Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
@Buddha: Seriously, I feel sorry for the people you work with. I bet even the ones that smile to your face can’t fucking stand you.
That’s funny. Unlike most people, none of my research colleagues at the university are required to work with me, or have anything to do with me, ever. I presume the lunch invitations, grant invitations, and more collaboration invitations than I can accept mean two things: They can stand me, and they want to work with me. I’m not cheap, on grants I earn the same salary as my collaborators. So if they truly hate me and voluntarily seek my equal partnership anyway, I must be one crazy smart jerk. 🙂
Bob said:
Well, at least Tony’s not insisting it’s blue…
And a felicitous upcoming orbit of Sol to you, too!
Tony,
I’ll respond to your comments (at least some of them) a little later, but I thought that I would emphasize one of Buddha’s points – people react to you the way they do because of your attitude, not your ideas (your ideas are not half as rational as you think they are, by the way, but you’re entitled to believe in garbage if you want to). You have said that one of the attractions of anonymity to you was the freedom to, essentially, be an asshole and you have certainly been liberal about exercising that right, but if you don’t understand that how you act will affect how people treat you, then for all of your training and experience you have the emotional maturity of a 10-year old.
Distinguish Basic that is.
I blame the excellent pumpkin bread.
Ooooo.
Whatever, Mr. Can’t Basic Distinguish Logical Forms.
Apparently you think I care what you think. I don’t write just for you, I write to defend myself and point out your bullying tactics. Sport.
Apparently you didn’t get the message I think you’re an ass not really worth talking to, did you, Tony?
@Buddha: Would you take someone seriously who wasn’t trained in science and said the scientific method was crap? That F doesn’t equal ma? Hardly. But that’s what you expect of us.
Bullshit, that is not what I expect of you at all. What I expect of you is what I routinely do and you refuse to do; which is provide a rational argument instead of an emotional argument or an argument from authority.
I’ve already pointed the road to research the rational validity of the idea of a social compact.
But apparently you’d rather write a page demanding I adhere to it than just explain why it is rational and my criticisms are unfounded. I presume that is because you cannot defend its rationality.
So please: Point out some ‘annoying’ thing I have said, and I’ll bet it is just a disagreement with some unjustifiable premise of yours. You enjoy pontificiation and get annoyed and all emotional anytime somebody actually tries to engage you in debate.
But. tjem. “Force equals mass times acceleration” is not a scalar equation, so force (scalar) does not necessarily equal mass(scalar) times acceleration(scalar).
And, the relationship among force, mass, and acceleration is really in the purview of tensor calculus.
Physics, calculated only with algebra is perilous.
I enjoy babble.
If I did not enjoy babble, I could never allow words into my life at all.
The fewer meanings we share, the livelier it seems to become.
Fourth of July fireworks in January?
Oh, oops, I nearly forgot; staying alive is my day job.
This blawg is one of the ways I use to evaluate how well I am doing my day job.
Oh,oh!
Tony,
Despite several attempts to get you to park your bad attitude since you started posting here – an attitude so bad many people initially though you were a troll, you’ve persisted. Because you acted like a perpetual dick to, oh, just about everyone, I have no interest in explaining anything to you, let alone a fundamental concept of legalism you just dismiss out of hand. I thought I made that perfectly clear.
Would you take someone seriously who wasn’t trained in science and said the scientific method was crap? That F doesn’t equal ma? Hardly. But that’s what you expect of us.
It has nothing to do with not being able to explain anything and everything about a social compact to you should I want to and everything to do with your piss poor condescending attitude. If I just want an ass to talk to, I’ll call the ex-brother-in-law. The trolls here act better than you. And I mean that. As infantile as Charlie and Kurt can be, they aren’t nearly as annoying a person as you are. And they’re paid to be annoying. Seriously, I feel sorry for the people you work with. I bet even the ones that smile to your face can’t fucking stand you.
Since you’re so damn smart, I’ve already pointed the road to research the rational validity of the idea of a social compact. Figure it out yourself. Or don’t. I don’t give a shit.
Stuff it up your axiom and smoke it, sport.
dont you people have day jobs?
Perhaps I noticed an inadvertent error that is my fault, and I apologize.
Were I to guess, and a mere guess is plausibly worthless, I would guess that Tony C. is not the only person wrong here.
He may have some company; for all I know, I may also be wrong in some ways like Tony C. is.
Where did I set my delusion detector?
Found it.
Oh, no, wrong again.
Twice in one comment.
