The Next President of the United States

[DaveShoelace]

Chelsea Manning has been freed/pardoned by Obama, what is everyone's view on her?

I'm still conflicted about Snowden/Assange and whether I think they are heroes of truth or people who put others' lives at risk.

In the case of Manning, from my very limited knowledge it just seems she was an absolute traitor to her country and put her fellow soldiers lives at risk. However, I know very little and could be persuaded the other way obviously.

What is the case for her release?

[MintTrav]

I'm as liberal as you can find, but I would throw away the key when it comes to all three. How can governments operate if everything they do is released to the public and other governments and terrorists are told everything they know? I have no doubt that lives were endangered, and possibly lost, but the releases also undermined the US national interest in many other, more mundane, ways. For example, Hillary Clinton's opinion of some members of the Mexican govt was publicised, which would have made discussions more difficult when she next met those Ministers to negotiate on her country's behalf.

Manning seems to have all kinds of psychological issues and has, apparently, expressed some remorse, so I guess some clemency might be justified. Seems a bit early though - I wouldn't have settled for less than ten years due to the seriousness of the crime. The other two remain defiant and Assange continues his operations whenever he gets the opportunity. I think he is pretty much incapable of reform so, as with an insane person who is causing harm wherever he goes, I would remove him from society for a long time.

[RED-DOG]

How can he pardon him/her who's guilt is uncontested and not Steve Avery who has one of the most unsafe convictions imaginable?

[DaveShoelace]

I'm as liberal as you can find, but I would throw away the key when it comes to all three. How can governments operate if everything they do is released to the public and other governments and terrorists are told everything they know? I have no doubt that lives were endangered, and possibly lost, but the releases also undermined the US national interest in many other, more mundane, ways. For example, Hillary Clinton's opinion of some members of the Mexican govt was publicised, which would have made discussions more difficult when she next met those Ministers to negotiate on her country's behalf.

Manning seems to have all kinds of psychological issues and has, apparently, expressed some remorse, so I guess some clemency might be justified. Seems a bit early though - I wouldn't have settled for less than ten years due to the seriousness of the crime. The other two remain defiant and Assange continues his operations whenever he gets the opportunity. I think he is pretty much incapable of reform so, as with an insane person who is causing harm wherever he goes, I would remove him from society for a long time.

Yeah I might be leaning towards your position.

Snowden is maybe where I am conflicted. Did he, in your opinion, do anything that endangered lives? I sometimes think he was a hero for exposing what the US was doing to its own people, but whenever I see a terrorist attack in Europe I breath a sigh of relief that Britain is an Island and generally seems to be doing a good job of snooping on the right people.

[MintTrav]

I'm as liberal as you can find, but I would throw away the key when it comes to all three. How can governments operate if everything they do is released to the public and other governments and terrorists are told everything they know? I have no doubt that lives were endangered, and possibly lost, but the releases also undermined the US national interest in many other, more mundane, ways. For example, Hillary Clinton's opinion of some members of the Mexican govt was publicised, which would have made discussions more difficult when she next met those Ministers to negotiate on her country's behalf.

Manning seems to have all kinds of psychological issues and has, apparently, expressed some remorse, so I guess some clemency might be justified. Seems a bit early though - I wouldn't have settled for less than ten years due to the seriousness of the crime. The other two remain defiant and Assange continues his operations whenever he gets the opportunity. I think he is pretty much incapable of reform so, as with an insane person who is causing harm wherever he goes, I would remove him from society for a long time.

Yeah I might be leaning towards your position.

Snowden is maybe where I am conflicted. Did he, in your opinion, do anything that endangered lives? I sometimes think he was a hero for exposing what the US was doing to its own people, but whenever I see a terrorist attack in Europe I breath a sigh of relief that Britain is an Island and generally seems to be doing a good job of snooping on the right people.

Well, he released almost two million documents, so God knows what was included. It doesn't seem possible he filtered out harmful items, as he claimed. If nothing else, terrorist organisations are known to have changed their communication and encryption practices as a result, making surveillance more difficult, but I suspect they made a lot more use of the disclosures than that.

