Please listen to a truly great military hero, Bradley Manning. He has been kept in abusive solitary confinement for a very long time now. He is plainly unbowed and undiminished.
There is another great hero out there too – the whistleblower who leaked the audio recording. Freedom fighters pop up everywhere – that is the great joy of being human.
Mmmm! Lovely smell of fresh air and no need to speed scroll through troll feed.
I agree with you Craig.
Wonder what the new Pope’s position is on the Falkand Islands…
Will listen to Manning tape. Thanks for posting.
Oops Falkland Islands
Oops Malvinas.
I often wonder if Bradley Manning is the bravest man in the US military.
Thanks Craig for posting this. I am going to listen to the recording later on.
I read about it on Medialens. The thread there starts…
Glen Greenwald’s Guardian piece on Bradley Manning’s statement.
Posted by Lala on March 13, 2013, 3:01 am
The most powerful piece I have ever read in the Guardian. To hear Bradley Manning’s voice, a young man courageously confronting a global super power – it can resonate throughout the world and inspire.
I cried.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/12/bradley-manning-tapes-own-words
Responses
Excuse my typos… it’s late and my brain-engine is running on fumes! NM – Lala Today, 3:04 am
Here is the Ellesburg OpEd in Huff Post Greenwald refers to in his article – MikeD Today, 8:26 am
Re: Here is the Ellesburg OpEd in Huff Post Greenwald refers to in his article – Gloriousrevolution Today, 9:40 am
Hmmm-no reply from Glenn to my comment under his article where I ask – emersberger Today, 11:42 am
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1363143671.html
Yes Craig – thanks from me too – great stuff. Just get fully fir quickly. Agree Guano – nice not to have to go through the motions!
From GG;
“Yesterday, former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller published a column which, while partially praising Manning’s leaks, insinuated that the claims Manning made in his in-court statement about his motives and actions may be unreliable because they are not found in the logs of the chats in which he engaged with the government informant. That is factually false. As both Nathan Fuller and Greg Mitchell conclusively documented yesterday, Manning’s descriptions match perfectly what he said in those chats when he thought nobody would ever hear what he was saying. That’s what makes Manning’s statements about his motives and thought process so reliable: they not only are consistent with his actions, but with everything he said when he thought he was speaking in private.”
Keller ( Judy Miller in drag?) doubts Mannings motives? Hah !
“The Army said in a statement it has notified the military judge that there was a violation of the “Rules for Court.”
“The U.S. Army is currently reviewing the procedures set in place to safeguard the security and integrity of the legal proceedings, and ensure Pfc. Manning receives a fair and impartial trial,” the statement read.
Ellsberg said he doesn’t know who made the recording or gave it to his group, which raises funds for open-government advocates, including WikiLeaks. The 81-year-old former Pentagon analyst said in a telephone interview from Berkeley, Calif., that a foundation member brought the recording to the group’s directors, who decided after a heated debate to publish it.
He said Manning, who has been locked up for more than 2 1/2 years awaiting trial, deserves to have his voice heard outside the courtroom.
“We thought that it was time for the public to hear his voice for the first time,” Ellsberg said.”
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2013/03/ap-audio-manning-wikileaks-statement-released-031213/
Violation of court rules——heh.
Long live Bradley Manning and may the day when he is a free human being come soon! May the Universe bless him for his right actions and reward him with his rightful Freedom.
Ben, 7.58pm
https://twitter.com/nytkelIer/status/311334472505233408 🙂
and a couple more:
https://twitter.com/nytkelIer/status/310989315771613184
https://twitter.com/nytkelIer/status/311578321987178496
https://twitter.com/nytkelIer/status/311336516888711168
https://twitter.com/nytkelIer/status/311321045254696960
whis·tle-blow·er
noun. a person who tells the people what the government does not want us to know.
See also: Hero, Patriot, Bradley Manning
“similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass”
In the Wolf Philosopher, a pop philosophy book by a philosophy prof who lives with a wolf, the question is asked what is actually evil, and the answer is suggested is that it is being deliberately cruel to those who are weaker than us.
