In June, Bradley Manning, 25, the army private who caused the greatest security breach in US history by giving hundreds of thousands of classified war and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks, will go on trial at Fort Meade, MD.
What did Manning produce?
Bradley Manning leaked three important bodies of documents from his army intelligence service, all of which went to Wikileaks.
This is too good not to reblog in whole. Original article here
democracynow.org
By Joseph Howard Crews
For 60 years the most celebrated and revered African in history was listed as a terrorist threat to the people of the United States. Who decided this? Why did Americans allow this, and what does it say about what we are?
In 2008, former South African President Nelson Mandela was finallyremoved from the U.S. terrorism watch list. Mandela and other members of the African National Congress had been placed on the list because of their fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime — a system of legalized racial segregation enforced by the country’s National Party between 1948 and 1994.
Yet it was just days ago that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt — a man once lauded by President Ronald Reagan — was convicted of genocide after a Guatemalan court found him guilty for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. In fact, a total of 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or “disappeared” during the conflict, making it one of Latin America’s most violent wars in modern history.
This marks the first time in modern history that a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide in his own country. After Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison, Guatemala erupted in cathartic relief.
During a meeting with Ríos Montt in December 1982, Reagan famously declared: “President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment …. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.” In reality, Ríos Montt was brutal, learning his “counter-insurgency” tactics at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”
Against accusations of murder, Ríos Montt responded: “It’s not that we have a policy of scorched earth, just a policy of scorched communists.”
So, Reagan supported this man who scorched Ixil Mayans from the face of the earth because they were “communists” (they were not) and proclaimed that Ríos Montt was a man of integrity, a friend of the United States. Shame!
Our government has over the last century supported a score of corrupt, murderous tyrants throughout Latin America, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujullo and Nicaragua’s Anastastio Somoza. The list for the Middle East is even longer and more sinister.
More disturbing is the vilification, torture or humiliation which our government has wreaked upon great heroes like Mandela, and courageous whistleblowers like Thomas Drake, Peter van Buren, Sibel Edmonds, Lt Col Daniel Davis, CIA veteran John Kiriakou and, most egregiously of all, Pvt. Bradley Manning. Never has a U.S. soldier been so unjustly and cruelly treated by his government.
After more than three years in prison, including nine months of torture in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning’s trial is finally scheduled to begin June 3, 2013, in Maryland. The nation will break out in protests.
The outcome of this trial will determine whether a conscience-driven 25-year-old WikiLeaks whistle-blower spends the rest of his life in prison. Manning believed that the American people have a right to know the truth about what our government does around the world in our name.
We do not know how history will judge Manning, but nations around the world already embrace him as the catalyst for activating vibrant democratic developments in the Middle East. Democracy thrives on truth and transparency in government dealings, which these leaked documents are supplying.
No one has named one single U.S. soldier who has been harmed by the leaked documents. On the contrary, release of the highly embarrassing documents expedited U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, rescuing thousands of troops from bodily injury, PTSD and traumatic brain injury.
The Commander-in-Chief, however, improperly decreed Manning guilty on April 23, 2011, even as Manning languished under abusive treatment in prison. This was evidenced when protesters interrupted President Obama’s speech at his $5,000-per-ticket fundraiser in San Francisco, and were met with the blanket statement from Obama that Manning “broke the law.”The impropriety of Obama’s public pre-trial decree of Manning’s guilt is both gross and manifest.
“How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers,” asked Glenn Greenwald, “when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt?”
Numerous commentators have noted how egregiously wrong Obama was in his preconceived condemnation.
Michael Whitney wrote: “[T]he President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.”
No American soldier has been treated the way our government has treated Pvt. Bradley Manning.
Over three years in prison without trial, nine months of which were in solitary confinement accompanied only by highly abusive treatment. The U.N. official overseeing the investigationpronounced that “Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation he was put in ….”
His miscreant jailers and interrogators tormented Manning with perfidious methods designed to humiliate him as a gay man. But he would not break. He stood strong and true for his country and his personal integrity.
It seems unlikely Manning’s trial will bring justice or exoneration. Court hearings have been structured to include secret testimony from secret witnesses and barred his defense from introducing exculpatory testimony.
But years from now Manning will be exonerated, much like Nelson Mandela. Let’s hope his exoneration rises above a Nobel Peace Prize, as that would only put him on a par with Obama’s questionable status.
We who love a healthy and vibrant democracy demand a full and unconditional pardon from Obama, an apology from the secretaries of State and Defense, and restitution for the injustice and humiliation already inflicted upon Pvt.Manning. If the court does not release Manning, and if Obama refuses to issue a pardon, a very severe political cost will be extracted. Justice will prevail.
