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President Obama Commutes Chelsea Manning's Sentence (theverge.com)
The New York Times is reporting that President Obama has commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. What this translates to is a reduced sentence for Manning, from 35 years to just over seven years. Since Manning has already served a majority of those years, she is due to be released from federal custody on May 17th. The Verge reports: While serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning leaked more than 700,000 documents to Wikileaks, including video of a 2007 airstrike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for her role in the leak and has been held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth for the past three years. Julian Assange, who has long been sought by U.S. and EU authorities for extradition on Swedish rape charges, had previously pledged to surrender himself to U.S. authorities if Manning was pardoned. Born Bradley Manning, Chelsea announced her gender transition the day after the verdict was handed down. "I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female," she said in a statement. "Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible." Obtaining the resulting medical treatments was extremely difficult for Manning, and was the subject of significant and sustained activism. After a lawsuit, Manning was approved for hormone therapy in 2015. In September 2016, she launched a hunger strike, demanding access to gender reassignment surgery; the military complied five days later.
So then, any response from Wikileaks / Assange? Will he now give himself up, as per this tweet - https://twitter.com/wikileaks/... ? (Note - not a troll response, genuinely interested to hear what folks think happens on that front now... )
Thank you Obama!!
Manning did the world a great service... I cant say more than this was long overdue.
Next.. Snowden? Perhaps all the people in prison and jail except for murders and rapist after they have had an independent review to make sure that they were REALLY guilty/not guilty??
More....
Incoming trolls!
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President Obama noted stark differences between Manning's and Snowden's cases.
From the New York Times article: “Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing,” Pres. Obama said. “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.”
He also noted that while the documents Ms. Manning provided to WikiLeaks were “damaging to national security,” the ones Mr. Snowden disclosed were “far more serious and far more dangerous.” (None of the documents Ms. Manning disclosed were classified above the merely “secret” level.)
So, the president isn't about to pardon someone who hasn't even been tried for his crimes.
At this point though, now that a number of Congressmen have called for his head (not necessarily following a trial), he has no reason to believe he would get a fair trial if he returned voluntarily. I don't see Russia reversing their position anytime soon so his involuntary return isn't looking all that likely..
So, the closest approximation of justice at this point would be a pardon.
technically, Obama can pardon him for certain crimes. But is unlikely to if he doesn't make a deal in 3 days. He'll still serve time in jail for any crimes not listed, but it's better than what Putin will eventually do to Snowden.
His best offer is likely to be a few years in federal jail in the US proper. He'd better reach out now. The door will close soon.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
First, I feel that Snowden should actually have his day in court and present his case before anything related to a pardon or commutation is discussed. The American people need to see and hear both his and the government's position and evidence in a more balanced, less sensational environment than the MSM gives us.
Second, I feel that neither Manning nor General Cartwright should have their sentences commuted. They were both members of the US military who had sworn oaths regarding their behavior and ethics in their service and disregarded them. Gen Cartwright, as an officer should be held to an even higher standard. They were both tried, found guilty and sentenced. What message does it send to the rest of the military if they don't have to serve their sentences? Why should anyone in the military feel compelled to obey any order or protect any secret if they know that whatever punishment they get will be commuted and all they need is some publicity to make it happen.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
But "pardon" and "commutation" are legal terms. And the legal difference is enormous.
Manning will definitely lose her right to own a gun and voting rights.
You are welcome on my lawn.
HE committed a crime. SHE is getting her sentence commuted.
If the sex change had happened before the crime, I wouldn't be using he/she at all. If it had not happened before the commutation, likewise....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You're running that Obamabot crap up the wrong flagpole, son. This is the same president that can out-conservative Reagan any day of the weak. Reagan publicly stated - repeatedly - that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Yet Obama appointed his Catfood Commission (because the only thing seniors could afford to eat after it was cat food) to reduce the deficit centered around those who want to cut Social Security.
Reagan granted amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants.
Obama deported them in record numbers.
Reagan withdrew from Lebanon.
Obama arranged to continue Afghanistan occupation until after his predecessor's predecessor.
Reagan signed arms reduction treaties with the USSR.
Obama started a trillion dollar upgrade program of America's nuclear arsenal.
Reagan signed a treaty requiring the prosecution of those who commit torture.
Obama immunized officials from torture and other crimes against humanity.
Obama started a war without Congressional authorization
Obama repealed habeas corpus with an NDAA
Obama wanted to re-legalize whaling when there isn't even a whaling industry to pander to
I could go on all day, Obamabot. You might want to put the shovel down now.
her gender (not biological sex; those are medically and legally different things)
What? This is the first time I've heard that claim, and I find it hard to believe. I can buy it for a medical definition (though I expect that it must be a recent change), those people mostly only care about what's best for the patient, but legally? In this political climate? In what state? In what country?
