http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...ged-sources-life-in-prison/?cid=hp:mainpromo2 We can celebrate it with him today- no visitors were allowed yesterday (his actual birthday). I think it's important that all people who are grateful to this man share the emotion publicly. I hope he has a wonderful and strengthening visit with family today, and that he gets the books he requested on the occasion: I also hope for many happy and healthy returns of the day, and that no matter where he is, Bradley feels a comforting and strengthening awareness of how many of his countrymen are so very grateful to him, for helping open our eyes to what our country has become, in a pivotal time in our history. I offer now a song and a toast for Bradley Manning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_6YQ-knKFw In a short while, I shall perform the most splendid victory roll I can manage (with the airplane I have ready for flight today) across the boundless blue sky in his honor. Happy Birthday Bradley Manning!
He's set to go away a long time, and I shed not a tear for him. He betrayed his comrades, his violated his oath and he broke the law. And for what? No great principle that I can see.
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@_@ The party's over, but the debate continues. I don't feel alone in caring about my country, and also believing in government accountability. It is patriotic in the United States to prize accountability and the defense of our humanity as a nation, over protection of the state apparatus. It is authoritarianism- the antithesis of democratic principle to defend government secrecy in the face of clear deception of the public by the US government. Authoritarian governments under threat consistently isolate and threaten whistleblowers as traitors. Words of inspiration and solidarity have value, but the truest test of democracy is when a whistle-blower's patriotism is attacked for revealing defining truths that are in denial by the majority. We cannot escape accountability as a society for the crimes we commit as a nation- certainly not by hiding behind "state security". Citizens who risk themselves in furthering national accountability are isolated and marginalized not by by believers in liberty and democracy, but by the handservants of tyranny.
Governments who hide things are corrupt. People who reveal what is hidden are corruption-busters. The US government has done many evil things, and kept them hidden. Those who whistleblow are doing the whole world a favour. On the other hand, no good deed goes unpunished.
All governments "hide" things, just as all people do. The people who are ready to ride the wikileaks furor over the cliff have not stopped to think what a world without privileged and restricted information would look like. It would be chaos, and on imagines even they would not like living in it.
If a government purports to derive its powers from the consent of the governed, what it is allowed to hide from those consenting is very limited. What it is allowed to lie about, matters about which it may actually present falsehood and conceal factual information in defense of its false claims, to those from whom consent is fundamentally required, whose consent is the only legitimizing authority for the government itself, is a vanishingly small set of circumstances. Justification of war is not nearly one of them. The employment of power in the interests of plutocrats is not nearly one of them. The combination is criminally not one of them.
Democracy does not equate to the right to post diplomatic cables. This action was not meant to simply share information, but its was intended to damage the diplomatic reputation of the United States, a country he surely despises (damage not from the information that was posted, but the fact that the U.S. cannot protect its cables, and therefore cannot be trusted). It is a personal vendetta of one man (a fact proven by those who have left his organization), rather than any journalistic right. Democracy does not mean that every piece of government information need be reveiled to the general public. There are some things the public does not need to know (those who believe otherwise, must have tremendous egos or overvalue their own self worth).
I agree. And among what it is allowed to hide are diplomatic cables and national security matters. What information are the cables concealing, beyond the usual private opinions and confidences? I'm sorry but these cables detail none of that.
The US has done more to encourage democracy than Manning ever will. Indeed, some would argue the disclosure pits him on the side of anti-democratic forces.
The Us and democracy never go together in my mind. The US and fascism on the other hand. The fact we even need people to disclose info proves this
It is possible to make a case that there are certain things that should remain secret. The problem is that governments hide all kinds of information that should be open, and they particularly hide anything that makes the government look bad. Yet those things that make a government look bad are exactly the things that the public needs to know. For these reasons I support wikileaks. As long as governments try to hide the stuff they that reveals their own corruption and unworthy motives, we need those who will open these secrets to daylight.
That says more about your mind than it does the US. That's a pretty stupid bar. Someone could disclose this kind of info about any nation on earth. So following your logic, they would all be fascist...
Not quite, countezero. My country, New Zealand, in a recent international survey, rated as least corrupt on Earth. Some wikileaks disclosures concerned New Zealand. They were pathetic. I am embarassed about how trivial those 'discosures' were. We can't even raise a scandal. Talk about wishy washy. NZ is democratic. We are so damn concerned about honesty that it is almost a national obsession. A member of parliament recently resigned, when it was discovered that, on a taxpayer funded trip to China, she met with some of the customers of her husband's business. That was classified as corrupt. So it is possible to be largely non corrupt, and properly democratic, rather than fascist. The problem with the United States is that it is too damn powerful, and power corrupts.
Saying power corrupts, itself a kind of stereotype, is a far cry from saying something as stupid as "the US and democracy never go together." The US is a democracy, and by all reasonable accounts, an open and honest one that has held more than 200 years of elections that were accepted by the people as legitmate and peaceable. As for corruption and New Zealand, I am glad your nation is relatively free from corruption. Mine is, too. As to your's being "less corrupt," well is that a surprise? NZ is an island with a small population sitting in the middle of an empty ocean, with more sheep than people, as I recall. It stands to reason that corruption, being a permenent part of reality in any society of humans, will be more widespread with more people (IE - the US has 320 million souls, which by sheer numbers offers more chances to practice "corruption"). The TI has been criticized, but the map shown here, paints the US in a color far more kindly than your bombastic, over-the-top, anti-American language does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Map_Index_of_perception_of_corruption_2010.svg Meanwhile, it's becoming quite boring to read all the moaning on this site about America, especially from our cousins in the commonwealth, where the practice seems to be a cultural obsession. Starting a thread that would allow you all to channel your bile and anger together, and in doing so, reach some catharsis would keep other threads free of this kind of nonsense, as well as collecting all you haters in one easy-to-find (read easy-to-avoid) location. Plus, hearing nothing but a chorus of agreement would allow you all to continue to avoid the truth and reaffirm your misguided thoughs.
countezero Good reference and nice map. I do not think, though, I have been expressing anti-American sentiments, apart from the suggestion that the USA is powerful and power corrupts. Nor have I suggested that the US is not a democracy. Wikileaks, though, is prone to uncovering things that governments do not want uncovered. That gives it a thumbs up in my book.
