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Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 12-09-2012 08:15 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The diplomatic cables allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning was not an example of whistleblowing. It was a data dump, albeit one which contained few surprises. |
That's what my boss would call a distinction without a difference. Whether it was stated intention to blow the whistle or not, by 'dumping' data, that's exactly what he (allegedly) did. |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5212 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 10:14 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Whether it was stated intention to blow the whistle or not, by 'dumping' data, that's exactly what he (allegedly) did.
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No. "Whistleblowing" involves drawing attention to malpractice of some sort - either by going over the head of the person(s) responsible or, if this fails, going public with one's concerns. Manning (if he was indeed responsible) had no idea whether the cables contained evidence of malpractice or not. He hadn't even read them. Instead a data dump was given to Wikileaks to sift through. That's not whistleblowing. It's indiscriminate leaking.
Some of Wikileaks' earlier stunts - such as the "collateral murder" video - could properly be considered whistleblowing (although that particular video had been edited so that it better supported the narrative Wikileaks was aiming for). Publishing a load of confidential documents, without regard for whether there is a public interest reason for doing so, is not whistleblowing by any stretch of the imagination. |
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| Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 12:40 Post subject: |
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| Whatever. It's a minor point, and I'm not going to argue the definitions with you. Whatever his intentions/knowledge, he gave away sensitive material. Why? Did he think this was completely harmless? Makes him a whistleblower in my book, as it does apparently in the eyes of the US government, hence why he is currently incarerated. |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5212 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 12:52 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Whatever. It's a minor point |
I'm afraid that I don't think it is. Whistleblowing is wholly defensible and most developed countries have laws designed to protected whistleblowers - whether they work properly or not is another matter. Had Manning stumbled across wrongdoing, he could have gone over the head of his immediate superior and taken his concerns to a senior officer. If the matter had still not been addressed, he could have gone public with his allegation. I doubt very much that the authorities would have reacted in the way that they had if he had done so.
| Quote: | | Makes him a whistleblower in my book, as it does apparently in the eyes of the US government, hence why he is currently incarerated. |
Nope. If he did it, then it makes him an indiscriminate leaker of confidential information. It's an enormous difference. |
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| Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 13:07 Post subject: |
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| Quake42 wrote: | | Nope. If he did it, then it makes him an indiscriminate leaker of confidential information. It's an enormous difference. |
Yeah, well, good luck selling that to the State Department. |
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| Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 13:09 Post subject: |
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| Quake42 wrote: | | Had Manning stumbled across wrongdoing, he could have gone over the head of his immediate superior and taken his concerns to a senior officer. |
I like that bit. Never served in a military, have you?! |
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| EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 1197 Location: USA Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 13:38 Post subject: |
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| Sergeant_Pluck wrote: | | Quote: | | The diplomatic cables allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning was not an example of whistleblowing. It was a data dump, albeit one which contained few surprises. |
That's what my boss would call a distinction without a difference. Whether it was stated intention to blow the whistle or not, by 'dumping' data, that's exactly what he (allegedly) did. |
Any ascription of 'whistleblowing' - as a colloquial term for revealing claims of or evidence for malfeasance - is at the discretion of the speaker.
However, that misses the most relevant point ...
'Whistleblowing' - as a specific legal construct under US law - is subject to specific definitions, allowances, and channels. US statutes regarding what we now popularly call 'whistleblowing' extend as far back as the time of the American Civil War (though the label 'whistleblowing' itself only dates back a few decades).
There are in fact prescribed 'whistleblowing' protections, procedures and channels for military personnel. Manning neither used nor claimed to have availed himself of any of these.
In the context of those US laws framing the ongoing legal proceedings and potential ramifications, Manning is not a 'whistleblower'. |
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| Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 14:19 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Whistleblowing is complex patchwork of contradictory laws within the US// |
According to Wikipedia. Doesn't seem like there is much of a consistent legal construct after all.