His releases included at least 58,000 British intelligence documents, by the way.

[DaveShoelace]

I'm as liberal as you can find, but I would throw away the key when it comes to all three. How can governments operate if everything they do is released to the public and other governments and terrorists are told everything they know? I have no doubt that lives were endangered, and possibly lost, but the releases also undermined the US national interest in many other, more mundane, ways. For example, Hillary Clinton's opinion of some members of the Mexican govt was publicised, which would have made discussions more difficult when she next met those Ministers to negotiate on her country's behalf.

Manning seems to have all kinds of psychological issues and has, apparently, expressed some remorse, so I guess some clemency might be justified. Seems a bit early though - I wouldn't have settled for less than ten years due to the seriousness of the crime. The other two remain defiant and Assange continues his operations whenever he gets the opportunity. I think he is pretty much incapable of reform so, as with an insane person who is causing harm wherever he goes, I would remove him from society for a long time.

Yeah I might be leaning towards your position.

Snowden is maybe where I am conflicted. Did he, in your opinion, do anything that endangered lives? I sometimes think he was a hero for exposing what the US was doing to its own people, but whenever I see a terrorist attack in Europe I breath a sigh of relief that Britain is an Island and generally seems to be doing a good job of snooping on the right people.

Well, he released almost two million documents, so God knows what was included. It doesn't seem possible he filtered out harmful items, as he claimed. If nothing else, terrorist organisations are known to have changed their communication and encryption practices as a result, making surveillance more difficult, but I suspect they made a lot more use of the disclosures than that.

His releases included at least 58,000 British intelligence documents, by the way.

Yes and from what I hear, we are much bigger snoopers than the yanks

[Doobs]

How can he pardon him/her who's guilt is uncontested and not Steve Avery who has one of the most unsafe convictions imaginable?

Surely this is two different questions about two different cases. 

Should Chelsea Manning be pardoned?  Quite possibly, as there was a lot of evidence that she had mental health issues before she committed the crime.  I have much less sympathy with Snowden and Assange.

No idea about Avery, though I know who he is.  Suspect there is a raft of equally unsafe convivtions out there that haven't been on the TV.

[RED-DOG]

How can he pardon him/her who's guilt is uncontested and not Steve Avery who has one of the most unsafe convictions imaginable?

Surely this is two different questions about two different cases. 

Should Chelsea Manning be pardoned?  Quite possibly, as there was a lot of evidence that she had mental health issues before she committed the crime.  I have much less sympathy with Snowden and Assange.

No idea about Avery, though I know who he is.  Suspect there is a raft of equally unsafe convivtions out there that haven't been on the TV.

I think it's the same question about two issues where the situation similar for both parties, ie, both in jail for a very long time.


Your reply kind of makes my point. If there is a raft of unsafe convictions why should that particular one be quashed?

[The Camel]

John Sweeney is a very brave man to make this documentary.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08bls3s/panorama-trump-the-kremlin-candidate

[Karabiner]

This time tomorrow The Donald will know and be in control of the US Nuclear Codes - this disturbs me greatly.

I'll bet neither Nostradamus or Leonardo da Vinci saw this one coming.

[Doobs]

How can he pardon him/her who's guilt is uncontested and not Steve Avery who has one of the most unsafe convictions imaginable?

Surely this is two different questions about two different cases. 

Should Chelsea Manning be pardoned?  Quite possibly, as there was a lot of evidence that she had mental health issues before she committed the crime.  I have much less sympathy with Snowden and Assange.

No idea about Avery, though I know who he is.  Suspect there is a raft of equally unsafe convivtions out there that haven't been on the TV.

I think it's the same question about two issues where the situation similar for both parties, ie, both in jail for a very long time.


Your reply kind of makes my point. If there is a raft of unsafe convictions why should that particular one be quashed?

Why throw the starfish back in the water?

