Left Side of the Aisle #119 - Part 6

On the Bradley Manning verdict

Bradley Manning - remember him? I wouldn't be surprised if you went "oh, yeah, him, the leaker guy. Whatever happened with that?" Despite the significance of his actions and the importance of the case - including charging a military whistleblower with "aiding the enemy" for the first time since the Civil War - the media, at least in this country, pretty much let the whole three years now of his confinement and trial slide by with just the occasional reference, a lack of coverage which was encouraged by the military court, which put major burdens on the ability of the media to report on the trial, including, most recently, subjecting reporters and their cars to invasive searches and having armed guards stand directly behind them as they worked at their laptops in the press area. This was because of, the judge said, earlier repeated breaking of court rules - even though no one could tell the reporters what rules had been broken.

But after months in solitary confinement under conditions that if it was done to an American by another country, we would call torture, torture inflicted with the intent of breaking him so he would testify against Julian Assange in the trial of which the Obama gang still dream, Bradley Manning was brought to trial.

On July 30, Col. Denise Lind, the judge in that military trial - I'm reminded of an article I read some years ago which was titled "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music" - the judge released her verdict: She convicted Bradley Manning of almost all of the charges against him but, be thankful for what you can, acquitted him of "aiding the enemy."

That was the charge everyone was focused on for two reasons beyond its rarity: One, it was the most severe, carrying a potential penalty of life without parole. Two, the impact of a conviction on the future ability of the public to learn what it should know but the government for whatever reason doesn't want to tell, would have been severe. You have to understand: Bradley Manning was not accused of giving important information to al-Qaeda. He was not accused of actually helping al-Qaeda. He was not accused of wanting to help al-Qaeda. He was accused of giving information to a media organization knowing that al-Qaeda would be able to see whatever that organization published. And even if the information in and of itself was of no assistance to al-Qaeda, it potentially could be analyzed in coordination with other information, thereby revealing something that would be of assistance. That, believe it or not, was the actual basis for, the actual argument the government used in pursuing, the charge of "aiding the enemy."

A conviction would have set a precedent that any leak of information relating to the military or foreign policy that the government wanted to keep secret, any leak of information the government found inconvenient or embarrassing, any leak of information which could even hypothetically be linked with other undetermined information in a way that could be useful to any of our enemies even if we don't know who those enemies are because that information is also classified, could be the basis for a charge of "aiding the enemy."

So we as a people dodged a bullet - but it's not over: We got hit by shrapnel. Manning was convicted of a computer fraud charge and some other, lesser, military infractions as well as, bizarrely, five counts of stealing government documents. Exactly how the documents were "stolen" since obviously he sent copies to WikiLeaks and the originals never left the military's possession is unclear: I remember that in the many-ways similar Pentagon Papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg the feds made the same charge and were faced with the same dilemma: Ellsberg had provided copies to the New York Times, not originals. Prosecutors were reduced to the farcical claim that copying was stealing, that he had stolen "the arrangement of words on the page." Yes, that's a quote.

Apparently, that was not a dilemma for Col. Lind.

More importantly and more seriously, something else that did not trouble Col. Lind was convicting Manning of six counts of espionage for providing documents to WikiLeaks. Six counts of espionage for leaking information to the media. And in all six of those cases, Manning had pled guilty to a lesser offense but Lind and prosecutors refused to accept that plea and found him guilty of the original charge. In fact, Manning had earlier pled guilty to a lesser offense on nine of the 21 charges facing him; Lind and prosecutors accepted only two.

So despite the acquittal on "aiding the enemy," Bradley Manning still faces a possible 136 years in prison for daring to tell the people what they deserve and in fact need to know. And remember this: The government has ranted and raved about "damage to national security" but in the three years since his arrest has not offered one single shred of evidence, not a single strand of an argument, that such national security has in fact been harmed by Bradley Manning.

But I will say this, there was one significant effect of Manning's actions: The end of US participation in the Iraq War.

The Bush gang had been forced by the Iraqi government into an agreement to remove US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. But the Obama gang was pressuring the Iraqis to allow for perhaps tens of thousands of US troops to stay beyond that deadline under a new "security agreement." Among the things Bradley Manning leaked was a video of US soldiers on a helicopter gunship shooting up a group of people and then going back to shoot up a van that came to take away the wounded. The video was put on YouTube under the title Collateral Murder. You can see the video at collateralmurder.com. The Pentagon decided the soldiers had acted within "the rules of engagement" and there would be no punishment.

In the wake of that, the Iraqis demanded that any US troops remaining in Iraq be subject to Iraqi law. The Obama gang refused, so there was no new agreement - and all US troops left Iraq on schedule. I can't help but wonder if the extremism of the case against Bradley Manning and the furious attempts to crush WikiLeaks were an outgrowth of frustrated egomania.

