This is how the New York Times tried to discredit Manning: shameful paper

[Catherina]

This is how the New York Times tried to discredit Manning: shameful paper

"In August, the newspaper reported Manning's relationship with "a self-described drag queen" and said that as a teenager "classmates made fun of him for being a geek . . . for being http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112905421.html">gay.""

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/this-is-how-new-york-times-tried-to.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Catherina]

2. Pavulon, it was interesting knowing you. Goodbye n/t

[Pavulon]

3. Later, Equality is a great thing

that means if you are stupid, commit felonies that carry massive fines and prison terms, the evidence convicts you. Especially electronic evidence you can read your self right now on the internet.

His sexual orientation is irrelevant to his status as a shitty person, liar, and felon.

[Dr.Phool]

50. "When the truth is treasonous, we're all in trouble"

[TheWatcher]

54. Don't mind that one. He's just pissed that we haven't gone to War with Iran yet.

Or started ANY new War actually, and That The Police State around us still affords us any Liberty or Rights at all, so he's just letting off some steam.

He's had a hard on for it for so long, years now, and hell even the commercials on TV tell you how dangerous more than four hours is.

Amazing he's still alive, to be honest.

:evilgrin:

[Ken Burch]

4. Secrecy is the crime, not telling the people what the regimes are doing.

Secrecy just gets ordinary people killed.

[Catherina]

5. Yes indeed. The Economist got something really right today

The careerists scattered about the world in America's intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America's unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.

If secrecy is necessary for national security and effective diplomacy, it is also inevitable thatthe prerogative of secrecy will be used to hide the misdeeds of the permanent state and its privileged agents. I suspect that there is no scheme of government oversight that will not eventually come under the indirect control of the generals, spies, and foreign-service officers it is meant to oversee. Organisations such as WikiLeaks, which are philosophically opposed to state secrecy and which operate as much as is possible outside the global nation-state system, may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy. Some folks ask, "Who elected Julian Assange?" The answer is nobody did, which is, ironically, why WikiLeaks is able to improve the quality of our democracy. Of course, those jealously protective of the privileges of unaccountable state power will tell us that people will die if we can read their email, but so what? Different people, maybe more people, will die if we can't.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/11/overseeing_state_secrecy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9692238

[Pavulon]

7. Glad that oped serves you position. Post it in LBN..

wait you cant, its oped.

[Pavulon]

6. Get elected to a senate seat

serve on the committee relevant to your concerns. Just don't dump classified information. You live in a representative democracy and so not get a majority rule vote on everything the government does.

Those are the breaks. Secrecy secures HEU (you know the stuff used to make a uranium gun device, a weapon so simple it was never tested before being used) , now that effort is in the clear.

Thanks to julian and bradley manning. How exactly does that help me?

[Common Sense Party]

10. So, we should not have any secrets? NOTHING should be classified?

You must be thrilled with what happened to Valerie Plame.

[Catherina]

11. There have been many threads here explaining how lame that meme is.

To persist with it is even lamer and very telling.

[Common Sense Party]

17. To dodge the question is the lamest.

I haven't seen a single thread on it.

So, should we have secrets, or not?

[laughingliberal]

18. There was a thread this morning about it. Plame's cover was blown because her husband exposed...

the lie the shadow government was selling us. Plame's work was monitoring the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and her husband's trip to Nigeria found the yellow cake story to be bogus. Actually, he was the whistle blower in that case exposing a lie of the government. Cheney broke her cover in order to discredit her husband to continue perpetuating the lie, not to expose a lie our government was telling us.

[pnwmom]

23. So? Assange no doubt broke the cover of many (you're kidding

yourself if you think redacting a few names will help) simply to gain attention.

If he was serious about doing GOOD, rather than simply wreaking havoc, he wouldn't have been releasing 250,000 documents simply because he COULD.

[laughingliberal]

26. No. He didn't break the cover of anyone.

And a person who is exposing the secrets and lies of the government is far different than one who exposes an agent in order to perpetuate more lies and secrets like Cheney did.

Here's what Ellsberg says about covert operations:

Many, if not most, covert operations deserve to be disclosed by a free press. They are often covert not only because they are illegal but because they are wildly ill-conceived and reckless. "Sensitive" and "covert" are often synonyms for "half-assed," "idiotic," and "dangerous to national security," as well as "criminal."

And here's John Kennedy:

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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8214

I'm gonna go with the principles they laid out which are the same ones on which the founders based the 1st amendment. I reject the encroaching police state that says we have a right to know what the government wants us to know. :hi:

[pnwmom]

30. How can you say that? He's been trying to release 250,000

documents. How do you know that some of those 11,000 "top secret" documents won't out anyone?

