Bradley Manning Wanted the American People to Know

From COMMON DREAMS (see links)

Thursday’s revelations came as Manning read a prepared statement—reportedly handwritten over 35 pages—before a packed military courtroom. The statement is Manning’s first complete account of what government and military information he leaked to Wikileaks, and an explanation of why he chose to do so.

Manning pled guilty to a series of charges, including providing Wikileaks with confidential military information, but denied the most serious charge against him, that of “aiding the enemy.”

According to FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola, reporting live from the courtroom, Manning’s plea makes possible two rulings by the presiding judge: “guilty to lesser-included offenses pursuant to the plea” or “guilty of the greater offenses in the original charges.” The court cannot find him “not guilty” based on his plea.

Pilkington also reported that Manning “confirmed he wants to be tried by military judge [Colonel Denise Lind] alone,” with no military equivalent of a jury.

In addition to revealign his attempts to contact other outlets first, Manning also told the courtroom that once he’d established communication with Wikileaks, “No one associated with [the outlet] pressured me into sending more information.”

In regards to his leak of the collateral murder video, Manning said, “I was disturbed by the response to injured children” and that the soldiers captured in the video “seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as ‘dead bastards.’”

He also said that he released the intelligence because he wanted to “spark a domestic public debate about our foreign policy and the war in general,” and added: “At the time I believed, and I still believe, these are … [among] … the most significant documents of our time.”

Learn How the World Works

Julian Assange appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he lives under the protection of the Ecuadoran Government. The British,  Swedish and Australian governments have already indicated that once they get ahold of him they will transfer him into the custody of the CIA. Once the Administration of the Hopester-in-Chief gets him, he will be disappeared into the depths of its prisons. And for what? For telling us how our Government actually works.

Good evening London.

What a sight for sore eyes. People ask what gives me hope. Well, the answer is right here.

Six months ago – 185 days ago – I entered this building.

It has become my home, my office and my refuge.

Thanks to the principled stance of the Ecuadorian government and the support of its people, I am safe in this embassy to speak to you.

And every single day outside, for 185 days, people like you have watched over this embassy – come rain, hail and shine.

Every single day. I came here in summer. It is winter now.

I have been sustained by your solidarity and I’m grateful for the efforts of people all around the world supporting the work of WikiLeaks, supporting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, essential elements in any democracy.

While my freedom is limited, at least I am still able to communicate this Christmas, unlike the 232 journalists who are in jail tonight.

Unlike Gottfrid Svartholm in Sweden tonight.

Unlike Jeremy Hammond in New York tonight.

Unlike Nabeel Rajab in Bahrain tonight.

And unlike Bradley Manning, who turned 25 this week, a young man who has maintained his dignity after spending more than 10 per cent of his life in jail, without trial, some of that time in a cage, naked and without his glasses.

And unlike so many others whose plights are linked to my own.

I salute these brave men and women. And I salute journalists and publications that have covered what continues to happen to these people, and to journalists who continue publishing the truth in face of persecution, prosecution and threat – who take journalism and publishing seriously.

Because it is from the revelation of truth that all else follows.

Our buildings can only be as tall as their bricks are strong.

Our civilization is only as strong as its ideas are true.

When our buildings are erected by the corrupt, when their cement is cut with dirt, when pristine steel is replaced by scrap – our buildings are not safe to live in.

And when our media is corrupt, when our academics are timid, when our history is filled with half- truths and lies – our civilization will never be just. It will never reach to the sky.

Our societies are intellectual shanty towns. Our beliefs about the world and each other have been created by the same system that has lied us into repeated wars that have killed millions.

You can’t build a skyscraper out of plasticine. And you can’t build a just civilization out of ignorance and lies.

We have to educate each other. We have to celebrate those who reveal the truth and denounce those who poison our ability to comprehend the world that we live in.

The quality of our discourse is the limit of our civilization.

But this generation has come to its feet and is revolutionizing the way we see the world.

For the first time in history the people who are affected by history are its creators.

And for other journalists and publications – your work speaks for itself, and so do your war crimes.

I salute those who recognize the freedom of the press and the public’s right to know – recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognized in the First Amendment of the United States – we must recognize that these are in danger and need protection like never before.

WikiLeaks is under a continuing Department of Justice investigation, and this fact has been recognized rightly by Ecuador and the governments of Latin America as one that materially endangers my life and my work.

Asylum is not granted on a whim, but granted on facts.

