rigorousintuition.ca

barracuda wrote:Oh yeah - FEEL THE POWER!!!

Free troll hour is over now, man. It's after twelve so Jeff's birthday was yesterday.

I'm not interested in a single thing you've got to sell. Take it to your own thread, and stop disrupting this one for lulz.

Unless you'd care for another martyrdom? Let's play "Earnest online activist gets it from the Man". I know how much you like that one. I'll wear my mod badge and you can pick a keyword, okay, hon?

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:Bradley Manning is just another patsy, a Lee Harvey Oswald of infowar.

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:So what do you think about the Manning phenomenon? Think he did it?

With any legitimate trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning still being at an unspecified date in the future, it would seem that what is presently on trial here is Western culture itself. When the persecution of an individual who has exposed an evil is pursued so ruthlessly and yet the evil itself is studiedly ignored, all of us know that there is something very wrong with the way that our society is conducting itself. And if we do not protest in the strongest terms about what is being done in our name, then we become complicit.

There is no third option. Bradley Manning and others like him everywhere are vital to our continued moral health and well-being as a people, and unless we offer them our full support in their often dire and isolated circumstances, it is we, as a people, who will end up the losers.

Bradley Manning Is "Almost Gone"
Posted: 12/14/11 12:52 PM ET

My name is Graham Nash and I am a human being...

I became a citizen of the United States of America decades ago mainly because I did not want to be hypocritical, criticizing this country, throwing caustic comments from the sidelines, usually in song, yet not being a true part of this wonderful social network. I also wanted to be able to vote and I wanted to be able to praise the obvious beauty of this country and it's people and the things they stand for, having been brilliantly set out in our Constitution.

Being a citizen means the world to me, and it also means that I can raise my voice and my opinion.

Obviously no one has to agree with anything I'm saying but I know that our constitution guarantees me the right to speak my mind.

I see many things wrong with this country right now: the ever widening divide between the rich and the poor, the taking over of our government by the corporate/financial elite, the 'buying' of our very democracy by the 1%, the decimation of our environment by the oil, coal, gas, chemical and nuclear industries and the ever increasing erosion of our civil rights to name but a few of our many problems.

I believe that one case in particular, the case against Bradley Manning, has chilling consequences for the future of our fragile society. Manning is the U.S. Private First-class soldier who, allegedly, released the hundreds of thousands of documents to the world for everyone to see exactly what was being perpetrated around the planet by our military and state departments in our name.

Regardless of whether you think that Manning is right or wrong, innocent or guilty, hero or villain, saint or sinner, he is a human being and should be treated as such.

This man was kept in a 12-foot by 9-foot white cell with bright lights on for 23 hours a day, sometimes naked. At night he was asked every five minutes whether he was OK and, if he did not respond positively, was "investigated" by his guards. He has been put on a suicide watch even against the advice of the psychiatrists in charge of his case who, without doubt, felt that he was not a threat to himself or anyone else.

He had not even been charged at this point, nor even touched by another human being in nearly eleven months. Think about that for a second. A human being needs and wants to be assured of his very existence, partly by the touch of others. From what I've observed we treat murderers better than this. In Bradley Manning's words, he did his duty to his country first not to the Generals and war profiteers who are running these conflicts. What he saw, whilst carrying out his duties as an intelligence officer, was abhorrent to him. He felt that the country should be made aware of what was going on, time and time again, in their name.

Unfortunately the president of the U.S.A. has already muddied the waters of this investigation by declaring that Manning had "broken the law." How is it possible for there to be a "fair" trial when the Commander-in-Chief has already pronounced a verdict? Why is the president openly supporting the rights of whistle-blowers except in the case of Bradley Manning?

The lawyer, David E. Coombs, when asked about Manning's mental state, says that his client is "almost gone." That phrase prompted me to write this song with my friend James Raymond:



One of the many ways that I'm privileged to be able to voice my concerns is with music and song. Ideas are really what change the world; ideas followed by actions. On a humanitarian level I feel so strongly that this persecution is both illegal and immoral.

Let us all stand up for justice and raise our voices against a two-tiered system -- the one of "one for us, and a different justice system for them."

Private Accused of Aiding WikiLeaks to Appear in Military Court

FORT MEADE, Md. – Bradley Manning, the Army private accused in the most famous leak of government secrets since the Pentagon Papers, makes his first appearance in a military courtroom here Friday to face charges that could send him to prison for life.

Private Manning, who turns 24 on Saturday, is accused of aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act by providing the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables, military field reports and war videos. His supporters, some of whom plan to demonstrate today outside Fort Meade, hail him as a whistleblower who sought to expose wrongdoing.

The evidentiary proceeding, known as an Article 32 hearing and expected to last about a week, will determine whether the charges proceed to a court martial or are dismissed. Both prosecutors and Private Manning’s attorney will present evidence, and the public could learn new details of the origins of the disclosures that shook governments and embarrassed politicians around the world.

“This is one of the most interesting military cases of the last 20 years,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale University. Mr. Fidell said the case comes at the intersection of advancing technology, making it possible to lay bare a truckload of secrets on the Web with the click of a mouse, and the culture of the Facebook era in which nothing stays secret for long.

The hearing could shed light not just on Private Manning’s conduct but on the possible role of WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and other WikiLeaks activists, in soliciting the material or facilitating the leak. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., is considering whether WikiLeaks leaders broke the law, though there has never been a successful prosecution of disseminating leaked secrets, as opposed to leaking them in the first place.

