Let us discuss her here

3/8/2019 8:13:45 PM

Not sure why she's decided to go to jail over questions she claims to have already answered.

3/8/2019 11:11:33 PM

Should have been hanged the first time around. What she did was unconscionably dangerous and irresponsible. I understand that she was a difficult personal position, but none of that excuses her actions.

Her sentence has now been lawfully commuted, so I suppose I have to live with her existence as a private citizen. Still, I could wish that nobody dignified her crime by asking her opinion about anything.

3/8/2019 11:38:46 PM

yep. need to learn more about this law/provision to offer an opinion on that, but as far as this motherfucker getting chucked into the slammer? A++, would let rot in prison again.

3/9/2019 12:58:32 AM

Quote :

"Let us discuss her here "

y tho?

3/9/2019 11:02:40 AM

^ I wanted TWW's take

[Edited on March 9, 2019 at 1:09 PM. Reason : ^^,^^^ that's more in line with my take ]

3/9/2019 1:08:40 PM

I'm okay with what Snowden did but I dont understand why a certain faction of the left praises Manning

3/9/2019 1:30:33 PM

^ It's 100% a transgender thing. They make it out like Manning was persecuted for being transgender, not for dumping millions of classified documents for no discernable reason and with no knowledge of what was in them.

3/9/2019 7:32:30 PM

Nah, I think that's a pretty small part of it. Mostly there's just a certain segment of people that will like anybody who leaks things, and another who supports anyone who leaks something that makes the other guy look bad. Even though Manning's leaks took place under the Obama administration, I think there's a lot of folks who view them as primarily portraying the military/Bush/the Iraq War in a bad light; this predisposes them to favor Manning.

But I really do think that for most pro-Manning people, it has less to do with the specific politics in what was leaked, and more to do with their belief that they are entitled to all information, that any leak from governments or corporations is good, and so on.

Snowden is accepted by slightly more people because he made some efforts to curate his leaks so that they would focus on a specific bad thing that was being done. Of course, he's still a traitor and a criminal who put lives at risk and then undermined all of his professed principles by running to Russia, and he should dance at the end of a rope right next to Chelsea Manning; but for all that, I suppose I can see the distinction, and it doesn't have much to do with her being transgender.

3/10/2019 12:30:12 AM

Do you think Daniel Ellsberg should have hanged? Snowden is like Ellsberg, Snowden even tried to report his concerns through appropriate channels before leaking materials so in that was arguably less criminal than Ellsberg.

3/10/2019 7:58:23 AM

Should Petraeus hang?

3/10/2019 8:42:03 AM

Reality Winner? Jared Kushner (probably)?

Quote :

"Not sure why she's decided to go to jail over questions she claims to have already answered."

-Mental health issues??
-To make a statement about how the grand jury process is kinda fucked up?!

3/10/2019 11:16:52 AM

Ellsberg? Yeah.

Petraeus? Probably. There's pretty significant differences of scale and motive, compared to the other names being discussed, which incline me to say "No;" but on the other hand, even if he were cast out of military and government he would retain a lifetime of classified information and has demonstrated that he can't be trusted to keep it, so that inclines me towards "Yes."

Winner? I don't know much about her situation. I wasn't around when it happened, and what I've seen in a brief search this morning isn't all that informative. But my gut says, yeah. Disliking Donald Trump doesn't give her a free pass to leak classified information.

These leaks aren't all equal, and some of them might not even be "bad" unto themselves. But harsh sentences must be imposed because no secret activity can function if anybody thinks they can become a hero by unveiling it. I get that there's a certain segment of the TWW population that thinks that governments should undertake no secret activities at all, or that the United States government in particular has lost the moral legitimacy which would justify secret activities; but that's a different debate. Operating on the assumption that the government must have secrets, people who leak them have to be punished severely whether their leak was on the more focused and justified end of the scale (Ellsberg) or the wildly irresponsible and petty (Manning).