The U.S. investigation is referred to in testimony – under oath – in the U.S. courts, is admitted by the Department of Justice, and in the Washington Post just four days ago by the District Attorney of Virginia, as a fact. Its subpoenas are being litigated by our people in the U.S. courts. The Pentagon reissued its threats against me in September and claimed the very existence of WikiLeaks is an ongoing crime.

My work will not be cowed. But while this immoral investigation continues, and while the Australian government will not defend the journalism and publishing of WikiLeaks, I must remain here.

However, the door is open – and the door has always been open – for anyone who wishes to speak to me. Like you, I have not been charged with a crime. If you ever see spin that suggests otherwise, note this corruption of journalism and then go to justice4assange.com for the full facts. Tell the world the truth, and tell the world who lied to you.

Despite the limitations, despite the extra-judicial banking blockade, which circles WikiLeaks like the Cuban embargo, despite an unprecedented criminal investigation and a campaign to damage and destroy my organization, 2012 has been a huge year.

We have released nearly one million documents:

Documents relating to the unfolding war in Syria.

We have exposed the mass surveillance state in hundreds of documents from private intelligence companies.

We have released information about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere – the symbol of the corruption of the rule of law in the West, and beyond.

We’ve won against the immoral blockade in the courts and in the European Parliament.

After a two-year fight, contributions to WikiLeaks have gone from being blockaded and tax-deductible nowhere to being tax-deductible across the entirety of the European Union and the United States.

And last week information revealed by WikiLeaks was vital – and cited in the judgment – in determining what really happened to El-Masri, an innocent European kidnapped and tortured by the CIA.

Next year will be equally busy. WikiLeaks has already over a million documents being prepared to be released, documents that affect every country in the world. Every country in this world.

And in Australia an unelected Senator will be replaced by one that is elected.

In 2013, we continue to stand up to bullies. The Ecuadorian government and the governments of Latin America have shown how co-operating through shared values can embolden governments to stand up to coercion and support self-determination. Their governments threaten no one, attack no one, send drones at no one. But together they stand strong and independent.

The tired calls of Washington power-brokers for economic sanctions against Ecuador, simply for defending my rights, are misguided and wrong. President Correa rightly said, “Ecuador’s principles are not for sale.” We must unite together to defend the courageous people of Ecuador, to defend them against intervention in their economy and interference in their elections next year.

The power of people speaking up and resisting together terrifies corrupt and undemocratic power. So much so that ordinary people here in the West are now the enemy of governments, an enemy to be watched, an enemy to be controlled and to be impoverished.

True democracy is not the White House. True democracy is not Canberra. True democracy is the resistance of people, armed with the truth, against lies, from Tahrir to right here in London. Every day, ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech and dissent.

For once we, the people, stop speaking out and stop dissenting, once we are distracted or pacified, once we turn away from each other, we are no longer free. For true democracy is the sum – is the sum – of our resistance.

If you don’t speak up – if you give up what is uniquely yours as a human being: if you surrender your consciousness, your independence, your sense of what is right and what is wrong, in other words – perhaps without knowing it, you become passive and controlled, unable to defend yourselves and those you love.

People often ask, “What can I do?”

The answer is not so difficult.

Learn how the world works. Challenge the statements and intentions of those who seek to control us behind a facade of democracy and monarchy.

Unite in common purpose and common principle to design, build, document, finance and defend.

Learn. Challenge. Act.

Now.

The Difference Between Julian Assange of Wikileaks and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

It’s Not Academic, It’s Real Life

The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and the National Defense Appropriations Act are not just hypothetical exercises. Our rights as citizens are being undermined and the Constitution is being shredded. Democracy is being dismantled in our lives. The following letter is written by one of the NDAA’s current target. You’re next!

Dear friends and family,

I am reassured to know that you have my back, and that you have done everything to prevent the US Government from threatening to detain me indefinitely without charge for my work as a journalist .

I am not one for cultivating an exaggerated sense of self-importance. I think it takes more character and courage to live in reality. Anybody who knows me personally, knows that if this can happen to me, it can and will happen to you or someone you know.

Since January 2011, I have covered the WikiLeaks release of US State Department Cables, JTF memoranda known as the ‘GTMO files’, and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen, as well as the legal proceedings against Bradley Manning and the US investigation into WikiLeaks. I have interviewed a preeminent US foreign policy expert on the Cambodia cables, and published hours of interviews with former GTMO guards, detainees, defense lawyers, and human rights activists, as well as WikiLeaks media partners: Andy Worthington, a GTMO historian and author, and Atanas Tchobanov, the Balkanleaks’ spokesman and co-editor of Bivol.bg.

