Manning not guilty
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Cancel 2016.2
The Almighty
I hope they give him the maximum 154 years...
I hope he does very little time.
Callinectes
Proud MAGA Semi-Facist
All he had to do was keep his mouth shut like he swore an oath to do. Beyond that, he had an unspoken commitment to the trigger pullers in the field, to analyze the intelligence entrusted to him and pass it to his superiors so that THEY could make war fighting and diplomatic decisions. There is a reason why they don't pay PFC's $10K a month.
The verdict comes on the 235th anniversary of the passage of America's first whistle-blower protection law, approved by the Continental Congress after two Navy officers were arrested and harassed for having reported the torture of British prisoners.
How have we gotten to the place where the revelation of torture is no longer laudable whistle-blowing, but now counts as espionage?
The answer is that government has not yet come to terms with the persistence and transparency of the digital age. Information moves so fast and to so many places that controlling it is no longer an option. Every datapoint, whether a perverted tweet by an aspiring mayor or a classified video of Reuters news staffers being gunned down by an Apache helicopter, will somehow find the light of day. It's enough to make any administration tremble, but it's particularly traumatic for one with things to hide.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/rushkoff-manning-verdict/
How have we gotten to the place where the revelation of torture is no longer laudable whistle-blowing, but now counts as espionage?
The answer is that government has not yet come to terms with the persistence and transparency of the digital age. Information moves so fast and to so many places that controlling it is no longer an option. Every datapoint, whether a perverted tweet by an aspiring mayor or a classified video of Reuters news staffers being gunned down by an Apache helicopter, will somehow find the light of day. It's enough to make any administration tremble, but it's particularly traumatic for one with things to hide.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/rushkoff-manning-verdict/
cancel2 2022
Canceled
I was listening to Daniel Ellsberg earlier on the Beeb, I just wish that I could post the interview on here but the BBC iPlayer is blocked in the US.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKellsberg.htm
Manning exposed allegations of torture, undisclosed civilian death tolls in Afghanistan and Iraq, official orders not to investigate torture by nations holding our prisoners, accusations of the torture of Spanish prisoners at Guantanamo, the "collateral murder" video of Reuters journalists and Iraqi civilians as U.S. soldiers cheered, U.S. State Department support of corporations opposing Haitian minimum wage, training of Egyptian torturers by the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, U.S. authorized stealing of U.N. Secretary General's DNA -- the list goes on.
These are not launch codes for nuclear strikes, operational secrets or even plans for future military missions. Rather, they are documentation of past activity and officially sanctioned military and state policy. These are not our secrets, but our ongoing actions and approaches.
A thinking government--a virtuous one, if we can still use such a word--would treat this as a necessary intervention. Things have gone too far.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/rushkoff-manning-verdict/
These are not launch codes for nuclear strikes, operational secrets or even plans for future military missions. Rather, they are documentation of past activity and officially sanctioned military and state policy. These are not our secrets, but our ongoing actions and approaches.
A thinking government--a virtuous one, if we can still use such a word--would treat this as a necessary intervention. Things have gone too far.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/rushkoff-manning-verdict/