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Imprisonment of those who might be considered to be heroes<br>
is one of the classical signs of tyranny.<br>
<br>
They threw Jeremiah into the dungeon.<br>
<br>
I guess there was dung in the dungeon and it is<br>
written that he sank into the mire.<br>
<br>
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<br>
Sic semper tyrannis (thus always to tyrants)<br>
is sometimes humourously said to mean<br>
"Get your foot off my neck".<br>
<br>
The government does seem to have the upper hand.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 08/23/13 7:41, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:BD2A3C1A-68E8-4892-A0C4-B50E813D54D5@newsfromneptune.com"
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<div id="id_5216a0ffa0f9d2083919698"
class="text_exposed_root text_exposed">Chris Hedges on Manning's
sentence:</div>
<div id="id_5216a0ffa0f9d2083919698"
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</span></div>
<div id="id_5216a0ffa0f9d2083919698"
class="text_exposed_root text_exposed"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"
class="userContent">Although it was less than I thought the judge was
going to throw at him, my gut reaction was quite emotional. I mean, I
was quite upset. And I think that that's because this is part of a
larger process by which any attempt to shine a light on the inner
workings of power is not only being shut down, but those with a
conscience who attempt to info<span class="text_exposed_show">rm the
wider public of, in the case of Manning, crimes that have been
committed, war crimes, have become in this society criminals.<br>
<br>
The whole moral and legal system has been inverted, and you have a
criminal class, whether that's on Wall Street, whether that's running
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, whether that's running our offshore
penal colonies and torture centers, whether that is the use of
electronic surveillance to sweep up all of the communications of most
Americans--we are seeing all of the traditional checks by which we are
able to thwart government tyranny ripped down.<br>
<br>
And so I look at what happened to today is a kind of process, and a
very depressing process, whereby not only civil liberties are shredded,
but finally any capacity for the investigation and uncovering of the
abuse of power is effectively thwarted. So, yeah, it's part of a larger
picture. I felt heartbroken for him personally, but I think on some
level also heartbroken for the rest of the country.<br>
<br>
Well, I mean, these sentences are ridiculous. I mean, I covered the war
in Bosnia, and, you know, one knows from the history of Bosnia that
when Princip assassinated Ferdinand, the archduke, the heir to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife, he received a 20-year sentence.<br>
<br>
We have just gone crazy within this prison system, whether it's for
drug offenses, whether it is for, you know, purportedly espionage, the
use, the misuse of the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers, and
these people are locked up for staggering amounts of time. So as a
former reporter for The New York Times, as someone who was published
top-secret information--and let's remember that everything that Manning
disclosed was never classified as top-secret. It was all secret. Four
to five million people had access to it. It's a very low-level form of
intelligence information. This has a kind of--you know, more than a
chilling effect, but essentially throws any kind of journalistic
activity into the deep freeze. It becomes impossible to investigate the
security and surveillance state, number one because they can trace all
communications, so they know who would be talking to reporters. And
number two, the consequences, as we have seen with Manning and as we
are seeing with Snowden and as we will see if they ever get their hands
on Julian Assange, which they seem intent to do or would like to do,
are just now so severe that it thwarts the traditional mechanism by
which the fourth estate, the press, was once able to investigate power
and shine a light onto the inner workings of power. All of that has
been shut down, in essence. It's all gone dark.<br>
<br>
Defense strategy was clear from the beginning, and that was to plead
with the court. Now, let's remember the defense's hands were tied. They
couldn't present much of the information to the court because it was
technically classified. They were not allowed to use as a defense
Manning's right under international law, and I think even under the
U.S. military code, to expose war crimes, I mean, in fact his duty to
expose war crimes. All of that was denied to the Manning defense team.
And so in essence their hands were tied. And Coombs, who, you know, I
have great respect for, essentially went down, I think, probably the
only route that he thought he could go down, and that was to plead. And
we saw that with his opening statement. We saw that with Manning's own
statement of remorse. I think it's sort of tragic in a way that Manning
was forced into this position, because in my mind he is a political
prisoner. In my mind, what he carried out is an act of conscience. And
yet that defense was never--or that possibility of that kind of defense
was never offered to him by Judge Lind.<br>
<br>
Well, Obama has used the Espionage Act now, if we count Snowden, seven
times against whistleblowers, people who have uncovered fraud, war
crimes, abuse, government malfeasance, and given that information to
the wider public through the press. Kiriakou, the former CIA agent is
now serving a 30-year sentence in a Pennsylvanian prison. And that is a
misuse of the Espionage Act, which is the equivalent of our foreign
secrets act. It's designed to be used against people who give people
information to groups that are classified as the enemy. Between 1917,
when it was written, and 2009 when Obama took office, it was used three
times against whistleblowers, including against Daniel Ellsberg, who
leaked the Pentagon Papers. Obama, of course, now has more than doubled
that.<br>
<br>
And that has become the mechanism by which they have essentially shut
down any kind of press investigation into the inner workings of power.
And so, again, you know, using the Espionage Act to go after Manning is
part of that wider campaign to make it impossible for those of us on
the outside to understand what authority is doing and not more
importantly the abuse of authority. </span></span></div>
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<div id="id_5216a0ffa0f9d2083919698"
class="text_exposed_root text_exposed"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"
class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show">[<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://therealnews.com">therealnews.com</a>]</span></span></div>
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