Intro: "Mayor Jean Quan's chief legal adviser resigned early this morning after what he called a 'tragically unnecessary' police raid of the Occupy Oakland camp."
Dan Siegel, mayoral legal advisor, addresses Occupy Oakland protesters in Frank Ogawa Plazain Oakland, California, 10/26/11. (photo: Mathew Sumner/San Francisco Chronicle)
Oakland Mayor's Top Legal Adviser Resigns Over Raid
15 November 11
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akland Mayor Jean Quan's chief legal adviser, a longtime friend, resigned Monday after what he called a "tragically unnecessary" police raid of the Occupy Oakland camp.
Dan Siegel was one of two aides to defect from Quan's administration Monday. Deputy Mayor Sharon Cornu also quit but said her resignation had nothing to do with the police sweep.
Siegel, a civil rights attorney and one of Oakland's most active and vocal police critics, said the city should have done more to work with campers before sending in police.
"The city sent police to evict this camp, arrest people and potentially hurt them," Siegel said. "Obviously, we're not on the same page. It's an amazing show of force to move tents from a public place."
Siegel strongly opposed any plan by the city to take down the month-old camp in the days leading up to the police raid.
Quan, who has known Siegel since the two attended UC Berkeley together, said at a news conference that they have been known to disagree. She said Siegel, an unpaid adviser, had been working on "a small project on a volunteer basis in my office."
"He's moving on. I'm moving on," Quan said.
Unlike Siegel, Cornu said Quan had done the right thing in approving the police sweep of Occupy Oakland.
"The situation on the plaza was untenable," said Cornu, 52.
Cornu, previously a labor leader, was one of two deputy mayors, making her in essence a co-chief of staff. She said she had stepped down voluntarily to strengthen Quan's staff organization.
Occupy Oakland, she said, "is a very difficult situation. The phrase 'between a rock and a hard place' doesn't start to explain it. Anybody who's looking for a rainbow ending on it is mistaken."
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If he felt there was information that should be public, he should have left the Army and gone about his "expose" in the right manner instead of burning his fellow soldiers...whic h he did.
Puh-leez. Because the warrantless-wir etapping, information-shr edding, drone-assassina ting "government" of Obama would have responded well to his civilian requests, right? WHAT country did you think you still live in -- America, circa 1978?
Manning "burned" the fellow soldiers who perpetrate horrors in our name, for fun or lust -- "burned" the lying warlords who put our troops where they should not be -- "burned" the lying politicians who cravenly gave the cover... WHOM did he "burn" or "kill" as a result of these leaks? NO ONE -- let's be clear -- yet Bush-Cheney can "out" Valerie Plame (a REAL treasonous crime) -- people really DID die (the brave people who helped her in foreign countries) -- BUT WHERE IS THEIR TRIAL AND SURE SENTENCING?
Come on. Don't try and pretend it is other than what it is -- the most valiant and daring sacrifice for truth our country has seen.
TALK ABOUT THE CRIMES HE REVEALED, PLEASE -- or, don't they matter? What flexible morality you have...
Would you like to discuss that?
.....wait -- soldiers are to be held to higher standards than civilians? Then what Manning disclosed -- thousands of American soldiers committing atrocious humanitarian crimes -- should ALL then be tracked down, court-martialed , held in boxes and hung (like the prescription for Manning) -- because THEY are ALSO held to higher standards, right? Right?
Like Nuremberg, a standard to which none of his fellows or commanders rose.
I hope Bradley Manning is acquitted and can be released to carry on with his life.
This double-standard turns one's stomach...
FREE BRADLEY MANNING -- PROSECUTE THE CRIMINALS HE UNCOVERED.
Think of so many from Jesus, Spartacus, William Wallace, victims of the inquisition and the Tudors, of Danton and Robespierre, Crazy Horse, Roland Freisler's hapless condemned, the Japanese WW11 prisoners, Leonard Peltier, Mumiya Abu Jamal, Troy Anthony Davis -the list is endless.
