It's insane the level of vindicativeness that government can reach. Worse than any bully and more fanatical than any terrorist.
Of course the government is like this to mere peasants. If you are the wealthy elite, the government acts like a grovel servant rather than master. Expose war crimes - then you are public enemy #1. Be part of the wealthy elite who destroys the financial system and ruins the lives of millions - it's just good ol' boys being good ol' boys.
And yet, everyday, we give more and more power to governments and corporations.
There are three facts that are not going to change anytime soon. Number one, integrity is a trait not every human possesses, most don't so the power balance will always be tilted to the other side. Number two, money still rules this world and who has the most of it? Corporations! Number three, society is not going to adapt to each individual, only the other way around.
As a result of these three facts, sometimes life can get pretty tough if you don't join the other side. Integrity was more valued in the past but it simply does not have the same weight in today society as modern competition has ramped up everywhere making everything much more difficult for the average citizen. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself becoming a villain. In other words, we either throw integrity out of the window and survive, or we die with it.
Also the way that politics works, there tends to be self-selection by those of little integrity. Those who desire power are frequently those least suited to it. It is unlikely that those who demur with 'nolo episcopari' attain positions of importance in a representative democracy.
Either integrity is a virtue, or it's not. Either it's something people value, or it's not.
If it's something people value, then it should be one of the attributes people weigh when they choose a spouse/job/politician/cell phone carrier. If it is, then the marketplace of spouses/jobs/politicians/cell phone providers should be incentivized to provide integrity, and also to broadcast that their competitors do not.
I would argue this happens pretty regularly. Samsung using Apple's battery throttling in it's ads comes to mind.
So integrity definitely factors into the marketing calculus of politicians and corporations, but maybe the market doesn't value it enough to offer it the primacy you're looking for.
I'm still with Robin Hood. I agree though, integrity seems to be in remarkably short supply of late. The older I get, the flakier people seem to be when it comes to showing up when they said they would.
> If you are the wealthy elite, the government acts like a grovel servant rather than master.
Anyone who draws the ire of government and doesn't have people on the inside (in the right places) protecting them WILL get screwed. The rich just have enough money to drag out the process and make that more difficult so you don't see them getting screwed over little things.
Shouldn't have the acts of Manning granted a little sympathy also among many people inside at this moment? I bet that not everybody is pro-war.
Rich people would have much more offshore properties, business, friends or economic relationships with other countries. They would have much more to lose by wars or unstability than common people [Unless directly feeded by war promoting systems].
>And yet, everyday, we give more and more power to governments...
I think we should be careful about blaming government itself. But instead focus on the _people_ that make up the government. It seems there is a serious lack of equal representation throughout our government. For the most part, it has become a matter of who has the larger bank roll.
It would be interesting to see a government with forced equal representation across the entire socioeconomic spectrum.
It's astounding to hear the hateful Libertarian view of government, understanding that it's exactly those kinds of people who often seek that kind of power, and make the worst kinds of politicians that create the vindictive, hateful government that Libertarians on the ground rail about.
It's a self-perpetuating anti-government cycle that helps no one.
I think libertarians simply understand incentives and human psychology. As long as a position confers wealth and power, over time it will tend to attract and get filled by the most cynical people who are willing to sacrifice the most ethics to achieve that wealth and power.
What helps no one is to perpetually increase the power of government, making the target ever more enviable to the absolute worst kinds of people. This is an inescapable truth of power.
The fundamental problem with the Libertarian ideal is that it trades the tyranny of the government for tyranny of the rich. At least with a democratic government you get 1 vote. With oligarchy you have 0 votes.
Private citizens and corporations can't accumulate much power without the government. Think of the most evil wealthy American citizens and corporations you can think of. How much money would they have without trademark, copyright, or patent protections?
