US Military

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Chelsea Manning, the American soldier jailed in 2010 for leaking information to Wikileaks, is finally free after serving seven years out of her 35 years sentence.

Barack Obama had announced the shortening of her sentence back in January after years of campaigning by multiple civil rights defense groups, including the ACLU and Amnesty International. This Wednesday, Manning’s legal team confirmed that she was safely released from the US military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“After another anxious four months of waiting, the day has finally arrived. I am looking forward to so much! Whatever is ahead of me, is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now–which is exciting awkward, fun, and all new for me.” Manning said in a press release.

Manning leaked more than 700 000 documents to Wikileaks, revealing various instances of misconduct by the US in the Middle East. Among the most shocking leaks was an infamous video of two American soldiers bantering about perpetrating an airstrike that killed 12 people, including two Reuters journalists, as well as evidence that the US military summarily executed a number of Iraqis and deliberately concealed the true civilian death toll of its attacks.

At the time, Chelsea Manning was only 23. She had not yet come out as transgender and she was working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad, under the name of Bradley Manning. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, the longest sentence ever given to an American whistleblower.

Manning was detained with the male prisoners in a military jail and denied hormone therapy and treatment for gender dysphoria. The impacts on her were devastating and she had to be put on suicide watch. Four months ago, Obama commuted this sentence to time served plus 120 days in one of his last significant decisions as president.

While advocates for transparency and for LGBTQ+ rights rejoiced, others fumed, calling her a traitor who put US lives at risk. Then President-Elect Donald Trump was quick to tweet his displeasure:

(For those wondering, he was referring to a column in which she argued that the Obama administration should stop compromising their progressive stances)

According to the Obama administration, the four months delay between the announcement of a commutation and its effect is meant to allow detainees to prepare for life outside. Manning’s entourage started the “Chelsea Manning Welcome Home fund” for the same reason. Within three months, the GoFundMe campaign raised more than $163 000 US.

Surprisingly, Manning is still a member of the US army “on active duty”  until her criminal appeal is over. The Army Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces both have to issue an official decision on her dishonourable discharge before it can take effect. Until then, she is on “involuntary excess leave” which means she is on unpaid leave, but subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

*Featured Image: Torbak Hopper under creative commons.

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In a week that saw US warships sent to North Korea, increased tensions in Syria following a US missile strike and the American military drop, for the first time, the largest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal on Afghanistan, the most ominous story came to light yesterday. President Donald Trump really wants to ride in the Queen Elizabeth’s gold-plated, horse-drawn carriage when he visits England.

While foreign leaders hitching a ride to Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty is occasionally a thing that happens, American Presidents generally take a different vehicle because of security concerns. A police source told the Times of London:

“The vehicle which carries the president of the United States is a spectacular vehicle. It is designed to withstand a massive attack like a low-level rocket grenade. If he’s in that vehicle he is incredibly well protected and on top of that it can travel at enormous speed. If he is in a golden coach being dragged up the Mall by a couple of horses, the risk factor is dramatically increased.”

I’m not sure of this source’s name or rank, so let’s just use Captain Obvious. Security concerns are heightened when it comes to this President in  particular. There are supposed to be massive protests and even the British Parliament is refusing to let him address them.

Instead of taking the safer route, the Trump team is doing their best to insist on the gold-plated carriage ride. It’s a pretty safe bet that this approach goes right to the top. And that is why this otherwise trivial piece of nonsense is downright scary.

Trump wants to ride in something gold sitting next to royalty. Putin got to do it. That peasant Obama slummed it when he visited the Queen. Slummed it in a super-fast grenade-repellent limousine driven by a chauffeur with more real-world military training than most fictional action heroes.

Maybe if the hyper-secure car was also gold on the outside Trump would ride in it. But then he would be in a competition with the Queen for opulence. Come to think of it, the main reason he probably wants to ride in the carriage is to be on equal footing with the Queen.

Why is that something he cares about? Being on equal footing, or even a dominant footing, when meeting with Xi Jinping, Justin Trudeau, Vladamir Putin or Theresa May makes sense. You don’t want to negotiate from a position of weakness. But what on Earth could President Trump possibly hope to negotiate with the Queen?

She is technically a Head of State, sure, but that is purely symbolic. Symbolism matters to this President. Celebrity, though, matters even more. The Queen is a celebrity, way more than Prime Minister May is, you might say she is THE celebrity.

Riding in the Royal Carriage means, to Trump, that some people may see his celebrity on par with hers and that he is one step ahead of Obama in looking important. It’s all about proving that he is important. The fact that he achieved, perhaps by fluke, something that only forty-four other people have done in a country of millions doesn’t seem to be a factor.