3/10/2019 11:59:14 AM

Welp, you're definitely a psychopath

[Edited on March 10, 2019 at 12:13 PM. Reason : Boot licker too]

3/10/2019 12:12:42 PM

Good thing the government never classifies information to protect wrongdoing.

3/10/2019 1:22:36 PM

I don't have anything to add with regard to Chelsea Manning, but I disagree with Grumpy's death-lust view of capital punishment.

3/10/2019 2:41:51 PM

^^Of course it does. But it's not up to you as an individual to decide what does or doesn't constitute an abuse of classification. For better or worse, the country elects people to whom it grants that ability. The country did not pick Ed Snowden to be the arbiter of what we get to know; he selected himself, putting lives at risk in the process, and then fled to a succession of unfriendly countries.

What will you say when somebody decides that America's intelligence services are all immoral and leaks a list of agents who then get killed, probably alongside their families? Most reputable news sources would refuse to report such a thing, obviously, but we live in an internet era where some wannabe Asange publishes the list. They will have made their decision with much the same though process as Snowden.

^That's fair. I suppose at the end of the day I don't have strong feelings about whether they're alive or not, except insofar as they retain secret information and could continue to leak it from prison. That makes them a continued security risk for as long as they're alive. Take that, plus my conviction that they must be punished very harshly, and I end up at capital punishment.

^^^Is there any point at which you try to make cogent arguments now, or do you just go straight to flimsy "gotcha" questions followed by name-calling?

Leaving psychopath aside - a title with a clinical definition that isn't simply "disagrees with dtownral about state use of force" - I do want to know how you arrived at "bootlicker."



[Edited on March 10, 2019 at 2:46 PM. Reason : so many carats]

3/10/2019 2:44:24 PM

He called you a boot-licker because of your reflexive desire to defend existing power structures even when you admit that those power structures may be corrupt.


But at least you use the right pro-nouns when you lust for the execution of whistle-blowers. So I guess you've got that goin' for ya.

3/10/2019 2:57:01 PM

fantasizing about people hanging on the end of the rope is psychopathic

wanting people to hang for breaking the law even though their cause was both just and moral is both psychopathic and boot licking

[Edited on March 10, 2019 at 4:38 PM. Reason : actually not even just hanging, he said dance at the end of a rope]

3/10/2019 4:31:33 PM

Rwoody asked if petraeus should hang. While we all know grumpy loves the death penalty, I took hanging to be more figurative here

3/10/2019 6:19:36 PM

Grumpy was the first one to mention hanging, he has a death penalty and authority fetish

[Edited on March 10, 2019 at 6:24 PM. Reason : Boot licker]

3/10/2019 6:24:03 PM

Yeah, I'm not actually that particular about the method employed. I reference hanging because it's evocative and not sanitized for popular consumption. Contrary to popular belief, I think the state killing people is a big deal, and trying to pretty it up with fancier terms or even methods doesn't really change much at the end of the day. If it would sooth your agitation to say "twitch and gurgle at the end of a needle" rather than "dance at the end of a rope," I guess I can do that, but the latter has wider currency.

Quote :

"He called you a boot-licker because of your reflexive desire to defend existing power structures "

Though I didn't do that, now, did I?

I am opposed to punishing members of the press for receiving or publishing leaked material, still less for attacking the "existing power structure." They should have at it. I'm not opposed to any leaker quitting their job and dedicating their lives to protesting the power structure.

In each of these cases, though, we have someone who voluntarily signed on to be entrusted with classified information, and who swore oaths to keep it confidential. They did so, generally without making a thorough accounting of exactly what they were releasing, frequently putting lives at risk and strengthening our enemies. They did so on nothing but their own interpretation of what was right. Fortunately, we live in a society of laws (at least, we used to, mostly), in which individuals aren't at liberty to do whatever the hell they think is right.