This is the simple hard truth: This case was not about protecting the nation. It was -and is - about protecting the privileges of the powerful, this was -and is - about control, this was -and is - about the imperious condescension of a government and military elite treating the rest of us as, the joke has it, mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed shit. It was - and is - about the Obama gang getting another skin to hang on its wall of secrecy. That's what this was and is about. And don't you forget it.

And don't you forget one other thing: Bradley Manning is a hero.

Sources:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/how-the-bradley-manning-verdict-avoided-a-serious-chill-on-whistleblowing-20130730
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/bradley-manning-guilty-charges-aiding-enemy/story?id=19797378
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/us/bradley-manning-verdict.html?_r=0
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57596093/bradley-manning-acquitted-of-aiding-the-enemy-for-giving-secrets-to-wikileaks/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-announce-verdict-in-bradley-manning-case-today/2013/07/29/e894a75c-f897-11e2-afc1-c850c6ee5af8_story.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/usa-wikileaks-manning-idUSL1N0G00PY20130730
http://boingboing.net/2013/07/25/journalists-at-bradley-manning.html
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/national/south/2013/07/bradley_manning_acquitted_of_aiding_the_enemy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=youtube_gdata
http://collateralmurder.com/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/06/wars-and-not-rumors-of-wars.html

One other thing

Welcome, Bradley Manning Support Network readers. Maybe after this you'd like to check out some of my other posts.

Updated There is one part of this I have not addressed, one interested party who I have not considered. He is in some ways the "forgotten man" in the whole business, the central figure whose name often doesn't come up.

He is Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst now held in the military prison at Quantico, Virginia on suspicion of being an American hero.

Manning, of course, is the man suspected of leaking documents to WikiLeaks including not only cablegate but the earlier documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars including the notorious "Collateral Murder" video. He was arrested in July.

In the media, he has been subjected to the typical combination of amateur psychoanalysis and subtle smears that always get inflicted on those who do not act in accordance with our sterilized "don't make waves, trust your betters" social norms.

He grew up, we've been told, and I emphasize that all that follows here is just a sample, "teased" and "taunted." He "had trouble fitting in at school," we hear. He was a high school dropout, "adrift," as he "hopscotched through various jobs" (including at a pizza parlor which for some reason was found relevant enough to specify) before enlisting.

But, the tale goes on, the military provided "no respite." He felt "alone, invisible," that his life was falling apart. He felt "he had no future." He was "anguished." "Isolated." And of course, of course, as just everyone seemed to think was starkly-stand-out relevant, he was a homosexual "bridling" under the demands of DADT.

"With doors closing all around him, Private Manning searched for a window." And so this "troubled young man," "fuelled by vanity," "used his proximity to sensitive documents to inflate his own sense of importance" and single-handedly destroyed, destroyed I say, the whole of international diplomacy.

And his reference to a hope that the leak might "actually change something?" That wasn't a reference to US foreign policy, oh no. It was a forlorn reflection on the conditions of his personal life.

In the face of all that, there's only one thing to do: We must tch-tch our way to sympathy for this obviously disturbed young man of the troubled childhood, the troubled adolescence, and the troubled young adulthood, the troubled soul who acted out of emotional desperation. Because, clearly, clearly, no sane person would do what he did. And we say that out of compassion, being unlike - and quite superior - to those who would have him killed as a traitor.

Or so we are by clear implication told.

In Quantico he is held in solitary confinement and is under a suicide watch, a status most often used as an excuse to humiliate a prisoner by stripping them of their belt, shoelaces, and anything sharp or breakable while implying (to them and to anyone outside) that they are not in their right mind.

But, it should be noted, there is another view of Bradley Manning, one that appears in the reporting of Denver Nicks. In it, he describes an incident that took place while Manning was still in school.

Bradley Manning, still effectively a boy, had few friends, and his family had all but fallen apart. In a time before Facebook and sustained long-distance friendships, he was leaving his two best friends for what could easily have been the last time.... He didn’t need to tell them he was gay in order to confess a hidden affection, to explain a behavior or even to allow his friends to know him better–in a short time he would be gone. And yet, presumably for no other reason than that he was who he was and wanted to live honestly in his own skin, he felt compelled, in a conservative, religious town, to confide in his friends that he was a homosexual. Not only must it have taken tremendous courage for such a young man, it displays a crucial aspect of Brad’s personality. As his Facebook profile still says today, “Take me for who I am, or face the consequences!”

