The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert)

Posted on | December 12, 2013 | 71 Comments

In that analogy, President Obama is P.W. Botha and laws to punish disobedient soldiers are apartheid. Remember that Bradley Manning was the emotionally disturbed Army private who illegally provided classified U.S. documents to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks.

Conservatives are often accused of “simplistic” thinking, and liberals claim they’re all about “nuance” and “critical thinking,” but there are layers of nuance that seem to pass right over the heads of these idiot anarchists who mindlessly admire Manning. When my own son took the oath at Fort Meade, security was on high alert because there was a hearing in the Manning case that day, and the Army didn’t know if the Anonymous protesters might try some real-life “civil disobedience.” My son swore an oath that day to obey the orders of his Commander-in-Chief, whose politics and policies I have frequently criticized, but who is nonetheless President of the United States.

This is what democracy and the rule of law require. Citizens of a democracy cannot selectively decide which laws to obey, imbue their crimes with political significance, and then claim that enforcement of the law is unjust. And the security of a free state is always dependent on the service of those like my son who are bound by oath to obey orders, without regard for mere political controversies.  While there are many decisions of the Obama administration that I have criticized, the prosecution of Bradley Manning is to be applauded, because if our soldiers cannot be trusted to obey orders, none of us are safe.

My soldier son and his mother.

If Bradley Manning is a courageous hero, then is every soldier who obeys orders a cowardly villain? This is what the anarchists of Anonymous are saying by their support of Manning, whose crimes were heinous and whose punishment is thoroughly deserved.

Speaking of punishments thoroughly deserved, a friend sent me an article about the “PayPal 14” hackers whom I mentioned yesterday. It may be necessary to remind you of the sequence of events: Manning illegally provided classified U.S. documents to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks; PayPal suspended the WikiLeaks account; Anonymous then launched distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks to shut down PayPal. In other words, a company’s business was attacked because of their refusal to support Manning’s criminal activity.

Alas, those digital terrorists weren’t so Anonymous after all, and it was only a few months until the feds busted them. This May article by Huffington Post writers Jerry Smith and Ryan J. Reilly oozed with sympathy for the “Pay Pal 14” hackers:

Before he was charged in July 2011 with aiding the hacker group Anonymous, Josh Covelli lived what he considered the life of an ordinary 26-year-old. He spent countless hours on the Internet. He had a girlfriend. He was a student and employee at Devry University in Dayton, Ohio.
But after federal authorities accused him and 13 other people of helping launch a cyberattack against the online payment service PayPal, Covelli faced potentially 15 years in prison, and his life began to unravel.
His girlfriend broke up with him. He struggled to find an employer willing to hire an accused computer hacker. His friends “wanted nothing to do with me,” he said, and he suffered from bouts of paranoia — “looking out windows, not sure who to trust” — before checking into a behavioral health center for three days.
“It was as if I got kicked off a cliff,” Covelli, now 28, told The Huffington Post in an interview. . . .

Well, boo hoo hoo. Maybe if Josh Covelli had sought “behavioral health” treatment sooner, he would have realized how crazy he was to think that committing crime on behalf of WikiLeaks was a smart idea. But, hey, let’s all be sympathetic to stupid criminals:

Some knew each other before the indictment, but only by online nicknames such as “Anthrophobic” and “Reaper.” They had never met in person until Sept. 1, 2011, when they made their initial court appearance together.
One defendant, Tracy Ann Valenzuela, a single mother and massage therapist, told a local ABC station in 2011 that she got involved in the PayPal attack while reading the news online.
“I saw something about PayPal shutting down payments to Wikileaks, and I clicked on some other site and joined a protest,” she said. “And next thing I knew, my house was surrounded by guns.” . . .

“I clicked on some other site and joined a protest” — a protest on behalf of criminals, a protest that involved criminal acts intended to deprive PayPal of revenue, because the company refused to process donations intended to support the criminal Julian Assange.

Tracy Ann Valenzuela: Her defense? She’s stupid.

Tracy Ann Valenzuela’s defense is that she was too stupid to realize that DDOS attacks are a crime. Perhaps we need to put all the stupid people in prison, just to be on the safe side, because otherwise they might log onto the Internet and commit cybercrime.

Let me propose an alternative theory of Tracy Ann Valenzuela’s crime: (a) she knew damned well this DDOS “protest” was criminal, but (b) she had contempt for the law and (c) she thought she could get away with breaking the law, because … Anonymous! and (d) oops.

Reminds me of the 18-year-old who thought she could get away with having sex in a school toilet stall with a 14-year-old. Oops.