I already answered your question, by dismantling the government provided mechanisms by which wealth and power accumulate. I'm not an anarchist, not even a minarchist. I'm not even opposed to some manner of minimal intellectual property rights. The point of bringing up the concept of zero intellectual property rights is so that you can see the primary mechanism people accumulate wealth and power in the modern age is through government created mechanisms such as patents and copyright. Since I'm not an anarchist, hopefully you can see how it's trivial to protect from things like warlords.
This has nothing to do with vindictiveness. Simply put, if you refuse to testify in court, you can be held in jail for contempt of court. Manning was offered an immunity deal but decided she didn't believe in the concept of a subpoena, so she chose jail instead.
She could have walked out of jail at any time had she chosen to testify. In accordance with the law, she has been released because the grand jury has concluded.
One can argue whether someone can/should be compelled to testify, but Manning was not singled out for extra punishment here.
I disagree with the premise of your comment GVirish.
> she didn't believe in the concept of a subpoena, so she chose jail instead
That is not the case. As clearly stated bboth in the linked article and by her legal team. She is happy to testify in a public hearing (which I agree is the proper place), but not in a closed door meeting away from democratic due process monitored by the citizenry of the country.
Forgive me if I mischaracterized her objections but previously I saw her quoted as being against the concept of being forced to testify.
And ultimately grand jury proceedings are non-public and they are a key part of our judicial process. To say it's not part of democratic due process is incorrect. There are a number of reasons for grand jury proceedings to not be public, particularly in national security cases.
One can disagree with grand juries as a legal concept, which is fine, but if you refuse to show up, there are legal consequences.
To me, arguing grand juries should work in public just signals a poor understanding of the American legal system - in the purpose of grand juries, the intent behind their design, and what they actually do. Arguing that we need to remove protection against over-zealous prosecutors to make the system safer is pretty nonsensical to me.
The thing is, both secret and public grand juries (or similar constructs) can be and are manipulated by governments and over-zealous prosecutors specifically. Except that the manipulation uses different means.
There’s no such thing as a public grand jury in America. Grand juries are undoubtedly biased towards prosecutors, since defendants have no role in a grand jury. A grand jury decides whether there is sufficient evidence of a crime to allow prosecutors to formally charge someone with a crime, where they then would have a trial with their opportunity to present a defense. Giving prosecutors a public platform to investigate people and associate them with crimes, even if they don’t plan to formally accuse them of such crimes, is quite literally arguing for an authoritarian society. I’m being charitable and assuming that the people who are asking for this actually want free societies and are quite ignorant, and aren’t actually advocates of authoritarian government.
I definitely agree about there being legal consequences. The issue here is that this should not be a situation in the first place, not that there are consequences for actions (which I am not arguing at all).
To your point about grand juries: many states do not use them anymore due to similar outrage as we are seeing here. There is widespread belief that secret tribunals are the things of kangaroo courts and backwater justice systems that people tend to despise (think ussr/north korea). They are largely used by governments to silence political opposition and hide that fact as much as possible.
>not in a closed door meeting away from democratic due process monitored by the citizenry of the country.
Anyone who believes that grand juries are removed from the democratic process because they are confidential should probably learn more about the American legal system before they form their arguments.
"Worse than any bully and more fanatical than any terrorist."
When we elected Der Fuhrer in the last presidential election, weren't we asking for exactly this? I expected the "establishment" to become less hawkish during Obama's reign but that didn't happen either. I love my country but at this point I don't have a whole lot of hope for her (and now I'm probably on an NSA watch-list - I guess I should point out that I have no intention of harming anyone).
Honestly when this happened my thought was Chelsea should just testify. I know it was stupid because it was all previous testimony and they didn't need it. But she's done and suffered enough, forget principals, give the vindictive bastards their testimony whenever they want it and try to enjoy your life in between.
> I didn't realize this about US law but if you've already been convicted of a crime OR they give you immunity you can be forced to testify.
Yeah, and it's not obvious why. The insight you're seeking here is that the right against self-incrimination was intended to be a solution to the problem of forced confessions (torture, etc.). It's not there because of some kind of belief that you really have some kind of fundamental human right to testify against yourself. In fact it's quite a bizarre thing to codify in a constitution otherwise.