Its a tough question as to whether an intelligent agent should whistle blow just because his conscience tells him / her to. They have a duty, which they have decided to take on. They have to consider if they a cross to carry and if so whether they carry that cross suffering through their silence, or through speaking out and suffering through the obvious public law consequences. Not easy for such people and you have to feel for Private Manning, but at least his voice sounds robust on the tape.
In Belzebub’s Tales to His Grandson chapter 1 there is a nice tale about how the early morning whistle blower at Tiflis station gets his curse in before he blows the whistle, which wakes everyone up – because he knows whats coming his way after he blows.
Conscious is always deliberate while conscience is random. In our universe conscious is the continuum and is quantitative while conscience is the direction right or wrong.
Bradley Manning took the right direction – Bravo.
Thanks for that link,Craig, hope you feel a bit better.
Lets get this out there, let the public know as far as wide as our horizon reaches, what quandary he must have felt before making this decision to publish these cowardly actions of an Ueber Goliath against unarmed civilians, helpers and press reporters carrying camera’s.
Long may he live.
Calling all US-based readers…
If you are appalled at the secrecy with which Bradley Manning’s trial is being conducted, there’s a petition up to get it broadcast on C-SPAN:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/broadcast-united-states-vs-pfc-bradley-mannings-trial-c-span/JVY0DCT3
“Bradley Manning, you are a hero of suffering Afghans!”
Photos and video of rally held in Kabul in support of Bradley Manning:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/afghans-rally-for-bradley-manning
Arbed; Those Keller tweets are radical self-parody. But he doesn’t even know how credible his self-condemnation appears.
What are the consequences for him? At least Judith Miller got canned
“Wonder what the new Pope’s position is on the Falkand Islands…”
He appears to have been a fervent supporter of the Junta whose attack on the Malvinas led to the ousting of fascism in Argentina and its establishment in Britain.
A real man and a real patriot. Not those fake TV parroting males who wouldn’t recognise courage if it did commercial breaks.
Yes, a hero. That one word says it all.
I hope he knows how much support he has in the real world.
Ben, 1.22am
Well, the penny seems to have dropped at the New York Times (finally!) what the US prosecutor was getting at when he confirmed that “Yes, Ma’am”, they would still be charging Bradley Manning with ‘aiding the enemy’ if he had gone to the NYT instead of Wikileaks:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/opinion/the-impact-of-the-bradley-manning-case.html
Actually, I mean “they would still be charging Bradley Manning with ‘aiding the enemy’ if the NYT had answered its voicemail”, don’t I? 😉
Bill Blum wants to know why he wasn’t charged with ‘aiding the enemy’?
Aiding the Enemy?
Osama Bin Laden, Bradley Manning and Me
by WILLIAM BLUM
Bradley Manning has the charge of “Aiding the enemy” hanging over his head. This could lead to a sentence of life in prison. As far as can be deduced, the government believes that the documents and videos that Manning gave to Wikileaks, which Wikileaks then widely distributed to international media, aided the enemy because it put US foreign policy in a very bad light.
Manning’s attorneys have asked the prosecution more than once for specific examples of how “the enemy” (whoever that may refer to in a world full of people bitterly angry at the United States because of any of many terrible acts carried out by the US government) has been “aided” by the Wikileaks disclosures. Just how has the enemy made use of the released material to harm the United States? The government has not provided any such examples, probably because what really bothers Washington officials is the embarrassment they have experienced before the world resulting from the documents and videos; which indeed are highly embarrassing even to genuine war criminals; filled with violations of international law, atrocities, multiple lies to everyone, revelations of gross hypocrisy, and much more.
So our splendid officials are considering putting Bradley Manning in prison forever simply because they’re embarrassed. Hard to find much fault with that.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/13/osama-bin-laden-bradley-manning-and-me/
He’s being ironic there of course.
