North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?
US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
Does Trump Not Realise How Globally Toxic Tony Blair Is? Mon Oct 06, 2025 19:30 | Ramesh Thakur Trump's peace plan for Gaza might yet succeed, but why on earth does Tony Blair feature, asks Professor Ramesh Thakur. Does Trump not realise how globally toxic the Blair brand is?
The post Does Trump Not Realise How Globally Toxic Tony Blair Is? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Stupidologiology Mon Oct 06, 2025 18:15 | James Alexander William Davies has written an article titled 'Stupidology' which Prof James Alexander summarises as: 'Trump is stupid. Brexit was stupid. I am not stupid. Neither are my friends. Why do stupid people have power?'
The post Stupidologiology appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Backlash as Nando?s Limits Customers to One Coke per Visit Under New ?Nanny State? Rules Mon Oct 06, 2025 15:11 | Will Jones Nando's has sparked a backlash after restricting customers to a single glass of Coca-Cola Classic under new 'nanny state' Government rules aimed at cutting sugar consumption.
The post Backlash as Nando’s Limits Customers to One Coke per Visit Under New ‘Nanny State’ Rules appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
?Nudge? Has a New Evil Twin: ?Stochastic Terror? Mon Oct 06, 2025 13:30 | Nick Rendell 'Nudge' has a new evil twin, says Nick Rendell: 'stochastic terror'. When all else fails, the Left foments the conditions for random political violence and then sits back and waits for someone to pick off Trump or Farage.
The post ‘Nudge’ Has a New Evil Twin: ‘Stochastic Terror’ appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Green Party Votes to Abolish Landlords Mon Oct 06, 2025 11:17 | Will Jones The?Green Party?has committed itself to "abolishing landlords" after party members at its conference in Bournemouth passed a motion to seek the "effective abolition of private landlordism".
The post Green Party Votes to Abolish Landlords appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en Voltaire Network >>
|
The US, its 'enemies'; the lies, the hyposcrisy, the sham – and Bradley Manning
international |
miscellaneous |
news report
Tuesday July 30, 2013 19:32 by nmn

In a show trial that focuses the biggest spotlight in decades to shine on the United States and its own goverment's flouting and twisting of the US Constitution in support of its militaristic ambitions, whistleblower Bradley Manning has now been cleared by a court martial's single judge of charges of 'aiding the enemy' by releasing secret government documents to WikiLeaks. It was the most damning of over 20 charges against him and carried a sentence of life in prison without parole.
The US Army Private could still face an effective life sentence after being convicted on numerous other counts. He was found guilty of most of the other 20 lesser charges including five espionage and five theft charges, computer fraud and other military infractions, which could see him sentenced to prison for over 130 years.
The 25-year-old had admitted giving the anti-secrecy website some 700,000 documents, pleading guilty to 10 lesser charges, including espionage and computer fraud. He had told the court he selected material that would not harm troops or national security.
The appalling lack of attention paid to such an important 'trial' by the bulk of the mainstream corporate media after its initial opening demonstrates the true allegiance of those organisations. Truth is the first casualty of their deception. This after all was a trial in which the concept of truth was itself in the dock.
Manning's sentencing hearing is set to begin on Wednesday.
The article below reveals some lesser known details of the case over the past few days.
By Nathan Fuller and Jeff Paterson, Bradley Manning Support Network. July 28, 2013
"The Government has pushed this case beyond the bounds of legal propriety. If the Government meant ‘information’, it should have charged information," explains defense attorney David Coombs in legal filings last week.
Two years ago, Army PFC Bradley Manning was charged with five counts of stealing government property, in violation of federal statute 18 U.S.C. 641. He faces 21 total charges for providing WikiLeaks with classified information at the court martial entering its final stage. After the Government rested its case against PFC Manning, defense lawyer David Coombs detailed how the evidence presented did not support those five 18 U.S.C. 641 charges. He appealed to military judge Col. Denise Lind to dismiss them outright; however, she let them stand. Shockingly, she then stepped away from her role as the "finder of fact," and into a clearly partisan role by allowing the Government to significantly alter its charges on July 24, 2013–long after all legal arguments had been made.
