The sentence was not supposed to make the final cut to comment and was not intended to be inflammatory.

I do stand by the belief that Bernd should use facts as his basis for opinion however I respect other’s opinions as well (which is what separates me from the GOP’s beliefs. )

@Dan_K_66_PGH
“So yeah Opinion stated as Opinion, and posted in the “Analysis & Opinion” part of the site is just and fare. Throwing around unwarranted criticism isnt.”

Really? Because I thought that was the purpose of Analysis and Opinion, to be able to express your opinion. Just as Bernd has thrown around his opinion you too have thrown around yours and me too, mine! Wow! Crazy how opposing points of view are able to still be printed!.
You should just watch your mouth is all and perhaps stop telling others how to comment. Perhaps you too should demand that writers use facts as their basis for supposition when they obviously write to so many people. There is a responsibility here that you are missing Dan. Do you think that Bernd should have free reign to write whatever he wants as fact? Because I would consider this to be yelling “fire!” in an a crowded theater and that my friend, is where the right to free speech stops.

Bernd, stop giving us your opinion based on non-facts and supposition is all I’m saying. Because your responsibility as a writer a large group of people is to be accurate. If not, then just go work at Fox.

No one is saying that you shouldn’t have editorials and opinions. I’m simply saying that maybe when so many people read your column that you should take it upon yourself to be more responsible with the facts. That is all.

Death to Republicans.

I don’t know whether our elected representatives in the West are really smart enough yet to see the implication – that most information is published ’round about the time it’s gathered and the real liability is in NOT promulgating the medium-sensitivity stuff – but it’s an inevitable eventuality. Obviously, that means messages will be ever more massaged, but that’s a soup pot we’ve been knee-deep in for decades. As ever, seek multiple sources.

Wikileaks is in no way unique or special – it’s simply a demonstration of how information works in a globally networked world. It was always going to happen. But I do quite like the hourglass logo.

You have one, now you have the other.

A sane person does not feel it is correct to torture another. A fearful person believes it is ok in some circumstances. A non-participant will allow it if they feel that it is mostly theoretical, maybe the guy deserved it, it will never have any consequence on my life, there is something else on television.

You can be sane, and ignorant at the same time. You can make a reasonable argument and be ignorant at the same time, but if you have the information, and you choose to ignore it, you are no longer ignorant, you are a participant.

I choose not to be part of a group that torture. Not to be part of a group that makes decisions based on economic benefit over social and long term benefit.

You need to separate Julian Assange and the release of these communications from the actual acts they represent. The people described in many of these communications have actually killed people. Julian Assange was only the person who allowed you to know about it.

Why is he punished more fully?

* he did not originally source the information. that is solely the responsibility of the people responsible for its keeping and the leaker
* the release of information directly from wikileaks is paralleled by the release from reputed and beyond reproach news organisations, therefore any legal attack should be targeted at them as well even if it is doomed to fail
* the diplomatic problems are caused by the gap between the publicised aims and rhetoric from a government and their real ambitions. this is there problem, not the person who points it out
* NOBODY, including Julian Assange wants to see anybody hurt over these cables. No way you can spin it, is he responsible for putting Australian, American, British, etc troops in harms way. That is entirely the decision of the government.
* Make a reasonable argument about what has transpired, please do, but don’t make assumptions and wild accusations of what might be. The fact is that people have been tortured, money has been wasted, and people have turned a blind eye to what has happened. I am more disgusted in my government for sending our troops into the situation than someone who has the courage to stand up to bullys. Shame on all these large companies folding to hidden pressure.

The problem is, it will lead to more responsive and honest government. That is exactly what those in power do NOT want.
Obama, pretending to be ‘green’ while all the time sabotaging the any real attempts at green solutions through the tactics around the Copenhagen Accords, which were not accords at all but manufactured lies.

Clinton, pretending to be for peace, while bombing families in Yemen.

Wikileaks needs to be supported more. I am very proud to have donated twice to wikileaks.

The propaganda machine is spewing so many lies, and very few counter the lie machine, it is no surprise the American public may be temporarily lead astray–but they will come around.

Check out Glenn Greenwald’s blog–one of the very few that have not entered the reality distortion field those in power have created around wikileaks.

Deciding which classified information should be released and which should not is far beyond the knowledge — and more importantly the wisdom — possessed by WikiLeaks. Hell, in the past — and very likely now still with 250,000 of them needing to be reviewed with extreme care — they’ve dumped documents they haven’t even read, let alone properly evaluated.

This dump has been referred to as mere “high-level gossip” after only about 600 or so have been seen by the press. But only a fool can be certain that the remaining 249,400 contain only such relatively benign material. It would take an enormous contingent of thousands of scholars to evaluate so much information; The WikiLeaks Oligarchy simply cannot perform due diligence on such a library’s worth of classified information.

The extraordinary naiveté of all the adulation of the Assange/WikiLeaks Oligarchy shocks me, as it should shock any advocate of democracy and an open society. No rational person can oppose unelected, dictatorial power and at the very same time defend or applaud this informational oligarchy. However popular, an autocrat whose acts you approve of is no less an autocrat for that!