I think the White House, CIA and Pentagon are guilty of “aiding the enemy” by providing the “enemy” with authentic instances of war crimes that can be used for propaganda purposes.
Bradley Manning is a truly brave man. Thankfully he has stayed strong despite a detention before his hearing of a length that broke the US military code.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/10/bradley-manning-military-code-lawyer
Unfortunately we live in times when all the good laws of the UK and US that were introduced to protect citizens have been abused. People in this country (nearly always Muslims) are held without trial because George W Bush and his advisors, Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell, Jack Straw and others removed a basic tenet of law that has existed for over 600 years in one form or another: habeas corpus. Basically this states that any one held in custody should be brought before the court and be charged or released. Habeas corpus was briefly suspended in England in 1794 and again in 1819(?) for fear the French revolution might spread. During neither of these suspensions was anybody held in custody for even twelve months. There are hundreds now have been in custody for years without charge – virtually everybody in Guantanamo Bay, Babar Ahmad, Talha Ahsan and others – and this abolishment of habeas corpus, for that’s what it seems to be now, was brought about by a so-called “war-on-terror” which was introduced to bring wartime atrocities to peacetime regimes. How regressive have we become?
Bradley Manning is an example to us all.
“Please listen to a truly great military hero, Bradley Manning. He has been kept in abusive solitary confinement for a very long time now. He is plainly unbowed and undiminished.”
How is that possible for a human being to be kept in abusive solitary confinement for so long and remain “plainly undiminished”? Two possibilities come to mind. Either this is an extraordinary show of the greatness of human spirit, or his conditions weren’t what we were told they were.
I know what living solitary for a long time means, especially how it can affect the psyche. I dare say I’ve also shown courage at times. Mahatma Gandhi showed weaknesses in youth as well as in old age; why don’t we see any of this young man’s weaknesses? I choose to take a dim view of the Manning case. The USA are increasingly the world of The Running Man come true. There’s much bleakness and depression, & we are too eager to believe and sunbathe in any good “news.”
Hopeful things you can find in abundance in Latin America. They’re much less likely to come from today’s US prisons.
Radio 4 news last night raised the issue of 100 UK mujahideen who are fighting in Syria against Assad on the same side as the UKUS IS + Russia + China + Europe + Saudi + Qatar. They said that this was the first time that Mujahideen had been fighting on the same side as the West. ( Big Tongue in Cheek by the BTC ).
So what about Yugoslavia, and the CIA’s Al CIAda since then?
The fact is that while Cameron is posturing about sending a couple of crates of stored weapons last used in Yugoslavia by their mujahideen of that time to the FSA, William Hague is sitting down with his counterpart from Russia to invite them to abandon Assad and keep their Mediterranean bases on the side of the winning team. They both know that Russia is arming Assad, and the money is coming with the connivance of the UK, via the Zionist UK banks, directly from Saudi and Qatar.
So the question is, if you were a good Muslim, whose side should you be fighting on, when in effect both sides in this, and all the other Muslim related conflicts since Yugoslavia, are one and the same? i.e. outdated assets of global hegemoney being replaced by fresh assets of global hegemony.
Last week we saw the river bank in Aleppo lined with the bodies of Sunni Muslims who had been arrested on their way to work in Assad controlled areas at checkpoints run by Assad’s forces. But Assad is an asset of UKUSIS +++ and he has faithfully delivered the oil from Kurdistan through his country on behalf of the sponsors of the Iraq war, USUKIS +++. What has going to work in a takeaway stall got to do with being shot in the head and dumped in a river?
It’s simple. If you are a Russian politician, you are controlled by Israel, same if you are a UK or US or a Saudi or a Qatari or an Australian etcetcamen. Israel has calculated that being the poor little victim of the holocaust is not going to keep them in global jobseekersallowance forever. They now need to build an Islamic buffer around them consisting of a type of Islam that mirrors their type of Judaism, secular/orthodox/ultra orthodox.