[laughingliberal]

32. Again:

Here's what Ellsberg says about covert operations:

Many, if not most, covert operations deserve to be disclosed by a free press. They are often covert not only because they are illegal but because they are wildly ill-conceived and reckless. "Sensitive" and "covert" are often synonyms for "half-assed," "idiotic," and "dangerous to national security," as well as "criminal."

And here's John Kennedy:

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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8214

I'm gonna go with the principles they laid out which are the same ones on which the founders based the 1st amendment. I reject the encroaching police state that says we have a right to know what the government wants us to know. :hi:

[pnwmom]

34. Kennedy's words were not meant for this situation, as you know.

No President in history would have supported having his diplomatic cables indiscriminately made public.

[laughingliberal]

38. The principle here is not what the President approves of.

A free press is meant as a check on government, not a lap dog.

Assange contacted our State Department before this last release and offered to redact anything they told him would put lives in jeopardy. They blew him off. This isn't about lives or 'national security' (how Nixonian). This is about a government that lies to its people and doesn't want to get caught at it.

[treestar]

45. So should there never be any classified documents?

That is the question you've dodged.

[laughingliberal]

52. Not if they're 'classifying' documents to deceive the American people about what they're up to.

The Pentagon Papers were classified Top Secret and leaking them was the absolutely right thing to do.

The cable released by Wikileaks where the State Department verified, early on, the coup in Honduras was illegal and there was no legal basis for removing Zelaya was very telling. Not surprisingly, we've heard little about that one from the corporate oligarch owned media.Our government continued to dither and act like this was 'complicated' and 'confusing.' In acting like they didn't understand if the coup was illegal, they avoided the responsibility to take the required actions against the coup. Their dithering was for one purpose only-to hide the fact that our country, once again, was lending legitimacy to right wing fascists, acting in the interest of wealthy corporate interests, who overthrew a liberal, democratically elected leader of a Latin American country just as we've been doing for 3 decades.

If we had been privy to the information the State Department was, would they have gotten away with the supporting the coup? Or would the American people finally see how much BS it is when our government claims to be spreading 'democracy.'

The first amendment does not say we should have a press that's free to report what the government says it can.

I agree with Ellsberg on it:

Many, if not most, covert operations deserve to be disclosed by a free press. They are often covert not only because they are illegal but because they are wildly ill-conceived and reckless. "Sensitive" and "covert" are often synonyms for "half-assed," "idiotic," and "dangerous to national security," as well as "criminal."

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8214

I'm also with Thomas Jefferson on it:

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Thomas Jefferson, 1787

IOW, if the purpose of 'classifying' documents is to deceive the citizens in order to continue to gin up illegal wars, prop up greedy corporations who are stealing our commons from the people, overthrow elected leaders in other countries to install oil company and private corporations' lackeys, then, No, I don't think they should be allowed to continue to 'classify' information.

[treestar]

53. So there should never be any classified documents?

And our government of laws should not decide which, just the conscience of the individuals with the security clearances?

And this dump is of so much stuff, it's not trying to make a particular point, not specific, like the Pentagon papers.

[laughingliberal]

55. I'm inclined to say, "yes." The more I see about the motives for 'classifying' documents, the less..

I see any good motives. Information 'classified' in the interest of 'national security' seems to be, with what we know now, more about protecting the entrenched powers who are screwing the people. If the choice is no classified documents as opposed to the misuse of secrecy, I'll take no classified document. The public's right to know is not contingent on your personal opinion of the importance of the information.

For instance, I see no indication that you see the significance of the cable regarding the Honduran coup as proving what many of us have been saying about American imperialism running over the people of Latin America for 3 decades. I think the quote from Jefferson in my sig line explains my position as well as any and I'll hang my hat on him rather than those who have been defending the decimation of the rights of the people. I don't like police states.

[treestar]

46. Distinction without difference as an excuse for being inconsistent

And hypocritical. Cheney was just shedding light on and showing us what was done in our name, no?

[Catherina]

48. Your name maybe, not mine n/t

[Ken Burch]

20. Valerie Plame was exposed while the rest of the secrecy culture remained in place.

Secrecy as the norm didn't protect her.

[jberryhill]

21. Yeah, so? The rest of the secrecy culture is doing fine now, too /nt

[Overseas]

49. 800,000 people had access to Top Secret files.

Not terribly secret if so many had access. But that's the Top Secret group. The intermediate confidential stuff was accessible to 2.5 million people.


And the US media is doing a great job distracting us from the news that is in the cables by focusing on the odd Julian Assange and making him the story as much as possible.