It’s weird how millions of Americans go through life without ever being arrested for sex offenses or cybercrimes, but whenever the liberal media want to portray some criminal as a victim of social injustice, they always manage to find a way to do it:

In interviews with The Huffington Post, defendants in the PayPal case said they have spent the past two years burdened by pre-trial conditions that restricted their Internet usage. Many also struggled to secure employment.
“When you’re applying for a job and someone Googles you, you have a lot of explaining to do when you want to point out that you were standing up for free speech and a worthy cause and the government says you’re a cyber terrorist,” said Graham E. Archer, an attorney who represents Ethan Miles, one of the defendants.
Archer said being on pre-trial release has been “extraordinarily stressful” for Miles. Court records note that he spent time at a mental health facility. . . .

What? Ethan Miles “spent time at a mental health facility”? It’s hard to get a job if “the government says you’re a cyber terrorist”?

Ethan Miles: A criminal who is crazy.

Strip away the HuffPo’s sympathetic spin — and the lawyer’s claim that the kook Ethan Miles thought DDOS attacks were a way of “standing up for free speech” — and what you get is this: Crazy people commit crimes and nobody wants to hire crazy criminals.

Where do these crazy and/or stupid criminals get the idea that any time there is a protest — because somebody said it’s about “peace,” or “free speech” or “social justice” — they can just join the protest and be exempted from potential negative consequences? Pardon me for thinking maybe they get that idea from the liberal media:

Most Americans have never heard of Chris Hani or Oliver Tambo, both of whom died in 1993, and there was no fanfare in the U.S. media when Arthur Goldreich died two years ago. Since Nelson Mandela’s death last Thursday, the names of his former comrades in the anti-apartheid struggle have been omitted from the media narrative. The MSNBC hostess who last week enthusiastically credited Mandela with having “singlehandedly” ended apartheid was merely reducing to its ridiculous essence a myth that has become ubiquitous. What has been carefully omitted from the media myth — along with the names of many of Mandela’s colleagues in the African National Congress — is that the ANC was a communist-dominated party closely allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The controversy that erupted Tuesday after President Obama shook hands with Cuban dictator Raul Castro at a Mandela memorial in South Africa should have provided an opportunity to explain the history that has been deleted from the media’s Mandela myth. After all, Fidel Castro’s communist regime sent tens of thousands of soldiers to Angola to fight in a civil war where South Africa’s apartheid government sent troops into combat against Soviet-backed Marxists. The fact that Moscow and Havana spent the final 15 years of the Cold War fighting to spread communism in sub-Saharan Africa, and that Pretoria was a key Western ally against that effort, got no mention in the obituary praise for Mandela, who remained imprisoned until 1990. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. Maybe I’m “on the wrong side of history,” but at least I’m not a stupid criminal kook.

Also, it’s not a crime to hit my tip jar: PayPal is your friend!





 

Category: Crime, Culture, History, Terrorism

Comments

71 Responses to “Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert)”

  1. JoyKeller1
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:34 am

    Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) http://t.co/CrqUwWYQPG

  2. NASCARNAC
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:35 am

    RT @MrEvilMatt: Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert): In that analogy, President Obama is P.W. B… http://t.…

  3. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:36 am

    “It’s weird how millions of Americans go through life without ever being arrested for sex offenses or cybercrimes” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  4. CFLancop
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:38 am

    RT @rsmccain: “It’s weird how millions of Americans go through life without ever being arrested for sex offenses or cybercrimes” http://t.c…

  5. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:38 am

    “Maybe I’m ‘on the wrong side of history,’ but at least I’m not a stupid criminal kook.” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  6. nofixedabode
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:38 am

    RT @rsmccain: “It’s weird how millions of Americans go through life without ever being arrested for sex offenses or cybercrimes” http://t.c…

  7. JH_Garner
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:39 am

    RT @rsmccain: “It’s weird how millions of Americans go through life without ever being arrested for sex offenses or cybercrimes” http://t.c…

  8. Wellfonder
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:39 am

    RT @rsmccain: “Maybe I’m ‘on the wrong side of history,’ but at least I’m not a stupid criminal kook.” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  9. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:40 am

    Smile for the camera! http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa KOOKS -> @the_N0 @worthoftheworld @Anthrophobic

  10. nofixedabode
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:40 am

    RT @rsmccain: “Maybe I’m ‘on the wrong side of history,’ but at least I’m not a stupid criminal kook.” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  11. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:44 am

    “If Bradley Manning is a courageous hero, then is every soldier who obeys orders a cowardly villain?” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  12. texlovera
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:45 am

    “Angola”. Heh.

    I remember Angola. Wonder how many of the PayPal 14 could find it on a map?

