#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.

Proud To Serve In "The Networked 4th Estate" #FreeBrad

T-shirt purchase supports coverage of Manning's trial. Purchase it here.

Expert testimony in the historic trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning laid out the case for the existence of a new model of a free press this week. Professor Yochai Benkler of Harvard explained:

"the networked Fourth Estate, the set of practices, organizing models technologies, that together come to fill the role that in the 20th Century we associated with the free press. Essentially, the cluster...of the Fourth Estate is the way in which the press provides a public check on the three classes of branches of government. The networked Fourth Estate is essentially the cluster of practices and technologies and organizations that fill that role in the 21st model of network information production.”

Kevin Gosztola's fine reporting on the trial via the blog Firedoglake went on to quote this exchange between Judge Lind and Prof. Benkler:

LIND: Am I understanding you correctly in saying that you're basically looking at, you know, in the last century traditional new media and the way people got news was through newspapers. Before that, I don't know, a telegram or something like that or a cable. As technology evolved, now you're getting more people on the internet that are sharing things? 

BENKLER: That's at the core of it.

This relates to what has become a perennial topic of conversation among activists and organizers everywhere, especially since Obama took office: What's with the widespread apathy in the face of climate crisis, endless war, and the burgeoning police state?

Photo credit: Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch / Edward Snowden and human rights activists meeting July 12, 2013  at the transit center of a Moscow airport where whistleblower Snowden awaits safe passage to asylum in a yet to be determined South American nation.

A Codepink associate just back from a liberal academic summer experience told me that she brought up the latest news on Edward Snowden's quest for asylum at breakfast, only to be met with blank stares and a change of topic to the weather prospects for the day. Her reaction: Isn't anyone paying attention? What's with the self-induced ignorance?

In an article this week in Common Dreams Richard Eskow asked "Where the hell is the outrage?" citing the disintegration of anything resembling the middle class "American dream" amid widespread apathy on the part of those affected.

The dearth of real information that results from believing that NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and "the Journal" (i.e. WSJ) are providing all the news that's fit to print is invisible -- but deadly. You might as well watch only ESPN and feel that you were well-informed (as many, in fact, do).

Photo credit: http://briansphirstblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/sticking-with-it.html

Why do educated, online liberals and so-called progressives avoid the networked Fourth Estate and the information to be gathered there? Various reasons, with the most significant likely being the inertia and comfort of those still enjoying fruits during the sunset period of unregulated capitalism.

Social networking sites are shunned for various reasons. One is because they enable much of the NSA's surveillance of citizens. Venezuela's Prisons Minister Iris Varela was reported as tweeting this week:

Comrades: cancel your Facebook accounts, you've been working for free as CIA informants. Review the Edmund Snowden case!

Another may be generational. Baby boomers just aren't netizens; many don't feel comfortable using their social networks to gather, filter and analyze information. They don't learn to tweet, and they use facebook for connecting with childhood classmates, and sharing cute pix of the grandkids. Never mind tumblr, vine, reddit, and so on ad nauseum. Too strange, and too overwhelming.

My hunch, though, is that the biggest reason is: if you know about gigantic problems like the U.S./NATO military-industrial-educational-security complex, you'll have to do something about it.

I was part of a panel at the University of Southern Maine last night about the constitutional dangers of the surveillance state. Rachel Myers Healy of the ACLU shared the three-pronged attack on the monitoring of calls by the NSA in cooperation with the telecom giant Verizon, and one thing I learned from her remarks is that attorney-client communications are not privileged or private. Verizon users mounting an effective defense against prosecution by the U.S. government under these conditions is likely to be difficult.

A member of the audience suggested that corporate espionage for commercial gains was likely a major goal of the sweeping NSA surveillance revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, unfolding as we speak. Another presenter, Eric Hooglund, reminded us that only eight members of Congress were informed of the existence of the secret FISA court that supposedly oversees (but really just rubber stamps) government surveillance. Reminder to self: find out the names and twitter usernames of those eight people.

A final question from the audience at my event: if we could do only one thing to resist drone enabled and other forms of surveillance in Maine, what would that thing be?

My answer: be an information worker. My role on the panel was sharing examples (e.g. video here and photos here) of the beautiful resistance to life under drones.