Why do I do this work? Because it moves me deeply. Because I am compelled to learn and to understand. The positive results of some of my work also grants me a sense of common purpose in service to my fellow man/woman.

When the US Government said in Federal Court that they would not guarantee  that I would not be indefinitely detained without charge under Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act FY2011 for articles I had written on the ‘War on Terror’, you set aside partisanship. You realized that what is as stake is more than an election. What was at stake is the safety of your friend, your daughter, a fellow citizen or journalist, as well as this nation and people across the globe. The NDAA, after all, was  passed with bipartisan support, and signed into law by President Obama.

Section 1021 of the NDAA FY2011 allows for the indefinite detention without charges or trial of anyone, including American citizens, who are deemed by the US Government to be terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The institutions of civil society – the press and civic square – are now what our military terms an information environment in a global theater of war. The ‘War on Terror’, our military says, is fought with intelligence and information. And, the US Government has already detained journalists at Guantanamo Bay under the AUMF seeking to gain intelligence on media organizations. The President has already played a personal role in the imprisonment of a journalist covering the US ‘War on Terror’ in Yemen.

When Government contractors falsely linked a group, which I helped found – whose only purpose is to support campaign finance reform in the United States - to Al Qaeda, you were outrafed.

When I was sent messages by a Government contractor saying that I was now associated with Al Qaeda and so called ‘cyber-terrorists’,  you spoke out.

When emails revealed that other private security contractors with ties to the US Government were “specifically asked to connect” the group that I helped found “to any Saudi or other fundamentalist Islamic movements,”  you took action.

When the Department of Homeland Security declared in error that a group that I helped found was linked to so called ‘cyber-terrorists’, you contacted your representatives and expressed that their support of the NDAA 2011 had the consequence of your lack of support for their candidacy.

I am especially grateful to those individuals, including a fellow journalist, who warned me privately that there were other unpublished US Government documents and that US Government agents were focusing their sights on me. They cautioned me to take special care. They understood the consequences for me.

Citizenship is a public office, but who among us can risk engaging in the body politic authentically, when we have families to provide for? Who can risk publishing about the workings of Government, our alliances, and wars when you might end up in my position?

No matter what your party affiliation, Section 1021 of the NDAA FY 2011 violates the First and Fifth Amendments to the US constitution, the principles that safeguard the independence of our republic and any real freedom or lasting security for our citizens and all peoples.

If this could happen to someone like me, it can and will happen to someone like you or someone you know. None of us can afford that risk. Do something NOW.

Best regards,

Alexa O’Brien

Criminalizing the Freedom of the Press

Want to know why Brad Manning is being held in solitary confinement without any charges being filed, and without a trial scheduled more than a year after being arrested?

Want to know why Julian Assange is being besieged in the Ecuadoran embassy?

Want to know why Bank of America is leading a worldwide assault on Wikileaks seeking to freeze accounts and to deny this nonprofit information service, against which NO CHARGES have ever been filed by any government, access to donations?

WIKILEAKS has been releasing the truth about our Government and its machinations, here is a sampling from the Latin American releases:

# In Chile, two WikiLeaks cables from 2009 revealed how “a subsidiary of a giant U.S. construction company, AEA Gener, pressed the U.S. Embassy for help to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling that the building permit for a thermonuclear power plant had been issued illegally,” said Francisca Skoknic, reporter for CIPER, an online investigative media center in Santiago.

# Argentinian editor O’Donnell said that, based on WikiLeaks documents, his paper reported how agribusiness giant Cargill “asked the (U.S.) embassy to launch a covert lobbying campaign on its behalf during a farm strike that potentially threatened Cargill’s position as one of the leading grain wholesalers in Argentina.”

# O’Donnell also said Argentinians were stunned at the hand the U.S. had in the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured more than 200.“”One cable recorded the FBI attache instructing the prosecutor to stop investigating certain subjects and to concentrate on the Iranian suspects…” O’Donnell noted.

# In the 2007-09 period, some 120 Mexicans working undercover for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI were assassinated in Mexico by the drug cartels.

# During the Bush years, “U.S. officials repeatedly requested that Brazil take the lead in isolating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez—even proposing that Brazil engage in espionage against him,” author Natalia Viana reports.

