keep the pressure on him you've gotta make this guy pay

There is a deeper idea here that needs examination. During the "rise of television power" in the United States, the two major political parties acted like an information oligarchy allowing "freedom" only up to a certain point. At the same time, investigative journalism was quashed. Prime example: Michigan State University used to have a student newspaper "The State News." In the 70's, the student journalists were free and undertook major investigations of the University itself and state government. Whistleblowers could seek out student journalists and did so on serveral occasions. Then aggressive action was taken to curb the power of the student newspaper. It came under the control of the administration. Money was offered -- free copies were to be distributed all over campus. But after that, the student newspaper became little more than a social calendar/event promotion advertising medium. The School of Journalism did nothing to stop this from happening.

Wikileaks is shocking because the powers that be in the United States have almost completely succeeded in quashing free press. The journalist in my current town responsible for covering issues relating to utility companies has clearly been "bought out" by those companies, publishing their version of every story as if it is the unvarnished truth. That journalist is clearly longing to make the jump from journalist to utility company vice president in charge of communications. And so it goes.

Does anybody think that television does the sort of investigative reporting once done by newspapers? Some people once hoped that the internet would fill the void. But apart from Wikileaks, it does not. Why?: Because whistleblowers know that their identity will not be protected.

Note that every example I've given speaks to the lack of true freedom of the press here in the United States. Despite all the flowery articles about the rest of the world, true freedom of the press is even less likely there.

Bottom line: If freedom of the press prevents powerful groups from making mistakes made possible by secrecy, then we need Wikileaks. If truth can defeat evil, then we need Wikileaks. We need Wikileaks because corporations here in the United States have been working hard, for 40 years, to undermine and destroy the independence of our press.

The United States Government can not seem to provide me with any evidence that WikiLeaks or Julian Assange has broken any American law. We the people have always had a right to know the operations of our own government, and from what I remember being taught in school it was our civil responsibility to oversee how our government is performing.

Its not the free speech that’s the problem, its how people respond to the truth. Free speech will offend people, and at times it may create enemies or even lead to violence, or it can create common ground and lead to peace and long lasting friendships. either way it has always been the American way.

read your American history books America

Wikileaks is a sort of anarchist spy agency. Charging Assange for anything would be as absurd as charging Yuri Andropov with espionage; maybe your government doesn't like it going on, but it would be hypocritical and absurd for them to punish people for it. They collect information that others gather, so no laws broken.

but as regards Julian Assange, what's to dislike? He is doing the job that American journalists should be doing. Indeed, if they had not, with few exceptions, been lackeys for the administration in 2002 and since, we might still have a future in this benighted country.

until such time as there are in fact charges against Assange in the U.S.? Which, I suspect at this point, won't happen . . ..

The US should play a longer game and stand by its values of freedom and democracy not its selfish interests when these conflict...that would be the mark of a real 'leader of the free world'

Sudden. Permanent. Game-Changing. Earth-Shaking.

5 Febuary 2011:

Permanent decisions about Chinese REE exports have happened.

The Non Chinese world needs to come to grip with the New Reality:

How to find and fund Non Chinese REE mining and manufacturing sources for all Non Chinese demand?

Let me explain the change that has happened:

"China and US shoot satellites in standoff" Telegraph Group Ltd. UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8299495/WikiLeaks-US-and-China-in-military-standoff-over-space-missiles.html

Dates: January 2007, February 2008, January 2010, February 2010.

Did these international incidents cause the Chinese to change Chinese REE export policy?

Did the Chinese determine that sharing REE with potential military adversaries is not in Chinese Strategic Interest?

If these statements are true, how permanent is the Chinese REE export ban? Particularly of the scarce and strategically important HREE?

How permanent is the Chinese ban of Dy Tb Y ?

Permanent decisions about Chinese REE exports have been made as a result of this incident?

Obviously there are other considerations, e.g, relative scarcity of materials, self interest in developing their own REE manufacturing sector. As the Chinese move up the technological REE manufacturing chain, they shall consume most if not all of Chinese produced REEs.

Further, China claims that China is now “environmentally” concerned?

These “official” explanations seemed insufficient to explain the drastic change in REE exports and total ban on Dy Tb Y.
Addendum comments: 6 Febuary 2011:

Suddenly the earth-shaking game-changing REE world events of the last year make sense.

Sudden severe Chinese REE export restrictions and the Chinese ban of Dy Tb Y make perfect sense.

Suddenly why are we surprised that our tiny fledging REE miners have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, or more within one year?

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” -- Albert Einstein.