Nicks also punched holes in the "disturbed young man" theory of why Manning leaked the documents. He first demonstrated that Manning was likely the source of the so-called Reykjavik13 memo, published by WikiLeaks on February 18, 2010.

The timing debunks the overarching narrative in the media that Brad was an anti-social outcast lashing out at the world and crying for attention when he decided to leak military secrets,

as this was several months before the exchanges with Adrian Lamo, the creep who turned him in and whose last name, if there is any justice in the world, is pronounced with long vowels.

Over the next several months[ after February], when Brad may have leaked most of the documents, he appears happy and carefree,

Nicks reports.

In his own words, Manning hoped the cables would spur “worldwide discussion, debates, and reform.”

I want people to see the truth[, he said,]… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Combine that and Nicks' reporting with the frequent media references to Manning's "liberal" or "progressive" Facebook entries and you have the makings of the psychological profile not of a "troubled young man" but of a variety of '60s radical, someone who grew up believing in the US of the civics classes but who ultimately was faced with proof that could not be denied that the US they had believed in was not the US that stood before them. Given the opportunity to act on that realization, he took it.

So, bottom line, as expressed by Sheldon Richman, writing in the Christian Science Monitor: "What are we to make of him?"

Is he a hero or a villain?

I say hero. When a government secretly engages in such consequential activities as aggressive wars justified by at best questionable and at worst fabricated intelligence, covert bombings and assassinations, and diplomatic maneuvering designed to support such global meddling, the people in whose name that government acts – and who could suffer retaliation – have a right to know.

I'm with him. Bradley Manning is an American hero. And he deserves to be recognized and supported as such.

Be aware, however: There can be a price to be paid for that support, at least if you're vocal about it, as Glenn Greenwald has shown:

In July of this year, U.S. citizen Jacob Appelbaum, a researcher and spokesman for WikiLeaks, was detained for several hours at the Newark airport after returning from a trip to Holland, and had his laptop, cellphones and other electronic products seized -- all without a search warrant, without being charged with a crime, and without even being under investigation, at least to his knowledge. He was interrogated at length about WikiLeaks, and was told by the detaining agents that he could expect to be subjected to the same treatment every time he left the country and attempted to return to the U.S. ...

November 3, David House, a 23-year-old researcher who works at MIT, was returning to the U.S. from a short vacation with his girlfriend in Mexico, and was subjected to similar and even worse treatment. House's crime: he did work in helping set up the Bradley Manning Support Network, an organization created to raise money for Manning's legal defense fund, and he has now visited Manning three times in Quantico....

The government is expanding its intensifying campaign against WikiLeaks to include those who have supported Bradley Manning. That, however, should not be taken as a sign to back off but to step up.

So I say Free Bradley Manning! No, I have no expectation that will happen. But some things should be said just because they should be said, not because you expect them to happen. Free Bradley Manning! Free the American hero.

A Footnote: In a footnote because it refers to someone who deserves to be no more than a footnote. It is frequently mentioned that it was in conversations with the Lame-o guy where Manning described how he obtained the documents he leaked. What I have yet to see mentioned anywhere other than a Glenn Greenwald piece (if it's out there, someone tell me) is that Lame-o lied to Manning, getting him to open up by telling him he was a journalist and he continued to pump him for details even after he - that is, Lame-o - had informed federal cops what Manning had said.

Lame-o, himself a convicted hacker, sanctimoniously allowed as how he hopes that Manning has "the same chance" to "reinvent" himself as he did - such "reinvention" apparently to include becoming a government snitch.

One other Footnote: Sheldon Richman, it develops, is a real right-wing/libertarian type, one of those who believes laissez-faire capitalism is the answer to everything and rails against "collectivism." It bears repeating yet again: Issues surrounding personal privacy, government secrecy, and civil liberties mark an area where left and right can combine and overlap in unusual ways.

Updated to say that in comments, Sheldeon Richman says my description of him is incorrect; he describes himself as a "left-libertarian, an anarchist" who "reject[s] historical capitalism as a system of inexcusable privilege." I stand corrected.

122.8 - Outrage of the Week: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Outrage of the Week: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

We finish up this week with our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week.

This week, the choice of Outrage was simple, straightforward, and obvious. Bradley Manning, as I expect you know, was the whistleblower who leaked a very large number of documents to WikiLeaks, resulting, ultimately, in his arrest, trial, and now sentencing. Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in military prison for the crime of enabling the American public to know about what its own government was doing and about the crimes, the war crimes, it was committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also reduced in rank, dishonorably discharged, and had his pay and benefits stripped away.

This is a moral and ethical outrage.