[Karabiner]

I'm a little concerned about this "Bikers for Trump" group who are planning to form a security buffer between the fans and those less in awe of The Donald at the inauguration or "urinauguration" as one wag labelled it on Twitter yesterday - it conjures up horrible images of the notorious Altamont free concert in 1969 who sadly installed The Hell's Angels as their security with tragic consequences.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-altamont-festival-brings-the-1960s-to-a-violent-end

[MintTrav]

How can he pardon him/her who's guilt is uncontested and not Steve Avery who has one of the most unsafe convictions imaginable?

Surely this is two different questions about two different cases. 

Should Chelsea Manning be pardoned?  Quite possibly, as there was a lot of evidence that she had mental health issues before she committed the crime.  I have much less sympathy with Snowden and Assange.

No idea about Avery, though I know who he is.  Suspect there is a raft of equally unsafe convivtions out there that haven't been on the TV.

I think it's the same question about two issues where the situation similar for both parties, ie, both in jail for a very long time.


Your reply kind of makes my point. If there is a raft of unsafe convictions why should that particular one be quashed?

Manning's isn't an unsafe conviction - guilt isn't in dispute. AFAIK, pardons are for showing mercy to a guilty person for whatever reason, not for second-guessing the court because we are not convinced they got it right.

[titaniumbean]

Chelsea Manning has been freed/pardoned by Obama, what is everyone's view on her?

I'm still conflicted about Snowden/Assange and whether I think they are heroes of truth or people who put others' lives at risk.

In the case of Manning, from my very limited knowledge it just seems she was an absolute traitor to her country and put her fellow soldiers lives at risk. However, I know very little and could be persuaded the other way obviously.

What is the case for her release?

There are 3 different cases here.

When huge human rights abuses, personal enrichment happens is it ok because it's the government/good guys? Clearly whenever documents are released they need to be released to a proper source otherwise they put too much unnecessary info out there, there is a collosal difference between dumping the data onto an open website and giving it to for example the guardian/main press. When of course the press' job is to hold those in power accountable by reporting on what they are doing.

Manning released documents to Wikileaks which included the collateral murder video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0) watch it if you haven't. It is not for those with a soft stomach.  They detailed abuses by the government.

The argument that us finding out that they are committing atrocious crimes isn't the reason the soldiers lives are put in danger, the reason for that is the government/people in charge choosing this abominable course of action and putting boots on the ground for their oil grabs/political plays. The people on the ground already know that this is happening it's just a wider audience that now is informed that in itself is not a reason against.

Since imprisonment Manning has been continually abused and placed in solitary confinement, Manning has tried to commit suicide there and her lawyers aren't informed, they aren't allowed to see her, no due process is followed because they want to send a message that they can do anything to you and there's nothing you can do. Laws don't apply when they don't want them to (this is a key tenet of American policy in all areas military/economic/environmental).


In the case of Snowden, he provided a wide range of documents which he spent years collating to the press and then it was up to the press what to release. In America it brought about actual change, and in the UK it brought about our government fucking us by just retrospectively legalising their antics. It was also said that he should have gone through the right channels, but when you see the treatment of other people  who are 'now heroes' but at the time vilified in the same way and see that there is systemic pressure to never allow truth to be seen outside of the system how can you think it's setup in anyway other than to enrich and protect the few?


Assange has long been an outsider, intent on shaking things up and whilst Wikileaks seems in my view to have started off at least well intentioned since the Ecuadorian embassy situation and with the recent election it's pretty clear he's gone off the rails on personal vendettas and isn't so interested in open information as to just mess up stuff for the US empire.


Just look at the different sentences from Mint trav on 3 different situations -

I'm as liberal as you can find, but I would throw away the key when it comes to all three.

The whole point of a justice system is to judge everything on the specific case and facts.  If we are to think that releasing info = lifetime imprisonment then why exactly does this not apply in the other cases? Two very excellent examples would be Patreous (sucked off by biographer for classified info = no punishment) and Flynn (illegal internet connection into his military computers + more and now crowing about Hillary doing much less with much less scope for negative outcomes = promoted to Trumps cabinet). Why does it only punish those at lower ranks and reward those at higher? especially when those lower ranked people were providing a public service by informing and those in higher were doing self benefiting deeds?