> The Supreme Court traces the roots of our Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to the protections the English courts and Parliament
granted to those religious dissenters who were compelled to take oaths when called before the ecclesiastical courts, as well as the Court of High
Commission and the Star Chamber. These courts used the “oath ex officio” to force heretics from the Church of England to swear before God to truthfully answer all questions, even before the heretics even knew the nature of the accusations against them. By use of the oath in conducting their investigations of religious heresy, these courts left witnesses with the “cruel trilemma” of (1) refusing to take the oath, which constituted contempt and subjected the person to torture; (2) taking the oath and telling the truth about their religious beliefs, which, if heretical, was punishable by death; or (3) taking the oath and lying, which was also punishable by death. In other words, this inquisitorial system countenanced methods of interrogating persons designed to lead only to confessions.
> [...] Parliament eventually abolished the Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber and, in 1662, passed a law providing that “no man shall administer to any person whatsoever the oath usually called ex officio or any other oath whereby such persons may be charged or compelled to confess to any criminal matter.” By the late eighteenth century, as the English common law courts began to recognize the presumption of innocence, trial judges in criminal cases began to afford defendants the right not to incriminate themselves, establishing the privilege against self-incrimination as a fundamental rule of evidence.
I'd suspect it's more about the state being pragmatic concerning the chances you or I would lie to protect a family member - assuming we have no axe to grind with said family member...
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking exactly, but I guess you could say it doesn't. It's important to remember the "bill of rights" is really the "bill of government restrictions", not "bill of fundamental human rights". I guess that, unlike the right against self-incrimination, spousal privilege wasn't deemed fundamentally necessary for preventing the government from forcing testimony, so that's probably why it wasn't put there in the fifth amendment. I can only speculate as to the reasoning, but I imagine it might be as follows:
With self-incrimination, if the government decides to force testimony from you (which inevitably implies a guilty confession), you'll get punished one way or another regardless of what you say (which apparently historically meant choosing between torture and death). This means two things: (1) innocent people will get punished either way (which is obviously the opposite of what you want), and (2) guilty people won't have any incentive to tell the truth either (which is also not what you want either)—they'll instead have incentive to say whatever will minimize their punishment, which is determined by the government, not by the truth. So it's pretty much entirely a lose-lose situation, and not something that'll make a justice system (whom you're charging with the task of finding the truth) achieve its goal. Spousal testimony, on the other hand, is entirely different in that respect: as far as the relationship between you and the government is concerned (which is, recall, what the goal of the bill of rights was—again, it wasn't written as a manifesto on human rights), you actually have a huge incentive to tell the truth here, because you don't get punished by the government for providing guilty testimony against your spouse. Same exactly thing happens when you're provided immunity: you don't get punished, and therefore society gets to extract the truth out of you, with decent confidence that it'll get what it's looking for. Therefore, as far as the constitution being concerned, spousal privilege probably didn't need to be written in there, because the right against self-incrimination already sufficiently achieved its restriction and goal.
My understanding of spousal privilege is that it was originally justified on the idea that a married couple were legally one person. Today it has the same basis as other privileges, such as the privileges covering therapists and pastors: that it would be bad to interfere with confidentiality in certain relationships.
Of course you can be forced to testify. That goes all the way back to English common law. The public has a claim to every man's evidence.
A strict privilege against self-testimony is somewhat distinctive to our US system. Even countries that share it with us, like the UK, limit it; for instance, in the UK, your refusal to testify against yourself can be held against you.
Privilege against self-incrimination is a generally recognised international standard and, for example, lies at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Juries are not frequently comprised of people with objectivity, intelligence, or education. Refusing to answer questions on the grounds of self-incrimination looks incredibly guilty even though guilt is clearly not established. A good prosecutor will use that in closing arguments or to influence other witnesses.