3/10/2019 9:56:14 PM

And my guess would be you have no idea the criticalality of what was taken, what they had access to, or whether lives were put in direct danger. You have much less information than the people doing the prosecuting but you want to sit here and say how they deserve to die.

You also seem to want them to suffer while they die, which is probably why dtr called you a pshycopath. That "cruel and unusual" clause should hopefully get in your way at least.

3/10/2019 10:39:11 PM

dude wrote twitch and gurgle, 100% psychopath confirmed

3/10/2019 11:18:47 PM

^It's true, that's right there in the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. Actually, they're even more stringent; according to them, if you say "'twitch' and/or 'gurgle,'" you're 100% confirmed crazy and should spend the rest of your life in a mental institution.

Quote :

"You also seem to want them to suffer while they die"

I don't. As with my position on the death penalty across the board, I don't think that suffering is a necessary or desirable part of the process, and I'm fine with reasonable steps taken to mitigate it.

Quote :

"You have much less information than the people doing the prosecuting but you want to sit here and say how they deserve to die."

Is this the tack we're taking? Well I'll appeal to the same logic, and say, "The people who classified this material had more information than the leakers, but the leakers want to sit there and say what deserves to be published."

Also, I've long since been leery of this word "deserve," with regards to punishment. It implies that the goal is to balance out some cosmic scale in which X crime = Y penalty, which is preposterous. The principle reason for punishing crimes is to prevent crime. In respect to this particular category of offense, well, "dead men tell no tales," and a person known to possess classified intelligence and a willingness to leak it cannot do so once they are dead.

Obviously, most of you have an across-the-board opposition to the death penalty, which is fine, though I think further debate on the topic is better suited for another thread; for our purposes here you might as well replace "hanging" with the harshest punishment you would allow the state to impose for any offense. To that end, I'm going to quit arguing about the death penalty here; however, I'd be happy to discuss why you think some of these people are heroes while I think otherwise.



[Edited on March 10, 2019 at 11:33 PM. Reason : Practicing what I preach and not spending too much time defending death penalty here]

3/10/2019 11:29:03 PM

Problem with "harshest punishment" for people who might "deserve" it is that it deters the genuine whistle blowers too.

Similarly to how we err on the side of letting guilty people free if there's "reasonable doubt" we should also err on the side of letting unscrupulous people unscrupulously divulge secret info.

What Snowden did was clearly heroic. He wasn't reckless, he tried the regular chain of command, and he was selective in what he chose to release.

What Manning did was much less defensible, but hopefully the "powers that be" will listen more closely to the objections of their underlings to avoid the next Manning.

The true deterrence effect we need is career staff being conscientious of what's in the public good and pushing political leaders to do the right thing, not on convincing conscientious people to keep quiet or submit to authority.

3/11/2019 2:41:29 AM

Quote :

"I am opposed to punishing members of the press for receiving or publishing leaked material, still less for attacking the "existing power structure." They should have at it."

Yo, how the fuck is the press supposed to publish leaked information without someone leaking it to them?

Quote :

"They did so on nothing but their own interpretation of what was right."

Um.....yeah? That's usually how it works.




Your entire position here seems to be that it's okay (and even necessary) for citizens to be made aware of government wrongdoing, but the actual sources of this information should be executed. You quite literally are advocating that we kill the messenger.

If you don't see the absurdity of this logic then I don't know what to tell you.

3/11/2019 4:25:11 AM

The Peace Corps guy wants to hang more people for divulging military secrets than the Marine Corps guy!

3/11/2019 5:57:19 AM

Quote :

"Similarly to how we err on the side of letting guilty people free if there's "reasonable doubt" we should also err on the side of letting unscrupulous people unscrupulously divulge secret info."

This is mortifying, and effectively amounts to "Everyone should be able to leak whatever they want."

Quote :

"Your entire position here seems to be that it's okay (and even necessary) for citizens to be made aware of government wrongdoing, but the actual sources of this information should be executed."