In my small way, I am a willing receiver and contributor in the networked fourth estate. I will use the Internet, my monitored Gmail account, my surveilled Facebook pages, and my twitter and tumblr accounts, until the day they shut them down.

Now, I'm off to feed my carrier pigeons...

@CODEPINK Associates Hot Summer Of Actions

Photo posted by Nancy Mancias July 2, 2013: #BARTstrike workers & #nurses join #socialsecurity march to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office 

Summer is underway and CODEPINK associates are busting out all over with actions challenging the status quo of drone strikes, wars/occupations, illegal detentions at Guantanamo, and austerity cuts to crucial programs for vulnerable populations so the Pentagon can continue to gobble up 57% of the federal budget.

Co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans along with Tighe Barry, Ann Wright and other allies visited Yemen in June to meet with families affected by drone strikes and Guantanamo indefinite detentions. Here's Medea explaining some of what she heard in Yemen, speaking in an interview with Dennis Trainor:

Support for whistleblower Bradley Manning was strong as CODEPINK Bay Area joined thousands of other supporters to march in San Francisco's Pride Parade 2013. Because Manning was removed as a Grand Marshall despite having been democratically selected for the honor, this was a perfect venue to support Manning during his court martial trial for providing evidence of war crimes to all of us via Wikileaks. Here are some of Manning's rocking Pink supporters in SF:

In Maine our most recent action on the streets in Portland called for a ceasefire to end the tragic levels of bloodshed in Syria and for the U.S. to abandon plans to send weapons there.

Local artist William Hessian designed and printed recycled t-shirts for CODEPINK Maine with a drone on the front and "One Nation Under Drones" on the back.  We'll be wearing them again on 4th of July when we march in Bath with a giant drone puppet and wearing our surveillance eyeballs. Maine recently passed a bill requiring law enforcement to obtain warrants before using drones to gather information -- but allowing military drones to be tested in Vacationland. Bad idea!

CODEPINK NYC is hot on the trail of Stolen Beauty with the call to boycott cosmetic products by Ahava, made from mud pillaged in settlements near the Dead Sea in occupied Palestine. Their petition to the department store chain Nordstrom to stop carrying products made illegally hopes to gather 5,000 signatures. Click here to sign the Causes petition or, if you are not on Facebook, you can sign the letter here instead.

A most inspiring ongoing action, pictured above, is the eloquent demand for justice at Guantanamo taking place regularly at the White House. Especially of note: Diane Wilson has been fasting since early May in solidarity with hunger strikers protesting inhumane conditions at the notorious prison where innocent men cleared for release are kept in limbo for years at a time. When Diane's weeks of fasting didn't get the attention of the President, who has the ability to release prisoners and even shut down Guantanamo, she hopped the fence. Diane and Medea and others were then arrested.

Here's Medea being slammed to the pavement by police on the sidewalk in front of the White House after protesters were told to clear the area and she paused to help another hunger striker who was having trouble walking:

It occurred to me that police might have been angered by the street theater enactment of forced feeding a la Gitmo, as shown here by Tighe Barry and a CODEPINK "prisoner":



As I watched this I reflected on news today that hunger strikers being held in Cuba would be force fed only after dark as they are Muslims observing Ramadan. Even George Orwell could not forsee this criminal absurdity.

Hot summer of actions ahead! Click here to find Codepink associates in your area.

Might Makes Right vs. Democracy

Source: Tweet June 4, 2013 by grinch1969 MARJİNAL ÇAPULCU #EylemVakti TURKISH police are erasing their id numbers on their helmets before torture citizens pic.twitter.com/h8j4Bln2EE

In a democracy, the police and military are public servants. Their actions are accountable -- to be monitored and reviewed by those who pay their wages. To further this accountability system, they are required to wear identification on their uniforms as they perform public duties.

When state violence is turned against the people, what happens to those systems of accountability?

First, identifying marks are erased so that citizens have no way to identify the individual police or soldiers harming them.

Second, watchdogs, whistleblowers and journalists are especially targeted for repression and brutality.

Third, official lies are broadcast 24/7. One of my favorite tweets from June 2 as Taksim Square was being raided violently by Turkish police:

Gokce Piskin ‏@gokcepiskin
If millions are uprising but TV channels are broadcasting only Erdoğan, something's are wrong. Seriously wrong. #occupygezi #turkishspring

Fourth, communication channels used by the people are shut down: cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, even the entire Internet. It's a bit of a last resort, because it often backfires as those angered by feeling the heavy hand of repression on their own information feed spill into the streets, swelling the numbers of those protesting.