"Because all of these critical ‘clarifications’ are coming after eight weeks of testimony, and because these offenses carry with them 50 years of potential imprisonment, and because the Defense was actually misled by the Charge Sheet, the Defense requests that this Court declare a mistrial as to the section 641 offenses," declared Coombs.
This move by Judge Lind allowed the prosecution to switch its theory, alleging now that Manning stole "portion[s] of" databases instead of the entire databases themselves. The change is for the Iraq and Afghan War Logs and the Global Address List. The evidence clearly shows that Manning downloaded Iraq and Afghanistan Significant Activity reports (SigActs), not the entire Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE) databases, which included far more – and far more sensitive – documents.
This alteration is not semantic. Legally, it’s substantially different than the original charges, and more to the point, it comes long after the government rested its case, precluding the defense from going back to question witnesses differently. The defense moved for a mistrial on those charges.
Under Rule for Courts Martial 915, a military judge may declare a mistrial when "manifestly necessary in the interest of justice because of circumstances arising during the proceedings which cast substantial doubt upon the fairness of the proceedings."
Judge Lind denied the defense’s motion for a mistrial on the theft charges last week, and the defense has filed a motion for the court to reconsider. Today, the judge announced that the defense did not request oral argument on the motion, so she will simply take this under advisement. The government has filed a response, but we likely won’t be able to see that until after the judge has ruled.
Coombs lays out the injustice at hand,
The Court has accepted the Government’s argument that databases = records = information. If this were the case, how difficult would it have been for the Government to actually charge "information" in the Charge Sheet? Why did it use the word "database"? Why are we in a position, three years into the case and after the presentation of all the evidence, where we have to read one word ("information") into another word ("database" or "records")? Why is it that the Defense is the party that is penalized for an apparent misunderstanding of the charged property? Why is the Government not held to task for using one word ("database") when it apparently meant another ("information")?
To prove a violation of 18 U.S.C. 641, the prosecution must show that the information allegedly "stolen" was worth more than $1,000. The government worked to prove its original claim, and now it says that its evidence proves the changed charge.
The Government itself sought to prove that PFC Manning stole "databases" (i.e. the receptacle or infrastructure associated with maintaining the records). Approximately 95% of its valuation evidence took the form of proving the value of the databases, not the information or the records. This shows that the Government itself, when it used the word "databases" in the Charge Sheet meant databases, not information or records. The Defense, seeing all the evidence that the Government was adducing on the database, was eminently reasonable in assuming that when the Government charged "database" it meant "database" (the physical receptacle for the information).
Coombs cites federal case law involving 18 U.S.C. 641 and "information," something the government appears not to have studied.
The Defense, and the accused, should not be penalized for being aware of federal case law on section 641. As the Defense argued in its motion to dismiss, every federal case where the theft of information was alleged actually charged theft of information. The Court failed to reference this fact in its Ruling, apparently believing that such a factor was unimportant to its disposition. However, such a factor is critical—since this will be the only prosecution to be maintained based on theft of "information" where "information" was not actually charged. A federal accused should not fare better than a military accused in terms of the notice provided to him under federal law (i.e. a federal accused’s Charge Sheet will state that the accused stole "information", while a military accused must extrapolate "information" from the word "database"). If the Government chooses to incorporate federal law, then federal law in terms of charging and proving the offense, must be followed.
Prosecutors’ negligence of case law might explain their confused and "schizophrenic" theories of what Manning "stole."
Here, the very property at issue is subject to dispute. This is, in the Defense’s view, more critical than who the accused allegedly escaped from, or who the money technically belonged to. If those cases concluded that there was a fatal variance between pleadings and proof, so too should have been the case here. The Government never did establish that PFC Manning stole "databases" –whether one defines databases as the receptacle alone, or the receptacle plus the records in that receptacle. And now the Court has given the Government a get-out-of-jail free card by allowing the Government to avoid the necessity of proving the value of the receptacle, even though the Government itself embarked on a mission to prove the value of the receptacle. In short, not even the Government knew what it was proving when it charged and pursued the section 641 offense.
