#BecauseofBradleyManning We Know Truth Telling Is Dangerous #FreeBrad

The U.S. government and its corporate masters lashed out (again) at young soldier Bradley Manning today, with court martial Judge Denise Lind handing down a sentence of 35 years. He's already been detained for 1,294 days, and tormented plenty, but none of his punishment can change the fact that the information Manning provided changed history forever.

Keeping Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under house arrest at Ecuador's embassy in London will not halt the changes already underway. Information wants to be free, and Assange already helped Manning free a lot of it; historians thank them both.

Similarly, hours of airport detention of journalist Laura Poitras or of David Miranda, working as a courier between Poirtras and his partner, journalist Glenn Greenwald, cannot change the fact that the information they shared from NSA leaker Edward Snowden has changed history.

And will continue to do so.

Governments may fulminate, threaten, and symbolically smash hard drives containing leaked material (do they even know how digital information works? one has to wonder). They may ground airplanes hoping the faint of heart will cower before them, but real journalists respond by becoming even more determined to see that the truth gets out.

"I believe the public has a right to know"
—Alexa O'Brien, journalist and unofficial civilian transcriber of the Bradley Manning trial

Here's something to know: NSA surveillance now in place can monitor about 75% of all Internet activity, as reported by mainstream news organization Reuters here.

Here's something else to know: the NSA is funded from the Pentagon budget, which gobbled up about 57% of the federal budget for 2013 and looks to do the same for 2014.

A place governments historically run into trouble is that they don't believe the public has a right to know, but they still insist that the public pay for what they can't know about. Like war crimes and dragnet spying, to give just two examples.

Tax revolt anyone?

Source: http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/upload/5385/images/manningmm.jpg

Update: Manning has since admitted that he leaked the Collateral Murder video of war crimes in Iraq.

Bradley Manning Is A Moral Giant

Credit for all photos of Manning: Bradley Manning Support Network / 

Made available for unrestricted use by Manning family

Bradley Manning's apology during the sentencing portion of his court martial trial for whistleblowing had a shocking effect on many. Because they have championed Manning for releasing evidence of war crimes and U.S. State Dept. complicity in corporate government, many activists were disappointed in his stating that he was sorry, and that he now regrets the unintended consequences of his leaking actions.

When I hear this, I wonder if he perhaps means unintended consequences like a month in a cage in Kuwait, ten months in solitary confinement in the Marine brig at Quantico, Virginia, or perhaps being on trial with the possibility of a life sentence just for sharing information.

Other commenters have noted that 90 years in jail would cause many of us to recant.

I would like to note that Manning chose to testify as an unsworn witness. This prevented the prosecution from cross-examining him, and also means (I think) that he did not swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. Remember crossing your fingers behind your back when you were coerced into saying something you didn't want to say as a child? This is what I would like to believe Manning was doing.

Another thing that many found shocking was his own defense team's decision to share a photo of Manning coiffed and made up as a pretty woman, attached to an email he sent to his superior in the Army with the subject line "My Problem." The attempt by prosecutors to portray Manning as a person deeply troubled by gender identity issues, and thus unstable, appears to have been adopted by the defense during the sentencing portion of this trial. (Of course much of what the prosecution has alleged has been kept ultra-secret from the public, who only pays for every penny of all the war crimes, court martial trials, confinement and so on.)

The defense introduced this material to make the point that Manning had tried going through the proper channels to get help for his isolated, stressed position in the ultra-macho atmosphere of the U.S. Army during the occupation of Iraq. His commanding officer says he never forwarded the email or shared Manning's concerns up the chain of command because of his concern that the photo would be shared widely and that Manning's life there would become even more miserable. This sounds humane, and may well have been humane, but it also had the effect of keeping Manning in his job as an information analyst during a period of extreme emotional duress. And it is in that context, apparently, that the defense hopes Judge Lind will view Manning's actions.

David Coombs is considered the pre-eminent court martial defense attorney in the U.S., and I sincerely hope that he knows what he is doing.

There was something during the sentencing trial that did shock me. It also hurt me so badly that I just laid my head down on the kitchen table at 6am and had a good cry.

Manning's older sister testified about their childhood growing up with parents who were both alcoholics. She said that their mother drank constantly while pregnant with her little brother, and that he was neglected and underfed as an infant. This seems to explain Manning's extremely small size, which often appears in stark relief as he is swarmed by the enormous beefy soldiers tasked with guarding him.

I am the adult child of an alcoholic parent, and have watched members of my family drink themselves to death. I also continue to live with and cry over the generational effects of alcohol addiction and other forms of substance abuse in my extended family. It is not a pretty sight, and the littlest members -- the ones who haven't started drinking yet and who I fervently hope won't fall prey to the family illness -- are who I thought of when I learned the ugly truth about Manning's earliest years.

I will stand on a different bridge than usual this Sunday, speaking up for peace and against war with Starr Cutler-Gilmartin and her friends. I will wear my Bradley Manning support t-shirt, and I will be thinking about Manning's sentence which will probably be handed down in a couple of days from now. I have stood to support Manning outside Quantico, outside the White House, outside Leavenworth prison in Kansas; I have read the accounts of people like Medea Benjamin and David Swanson who went to the courtroom at Ft. Meade to hear Manning's statement last week. I read reporters Alexa O'Brien and Kevin Gosztola often, because they have so faithfully covered the trial of Bradley Manning.