Well, kinda.

It's possible or a given leak to be beneficial, but the risks of unfettered leaking are too great, so the act calls for a stringent punishment. So I suppose my standard for leaking is, "Is publication of this information so vital that I'd be willing to die to get it out?" Which seems like a better way to suppress the more frivolous or dangerous leaks than, "Is publication of this information so vital that I'd be willing to spend a couple of years in prison, get a state-supported gender reassignment, and then spend the rest of my life on the speaking circuit?"

3/11/2019 7:55:34 AM

^luckily most of the people responsible for those decisions disagree with you

Quote :

"Well I'll appeal to the same logic, and say, "The people who classified this material had more information than the leakers, but the leakers want to sit there and say what deserves to be published.""

That's not much of a point. I'm certainly not advocating that leakers shouldn't be punished (is anyone?).

3/11/2019 10:11:18 AM

Quote :

"Quote : "Similarly to how we err on the side of letting guilty people free if there's "reasonable doubt" we should also err on the side of letting unscrupulous people unscrupulously divulge secret info." This is mortifying, and effectively amounts to "Everyone should be able to leak whatever they want." "

It sort of does, but i'd rather everyone leak than no one leak.

Also, Snowden is a good example to use. He really trusted Obama and waited on him to do the right thing, but Obama didn't. If we don't want leakers, Presidents should be convincing to career employees on why they should be honorable and dutiful in their work.

3/12/2019 11:17:23 PM

Quote :

" He really trusted Obama and waited on him to do the right thing, but Obama didn't"

Do tell.

3/13/2019 12:06:25 AM

Here's a rare occurrence: after a few days of reflecting on this conversation, I have changed my mind. Not as much as any of you would like, naturally, but for an internet argument, that's something.

First of all, anybody who leaks should receive some punishment, because even the most anodyne leak is an assault (perhaps a small one) on Democracy. For better or worse, the American people elected certain leaders and entrusted them with the power to make decisions; nobody elected Snowden, or Ellsberg, or any of the others presented here. But they abused a trust placed in them by those elected officials to try to force new policies upon them (or just to wreak havoc out of pettiness). That's bad, and it can't just slide. But maybe it doesn't always have to end at the gallows.

I still think Manning should have died, or at least languished in prison for the rest of her life. And Snowden, if we ever get him, should do the same, though that has more to do with his defection than the initial leak, which may have been, if not forgiveable, at least punishable with a lighter sentence. He doesn't get immediately released with laurels and praise, though; for whatever benefit his leaks may have had, they still caused harm (in addition to the broader "unelected bureaucrat imposing his will" harm I mentioned at the beginning)

Ellsberg I wrestle with. It's hard to imagine that leaking the government's knowledge that the Vietnam War was a stupid unwinnable clusterfuck did us any favors at the negotiating table, which is a pretty serious negative impact, arguably a life-threatening one for soldiers.

Petraeus committed a crime that would have gotten me sent to prison, but I suppose I don't have a lifetime of otherwise unquestioned public service to set against a hypothetical leak, so maybe a fine and probation was enough. I think I would have preferred at least nominal jailtime, but at all events he clearly wasn't trying to leak information to undermine elected officials (or even to see the information more widely leaked), which puts the crime on a different order of magnitude.

I still don't know anything about Reality Winner and have no intention of researching to find out more.

3/13/2019 10:25:40 AM

You should def take 5 mins and do some reality Winner googling.

Of all the leakers listed, her’s was the most targeted and she leaked the least. We don’t know her role quite yet in the Russia fiasco, but the potential is there that she helped expose FAR GREATER SECURITY RISKS than what her initial leak was.

Bonus points because her leak exposed how shitty self described “national security experts” The Intercept are.

3/13/2019 1:24:17 PM

So what about elected officials who leak information in order to play the media or to make themselves look good?


Do they get executed too or nah?