    Good post, Stacy. Good post…

  13. fatdaddybulldog
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:50 am

    RT @rsmccain: “If Bradley Manning is a courageous hero, then is every soldier who obeys orders a cowardly villain?” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  14. professsorquail
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:52 am

    RT @rsmccain: “If Bradley Manning is a courageous hero, then is every soldier who obeys orders a cowardly villain?” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  15. Quartermaster
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:54 am

    Of course you’re on the wrong side of history. You’re merely crazy, not insane. You must be insane to be a Commie.

  16. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:59 am

    Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa cc @AmPowerBlog @instapundit @rdbrewer4 @ali

  17. LeatherPenguin
    December 12th, 2013 @ 11:59 am

    I’m dropping “ineffably” this time, @rsmccain… BEAT NAVY! http://t.co/XE4WfTpsGI

  18. rdbrewer4
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:02 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa cc @AmPowerBlog @instapundit @rdbre…

  19. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:05 pm

    RT @LeatherPenguin: I’m dropping “ineffably” this time, @rsmccain… BEAT NAVY! http://t.co/XE4WfTpsGI

  20. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:06 pm

    @baldingschemer “I know, right?” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  21. rsmccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:13 pm

    #Anonymous Logic: Bradley Manning = Nelson Mandela! PayPal = Apartheid! DDOS = “Free Speech”! Or something … http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa #tcot

  22. thenewsblaster
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:14 pm

    RT @rsmccain: #Anonymous Logic: Bradley Manning = Nelson Mandela! PayPal = Apartheid! DDOS = “Free Speech”! Or something … http://t.co/w3…

  23. thehiredmind
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:23 pm

    RT @rsmccain: #Anonymous Logic: Bradley Manning = Nelson Mandela! PayPal = Apartheid! DDOS = “Free Speech”! Or something … http://t.co/w3…

  24. AmPowerBlog
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:33 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa cc @AmPowerBlog @instapundit @rdbre…

  25. Dana
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:34 pm

    The left want to see Bradley Manning as some sort of crusading hero, because they were opposed to our liberating the people of Iraq and Afghanistan; apparently the left supported the regimes of Saddam Hussein and Muhammad Omar.

    But PFC Manning was no hero: he was a queer homosexual male who voluntarily joined an organization where he had to keep his sexual orientation a secret — though, as the recruiters often said, you don’t have to ask to be able to tell — got dumped by a civilian boyfriend, started going off the deep end, and then got stupid in protest. (He had already been busted from CPL to PFC due to his idiocy.) If he had really wanted out of the Army, all that he had to do was officially Tell, and he’d have been chaptered out. Julian Assange used him, just like he has used everybody else he could.

  26. DianeCva
    December 12th, 2013 @ 12:52 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “If Bradley Manning is a courageous hero, then is every soldier who obeys orders a cowardly villain?” http://t.co/w3kicvpRqa

  27. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 12th, 2013 @ 1:00 pm

    Would it be ironic to compare Barack Obama to the sign language guy at the Nelson Mandela memorial service?

  28. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 12th, 2013 @ 1:03 pm

    Bradley who? He is quickly being forgotten and will spend many years exploring his desire to be a woman. Bradley Manning of course belongs in prison or a criminal mental hospital. The superiors who allowed him to get in a position of trust (at a minimum) should be administratively disciplined.

  29. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 12th, 2013 @ 1:21 pm

    “Chelsea” Manning didn’t keep his “orientation” a secret. He shared photos of himself with his superiors and they still put him in a position of trust. WTF?

  30. WrayPressley
    December 12th, 2013 @ 1:36 pm

    Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert)…http://t.co/KtqRxfZ9Tt

  31. Quartermaster
    December 12th, 2013 @ 2:27 pm

    It would be more accurate. Both are fakes.

  32. Will_Brown
    December 12th, 2013 @ 2:45 pm

    “My son swore an oath that day to obey the orders of his Commander-in-Chief …”

    Here’s were we get into that conservative nuance. The oath your son (and I, once upon a time) swore actually stipulates the “lawful orders of those placed above me”. Logically, that would – and ought to – include the current commander-in-chief so widely held in such lowly regard.

    Complying with that oath requires each individual make the judgement call each and every time s/he receives an order – is this a lawful order in the circumstances in which it is issued and must be complied with?

    That you (along with a great many others) are of the opinion that Bradley Manning violated lawful orders by revealing the data he apparently did is in itself a valid point, he none the less makes a reasonable example of the ironic point being made regarding that same current commander-in-chief. Pointing out the amusing nature of the layers of irony revealed in the Anonymous tweet is certainly worthy of note, but making an erroneous point regarding the oath of military service oughtn’t be part of that.

