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News Bradley Manning guilty of most charges but cleared of 'aiding the enemy'

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Meanmotion, 30 Jul 2013.

  1. SMIFFYDUDE

    SMIFFYDUDE Supermodders on my D

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    I honestly don't think the world gave that big a **** about the contents of the leaks. It's just another news story to most people, something you hear about then forget until it's reported again.
     
  2. law99

    law99 Custom User Title

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    Things will always be recorded. Powers will always fall from grace. People remember martyrs. (not saying he chose to be martyred)
     
  3. wafflesomd

    wafflesomd What's a Dremel?

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    I'm rather disturbed by this opinion.
     
    Last edited: 31 Jul 2013
  4. miller

    miller What's a Dremel?

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    So your posts all come with sarcasm now do they? Seems like you find it hard to post without some sarcastic remark or a sarcastic tone running all through a post, then I suppose it must be so tiresome having to deal with so many inferior intellects to yours, For a moderator you set a poor example, but "The Emperor’s New Clothes" fit you well.

    This forum has gone to **** anyway, pretty pathetic when there are more replies for a "dental hygiene" thread than for many PC related threads, it's nothing more than a Dennis pop up fiasco, your welcome to reign over it.
     
  5. Tynecider

    Tynecider Since ZX81

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    Unfortunately there are rules and contracts get signed.
    Under a court of law that is all that matters, Manning had to go down for breaking his contract.

    We are going to see a lot of leaks/attempted leaks in the future when many high rankers develop "guilt of knowledge" as they face their mortality and start releasing information.

    This is why I personally think governments are attempting to lock down forms of communications and restricting the media now. It might be pron today but it will be the gate opener for bigger and stricter attempts in the near future as we will see. I am confident in that sad fact.

    Power has always been maintained by controlling information, That will never change and is another driving force behind leaking information (ie When the people that hold power abuse that power)

    What is going to happen in the next 5 years is preventative maintenance for the following century and beyond.
    The truth would destroy nations as well the history books.
    It will also be a good start for putting the "wrong's" "right" in this world.
     
  6. supermonkey

    supermonkey Deal with it

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    /flippant opinion
    Someone should tell the US government that if it's not doing anything wrong, then it shouldn't be a problem for us to see what it's up to.
    /flippant opinion

    Still, although he was found not guilty of the big offense, I see his other convictions as a warning shot for anyone else considering taking their turn as a whistleblower.
     
  7. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    I think you misunderstood me. You said that you probably didn't explain your point very well because you're "one of those stupid people" --which I took as a tongue in cheek self-deprecatory remark. I then conceded that I probably misunderstood your original point (which I partly agree with) because after all I'm one of those stupid people myself.

    It seems that we just have misunderstood each other. It's no biggie. I didn't mean to cause offence and I apologise if I did. :)
     
  8. Dave Lister

    Dave Lister Minimodder

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    I was of the understanding that the U.S had specific laws to protect whistleblowers, yet nobody (including the U.S government) seems to acknowledge them ! If these laws are not in place then its a case of "if not, why not?"
    The Damned U.S government including its evil sponsors and kiss ass, suck up ally countries need to be reformed radically !

    WW3 incoming, mark my words !... please, give it 5 years max before lynching me for that comment ;)
     
  9. Sentinel-R1

    Sentinel-R1 Chaircrew

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    Well, I'm not saying you're wrong. An opinion is exactly that, as is mine; however, I'm subject to the same laws that Manning was as a daily occurrence. I've signed the Official Secrets Act for the UK and I totally condemn what he has done. He did to his country what I wouldn't do to mine. Simple as that.
     
  10. Boscoe

    Boscoe Electronics extraordinaire.

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    I think Manning has got some serious balls and I really respect him for it. I don't like the Americans or their government and on some levels they are no better than the taliban etc. - they just do it and excuse it with their morals.

    I think it's disgusting what they have done to this kid, look at him he looks ill. I also believe he has been tortured by the US by stripping of his clothes and depriving him of sleep. I don't know how true that is though.
     
  11. RichCreedy

    RichCreedy Hey What Who

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    this exactly, except as I understand it, the US doesn't have an official secrets act per-se, they sign a non disclosure contract.
     
  12. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Yes there are laws to protect whistle blowers, sorry for quoting my self but...

    Basically Manning went about blowing the whistle in the wrong way.
     
  13. wafflesomd

    wafflesomd What's a Dremel?

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    Please don't lump in the average u.s. citizen with our politics. We are no different than most people on the planet. We want the same things and generally pretty nice.
     
  14. konstantine

    konstantine What's a Dremel?

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    Strongly disagree with me on what points? On the fact that Communism is the most murderous and cruel system that world has witnessed? Or the fact that it was actually a Jewish revolution in Russia perpetrated and funded by Jews across Europe? Your own prime minister who well, while didn't start the war, he carried out the war to an end, stated in a newspaper article in 1920 that the recent Bolshevik seizure of Russia is really a Jewish one. And many other political personals really stated the same exact thing. You can read all of it here:
    http://iamthewitness.com/doc/Jews.and.Communism.htm

    Is it the cause of WW2 that you disagree on? How the treaty of Versailles that screwed Germany over, big time was really another sadistic policy of not-so-great Britain to screw people over for no damn reason.