Seemed like a “miracle” didn’t it? Guess what? That’s how things appear until more facts are revealed?

Finally the China and USA “star wars race” conflict was revealed 2 February 2011 by UK Telegraph. (See attached links to numerous articles).

This conflict extends to the rest of the Western world. For example, China’s fear of Strategic Missle Defense Shield in Japan by the USA.

A major change in policy is often due to a significant incident. Why are we surprised?

Please do not take my opinion as fact for yourself. Please review the maze of documents just released by UK Telgraph. Come up with your own judgements. (Links attached).

Please spend 10 minutes or 10 hours doing your own analysis of the just revealed UK Telegraph documents, and decide in your own mind the permanent consequences to REE Mining/Manufacturing.

The Chinese shall ban most rare earths and certainly any HREE that have military applications. The West shall never again trust the Chinese for vital REE resources.

Yes the REE world is forever changed. Irreversibly. Permanently.

The Non Chinese REE mining and manufacturing world is suddenly called upon to deliver 50 percent of the world’s REE supply.

Impossible REE demands shall be placed on the Non Chinese REE Miners/Manufacturers. Can we deliver? I doubt we can.

Severe pressure shall be placed upon each and every Non Chinese Miner to produce. Currently, only 7 Non Chinese REE miners are expected in production by 2015 (Alkane, Arafura, Avalon, Great Western, Molycorp, Lynas, and Dong Pao of Vietnam).

Personally I doubt that these 7 select companies can replace 50 percent of the world’s rare earth needs, even at current levels.

Perhaps with more warning, more awareness of the 2 February 2011 revelations, our Non Chinese miners could have geared up faster, expanded more rapidly, more money could have been raised, more workers trained, etc.?

We have been living in a world based on old assumptions. China: The Rare Earth Monopolist would be our REE “Mama”. China would provide any shortfall that the Non Chinese miners could not provide in the next few years?

New Reality: Virtually all of the Non Chinese demand needs to be supplied by Non Chinese Mining and Manufacturing companies, i.e., 50 percent of the world’s total use of REEs. Virtually all of the already Chinese banned REE: Dy Tb Y. China has already banned 41 REE manufactured products. How soon!

The progression to a total Chinese REE ban is inevitable and may happen at any time.

Is the Non Chinese world prepared for severe shortages? Shortages that the US Department of Energy said in December 2010 shall last at least 15 years? (See attached link).

The world’s most successful businesses: Siemens, General Electric, Toyota, Honda, Apple, etc. and governmental needs: Japan, USA, EU, South Korea, India are all threatened.

China: No safety valve for the world. See Zhang Anwen statement: Video attached.

Solutions happen when actions are taken.

May I ask a question? How can we come to our own personal interpretations, and merge our collective interpretation of the New Reality? What actions can we take? How can we “spread the word” of real shortages, real need to increase Non Chinese REE supply capability?

What obligations do governments have to mitigate potential damage to their National Defense, and potential crippling of businesses?

Is there a true REE crisis? A true emergency?

If there an impending disaster of supply shortfall, what can we do to make a difference? Individually? Collectively? Individual REE companies? REE companies collectively? REE industry collectively?

The future is in our hands. Our collective hands. We will be judged as an industry by our actions.

Yes these are great opportunities for the Non Chinese REE mining/manufacturing industry, but at the same time severely difficult times ahead even working together.

Can we accomplish a nearly impossible task: fulfilling our call to provide the modern world with a sufficient supply of REE?

How will history judge us?

Attached links:

2 February 2011 UK Telegraph Ltd:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8299495/WikiLeaks-US-and-China-in-military-standoff-over-space-missiles.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8299410/WikiLeaks-timeline-of-the-space-race.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8299491/WikiLeaks-US-vs-China-in-battle-of-the-anti-satellite-space-weapons.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8299408/WikiLeaks-the-race-to-take-control-of-space.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/china-wikileaks/8299317/REQUEST-TO-ALLIES-FOR-NEW-DEMARCHE-TO-CHINA-REGARDING-CHINAS-JANUARY-2007-ANTI-SATELLITE-TEST.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/china-wikileaks/8299318/CHINAS-ANGST-OVER-U.S.-SATELLITE-INTERCEPTION.html

USA Department of Energy Report: Critical Materials Strategy December 2010:

http://www.energy.gov/news/documents/criticalmaterialsstrategy.pdf

Zhang Anwen a leading Chinese government advisor and Deputy Secretary General of Inner Mongolia Rare Earth Guild who in Beijing conference Spring 2010 said:
“Foreign countries should calmly and logically think about this and develop their own mines for their own needs. Our (China) resources are diminishing and we (China) need these minerals for our own use.”
(Minutes 2:46 to 3:20 in the 6:19 minute video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHs2lGsqFKU&p=19D44B68A08E1850

