Did the New York Times commit treason? - Page 7

rota · #61 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barney-fife";p=&quot

No, I think a better option is executing persons found guilty of treason.

I think there might be laws against doing something like that to the president but I'm no expert and could be wrong. I do know that nothing ever happened to Bill Clinton when he gave missle secrets away to China. And of course nothing happened to Johnson when he ordered fighters not to protect the U.S.S. Liberty when Israel attacked it. Even worse he said he wanted the Liberty at the bottom of the sea.

barney-fife · #62 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 04:52 PM

al-rota, try staying on subject. Many persons committing far less dangerous acts have been tried and convicted of treason. You simply do not publish intelligence secrets in a newspaper, at a time of war. That is treason.

EiregoSod · #63 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 05:35 PM

the USA regards its own people as terrorists. LOL too funny.

hey Barn, you know who to call when they bust you for conspiracy?

barney-fife · #64 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 05:59 PM

That makes no sense, even considering its source.

rota · #65 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 06:24 PM

I think this article must have been talking about you Barney when they said "where calls for Times editors to stand trial for the capital crime of treason are routinely being aired, along with scarcely veiled exhortations for mob violence against the press". (*)(*)(*)(*) I didn't think they read this forum. When Barney talks the world listens!!

Quote:

The Bush War On
Liberty Intensifies
By Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
6-28-6

Glenn Greenwald has the goods on the all-out war that the Bush Regime and its bootlicking sycophants throughout the right-wing media are waging against the free press. The recent "controversy" over the New York Times report on the Regime's surveillance of bank records is, as Greenwald astutely notes, based entirely on outright falsehoods. It is also being deliberately stoked by the White House, whose lies about the non-existent "damage" the NYT story has done to national security are exposed here -- by their own words.

Greenwald turns up quote after quote, going back years, many of them from Bush himself, detailing the same kind of information relayed in the Times' story. Yet, as Greenwald and others report (Atrios has been good on this as well), the Regime's hate campaign has now burst into the media mainstream, where calls for Times editors to stand trial for the capital crime of treason are routinely being aired, along with scarcely veiled exhortations for mob violence against the press. (But only the so-called "liberal" press. The fact that the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and other papers have also run stories on the banking records is ignored or dismissed by the hatemongers.)

Make no mistake: the Bush Regime intends to silence all dissenting voices and suppress all politically harmful information in the American establishment. It's a not a drive toward totalitarianism; they don't want or need to repress and control everything. They don't care if bloggers rant, or Harper's fulminates, or Michael Moore makes movies, or Noam Chomsky sells books (or even speaks at West Point). They are perfectly happy to allow isolated enclaves of dissent to float around out there somewhere -- as long they remain isolated and, above all, ineffectual.

What they cannot tolerate -- and increasingly will not tolerate -- is any institution, organization or person in a position of genuine influence on the American power structure to undermine the presidential dictatorship that the Regime has established. (There will be more on this theme in the next Global Eye column.) Anyone within the power structure who attempts to report disturbing facts or "inconvenient truths" about the Regime's unconstitutional secret government will be attacked relentlessly. It begins with slander to destroy their credibility and effectiveness, to marginalize them, to destroy their public position -- and to frighten off anyone else who might support them or give them hearing.

In the past, this has usually been sufficient; there's been no need for recourse to sterner measures. You don't arrest Dan Rather, you simply drive him out of his job. You don't imprison John Kerry; you just Swift Boat him. But these are increasingly desperate times for the Bush Regime. It is vastly unpopular with the American people. Its war in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. And the sheer bulk of its high crimes and misdemeanors has grown so large it can longer be hidden; rotten chunks of this mammoth slagheap are spilling out almost every day. They know that should the tide ever turn completely against them -- if anything even faintly resembling a constitutional republic is ever established again -- they face not just political oblivion but actual prosecution.

