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Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

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Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#781
post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>possibly gave Russia the keys to the castle when he fled the country Might as well claim that he possibly coordinated the 9/11 attacks. It's also possible that he's secretly really old and shot Kennedy. There hasn't been a shred of evidence presented supporting these claims, and if you're going to make the claim you should back it up somehow.

For one, I don't appreciate your reductio ad absurdum[1] approach to discussion. Snowden would also have to be "secretly really old" to coordinate the 9/11 attacks and even then the claim is patently absurd. Snowden had a cache of encrypted intelligence data. Intelligence agencies are fully capable of cracking encryption when properly motivated (in some cases they've backdoored them preemptively). Ewen MacAskill, liv…

He handed off his entire cache of documents to journalists while he was in Hong Kong and before he reached Russia. He also didn't read every single one, the journalists were responsible for combing through most of the data to determine what to release and what to redact.

So knowing those two things, you can't credibly claim he handed Russia anything. Whatever Russia has, they obtained from the newspapers just like the rest of us.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#782
post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In parent we can see you conveniently call that China, but that isn't the same. Diplomatic relations are handled by China's foreign ministry. There is no way Snowden's status would not be handled by the Chinese government.

There is still only one reason to say he went to China instead of simply mentioning he went to Hong Kong: to deliberately inaccurately describe and deceive what happened ie. a political reason. Don't resort to such lame rhetoric. It won't fly here.

Oh brother. Neither Hong Kong, nor China is the principal actor in this story. Their role consist of letting him leave despite a passport revocation and an arrest warrant.

Who is trying to muddle the point with irrelevant detail? It won't fly here!!

//

Also, I'm glad there were witnesses of some SD card being destroyed. Good thing we can trust the word of someone who at that point has already stolen deep operational intelligence in the first place (we're not even talking about information on mass domestic intelligence - just typical intelligence data), that this was the only copy he held or wasn't already compromised. A person who then fled to Russia by way of China. Unbelievable.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#783

This is great ... his life compared to Snowden has been horrid! On a different note I never bought he wants to be a woman just a PR thing to keep his name, plight and fight in the public eye. Maybe in five years or so his story will be told and we will see him as a him not a woman. *This is getting downvoted? I'm sure your now aware of fake news which is created to push agendas and or make money. Thus, I don't believ…

There is literally no reason to believe Chelsea lied about being transgender.

When you consider the current extremely negative views that the U.S military and the average Americans have against transgender people then it would be a terrible strategy to make up such a story.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#784

This is great ... his life compared to Snowden has been horrid! On a different note I never bought he wants to be a woman just a PR thing to keep his name, plight and fight in the public eye. Maybe in five years or so his story will be told and we will see him as a him not a woman. *This is getting downvoted? I'm sure your now aware of fake news which is created to push agendas and or make money. Thus, I don't believ…

> On a different note I never bought he wants to be a woman just a PR thing to keep his name, plight and fight in the public eye.

Once again, the information that became public from the military through the trial was that Manning met with a gender counselor about gender dysphoria before collecting and leaking information, much less being in the public eye. This is a fact that is not in dispute.

> This is getting downvoted?

Yes, when you try to spin a completely unsupported fantasy that is inconsistent with the well-documented historical sequence of events to justify misgendering someone, that's not really a valuable contribution to the discussion.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite true either. According to https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/236/79/case.html "There are substantial differences between legislative immunity and a pardon; the latter carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it,[..]" You can only be pardoned if you have committed a crime. You have to either confess or admit your crime, or be tried, or at least be charged with a crime.…

Nixon confessed and admitted that he was guilty. [Citation Needed] I have never seen or even heard of any such confession from Nixon.

Good point! I was under the impression that he had admitted that he was guilty in some form. It's unclear to me now if he did. I don't know if anything he's said and done in the aftermath may be considered an admission of guilt. So my previous comment might be incorrect.