# Under former President Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian military “quietly” maintained a base on Venezuelan territory” that housed a 100-man “counter-guerrilla company,” according to investigations editor Carlos Eduardo Huertas of “Semana,” writing in “The Nation.” The Colombians were running covert operations inside Venezuela.

# The U.S. secretly transferred to Brazil, 30 Drug Enforcement Administration personnel “who had previously been expelled from Bolivia for spying and aiding the opposition,” reporter Viana said she learned from the cables.

# According to Blanche Petrich Moreno’s “The Nation” article, “The WikiLeaks cables revealed the astonishing degree to which the United States exercised its power and influence at the highest levels of the Mexican government. In some cases it appears that an essential part of the decision-making process on matters of internal security is actually designed not in Mexico City but in Washington.”

 

Julian Assange Speaking to the UN (and to us)

The Foreign Ministry of Ecuador arranged for Julian Assange of Wikileaks to address the UN from his asylum at their embassy in London.

I speak to you today as a free man, because despite having been detained for 659 days without charge, I am free in the most basic and important sense. I am free to speak my mind.

This freedom exists because the nation of Ecuador has granted me political asylum and other nations have rallied to support its decision.

And it is because of Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that WikiLeaks is able to “receive and impart information… through any media, and any medium and regardless of frontiers”. And it is because of Article 14.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which enshrines the right to seek asylum from persecution, and the 1951 Refugee Convention and other conventions produced by the United Nations that I am able to be protected along with others from political persecution.

It is thanks to the United Nations that I am able to exercise my inalienable right to seek protection from the arbitrary and excessive actions taken by governments against me and the staff and supporters of my organisation. It is because of the absolute prohibition on torture enshrined in customary international law and the UN Convention Against Torture that we stand firmly to denounce torture and war crimes, as an organisation, regardless of who the perpetrators are.

I would like to thank the courtesy afforded to me by the Government of Ecuador in providing me with the space here today speak once again at the UN, in circumstances very different to my intervention in the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva.

Almost two years ago today, I spoke there about our work uncovering the torture and killing of over 100,000 Iraqi citizens.

But today I want to tell you an American story.

I want to tell you the story of a young American soldier in Iraq.

The US administration is trying to erect a national regime of secrecy. A national regime of obfuscation.

The soldier was born in Cresent Oaklahoma to a Welsh mother and US Navy father. His parents fell in love. His father was stationed at a US military base in Wales.

The soldier showed early promise as a boy, winning top prize at science fairs 3 years in a row.

He believed in the truth, and like all of us, hated hypocrisy.

He believed in liberty and the right for all of us to pursue happiness. He believed in the values that founded an independent United States. He believed in Madison, he believed in Jefferson and he believed in Paine. Like many teenagers, he was unsure what to do with his life, but he knew he wanted to defend his country and he knew he wanted to learn about the world. He entered the US military and, like his father, trained as an intelligence analyst.

In late 2009, aged 21, he was deployed to Iraq.

There, it is alleged, he saw a US military that often did not follow the rule of law, and in fact, engaged in murder and supported political corruption.

It is alleged, it was there, in Baghdad, in 2010 that he gave to WikiLeaks, and to the world, details that exposed the torture of Iraqis, the murder of journalists and the detailed records of over 120,000 civilian killings in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He is also alleged to have given WikiLeaks 251,000 US diplomatic cables, which then went on to help trigger the Arab Spring. This young soldier’s name is Bradley Manning.

Allegedly betrayed by an informer, he was then imprisoned in Baghdad, imprisoned in Kuwait, and imprisoned in Virginia, where he was kept for 9 months in isolation and subject to severe abuse. The UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Juan Mendez, investigated and formally found against the United States.

Hillary Clinton’s spokesman resigned. Bradley Manning, science fair all-star, soldier and patriot was degraded, abused and psychologically tortured by his own government. He was charged with a death penalty offence. These things happened to him, as the US government tried to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.

As of today Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for 856 days.

The legal maximum in the US military is 120 days.

The US administration is trying to erect a national regime of secrecy. A national regime of obfuscation.

A regime where any government employee revealing sensitive information to a media organization can be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or for espionage and journalists from a media organization with them.

We should not underestimate the scale of the investigation which has happened into WikiLeaks. I only wish I could say that Bradley Manning was the only victim of the situation. But the assault on WikiLeaks in relation to that matter and others has produced an investigation that Australian diplomats say is without precedent in its scale and nature. That the US government called a “whole of government investigation.”

