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Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

nytimes.com

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Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#361

Post by etjossem »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #333
etjossem wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester? You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. > So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved? In short, yes. Her 7-year sentence has already been quite enough. I will concede that the outlet through which the leaks were publishe…

>You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. It's not ridiculous, its a reductio ad absurdum of the principle you seem to be employing, that a chance positive result of an action justifies the original action. Or are you just making things up as you go along to reach the conclusion you prefer? >In short, yes. OK, here's a more down to earth scenario. Say I'm a high level administration official and I have a…

That's more like it! Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about, and which could compromise ongoing operations if it were completely transparent. Sources who want to ethically be whistleblowers need to work with reputable press outlets, releasing only what is necessary to people they know will further trim the leak - until the final product does only good for the public.

Here's a quote from Snowden on just that:

"I never published a single document on my own because I believe that the model, the ideal of American government is actually quite a shrewd one,” he said. “I tried to emulate the model of checks and balance. Instead of making a unilateral decision, that ‘The world must know,’ I worked with the free press, institutions that we trust, American journalists.”

Could Chelsea Manning have chosen a better way to release the documents than WikiLeaks? Absolutely. Do I still consider her a whistleblower? Yes - though I would never claim she was as responsible about it as someone like Snowden.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#362

Post by crispyambulance »

davidw wrote: post #245
mhurron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classifying material should not be a way for the Government to hide corruption and wrongdoing. Whistle blowing is the only way that prevents that. Chelsea Manning acted on her conscience, which is the best we can expect anyone to do. The governments punishment was to prevent that happening again.

Manning dumped a whole slew of stuff without any checking or vetting or anything else. Some of the stuff I saw in relationship to Italy, for instance, was just diplomatic personnel airing "what they really thought" about Silvio Berlusconi. These comments are the kind of thing that didn't do anyone any good to have dumped in public.

Manning certainly has already paid a harsh price for her decisions. I think reasonable people would say that it was "enough" at this point. What good does it do to keep Manning in prison for the full 35 years?

As for outing what people "really think" of Berlusconi... I suspect that no one was surprised (including the clown himself, Silvio).

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#364

Post by grzm »

adrienne wrote: post #351
akjainaj wrote: post #53

Why can the US president meddle with the sentence of a convict? Isn't that against the separation of powers? Not that I have anything against this guy Manning in particular, just asking why is this "tolerable" in a democracy. Isn't it a risk, that the president can pardon whoever he wants?

Manning is a woman, not a guy. It is fucking disgusting how many people here want to misgender her.

This is an issue you (along with many others) are very passionate about. An earlier comment you made I think describes this particularly eloquently and civilly.

She was always a woman; she just presented as a man for many years. The NYT presented the information quite well when they said, "Ms. Manning was still known as Bradley Manning when she deployed with her unit to Iraq in late 2009."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13422094

You're also very aware that a lot of people are not on the same page with you. Some are trying to figure it out for themselves, some have made up their mind. I think it's commendable that they're willing to do so in a public forum and for the most part civilly, particularly on an issue that has been historically as divisive as this. Let's encourage this discussion in a constructive manner and leave strong, insulting language out of it, regardless of how strongly we may feel about the issue. I completely understand how frustrating it can be when you feel like you're constantly repeating yourself and no one's listening. It would be great if people could be convinced over the course of 30 minutes, but I doubt that's realistically going to happen.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#365

Post by dragonwriter »

464192002d7fe1c wrote: post #58
blhack wrote: post #2

Good. I wish that he would just pardon her, though. I don't want the next administration to somehow undo this.

It won't be undone under Trump. If anything, he would grant immediate clemency or a pardon (though I don't expect either).