It's also unclear if a pending impeachment might be considered a "conviction" if it's just a likely outcome and not an actual impeachment.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#786
post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this case, it's raised that we know the subject's gender identity, so the use of gender-ambiguous "they" isn't necessary. Not out of any sense of pronoun policing or bullying - I suspect more because it scans weirdly when you have the information that it would normally abstract.

> I think in this case, it's raised that we know the subject's gender identity What if we don't care about the subject's gender identity and are more interested in their biological identity?

Our language currently lacks the words that would let us refer to a person in a way that encapsulates both succinctly.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The country is hit by "leakers" when arbitrary people on inside leak secrets for arbitrary reasons. Even the leakers themselves disagreed on morality of various things at various points. The problem is much broader and more subjective than you're hinting at if we adopted a policy of letting anyone leak anything they personally thought was bad. Especially if only one country in a world of nations competing was doing i…

The people of any country where would-be leakers are summarily executed for treason will not know what its government is hiding from them. Sometimes governments hide things for good reasons but, sometimes, the very crimes the government commits in order to protect the country's principles end up undermining those.

I dont disagree. Im pro leaking of evidence of crimes. That's whistleblowing. Manning did a lot more than that, though. So, your point is a strawman better suited for someone like Binney who only discussed corruption instead of huge, raw dump.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#788
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden was very selective, and look where that got him...

Oh yeah, for sure. You aren't getting around the nasty governmental environment towards whistleblowsers. Just improving your image in the eye of some people and your odds if it does come down to a legal matter, really. Running, like Snowden did is really your best bet there I think. He's pretty much the textbook example of how to do this in the most correct way possible and still keep some degree of freedom for yours…

The press was selective in what Snowden released. As far as we know, Snowden wasn't selective in what he obtained, or in what he then provided to adversary intelligence services in China and Russia.

I don't like what Snowden did, but I would respect the hell out of him if he had decided to stand up for his convictions and face the music. He'd have had a far better case, and would have had incredible EFF and ACLU lawyers on his side, and a ton of public sympathy. Instead, he turned an act of patriotism into an act of espionage and treason.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a business about people . You can have information that's not "embarrassing" or "damaging" to the US that's both embarrassing and damaging to individuals in other countries. Again, there's a practical side here. As I asked in another post, just how much would you share with a friend or family member that was going to immediately run to publish what you said in a Facebook post? Because that's essentially what…

Because that's essentially what Manning did. No, that's not what she did. She gave the archive to a third party (Assange) who turned out to be unreliable. But that's not "the same" -- or even "essentially" the same -- as just outright posting it on Facebook. Can we just end the discussion there, please? I'm not saying this issue is cut-and-dried, or that there's no validity in your arguments. But if we keep going bac…

>No, that's not what she did. She gave the archive to a third party (Assange) who turned out to be unreliable. But that's not "the same" -- or even "essentially" the same -- as just outright posting it on Facebook.

Yes it is. Once it's there on the internet, people are linking to it, and it's a topic of discussion, anything that gets you into any kind of trouble is out there for people to see.

>Can we just end the discussion there, please? I'm not saying this issue is cut-and-dried, or that there's no validity in your arguments. But if we keep going back and forth about the basic event chronology, then there's really not much a of a point.

If you're really intent on ending a conversation, try not attempting to slip in the last word.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#790
post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still only one reason to say he went to China instead of simply mentioning he went to Hong Kong: to deliberately inaccurately describe and deceive what happened ie. a political reason. Don't resort to such lame rhetoric. It won't fly here.

Oh brother. Neither Hong Kong, nor China is the principal actor in this story. Their role consist of letting him leave despite a passport revocation and an arrest warrant. Who is trying to muddle the point with irrelevant detail? It won't fly here!! // Also, I'm glad there were witnesses of some SD card being destroyed. Good thing we can trust the word of someone who at that point has already stolen deep operational…

You have no proof for any of your conspiracy claims.
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