My understanding is this: Robert Stoller started distinguishing between the words sex and gender back in the sixties because he found it convenient for his research on transexuality. Some feminists starting picking up the idea in the seventies, when Gail Ruben argued that gender was a social imposition rather than anything tied to biology, and she used the two words separately in her argument. Since then the sex/gender distinction has become common jargon in feminist literature... And that's it. That's as far as it goes. The two words are distinguished in certain academic jargon, but they are synonyms outside of that.
Is there more to this that I'm unaware of? I ask because I've seen this declaration that gender means one thing and sex means something else a lot lately, and it seems so... dumb. It's like that guy who declares that green beans aren't vegetables because they're actually fruits. And technically it's true that green beans are fruits in the jargon of certain academic fields, but this fact doesn't make that guy right. That guy is still dumb. Outside of a textbook: green beans are vegetables.
Or, for that matter, sex and gender have different meanings in linguistic jargon than they do in feminist jargon. Saying that one definition is "correct" is just myopic.
There are numerous other variations. Some biological women have abnormally high testosterone levels - for a long time they were barred from competing in the olympics. Then there is a condition where the body is incapable of absorbing testosterone. And sometimes these can occur in the same person. For a long time women barred from the olympics due to high testosterone levels were allowed back in if they also had that condition.
Human bodies are extremely complex machines and come in many varieties - and most of them are harmless variation. There is nothing harmful about transgender genetics - the only harm they suffer is from the way people treat them, it's not their genes causing that, it's a flawed culture. One of the greatest Winter Olympians of all time had a rare genetic trait that made his body produce far higher than average red blood cells (Polycythemia). What some sportsman try to achieve with drugs like EPO - he had by nature of his genes.
When she was 3 months old my daugher swallowed a peanut which went down the wrong hole and got inhaled. She needed an endoscope to remove it. While doing the endoscope we learned that she had only one tube connecting her airways to her left lung. Generally there are two. I asked the doctor if this was anything to be concerned about and she said "Absolutely not, it's entirely harmless and will have no impact on her life whatsoever. It's a known and perfectly natural genetic variation and it's quite likely either you or your wife also has it. The only reason I pointed it out is because I found it personally interesting because though I knew about it, I hadn't seen it myself before".
Humans are not simple and don't fit into such super-simplistic categories as "male/female" very well and never really have. Just like anybody who says "people have two passages connecting the left lung to the airway" would be saying something that looks extremely obvious on the surface but simply isn't TRUE of all people.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There is a third group, the genuine transphobes. For a long time the idea of someone, usually a Manly Man, inadvertently becoming intimate with a transsexual person has been used as a punchline. When portrayed on TV or in movies it is almost always followed by throwing up. It's become a trope.
These people are paranoid. They think that they might be unable to determine from outward appearance if someone has their preferred genitalia, and that the mistake will somehow harm them. Perhaps their friends will find out and mock the, perhaps their masculinity is just that fragile. So they see transgender people, particular trans women, as deceptive and dangerous, the so-called "trap".
That leads to hostility and a desire to "call out" such people as a warning to like-minded individuals.
Like homophobia and similar bigotry, it's mostly about their own insecurities.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There's no known relationship between transgenderism, and delusions or psychoses.
But there is a correlation between attitudes on gender roles, and gender dysphoria. In places where the line is blurred and people aren't throwing rocks at men for wearing a dress or at women for wearing pants, more people live the lifestyle "of" the other gender without sexual reassignment. This strongly suggests that for at least some percentage of individuals, the desire to change their gender is a sort of sickness created by society's behavior towards them. Compare a natural-born full hermaphrodite; they have everything, and all possibilities in theory, but we overwhelmingly assign whichever sex appears more dominant at birth for cultural reasons. Why can't they be permitted to be themselves?
To my mind, it is a delusion, if a relatively harmless one. What do I care if people want to change their gender? If I'm not fucking them, it's irrelevant. If I fuck one by mistake, then I should consider my dating habits in one way or another. Once you can wave a magic wand and reassign your gender properly and without complications or risk, then I'll be willing to believe otherwise. But which thing do I believe: that it's reasonable to be happy with who you are, or that it's reasonable to take a knife to parts you just don't like? I've been taught the first thing since birth, and so far I've never had any reason to doubt it. Elective and cosmetic surgery goes wrong all the time, and often produces less-than-desirable results.
On the third hand, nothing justifies treating other people like crap because you don't agree with their decisions. With that said, if you want to be called she even though your original equipment doesn't match the description, or even your current equipment, stop expecting me to use the prefix "cis". I'm not going to call myself cis-anything. By every dictionary definition I am a natural-born human male. I don't need to call myself anything-gendered because I am typical of the species, at least in that way. Of course, my equipment is unusually large, but it's the standard type. ;)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"