The Latest Smear-Snowden Lie Is Another Lie

In case it's not obvious, which it should have been from the first sentence of the London Sunday Times piece.

Digby:

It's entirely possible that some kind of breach happened that revealed the names of some British agents. As Greenwald says, there's been a whole lot of hacking going on. And I suppose its predictable that they would blame any breaches on Snowden but the fact that they got important facts wrong is a sign that they're just throwing this out there and the press isn't bothering to check the facts they have at hand. One would have at least thought they'd question why the Russians waited for two years before checking Snowden's invisible laptop. But that's just how they roll.

The British have turned into monsters when it comes to this surveillance and spying stuff. It brings into sharp focus why the Americans decided to write down a Bill of Rights when their revolution succeeded. They knew better than to leave anything to "trust". Even themselves.

KY Whistleblowers Beware: New House Leadership Is Out to Get You

The man announces to reporters that he is planning to punish the victims of a disgraced sexual predator and the lovely Dems of the Kentucky House elect the motherfucker Majority Whip.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

House Democrats also elected Rep. Johnny Bell of Glasgow to be their whip — the leader who counts members' votes behind the scenes.

Bell was the subject of accusations last week that he intended to "clean house" if he were elected to leadership by terminating the employment of one of the women staffers in the legislature who alleged they were sexually harassed by former state Rep. John Arnold, D-Sturgis.

Yolanda Costner, who worked for former Majority Whip Tommy Thompson of Owensboro, said in an email that a candidate for House leadership planned to fire her. Her attorney, Thomas Clay of Louisville, identified the candidate as Bell and said Bell was angling to replace Costner with one woman in particular.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/01/06/3627275/ky-house-democrats-elect-former.html?sp=/99/164/#storylink=cpy

AynRandy Doesn't Know the Difference Between Felony Lying to Congress and Telling the Truth About Government Malfeasance

Talking Points Memo:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday suggested that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should share a prison cell in the U.S.

"Maybe if they served in a prison cell together, we'd become further enlightened as a country over what we should and shouldn't do," he said on ABC's "This Week."

Paul said that he does not believe Snowden deserves harsh punishment for his leaks, but believes that both Snowden and Clapper broke the law.

Wrong, and wow is he stupid.

Weak and Cowardly Is As Weak and Cowardly Does

I hope Digby will forgive me for posting this in full

Some of the stuff I'm reading on twitter and elsewhere about Private Manning's change from Bradley to Chelsea is just depressing Honestly, I do not understand why people care so much about this stuff. She's a human being. That's all anyone needs to know. If she sees herself as a woman, then that's what she is. Human beings own their own bodies and their identities. Period.

I can't help but be reminded of this, when I read all this stuff today about what a cowardly weirdo Chelsea Manning is:

Monday, June 03, 2013

 
Here's a truly heroic Navy SEAL

Now this is an amazing story:

The 2011 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ended the military’s official policy of discriminating against gays and lesbians in the armed services, but a ban on transgender service members remains in place, meaning that trans men and women are still barred from serving.

But some advocates say that may change, or may come closer than ever before to changing, with the release of a new memoir from a former Navy SEAL. Kristen Beck (formerly Chris Beck) was a SEAL for 20 years — and member of SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden — before retiring, coming out as transgender and beginning her transition from male to female in 2011.

And with all the ugliness in the world one could expect a huge backlash, especially among her former colleagues in the military. And there may be some.

But it isn't across the board:

Soon, the responses from SEALs stationed all around the world suddenly started pouring in: “Brother, I am with you … being a SEAL is hard, this looks harder. Peace” * “I can’t say I understand the decision but I respect the courage. Peace and happiness be upon you…Jim” * ” … I just wanted to drop you a note and tell you that Kris has all the support and respect from me that Chris had … and quite possibly more. While I’m definitely surprised, I’m also in amazement at the strength you possess and the courage necessary to combat the strangers and ‘friends’ that I’m guessing have reared their ugly heads prior to and since your announcement. …”

I can only say hooyah! to that.

This woman is the same person who was member of Seal Team 6. Whatever "he" could do, she can do. Maybe this will make the military --- hell, everybody --- stop and think a little bit about gender roles and how essentially meaningless they really are.

Good for Kristen. She's a real hero.

I admire Manning for a lot of reasons and this is up there. Anyone who says she's weak and cowardly is an idiot.

When Do the War Criminals Manning Exposed Go on Trial?

 The crime isn't the crime; exposing the crime is the crime.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

I don’t object to Manning being charged with a crime. I certainly strongly object to the way he was treated in prison. And I think the idea that his leaks merit a 35-year sentence is absurd. And as I said before, it’s particularly appalling when you consider the Obama administration’s “look forward not back” approach on torture. It’s hard to square this life-ruining sentence with the fact that no torturer was even considered worthy of being charged. I’d also say that at this point that it’s pretty hard to the American government to complain when other countries refuse to extradite whistleblowers.

Charles Pierce cuts to the heart of it.