It is funny whenever US government is in the spot light. Someone always tries to point the finger towards Chinese.
Let me return in kind
Facebook banned by Indian government
http://techlogg.com/2010/06/facebook-banned-by-indian-government/816

The 1960's Pentagon Papers report compiled by the Pentagon's right hand men at the Rand Corporation were the highly confidential restricted access official US Government account and history of the US's highly controversial and domestically tumultuous involvement in the civil war in Vietnam. The Papers were, by all accounts, "purloined" (stolen property) by a former Rand analyst (Daniel Ellsberg) and given by him directly to the Washington Post and to the New York Times which between them raced to read, dissect and publish the official account as interpreted by each journal.

The US Government (Pres Nixon) went to the US District courts and, as viewed necessary to the US Courts of Appeals to seek injunctive restraining orders against publication of the Papers. The US Government won an injunctive restraining order against the Times and lost its case for an injunctive restraining order against the Post. (At no time was a court order either violated or ignored.) The legal (and public policy) dispute ultimately was decided by the US Supreme Court. The Court decided the case against the US Government's attempts to censor publication of the Papers and in favor of the free and unfettered publication of the Papers by US media.

Of vital importance in deciding for the media, the Supreme Court asserted the body of First Amendment case law that severely restricts acts of "prior restraint" by the government (legalese). That is, the US Government Constitutionally has no readily or easily available right or claim to prevent or to prohibit in advance the free publication/dissemination of anything, that any time the government wants to censor, the "presumptive burden" to prove a (valid) Constitutional reason to censor lays heavily on the government to prove its case to censor - very heavily. Significantly, the Supreme Court made its decision while United States armed forces were continuing to be engaged in combat in Vietnam.

Assange clearly is one of the numerous anti-American Australians who is delighting and tickling himself in the Wikileaks saga. However, if the Supreme Court can also (rightly) decide 9-0 that Hustler Magazine and its onorous publisher Larry Flint have the Constitutional right to publish his periodical, then we should by all reason of law and precedent (stare decisis) expect that, should this case appear before the Supreme Court, the US Government would rightly take it on the chin once again. However, I doubt seriously that Pres Obama wants to look like Pres Nixon in the Pentagon Papers case or to look like bush league county prosecutors in the case of The People v Larry Flint. (Recall 'The People v Richard Nixon' in the Watergate Tapes case the Court decided 9-0 for The People?)

Yes diplomats are going to be more cautious in their communications of all manner and sorts, not only in the US Government but in all major governments everywhere. However, diplimats will continue to devise newly effective ways to continue to provide vital information to their respective governments.

Wikileaks will soon reveal much about the June 4, 1989 Tienaman Square massacre of unarmed civilian demonstrators by the People's 'Liberation' Army. Ellsberg is a better motivated democrat than is Assange (we'll omit Flint at this point), but both serve a precious purpose that is long respected in both the culture and jurisprudence of Anglo and Anglo derived societies and civilizations.

The reputation of the United States as a defender of free speech, or any other kind of freedom for that matter, was, rightly or wrongly, lost a long time ago. Had you only just noticed?

One thing our founding fathers knew that we have forgotten is that an adversarial press (adversarial in relation to those in governmental power) is an absolute necessity for the country they created. One thing I have never liked is that annual love fest between the media and the politicians. A few years ago one of the clips that made the rounds after that was a charming little spectacle of Karl Rove and David Gregory chumming and hamming it up pretending to be rappers. It made me want to gag.

Every day we have fewer and fewer local newspapers, which is the cradle of investigative reporting. You could call that a cradle of liberty. It teaches the tradition to those entering the field of journalism, and it accustoms the people to the idea of political accountability. I fear greatly how we can expect any national media to survive as a force to ensure that government is by and for the people...when the politicians and the journalists are in bed together, wining and dining each other, scratching each others' backs and feathering each others' nests, while they are dancing the night away, our country is falling deeper and deeper into the grave.

Wake up America. And to those who thought the Internet would be the solution to this problem: a) it only exacerbates the dearth of a well-informed public as to local issues, which is again the breeding ground of a well-informed public on the national level, b) most of the major web sites that get visited by people who use their computer as their major source of news are staffed by the same circle of journalists who make up the msm print and television sources, ergo you may be reading it on your computer screen but the content of what you are reading is by and large the same as what is in the big-name papers and magazines and on the tv channels, and c) as we see in the incarceration and near-torture of Pvt. Manning, the powers that be are very capable of controlling the internet, yes, just as much in America as anywhere else.