If Obama took a secure limo, Trump wants to ride in the same carriage as the Queen. If other Presidents dropped bombs, Trump wants to drop the Mother of All Bombs. His bomb is bigger.

Some have suggested, and I tend to agree with them, that launching sixty missiles at an airfield in Syria was a PR stunt:

A distraction, most likely from the persistent allegations that he is a Russian puppet. But he didn’t just give us one distraction, no, that’s something a standard politician would do. Trump has the most distractions, the best distractions. Bigly.

Three distractions so far. If this is a case of the tail wagging the dog (as in the 1997 film Wag the Dog which many have referenced in the past few days), well, this dog now has three tails and might grow more.

The Trump team can’t even do deflection right, because their boss is only focused on looking bigger and badder than anyone else. Meanwhile, the biggest, baddest dog in the yard, the US military (along with its defense contractor allies) has been unleashed, or at the very least, is now connected to a real long bendy leash that no one is pulling on to reign it in.

These distractions could turn into full-blown wars. When it comes to North Korea, it’s now up to Kim Jong Un to be the restrained, responsible one if the world is to avoid the start of World War III.

If Donald Trump was taking the actions of the military he now commands with the gravity the situation warrants, then he wouldn’t be telling reporters about the chocolate cake he was eating when ordering a strike on Iraq, only to be corrected that it was, in fact, Syria he had sent missiles into. He also wouldn’t be ordering military actions from a golf course.

He also wouldn’t care if he got to ride in the carriage with the Queen, or, for that matter, whether or not he got to meet with the Queen at all. This focus on image and who looks more famous, bigger and more important, may be laughable, but it also may be what dooms us all.

 

 

News

The US-led operation that killed 33 civilians and wounded 27 in Boz Village (Northern Afghanistan) last November was an act of self-defense, says a report published by US Forces-Afghanistan on Thursday.

The report describes the events like this: On November 2nd and 3rd, US and Afghan forces were conducting a joint operation in Boz to capture Taliban leaders when they found themselves under fire coming from civilian houses. US Forces came to their assistance with aerial strikes on those Taliban-occupied houses, killing 33 civilians and “approximately 26 Taliban, including three leaders.” Two American soldiers and three Afghan soldiers also died in the operation.

“The investigation concluded that US forces acted in self-defense, in accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict, and in accordance with all applicable regulations and policy,” states the report. “It has been determined that no further action will be taken.”

“Regardless of the circumstances, I deeply regret the loss of innocent lives,” assured the Commander of US Forces-Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, in a press release.

Charles H Cleveland, a spokesman for the US military in Afghanistan, while also deploring civilian casualties, said this to Al-Jazeera: “[Boz] is not a normal village. There are a lot of Taliban fighters there. However, the only real solution to prevent civilian casualties is for the Taliban to not hide behind civilians.”

According to the same Al-Jazeera article, residents of Boz have expressed doubts about the number of Taliban fighters present. “We don’t even know if the Taliban were actually killed in this attack. All we saw were dead bodies of the innocent people,” said one.

The operation in Boz happened a little over a year after American airstrikes destroyed a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in the nearby city of Kunduz, killing 42 patients and staff members. The Kunduz bombing was one of the only instances where US military forces publicly admitted they had made a mistake. President Obama issued a rare formal apology for it on October 7th 2015.

The bombing of a hospital, if established as deliberate, is considered a war crime by international laws. The results of the UN investigation on the matter are awaited in the next month.

* Featured image via Sputnik News

LawNewsPolitics

Narcissistic racist misogynist scam artist Donald Trump is running for President. While everyone initially thought it was a publicity stunt and a joke, Trump has become the sole Republican candidate.

We are now realizing it is not a joke. There is a very real possibility that this man – who says whatever he wants without checking facts, who lets his campaign people assault journalists and then gaslights them and any witnesses, who has called Mexicans drug dealers and rapists, threatened the mass deportation of Muslims, and has claimed that soldiers who are captured don’t deserve to be called heroes – will become president of the United States of America.

But don’t fret, America.

Hope is not lost.

And you can partly thank your Founding Fathers.

The Founding Fathers were not perfect. They said that “All men are created equal” when what they meant was “All men are created equal except for women, blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.”

It took almost a hundred years after the Declaration of Independence for slavery to be abolished and almost two hundred for women to get the vote. In that time, Native Americans were brought to the brink of extinction in mass genocide campaigns and those of Spanish origin were forced off their land.

