The Bradley Manning Saga

[tec0]

So it was alright for Nazis to kill Jews because they were loyal trustworthy soldiers? crimes against civilians are crimes and need to be outed and all the other crap also needed airing same as with Edward Snowdon, I am sure they both considered what they did very carefully before they blew the whistle.
I don't like the Idea that USA killed innocent news cameramen or the fact that they are possibly spying on me!!!

It is a 100% fact that your emails goes trough a few systems every second and if enough red flags popup someone will read it to see if action needs to be taken or not. The truth is these systems have existed since the "cold war" and evolved into something spectacular. Imagine all those wonderful CPU farms working with clever software to figure out what is going on inside your head.

Millions upon millions of pages of emails that gets scanned every time you hit the send button. It sounds like science-fiction but its not...

[HR Solutions]

Its a pity then that they don't figure out quick enough those people that go on the rampage killing people in cinema's/schools in the US or in Oslo !!!

[Citizen X]

So it was alright for Nazis to kill Jews because they were loyal trustworthy soldiers? crimes against civilians are crimes and need to be outed and all the other crap also needed airing same as with Edward Snowdon, I am sure they both considered what they did very carefully before they blew the whistle.
I don't like the Idea that USA killed innocent news cameramen or the fact that they are possibly spying on me!!!

The Nazis were fascists whereas the USA, despite its shortcomings is a democracy. So the question is how should a soldier behave in a democracy?

4. With Manning, he/she was serving under a democracy in the capacity of a soldier. Common sense should have told him/her that what he/she was doing was treason. Besides the media were already reporting on civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, I don’t condone the killing of any civilians by any military

Back to Nazi Germany:
There was selective morality at Nuremburg! Not all that should have been tried were in actual fact tried. One would imagine that the scientist who developed the v1 and v2 rockets which killed indiscriminately i.e. just landed in any civilian area in Britian and exploded would be on the list of those to have been tried at Nuremburg. No so!
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun, developed these rockets that killed so many civilians. He was aware of their purpose. Yet after WW11, the USA actually recruited him. H worked on the United States Army intermediate range ballistic missile. In 1975 he received a medal from the states for his contribution!

Back to Manning: If he truly had a sense of morality, he would have only released the documents that pertained to the civillian killing.

Let’s assume that the court held that based upon his sense of morality he is acquitted on charges pertaining to specific documents regarding civilian killing, let’s assume further that the court states that the leaking of the diplomatic cables is a treasonous act and grants the death penalty. What would now be wrong with this scenario?

It's common cause that it's plain wrong, simply an atrocious crime against humanity, for any military to to kill civillians regardless of who those civilians are
I'm by no means suggesting that it was right for the Nazis to murder the Jews, I'm merely pointing out the fact that the civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan was covered by the media of that day, though not in fine detail.

I'm further attempting to demonstrate that Manning is not the moral character that he/she presents himself/herself to be. If so why did he/she restrict the leaks to only the civilian killings which would have not been more than a 100 pages. He released thousands of pages of documents, most of them diplomatic cables.

So let's remove the civilian killings from this equation. Isolate the diplomatic cables. leaking this alone was sufficient for him to be granted the death penalty.

I come back to my initial point: Had Manning existed in the 18th century and done the same serving George Washington in the American revolution, he would have been shot!

So, for me the issue in dispute is not the civilian killings, it's the leaking of thousands of other documents that were classified in his capacity as a soldier

[Citizen X]

Its a pity then that they don't figure out quick enough those people that go on the rampage killing people in cinema's/schools in the US or in Oslo !!!

Good evening HR Solutions,

Answer me this: From a recruitment and selection process where did the states go wrong in recruiting Snowden?

[Dave A]

At times I do wonder if the USA is going to end up being the definition of democratic fascism. They do get pretty close to some of the fascist state characteristics every now and then.

But then it's pretty difficult to be a genuinely open, free society nowadays. Quite a tricky line to walk, balancing individual freedoms and security.

[HR Solutions]

Good evening HR Solutions,

Answer me this: From a recruitment and selection process where did the states go wrong in recruiting Snowden?

I never said they went wrong in recruiting him, so I can't answer that.

[tec0]

Its a pity then that they don't figure out quick enough those people that go on the rampage killing people in cinema's/schools in the US or in Oslo !!!

Most killings are done in the name of hate, greed and passion. The shootings that you pointed out was done by unstable people. But consider that we have more deaths per day than most of the US have in a week then you see a pattern. The reality is that some parties want stricter gun control so they use the media to do exactly that. However if you consider the population size to our own. Consider there resources and access to legal weapons and then consider that our country has more deaths in week then they have in a month "keeping in mind the population size. Then there country is still considered safer then us.

The reality is they have the technology to log your complete digital footprint. But depending on the person they still need warrants to access the info unless you are flagged by a intelligence agency. It is these laws however that is slowly changing.

[Citizen X]

I never said they went wrong in recruiting him, so I can't answer that.

Granted! I didn’t imply that you did!

I’m merely trying to establish that even HR department can employ the wrong person.
The point I want to make here is that in business and in the Intelligence community, the HR department will create an impression that the individual they recruited/interviewed by whatever means is simply the best person for the job.

Our very own business history in SA shows otherwise as many individuals in senior positions such as CEO eventually brought their employers into disrepute or abused their position of power.

With Snowden, I would personally think that the CIA has the most sophisticated recruitment and selection criteria and that Snowden was subject to such selection process. Despite this look how he turned out.
If the CIA can get it wrong then similarly corporate South Africa(Their HR departments) can also get it wrong at times.

[wynn]

So, for me the issue in dispute is not the civilian killings, it's the leaking of thousands of other documents that were classified in his capacity as a soldier

So assume that when I was doing my military service in 1970 I came across a hoard of secret military and diplomatic correspondence indicating crimes against humanity by the then Apartheid NAT government and I sent them all to a neutral party, because to filter them would expose me to greater risk of being caught, assume as Manning did that 'Wiki Leaks' and certain well known newspapers were going to redact the hoard and only leak the ones that showed civilian casualties, crimes against humanity and internationally illegal behavior.
Then imagine through circumstances the 'Wiki Leaks' of the day were forced to protect themselves and publish everything, after all that is what happened.
Manning never meant for everything to be published but the bullying tactics of the USA and their clandestine operators forced the hand of 'Wiki Leaks' and the selected news papers that were doing the redacting, hence the fact that a lot of secret stuff that never should have seen the light of day was put out for everybody to see.
For this the NAT's would have either hung, shot or jailed me for life but after the new Democratic dispensation I would have been hailed as a hero, much like certain Afrikaner Clergymen who went against the grain and refused to accept the meddling of the NAT's in their beliefs, they were demonized and persecuted but today are heroes.

Perhaps when the new American President comes to power he will pardon Manning and declare him a hero for exposing all the wrongdoing of the American Forces, after all he was just the messenger not the boogyman.

[tec0]

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist... History is written by the victor not by facts. It is and will forever remain fact that there are monsters on all sides and each of them will get away with there crimes against humanity until such time when they lose then things will change so that they will remain the same. So what am I saying?

the more things change the more they stay the same...

A simple truth if there ever was one.