What I found is my Bachrach CO analyzer. Let me make sure of what it is. Turned it on. Wait for the reading to stabilize. 1 ppm or less. Conscientious Objection is apparently very low here, at one part per million or less?
@Buddha: I have admitted when I am wrong on this blog more than once, and even in this thread.
If I am wrong, why can’t you (or Bob) give me a reason I am wrong? You say I “dismiss a key underpinning of an entire discipline.”
Well of course I did, because the conversation was about a political philosophy (libertarianism) founded on a premise with which I disagree. I provided reasons for why I disagree. But you don’t address them or refute them, you just demand adherence to an axiom put forth without reason, and you are incapable of providing any reasons for accepting it other than than the fact that it is already accepted as such in established law. So you are in essence just saying, “We have to start there because we always start there.”
You are not capable of defending the axiom a priori, and you are apparently so invested in it that you are also incapable of even entertaining the thought that this axiom might be wrong, and then you get all irritatable and puffed up when people disagree with you. Maybe it is like a religion; even if you can’t defend it rationally you remain emotionally committed.
The only person wrong here is you, Tony.
But you’ll never admit that.
So blather on.
And if I wanted to insult you? Eh, that wasn’t even close, sport. Bob was the one who insulted you. I just agreed with him. If you were insulted? That’s because you know I’m right and you don’t know shit about form over substance or substance over form (which was the original point of the contrapositive logical example of monotonicity of entailment). Or you don’t and actually believe your bullshit. Which is just sad.
Either way, I couldn’t care less.
You still don’t know what the Hell you’re talking about.
@Buddha: I know this: Somebody is pathetically resorting to insults to avoid admitting they were wrong.
@Bob: Man, that was a long way to travel for such a weak insult. Punch it up, buddy. You need more snap.
Tony,
Pardon me if I don’t get all a flutter at what you think about logic or anything else.
That you failed to see a blatant example of the monotonicity of entailment as formally correct and factually irrational just goes to show you don’t know as much about logic as you think you do, sport. You know a lot about “The World According to Tony”, but not jacksquat about much else.
____
Happy New Year, Bob.
I vote all of the above.
Kevin,
Happy New Year!
Kevin & Buddha,
In Re: Tony
Sometimes when you ask people what color is orange juice and they say orange (instead of yellow), and they repeat the answer with a fresh glass in front of them for inspection, I guess the question becomes whether they’re stubborn, color blind or simply don’t know the difference.
root ought all the progressives from government, maybe then we can have good government.
@Buddha: As you have demonstrated you don’t know what the hell you are talking about when it comes to logic.
But sure, silly me for thinking you were responding to what I wrote instead of something in your own head. But I will reiterate, because my original statement still applies:
You say: He didn’t even wait for industry to give him his marching orders – he went and asked for them.
Yes I knew that, yes I expected that, and still I say he can only execute those orders with the wholesale cooperation of Democrats in the Senate and White House.
If we don’t trust our own party to stand against another round of corporate giveways and/or witch hunts, we might ask ourselves how the hell we ended up voting for this sorry ass collection of cowardly weak-kneed Democrats.
Issa is a puppet of the Chamber of Commerce and pretty much an outright fascist. He’s got a past too. A very suspect and criminal smelling past that involves theft and arson and even a conviction for carrying an unregistered handgun. He’s a scumbag. He’s also a scumbag who after the elections sent letters to more than 150 trade associations, companies, and think tanks – including the oil and pharmaceutical industries – asking THEM to “tell him which Obama administration regulations to target”. He didn’t even wait for industry to give him his marching orders – he went and asked for them.
“Comparative damage” is a childish argument.
Issa isn’t Issa “engaging in a bit of stagecraft to distract the Tea Party spectators from the larger plot of the wholesale demolishment of our rights and economy.” He’s part of the attack proper.
And don’t try to put your half-baked words about my “interesting” theory of government into my mouth, Tony.
You’ve already demonstrated you don’t know what the Hell you are talking about when it comes to law.
@Buddha: So you think a minority of Republicans have power in the Senate, but a majority of Democrats do not? You think a Republican President can veto legislation but a Democratic President cannot?
You have an interesting theory of our government; Buddha.
No Witch Hunt Issa can engage in will be any more damaging to citizens then Obama’s unrestrained and enthusiastic embrace of the anti-constitutional, torturing, war-criminal-protecting set of policies Bush/Cheney handed him. Issa is engaging in a bit of stagecraft to distract the Tea Party spectators from the larger plot of the wholesale demolishment of our rights and economy.