[pnwmom]

22. Diplomats often cannot conduct negotiations

except in secrecy.

Anarchists like Assange don't care about diplomacy because their aim is to bring down all governments. But the rest of us should care.

[laughingliberal]

27. I'm for bringing down the shadow government. Lots of people here were at one time. nt

[pnwmom]

29. Assange is attacking government period. Not just "shadow government."

No diplomat can operate under the conditions that Assange and his team are demanding.

[laughingliberal]

31. Again:

Here's what Ellsberg says about covert operations:

Many, if not most, covert operations deserve to be disclosed by a free press. They are often covert not only because they are illegal but because they are wildly ill-conceived and reckless. "Sensitive" and "covert" are often synonyms for "half-assed," "idiotic," and "dangerous to national security," as well as "criminal."

And here's John Kennedy:

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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8214

I'm gonna go with the principles they laid out which are the same ones on which the founders based the 1st amendment. I reject the encroaching police state that says we have a right to know what the government wants us to know. :hi:

[pnwmom]

33. Kennedy would never have said that 11,000 top secret documents

should be indiscriminately dumped onto the web -- simply because Manning happened to have access to them and thought it would be fun.

Kennedy, like all US Presidents, classified some documents as secret or top secret. He never would have excused some military leaker passing them onto Wikileaks to put them on the web.

[laughingliberal]

35. Well, he's not here to speak for himself

And you might want to consider the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the press in the case of the Pentagon Papers. And try as they might they were not able to convict Ellsberg for espionage, either.

I don't care for police states and a free press is the safeguard against them. The crap we've seen in recent years would make Nixon blush.

[pnwmom]

36. They'll have a lot easier time convicting Manning, who has already

admitted to what he did and was a serviceman with a secret clearance at the time.

[laughingliberal]

39. Perhaps

I'd say since he was in the military, the military could well convict him.

It still does not change the principle involved nor does it make Assange guilty of anything.

I don't care for police states. Didn't like it when Nixon was moving that way and I don't like it now.

[Catherina]

41. This is the second time in this thread you've mistated the classification

NONE of the documents are top secret. The only ones insinuating that are dishonest rightwing media members.

Not only did Manning not have access to anything over Secret but Siprnet doesn't even route Top Secret material.

The overwhelming majority of the cables Assange leaked were either unclassified or Confidential.

The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked "top secret," the government's most secure communications status. But 11,000 are classified "secret"; 9,000 are labeled "noforn," shorthand for material considered too delicate to be shared with any foreign government; and 4,000 are designated both secret and noforn.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-wikileaks_29int.ART.State.Edition1.db5b34.html

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Scruffy1]

43. What do you expect from the paper of record?

After all they are part of the Ministry of Truth. Personally I like their crosswords and ignore the rest.

[Downwinder]

8. Why is the NYT site still available?

Aren't they publishing "secret" cables? Where are all of the "hackers" with their DDOS attacks?

[Catherina]

9. The NYT shills for the government. Assange didn't provide the cables to the NYT

He hates that paper. John Burns’s October profile of him told him all he needed to know about the NYT. He called the NYT journalists, "journalists with extremely bad character".

...

Assange said Monday at London's Frontline Club that he wasn't surprised by the Times' recent coverage of him, given what he considers the paper's "absolutely disgusting" August profile of Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old army private suspected of supplying the classified documents to WikiLeaks. The Manning piece, Assange said, "removed all higher-level political motivations from him and psychoanalyzed him down to problems in his childhood and a demand for attention."

The WikiLeaks chief also questioned whether the Times simply employs "journalists with extremely bad character" or whether coverage of him and his whistleblower organization is influenced by the "realpolitik that Bill Keller has to go through in order to get out any story that depicts the U.S. military in a negative way."

Assange's harsh words for the Times comes after WikiLeaks provided the paper with more than 400,000 secret Iraq documents in advance of Friday's publication online — the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history. This summer, the organization also provided more than 75,000 Afghanistan documents to the Times weeks before July's massive leak. In response to those suggesting the Times has focused too heavily on Assange as opposed to the materials contained in the latest WikiLeaks leak, Burns noted that the paper's staff have "written many, many thousands of words about the documents."

...

Salon's Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/24/assange/index.html">called the profile a "sleazy hit piece" and wrote Sunday that it was "filled with every tawdry, scurrilous tabloid rumor" about the WikiLeaks founder. Greenwald likened Burns to the "Nixonian henchmen" who plotted against Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and described him as "one of the media's most enthusiastic supporters of the occupation of Iraq."

"The Iraq War is John Burns' war, and for the crime of making that war look bad, Julian Assange must have his character smeared and his psychiatric health maligned," Greenwald wrote. "Burns — along with his co-writer Ravi Somaiya — is happy to viciously perform that function."

