Yeah um I already played out this confrontation like 10 times in my head so if you could stick to the script I imagined for you, that’d be great, thanks.
i have no fucking clue what to even say about this like this is just absolutely stupefying
this is why i will always make fun of vegans
Chelsea Manning. Committed. Treason. She put American lives at risk. This is a fucking joke.
She exposed war crimes you fuck, including video of the US military killing journalists (some of whom were Americans to follow your point) and civilians including children, showed the awful conditions and tortue of the prisoners in Guantanamo (again including children as young as 13 and journalists), and revealed the civilian deathtoll from Iraq and Afghanistan to be in the 100,000’s
American lives are not inherently more valuable than any other. It is not treason to expose the crimes of your government; blind, obediant patriotism is much more harmful as it allowed the US to put even more of its citizens into a war zone to die.
Even then, none of what she leaked endangered a single troop on the ground as none of the files had anything to do with current military operations.
As Chris Hedges eloquently writes in his book Wages of Rebellion:
“Manning, if we had a functioning judiciary, would have been a witness for the prosecution against the war criminals she helped expose. She would not have been headed, bound and shackled, to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
But the government effectively shut down Manning’s defense team. The Army private was not permitted to argue that she had a moral and legal obligation under international law to defy military orders and to make public the war crimes she had uncovered. Because the documents that detailed the crimes, torture, and killing that Manning revealed were classified, they were barred from discussion in court, and so the fundamental issue of war crimes was effectively removed from the trial. Manning was forbidden to challenge the government’s unverified assertion that she had harmed national security.”
Some other things to consider:
*Manning was prevented from presenting her motives to the court- that could only be raised at the time of sentencing but we all know that’s too late
*The restrictions placed on her and her defense team prevented Manning from using the Nuremberg Principles in her favor – principles created post world war II by the United Nations to determine what constitutes war crimes
* Had she been able to appeal to the Nuremberg Principles she would have been set free since under them military orders do not exonerate you from committing war crimes
*Empirical evidence now shows that Manning’s actions did not harm the U.S.’s empire building, war-loving ways
So besides being innocent she was fucking shafted by this twisted, servile to the military industrial complex judiciary system we have that so many of us are proud of. This country is pathetic.
With what we currently have running the country, you’d better hope there are more Mannings.
they did in-depth interviews with 137 scientists and about 35% of them mentioned Dawkins unprompted, and about 80% of those were apparently just desperate to tell someone how much they hate him
28% of scientists hate Richard Dawkins so much that they just start spouting off about his bullshit unprompted.
True story: Richard Dawkins ONCE tried to get me fired because I wouldn’t give him $10,000.
The long version is that I worked at an organization that disburses funds according to the owner’s wishes (basically Trump Foundation without the skeeze) and by law, every recipient of donations has to be a 501(c )3 organization. If you get caught giving money to a non-charity, you get in VERY BIG TROUBLE. So my job was to ensure that every foundation we gave money to had all its paperwork properly filed and was recognized by the IRS.
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (gag) was set to get $10K from us, but since we’d never given to them before, I had to double-check the IRS filings etc. And guess what?
The foundation was not accredited.
This was in 2007, and the foundation had only recently been set up; oftentimes the paperwork takes a while to get through. The IRS will give a sort of provisional paper in that situation, saying it’s okay to donate, so I called up the foundation to ask them for said paper. I promptly got yelled at for the better part of 15 minutes by the most unpleasant woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, who claimed I was lying about the foundation’s IRS status, that I must immediately send her the money, that she would be taking legal action if I did not release the funds to her this instant. I managed to get off the phone after telling her that no, in fact we did need the IRS paperwork before we disbursed funds, thanks very much, let me know if you can send them, here’s the fax number! (Oh, faxes.)
The next day I get a call from an irate dude with a British accent who starts the conversation with “I’m Richard Dawkins.” Now I’ll be honest, dear reader, in 2007 I didn’t have the first fucking clue who that was; all I knew is he’d named his foundation after himself. So I tried to be as soothing as possible (because rich people are the worst) but he pretty much immediately said “I’d like to speak to your supervisor—or someone more competent, at any rate,” and for the next hour my boss had to make faces at me through the window as she dealt with him.
It turns out he wanted her to fire me for lying about the status of his foundation, otherwise he’d take legal action. My boss, who was an incredibly great lady, very politely told him to get bent and that if he didn’t want to supply the required paperwork, he’d have to live without our ten grand.
And to the best of my knowledge, we never gave him the money.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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