Coombs explains why this is irreparably damaging to the defense’s case, with no proper recourse,
Now, after the close of evidence, the Court has grafted onto the Charge Sheet the word "information" – something that the Defense did not know it had to defend against until after it had cross-examined Government witnesses and after it had called its own witnesses. In short, the Defense did not know of the case to meet until 24 July 2013, almost two months into the trial, and the day before closing arguments. The Defense is now left to hope that the Government has not presented enough evidence to prove a charge that the Defense did not actually defend against and it does not believe the Government actually charged.
"If the Defense had known that when the Government charged databases, it really meant information, the Defense would have defended this case very differently.
For one thing, the defense would have better been able to and had more ground to challenge the testimony of the government’s witness, Mr. Lewis, on whom it relied to prove the value of the documents charged."
Mr. Lewis himself did not seem to understand the government’s case.
"...the Defense would have filed a motion to preclude Mr. Lewis from testifying and from being qualified as an expert. The Defense would have fully briefed this issue with reference to relevant case law. The Defense interviewed Mr. Lewis on numerous occasions prior to the case and Mr. Lewis repeatedly indicated that he did not know why he was testifying, he did not consider himself an expert on the value of information, and he would not be able to provide any value for documents. In fact, on the Friday prior to Mr. Lewis testifying on the Monday, he still held this position.
Furthermore, Judge Lind accepted the government’s new claim that stealing records and stealing copies of records are legally the same thing, without supportive case law.
The Court also has apparently accepted the Government’s position that there is no distinction between original records and copies of records both for identifying what was allegedly stolen and for placing a value on it.
Clearly, here there is no question that the records that PFC Manning sent to WikiLeaks were copies of records that he maintained on CD. However, the Court is allowing the Government to argue and introduce value of the production of originals when what the Government is saying is that PFC Manning converted the copies.
Judge Lind blamed the defense for the confusion because it didn’t seek further clarification from the government last year. Coombs explains why this is problematic.
The Court appears to fault the Defense for not requesting additional specificity in the Bill of Particulars on the res alleged to have been stolen. See Ruling ("In the bill of particulars, the Defense posed questions with regard to the Government’s theory of prosecution. The Defense did not seek more specificity as to the items charged. Nor did the Defense seek clarification after receiving the Government’s response."). The Court ignores the fact that there was no need to request "further clarification" given that the Government stated that it was "clear" what property was alleged to have been stolen or converted—specific, identifiable databases (CIDNE, NCD and SOUTHCOM). The Court indicated at the time that the details provided by the Government provided sufficient notice of the charges against the accused. The Defense was not obligated to further ask the Government, "Are you sure you don’t mean information? It looks like you probably meant information, so maybe you should change the charge sheet before referral."
It is ironic that the Defense was supposed to read into the word "database" the concept of information, all while the Government was doing its best to present every bit of available evidence valuing the actual CIDNE, NCD and SOUTHCOM databases (excluding the value of the information).
Judge Lind allowed the government to change its sheet to allege that Manning stole "a portion of" each of the databases at issue, yet the defense wasn’t on notice that it needed to question witnesses about "portions" of the databases.
The Defense would have interviewed witnesses and ascertained for itself what the cost of production of these records would be. The Defense would not be left simply hoping that the Government has not met its burden of proof.
Coombs summarizes these points in full.
It is clear from federal case law that "records" and "information" are different things. The Court’s conflating of "database" and "records" and "information," after the close of evidence, is not a fair or accurate reading of the law and unfairly prejudices the accused in this case….
If the Defense knew that the property allegedly stolen was "information" it would have proceeded in an entirely different fashion. This is true as well if the Defense knew that the Court would allow the Government to value original records when no original records were stolen or converted.
The accused is still facing the prospect of life in prison (due to what the Defense submits is an unprecedented Article 104 charge). There is no need to mar the appellate record in such a way that it clear that a substantial doubt is cast upon the fairness of these proceedings.
The judge will take this motion into consideration, amid her deliberation on the final verdict. If she does not declare a mistrial on the theft charges, she will be taking the government’s unsupported position yet again, further prejudicing Bradley Manning, whose trial is already rife with injustice.
Source
|