Besides, legal constructs and definitions are notoriously malleable. Take Vietnam, for example. An armed conflict inviolving multiple nations that lasted for what, 14 years and killed 100s of 1000s of people. But was it legally a war? No, it wasn't. At least, not from the US govt perspective.
Anyway, as I said, I hear you. I'm just saying that for all the wonderful definitions and nice tidy constructs, there's a reality pill need to be taken here. For all intents and purposes, he's a whistleblower. Indeed, type Bradley Manning Whisteblower into Google and you get 171,000 hits.
Real world Distinction? Maybe. Real world Difference? Not really.
Whistleblower or not, I think it's safe to say that Manning is totally screwed. |
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| EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 1197 Location: USA Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 15:47 Post subject: |
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| Sergeant_Pluck wrote: | | Quote: | | Whistleblowing is complex patchwork of contradictory laws within the US// |
According to Wikipedia. Doesn't seem like there is much of a consistent legal construct after all.
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As a construct relevant to potential recourse to 'whistleblower' defenses, it's quite specific in the context within which Manning will be judged.
| Sergeant_Pluck wrote: |
For all intents and purposes, he's a whistleblower. Indeed, type Bradley Manning Whisteblower into Google and you get 171,000 hits.
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For the intents and purposes of discussions among the global peanut gallery - yes.
For the intents and purposes of the entities that will decide Manning's fate - most definitely no.
| Sergeant_Pluck wrote: | | Whistleblower or not, I think it's safe to say that Manning is totally screwed. |
I agree 100%. IMHO Manning is unavoidably 'toast', and he can expect to spend much - if not all - the rest of his life in confinement. As far as I can tell, the only open issue is which type of environment (e.g., prison versus mental institution) it will involve.
In the worst case scenario, he'd be facing the same prospective punishment (albeit with less probability) even if he'd never forwarded any of the classified data to Wikileaks (or, for that matter, anyone else). |
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| Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 16:04 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | As a construct relevant to potential recourse to 'whistleblower' defenses, it's quite specific in the context within which Manning will be judged. |
With respect - mumbo jumbo. Doesn't even make sense.
| Quote: | | //For the intents and purposes of discussions among the global peanut gallery - yes. |
1. Is that the global VOTING peanut gallery? Politicians will call him whatever the voters want him to be called.
2. Is the same peanut gallery that describe Vietnam as a 'war'. Were they wrong?
| Quote: | | For the intents and purposes of the entities that will decide Manning's fate - most definitely no. |
You reckon? Given that I'm yet to be convinced that any concrete legislation exists wrt whistleblowers, I'd say it was dependant anyway on how hard they can f*ck him. If they can get him more years by calling him a w/b, they will. If they can get more years with him not a w/b, he won't be (similar situation with Breivik in Norway - is he a nutter or not? Dunno, which will get him a tougher sentence?). |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5212 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 16:18 Post subject: |
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I can't imagine those prosecuting Manning will have any interest in calling him a whistleblower. Apart from the fact that he, well, isn't, using the term "whistleblower" implies that there was some important purpose to his actions. It opens the door to some sort of public interest defence.
If they call him anything I expect it's more likely to be "traitor". |
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| EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 1197 Location: USA Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 16:23 Post subject: |
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| Sergeant_Pluck wrote: | | ... I'm yet to be convinced that any concrete legislation exists wrt whistleblowers ... |
Title 10, United States Code, section 1034 - Military Whistleblower Protection Act of 1988. |
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| Sergeant_Pluck Great Old One Joined: 10 Apr 2012 Total posts: 504 Location: The Hague, Netherlands. Age: 40 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 16:56 Post subject: |
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| Acknowledged. Thanks. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-09-2012 13:43 Post subject: |
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Full text at link.
| Quote: | George Galloway, whose clumsy and half-cocked defence of the embattled Australian led to an establishment onslaught of vituperation - spreading from the front page of The Sun to editorials in The Guardian and The Independent, not to say the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which would criticise Galloway for helping little old ladies across the street1 - now faces political backlash in his own organisation.
First, Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, sometime member of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and then high-profile defector to the Respect camp, withdrew her candidacy for the upcoming Manchester Central by-election. “I cannot in all conscience,” she wrote, “stand as candidate for a party whose only MP has made unacceptable and unretracted statements about the nature of rape. To continue as Respect Party candidate in this situation, no matter how much I object to and oppose his statements personally, would be in effect to condone what he has said. That is something I am not prepared to do.”2
Second, and perhaps worse for Galloway, Respect’s so-called leader, Salma Yaqoob, quit the organisation, citing a “breakdown in trust”. Apparently she too was upset by his “deeply disappointing and wrong” comments on Assange. However, she preferred to confine herself to a few utterly anodyne formulations in her resignation statement: the last few weeks had been “extremely difficult” for the party and for her, she had taken her decision with “deep regret” ... yudder, yudder. Nonetheless, The BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Independent, the Evening Standard all used her to stoke the anti-Galloway fire.
Of course, Galloway is not the only figure to have been targeted. The American feminist, Naomi Wolf (an odd sort of feminist, it is true, but at least identifiably leftwing in sympathies), has been merciless in her criticism of this whole circus from the very beginning, penning a sarcastic letter of thanks to Interpol back when the allegations first arose, proclaiming herself “overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating”.3
Like elephants, the establishment, and its leftist patsies, will never forget such a sin. And so it has been truly remarkable to note the almost universal slamming that Wolf’s new book on vaginas has received (for all this writer knows, well-deserved; but remember, these are the same journalists who said nice things about Caitlin Moran’s How to be a woman); and how frequently her dismissal of the accusations against Assange has factored in as subsidiary evidence against her in these reviews - a tic which unites the Evening Standard, The Guardian, New Statesman and, alas, Socialist Worker.4
While the sour grapes directed at Wolf have a certain absurdity - coming from the quarters they do - the wooden spoon, surely, goes to comrade Hudson. There are those of us, this paper included, who have been vociferously critical of Galloway’s record on women’s rights for many, many years now. He is a Catholic, and he is of one mind with Benedict XVI on the question of a woman’s right to choose. Abortion, for him, is murder. This is a thoroughly worked out and thoroughly reactionary position, which, however, Galloway is most unlikely to retract any time soon - if anything his rhetoric gets more religious as the years draw on.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/929/pushing-the-button |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-09-2012 12:18 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | No DNA link to Assange in condom central to sex assault case
http://rt.com/news/assange-condom-no-dna-277/
Published: 16 September, 2012, 23:57
Edited: 17 September, 2012, 08:40
A ripped condom given to Swedish police by one of Julian Assange’s accusers does not contain the WikiLeaks founder’s DNA, forensic scientists have reportedly found.
In a 100-page document shown to Assange’s lawyers, it was revealed that the torn prophylactic, having been examined by staff at two forensic laboratories, did not bear conclusive evidence that Assange had ever worn it, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
Assange’s lawyers said the lack of DNA evidence on the condom, which was allegedly used during a supposed August 2010 sexual assault, indicates that a fake one could have been submitted.
The woman in question, now aged 33, claims to have been molested by Assange at her flat in Stockholm. She says that at one point he deliberately broke a condom in order to have unprotected sex with her.
Assange claims he had consensual sex with the woman, but denies intentionally tearing the condom. He had previously told police that he continued to stay at her residence for the week following the alleged incident, saying his accuser never made any mention of the ripped condom.
But DNA purportedly belonging to Assange was present on a condom submitted by a second woman, who has accused him of rape, prompting Swedish authorities to push ahead with their bid to have him extradited from the UK.
However, his second accuser, now 29, who claimed to have been raped in her sleep by Assange, apparently told police she had not been opposed to having unprotected sex with him despite previous statements to the contrary, the daily reported.
Assange denies the allegation of rape, maintaining he had consensual sex with the second woman as well. The Swedish prosecutor’s office refused to comment on the report, saying that the investigation was ongoing. |
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