But what is orthodoxy in religion? It is control/obedience to a set of outward rules that bypass the main meaning of Islam which is to establish justice in society. What is secularism? Freedom to do anything except establish justice in society.
The working men who were shot in the head by the conspiring political minds sitting in London, of Assad/UKUSIS + Russia, China, Europe, Saudi, Qatar, ++++, were going peaceably to earn their living which is a sunnah/requisite of Islam. The shite on all sides who are sponsoring this conflict in the name of Islamic jihad, and the slime who are reporting it in these terms as Islamic jihad are nothing at all to do with Islam.
The real jihad is to fight with weapons, but knowing who your enemies are, and who is paying whom and who is on the side of whom. Syria is full of practising Muslims, mujahideen, from Kurdistan, from Syria, from Saudi, Afghanistan or Libya, and some from the UK, who are fully aware of what the world powers are conspiring. They know their enemy and they will definitely prevail over the cynical bastards who are trying to manipulate them.
They are fighting for the establishment of justice in society by the implementation of Islam.
Thanks for that Craig…Yes there’s Two Hero’s out there now. Hope the new whistle blower doesn’t get caught
The HuffPo is running on this story Too –
As the former general counsel of the New York Times James Goodale once said, “Charging Julian Assange with ‘conspiracy to commit espionage’ would effectively be setting a precedent with a charge that more accurately could be characterized as ‘conspiracy to commit journalism.”
Now there’s a Crazy Truth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-ellsberg/bradley-manning-military-court-speech_b_2859353.html
Mary has, on thr “cotton corrruption” thread, just informed us all that
“The ADL support the new Pope”.
Didn’t take her long to weave the event of the election of a new Pontiff into one of her standing obsessions, did it. 🙂
**************
La vita è bella, life is good! (vote for your Anti-Obsession candidate)
Bradley Manning deserves profound respect and admiration. By choosing to defend the value of his actions, he demonstrates immense courage and conviction. It is very heartening to see that during more than two years of deliberately oppressive confinement, his resolve has remained steadfast, confounding the cowardly advocates of secrecy who tried to break his will. Bradley Manning’s testimony offers hope for peace and justice for the whole world. He demonstrates incredible loyalty to the US, to the principles of freedom and justice upon which it was founded and which were enshrined in its constitution.
In contrast, those surrounding him who have tried to break his will, silence him, and make him implicate others, understand only subservience to temporary political and military masters. They should look to the US Constitution for their inspiration rather than US political and military dominance.
Critics of Manning have tried to smear his actions as motivated by immaturity, and isolation due to his sexuality. Manning’s testimony shows them to be utterly wrong. Bradley Manning disclosed information because he was so dedicated to his job of analysing intelligence. Rather than unthinkingly submitting reports of “enemies”, he used his intelligence and the facilities placed at his disposal to understand the information available to him. When his smaller-minded superiors showed that their objective was to dominate Iraq and its people rather than to liberate them, Manning went to higher authority; he knew that as US Services personnel, the US, its people and its constitution outranked his commanding officers, right up to and including the President.
Manning tried to interest the corporate media in the information that he had available. Their (lack of) response clearly demonstrates where their loyalties are placed. Manning was not a government spokesperson nor a senior secret service agent speaking anonymously, so they simply ignored him; in their self-important opinion, Manning was beneath them. Only in Wikileaks did Manning find an organisation that would accept and publish his revelations. The corporate media are hamstrung; they cannot effectively serve the corporate/government system and the people simultaneously. Wikileaks and other such organisations deserve protection under the law. Instead, we see calls for assassination, threats against the Ecuadorian embassy, and a Grand Jury convened against Julian Assange.
It is very telling that those with power are now trying to hide Manning’s testimony from the US population, the authority to whom they are ultimately responsible. Thus, respect and admiration are also due to the unknown person who recorded Bradley Manning’s testimony and made it available to the world at large.
Respect and thanks to all who respect disclosure of the truth.