191–200 of 248 posts
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She also released hundreds of thousands of pages of other documents. I can sympathize with carefully targeted disclosures -- like the Collateral Damage videos -- but there's no way she reviewed all the documents she dumped. Wildly irresponsible.
I would blame the US for invading Iraq and Afghanistan before blaming Manning even a tiny bit for anything.
So, I'm gonna lay it out here as I am having a bad day and don't feel like censoring myself. I'd known Adrian since 1998. He came to 2600 meetings in SF and was a fixture there. In that time, he generally didn't make any friends. While he was gay, he was also stalking a lady at the meetings, and being super creepy about it. Eventually, he left SF and was homeless. He got in trouble for hacking the NYT and making hims…
> Lamo screwed Manning big time, but when he did, none of us who knew him were surprised. He was never a happy person, and never friendly to anyone I knew. I think his folks threw him out of the house in his teens. > Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups…
Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me.
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Are you suggesting that it is OK to put numerous third parties in danger (the people whose names being exposed would make them Taliban targets were generally Afghan civilians, not Americans) if the circumstances are such that no one will ever be able to prove that any specific one of them actually comes to harm from that danger? Even when releasing those names does nothing whatsoever to help expose any abuses?
No. I'm not saying that at all. You seem to have forgotten that you wrote this. > The best we can do is, as with lung cancer, is think about it statistically. Compare the people exposed in the leaks to similarly situated people who were not mentioned, and see if the former had a statistically significant higher death rate from Taliban attacks for themselves or their families. > I don't know if the data is available t…
I think you're both making valid points and the truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, with certain kinds of leaks, there are potential risks to people that should be taken into account, by carefully selecting, and redacting when appropriate, the material to be leaked (which Manning didn't begin to do, nor allow anyone else to do). And on the other hand, with any leak of information about the military, one can count on people who object to the leak raising concerns about such risks, making it difficult to tell exactly how valid these concerns are in any particular case. That's not necessarily a good argument against leaking at all, in my opinion, though many consider it so.
This guy was seriously mentally troubled, and that's too bad. Chelsea Manning (Bradley/Bradass at the time) confieded in Adrian, Adrian snitched, and the rest is history. He did what he thought was right, but the consequences were absolutely disastrous. Kids, don't be a snitch.
SNITCHING means going to the authorities to out one of your comrades, especially in return for some 'deal' you're offered. That makes you scum.
WHISTLEBLOWING means going to the public to out criminals for their secret crimes and lies, especially public servants and those in power. That makes you a hero.
I'm conflicted about this news. On one hand, he was one of us, and he shared his knowledge. On the other hand, he was a traitor, and he betrayed the trust of a true hero in order to put more unaccountable government power in the hands of people like Donald Trump. Who would have expected that Adrian Lamo would outlive Chelsea Manning? Did he commit suicide — as she nearly did?
Manning is no hero, let's not go overboard. At best, she made a well-intentioned but horribly reckless mistake.
Adrian and I became friends when we were both about 12. We met at 2600 meetings in the embarcadero in SF. We soon were buddies, going “trashing” downtown finding all kinds of crazy things corporate SF left out for trash: working DAT backup drives, 17” view sonics (prized at the time), blueprints for a bank (!), entire trash bags full of credit card receipts with nothing redacted, etc.
He was always a mysterious one, and beat to his own drum. I admired his spirit, and our paths crossed many times including when we both volunteered at the same queer youth center in SF.
Years later he stayed with me in grad school in Cambridge looking not the healthiest. I tried to provide food and shelter, not able to figure out why a guy so talented refused to do anything conventional that would make him good money. But he didn’t care about such things.
He had his own sense of right and wrong, and was principaled within his own philosophy — but I never fully understood what philosophy that was. When I recently was chatting with him, I asked why did was doing something currently to which he said “why do I ever do anything?”
I’ll deeply miss Adrian.. he was a kind and unique spirit. Some may disagree with me on that only because they only know him through Manning, but that was a small sliver of his life (and one I happen to agree with him on, with additional perspectives I can’t share publicly).
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Actually, I feel my comment is about as even handed as I could muster. Aspergers or not, he hurt a lot of people.
Serious question: what's the public benefit afforded by your comment?
This guy was seriously mentally troubled, and that's too bad. Chelsea Manning (Bradley/Bradass at the time) confieded in Adrian, Adrian snitched, and the rest is history. He did what he thought was right, but the consequences were absolutely disastrous. Kids, don't be a snitch.