More American Progress Only A Despised Dissident Can Accomplish

The question isn't patriot or traitor.  The question is progress or regress.  And as President Obama has made crystal clear, on both Bradley Manning's and Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing revelations, the answer is, resoundingly: progress.

Digby:

The president held a press conference (Friday) and spoke of many things.  But he opened his remarks with an announcement of coming investigations and a release of information about the NSA's secret spying apparatus. And while the President insisted that he had already been reforming the NSA so Snowden's revelations are irrelevant in the long run, the mainstream press, at least, doesn't seem convinced of that anymore.

SNIP

It's nonsense and everyone knows it. This great debate, which today resulted in a very public set of executive branch reforms and investigations would not have happened were it not for Edward Snowden. You do not have to call him a patriot --- perhaps you think these programs are great and you hope the government keeps up the good work. But he is most definitely a whistleblower in the most classic sense of the word.

And that whistleblower was undoubtedly very well aware of the fact that the Obama administration has been uniquely hostile the very idea of a free press informing the American public of what the government is doing in its name:



SNIP

There is no evidence that President Obama was seriously engaged in systematic reforms of the NSA surveillance programs prior to now. He could have put a stop to much of it long before Edward Snowden came on the scene. And he sure as hell could have called a truce in the war on whistleblowers and the press. Instead, the DOJ has been pressing forward with everything it has against reporters like the NY Times' James Risen who has been harassed by the federal government since 2005.

The administration's actions speak louder than words, especially these words:

[T]here's no doubt that Mr. Snowden's leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board to go through -- and I'd sat down with Congress and we had worked this thing through -- it would have been less exciting and it would not have generated as much press -- I actually think we would have gotten to the same place, and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security and some very vital ways that we are able to get intelligence that we need to secure the country.

Basically:

It's time for that trope to be retired. It's frankly reminiscent of the paternalistic bullhorn nonsense we had to put up with in the Bush administration. This is a democracy. We don't outsource our constitutional responsibilities.

This administration, like all the administrations before it since WWII, has fiercely guarded the prerogatives of the secret surveillance state and the Military Industrial Complex.  It is the source of real presidential power and they are loathe to give up any of it until they are forced to do so by the people. This has been obvious for many decades and President Obama is no exception.

The Crime of What We Did to PFC Manniing

First, Gary Younge nailed it

Gary YoungeVerified account @garyyounge

 

Exposing war crimes gets you 130 years. http://bit.ly/13w4610 
Committing them gets you a library. http://bit.ly/Mp2ljA  #Manning
6:41 PM - 30 Jul 13

Chase Madar at The Nation explains it:

Many intellectuals have labored to draw casuistic distinctions between what they see as Manning’s irresponsible leaking and Daniel Ellsberg’s virtuous leaking of the Pentagon Papers some forty years ago. These exercises zealously avoid the main legal difference: the thousands of documents leaked by Ellsberg were uniformly classified as “top secret,” whereas nothing released by Manning is of that high status. Meanwhile, Ellsberg himself has been a tireless defender of the young soldier, and on a weekly basis has had to reprise Marshall McLuhan’s famous scene in Annie Hall against Manning’s smug detractors. 

SNIP

After all, the transgression of this soldier is far greater than being a freethinking queer in the military. Private Manning actually believed that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be about Iraqi freedom. He thought he should be a well-informed citizen soldier, and he thought civilians should know the truth about the war that was being fought in their name.

SNIP

But Private Manning broke the law—and the law is the law! This folk tautology ought to be airtight, but it carries a whiff of desperation, of depleted authority on the verge of meltdown. It turns out that selective enforcement of military law is pervasive. Sexual assault is rarely punished. Laws against killing foreign civilians are worth even less: just ask the Marine unit that killed twenty-four Iraqi civilians in Haditha, some of them execution style, without any of the soldiers serving time in prison (the leader of the unit suffered only a reduction in rank and a pay cut). The law in these instances may be many things, but it is not a prescriptive rule enforced evenly and impartially. And yet the request for clemency in the case of Bradley Manning is treated as an outrageous and whiny exception, which if granted would bring about the collapse of all military discipline. 
The laws against releasing classified material are just as elastic. Barely a week goes by without The New York Times or The Washington Post spilling government secrets. This complaisant nonenforcement of leaks is nothing to complain about: after all, it’s how we learned the truth about—to name just a few salient examples from recent history—Vietnam, Watergate, warrantless wiretapping and the cyberwar against Iran.

SNIP

But it is Bradley Manning we have put on trial, not the impresarios of war, not the CIA torturers or their lawyers. The Iraq War, which began with a lurid overture of secrecy and lies, is now getting its dissonant coda: a private court-martialed for telling the truth, a trial unfolding behind a thick wall of official secrecy, in which the court’s media center was, on the day of the prosecution’s closing statement, patrolled by armed soldiers peering over the shoulders of typing reporters. “Pfc. Manning was not a humanist. He was a hacker,” said prosecutor Maj. Ashden Fein. “He was not a whistleblower. He was a traitor.” The past decade has witnessed the carnage unleashed by militarized cluelessness. In the story of Bradley Manning, who has been the ethical citizen and who the rampaging criminals?