do the same thing," Mr. Hormats, a former top executive at Goldman Sachs, said in an interview.
Said Tim Neale, a Boeing spokesman, "The way I look at it, it levels the playing field."
But Charles A. Hamilton, a former Defense Department official who is a consultant to Airbus, said the government’s advocacy undermined arguments by Boeing and the United States that Airbus had an unfair advantage because of its subsidies from European governments.
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One pitch came from the highest levels, the cables show. In late 2006, Israel Hernandez, a senior Commerce Department official, hand-delivered a personal letter from President George W. Bush to the Jeddah office of King Abdullah, urging the king to buy as many as 43 Boeing jets to modernize Saudi Arabian Airlines and 13 jets for the Saudi royal fleet, which serves the extended royal family.
The king read the letter from Mr. Bush, the State Department cable says, and announced that Boeing jets were his favorites. He said he had just turned down two new planes Airbus offered, opting instead for a slightly used Boeing 747.
But before he would commit to a mostly Boeing fleet, the king had a request.
"I am instructing you," he told Mr. Hernandez politely, according to the State Department cable, "to speak to the president and all concerned authorities," as the king "wanted to have all the technology that his friend, President Bush, had on Air Force One." Once he had his own high-tech plane, with the world’s most advanced telecommunications and defense equipment — the king told Mr. Hernandez that " ‘God willing,’ he will make a decision that will ‘please you very much.’ "
A State Department spokesman confirmed last week that the United States had authorized an "upgrade" to King Abdullah’s plane, adding "for security reasons, we won’t discuss specifics."
Government/business. Same thing in the "reality of the 21st century." Sigh.
Darrell Issa hates the constitution and the rule of law
US Attorney General Eric Holder is hurting the administration by failing to prosecute the founder of the WikiLeaks website and may need to step down, a top Republican said Sunday.
Republican Representative Darrell Issa, who takes over as the chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform committee, said that "the world is laughing at this paper tiger we've become."
He blamed Holder for failing to bring criminal charges against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which has published hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic and military cables.
"He's hurting this administration. If you're hurting the administration, either stop hurting the administration, or leave," Issa told Fox News Sunday.
"Ultimately the next whistle-blower bill has to deal with WikiLeaks and the loss of these classified documents in a mature, bipartisan way," he added.
He said such legislation would be swiftly taken up by his committee, "so the diplomats can do their job with confidence and people can talk to our government with confidence."
A laughing stock because of what we do, Mr. Issa. Idiot. How dare we not charge Assange with fake laws!! We suck.
El Pais defense of publishing Wikileaks cables is a MUST read.
WikiLeaks: Israel preparing for 'large scale war' - I guess this is part of the Wikileaks/teh Jooos conspiracy that idiots have been throwing out.
CNN disinfo on Wikileaks and Julian Assange. They are trying to outgun every other "news" networks with how they follow the 8 media lies about Wikileaks :
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The Basics
Greg Mitchell's Wikileaks blog at The Nation
Unofficial WikiLeaks information resource
Wikileaks cable page
Jan 1 cables - no cables listed for today....
Wikileaks Twitter
Glenn Greenwald
Kbucket roundup of cables
Wikirebels documentary
@youtube
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
@Swedish TV
Full Doc
Al Jazeera English interview
It's about 22mins long and well worth it. Again, here is the exchange that I think is VERY important at about the 10min mark:
When the host asks Baruch Weiss, a former U.S. Government lawyer,
if leaking classified information is a crime in the United States, he says:
"I'm going to say it twice because noone will believe me the first time, but the answer is usually no. No.
There is no statute on the books in the United States that says 'Thou shalt not leak classified information.' There is no statute of that sort. Congress tried to pass one during the Clinton administration and Clinton Vetoed it and for a very good reason. And the good reason is, that in the United States there is a huge over-classification problem. There is a huge amount of material that should not be classified that is."
Julian Assange- A Wanted Man
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Near v. Minnesota
Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment). Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called Near the Court's "first great press case."[1]
It was later a key precedent in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), in which the Court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.
New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.
President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press under the First Amendment was subordinate to a claimed Executive need to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment did protect the New York Times' right to print said materials.
JFK
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
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And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
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And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
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No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary.
As Julian Assange told Time: "It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society; it's our goal to achieve a more just society."
Tell me what the word is in the comments