I suppose it could have been worse. He could have got sixty years, he got thirty-five. Thirty-five years for telling the truth, blowing the whistle on war crimes. Among the 700,000 classified documents Mr Manning downloaded while stationed in Iraq was a video that showed a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad opening fire on a group of Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists and their children, who had attempted to rescue a severely injured man. More devastating than the film was the cockpit chatter of the soldiers who joked as they shot people in the streets.
"Look at those dead bastards," said one. "Nice," said another. And embarrassing the powerful.
Thirty five years to send a warning to others:
What perfect timing. Just as the U.S. ends its war in Iraq, not with a bang but a whimper. Bye bye Big Lie. Bye bye Shock and Awe. Bye bye mass murder. Bye bye Abu Ghraib.
In a junkyard near Baghdad, somebody came across the true horror of Haditha.
The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.
The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.
To remind us that not ONE of the U.S. soldiers responsible has been convicted. And that just like the war criminals Bush, Cheney, and Blair they all got away.
On Thursday it will be one year since Bradley Manning was arrested by the U.S. military and accused of leaking classified documents and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
The massive leak revealed war crimes, embarrassed the rich and the powerful, and is credited with sparking the Arab Revolution.
Now the PBS program Frontline takes a close look at Manning by resurrecting his Facebook account, and finds an angry young gay soldier trapped in a homophobic nightmare.
Frontline offers a compelling picture of Manning’s youth and army career – a young gay man who seemed to be endlessly at war with authority. What the Facebook material reveals is a person who hated the baiting and harassment he received for being gay. Because of the U.S. Army’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rules, he could do little except internalize his anger.
A lonely young man, sensitized to injustice by the bigotry he experienced, and disgusted at the world around him.
A young gay activist tired of being forced to live a lie. And not afraid to stand up for his rights.
Here's an excerpt from the PBS documentary.
I don't think many understand how angry homophobia can make gay people. How they can't escape it no matter how hard they try. How it attacks them and the ones they love.
And how it can motivate them to fight for the rights of others. From the civil right's struggle of black people, to the war on women's rights. With no quarter given.
But I do.
As John Doyle says it's an amazing story.
You couldn’t make it up, and the truth as it is chronicled here is beyond bewildering.
A motherlode of “if” questions ensue for the viewer. But the key one is this: “If” the U.S. Army were better equipped to absorb into its a ranks a young gay man, would the events never have happened? There’s a shock of recognition there, too.
Yup. Bigotry is bewildering, and has consequences.
I had a hard time getting up enough energy to blog tonight. Every story I wanted to write about is so depressing. Starting with this one.
As if the poor Japanese people hadn't suffered enough, now they must face their worst nightmare.
As must the rebels in Libya. Because now that the eyes of the world are focused on Japan, who will stop the degenerate tyrant from slaughtering them?
Then there's Obama, the human rights champion Pentagon stooge declaring that the treatment of Bradley Manning was "appropriate."
Obama responded that if Manning's treatment is good enough for the Pentagon, it is good enough for him. "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards," Obama said, suggesting some of those procedures were to protect Manning's safety. "They have assured me that they are."
"I became upset. Out of frustration, I clenched my hair with my fingers and yelled: 'Why are you doing this to me? Why am I being punished? I have done nothing wrong.'"
And then of course, there's that other cloud hanging over my head. The possibility that we could be fighting an election in less than ten days.
Stephen Harper might finally win his precious majority. And use it to torture and slaughter the Canada we know and love.
Oh boy. Talk about blogging in a nightmare world. If you don't blog you can try to ignore what's going on out there. If you do you can't.
I think I need a break. I may have to give up blogging, and just make videos. Or go back to writing poems about trees, even though the woods are full of policemen.
Or maybe I'll just do what the guy in this new R.E.M. video does.
And hope I'll feel better tomorrow ...
If I'm not ARRESTED.
And that's it eh? That's all I wanted to say.
Live life to the fullest. Fight for freedom as hard as you can.
They have tortured him for almost a year. They want to sentence him to death, just for telling the truth. But for the war criminals at the Pentagon, even that is not enough.
Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking government files to WikiLeaks, will be stripped of his clothing every night as a “precautionary measure” to prevent him from injuring himself, an official at the Marine brig at Quantico, Va., said on Friday.
Now they must humiliate him.
There can be no conceivable justification for requiring a soldier to surrender all his clothing, remain naked in his cell for seven hours, and then stand at attention the subsequent morning,” he wrote. “This treatment is even more degrading considering that Pfc. Manning is being monitored — both by direct observation and by video — at all times.”