And as we all know, desperate times call for desperate measures. If slander and hate don't do the trick, if they are ineffective in cowing Establishment opposition, then the next step is the criminalization of dissent. Thus the not-so-subtle hints from Torturer General Alberto Gonzales about pursuing leakers -- and the leaked-to -- with federal charges. And thus the current trial balloons in the media about charging the NYT with treason. These are serious threats; but just in case they're not enough, we're also getting the increasingly open call for violence against Bush opponents, for the "outraged public" to "take the law into their own hands." These calls are couched -- for now -- as "concerns" about "what might happen" if Bush's opponents continue their "provocations;" they are being phrased -- for now -- as warnings of a fate that the commentators hope will not come to pass. But as the Regime's position grows more precarious, these "concerns" will give way to incitements. Indeed, you can already see this happening with people like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin -- hatemongers with ready and frequent access to the mainstream media.

I've said for years that the most dangerous time will come not when the Regime is flush with triumph but when this vicious gang of thugs find their backs against the wall. That time has come. No doubt Greenwald's warning will be dismissed by the comfortably numb as "typical liberal paranoia" (or ignored by fatuous fools too busy ranting about "blogofascism" to see their own republic disappearing before their eyes). "Come off it," they'll say; "do you really think the Administration will start prosecuting newspapers? They'd never cross that line." But the record clearly shows that the Bush Regime has crossed line after line after line, into depredations that no one could have imagined an American government embracing so openly, so brazenly, with such sinister gusto: torture, concentration camps, indefinite detention, rendition, mass surveillance, "extrajudicial killing," and aggressive war. Where exactly is the line they will NOT cross? They are "so far steep'd in blood" -- and you think they'd blanche at prosecuting newspapers?

As bad as these last five and half years have been, what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

There is worse, much worse yet to come...

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=
com_content&task=view&id=718&Itemid=1

barney-fife · #66 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 06:36 PM

What sort of kook dribble was that? If you wish to find Presidents who have pushed the envelope on civil liberties, you might wish looking at FDR and Lincoln. But W? W couldn't hold a candle to the abridgment of civil liberties done at the hands of FDR and Lincoln.

In the only arena that matters (the arena of ideas) you are very much on the losing side. The vast majority of Americans don't take kindly to aiding the enemy at a time of war.

rota · #67 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barney-fife";p=&quot

What sort of kook dribble was that? If you wish to find Presidents who have pushed the envelope on civil liberties, you might wish looking at FDR and Lincoln. But W? W couldn't hold a candle to the abridgment of civil liberties done at the hands of FDR and Lincoln.

In the only arena that matters (the arena of ideas) you are very much on the losing side. The vast majority of Americans don't take kindly to aiding the enemy at a time of war.

Calm down fife, I'm with you on this. I even made some popcorn and tuned my TV over to Fox news waiting for the Jack boot thugs of Homeland Security to kick down the doors to the NYTs and drag those traitors out of their ivory tower and send them down to Gitmo. I was hoping I'd get lucky and see a few Zionist get their arms broken with those numchucks.

To tell you truth it looks like you guys whimped out and I won't get to see anything. Barney I'm beginning to think you guys are all talk and no action. I can't believe I wasted an hour of my life watching Fox waiting for this to happen.

barney-fife · #68 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 08:33 PM

That's why Ann Coulter wrote her article slamming Republicans for wimping out. She's right. Since Hanoi Jane parked her butt on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, treason has gone out of style. But I'm into retro, and retro includes charging and prosecuting persons engaged in actions that provide aid and comfort to our enemy at a time of war. So, I'll slip on my two-tone swing shoes, my shirt-jac, maybe a nice Sinatra smoking jacket, and put a Temps cd on, all the while wondering why treason went out of style. Some things don't go out of style, and treason is one of them.

nonsqtr · #69 (**permalink**) 06-28-2006, 11:31 PM

Let's see, you'll probably want to read my posts in the other two threads on this topic (over in the other sub-forum), before reading this one. In the first post, I told you about several additional pieces of evidence that support the concept that the NYT said nothing new in its recent article. In the second post, I told you about some info I got from Congressional staff this afternoon, regarding "why" the administration is spinning this issue in the particular manner that it has.