Juries are most certainly not a universal part of the legal system. They are mostly found in the Anglosphere. Most European countries, for example, have a civil law system that typically does not feature a jury of peers.
Are prosecutors allowed to imply in closing arguments that asserting one's fifth amendment right should be considered evidence that the person is guilty? I would hope that judges would instruct juries not to consider assertion of this right as evidence one way or another, and would not allow a prosecutor to say so either.
> Comment to the jury by a prosecutor in a state criminal trial upon a defendant's failure to testify as to matters which he can reasonably be expected to deny or explain because of facts within his knowledge or by the court that the defendant's silence under those circumstances evidences guilt violates the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Federal Constitution
That's right. The 5th amendment only protects you from self-incrimination. If theres no risk of you being charged with a crime you can't refuse to testify.
You could perhaps come up with a 1st amendment case but I think that wouldn't have much of a chance of going anywhere.
Even if they give you immunity for the specific thing you’re testifying about, what if your testimony reveals that you’re guilty of some completely different crime?
Is there anything to protect against parallel construction? Bob mentions he was selling drugs to a guy near the scene of the crime. A police officer then finds out who the buyer was, and gets him to testify to bring drug charges against Bob. Or: During the following weeks, a police officer just happens to be in the same place at the same time of night every week, and eventually catches one of Bob's future transactions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_immunity seems to be the reference. Seems to cover the exact issue: "In the United States, the prosecution may grant immunity in one of two forms. Transactional immunity, colloquially known as "blanket" or "total" immunity, completely protects the witness from future prosecution for crimes related to his or her testimony. Use and derivative use immunity prevents the prosecution only from using the witness's own testimony or any evidence derived from the testimony against the witness. However, if the prosecutor acquires evidence substantiating the crime independently of the witness's testimony, the witness may then be prosecuted."
There is specific immunity and blanket immunity. Specific immunity is protection from prosecution for a specified offense. Blanket immunity is protection from prosecution for any offense related to a given court case.
Immunity, like double jeopardy, is limited to a given court. For example a state prosecutor can grant immunity in exchange for testimony, but in the case of overlap with federal law the witness can still be prosecuted in a federal court.
Could you have committed an unrelated murder, and by disclosing this murder in your testimony, become immune to conviction of it?
If that is not how immunity works, then how can the government force anyone to testify? The government does not know what (unrelated) crimes I may have to confess to in order to give truthful testimony on the matter in question.
i'm not even sure what the answer to this is other than to say -- it's a completely contrived example and there's no way you would answer such a question let alone be asked about it. getting on the stand isn't some grand fishing expedition -- you're asked relevant questions and if they're not relevant then your lawyer / opposing lawyer is going to challenge relevance
If you explicitly have immunity for all things you reveal in the course of the questioning (and that immunity applies to the crimes revealed, not just that particular testimony), then I don’t see why you wouldn’t reveal everything you can, whether asked or not. Any way you could possibly shoehorn “I murdered a guy in 2012” into an answer, you should, if that were how the immunity worked.
Does that include false testimony? If so, why couldn't Manning employ the Regan/Poindexter tactic... I don't recall?
Or can the immunity be rescinded if the testimony doesn't produce the answers the prosecution wants?
I would say that "forcing" testimony, can only be done under duress, in a situation like forcible coercion or torture. I'm not familiar with the Swartz's case and its parallel investigations, but in principle people aren't "given' immunity and "forced" to testify, but rather they choose a deal with the prosecution that included leniency for themselves and were no longer protected by the 5th amendment as a criminal defendant.
Manning exactly illustrates this point, no one is "forcing" her to do anything. She doesn't want to talk, so she won't! You always have a choice.
> in principle people aren't "given' immunity and "forced" to testify, but rather they choose a deal with the prosecution that included leniency for themselves and were no longer protected by the 5th amendment as a criminal defendant.
That's not exactly true. In the US you can generally be compelled to testify if you are not the one on trial unless you claim the 5th (the law generally recognizes that court proceedings are part of the record and testimony there could be used to bring charges against you later).
