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Bradley Manning
If you don't know much about this read this article and if you have time watch that 19 minute video.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/28/bradley-manning-trial-plea-statement
I had read a bit about him before and I thought he might have been honorable. This piece really took me for a ride. According to this the guy was pissing his pants during confrontations, getting dissed by everyone, and should have been discharged. After reading it I would hate to be one of the people making a decision on this. I'm really curious what other people think of it.
This comment on the article inparticular:
"@AgentC -
How did he betray the US?
He leaked 250,000 United States diplomatic cables and 500,000 army reports not caring which of his colleagues would die because of it. Now, of course he says it was all about the Apache Helicopter atrocity. Defence has primed him well, but the question remains "why not leak that but not the other 749,999 documents?" Then you would be a proper whistleblower and hero? The answer is he is a traitor who leaked anything that passed his way. He neither knew nor cared what he leaked or who got hurt. "
Ouch...
Does anyone think he will be sent away for life? That he never should have been there in the first place? That he is a hero? Don't give a flying @#$%? Unfit to stand trial? I can't even form an opinion on this right now it's so f'ed up.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/28/bradley-manning-trial-plea-statement
I had read a bit about him before and I thought he might have been honorable. This piece really took me for a ride. According to this the guy was pissing his pants during confrontations, getting dissed by everyone, and should have been discharged. After reading it I would hate to be one of the people making a decision on this. I'm really curious what other people think of it.
This comment on the article inparticular:
"@AgentC -
How did he betray the US?
He leaked 250,000 United States diplomatic cables and 500,000 army reports not caring which of his colleagues would die because of it. Now, of course he says it was all about the Apache Helicopter atrocity. Defence has primed him well, but the question remains "why not leak that but not the other 749,999 documents?" Then you would be a proper whistleblower and hero? The answer is he is a traitor who leaked anything that passed his way. He neither knew nor cared what he leaked or who got hurt. "
Ouch...
Does anyone think he will be sent away for life? That he never should have been there in the first place? That he is a hero? Don't give a flying @#$%? Unfit to stand trial? I can't even form an opinion on this right now it's so f'ed up.
Comments
You can say his conduct was unbecoming of a soldier, but the conduct of our nation and our armed forces towards this American citizen has been inhumane, and unAmerican.
Again, I absolutely concede he does not make a good soldier - but he is still supposed to be afforded certain rights and if you are a soldier who thinks he isn't allowed these rights then you're the type of soldier he wanted to expose in the first place.
This article about his peace prize nomination keeps turning up. I got bored.
Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Movement in the Icelandic Parliament, the Pirates of the EU; representatives from the Swedish Pirate Party, and the former Secretary of State in Tunisia for Sport & Youth.
From wiki:
The Movement (Icelandic: Hreyfingin) was a political movement in Iceland. It had 3 members of parliament in the Alþingi (the Icelandic Parliament). All of them were former Citizens' Movement (CM) MPs.
The original Citizen's Movement had four members of parliament. However, since one MP, Þráinn Bertelsson, had already left the party in the summer of 2009, none remain.[1] On March 18 2012 it merged with Citizens' Movement and the Liberal Party to form a new political party called Dawn.[2] (four members)
The page "Pirates of the EU" does not exist. (no members)
Slim Amamou (Arabic: سليم عمامو) (born in 1977) is a Tunisian blogger and the former Secretary of State for Sport and Youth (Arabic: كاتب دولة للشباب والرياضة, French: Secrétaire d'État à la Jeunesse et aux Sports), deputy to the Minister for Youth and Sports. He resigned on the week of May 25, 2011 in protest of the transitional government's block of several websites.[1] A known blogger, he is also a Pirate Party member. (a blogger)
...
This guys screwed.
Lets not forget no one has died or been injured as a result of all the leaks, that's got to count for something right?
The US is going down a dangerous path while no one seems to notice. These couple of bills have destroy our rights to the extent that we will never see them again.
HR 347
Patriot Act
NDAA 2012 & 2013
SOPA
Many of this seems to just incite civil unrest, but as of yet, Americans remain silent. I hope Bradly Manning is released with no charges but heroics and bravery. He is being punished for being a Whistle blower... among many other americans that just disappear for lashing out the truth. Scary times are ahead.
US military are required to take an oath to the constitution just like all other political representatives do. They are to defend the constitution from foreign and domestic enemies. Bradly Manning provided America the truth that our enemy is domestic, he was following his oath to the constitution which trumps any order given by the Commander in Chief.
Official Oath:
"I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
If the domestic enemy is the president/administration itself, assuming that his orders are not honorable, immoral, threatens the establishment that is the United States, I believe it is the duty of any US Military personnel to speak the truth, or disclose the truth by any and all means.
The Germans have a well-deserved reputation for producing a lot of really smart people, but this did not prevent them from being completely vulnerable to American-style propaganda. Amazingly, a nation raised on the greatest classical music, the profoundest scientists, the greatest poets, actually fell for propaganda that led them into a hopeless, two-front war against most of the world. Being smart is, in itself, no defense against skilled American propaganda, unless you know and understand the techniques, so you can resist them.
American politicians learned, early in the twentieth century, that using emotional sales techniques won elections. Furthermore, they learned that emotional appeals got them what they wanted as they advanced towards their long-term goal of becoming Masters of the Universe. From this, we get our modern lexicon of political speech, carefully crafted to appeal to powerful emotions, with either no appeal to reason, or (better yet) a vague appeal to something that sounds foggily reasonable, but is so obscure that no one will bother to dissect it.
Franklin Roosevelt understood this, which is why he called for Social Security. Security is an emotional appeal: no one is against security, are they? Roosevelt backed up his campaign with a masterful appeal to emotions: images of happy, elderly grandparents smiling while hugging their grandchildren, with everything in the world going right because of Social Security. All kinds of government programs were sold on the basis of appealing images and phrases. Roosevelt even appealed to America’s traditional love of freedom, spinning that term by multiplying it into the new Four Freedoms, including Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. Well, what heartless human being could possibly be against that? The Four Freedoms were promoted with images of parents tucking their children cozily into bed, and a happy family gathered around a Thanksgiving dinner, obviously free from want. The campaign was also based on that most powerful of all selling emotions: fear. If you don’t support Social Security, the ads suggested, you will live your last years in utter destitution.
American advertising executives learned the value of presenting a single image or slogan, and repeating it over and over again until it became ingrained in the public’s consciousness. Thus we are all aware that Ivory Soap is so pure that it floats: a point that has been repeated for the better part of a century. I’m not sure why I should be impressed that a bar of soap floats, but on the other hand, it’s not intended that I think that far. Politicians now sell their programs the way the advertising creeps sell soap: they dream up a slogan and repeat it over and over again. Thus we get empty slogans like The New Frontier, The New World Order (that one was poorly chosen; it sounds too much like an actual idea), or Reinventing Government (an idea that everyone should favor, except that the idea behind it really means Keeping Government the Same, only no one is supposed to think that far). Empty grandeur sells political products.
If you want to take heart, remember that the Vietnam War ended because a few people just continued to speak against it, despite the overwhelming government propaganda for it. The fact that a lot of the anti-war protesters were motivated by the wrong reasons (support of commies), doesn’t matter in light of the fact they were able to turn the tide. They were right, even if for the wrong reasons. If advocates of freedom continue to speak against the creeping tyranny that our masters justify on the phony grounds of the War on Terrorism, we might just be able to prevent the transition from Republic to Empire. The thing about propaganda is that, once it is exposed for what it is, no one listens anymore. People tune it out, just as the slaves in Russia and China learned to tune out their official propaganda."