Source: Tweet on June 4, 2013 by NameDerRose Melikeall Arınç says that the government can shut the Internet down in a second! #Anonymous #opturkey #EylemVakti pic.twitter.com/bFKcg8kgBt

And if, like the Erdogan government, you've already got this kind of mass mobilization rising

Source: Spanish Revolution blog "June 1. The people crossing the Bosphorus at dawn. Photos via occupygezipics.tumblr.com"

you're in deep doo-doo. Even before the Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK) calls a two-day solidarity strike citing "state terror implemented against entirely peaceful protests...continuing in a way that threatens civilians' life safety." The translation of today's trending hashtag #EylemVakti is "time for action."

It must be hard for ruling systems posing as democracies to know when to keep holding on to the illusion, maybe by having violent militias that appear to be acting independently do some of the regulating and terrorizing for you, at the risk of not being able to rein them in later. How do they decide when the time has come to stop pretending to be a democracy that fewer people each day can bring themselves to believe in?

From Agence France-Presse:

Erdogan has dismissed the protestors as “vandals” stressing that he had been democratically elected..."for me, democracy comes from the ballot box,” he said.

What's not difficult for repressive governments posing as democracies is knowing that truth must be suppressed as effectively -- and quietly -- as possible.

source: Salon.com article about the infamous Collateral Murder video which Bradley Manning admits he leaked.

Shout out today to epic leaker Bradley Manning, whose court martial trial enters its second day following 1,100 days of pre-trial detention with barely a whisper of corporate press attention. Press Freedom Foundation has published the first rush transcript made by a crowd-funded court stenographer denied access to the courtroom, and housed in a location with an audio feed that cuts in and out.

Watchdogs like the Center for Constitutional Rights keep pressing for more transparency in Manning's historic trial.

And the lies just keep rolling on...

Bradley Manning, Global Citizen, And The Thirst For Truth

Portland, Maine Jnne 1, 2013

This weekend rallies across the planet marked the beginning of the court martial trial of global citizen-soldier Bradley Manning, who leaked the truth via Wikileaks about a multitude of war crimes and dirty dealings by the U.S. government.

In Maryland outside Ft. Meade where Manning's trial will take place, around two thousand people gathered to hear speakers like retired Army officer Ann Wright who resigned from the State Dept. when the U.S. invaded Iraq. A global citizen, she has just returned from peacefully meeting with women in China and Ireland among other places. Ann said that in every country she found Bradley Manning support groups. Rather than seeing Americans only as warmongers, they also want to see Americans as like Bradley Manning:

whistleblowers, the people that tell the truth...the people that hold the government accountable... (he) has stood for more honesty and justice in our country than the senior leadership of this whole country.

Source: Bradley Manning Support Network -- March in Ft Meade, Maryland June 1, 2013

In Portland, CODEPINK Maine chapters staged political theater in Congress Square Park. An Obama  character jailed multiple Bradley Mannings, and silenced them by taping their mouths shut. Later, the president was placed under citizen's arrest and put in jail for war crimes at Guantanamo, with drones, and against whistleblowers like Manning.



Jon Gaither of the ACLU of Maine provided an overview of the legal implications of Bradley Manning's arrest and treatment to date in violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Kara Oster of Occupy Portland Maine spoke about the value of truth and free speech in a democracy, and how hard it is for us to speak truly in today's society. I read the anti-war statement I had seen Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW) spokesperson Stephen Funk give in response to the San Francisco Pride Parade director removing Bradley Manning as a Grand Marshall of the SF Pride Parade. Later, my Codepink associate Janet Weil told me that IVAW member Funk was the first Marine to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq.

Activists in Portland, Maine prepare signs for a rally on June 1, 2013 while a livestream broadcast from Istanbul's protests plays in the background.