    Or is the Holohoax, that's the most stupid and irrational way of executing "millions of people" in those so called gas chambers that every single expert agrees that such execution mechanism could've never been designed and carried out in those facilities.

    Under which section BTW you think this topic would normally fit? We don't have a politics or revisionist history sections, do we?
     
  15. John_T

    John_T Minimodder

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    Well, I'm open to being corrected, but that's not how I understood it. I understood that wikileaks published the first document in February 2010, and started slowly releasing them while it did as you said and checked them - up until September 2011, by which point it had only released a couple of thousand and realised it was never going to get through checking them all - at which point it simply dumped all the remaining ones on its public servers for the world to see.

    You can blame wikileaks for that if you want, but legally the man who gave them to wikileaks is responsible.

    I go back to my main issue: I don't have a problem with a whistle blower, but a whistle blower is someone who highlights a specific issue (or issues). Dumping three quarters of a million reports into the public domain without even having knowledge of what they contain is not whistling blowing. It is extremely reckless and dangerous, and the person releasing them can have no idea who they are dangerous to or why.

    If Bradley Manning had released one report which highlighted wrongdoing he had come across I would have applauded him. If he had seen that report and decided to investigate and look for more, I would have applauded him. If he had gone on to release two documents, or three documents, or five, or ten, or twenty, or fifty or a hundred - I would have applauded his actions.

    I don't even care if he'd circumvented the official whistle blowing procedures if he had no faith in them and just gone straight to the press, (New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, whoever) - because THEY would have put some oversight onto what they had.

    He didn't do that. He released three quarters of a million documents to an internet group who put them free on the internet. He had no way of knowing the specifics of what he was doing.

    I've looked up the numbers:

    Diplomatic cables - 251,287
    Afghan War documents - 91,731
    Iraq War documents - 391,832
    Total - 734,850

    I really want to put your 'they were all checked' theory to the test for a moment with a little 'back of a *** packet' type calculation. I have a ream of paper in front of me. A ream is 500 sheets, and I'd say it's, approximately, 2 inches thick. Roughly.

    Now, let's say the average document he released was two pages long. That's a completely made up guess on my part, but some will be one page long, others will be several pages long - I don't think it's unreasonable to assume an average of two pages per document.

    So let's see:
    734,850 documents x 2 pages per document = 1,469,700 pages in total.
    1,469,700 pages / 500 pages = 2,939.4 reams of paper.
    2,939.4 reams x 2 inches thickness = 5,878.8 inches thick.
    5,878.8 inches = 489.9 feet.

    So, if you printed out all the documents and stacked them up on top of each other, it would make a pile 489.9 feet high, (let's say 490 feet). Very, very roughly speaking.

    Could be a lot less of course, but then it could be a lot more.

    To put that in perspective:
    Statue of Liberty - 151 feet.
    Leaning Tower of Pisa - 183 feet.
    Elizabeth Tower - 316 feet. (The clock tower that holds big ben).

    Are we really going to suggest Bradley manning, alone, scanned though all that before he passed it on to wikileaks? Or that wikileaks, a half dozen full time staff and a bunch of part-time volunteers (credentials? background?) are going to have scanned them all?

    Rubbish.

    The bloke appears to have serious mental problems, and that should definitely be taken into account in his sentencing, but that doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong.
     
  16. John_T

    John_T Minimodder

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    Unfortunately, that's all true. Frankly speaking, Manning shouldn't be the only one in the dock - a good few people superior to him should be there for criminal negligence as well.

    Given the amount of famous cock-ups that keep happening there, here, and elsewhere, how in God's name is security not improved?
     
  17. John_T

    John_T Minimodder

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    Mate, (working really hard to remain polite here, after deleting my first reply) this really isn't the place.
     
    Last edited: 1 Aug 2013
  18. Nutyy

    Nutyy Widden Palettes

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    Can we please just /thread.
     
  19. MightyBenihana

    MightyBenihana Do or do not, there is no try

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  20. MightyBenihana

    MightyBenihana Do or do not, there is no try

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    Also considering BM is being treated so harshly why is no one calling for trials for those for whom evidence of war crimes exist.

    We have not moved on from Roman times where the worst crime is to out the state.

    Remember who the government works for and is supposed to represent, it is not a private body yet so much of what it now does is secret.

    A democracy is not just the ability to vote for you leader but an on going process that is constantly answerable to the people is represents. the problem now, especially in the US is that the government does not represent its citizens but its donors.

    As Noam Chomsky said the democracy we have now is not democracy, only manufactured consent and we also now the name of a system where government and corporate powers work to help each other and not the citizens of that country. I will give you a clue, it starts with an f.
     
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