The vast majority of the remaining names on the White House’s clemency list are ordinary offenders that fit within the administration’s guidelines for clemency action: those convicted of nonviolent drug offenses who were given stiff federal penalties under older drug laws. The list of commutations includes around 100 people given life sentences for drug distribution or possession, with a handful of those including violent offenses or possession of a firearm.
Leonard Peltier is not on that list. Neither is Marcus Garvey.
On the one hand, I wouldn’t trust the US gov’t to behave in a lawful manner. On the other, Assange saying that were Manning to be given clemency that he’d turn himself into US authorities is totally ridiculous when the US authorities have neither filed charges nor have a warrant so far as anyone actually knows. He is wanted for rape in Sweden (with multiple varying complex accusations), and wanted in the UK for jumping bail. The US is the one party that doesn’t formally want him, and his constant attempts to pretend that the US is why he’s evading the rape charges in Sweden when the US has no charges against him really make him look like he’s guilty of rape by being so incredibly dishonest and evasive about it.
His dishonest claims about Obama’s clemency (which is absolutely clemency) where he’s redefined it to not only not be clemency, but now with added conditions that were never previously stated as his excuse for not living up to his word isn’t really surprising, but again make it look like he’s determined to hide from the rape charges for as long as possible.
If this was part of a deal with Assange, surely all the lawyers would have the details in writing in advance, and we’d see Manning and Assange walk out of respective doors at exactly the same time on live TV.
This isn’t part of a deal. There is no deal. Grow up.
He moved the goalposts, he’s got no credibility, and he’s a sexual predator.
I don’t think we disagree. I just think it’s very plausible that Assange’s current situation is the result of American interference rather than Swedish officials being committed to making these cases part of the less than 1% of sexual assault cases that the secure convictions on (216 convictions on an estimated 30,000 assaults in 2007 according to Amnesty International).
There’s no doubt current US authorities loathe him, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn the US has been working behind the scenes to make sure that the pressure stays on him regarding the rape charges. UK authorities aren’t in love with him either, though, since he’s made a career out of pissing off virtually every non-Russian government.
My understanding has been the same, that the US and Britain were deeply concerned over the Russians throughout the war. And when the end of the war was in sight they had been planning secret counter-measure plans in anticipation of the Russians deciding to just… continue advancing through Europe and even attacking Britain. The Russians (through spies or good deduction) were also seemingly aware of allied forces preparing for such an event.
Was the post-WW1 invasion of Russia the first example of “US militarily interferes in a foreign country in support of unpopular corrupt right-wing authoritarians” (AKA America’s standard foreign policy ever since)?
Or was there another one before that? One of the Mexican invasions maybe?
There was a long history of interventionist, imperialist policies by the US government, including those that backed non-democratic governments (Hawaii could be an example, so could the Philippines, if you’re going to bring up Mexico and I assume you mean the Mexican American war).
Interventionism was long established, in the western hemisphere and stretching into the Pacific by the early 20th century.
I think you can say that the people who overthrew the government of Hawaii, after native, local protest and wide-spread support for the monarchy’s continued existence was anti-democratic. Philippines was also a case where local democracy was subverted.
Of course, the plants in Hawaii wanted to found a “republic” but not a republic that included the Hawaii monarchy. And in the Philippines, the US had defeated the Spanish and then flat out refused the local initiatives. If you look at it from one angle, the Hawaii case looks more like overthrowing a monarchy much like we were backing in Russia, but that ignore the democratic institutions that native Hawaiians had built up that the white planters were seeking to subvert.
The connective tissue seems to be subverting local rule on a racial and anti-democratic basis rather than on a necessarily pro-right wing basis.
The Monroe Doctrine was established in 1823 and the US had a habit of propping up/supporting right wing oligarchic leaderships in banana republics in S./Central America since then in support of US commercial interests. For instance the US interfered to support separatists for Panama’s independence and prop up right wing oligarchs (we wanted that canal) in 1903, and the US Marines helped back the separatists there.
Do you mean the Marcus Garvey who has been dead for 76 years (and whose sentence was commuted by President Coolidge), or is there another one I don’t know about?
