Drone Whistleblower Thrown in Pen with Terrorists | Hacker News Reader

Drone Whistleblower Thrown in Pen with Terrorists

consortiumnews.com

33 pointsl33tbro13 comments

From his wiki:

>In court, Hale said he accepted punishment for taking the documents, and for taking innocent lives during his participation in the drone program. Noting that he is a descendant of Nathan Hale, executed for spying on the British for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, Hale paraphrased his ancestor's reported last words, saying, "I have but this one life to give in service of my country."

Man its seeming more and more like the US is straying from its roots. Are actions like this a canary in the coal mine for a future collapse of the union?

A Supermax for Hale, really? The pettiness of butthurt officialdom never ceases to amaze.

And this is the biden administration. Why did we vote Democrat again?

We didn't vote Democrat, we voted "lesser of two evils."

I see. This is probably a better lens to view things.

Where’s the “lesser evil” part? I just see more liberties being lost, more censorship, more violations of the second amendment, more violations of federalism and states rights and so on.

A fake “whistleblower” who supports the narrative and pushes for more censorship gets the red carpet treatment by media, 60 minutes, gofundme donations and a hearing from congress. While Assange is rotting in prison, this drone whistleblower gets prison, the marine calling out the Afghanistan debacle gets prison and so on.

>I just see more liberties being lost, more censorship, more violations of the second amendment, more violations of federalism and states rights and so on.

Curious, if you didn't also see that under Trump, or would have expected less of it under him, given how little he fought against it during his first term. If you were expecting a second Trump term to include a repeal of all gun laws, a rollback of Federalism, the end of American surveillance or some kind of widespread social free speech revolution leading to a libertarian minarchist utopia, I suspect you haven't been paying attention to who the person sitting in the Oval Office actually was.

What I saw was Trump undermining the COVID response by sowing fear and paranoia and going pants-shitting insane about imaginary communists stealing his votes, encouraging superspreaders and anti-maskers and stop-the-steal rioters, and ranting like a lunatic on Twitter. And that notwithstanding the circus that was his first term.

But to be clear - no one voted for Biden in this last election. No one on the left likes him, and the further left you go, the more the left hates him. People just voted for or against Trump, and to me it seemed like an obvious choice. As always with politics, your mileage may vary.

Don't forget about the imaginary communists attacking US cities, justifying the use of a federal paramilitary to "restore order" (along with wasting tons of scarce PPE that could have instead gone to hospitals). In light of that, any claim of Trump respecting federalism/states rights is ridiculous.

A vote for Biden was definitely a vote for the military industrial complex American empire status quo. But a vote for Trump wasn't an effective vote against that status quo, in the reality outside of his promise-everything chameleon con.

The US is a Schelling point of no political will. If we want to disassemble the status quo, we're going to have to do it through the long and hard way of agorism. Any quicker way creates a power vacuum that is too lucrative to not fill, as illustrated by this last round.

... less overtly, gleefully evil? I don't have much positive to say about this administration, but for what it's worth, Trump tried to call the election in his favor and when certain states didn't go his way, he cajoled and threatened their officials. When that didn't work, he tried to get his vice president to overturn the results of state elections. When that didn't work, he whipped up a crowd to march on the proceedings, who literally called for his veep's head and stormed the building. I dunno what state rights you're interested in, but those aren't the actions of a federalist. He wants to be king, make no mistake.

That's part of the damn problem, tbh. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

Were you not paying attention to the Obama administration, of which Biden was second in command? Do the names Manning or Assange ring any bells?

Do you think the alternative, Trump, was gonna handle this differently? Or that actual progressive candidates would have stood a chance against Trump?

This guy deserves a medal not prison -a very sad path for America

Upsetting. I thought we would see change with the Biden administration. Very sad that Daniel Hale got a 4-year sentence, via Judge Liam O’Grady (even though it was reduced from 11 years). The appropriate sentence is 0-years, and a medal.

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