This is what Chelsea Manning Leaked

pn62

Government has granted Chelsea Manning permission to apply for a visa to enter NZ for a talking tour.

This extract from Gordon Campbell's flagship website Werewolf* lists the offences for which she was jailed. 

It is a pity most journalists who reported National's objection to her entry failed to mention the nature of those secrets, for without this knowledge it is difficult to judge whether she was a traitor or a hero, and to whom.

"Manning leaked 700,000 documents that exposed the means via which the US government secretly practiced violence against vulnerable minorities around the world. For doing so, she was sentenced to 35 years in jail and served nearly seven of them, before having the rest of her sentence commuted by US President Barack Obama.

"The lengthy sentence [had] long been criticized by her advocates and supporters who have said that Manning’s leak was a public service that exposed human rights abuses. On Wednesday, during his last press conference as president, Obama said Manning’s sentence was “very disproportionate relative to what other leakers have received”.

"Here’s a list of ten things that Manning’s leaked cables revealed. The revelations included chapter and verse on these sort of activities:

• During the Iraq War, U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to thousands of field reports.

• There were 109,032 “violent deaths” recorded in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians. Leaked records from the Afghan War separately revealed coalition troops’ alleged role in killing at least 195 civilians in unreported incidents, one reportedly involving U.S. service members machine-gunning a bus, wounding or killing 15 passengers.

• The U.S. Embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country that opposed genetically modified crops, with U.S. diplomats effectively working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto.

• British and American officials colluded in a plan to mislead the British Parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs.

• In Baghdad in 2007, a U.S. Army helicopter gunned down a group of civilians, including two Reuters news staff."

Personally, I think our government should be thanking Manning for these and other revelations, and for the sacrifices she made as a consequence of bringing them to light".  -- Gordon Campbell.

And from across the ditch:

"In 2010, as a US soldier stationed in Iraq, she decided to blow the whistle on her own army. She smuggled classified files off her base on a CD labelled ‘Lady Gaga’ and passed them on to Wikileaks. The video files showed horrifying and morally questionable airstrikes. 

"A journalist she thought she could trust squealed on her and she was arrested for treason. This could have earned her the death penalty but she got away with 35 years jail, later commuted to seven.

"She’s been out of jail for over a year but still walking into trouble everywhere she goes. 

"Harvard University honored her with a fellowship, motivating a former CIA man to resign from his post at the university. A traitor shouldn’t be honored, he said."
 -- www.thinkinc.org.au

Opinions are divided. Write what you think in  Comments below. 
____________________________

* I highly recommend Gordon's Werewolf for its often contrarian articles on politics, art and culture. Here's one journalist who does not dissemble. http://werewolf.co.nz

It's not Ok ...

Pn44

To promote pornography, rape or incest

To promote domestic violence

To destroy the environment

To trap native birds

To bully or do nothing to stop it

To desecrate gravestones and the dead

To promote hatred of others on account of their appearance or manner, their sexuality, gender, race or religion

To knowingly spread false news

To grossly abuse free speech

For these things go against the underpinning  principles of our society

...  But it is OK to seek help.

-- ACW.
______________________________________
With acknowledgement to the domestic violence campaigners.
http://www.areyouok.org.nz/

The Freedom of Privacy

Credit: newyorkstartupattorneys Pn30

Here's another one to add to our list of freedoms: our assumed right -- that does not exist in law -- to privacy. What's happening in the U.S. is dangerous and could come here. If it is not already here in some other form. Consider the recent storm of media leaks, and this article about Telstra in Australia. And Joanna Black, NZ Listener columnist in the USA, reports her bank account was accessed by someone who stole her identity by buying a copy of her passport biodata page on the "dark web". 

MyLife gathers personal information through public records and other sources to automatically generate a "MyLife Public Page" for each person, listing a wide variety of personal information, including age, past and current home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, employers, education, photographs, relatives, marriages, courts appearances and criminal convictions, political affiliations ...and a personal review section which encourages other MyLife members to rate each other. MyLife claims to have over  225 million Public Pages with information about almost everyone in America, 18 years old and over. Wikipedia

According to the U.S. Consumer Affairs  complaints have been numerous, mainly because of false information and being visible to all. Here are some examples:

I was in the process of getting married and my fiancé family did a search on me and MyLife.com showed up saying I have bankruptcy criminal records, my date of birth was wrong but showing, allowing people to leave False comments without prior approval

If my employer gets a hold of this false info it will cost me my career! Is there a lawsuit against them? I want in! If not I think we all should get together for a

MyLife has mined my information and posted it for public view, and has additional information of mine available for purchase

This business will not correct inaccurate data, even upon request.

They offered the option to remove my information only if I PURCHASE A PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP FROM THEM! What a scam. Essentially, they want to sell me my privacy.

Same experience as everyone else: This company makes up fake "facts" and markets them to unsuspecting consumers.

How do they even get this information!? They even have my CHILDREN'S NAMES! This is incredibly unsettling!!! I am in shock that this is even legal. They give me two "stars" out of five because of my EX-HUSBAND'S bankruptcy. It makes me look like a total loser, and if I were an employer, I wouldn't want to hire me either. I am in utter disbelief about this. MyLife should be shut down!

I was playing on computer and decided to pop my name in search engine to see what others could see. So much false info. Wrong relatives, wrong income, AND IN RED HIGHLIGHT; IT IS NOTED THAT I HAVE A CRIMINAL AND ARREST RECORD, BANKRUPTCIES, LIENS, PARKING TICKETS, and a negative personal score rating of fair based on 1 person review? WTF? Are you kidding me? Any class action lawsuits going on? I am pissed off.

They have me written up as having a criminal background, with an arrest record, liens, and court cases against me which do not exist & never have;.UNBELIEVABLE.

Do not let this company get your credit card! This is a repository for everything ever written about you on the internet.

My patient killed herself after she told me that MyLife.com put all her personal information online which allowed a Stalker to find her again after she worked so hard with the police to get away from him...How can it be allowed and legal for them to put all that personal information about people. Please powerful, wealthy, peoples, attorneys... shut MyLife.com down!!!
ACW