or is that 'different' because it's now history?

It's difficult to take the question seriously as you are misconstruing it as personal information, when in fact the documents were pointing to wrong-doing by the government and armed forces.

the Stratfor memos.

...are going to hide behind their "privacy"?



See: http://gizmodo.com/5888440/wikileaks-reveals-private-cias-dirty-laundry-updating-live

They probably DID the Assange sex sting!

It's what they DO. Here's one Stratfor email (found at the above web page):

"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez."

"Privacy"? Really? That's kind of like the CIA claiming privacy rights. Stratfor has paid spies and informants throughout the governments, militaries, corporations and corporate media all over the world! They respect NO ONE's privacy. They trade their spying secrets for money--lots of money, big chunks of it being your tax dollars and mine.

Then they turn that filthy lucre and their spy network's reports into gaming the financial system. From the same web page:

"The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to "utilise the intelligence" it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. [...] CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS: 'What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like'."

You gotta be kidding, right, about Stratfor being "private"? Your comment has a Rip-van-Winkle feel to it, like you went to sleep a hundred years ago and just woke up to a brave new world where the rules and laws have all been turned upside down. It's hard to get oriented. Just stand on your head, is all, and then you'll be able to see that "private" and "government" have become interchangeable words. (--kind of like "human being" and Exxon Mobil--same thing really). It's quite touching that you would hold onto that dear old thing, private business. It's like hearing from Henry Ford or Lord Acton.

Google for "Ellsberg on Assange" and you will get a load of good articles.

It was a mass data dump. Manning hadn't even read it all. He just stole whatever he could get his hands on and passed it along for distribution.

All of the diplomatic cables that allow the business of diplomacy to go on...? Were those all "pointing to wrong-doing by the government and armed forces."

The same goes for the rest of it.. mission SITREPs and the like.

Wikileaks does NOT just 'dump' data. It verifies what it publishes. That's why some things that were hinted at existing took a long time to become public.

There's lots of external references you can use to research Wikileaks vetting process instead of just making stuff up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Verification_of_submissions

No one, that I know of, is claiming that the data is fraudulent.

The point is that Manning stole the information en masse and then passed it along for distro.

A true "whistleblower" passes out information that shows that the organization they belong to is conducting some sort of specific illegal act.

Secret diplomatic cables are necessary to conduct the business of diplomacy. The same goes for mission SITREPs, orders and the like.

If you want to make the case that the helicopter footage was evidence of a "war crime" (which it wasn't), then he should take the consequences of his actions. Mass dumps of data like this are just attempt to hurt and embarrass the United States and make diplomacy harder.

that there are people who are far more concerned with bashing Assange than with the war crimes and other serious misdeeds that Wikileaks uncovered.

I realize the logs suggest Manning may have thought he was chatting with Assange; but my understanding is that there's nothing else to support that inference.

that the U.S. would never ever grab Assange to being supposed to think that well, if they do, he deserves it?
Not that our government cares much about what we think.
Perhaps the Assange stuff should be back-burnered until after the election, because grabbing Assange is not going to generate any more votes, methinks. Pardon my cynicism.

...are probably looking at that, too. But I think they want to get him on espionage because they can spill his blood with that one.

And ain't it ironical that they are all so bent out of shape that someone dared to spy on their secret machinations and expose them to the world--someone with hifallutin global motives--and they can't wait to draw and quarter him, yet when our own loyal, patriotic, good 'ol U.S.A. mom-and-apple pie spies were spying on weapons of mass destruction, they got outed and their lives endangered all over the planet, and the guys who did it not only did not get smeared with trumped up "sex charges," they aren't in prison, where they surely belong (for treason, among other things) and they are running around free and may be plotting Bush Junta II as we speak.

Julian Assange is more dangerous than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld? ????!!!!

The one--Assange--smeared, robbed, hunted--a Gitmo dungeon with his name on it waiting for him (or worse)--for the crime of journalism; the others--the mass murderers, the torturers, the rapists of children, the mind-boggling thieves, the violators of the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the US Constitution and every human rights protocol on earth, whose loyalty to this country was perfectly expressed by their outing of our own intelligence agents--living in luxury, multi-billionaires, officially respected and honored, no fears whatever of investigation or prosecution, total immunity guaranteed by their successors, not to mention topnotch medical and dental.

How come our President doesn't say, "We need to look forward not backward" about Julian Assange?

No, I don't think they'll go for any lesser charge. If they can get past the world's abhorrence of our use of the death penalty, give up the lethal injection goal and can get him into custody somehow, they will want the harshest penalty possible--to permanently bury him in prison, probably in total isolation and quite possibly with other forms of torture, to find out what else he may know.

"the practice of spying or using spies to obtain information about the plans and activities especially of a foreign government or a competing company"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/espionage

Not Julian Assange, because if he did, every journalist who receives information from a whistle blower should be tried for Espionage.

The Supreme Court already ruled on this when the Government tried to go after the NYT in the Ellsberg case. You should read that decision sometime if you haven't already.

Journalists have no obligation to withhold information they receive about the government from a source. Their job is to inform the public. I know it's hard to remember what journalism is supposed to be, it's been so long since there has been real journalism in this country.

But you can look at Wikileaks to get an idea of what journalism ought to be. And it scares the hell out of our leaders, REAL journalism scares them as it should.

either he has broken no American laws or the case against him is so weak they don't want to risk the embarrassment of an acquittal after a huge spectacle of a trial.

I sort of doubt it, though. With the mix of public and private-sector information, it'd be difficult to show damages.

I think more likely, as said above, there's no case or it's weak enough not to risk prosecuting. Assange is as likely to be arrested by the US as I am.

So it would be exaggerated as an excuse to get him here and then disappear him, change the charges to espionage and a hundred other things.

This is the evil US we are talking about and it deserves to have all of its secrets exposed. The law does not apply to Julian - he is a God or something.