There can be a series of escalations and motions before the judge, eg where the judge asks you in closed court to give more details so he/she can rule on whether the 5th applies. In theory you could refuse to give any details by claiming even the tiniest detail would put you at risk of prosecution. Ultimately if the prosecutor offers you blanket immunity you can no longer claim the 5th because the threat of prosecution has been eliminated.
Similarly if you refuse to testify for fear of your own safety the government can offer to protect you, up to and including putting you into witness protection which eliminates the objection.
The general principle seems to be you have a series of objections you can raise. Each one imposes a higher and higher cost on the government, forcing them to decide just how important your testimony really is.
This is all separate from the material witness procedures, which have been abused somewhat in recent times. The theory there is there is an imminent thread to your life _or_ you are a serious flight risk. In those cases you get jailed until trial despite not even being accused. As you can imagine prosecutors have sometimes used the threat of losing your job, house, etc while jailed awaiting trial to coerce testimony.
> no one is "forcing" her to do anything. She doesn't want to talk, so she won't! You always have a choice.
Pedantically true, yes. If I hold a gun to the witnesses head and demand they testify or I will pull the trigger, no one is "forcing" them to do anything. They have the choice to refuse to testify and suffer the consequences.
It's the same with Manning. She has the "choice" to be thrown in prison because she refuses. Usually doing something under threat of deprivation of live or liberty is legally considered being forced to do something.
I can rob a bank at gunpoint and then argue that the bank "chose" to give me the money, since they always had the option to refuse, just as you are arguing here that Manning has the "choice" to testify. When there is a threat of deprivation of life or liberty, that is not considered a free choice. It's coerced, under duress, also known as forced.
Testifying against a friend or community member is not coercion if people ascribe negative outcomes to not just their well-being, but to the well-being of their friends.
For instance, my testimony gets me out of jail, but it helps put my friend in jail: the degree my testimony impacts that sentence, and the sentence itself, have to be factors in the decision.
Thus, and without getting into Manning's thought process, I wouldn't be surprised if she believes the negative effects (real or perceived) of her testimony outweigh the stay in jail.
They can't, however, force the testimony to be useful.
I don't fully understand why she didn't testify here. The events were so long ago and so stressful. If it were me I wouldn't be able to remember much with any confidence.
But I'm glad she has been released now and I hope it did some good.
> But I'm glad she has been released now and I hope it did some good.
Well, she’s only been released because the term of the grand jury expired. She’ll be called to testify again, and if she refuses to testify again, she will most likely be locked up again.
So this is more a temporary development, rather than a resolution of the issue.
I think its pretty clear that she refused to testify out of principle. None of the war criminals exposed by Manning's leaks have been charged or tried for their crimes. The government's refusal to charge the war crimes, which are central to the entire case, completely undermine any pretense of "justice". As usual, the government is using its infinite power to punish those who exposed wrongdoing, while completely ignoring the actually wrongdoing that was exposed. I find it quite admirable that Manning refuses to be used as a tool to further this charade of injustice, at great personal expense. Being held in "contempt of court" is no vice when the court, and the prosecutors, have done everything possible to earn that contempt.
For those unfamiliar with the still unprosecuted war crimes exposed by Manning (and published by Assange):
"US had planned to topple the Syrian government long before 2011, the year that the brutal conflict broke out in the country."
"In his new book, Assange points to a cable pertaining to US Ambassador William Roebuck, who served as the Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus between 2004-2007, about plans for overthrowing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the time."
The book based on the Wiklieaks files (Assange wrote an introduction):
Might have saved millions of people from suffering. BTW, presstv is Iranian regime's news source, ally of Assad's regime, and the party (Iran) murdering civilians in Syria the last few years. So I wouldn't expect anything objective from them.
Other media avoided to cover the book or what’s in the wikileaks material. I’ve tried to find and failed.
The book was not published by the writers of the article. They just wrote that the book exists and what is revealed.