3/14/2019 12:55:26 AM

Quote :

"First of all, anybody who leaks should receive some punishment, because even the most anodyne leak is an assault (perhaps a small one) on Democracy. "

Agreed. And as we all know, Democracy is most healthy when the citizenry is completely in the dark and all government activity is kept secret.

3/14/2019 1:04:46 AM

Quote :

"So what about elected officials who leak information in order to play the media or to make themselves look good?"

This depends on so many circumstances that it's impossible to answer.

Quote :

"Democracy is most healthy when the citizenry is completely in the dark and all government activity is kept secret."

Nice. You've made a jump equivalent from "leaking pipes are bad" to "everything should be put in a pipe."

I don't want everything kept secret; on the contrary, I'd like to revise our classification rules and procedures to cut back on the amount of material that is classified. Clearly there's vast troves of government documents that are marked "Secret" or above that really don't need to be.

But when something is classified, the people who have been entrusted with that information - who have been investigated and cleared* and sworn to keep that information secret - should not take it upon themselves to leak it. Democracy isn't healthy in the straw-man dystopia you laid out, and it's not healthy when unelected bureaucrats decide to overrule the policies put in place by elected leaders.

*-Jared and Ivanka should not have Security Clearances and I am enraged every time that I remember that they do.

3/14/2019 7:45:16 AM

Quote :

" This depends on do many circumstances that it's impossible to answer"

Quote :

" First of all, anybody who leaks should receive some punishment"

Dude, pick one.

Quote :

" Nice. You've made the jump from equivalent from "leaking pipes are bad" to "everything should be put on a pipe""

No. I'm just pointing out that you think democracy depends on government secrecy. And that the more secrets it has, the more democrac-ier it is. This is a ridiculous assertion and I shouldn't have to slow walk you through this.


If you think elected officials get a pass, then you clearly don't actually think leaking secrets is bad. You just want to punish the plebes who do it. And you agree that powerful people abuse the power of secrecy to protect their wrongdoing/crimes, but for some reason you think the plebes who expose those crimes should be killed. This is a stupid position to have.

3/14/2019 12:05:00 PM

Quote :

"I'm just pointing out that you think democracy depends on government secrecy. And that the more secrets it has, the more democrac-ier it is."

Quote :

"I don't want everything kept secret; on the contrary, I'd like to revise our classification rules and procedures to cut back on the amount of material that is classified. Clearly there's vast troves of government documents that are marked "Secret" or above that really don't need to be."

3/14/2019 3:33:40 PM

I said "anybody who leaks" in the context of the discussion so far, which revolved around national security secrets and not, say, confidential discussions that a politician might leak for political advantage. Like I don't care about all the leaks about how the White House is a goat rodeo in a dumpster fire these days.

I don't think democracy qua democracy requires government secrets. But it DOES require that policy be set by the people or their elected Representatives, not by disgruntled bureaucrats.

Nor, of course, do I think that more secrets = more democracy; I just said I thought we needed fewer secrets, and nothing I've written here implies that I would like more. But you get your jollies building straw men and, hey, whatever makes you happy.

Now as to elected officials, again, you're going to have to be more specific. Their situation could be slightly different on the grounds that they were at least chosen by the people, to the extent that in some cases it would make them incapable of leaking. The President, as the head of the executive branch, is ultimately in charge of classification; if they reveal anything, that could effectively just mean it's not classified anymore. Then you have Senators, who, per the Constitution, can't be prosecuted for things they say on the floor of the Senate. (Though I would hope that the Senate would punish someone who did so, either by rebuke or by removing them from committees with access to such information)

[Edited on March 14, 2019 at 3:41 PM. Reason : ^finally, someone with reading comprehension skills]

3/14/2019 3:40:10 PM

So the higher up one is in the bureaucratic machine, the more classification privileges they get? And the lower one is, the more punitive the measures must be?