In this post, I'm going to talk about Tony Snow, and why he's saying that the White House "can't and won't" pursue this matter any further. In addition to the daily press corps briefing, Mr. Snow-Job gave an interview on the O'Reilly Factor this evening, on Fox News. Unfortunately, Fox hasn't posted the transcript of the interview yet, but I'm sure you'll be able to find it tomorrow (or later tonight). Here's what Tony said:

First, he said that "the President has no legal authority to initiate an investigation into this matter". What a load of BS that is - the President has full legal authority to authorize the DOJ to initiate an investigation, and barring that, he can even go so far as to appoint a Special Prosecutor if he wishes to. Tony's contention was that "the request has to come from Treasury", which is again a load of phony baloney, 'cause Treasury is part of the White House cabinet, which means the President has full executive authority over that division of government.

Second, he said that the President would take "no further action" against the New York Times (and he said some other things too, like "the people will decide this issue on their own", and other such drivel). Wow. Doesn't that strike you as a little strange, coming from the guy whose people are yelling and screaming about TREASON?

But wait - it gets better. Asked to compare this "treason" to other instances of treason against the US government, Snow demurred on likening this to the Algier Hiss case, to actions against the overseas press during World War 2, and to those espionage activities against the United States which have been specifically prosecuted. But Snow-Job did compare this case to the one where the Chicago Tribune published the story of the breaking of the Japanese codes during WW-2 (the one that the Japanese supposedly didn't read). So, in his own subtle way, Tony essentially said that this case was not a prosecutable case of treason, nor was it even dangerous enough to go after in the business arena - it was just a "public" piece of information that the terroists could read or not read, as they saw fit. Boy, talk about backpedaling....

So, why do you think Tony would backpedal like that, on behalf of the Bush administration? Well, I gave you the answer in the other thread. bushie is about to get massive amounts of egg smeared all over his face, in the court of European public opinion. It seems he bypassed all the European governments and went directly to several individuals within the SWIFT banking consortium, to get the information he wanted.

So, essentially what Bushie did, is to co-opt European individuals and enlist them as spies for the United States. Keep in mind that these European countries are our allies, there's not even one of them who could remotely be considered as anything but an ally. In some cases, such activities are covered by explicit treaties within NATO and between the US and each individual country, which Bushie has now clearly broken.

Can you imagine the outrage this is going to cause within NATO?

That's why Bushie didn't want this thing to see the light of day. It has nothing to do with US national security interests. It only has to do with Bushie once again breaking the law in order to do whatever it is he's doing.

I mean, this is exactly the equivalent of the case where we caught an American citizen spying for Israel - and guess what, we locked him up for twenty years to life. What do you think the Europeans are going to do to these SWIFT guys? OMFG....

This is going to be a major international scandal, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that Bushie tries to find another hammer to lower on the Belgian government so they don't plaster this story all over the US press, 'cause that's the only way Boy George knows how to operate.

What an idiot. What a complete and total moron. It's like I told you folks from the very beginning, our President has zero implementation skills. I can think of at least half a dozen ways Bushie could have gotten the same information "legally", but no - he has to go enlist our allies to spy on their own governments.

Jesus H. Christ. What a god-awful mess. Thanks George.

rota · #70 (**permalink**) 06-29-2006, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nonsqtr";p=&quot

I gave you the answer in the other thread. bushie is about to get massive amounts of egg smeared all over his face, in the court of European public opinion. It seems he bypassed all the European governments and went directly to several individuals within the SWIFT banking consortium, to get the information he wanted.

You know nonsqtr when Bush doesn't respect and enforce the laws that he himself signed and then shows he doesn't even respect the laws of our allies then when will the question be asked? Is this man out of control and fit to govern this country? Egg on his face seems a little tame when this country is about to be dragged in the gutter for what he is doing. It's not like this is out of character for him or even just a fluke, it's seems to be a character flaw. Of course if he did the proper thing (which I doubt he would) he would resign but then we'd be left with someone even worse Cheney. What a mess this country is in.

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