We demand full respect and honor for patriotic whistleblowers, without whom our democracy will descend into despotism. Governments which operate in secrecy cannot be trusted and descend into oppression — even tyranny.
We see clearly that American government has an atrocious record in choosing its friends, and an equally dismal record of abusing its heroes. We must not allow the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, the Pentagon or even the president to make these choices. We, the free and informed people of America, must select our heroes, and name our villains.
Joseph Howard Crews is the editor of Progressivepost.com, a North County liberal website and bi-monthly newsletter.
******************
June 1 is the International Day of Action to Support Bradley Manning as his trial begins. Rallies in support Manning are scheduled across the nation. San Diego’s rally will be held at 1 p.m. at the corner of 6th and University avenues.
We the People will send a strong message to the military prosecutors, the Congress and President Obama, that Bradley Manning is a courageous patriot for democracy, a hero and intrepid truth-teller.
I'll be posting flyers and posters with specific details of events in Australia tomorrow. Here's an initial general poster advertising the day of action.
DOWNLOAD A PRINT READY PDF OF THE BRADLEY MANNING WAR PORN POSTER…
Stand up for the Army whistle-blower who risked everything to give the public real facts about our government’s wars in the Middle East and foreign policy worldwide. bradleymanning.org. Week of action for Bradley, June 1-8. Join us at Fort Meade. June 1, 2013
June 1st will mark the beginning of Bradley Manning’s fourth year in prison and the start of his trial.
Reblogged from Eslkevin's Blog:
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press.
San Francisco Pride would really like you to forget the whole Bradley Manning issue. After Manning was nominated to be honored by former Grand Marshals of the city's yearly Pride Parade, the announcement was made public, some veterans and LGBT groups protested, SF Pride retracted the honor, faced community protests, changed its tactics, and was protested again — and yet the organization still hasn't absorbed why the community is upset and why it matters.
Reblogged from Dandelion Salad:
with Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
May 15, 2013
democracynow on May 15, 2013
http://www.democracynow.org - The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press.
Reblogged from The Fuckington Post:
In a brazen and illegal attack on press freedom, the Obama Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the telephone records of Associated Press editors and journalists and tracked ingoing and outgoing calls on at least 20 telephone lines, including the national headquarters of the press agency and its news bureaus in New York, Hartford and Washington DC. Among the lines tracked was the telephone used by AP reporters working out of the House of Representatives press gallery in the Capitol.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that theAP leak put U.S. lives at risk and demanded "very aggressive" method of investigation, reported the BBC.
Revelations this week of a secret Justice Department seizure of two months’ worth of phone records from The Associated Press are the latest flare up in tense relationship between the U.S. government and the media when it comes to whistleblowers.
Reblogged from Talesfromthelou's Blog:
5 Things No One Tells You About the Military Industrial Complex - Waking Times : Waking Times.
"I mean, the war industry is really the ONLY industry the US has. We’re the war machine of the western empire"
"And if the president of the United States happens to be reading this (Xerxis forbid!): Pull your head out of that Darth Vader helmet, blow up the Death Star, burn the NDAA, …
Reblogged from Writing Wrongs:
Today marks the 100th day of a hunger strike in the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison. Activists have submitted a petition to the US government that was signed by around 370,000 people, in the hopes that somebody in the government would listen.
I've never been a huge fan of petitions. The responses to these petitions have been, at best, unsatisfactory if not outright insulting to our intelligence.
BRADLEY MANNING GLOBAL AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
Please share widely. Thank you!
An image is worth a thousand words.
Promote world-wide awareness of what the U.S. government is trying to suppress by attacking Bradley, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Put his image in your window, on walls, banners, sidewalks. In every corner that needs sunshine.
Let him not be forgotten.
Reblogged from Proletarian Center for Research, Education and Culture:
Review by Gary Corseri. A review of “America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy” by William Blum (Zed Books, London/New York, 2013.)
In activist-author-publisher William Blum’s new book, America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy, he tells the story of how he got his 15 minutes of fame back in 2006. Osama bin Laden had released an audiotape, declaring: “If you are sincere in your desire for peace and security… and if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State.” Bin Laden then quoted from the Foreword of Blum’s 2000 book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, in which he had mused:
Reblogged from Bill Totten's Weblog:
by Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy (May 01 2013)
Dear Readers:
If there is hope, you are it. You are motivated to find truth. You can think outside the box. You can see through propaganda. You are the remnant with the common sense that once was a common American virtue. You come to this site, because you get explanations that are not agenda-driven, that are not BS, that are not right-wing or left-wing, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat.
LONDON—A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world’s best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June.
Bradley Manning news #opManning FeedBurner CyberWarNews.info