Cool. Totally democratic and not at all authoritarian.

3/14/2019 4:35:36 PM

She's back in jail for refusing to testify. Anyone know how long this cycle will continue?

5/16/2019 9:56:17 PM

^^ so...what're your thoughts about Hillary Clinton?

5/17/2019 1:39:13 AM

I feel like Duke is a Boomer-in-spirit with all his "WHATABOUT HILLARY??" posts

5/17/2019 10:53:22 AM

Imagine still being willing to go to jail on behalf of Julian Assange in 2019.

^ also the user in question has made it well known for years he disliked Clinton immensely

[Edited on May 17, 2019 at 11:26 AM. Reason : X]

5/17/2019 11:26:02 AM

I'm sure he'd prefer 4 more years of Trump than Hillary too, if presented with the option.

5/17/2019 11:34:55 AM

You guys are fucking impossible.

You’re missing the point of my previous post. Hell, you’re confirming my point.

Also, I have said many, many times that while Hillary is loathsome and her willful mishandling of classified material should otherwise be disqualifying, she would be immensely preferable to Trump. Like, to the point that I’d likely vote for her.

[Edited on May 17, 2019 at 12:35 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on May 17, 2019 at 1:15 PM. Reason : ]

5/17/2019 12:34:41 PM

Quote :

"Anyone know how long this cycle will continue?"

should stop when the grand jury is finished, right?

5/17/2019 12:42:59 PM

Quote :

"You’re missing the point of my previous post"

naw i got the point. it was clearly:

Quote :

"WHATABOUT HILLARY??"

Quote :

"Also, I have said many, many times that while Hillary is loathsome and her willful mishandling of classified material should otherwise be disqualifying, she would be immensely preferable to Trump. Like, to the point that I’d likely vote for her"

You have said that many, many times, but you didn't vote for her over Trump in 2016 when you had that very choice.

[Edited on May 17, 2019 at 1:52 PM. Reason : For a point of agreement though, I think she was an absolutely terrible candidate and I'm far from a fan]

5/17/2019 1:45:48 PM

Quote :

"naw i got the point. it was clearly:"

No, you are not getting the point.



So the higher up one is in the bureaucratic machine, the more classification privileges they get? And the lower one is, the more punitive the measures must be?

Cool. Totally democratic and not at all authoritarian.


...makes it sound like it's not OK for those high up in the bureaucratic machine to be held to looser--or practically no--standards when it comes to access to and handling of classified material. Like it's not OK for Trump to casually out sources and methods or use his personal cell phone or many other things he has done...like it's not OK for people like Jared Kushner to get to bypass the normal rules and requirements. Like it's not OK for Hillary Clinton to fucking email classified material, to include TS/SCI, on an unclassified network.

Great, I agree. Right on, JesusHChrist. None of those things are OK. They all range from very bad to really extremely fucking bad.

You, synapse, are not only apparently oblivious to my point, but you're reinforcing it by trotting out the old trope, yet again, that the right is making much ado about nothing regarding Hillary's security breaches. The right has witch-hunted Hillary Clinton in a number of ways over 3 decades, but she's the fucked-up one on this matter.

I raise a valid question about hypocrisy and double standards, and you are apparently so hypocritical about it that you don't even recognize it as such, and attempt to reduce it to simple "whataboutism." There is no "whataboutism"--I am not trying to absolve the other side of anything by relativism to the sins of Hillary. Manning, Clinton, the whole circle of Trumps and Trumps-in-law...fuck all of them, in my book.

You can dislike Hillary Clinton. You guys don't think she's sufficiently leftist. Not one ounce of her husband's likeability has ever rubbed off on her. For a variety of reasons, she is not hard to dislike. I just want you collectively to acknowledge that her mishandling of sensitive material was abhorrent, particularly in her position, that she deserves your ire for it, and that calling it out is valid and not always simple "whataboutism".

5/18/2019 3:26:13 AM