    Like all the rest of us who swear the oath, your son along with Bradley Manning is responsible for the lawfulness of his compliance with orders – specifically to include the nature (and thus the validity) of the orders themselves.

    I am of the opinion that Manning decided wrongly, but his willingness to exercise his responsibility to make the required judgement call as to the validity of his orders is not the reason why. A minor point in the big picture your post presents, I acknowledge.

  33. Kevin Trainor Jr.
    December 12th, 2013 @ 2:57 pm

    Kevin Trainor Jr. liked this on Facebook.

  34. dwduck
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:13 pm

    Nothing Manning did rises to the level of disobeying orders, lawful or otherwise.

  35. Adjoran
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:19 pm

    The insanity defense rarely works because it is only supposed to work rarely. A person who is INCAPABLE of knowing right from wrong or that he/she is committing a crime at the time of the act is not held responsible.

    Note that you don’t have to KNOW it’s wrong or that it’s a crime, as long as you are CAPABLE of that knowledge, no insanity soup for you! IOW, being stupid is not a defense.

    Is it just me, or does that Miles guy’s expression remind anyone else of the Tuscon and Aurora shooters, too?

  36. Adjoran
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:22 pm

    Manning doesn’t deserve a mental hospital. He took steps to cover his acts, showing he knew they were wrong and illegal.

    If he wants to be a woman, he should save up his commissary tokens for when/if he’s paroled. The sad news for him is that ObamaCare would probably pay for it, but it won’t be around by then.

  37. Adjoran
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:24 pm

    But Signing Guy admitted he was a fake, so he is at least morally superior to Obama.

    I suspect intellectually, too, but he needed to talk for another sentence or two to be sure.

  38. Adjoran
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:25 pm

    There are steps to be taken in the face of an unlawful order, and none of them include transmitting classified information to foreign agents.

  39. Dana
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:25 pm

    Due to DA/DT, if PFC Manning didn’t tell, his superiors couldn’t use his homosexuality as a reason to deny him a security clearance. However, once he started to act up, his clearance could have and should have been revoked, and he should have been removed from his position. PFC Manning sending that picture of himself in drag should have counted, right then, as “telling” as far as the Army was concerned.

    I would not condemn the people who issued him the clearance, nor the people who assigned him to his duty station. I would, however, say that the officers who allowed him to continue in that position, when they could see that he was so badly messed up, were culpably negligent. I’m guessing — I have no information either way — that those officers have suffered some rather career-limiting consequences.

  40. Zohydro
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:54 pm

    What about hir habitual and willful violation of Article 125 of the UCMJ?

  41. jakee308
    December 12th, 2013 @ 3:58 pm

    It’s going to be even harder for Evan to get a job wearing that douchebag scruffy beard and the “who me” smirk.

  42. M. Thompson
    December 12th, 2013 @ 4:01 pm

    Bullshit.

    He KNOWINGLY violated a non-disclosure agreement for classified information, and those are LAWFUL orders that are acknowledged in writing.

  43. dwduck
    December 12th, 2013 @ 4:10 pm

    That’s a regulation, not an order, and that’s my point. Right, wrong, or otherwise, it takes stones to refuse an order. It takes far less to break a rule, even a serious one, from your computer chair.

    The soldier who refuses to pull the trigger is refusing an order. The soldier who blows the whistle on something obviously illegal is (possibly) refusing an order. The guy who steals classified data because he’s unbalanced upstairs is, by comparison, doing something far easier.

  44. robertstacymccain
    December 12th, 2013 @ 4:23 pm

    The idea that someone like Bradley Manning could have been permitted to have access to classified information just astonishes me.

  45. PubliusNV
    December 12th, 2013 @ 4:46 pm

    Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) http://t.co/IR2dkIaAD9

  46. M. Thompson
    December 12th, 2013 @ 5:02 pm

    The right hand and the left rarely communicate in Big Military.

    Also, it can be a huge PITA to replace someone with expensive training.

  47. Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) : The Other McCain | Dead Citizen's Rights Society
    December 12th, 2013 @ 5:24 pm

    […] Read the rest … […]

  48. Zohydro
    December 12th, 2013 @ 6:09 pm

    It looks to me like there are crack pipe burns on Valenzuela’s mouth in that pic…

  49. OwainPenllyn
    December 12th, 2013 @ 6:20 pm

    #Anonymous Compares Bradley Manning to Nelson Mandela (Irony Alert) http://t.co/hIfuB4ywOY via @rsmccain #tcot #tgdn

  50. Quartermaster
    December 12th, 2013 @ 6:28 pm

    Recall, that this is the same Army that can’t bring themselves to call Hasan a terrorist.