Let's review Manning's detention over the last nine straight months: 23-hour/day solitary confinement; barred even from exercising in his cell; one hour total outside his cell per day where he's allowed to walk around in circles in a room alone while shackled, and is returned to his cell the minute he stops walking; forced to respond to guards' inquiries literally every 5 minutes, all day, everyday; and awakened at night each time he is curled up in the corner of his bed or otherwise outside the guards' full view. Is there anyone who doubts that these measures -- and especially this prolonged forced nudity -- are punitive and designed to further erode his mental health, physical health and will?
And why is this happening? Because the Obama administration is conducting the biggest crackdown on whistleblowers since the days of Richard Nixon.
So much for the human rights champion.
So much for Yes We Can...
Oh boy, when I see what's happening all I can think of is how could we have left Omar Khadr, a Canadian kid, in the hands of those Pentagon bastards?
When I think of what they're doing to Bradley Manning, stripping him naked to try to break him. And I know that they're doing that because he's gay.
As if they hadn't tortured him enough, now the war criminals at the Pentagon are trying to kill Bradley Manning.
Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has spent 10 months in solitary confinement on suspicion of having transmitted a huge trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, now faces a possible death penalty
For the crime of "aiding" an enemy with no name.
The charge involves "giving intelligence to the enemy", which is defined as "organised opposing forces in time of war but also other hostile body that our forces may be opposing such as a rebellious mob or a band of renegades". Such an enemy could be civilian or military in nature.
Or you and I. Or any part of any "rebellious mob" that believes that the truth will set us free.
The records allegedly downloaded by Manning revealed clear instances of war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, widespread torture committed by the Iraqi authorities with the full knowledge of the U.S. military, previously unknown estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed at U.S. military checkpoints, and the massive Iraqi civilian death toll caused by the American invasion.
Pfc. Manning saw this misery and rampant illegality with his own two eyes, and then, online, he discovered more of the same -- much, much more -- and he did something about it, knowing full well the penalty. "I wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press," he confided to the informant who betrayed him. Manning knew the stakes and the risks when he leaked these documents, but still he loyally performed his duty, both to the United States Army and to his country.
He just did his duty. The Pentagon boss Robert Gates says he did no harm. But still they torture him.
“It’s hard to imagine why prison officials would treat someone who they worry is mentally disturbed by isolating him to the point that, as medical experts have documented, is likely to make him crazy,” said Daphne Eviatar, who investigates and reports on U.S. national security policies and practices for Human Rights First.
For the crime of telling the truth. And embarrassing the rich and the powerful.
You know, Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian fruit seller who set himself on fire to protest against injustice, is credited with starting the wave of protests that is shaking the world.
But I believe Bradley Manning also inspired a lot of young people, by shining a light into dark and corrupt places . And showing them a world they had never seen before.
Because the truth WILL set us free.
The Obama administration is acting like a totalitarian regime.
If the Pentagon war criminals want a rebellious mob they will get one.
It's funny or scary, how a big story like Wikileaks can flare up, make the mighty tremble, and then almost disappear.
When I last saw Julian Assange he was staying at the country mansion of a supporter, being harrassed by the Forces of Darkness.
And the idiots in the right-wing media...
Then many in the MSM seemed to lose interest in the story. So I had to read the Guardian today to find out how Assange was bullied as a child. And how that may have helped change the course of history.
He would reach a new community he would be ostracised, he would be . . . picked on, he would be bullied and his only real saviour in life or his own bedrock in life was this computer.
And that reminded me of that other Wiki warrior and bullied kid, Bradley Manning.
Who is being tortured in solitary confinement. No matter what the Pentagon says.
To find out if the accusations of Bradley being mistreated by the military are true, The Times asked the military. Not surprisingly, a Quantico spokesman said no. The reason Bradley has been on prevention-of-injury restrictions for almost six months, he explained, is that military medical experts and brig guards recommended it. It would have been nice if The Times had asked specifically about the military psychologist who supposedly cleared him months ago. It would also have been nice to know if anyone has ever been on prevention-of-injury watch, with five minute checks, for months at a time. And lastly, could he confirm that Bradley’s one hour of exercise daily consists of walking figure eights in an empty room?
Which in turn reminded me that if the good guys lose this one it's OVER.
A December 14 subpoena obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice and published by online magazine Salon.com on Friday said the records sought from Twitter were "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."
It ordered Twitter to provide account information on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking Pentagon documents made public last year by WikiLeaks.
For EVERYBODY.
You know it gives more pleasure than you could ever imagine, to think that two bullied kids made the rich and the powerful tremble.
But then I wonder do enough people really care about what's happening to make a difference? Will there be light? Will there be darkness?
David Pitchford, who claims to be a Miami resident but lists an address in a Key West trailer park, filed a $150 million lawsuit against both Wikileaks and Assange for the intentional infliction of emotional distress by the release of documents that "indangered (sic) the PLAINTIFF as well as every person of the United States; and the entire planet."
