Fog again this way-early Thursday on California’s north coast, but the outside feels a bit warmer than yesterday — but it’s the weather, and who’s to really know?
In the state of everything nowadays, who’s to know anything?
Especially the state of a person’s mind — Bradley Manning leaks of himself: “I am Chelsea Manning. I am female,” the Army private wrote in a statement read on TODAY Thursday. “Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition.”
Disclosure personified — from a war/revenge infested state watching our every move to a cry for person freedom leads to WTF!
(Illustration found here).
Yesterday, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for espionage, which is bullshit.
Via Voice of America:
Manning says he did it to expose the wrongfulness of war and U.S. actions overseas. The government called him a traitor.
In the end, testimony pointed to no specific harm and no deaths caused by the leaks.
Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Morris Davis is a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo who testified on Manning’s behalf.
“The worst thing Bradley Manning did is embarrass the country,” said Davis.
War crimes and lying about it — more shame than embarrassment.
And there’s some real criminals convicted of bad shit who received less sentences — HuffPost has a list, which includes people found to have given secrets to, wait for it, wait for it, the Russians! Asshole hypocrisy at the highest degree and levels.
However, I don’t know where Chelsea Manning is headed, but the guy/girl needs our support, mainly because he seems to deserve it.
Via Raw Story:
David Coombs, the civilian who led Manning’s team, said his client was stoic but he and other lawyers cried when they gathered in private soon after the judgment was read out.
“Myself and others were in tears, because this means a lot to us,” Coombs said.
He said Manning looked at him and said: “It’s OK. It’s all right, don’t worry about it. I know you did your best. It’s OK. I’m gonna be OK. I’m gonna get through this.”
Coombs added: “I’m in a position where my client is cheering me up.
“That shouldn’t happen, but he is a resilient young man. If nothing else, he is resilient, for sure.”
Meanwhile, in another security-state up-chuck, Glenn Greenwald comments on the other gosh-awful scenario of the moment, which includes the episode at Heathrow Airport in London with his companion, David Miranda.
No matter what you think of Greenwald, he’s still a real journalist, and blasts away at the shitstorm blustered up by the US and UK authorities:
But here’s the most important point: the US and the UK governments go around the world threatening people all the time.
It’s their modus operandi.
They imprison whistleblowers.
They try to criminalize journalism.
They threatened the Guardian with prior restraint and then forced the paper to physically smash their hard drives in a basement.
They detained my partner under a terrorism law, repeatedly threatened to arrest him, and forced him to give them his passwords to all sorts of invasive personal information – behavior that even one of the authors of that terrorism law says is illegal, which the Committee for the Protection of Journalists said yesterday is just “the latest example in a disturbing record of official harassment of the Guardian over its coverage of the Snowden leaks”, and which Human Rights Watch says was “intended to intimidate Greenwald and other journalists who report on surveillance abuses.”
And that’s just their recent behavior with regard to press freedoms: it’s to say nothing of all the invasions, bombings, renderings, torture and secrecy abuses for which that bullying, vengeful duo is responsible over the last decade.
But the minute anyone refuses to meekly submit to that, or stands up to it, hordes of authoritarians – led by state-loyal journalists – immediately start objecting: how dare you raise your voice to the empire?
How dare you not politely curtsey to the Queen and thank the UK government for what they have done.
The US and UK governments are apparently entitled to run around and try to bully and intimidate anyone, including journalists – “to send a message to recipients of Snowden’s materials, including the Guardian”, as Reuters put it – but nobody is allowed to send a message back to them.
That’s a double standard that nobody should accept.
Right on — we should be thanking Manning and Snowden, not locking them away.
Security is another word for shut-the-fuck-up!