Oh, stop throwing logic into the mix! There’s a traitor of the United States to defend! And yes, I absolutely consider Manning to be a traitor to the United States. I also think she was treated poorly, and generally agreed with Obama’s action to release her. However, it strikes me through this action of hers that her self-importance in her own mind continues to be a higher priority than her commitment to her country. That’s a shame.
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At least then it’s clear to the world that indeed you are having such a discussion with authorities? Versus being completely off-the-record? I am really not following your “logic.”
I’m not interested in talking to you. Knock it off.
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Some advice
The request has been made by reactionabe, and rules-lawyering with the mods never works well.
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This is the Alexandria Fed Detention Center where Chelsea is mostly likely sitting inside. I drive by it often. I will be honking in support until her release.
It will make me feel better anyway.
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Fair enough. I’m still going to call bullshit on insulting someone, and then requesting they not engage any further. I’d say that violates “the spirit” of the rules, and is quite “hostile and unpleasant” itself. I have withdrawn my last post directed to the requestor.
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The system is imperfect and incredibly labour intensive for the mod team to maintain. Thankfully the user ignore feature for Discourse is being developed right now, and when complete, we will change this policy and disallow requests to not be contacted/replied to. Instead users can simply ignore users from topics, or completely.
Until then, though, if someone doesn’t wish to engage with someone else, we ask that you respect that.
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It kind of sounds like you arguing “grand juries are bad because they can undermine the trust needed to successfully run a criminal operation.”
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Just out of curiosity – IF I wanted to request that the user who asked me to disengage, ALSO disengage from conversing with me, how would I go about that under the current system? Is it implied that a request for engagement to end is inherently reciprocal? Maybe this should be stated clearly, if indeed it’s the case. Otherwise we have a bit of a Catch-22, unless I’m missing something (I may be!)
In any case, appreciate your clarification as always.
“Do not engage” requests are reciprocal. This isn’t ontopic here though, these situations are best handled through PM.
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So either you genuinely believe that’s what I’m arguing… in which case you’re wrong. Or you’re by-your-logicing me. In which case you can just phrase it like this is a problem with my argument (or with what I would argue is a misunderstanding of my argument) more directly instead of throwing a weird insinuation that I think we might both agree is counterproductive.
So, one implicit argument that seems to crop up, which I think is fair to point out as implicit (if somewhat secondary) in your rebuttal, is that the abolition of grand juries leaves a void of some kind. Even it’s not implicit, it’s an objection worth anticipating. As I pointed out to @jerwin abolishing something does not preclude that it can be replaced with similar systems that accomplish the same thing better. I only need to point outward to the multitude of countries that don’t have grand juries and still manage to fight things like organized crime.
The problem with grand juries is that they completely dispense with some basic safeguards we have for civil liberties with broad-ranging powers in ways that are more often than not abused by prosecutors, and which are rarely used to pursue wrongdoers that have some form of systemic immunity from prosecution. (See: prosecutors who can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwhich, but are magically unable to get them to indict a cop who shot an unarmed person.) This is one of the central problems of grand juries that justifies their abolition.
My suggestion to you with regards to your specific comment, is that trust can be deliberately undermined by a grand-jury, which you seemed to argue was irrelevant because trust can be undermined secretly at any time. That’s kind of a different argument from why grand juries should be abolished in the grand scheme of things. But, it is worth pointing out that civil rights organization often operate on the margins of the law, and much like the (supposed) legal preference to let the guilty go free rather than to intern the innocent, I make the argument that it is broadly better to have a society that is limited in its ability to undermine organizations pushing against the status quo than it is to have a society that can ruthlessly pursue all problematic organizations with 100% efficiency.
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Consider the following scenario.
The government would like to indict wikileaks.
(grand jury goes here)
It conducts searches and seizures as it damn well pleases.
(grand jury goes here)
when it thinks that it might have enough evidence to do so, it charges wikileaks and Assange
(grand jury goes here)
Assange is tried. Manning is called as a witness.
Manning is jailed for refusing to testify
…
what an awesome scenario!
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Hey, speaking of, did you see the article about how Chelsea Manning has been jailed for refusing to testify at a grand jury about her whistleblowing?
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Maybe you could clarify why “trusting that someone won’t share information with a grand jury” is so important to an organization that hasn’t engaged in criminal activity.
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I don’t understand this construction… as in the grand jury is a step in this process?
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There are lots of organizations that have engaged in non-criminal activities or activities that should not be criminal that police and state actors seek to disrupt in multiple ways. See: the COINTELPRO program.
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In a criminal trial, the jury decides whether the state has met its burden of proving a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
Prior to an indictment, the grand jury decides whether the state has met its (lessened) burden of proof to issue warrants for search, seizure, and arrest. The grand jury decides whether probable cause exists, for instance.
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If you haven’t done anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide, amirite?
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Frankly, I don’t blame Manning for not trusting the government or any of its’ enforcers.
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I am no friend of Assange, I think he corrupted Wikileaks even if his original motives were pure (which I doubt). I just think that he wasn’t a Russian asset until 2011.
On the balance of probabilities, based on the information I have, I’d say he was approached by the Russian state in early 2011, after the first Swedish extradition hearing in London. Before Chelsea gave her leak he would have been too much of a liability, just as likely to turn on them as he was their enemies, and it wasn’t until there was a real risk of him being taken to the US that they thought they could get him on their side.
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