Street theater in Portland, Maine June 1, 2013

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers thanked Bradley Manning and Wikileaks earlier this week for having the courage to tell the truth about U.S. actions in Afghanistan. As reported by Kathy Kelly:

I often hear Afghan individuals and groups express longing for a far more democratic process than is allowed them in a country dominated by warlords, the U.S./NATO militaries, and their commanders.  In the U.S., a lack of crucial information increasingly threatens democratic processes. How can people make informed choices if their leaders deliberately withhold crucial information from them?  Manning’s disclosures have brought desperately needed light to the U.S. and to countries around the world, including struggling countries like Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Press Freedom Foundation raised funds to pay for a court stenographer "for the people" as the U.S. government declines to release a transcript, and the military judge speaks so rapidly as to defy accurate reporting. (A clandestine audio recording of Manning's only public statement in three years may be found here.) The judge has ruled that twenty-three of the government's witnesses may testify in secret.

The majority of applications for press credentials to attend Bradley Manning's trial have been denied. As reported by Scott Galindez and Mark Ash of Reader Supported News, one of the press organizations being denied access:

According to the Army, 350 reporters applied for credentials to the trial of Bradley Manning. Fewer than 100 received credentials, meaning over 250 were denied. Reader Supported News was one of the publications denied. The Army in its notification of denial said, "The U.S. Army Military District of Washington made every effort to ensure a variety of media were credentialed to provide the public (local, national, international) a continuous news feed of the legal proceedings." However the criteria for approval remains vague at best.

Get The Word Out: #Drones Kill, Generate Terrorists

Source: Carter F. McCall | Bangor Daily News

Lisa Savage gives a presentation on "wielding the mighty pen to make the world a better place." She used her protest of the United States military's use of drone warfare as an example. Hope Festival attendees were asked to write down one thing they will do to make the world a more peaceful, sustainable place and encourage to give presentations on what they wrote.

Maine's newest senator Angus King was reached by Yemeni writer Farea Al-Muslimi's testimony in the historic public hearings on drones this week. King reportedly said in an interview with Kathleen Hunter of Bloomberg:

By using armed drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas, the U.S. runs the risk of generating more terrorists, King said. 

“That’s the dilemma,” he said. “I saw a story last night of a guy from Yemen who basically said the drones radicalized his village, and they were always pro-American. That’s a tough call because the drone program has been very effective in essentially decimating al-Qaida.”

It's not a tough call because the contradiction he identifies -- that drones both "generate" and "decimate" terrorists -- exists mostly for people who believe Pentagon briefings tell the truth about al-Qaida and other aspects of the endless "war on terror." And Angus did not even dignify Farea with a name. But at least he listened to the testimony and spoke out about it to a journalist.

The 19th annual HOPE festival was yesterday. This event is organized by the vibrant community presence, the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine. It's a chance to get together with people you know and new people, especially college students. A woman I used to teach with turned up as the mother of Eric, one of the leading lights of the University of Maine at Orono on campus Peace Action group, and the friend of another young organizer, Shannon Brenner, with whom I shared the podium.

While tabling we got a lot of signatures on the Free Bradley Manning petition also, and that was even before my speech about how we all need to be information workers now, and my shout out to Bradley and the information he shared with us all. Farea Al-Muslimi is in the same category as I place myself, Bradley Manning, and many readers of this blog: information worker.

Earlier in the day, a young woman who came to the CODEPINK table asked if we knew of any resources like books on "how to talk to military wives." She was an ex-military wife herself and she said it was hard to find the words to share an anti-war perspective from within that "brainwashed" world. 

Her current male friend, a National Guard member, agreed. "I don't believe in war but I needed the paycheck and I didn't think the Guard would be fighting other countries, " he explained.

Does anyone know of books, websites, articles that I might share with this woman? If so, please respond in a comment and I will pass it along.

I'm not going to go into an analysis of how this "brainwashing" works because I find it too dispiriting. Suffice it to say that I cringe when my nieces and great-nieces share sentimental dreck on facebook like photos of young boys in camo saluting combat veterans in an airport with the giant word GRATITUDE underneath. 

The young women doing the posting are not even in military families. They are just drinking the brand USA Koolaid from the always overflowing propaganda fountains.

That is why our job as information workers is critically important in the 21st century. You keep it up and I will, too.

Information Wants To Be Free And So Do Whistleblowers

White House Press Secretary turned journalist says he was instructed not to acknowledge any drone program even if questioned about it during press conferences. Robert Gibbs reportedly described this communications strategy as "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" and further added

the White House's denial of the program "when it’s obviously happening, undermines people’s confidence overall in the decisions that their government makes."