I would also like a link to NYT or WaPo but they avoided to cover the book (and even more to analyse the materials leaked). At least you can still buy the book. The material itself is still reachable on the wikileaks site.
Interesting. You're right NYT only mentioned the book in passing in one article. And I can't really find many references in any media I recognize, either.
The court ordered that Manning be jailed, which is entirely under its purview. The court could have dressed down the government prosecutors for being the jackboot thugs that they are and admonished them for not prosecuting the war criminals.
Can anyone who knows law explain why the 1st amendment doesn't apply here? I understand the 5th doesn't apply, but it seems like the 1st should. Has this ever been decided in court?
Yes, you will be issued a Subpoena, and the presiding judge for the case can sentence you with Contempt of Court if you fail to testify. The idea is to keep you in jail under Contempt charges until you do whatever the judge wants.
The longest sentence for contempt of court is H. Beatty Chadwick (1994 - 2009), which was over a divorce settlement.
Susan McDouglas went to jail over not answering questions about Bill Clinton in civil case, and was pardoned by him later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougal
"her lawyers reportedly asked that she be confined at home due to medical issues, but the judge said US Marshals would address her care needs."
That is a terrifying sentence to read after having learned about the medical care provided (or not provided...) in US prisons. It almost reads to me as if they planned on killing her.
They've already failed to provide necessary post-surgery care, resulting in potentially permanent, intractable medical complications, according to this declaration filed three days ago while she was still imprisoned: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.405498... (paragraph 13)
The state of medical care in US prisons is really horrifying. Like this one from four days ago, in which a mentally ill woman gave birth alone in her cell.
there isn't much US government managed health care that is worth a damn, just ask veterans or Indians on reservations. when people outside the country keep lamenting the US doesn't have government provided healthcare they need to realize the examples we have are both horrible and many doubt that they have the capacity to not inflict the same shoddy care on the current system.
Most jails and prison care is the same because it is all government managed. while the private jails, which are a very small minority, have problems they are held to higher standard that government does not apply to itself.
the prison/jail system is just a money machine for the sheriff and police unions of the country and therefor actively supported by the politicians they support/control. California had to be compelled by the Federal Courts just to reduce overcrowding and provide better health care
> there isn't much US government managed health care that is worth a damn, just ask veterans
This seems to be incorrect. The VA has problems that should be addressed, but it's still preferable to most veterans than any alternative, which is why they pushed back against Medicare for All's initial proposal to replace the VA with Medicare. Now it retains the VA. We've been in a bunch of silly wars for 18 years now producing a constant flow of new veterans, the VA needs beefing up to deal with that.
> when people outside the country keep lamenting the US doesn't have government provided healthcare they need to realize the examples we have are both horrible and many doubt that they have the capacity to not inflict the same shoddy care on the current system.
Most people are "lamenting" that the USA has, what is it now, 30 million people without access to health care? And has 30-40k deaths every year due to lack of access. The expectation is for universal coverage. Not coverage based on circumstance or wealth.
Most people on Medicare defend it regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum. It should be noted that Medicare isn't "government managed health care" it's a payer to private health care providers. The health care providers are still private and privately run, there's no government hospital and doctors don't work for the government. At the moment the popular opinion in the US is not asking for the government to take over all health care management in that way, but instead to provide everybody with access to healthcare by expanding the popular Medicare program to everyone.
It would probably have been better to join Snowden in Moscow ... the land of the "free" is applicable if you go up against the military-industrial complex and their agenda.
The current administration has already pardoned one American convicted of a war crime and is considering a second pardon for a war criminal Navy SEAL who was repeatedly reported by fellow soldiers, in one case for murdering a young girl in front of other children without provocation. At least the policy is consitent: if you murder civilians we have your back and whistle blowers will be jailed at all costs.