Those government agencies identified so far as a matter of public record having been involved in this investigation include: the Department of Defense, Centcom, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the US Army Criminal Investigation Division, the United States Forces in Iraq, the First Army Division, The US Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit, the CCIU, the Second Army Cyber-Command. And within those three separate intelligence investigations, the Department of Justice, most significantly, and its US Grand Jury in Alexandria Virginia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which now has, according to court testimony early this year produced a file of 42,135 pages into WikiLeaks, of which less than 8000 concern Bradley Manning. The Department of State, the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Services. In addition we have been investigated by the Office of the Director General of National Intelligence, the ODNI, the Director of National Counterintelligence Executive, the Central Intelligence Agency, the House Oversight Committee, the National Security Staff Interagency Committee, and the PIAB – the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

The Department of Justice spokesperson Dean Boyd confirmed in July 2012 that the Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks is ongoing.

For all Barack Obama’s fine words yesterday, and there were many of them, fine words, it is his administration that boasts on his campaign website of criminalizing more speech that all previous US presidents combined.

I am reminded of the phrase: “the audacity of hope.”

Who can say that the President of the United States is not audacious?

Was it not audacity for the United States government to take credit for the last two years’ avalanche of progress?

Was it not audacious to say, on Tuesday, that the “United States supported the forces of change” in the Arab Spring?

Tunisian history did not begin in December 2010.

And Mohammed Bouazizi did not set himself on fire so that Barack Obama could be reelected.

His death was an emblem of the despair he had to endure under the Ben Ali regime.

The world knew, after reading WikiLeaks publications, that the Ben Ali regime and its government had for long years enjoyed the indifference, if not the support, of the United States – in full knowledge of its excesses and its crimes.

So it must come as a surprise to Tunisians that the United States supported the forces of change in their country.

Credit should be given where it is due, but it should be withheld where it is not.

It must come as a surprise to the Egyptian teenagers who washed American teargas out of their eyes that the US administration supported change in Egypt.

It must come as a surprise to those who heard Hillary Clinton insist that Mubarak’s regime was “stable,” and when it was clear to everyone that it was not, that its hated intelligence chief, Sueilman, who we proved the US knew was a torturer, should take the realm.

It must come as a surprise to all those Egyptians who heard Vice President Joseph Biden declare that Hosni Mubarak was a democrat and that Julian Assange was a high tech terrorist.

It is disrespectful to the dead and incarcerated of the Bahrain uprising to claim that the United States “supported the forces of change.”

This is indeed audacity.

Who can say that it is not audacious that the President – concerned to appear leaderly – looks back on this sea change – the people’s change – and calls it his own?

But we can take heart here too, because it means that the White House has seen that this progress is inevitable.

In this “season of progress” the president has seen which way the wind is blowing.

And he must now pretend that it is his adminstration that made it blow.

Very well. This is better than the alternative – to drift into irrelevance as the world moves on.

We must be clear here.

The United States is not the enemy.

Its government is not uniform. In some cases good people in the United States supported the forces of change. And perhaps Barack Obama personally was one of them.

But in others, and en masse, early on, it actively opposed them.

This is a matter of historical record.

And it is not fair and it is not appropriate for the President to distort that record for political gain, or for the sake of uttering fine words.

Credit should be given where it is due, but it should be withheld where it is not.

And as for the fine words.

They are fine words.

And we commend and agree with these fine words.

There are times for words and there are times for action. The time for words has run out.

We agree when President Obama said yesterday that people can resolve their differences peacefully.

We agree that diplomacy can take the place of war.

And we agree that this is an interdependent world, that all of us have a stake in.

We agree that freedom and self-determination are not merely American or Western values, but universal values.

And we agree with the President when he says that we must speak honestly if we are serious about these ideals.

But fine words languish without commensurate actions.

President Obama spoke out strongly in favour of the freedom of expression.

“Those in power,” he said, “have to resist the temptation to crack down on dissent.”

There are times for words and there are times for action. The time for words has run out.

It is time for the US to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks, to cease its persecution of our people, and to cease its persecution of our alleged sources.

It is time for President Obama do the right thing, and join the forces of change, not in fine words but in fine deeds.

U.S. Labels Wikileaks an Enemy of the State

Military documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted online by Wikileaks show that the US government has designated the whistleblower website and its founder Julian Assange as “enemies of the state”—the same legal category as Al Qaeda and other foreign military adversaries.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

The documents, some originally classified “Secret/NoForn” – not releasable to non-US nationals – record a probe by the air force’s Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London.