The White House has refused thus far to release the legal memos they use to justify extrajudicial assassination. Apparently the fact that your taxes pay the salary of everyone in the White House, in the CIA, at the drone bases, and the special folks who prepare the "kill list" for Tuesday review doesn't buy you a right to significant information.

Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy believes the public has the right to know and has called on the Senate to conduct hearings where information could be brought to light:

The Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to do oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the CIA is conducting drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and since this is a controversial policy, the Senate Intelligence Committee should be doing oversight of that. 

But, as the Los Angeles Times recently noted, the Senate Intelligence Committee has never held a public hearing on CIA drone strikes. Indeed, for the year prior to the recent confirmation hearing of John Brennan to head the CIA, it never held a public hearing at all. 

Following Brennan's confirmation hearing, Politico reported that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was unaware of reports that U.S. officials assumed any male of fighting age killed in a strike was a combatant — a method likely to undercount the number of civilian deaths.

On the other side of the coin, what happens to those who dare to share the truth of what our government is up to?  CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou just began a 30 month prison sentence for his leaks about torture. Coverage by Democracy Now! notes the irony that Krirakou never tortured anyone, while those who did torture are not being sent to prison. Information sharing genius Aaron Swartz was hounded to death by prosecutors for merely giving folks access to academic journals, and Julian Assange has been in asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for months now rather than face extradition to the U.S. for Wikileaks' participation in sharing a wealth of information with the general public. 

Assange is justified in seeking to remain beyond the grasp of the U.S. government -- his most famous accomplice in the quest to bring some information about U.S. government doings into the light of day, Bradley Manning, has been incarcerated for 1,000 days and has yet to be brought to trial.

U.S. Army personnel shooting from a helicopter at a van rescuing injured civilians. (From the "Collateral Murder" video which is probably Manning's most famous leak.)

Again I must note the irony that Manning's crime is sharing information about acts of violence, such as military attacks on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan -- yet he himself has done nothing violent.

Two t.v. news channels showed up in Portland, Maine on February 23 to record a rally organized by CODEPINK Maine marking Bradley's 1,000th day in jail. But the editors at both stations must have killed the story, because in the end all you get is my amateurish video. (Apologies to Occupy Maine's attorney John Branson for accidentally unsynching his audio -- what he had to say is well worth hearing.) 

Bellows looks on as Bradley Manning supporters sign a petition calling for his release. You can sign it online.

MCLU director Shenna Bellows also spoke about the implications for all of us of the trampling of our rights under the Constitution -- something that the president and members of the Senate swore to uphold when they assumed office, and something which the people of Maine have the right to know about. But corporate media do the bidding of those in power, and the people must become information workers on their own behalf if they wish to know what is done in their name by their government.



My CODEPINK associate Pat Taub distributed flyers in downtown Portland in advance of the rally. She said that every single person she encountered while asking in shops if she could post a flyer -- had never heard of Bradley Manning. (Go ahead, try it yourself. Search for Portland, Maine t.v. mentions of Bradley Manning. After all, he only shared the information that helped start the "Arab Spring" and Occupy Wall St. and...)

Fiscally Responsible Idea Of The Week: #FreeBrad

My CODEPINK sister Janet Weil Sunday, December 9, 2012, San Francisco. I carried a Free Bradley Manning sign at my bridge vigil yesterday, too, in Skowhegan, Maine.

Imagine if you added up the cost of all the un-Constitutional activities Bradley Manning leaked word of via Wikileaks. If you had the time and the smarts to quantify every helicopter sortie that shot up kids in a van -- the cost of the soldiers' pay, the fuel for the helicopter, the bullets -- and every creepy diplomatic encounter where the U.S. urged a client government to crack down on dissent -- the airfare, the State Dept. salary, the baksheesh, the tear gas pledged -- what would it add up to? In dollars and cents, I mean. Then, ok, go ahead and quantify the cost of all the pollution for the plane trips, bombings, depleted uranium dustings, trucking supplies through the Khyber Pass to conduct war to protect supply lines for fossil fuels. Roll all of it into one great big price tag. What would the price be? Would it equal the federal budget deficit, or exceed it?