I'm still hoping for the best. Because only the truth will set us free eh?
But since I live in an idiot world AND Stephen Harper's Canada.
I see the calamitous moron Joe Biden is calling Julian Assange a hi-tech terrorist.
Look, this guy has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world.
After denying that the day before.
In an interview the previous day, he had been more neutral about WikiLeaks, saying: "I don't think there's any substantive damage."
I see that Bradley Manning is being slowly broken by torture.
Under the rules, Private Manning is not allowed to sleep at any time between 5am and 8pm; if he does so, he is made to sit up or stand by the guards. He is allowed just one hour of exercise a day, even then not in the fresh air, but an empty room where he can walk in figures of eight. Any attempt by him to keep himself busy by, for example, doing press-ups, or sit-ups, is forbidden.
The guards have to check every five minutes that Private Manning is ok, and he has to verbally confirm that he is alright. The same checks are continued during the night, and, if the guards cannot see Private Manning because he has pulled a blanket over his head (he is allowed blankets but not sheets or pillows) then they wake him up.
With the same kind of sleep deprivation they used to tortured Omar Khadr at Guantanamo.
So I'm not surprised to see the Bank of America joining the war against Wikileaks.
In a sign of the increasing tensions between WikiLeaks and the corporate world, The Bank of America has said it will no longer help process payments for the organisation, which has threatened to "take down" a major United States bank with another data dump.
Because what is the REAL reason Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are being persecuted, tortured, and treated like terrorists?
Even though all they've done is expose war crimes, and embarrass the rich and the powerful.
Answer: they are being made examples of, for committing the unforgivable, the unspeakable crime of meddling with the primal forces of nature.
Of course that pontificating plutocrat is wrong. The primal forces of nature dictate that those who can't adapt to change are doomed to die and disappear.
The world needs to change if it's going to survive.
If the old men who are torching this planet with their greed and their corruption don't understand that sooner or later they will.
Or there will be peaceful change, or there will be a REVOLUTION.
Julian Assange is the imperfect prophet of a new age.
Bradley Manning is its unlikely martyr.
And my hero.
Honesty and transparency are the primal forces of democracy.
Bradley Manning spent yesterday, his birthday, alone in a tiny, bare prison cell, without a pillow or sheets on his bed, in weak health and wracked with anxiety at the prospect of a prison sentence of 52 years.
David House, a computer programmer who visits Private Manning in prison, said in an interview: “Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing. His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to regulations has affected his physical appearance in a matter which suggests physical weakness.”
So they can get him to say ANYTHING. Just like they did with Omar Khadr. Or slowly kill him.
The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.
Because in its twisting imperial agony the Republic of Fear is capable of ANYTHING. But then so are we now that we have seen that the emperor has no clothes.
Now, we find we are witnessing a new level of info-struggle. We are witnessing how the emperor wears no clothes. We can see the lies made bare, we can see the posturing and propositioning that our governments participate in. We can see the collusion that occurs with transnational corporations and with global media giants. WikiLeaks and others are battling against powerful institutions bent on curtailing our knowledge of and influence over policies and structures that impact our lives: they are information heroes, not information villains. We see all this being done in our name, and we condemn it.
Now it's up to us to defend internet freedom, or risk losing it forever.
As for me, I've seen the future and I like it. I refuse to go back to the darkness.
Julian Assange is a prophet of a new age. Bradley Manning is our martyr.
And, as Broken Social Scene explain in their new video.
As the Wiki Wars continue, I think some things are becoming clear, even in the piggy darkness.
If you publish material that embarrasses the rich and the powerful you will be treated like a terrorist.
Assange has been held in solitary confinement, released from his cell for only one hour a day, and his mail has been heavily censored, according to his supporters.
If you download material that exposes war crimes, you will be tortured.
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch).
And that if you want to download Obama's secrets... in the White House.
As for me I believe in the freedom of the internet so I believe this: Julian Assange and Bradley Manning should have been Time Magazine's Persons of the Year.
Bradley is my hero.
"I want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are.
Because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
If you think the ruling classes are foaming mad at the way Wikileaks has exposed their porky diplomatic secrets. If you think they're screaming squealing for blood now.
Imagine how angry they are going to be when the truth squad goes after big business.
Does Assange have unpublished, damaging documents on pharmaceutical companies? Yes, he says. Finance? Yes, many more than the single bank scandal we’ve been discussing. Energy? Plenty, on everything from BP to an Albanian oil firm that he says attempted to sabotage its competitors’ wells. Like informational IEDs, these damaging revelations can be detonated at will.
And imagine how loudly they are going to squeal, when it dawns on them that this could be the beginning of a digital revolution.