Manning will always be a towering figure in my mind, a person of great moral stature who dared to strike a blow for truth in the hope of making a better world for us all. Although I will probably never meet him, I send him love every day.

After he is sentenced, I will be in the streets protesting his spending even one more day in jail for his actions. Click here to find a demonstration near you.

#FreeBrad Hall Of Shame: Lamo, Obama, Choike, Lind, Showman, et al.

“We are a nation of laws.  We don’t let individuals make decisions about how the law operates.  He[Bradley Manning] broke the law!” – President Obama

The rogues' gallery of those eager to participate in the persecution of whistleblower Bradley Manning will go down in infamy.

Source: http://www.indyposted.com/195764/hacker-responsible-for-reporting-bradley-manning-to-authorities-takes-stand-in-court-martial/

Adrian Lamo, the Über lame snitch who seized his 15 minutes of fame by ratting out a young soldier in Iraq who was troubled by conscience, made an early appearance in Manning's court martial trial.  Alleged chats between the two men had been circulating for years by then, and Lamo had given interviews gloating over the power he wielded after the naive Manning misplaced trust in an online friend. His appearance in court did nothing to change the impression of Lamo as someone incapable of experiencing remorse.

Credit: Courtroom artist Deb VanPoolen, bradleymanning.org

Col. Denise Lind, the judge presiding over the court martial, has cooperated with the government so well that historians will search in vain for evidence of blind, impartial justice being applied in the case. Her ultimate boss, the commander-in-chief, stated publicly years ago of Manning, "He broke the law," so that whichever judge was chosen to preside would have gone into the case with the clear understanding that President Obama expected a guilty verdict.

Presumably someone further down the chain of command gave Lind orders to read out the charges against Manning so rapidly that reporters were unable transcribe them accurately during the pre-trial hearings. And, the same government that came into office bragging about how transparent they would be also declined to produce a written transcript of the legal proceedings. (Crowd funding hired a stenographer for the people after that shameful display of bias, and full transcripts are available to us here.)

Lind denied many of the witnesses Manning's defense team wished to call. As the trial progressed, it became evident that the prosecution had a rather weak case -- which probably accounted for the 3+ year delay in bringing the court martial to trial, in clear violation of the military's own code of law which stipulates 120 days. No one could find the acceptable use policy allegedly signed and violated by Manning, and at least in public no one could demonstrate that any of the low classified or unclassified information Manning admits providing to Wikileaks caused harm to anyone. The prosecution was allowed to make the argument that Manning aided the enemy because he knew the information he shared would be available on the Internet -- and "Al Qaeda" uses the internet. Wow. The U.S. government would deserve to lose a 6th grade debate contest using that kind of logic.

Jihrleah Showman testifies by Clark Stoeckley @Wikileaks truck

Then, last week, at the 11th hour in the court martial trial and after the defense had rested its case, Judge  Lind allowed the prosecution to bring a witness in rebuttal who had suddenly "remembered" Manning making anti-American statements. From bradleymanning.org via the website Popular Resistance:

In a cynical move, the government prosecution recalled former Specialist Jihrleah Showman, a supervisor against whom Manning had filed an Equal Opportunity complaint. Following Manning’s complaint, Showman was admonished for her use of homophobic language in conversation and workplace signage. In the years since, she has vied for media appearances, augmented by her own vitriolic Tweets, attacking Manning as well as his supporters. Now, at the eleventh hour, she claims to recall a conversation with the 25-year-old army private in which he allegedly shared anti-American opinions. 

According to the defense, Ms. Showman is lending an intentional and inaccurate spin to comments Manning made regarding his refusal to follow any authority blindly as an “automaton” (in Manning’s own words) so that they conform to the prosecution’s characterization of someone disloyal to the United States. 

No other witness from the prosecution or defense ever testified that Manning harbored any anti-American sentiments, including Ms. Showman herself during previous trips to the stand in this case. In fact, several witnesses offered just the opposite.

And while we're constructing this hall of shame, let's not forget the corporate "news" outlets that spurned Manning when he tried to share the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs files prior to contacting Wikileaks. For shame, New York Times. For shame, Washington Post. For shame, Politico. You all only jumped on the publishing bandwagon after Wikileaks had stuck its neck out (and Julian Assange has been hounded ever since, residing today under virtual house arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he continues to do good work).

Ret. Col. Daniel Choike, Quantico Brig commander when Manning was imprisoned there (Sketch by Clark Stoeckley)

Manning's pre-trial detention produced many a shameful episode as well: being caged outdoors in the desert in Kuwait for several days, a place Manning felt sure he would die. Then nine months of solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia where the ghosts of Jefferson and Madison might well have cringed to see a young soldier standing naked at attention outside his cell -- allegedly to prevent him from suicide. Many of those responsible remain nameless -- but they know who they are.

Ditto the man or woman who denied UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez an interview with Manning. (Mendez was also denied an opportunity to testify in Manning's trial as a witness for the defense.)

I leave you with Manning's immortal words:

We are all human and we are killing ourselves and no one seems to care.