Parents and teachers are the solution, we have got to start inspiring our children to become journalists who have the dream of saving this country. The pen is mightier than the sword but only if it is a pure pen.

Time and again, as in many other articles on the subject, a glaring omission is obvious, often used as a defence - that politicians and civil servants need to talk candidly and in confidence - rests upon the idea that the same objectives couldn't be achieved through direct honesty and transparency.

As a former intelligence operative, I am not the least bit upset about the content of the leaked files. I was selected because of my language backgrounds of Arabi, Farsi, Kormanji, Hezarazi, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Francaise, Deutch, Italiano, Swahili, Espanol, Portugese and English. I was also a third award rifle and pistol expert in the Marine Corps.

There was a time where I wanted to get out of the intelligence field - because a some of information that we collected someone paid for with their lives. A lot of the intelligence that we exploited cost someone else their lives. I am an idealistic and conscientious person and this was all too heavy for me. Then my section chief asked me a profound question " Don't you see it is exactly your high value that you put on human life - that you should stay on?"

In 500,000 leaked files you will not find one impropriety - that is how good our men and women in uniform are.

In the infamous collateral murder video, Assange doesn't point out a few key facts:

The helicopter was called because the ground forces had just received fire.
That WAS an RPG that you saw (posession of an RPG is illegal in Iraq for personal protection.)
Chmagh was taking a photo of a Humvee target.
Reporters often imbed with insurgents. Reuters is famous for it in Lebanon and Iraq. Reuters cameramen are part of Hezbolla's propaganda machine.
You don't let an insurgent get away - you stop them at all cost.

Assange's diatribe is an exercise in grandstanding - but I'm not suprised that he is shocked by the happenstance of war... It also reflects his naivety about warfare and his lack of knowlege.

Regarding the truly sensitive and compartmental operations of US intelligence. It is only on a need to know basis and there is absolutely no written record of it. I went on more than a few assignments not knowing what I was going in country for. The orders were always verbal and very clear.

Bradley Manning, on the other hand, signed a non-disclosure agreement with the US government - just as I did. The punishment for distributing classified information is about 50 years of solitary confinement in a maximum security prison. He knew what he was doing. If he was the leak, it will come out at his Courts Martial, on the basis of evidence and he will have his day in court.

SATAN, I know thy strength, and thou knowest mine,
Neither our own but given; what folly then
To boast what Arms can do, since thine no more
Then Heaven permits, nor mine, though doubled now
To trample thee as mire: for proof look up,
And read thy Lot in yon celestial Sign
Where thou art weighed, & shown how light, how weak,
If thou resist. The Fiend lookt up and knew
His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.

It is disturbing that many people don't realize how important this issue is. The cables do expose an invisible government. I have no fear of the "most dangerous man in the world" but I have great fear of my government. They have given themselves the authority to seize my twitter, facebook and email account, complete transparency into my life but it has become illegal for anyone to have transparency into theirs. The people of the united states no longer have the power to stand up to our governance. We should remember our forefather’s. The forefathers tried to tell us, they gave us the constitution and told us to protect it and uphold it until death. CNN, Fox News and the like are just as bad, we couldn't get enough coverage of Michael Jackson’s death but they report little to nothing about the content of the cables. I have been disappointed in the media and journalists. They call themselves representatives of the free press but they themselves distort the truth, limiting the free press. Journalists have become sanctified and placed themselves among the elite. They have given themselves the authority to decide for the people what we can consider news worthy, everything has become classified and in privileged formation. People need to wake up and stand up and recognize that Julian Assange did not break American law and if we continue to allow the government to continue to bring down the whistle blower’s then we really don’t want to know the truth. In doing so we will hand over to our integrity to our enemy. Therefore, the next time America’s enemy comes forward and says, America has an ugly face, she only cares about herself and she is a murderer, then they would not be lying.

As far as I'm concerned, Assange is a hero, and the more the US government and Obama pursue him, the more hypocritical and criminal the government looks. You hide things when you are ashamed of them. I admit that it's a bit surprising that people in the government are capable of shame, but apparently they are.

The First Amendment guarantees both freedom of speech and the press. If those words mean anything, the government should back down. In fact, non-disclosure agreements are themselves unConstitutional since they amount to prior censorship of speech and press, which the government is prohibited from doing.

I think the US has a better government than Mubarak provided Egypt, and that's saying something, but not a lot. Our government has a long way to go to become democratic...or honest...or competent. I'm not hopeful.