Reporters from around the world have signed up to cover the hearing, with a small number taking turns in the courtroom and most following the proceedings on a video link from an adjacent media center. Security is tight at the sprawling Army base, which houses the National Security Agency, the intelligence agency that eavesdrops on foreign communications.

Private Manning’s treatment during 19 months of incarceration set off a major controversy. At the jail on the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., he was held in isolation and forced to strip off his clothing and sleep in a tear-proof smock, a measure military officials said was necessary because he might be a suicide risk. After an outcry – including sharp criticism from the State Department’s top spokesman, who was fired as a result – Private Manning was moved to a new military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where his attorney, David Coombs, said his treatment was better.

Private Manning, an intelligence analyst, told friends and family of struggling with Army life and hiding his homosexuality while serving at Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad. He was arrested in Kuwait in May 2010 and accused of exploiting gaping security holes on the military computer system by downloading the secret material onto CDs that he marked as Lady Gaga songs.

In Web chat logs later made public by Wired magazine, Private Manning – identified in the logs only by a screen name – discussed his feelings of depression and loneliness and his motives for diverting the secret material to a “crazy white haired dude,” Mr. Assange.

The person in the chat logs showed a boyish glee at outsmarting the Army’s poorly protected computer system but also offered political motives, suggesting that “criminal political backdealings” should be subjected to public scrutiny.

The chat logs show him describing having seen in the secret files “incredible things, awful things” that he said “belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.”

The leaked material was made public by WikiLeaks over more than a year, sometimes directly on the organization’s Web site and sometimes in collaboration with newspapers and other media organizations, including The New York Times.

Though WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, it attracted little public attention until it began to post the material Private Manning is accused of providing. The organization released a long-withheld video of American helicopters in Iraq fatally shooting people on the ground, two of whom turned out to be Reuters journalists, edited and given the title “Collateral Murder.”

Private Manning is also accused of passing on military reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a quarter-million State Department cables. The cables have made a splash in country after country, igniting diplomatic spats and forcing at least a few people named as sources for American diplomats to hide or flee to avoid retaliation from repressive governments.

State Department officials have argued that the exposure hampered diplomacy by making valuable informants overseas reluctant to speak candidly. But Arab activists say the revelations of high-level corruption and nepotism in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, among other countries, helped fuel the revolts that have transformed the region.

Manning's lawyer asks officer to step down from WikiLeaks hearing
Hearing of soldier accused of leaking documents, video to WikiLeaks begins at Fort Meade

By Matthew Hay Brown, The Baltimore Sun

10:20 a.m. EST, December 16, 2011
The attorney for Army Private Bradley Manning, the former intelligence analyst suspected of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, asked the officer presiding over his preliminary hearing Friday to recuse himself from the proceeding.

Manning, appearing in public Friday for the first time since his May 2010 arrest, faces charges including aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. The Article 32 hearing, at which the presiding officer will recommend whether to send his case to court martial, opened Friday at Fort Meade.

His civilian attorney, David E. Coombs, gave what he said were four reasons that Army Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Almanza should not preside over the hearing — any one of which, Coombs said, would preclude his participation.

The first was that Almanza works in civilian life as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice, which is conducting its own investigation of the WikiLeaks case. The others involved Almanza's rulings on pretrial motions that Coombs said were adverse to the defense.

Almanza declared a recess.

Manning, wearing glasses and the standard Army green camouflage uniform, sat with Coombs and two military attorneys at the defense table in the small courtroom. At the opening of the hearing, he affirmed that he understood the charges against him and was satisfied with his legal team.

Manning is suspected of leaking field reports from Afghanistan and Iraq, diplomatic cables that included analyses and observations of foreign leaders and governments, and video footage of a 2007 helicopter attack that killed 12 in Baghdad.

Aiding the enemy is a capital offense, but military prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty. If convicted of the charges, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison.

The Article 32 hearing is a preliminary proceeding at which an independent officer will hear testimony and arguments before making a recommendation on whether the should proceed case to court-martial. The hearing is expected to last five days; there is no deadline for the officer to issue a recommendation.

Hundreds of activists were planning to demonstrate outside Fort Meade this weekend in support of Manning, organizers say. The release of the Apache helicopter video, in which Americans can be heard laughing and referring to Iraqis as "dead bastards," has made whoever leaked it a hero to antiwar activists.

They say that video and the other materials were incorrectly and illegally classified, and that whoever disclosed it should be protected as a whistle-blower.

"It was very important that that information be out," Jean Athey, an activist from Montgomery County, said Thursday. "Making information public is essential to a free country."

Manning's detention at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va. — where he was held from July 2010 until April of this year in a maximum-security, single-occupancy cell, placed on a prevention-of-injury order and allowed to wear only a suicide-proof smock at night — drew concern from Amnesty International and a request to visit from a United Nations torture investigator.

Manning was moved in April to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. President Barack Obama and Pentagon officials have defended the conditions of his detention.

The appearance at Fort Meade marks a return to Maryland for Manning, who lived in Potomac and studied at Montgomery College before he enlisted in the Army in 2007.

The Army installation in Anne Arundel County is one of three bases within the Military District of Washington that have a courtroom that can accommodate the proceeding, according to a spokeswoman.