Thanks to the internet, we have come to expect a greater level of knowledge and participation in most areas of our lives. Politics, however, has remained resolutely unreconstructed. Politicians, see themselves as parents to a public they view as children – a public that cannot be trusted with the truth, nor with the real power that knowledge brings.
We are at a pivotal moment where the visionaries at the vanguard of a global digital age are clashing with those who are desperate to control what we know. WikiLeaks is the guerrilla front in a global movement for greater transparency and participation.
Then think what the rich and the powerful might do to try to crush that movement.
This is a revolution, and all revolutions create fear and uncertainty. Will we move to a New Information Enlightenment or will the backlash from those who seek to maintain control no matter the cost lead us to a new totalitarianism?
Or what they might do to the internet.
Yup. The stakes couldn't be higher. This Wiki War is part of a larger struggle.
The backlash will be brutal. But the future is now. Julian Assange is a prophet.
The site is under attack by the shadowy forces of darkness.
The leader of the truth conspiracy, Julian Assange is on the run, wanted by interpol.
So it's good to know that the young soldier who started it all is getting to watch the incredible truth show on television.
The one he's going to pay for with a lifetime in jail.
Manning faces a court martial and up to 52 years in prison for his alleged role in copying the diplomatic cables, as well as the leak of military logs about incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq and a classified military video which showed a crew of an American Apache helicopter gunning down a group of men who they thought had a rocket launcher. They turned out to include Reuters staff with a TV camera.
You know right-wing bloggers have seized on the fact that Bradley Manning is gay, to claim he did what he did to get back at the U.S. military. And have criticized me for calling him a gay hero.
At this point in his selfish and sordid saga of treason, some people are actually lauding this traitor—excuse me, this "alleged" traitor—forbeing a gay hero.
But actually the gay part is only relative. It made him more sensitive to injustice.
Manning could "identify" with Iraqis and Afghans who he believed had suffered as a result of U.S. policies, especially because he himself was a "a member of a minority" treated unfairly by the military, he told AFP.
But I believe he did what he did, because he's an idealist.
"God knows what happens now," he said, having sent the material to WikiLeaks. "Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. If not … than we're doomed as a species. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens. The reaction to the video gave me immense hope … CNN's iReport was overwhelmed … Twitter exploded …"
None of the cables released threaten the lives of anyone. All they have done is embarrass the rich and the powerful who are leading this world to economic, military, and ecological disaster.
And the truth may be blinding. But only it can save us.
For how else could I find out what Benjamin Netanyahu thinks a Palestinian state should look like?
"A Palestinian state must be demilitarized, without control over its air space and electro-magnetic field, and without the power to enter into treaties or control its borders."
Or know that the corrupt Arab rulers are beating the drums of war against Iran to save their autocratic regimes. Or that the former head of CSIS thought the our courts were an inconvenience.
Oh yeah.Bradley Manning isn't a criminal he's a hero.
When a government secretly engages in such consequential activities as aggressive wars justified by at best questionable and at worst fabricated intelligence, covert bombings and assassinations, and diplomatic maneuvering designed to support such global meddling, the people in whose name that government acts – and who could suffer retaliation – have a right to know.
Here's to the Great Truth Conspiracy.
And because every post in the dreary month of November should end with a song.
As I watch the torrent of Wikileak material pouring out of the darkness and into the light, I can't get one image out of my mind.
The image of the young soldier Bradley Manning, downloading the classified information, while listening to Lady Gaga.
"I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history."
And then there's the story of why he decided to do what he did.
After arriving in Iraq the young soldier, who is gay, complained of feeling socially "isolated" in the military.
As he spent his time looking through classified information for up to 14 hours a day, he is believed to have become increasingly disillusioned by US foreign policy, once describing "military intelligence" as an "oxymoron".
How it all began when he was ordered to look the other way in the face of injustice.
“Everything started slipping after that. I saw things differently. I had always questioned the [way] things worked, and investigated to find the truth. But that was a point where I was a part of something. I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.”
And how it all caught up with him.
“I’m isolated as fuck. My life is falling apart, and I don’t have anyone to talk to.”
You know I don't think I'm brave enough to do what that young gay soldier did. I can't even imagine being caged like an animal, when I love freedom so much. And I find the cyber-world scary enough.
But I sure admire him for finding that courage. Because I'm tired of looking on helplessly while old men play games, and lie and cheat, even as the planet burns. And I believe the truth will set us FREE.
Just like the young soldier who set the truth free does.
"I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are. Because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
Except that for him there will be no freedom. He's been held in solitary isolation for seven months, and faces a fifty-year prison sentence.
They told him to look away and lie. They told him don't ask don't tell. But he took the truth out of the darkness and told the whole world.