The counter-intelligence investigation focused on whether the analyst, who had a top-secret security clearance and access to the US military’s Secret Internet Protocol Router network, had disclosed classified or sensitive information to WikiLeaks supporters, described as an “anti-US and/or anti-military group”.

The suspected offence was “communicating with the enemy, 104-D”, an article in the US Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits military personnel from “communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy”.

 

Compiled by COMMON DREAMS (see Links)

Still Counting

How much do I despair of the continuing oppression of the Empire? Let me count the ways …

653 days ago Julian Assange lost his freedom of movement to spend his time on alert against arrest or abduction now temporary resting in asylum at the Ecuadoran embassy in London

656 days ago the banks and financial transactions brokers around the world have imposed a blockade on all WIKIPEDIA transactions despite the fact that no Court has every ordered such an action. This has been done at the behest of the United States Government without transparency

736 days ago the SECRET Grand Jury commenced its investigation into Julian Assange and Wikipedia neither of whom are allowed legal representation

850 days ago Brad Manning was imprisoned in solitary confinement without formal charges and without a trial

Britain Threatens Ecuador with an Act of War

JULIAN ASSANGE, the publisher of WIKILEAKS, has been provided asylum in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. They did so because they believe Assange to be a refugee in danger of persecution and harm due his political views. The United States and its British lapdog have long been the world’s strongest defenders of the inviolability of embassies and the legality of asylum. Yet the British Government sent Ecuador a communique stating that unless the Ecuadorans turned Assange over British police would be dispatched to invade the embassy and snatch Assange.

Is Assange wanted in Britain? No.

Where is he wanted? He is wanted in Sweden for questioning relative to a charge of rape. A charge which the female complainant admits relates to an act of consensual and not forced sex. He is actually wanted by Swedish intelligence who have already promised to deliver him to their counterparts in the U.S. The United States CIA and the Obama Administration want him so that they can bury him so deep that he can no longer reveal American policy failures and shenanigans committed in our name.

Here is what Mark Weisbrot has written,

“It was like a scene from a Hollywood movie, where the kidnapper walks up from behind, with a gun protruding from his trench coat pocket. “Keep walking, and don’t say anything,” he warns.

Such was the U.K. government’s threat three weeks ago to Ecuador, that British police could invade the Ecuadorian embassy if necessary to arrest WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange. But Ecuador’s foreign minister didn’t keep walking, and said something, to the great embarrassment of the U.K. Foreign Office. The Foreign Office tried to say it wasn’t a threat—although it was now available to the world in writing – and then took it back.

But the unprecedented threat to violate the Vienna convention that protects diplomatic missions brought serious criticism from the Union of South American Nations, and then – despite being watered down by Washington – another rebuke from the Organization of American States.

The U.K.’s threat also made it clear that this case was not about questioning Julian Assange regarding a possible criminal case in Sweden. Few could believe that the U.K. government would have resorted to such extreme and illegal measures if this were just a matter of extraditing a foreign citizen to a foreign country where he is not even charged with a crime.”

If the CIA ever gets their hands on him it is quite likely that this quiet mild-mannered idealist will never see the light of day. He will be disappeared, or suicided or he will have an accident. Yeah, an accident would be far more convenient than a public trial, yeah, an accident, that’s the ticket.

SOURCE: Mark Weisbrot, Counterpunch.org (September 7, 2012)

Free Bradley Manning

On the day of President Obama’s DNC nomination acceptance speech, hundreds of Bradley Manning supporters in 34 cities acoss the United States rallied at local Obama campaign headquarters to ask that the President free accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower and Nobel Peace Prize nominee PFC Bradley Manning. International supporters, in Australia and theU.K., also protested at U.S.embassies.

In each city, supporters delivered a letter to the campaign, outlining their demands. The letter called on President Obama to release Bradley Manning and account for the abusive treatment he endured in the Quantico Marine Brig.

Michael Thurman, of Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Bradley Manning Support Network explained, “We’re tired of President Obama promising what he refuses to deliver. Bradley Manning exposed war crimes, corruption, and abuse. He’s the type of whistle-blower Obama vowed to protect.”

Contact the Obama campaign now to voice your support for Bradley!

The Obama campaign keeps track of how many calls and e-mails they get about each issue.

Contact President Obama’s team now and tell them “Obama must uphold his promise to protect whistle-blowers and free Bradley Manning!”

Call: 312-698-3670

E-mail: 
http://barackobama.force.com/questions