Reflections From a Murky Pond

US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is facing serious charges because of his traitorous release of large amounts of classified material. He he is charged with three (3) separate crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The most serious of these crimes is breaching Article 104 – Aiding The Enemy, which is a capital offense.

He is also charged under Article 92 – Failure to Obey Order or Regulation and Article 134 – General Article. The latter is a catch-all for improper behavior by military personnel that isn’t specifically covered by other Articles under UCMJ.

In all, with the original charges and the recent additional charges, Manning is facing 34 Specifications – very close to what are called “counts” in the civilian courts – between the three (3) charges.

1. Article 104 – Aiding The Enemy (1 Specification)
2. Article 92 – Failure to Obey Order or Regulation (9 Specifications)
3. Article 134 – General Article (24 Specifications)

Article 104 carries the death penalty or any other legal punishment that the court-martial or military commission decrees. Both Articles 92 and 134 allow for any legal punishment short of execution that the court-martial or military commission decrees.

It is reported that the prosecution will not seek the death penalty under Article 104, seeking life imprisonment instead. Under UCMJ however, the convening authority, not the prosecution, has the final decision as to whether or not to impose the death penalty. This combined with the broad latitude in sentencing allowed to the court-martial or military commission which will hear the case makes it anyone’s guess what will happen.

My guess it that about 10 of the specifications under Articles 92 and 134 will be dropped due to redundancy and lack of evidence and that, at the end of the day, Manning will be sentenced to a Bad Conduct Discharge and Incarceration for Life + 69 years (3 years / specification).

This is the text of America’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 104 – Aiding The Enemy. for the sake of conciseness it does not include the entirety of the additional explanatory text which can be found here.

Article 104 – AIDING THE ENEMY

Any person who–

1. aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or
2. without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;

shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.

Elements

1. Aiding the enemy.
   1. That the accused aided the enemy; and
   2. That the accused did so with certain arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things.
2. Attempting to aid the enemy.
   1. That the accused did a certain overt act;
   2. That the act was done with the intent to aid the enemy with certain arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things;
   3. That the act amounted to more than mere preparation; and
   4. That the act apparently tended to bring about the offense of aiding the enemy with certain arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things.
3. Harboring or protecting the enemy.
   1. That the accused, without proper authority, harbored or protected a person;
   2. That the person so harbored or protected was the enemy; and
   3. That the accused knew that the person so harbored or protected was an enemy.
4. Giving intelligence to the enemy
   1. That the accused, without proper authority, knowingly gave intelligence information to the enemy; and
   2. That the intelligence information was true, or implied the truth, at least in part.
5. Communicating with the enemy.
   1. That the accused, without proper authority, communicated, corresponded, or held intercourse with the enemy, and;
   2. That the accused knew that the accused was communicating, corresponding, or holding intercourse with the enemy.

    

“Enemy” is for the purposes of UCMJ defined in Article 99 – Misbehavior Before the Enemy (paragraph – 23c(1)(b)):

Organized forces of the enemy in time of war, any hostile body that our forces may be opposing, such as a rebellious mob or a band of renegades, and includes civilians as well as members of military organizations. “Enemy” is not restricted to the enemy government or its armed forces. All the citizens of one belligerent are enemies of the government and all the citizens of the other.

This is one of the most serious offenses codified within America’s Uniform Code of Military Justice. Hence, it carries a maximum penalty of death, though the Court-Martial or Military Commission my enact a lesser sentence at their discretion.

Aiding The Enemy is one of only 10 crimes under UCMJ that carries the death penalty even when not committed during actual times of war.

Has it occurred to anyone that the prophesied Apocalypse might, due to Augmented Reality and the growth of portable – soon to be wearable – computing power, have a soundtrack?  While this is quite obviously unknowable, we can guess what format it would be in.

Will That Sooth The Savage Breast? … Sort Of.

Sadly, this means that the music of the End Times will take on a decidedly staccato tempo and lose a great deal of its bass. 😉

Don’t worry though; Steve Jobs or his successors at Apple probably won’t be releasing the iKill or iBurst for your End of Days listening pleasure. They don’t need to since a British firm has been marketing a MP3 player modification to the Kalashnikov (AK-47 series) since 2005!

AK-MP3 Jukebox – Rock and Roll, Boys and Girls!

So the question would be what’s your playlist for Armageddon? Or would you prefer an audio book?

In an Eight to One decision the United States Supreme Court upheld the earlier appeals court ruling and sided with Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church in the case of Snyder v Ph elps. The $5 million judgment against them has been nullified.

Justice Samuel Alito was the lone though very passionate dissenter, as was to be expected.

In a nutshell the SCOTUS’ ruling once again confirmed that unpopular speech and/or expression – Phelps’ brood’s rantings are about as unpopular as it gets – is protected by the 1st Amendment of America’s constitution. They further, by their ruling, in effect reiterated that people cannot use tort law to circumvent the constitutional limitations upon criminal law.

We, the People cannot allow the government at any level to enact laws that curtail freedom of speech by the People, nor can we allow judges to use lawsuits and punitive damages to do the same. Allowing such would lead to greater lasting harm than anything that the Westboro traitors could achieve on their own.

As much as allowing Phelps’ brood of traitors to continue their attacks upon America’s military and military dependents sickens and outrage me, the SCOTUS arrived at the only right decision.

If Americans want to solve for the problem of Westboro Baptist Church and the Phelps brood, then we’re going to have to do it in an extra-judicial manner.  Preferably this should be done in a manner that sends a clear message to any other domestic enemies that would attack our troops and their families in this or any other manner.

Sadly, I don’t think we have the courage and conviction anymore to do this as it would need to be done; we’re too squeamish to enact a pogrom of rape, mutilation, and murder against them with an emphasis on targeting their women, children, and grandchildren, and we’re far too cowardly to sacrifice ourselves up to the law when finished.

So Westboro won 8-1 in the SCOTUS and will continue to win the privilege of attacking our troops and their dependents because we, the People won’t put aside our sensitivities and do what is necessary to put a stop to their atrocities.

Zombies, those galvanized corpses which are so fond of brains as a core diet, have in recent years become an entrenched meme in American pop culture. Normally I would consider this a bizarre but harmless exercise in people’s creative stupidity, but they’ve taken it just a bit too far.

Zombie Fashion Apocalypse?

Somehow I can find absolutely no benefit in zombie catwalk models or in nominal females who could pass themselves off as zombies.

Come on! Looking at the creature in this image, aren’t you just expecting it to groan, “Braaaaaaains?” And it would be pathetic if it did since brains are thin on the ground anywhere within the fashion industry – even zombies have to starve themselves to work in the industry. 😉