If they have evidence that a person in your position should reasonably know the answer, then you're in a bad situation. "I don't recall" doesn't fly very well unless you're HRC being interviewed by the FBI
In the general case, maybe. The objection here is specifically over providing non-public testimony. Even if your secret testimony didn't cover anything new or wasn't useful, how do other people know that?
I wonder if Manning can pull the ol' Assange and hide in an embassy. It looks like the government is willing to make an example and send Manning to jail for an insanely long time, if not life. I personally would rather live my life in an embassy than in prison (not that this is a choice that I would like to have in the first place)
> Her release on Thursday comes after the period during which she could be held for failing to give evidence expired.
> "Today marked the expiration of the term of the grand jury, and so, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea was released from the Alexandria Detention Center earlier today," her lawyers said in a statement.
My comment has absolutely nothing to do with her gender.
It's that the grand jury in question wasn't dealing with her case at all. The grand jury was tasked with Julian Assange, who isn't female, but more importantly isn't Chelsea Manning.
In the comment you're referring to, "and declines to point out that her grand jury ended years ago", the "her" was absolutely correct because it was referring to her grand jury, not to the new one for Assange. The whole comment was irrelevant, because it doesn't matter whose grand jury it was that caused her imprisonment, but you're quibbling with the wrong thing and the only outcome of your use of scare quotes is to make it look like you're taking issue with her pronouns.
yes, given that the previous president put her in prison for seven years for exposing US war crimes under the president before him, crimes which that president continued to emulate, it’s been quite a few decades since we’ve had one of those.
I feel that you're being quite reductive here, but I suppose this may very well be the sum total of your beliefs on the subject. I will take the comment at face value. Anyway, you'll notice that I used the word "somewhat" to qualify "worthy of the office"; I didn't just toss that word in because it sounded cool in my head.
Relevant, from Wikipedia:
> On January 26, 2017, in her first column for The Guardian since the commutation, Manning lamented that President Obama's political opponents consistently refused to compromise, resulting in "very few permanent accomplishments" during his time in office. As The Guardian summarized it, she saw Obama's legacy as "a warning against not being bold enough." In response, President Donald Trump tweeted that Manning was an "ungrateful traitor" and should "never have been released."
Bombing wedding parties and starving Yemeni children and making bad tweets is worse than just bombing wedding parties and starving Yemeni children, to be sure, but focusing on the bad tweets misses the point spectacularly.
"The point" being that Trump is no worse for our country, society, and the world at large than any other president before him whose decisions had (at least partially) bad outcomes?
I think you're either unconsciously projecting your own narrowly black-and-white worldview onto my comments here, or being deliberately obtuse. Either way I'm done with this conversation unless your next comment is more interesting.
It's more that the US is plainly and obviously intending to charge assange with tremendously more the second he gets to US soil. Including charges that carry the death penalty. For actions that virtually every journalist would do
Journalists are generally extremely careful when publishing classified material working with the government to understand and minimize the harm caused by publication. They are also careful to not direct others to commit crimes.
> "Today marked the expiration of the term of the grand jury, and so, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea was released from the Alexandria Detention Center earlier today," her lawyers said in a statement.
> "Unfortunately, even prior to her release, Chelsea was served with another subpoena," the statement adds. "It is therefore conceivable that she will once again be held in contempt of court, and be returned [to custody].
It is for all men and women of good conscience to decide that. The jurors should refuse to cooperate and leak statements to that effect to the press. The prosecutor should resign. The prison guards should leave the doors open for her. etc.
The release was always going to happen eventually. Contempt is not a life sentence, in the US it isn't punishment but coercion. When the opportunity to testify is over, they let you out because they have nothing they want you to do any more. Doesn't stop them from serving you with another subpoena though.
Of course the government is like this to mere peasants. If you are the wealthy elite, the government acts like a grovel servant rather than master. Expose war crimes - then you are public enemy #1. Be part of the wealthy elite who destroys the financial system and ruins the lives of millions - it's just good ol' boys being good ol' boys.
And yet, everyday, we give more and more power to governments and corporations.