Anybody who think manning is a traitor is a fink and total cowardly conformist.
Exactly WHAT information put America at jeopardy? Please tell us specifically how we were hurt. I submit that you don't have a clue. Our government classified this info to HIDE war crimes, among other things; it may have been embarrising for us and made us look bad, which we were; killing unarmed Iraqis and capturing it on video IS embarrising. These leaks helped start the Arab Spring. Bradley Manning is a HERO and I am PROUD of him and his actions. He showed TRUE COURRAGE by doing what he did.
A traitor to what?
The world's most lumbering, polluting, destructive and resource-soakin g, threatening bully of a military-indust rial corporate state which seeks to devour all in it's path and relies on uber-conformist s like you to go along with it and even sing it's praises.
I'd call that traitorous to the world in general and blinkered in the extreme.
The US doesn't exist in a bubble y'know, in spite of it's claim to exceptionalism, and is far from being a "civilized" nation, which is reflected in this kind of case which is almost medievalist in it's intent, like they used to leave hanged thieves corpses rotting at cross roads and hang the chopped torsos and legs of the quartered executed hanging in different towns, their heads on spike mounted on London bridge. It's also reflected in the the way it treats all but the wealthiest of it's own citizens, their basic well-being sacrificed for the military death machine.
The message, "Conform and stay silent or we'll get you one way or another"!
This paragraph can be the entering wedge into a truly interesting conversation about moral neutrality. See, e.g., http://righteousmind.com.
According to Jonathan Haidt's thesis, loyalty is more likely to be treated by liberals than by conservatives as a "morally neutral" virtue. The same goes for three other "moral foundations" identified by Haidt as universal in human societies: sanctity, liberty and respect for authority. Two more, care for others and fairness, are also important to conservatives, but these two are overwhelmingly important to liberals, who tend to take the other four into account only to the extent that their implications for the debate do not diminish the importance of care and fairness. (Haidt says libertarians, meanwhile, are unimpressed by any of the moral foundations other than liberty.)
Haidt's short answer to the quoted paragraph would probably be: To a conservative, Bradley Manning's disloyalty to the U.S. could easily be a hanging offense; to a liberal, it would pale in comparison to the need for care and protection for the victims of U.S. behavior; for a libertarian, it would be an issue not of morality but of individual policy.
[more to follow]
Check out his book. It'll give you new insight into why there are so many intelligent, thoughtful, morally-engaged and sincere writers on the blogs whose opinions seem to us intelligent, thoughtful, morally-engaged and sincere onlookers like pure lunacy.
According to Jonathan Haidt's thesis, loyalty is more likely to be treated by liberals than by conservatives as a "morally neutral" virtue. The same goes for three other "moral foundations" identified by Haidt as universal in human societies: sanctity, liberty and respect for authority. Two more, care for others and fairness, are also important to conservatives, but these two are overwhelmingly important to liberals, who tend to take the other four into account only to the extent that their implications for the debate do not diminish the importance of care and fairness. (Haidt says libertarians, meanwhile, are unimpressed by any of the moral foundations other than liberty.)
Haidt's short answer to the quoted paragraph would probably be: To a conservative, Bradley Manning's disloyalty to the U.S. could easily be a hanging offense; to a liberal, it would pale in comparison to the need for care and protection for the victims of U.S. behavior; for a libertarian, it would be an issue not of morality but of individual policy.
Check out his book. It'll give you new insight into why there are so many intelligent, thoughtful, morally-engaged and sincere writers on the blogs whose opinions seem to us intelligent, thoughtful, morally-engaged and sincere onlookers like pure lunacy.
Bradley fulfilled his oath with courage and honor. Bales was a good soldier.
There is a lack of understanding by the general public that an American soldier is obligated, by American negotiated treaties from WWI and WWII, to report war crimes and atrocities. The Holocaust was allowed to happen and continue because "no one" blew the whistle.
Time to free Bradley Manning and award him the Medal of Freedom!