Now take that number and add to it the cost of keeping Bradley Manning incarcerated for more than 900 days, first in a tiger cage in Kuwait where he passed out from heat exposure and was completely convinced he would die right there; next at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia where he was kept in solitary confinement for nine months and woken up constantly by guards drawing a paycheck from the U.S. taxpayer, and where the biggest phalanx of every kind of cop imaginable shut down the public highway and arrested a bunch of peacenik grandparents for holding a vigil outside the gates for him; and now at the maximum security prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Factor in the cost of flying Manning and his guards back and forth to Ft. Meade in Maryland for his pre-trial hearings. Factor in the whole cost of court martialing Manning for sharing information that was, in some cases, not even classified (his most famous leak, video of Apache helicopter soldiers shooting civilians in Baghdad, was not classified at all). Add it all up.

What would be the point?

My point is that the bottom line of all the economic-speak and legislative-speak around fiscal cliffs and sequestration and discretionary v. mandatory expenditures and entitlements is what they are meant to obfuscate: a budget is a moral document.

We all spend our money on what we value.

An addict spends his money on the drugs to stay high and/or ward off withdrawal symptoms.

The U.S. government spends our money on bombs and drones and stealing other people's land (and airspace) and advertising itself to youth as a job opportunity. On the designed-to-be-endless war on terror.

Obama's next budget, if Congress enacts it. Source: NationalPriorities.org

Your personal budget or that of your family is probably spent primarily on housing, food, heat and electricity, potable water and disposal of sewage and garbage. If you spent as much of your income on weapons as your government does, you'd probably end up eating Ramen noodles several nights a week for supper.

Austerity, here we come.

What to do? Call Congress, Occupy, communicate with your neighbors about the problem, and the need to bring our war dollars home. Write letters to the editor and reach lots of them at the same time. And, if you're anywhere near Maine next weekend, come join a diverse group of concerned citizens to brainstorm more ideas for action December 15, 2012 in Augusta. I'll see you there.

Nine Months In Solitary. You Try It. #FreeBrad

 T-shirts benefit Firedoglake, not the Manning defense fund. But how cool is this graphic?

Soon, Bradley Manning will testify at his court martial pre-trial hearing for giving Wikileaks info about how our government and its military operate. I can't wait!

It will be the first time he has spoken in public about his situation, unless you count his recent admission that he was the source of the information provided to Wikileaks. Info published by mainstream news outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times though you don't see any of them in 900+ days of detention without a trial and no editors got put in nine months of solitary confinement at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia.

Quantico is the place I witnessed what seems now to be foreshadowing of the large scale military style response to fairly small crowds of non-violent protestors. It mirrored the out of proportion violence being done to a young intelligence officer who followed his conscience and dared to defy authority.

The government is hard pressed to prove that what Manning did harmed anyone, but he has been brutally treated just the same. A portent of what the response would be in cities across the continent when Occupy broke out. OWS sign: "If banking regulations were enforced like camping laws in this country, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in."

In March 2011 when we stood outside Quantico when Bradley was being detained in the worst conditions -- sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and other humiliation tactics. This was before they moved him to Leavenworth. While he faced the demons inside the facility, his supporters outside faced scores of the following: military police, state police, town police, county sheriffs, mounted police, K-9 police, riot squad police, and commandos in cammo with automatic weapons. We were outside the gates of the base and at one point officers shut down the major road that we were standing along side in an open field, a couple hundred of us, with our signs. Then they kettled us into the now closed street using metal barricades. In an act of civil disobedience retired Col. Ann Wright sat down in the road and, according to his own account, Dan Ellsberg was then inspired to sit down with her. Then others joined in. Last I saw of her that day, riot police with shields were wrenching her arm as she did not get up quickly enough when they told her to get up.

Now the action has moved to Ft. Meade where the pre-trial hearings have been going on. Today's update for Nov. 27, 2012 from the website BradleyManning.org:

At this extremely important hearing, Bradley’s lawyer David Coombs will focus on the abuse Bradley endured in Quantico, VA. It is now well-known that Bradley was held for nine months in solitary confinement, in conditions that were declared by UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez to be “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” David Coombs will present evidence that brig psychiatrists opposed the decision to hold Bradley in solitary, and that brig commanders misled the public when they said that Bradley’s treatment was for “Prevention of Injury”. 

I am looking forward to hearing what Brad has to say in court. He is the most significant political prisoner in the U.S. of our time. He has been in jail for years for sharing mildly classified information, even though war criminals who have waged genocide walk free.

A cool holiday gift that communicates. Note: T-shirts benefit Firedoglake, not the Manning defense fund.