...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101026/cm_yblog_upshot/ny-times-reporter-defends-profile-of-wikileaks-assange

The NYT allegedly got the cables from The Guardian.

The Guardian gave State Dept. cables to the NY Times
Sun Nov 28, 9:26 pm ET


New York Times editors said Sunday that although the paper's reporters had been digging through WikiLeaks trove of 250,000 State Department cables for "several weeks," the online whistleblower wasn't the source of the documents.

But if WikiLeaks—which allegedly obtained the cables from a 22-year-old army private—wasn't the Times source, than who was? Apparently, The Guardian—one of the five newspapers that had an advanced look at the cables—supplied a copy of the cables to The Times.

David Leigh, The Guardian's investigations executive editor, told The Cutline in an email that "we got the cables from WL"—meaning WikiLeaks—and "we gave a copy to the NYT."

It's not everyday that a newspaper gives valuable source material to a competitor. But Leigh explained in a second email that British law "might have stopped us through injunctions if we were on our own."

...

WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange harshly criticized The Times in October for a front-page profile of him that ran alongside the Iraq logs coverage.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, would not confirm on Sunday night that the Guardian was the paper's source.

...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20101129/ts_yblog_thecutline/guardian-editor-says-they-gave-cables-to-the-ny-times

They're such weasels. They've been working with the Obama administration to water it all down. I wonder if the Guardian Story isn't just a coverup and the NYT got them directly from the administration.

After its own redactions, The Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest. After reviewing the cables, the officials — while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material — suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all. The Times is forwarding the administration’s concerns to other news organizations and, at the suggestion of the State Department, to WikiLeaks itself. In all, The Times plans to post on its Web site the text of about 100 cables — some edited, some in full — that illuminate aspects of American foreign policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29editornote.html?hp

I hope that sheds some light on things.

[PufPuf23]

12. Thanks. Very informative post. nt

[Downwinder]

13. Like the Belafonte song.

Clear as mud, but it covers the ground.

". . .WikiLeaks provided the paper with more than 400,000 secret Iraq documents in advance of Friday's publication online . . ."

[Catherina]

14. Terrible paper. Never to be forgiven for shilling for the war

[EFerrari]

15. And John Burns has been sliming Assange. Burns was one of the cheerleaders

that got us into Iraq.

This is David Corn's article on the same topic.

The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange
Dec 3 2010,


Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning, a former army intelligence analyst in Iraq, faces up to 52 years in prison. He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where he is not allowed to see his parents or other outside visitors.

Assange, the organizing brain of Wikileaks, enjoys a higher degree of freedom living as a hunted man in England under the close surveillance of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies -- but probably not for long. Not since President Richard Nixon directed his minions to go after Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan - "a vicious antiwar type," an enraged Nixon called him on the Watergate tapes -- has a working journalist and his source been subjected to the kind of official intimidation and threats that have been directed at Assange and Manning by high-ranking members of the Obama Administration.

Published reports suggest that a joint Justice Department-Pentagon team of investigators is exploring the possibility of charging Assange under the Espionage Act, which could lead to decades in jail. "This is not saber-rattling," said Attorney General Eric Holder, commenting on the possibility that Assange will be prosecuted by the government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Wikileaks disclosures "an attack on the international community" that endangered innocent people. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested in somewhat Orwellian fashion that "such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government."

It is dispiriting and upsetting for anyone who cares about the American tradition of a free press to see Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs turn into H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean. We can only pray that we won't soon be hit with secret White House tapes of Obama drinking scotch and slurring his words while calling Assange bad names.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/10/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/

[laughingliberal]

19. +1 nt

[laughingliberal]

16. No surprises there-the paper that sold the Iraq war to the American people. Shameless hacks. nt

[avaistheone1]

25. k&r

[Smarmie Doofus]

28. Downloading top secret files while "lip-syncing to Lady Gaga'?

Ahem.

A little textbook journalistic stereotyping and defamation besides.

Thanks a heap, ol' gray lady.

Gotta go now. Glee's on.

(K and R, BTW)

[pnwmom]

37. How is it defamation to quote Manning himself? n/t

[Catherina]

44. Ahem covers it. n/t

[laughingliberal]

40. I'm surprised they haven't brought Judith Miller back. These kinds of smears are right up her alley.

:nuke:

[Catherina]

42. They might as well. Same thought crossed my mind earlier n/t

[deaniac21]

47. They never have anything good to say about Manning

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/sports/football/23leading.html?_r=1&ref=eli_manning

[Dr.Phool]

51. Ellsberg/Manning-2012!