Despite all their shortcomings, the Founding Fathers provided the United States with one very important aspect of your political system.

They gave you a failsafe.

They gave their new country a system of government that would make sure that its leader would not have absolute power once elected.

They did this with the creation of Congress.

Congress is the American federal legislature consisting of two houses: The House of Representatives, and The Senate. Senators and members of the House of Representatives – known as Congressmen – are elected by the people of their respective states. Senators are elected for six-year terms, and Congressmen for two-year terms. Any federal bill proposed in the United States must get through these two houses in order to become law.

That means that if Donald Trump tried to do something ridiculous (besides running for President) like proposing a bill that would force Mexican Americans to pay for that wall he’s proposing, the bill would have to be passed by Congress in order to become law. If both houses vote against the law, the bill dies.

If there is one thing this election has taught us thus far, it’s that American politicians are united in their dislike of Donald Trump. Democrats are outraged and insulted by his very presence in the elections. Republicans are embarrassed by him. Both sides recognize how preposterous Trump’s policy ideas are and their representatives may be in the best position to save America from itself.

Now let’s say Trump doesn’t like a proposed law. Let’s say Congress decides to pass a law forgiving debts accrued by people who needed to pay for health care. Congress passes the bill and Trump gets wind and decides to tell the bill it’s fired by using his Presidential Veto to kill it. If Congress is really determined to pass a law vetoed by the president, there is a failsafe for that too.

Congress can overturn a presidential veto with a two thirds majority vote in both houses. This may seem like a tall order in a country where Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything, but it’s possible a reality TV show star has finally found something to unite them. The possibility that Congress can come together to overthrow a presidential veto isn’t that outlandish provided the one using the veto is Donald Trump.

Now let’s talk about nukes.

There has been a lot of talk about Donald Trump’s gung-ho attitude about nuclear weapons. From all reports, he clearly has no understanding of why using nuclear weapons is dangerous and should be avoided. Fortunately for the world, the buttons for launching the nukes are protected by the US military, and Trump seems to be doing everything he can to alienate them.

Yes, some veterans’ groups have come out in favour of Donald Trump. They don’t like that the US is cutting back on its military and think that Trump would somehow restore it to its former glory.

But there are many in active service who are deeply incensed by Trump’s remarks about the military. They are insulted by his claim that attending New York Military Academy gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” They are insulted by his claim that Senator John McCain, a former naval officer who was captured by the North Vietnamese and tortured for six years, is “not a war hero” because he got captured.

Most know that Trump got the rich-boy ticket out of serving in Vietnam. And they are not going to let this man do what he wants if he becomes Commander-In-Chief.

On August 4, 2016, a group of veterans showed up on Capitol Hill to urge Republicans to withdraw their support of Donald Trump. Alexander McCoy, a former sergeant in the marines told reporters:

“Donald Trump’s reckless ignorance about America’s responsibility to the world shocks me to the core … I am done listening. I have heard enough.”

Fortunately, many in active service have heard enough too.

If Trump succeeds at rallying enough self-hating women, racists, and wealthy people to vote him into office, we can take comfort in the fact that American nuclear weapons are guarded by people sworn to protect their country.

The military is made up of people who are trained to recognize when someone is dangerously unfit for command and unable to make rational decisions. The military is trained to recognize when someone is endangering their country and the world and to act accordingly to stop them.

People are scared of Donald Trump, but we can take comfort in the fact that America has a system in place that can save it from itself. Let’s hope they don’t have to use it.

CultureMediaNewsWeb & Tech

Most people know by now that the US uses drones quite a bit in the Middle East these days. Some are aware that drone killings are frequent and don’t always hit non-civilian targets. But very few get an accurate sense of what’s happening in almost real time.

Now, that may change because of a new iPhone app called Metadata+. Developer Josh Begley, who also runs the Twitter account @dronestream, culls data from news reports of US drone strikes from the New York Times, BBC and other sources and makes that data available in map format on his app which also sends out a push notification each time a strike happens.

metadata drone app

Apple rejected the app, which was originally called Drones+, five times. Now with a name change and a more generalized description (“real time updates on national security issues”) it’s available for free in the app store.

Here’s Begley talking about the app before it was approved on MSNBC. In this interview he asks the question: “Do we want to be as connected to our foreign policy as our iPhones?”

It’s an interesting question. Are people and in particular activists speaking out against the US drone program and targeted killings going to download an app that effectively announces each time one of those killings occurs? Can people stomach having their day interrupted regularly with a buzz from their pockets every time the US military kills someone with a drone?

Will you download this app?