I have no doubt that lives were endangered, and possibly lost

If we read the US governments own reports on these matters, they say that ZERO lives were lost. Yet mintrav has no doubt and many many others are like him. Opinion trumps fact if you forgive the pun!

the releases also undermined the US national interest

here's an important point is the US interest the most important thing ? the human race? just our nation etc? much of this boils down to where allegiances lie. There's little doubt in my mind that US interest absolutely shits on every single other human on the planets interest so I have no patience to accept that as a valid argument.


As reddog points out it's the inconsistency and self serving nature of all these things that's very irksome.



Snowden is maybe where I am conflicted. Did he, in your opinion, do anything that endangered lives? I sometimes think he was a hero for exposing what the US was doing to its own people, but whenever I see a terrorist attack in Europe I breath a sigh of relief that Britain is an Island and generally seems to be doing a good job of snooping on the right people.


Points like this annoy me because it's another mute point. The government already had the absolute ability to do many things including house breaking, computer tampering, hacking etc with due process we haven't in anyway worried about stopping them from doing that, it's the idea that daveshoulace needs to be hacked 24/7 and have his every move recorded along with every single other citizen 'to make us safe'. It's already been shown that the services are taking on too much data and information to be able to keep track/find the needle in the haystack. Similarly US house reports have shown that ZERO cases benefited because of this mass surveillance. Whilst those who worked for the government (actually doing the work not the politicians) have made repeated statements that they just keep adding to the haystack and obfuscating the needle. We have the Belgium attackers already on the books but not enough resources to follow them up, there are other attackers who are also known but we are just feeding more and more people into analysing SIGINT rather than doing targeted work.





Well, he released almost two million documents, so God knows what was included. It doesn't seem possible he filtered out harmful items, as he claimed. If nothing else, terrorist organisations are known to have changed their communication and encryption practices as a result, making surveillance more difficult, but I suspect they made a lot more use of the disclosures than that.

His releases included at least 58,000 British intelligence documents, by the way.

Again he didn't release, he passed them onto the main stream press who RELEASED a very small minority of the reports redacted after careful discussion and review with the government to mitigate specific harms to people but not the abuses of the system. That's such a huge difference.

Any terrorist organisation that had to wait for these documents to wonder if using their iphone and mainstream applications to do their jihad were utterly useless anyway. OBL gave specific instructions to his followers PRE 2000 that western communication methods were not secure and were not to be used. This is why he stayed free for so long (+ Pakistan ofc). Many of the recent attacks you find that there were very little safeguards on their communications and those who are intending on martyrdom don't need good opsec because they aren't trying to get away with anything. Yet after the Belgium attacks and Orlando, San Antonio etc all we heard about from the press was waaah waaaah encryption my government source says we must punish anyone who uses it even though they can definitely access what they need they just want a court to reduce the cost for them to do it and allow it on a worldwide scale. This isn't good for people, it's not good for us but it can again as usual benefit a select few whilst enriching another select few who utterly coincidentally have a lot of links to the former.



The bit about us having some files released. Oh no. Ofc we had some released, we have a reciprocal arrangement where we hack the US populace and provide the information so they can claim they didn't hack their own but now have access to data which they can search totally legally how coincidental, and we use their capabilities to benefit ourselves. Obviously mainly economically and politically because that's all that matters to politicians. The huge bulk of our benefits from these systems are business related and 'position in the world' related absolutely bugger all to do with waging war or catching the baddies.  If this is so irksome are you also aware that one of the biggest and most consistent attackers to US systems is a MAJOR ally of ours?




Cliffs-

Snowden = well intentioned hero. let's hope he doesn't have to work down the Apple store like his predecessors.

Manning = well intentioned, very unwell and needs help whilst we don't overlook the specifics of what was released about US intent/policies/actions.

Assange = started off good, seems to have turned bat shit crazy and be following his own agendas not those that he initially made out = worrying.



People don't listen to facts, expert opinion or bi-partisan government reports they just lap up whatever content fits their pre-defined narrative. Is it any wonder we have ended up with this utter disgrace of a turd that is Trump in charge?

[nirvana]

I teresting read as always titterz