While the right loves WikiLeaks now, that's all because of Assange's more recent tactions that don't involve Manning; at the time, they wanted Manning and Assange treated as enemy combatants, while that's changed for Assange because he has now served their political interests, I don't see any indication that it has for Manning.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#366

Post by sureshn »

In the last 4 years of Obama presidency the clout America had abroad has considerably reduced. Especially after the whistle blowing incident , the ruling dispensation came across as corrupt and unethical. The bargaining power was compromised greatly because of this and the whole world now knows about spying , prism , NSA etc. A Greek philosopher Diogenes I think it was or Socrates dont remember had said this awesome quote , " Pardoning treason will lead to self destruction" . This decision seems to have a strong left liberal bias unfortunately

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#367

Post by hackinthebochs »

etjossem wrote: post #361
hackinthebochs wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. It's not ridiculous, its a reductio ad absurdum of the principle you seem to be employing, that a chance positive result of an action justifies the original action. Or are you just making things up as you go along to reach the conclusion you prefer? >In short, yes. OK, here's a more down to earth scenario. Say I'm a high level administration official and I have a…

That's more like it! Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about, and which could compromise ongoing operations if it were completely transparent. Sources who want to ethically be whistleblowers need to work with reputable press outlets, releasing only what is necessary to people they know will further trim the leak - until the final product does only good for the pub…

>Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about

This can't be reconciled with saying Manning's actions were justified without post-hoc rationalizing.

>Do I still consider her a whistleblower? Yes

Then clearly the meaning of words mean nothing to you. Which is fair, a lot of that going around lately.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#368

Post by bb611 »

djsumdog wrote: post #32

Seven years is still a long time for whistle blowing. I'm glad to see she is still getting released though. It's important to note commuting the sentence is not a pardon. Chelsea will still have this conviction for the rest of her life. I know there is a lot of controversy with Manning compared to Wikileaks et. al. as far as not redacting documents or using a discriminating news source to filter them. Still, I oppose…

I appreciate many of your points but this:

> No one has the actual Pentagon Papers outside of very specific news agencies

is patently false, they're available in full from the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers

There are very good arguments made elsewhere in this thread about releasing in full vs. releasing to a group that has the ability and willingness to appropriately vet documents before release. Certainly Wikileaks' blanket release caused a large amount of unnecessary controversy that could have been strategically avoided, and would have served as less distraction from the issues presented in them.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#369

Post by revelation »

rudolf0 wrote: post #158
mhurron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classifying material should not be a way for the Government to hide corruption and wrongdoing. Whistle blowing is the only way that prevents that. Chelsea Manning acted on her conscience, which is the best we can expect anyone to do. The governments punishment was to prevent that happening again.

Little unethical behavior was actually leaked, though. The killing of the Reuters journalists probably should've been leaked since there was a sort of cover-up (government refused to give Reuters the video or concrete details), so I'll give her that. But the rest was basically just normal communications. I think she's served more than enough jail time, but this didn't really seem like a conscience-driven whistleblowi…

Some serious amnesia in this thread. But the reaction is all too common, people who just go "we knew all of that already" and switch back to sports while others out there risk their life to produce the documents that can bring about actual change.

Even if you don't care for the content of the cables, the fact that an estimated 3 million people have access to them with nothing worth mentioning in the form of access control should give you serious pause. The 1% are real, they are just not all billionaires.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#370

Post by l33tbro »

rudolf0 wrote: post #158
mhurron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classifying material should not be a way for the Government to hide corruption and wrongdoing. Whistle blowing is the only way that prevents that. Chelsea Manning acted on her conscience, which is the best we can expect anyone to do. The governments punishment was to prevent that happening again.

Little unethical behavior was actually leaked, though. The killing of the Reuters journalists probably should've been leaked since there was a sort of cover-up (government refused to give Reuters the video or concrete details), so I'll give her that. But the rest was basically just normal communications. I think she's served more than enough jail time, but this didn't really seem like a conscience-driven whistleblowi…

Could you please elaborate on this? I recently had dinner with a friend in intelligence, who was trying to convince me that Snowden was in bed with Russia from the get-go, and that the 90% of the leak had nothing to do with privacy concerns.

I took his opinions with a grain of salt given his background, but also couldn't refute due to being relatively unfamiliar with the Snowden saga.

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