Chelsea Manning Will Be Free in May 2017

Y’all probably already know it, but I just want to join the celebration:

President Obama has commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence. She is to be released in May 2017.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday overruled his secretary of defense to commute the sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks.

I cannot express in words how happy I am. Chelsea Manning was unjustly imprisoned, and she will finally see the freedom she deserves.

I’ve always supported her, and I will continue to. She deserves it.

Sadly, being the relentless cynic that I am, I have to reign a little bit on the parade…

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Is WikiLeaks Being Run by 13-Year-Olds? Or Just Their Task Force Account?

The worst thing about all this is that I feel like I’m being forced to join a whole bunch of conservatives and people on Twitter blocked by the Block Bot to do this criticism, and it makes me feel dirty.

To sum up… a while back, as you may recall, WikiLeaks got in some trouble for doxxing people’s private lives. More recently (as of yesterday), WikiLeaks got angry because Obama’s administration decided to anonymously share some of the CIA’s report linking senior Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, to the DNC email server hack.

You know, I remember a time when WikiLeaks was praised. Even those of us who always wanted Assange to face a court of law for the rape accusations leveled against him pretty much liked what WikiLeaks was doing. Maybe that’s because they became a thing during the Bush II Administration, and as a result, were leaking things that really hurt that administration. But it’s not like President Obama’s administration wasn’t hurt by leaking, both from WikiLeaks and from Edward Snowden. And I support all of that despite largely being a very big fan of President Obama (I cannot express in words how badly I’m going to miss him and the entire family; I have major issues with his foreign policy, but he was a great president, as far as I’m concerned).

But either I’ve been blind to what WikiLeaks really is up until now, or they just decided that now was the time to show their true colors… either that, or a 13-year-old is running their @WLTaskForce account…

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Wow Wikileaks… Just… Wow…

I probably shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m sure many will say that to me, but…

I’m surprised.

I’ve already covered this, technically, but…

Again, I’m a big fan of whistleblowers. I am actually sick of the secrets of people in power, and if there’s shit to leak, especially from a government, it should be leaked, because we deserve to know… especially when that government is elected by the people of the country it governs.

One would think that whistleblowing would be a bi-partisan affair. I recall whistleblowing under both Bush II and President Obama, and just assumed it would continue under Trump. But even while that may be the case, it obviously won’t be happening with Wikileaks, which has clearly outlived its usefulness…

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What the Hell, Wikileaks?!?

I should start off by saying that I am a fan of whistleblowers. Hidden corruption, be it in major corporations or governments, deserves to be seen by the public, so that changes can be forced through. So it should go without saying that I consider many whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning, Andrew Maguire, Blake Percival, Vijay Pandhare, Antoine Deltour, Edward Snowden, Ben Strickland, and many others to be heroes.

I have also always believed, and maintained, that whistleblowing should be a protected act worldwide. When exposing corruption, whistleblowers should be given immunity from prosecution and protection from retaliation. So, in the past, I’ve admired sites like Wikileaks for trying to do just that. Protection provided by such sites is, of course, extremely limited, which is why whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden often end up in prison or in exile.

Wikileaks has often proved to be a fascinating site. Filled with a treasure trove of interesting, and sometimes important, information, it’s a site that has remained controversial throughout its existence. Not only can you find the corruption that Chelsea Manning exposed, but you can also find quite a bit that the Church of Scientology would rather the average person didn’t know about their beliefs and their operations.

But Wikileaks apparently no longer cares what it leaks, so long as it does leak…

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