The sentence was condemned by human rights groups. Amnesty International called on President Obama to commute Manning's sentence to time served "to allow his immediate release." The Center for Constitutional Rights called for a full pardon. The American Civil Liberties Union called Wednesday "a sad day for all Americans who depend on brave whistleblowers and a free press for a fully informed public debate."

There are a number of things notable here, primary among which is the fact that Bradley Manning is being sent to prison for 35 years for telling the American people about crimes committed in their names while the people who committed those crimes, who organized them, oversaw them, even came up with twisted supposed legal justifications for them, who were responsible for the murder, the torture, the illegal detention, the abuse, the war crimes, walk free, free because in the words of our esteemed president, we must look forward, not backward - words which, it's actually not necessary to say but I will anyway, were not applied to Bradley Manning.

After his arrest, Manning was held for several months in solitary confinement - which is regarded as torture by international treaty, but hey, y'know, who's gonna stop us - in a blatant attempt to break him and force him to testify against the person the Obama gang really wanted to get: Julian Assange, director of WikiLeaks.

And across that time, during his confinement in solitary, during his trial, all through it, across more than three years we heard government officials accuse Bradley Manning of murder. Members of Congress, the administration, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the leaks endangered US interests and lives. He, we were told more than once, had blood on his hands.

But when it came to the sentencing portion of his trial, when the actual question of harm had to be addressed, when actual harm was supposed to be demonstrated, not just claimed in a Congressional or prosecutorial rant, the government was utterly unable to do so. The government could not, did not, produce any evidence that anyone died as the result of the leaks; it couldn't produce any evidence that anything rationally under the term "national security" was harmed by the leaks; it couldn't even produce evidence that international relations were harmed by the leaks. The closest they came was when one government witness said some allies, offended by what the documents revealed about US attitudes, got "chesty."

Some allies got "chesty?" That's the harm? That's the justification for 35 years in prison?

But that, almost unintentionally, raises an important point that almost no one seems to be mentioning. What we ultimately come down to is the fact that, according to our government, lying to our political allies is not a crime; letting those allies know about the lies is a crime. Torture is not a crime, letting people know about the torture is a crime. Even war crimes are not crimes, letting people know about war crimes is the crime. According to our government, by doing so Bradley Manning committed crimes worthy of 35 years in prison. But the fact is, if there had been no lying, if there had been no torture, if there had been no war crimes, there would have been nothing for Bradley Manning to leak!

Which is the real point. This case, this trial, this sentence - a sentence 17 times longer than any previous sentence for leaking classified documents to the media (by the way, a long-forgotten facet of this is that Manning first tried to go to the Washington Post and the New York Times and it was only after the Times ignored him and the Post wouldn't take him seriously that he went to WikiLeaks) - this trial, this sentence, is not really about Bradley Manning. It's about any future Bradley Mannings.

It's a warning to anyone in government, in or out of the military, who may have any moral qualms about what they learn, who may be upset or even outraged by what they find, to just shut up, keep quiet, don't let anyone know, because if you raise your voice, we will track you down and destroy you.

Bradley Manning is a patriot and a hero. And don't you forget it.

Footnote: I'm going to repeat here something I said about this a few weeks ago:

There was one significant effect of Manning's actions: The end of US participation in the Iraq War.

The Bush gang had been forced by the Iraqi government into an agreement to remove US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. But the Obama gang was pressuring the Iraqis to allow for perhaps tens of thousands of US troops to stay beyond that deadline under a new "security agreement." Among the things Bradley Manning leaked was a video of US soldiers on a helicopter gunship shooting up a group of people and then going back to shoot up a van that came to take away the wounded. The video was put on YouTube under the title Collateral Murder. You can see the video at collateralmurder.com. The Pentagon decided the soldiers had acted within "the rules of engagement" and there would be no punishment.

In the wake of that, the Iraqis demanded that any US troops remaining in Iraq be subject to Iraqi law. The Obama gang refused, so there was no new agreement - and all US troops left Iraq on schedule. I can't help but wonder if the extremism of the case against Bradley Manning and the furious attempts to crush WikiLeaks were an outgrowth of frustrated egomania.

This is the simple hard truth: This case was not about protecting the nation. It was - and is - about protecting the privileges of the powerful, this was - and is - about control, this was - and is - about the imperious condescension of a government and military elite treating the rest of us as, the joke has it, mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed shit. It was - and is - about the Obama gang getting another skin to hang on its wall of secrecy. That's what this was and is about. And don't you forget it.

255.5 - Outrage of the Week: Chelsea Manning faces charges for attempting suicide

Outrage of the Week: Chelsea Manning faces charges for attempting suicide

Speaking of war crimes brings us to one of our regular features. This is the Outrage of the Week.

A couple of weeks ago, I reported that Chelsea Manning, the war crimes whistle-blower now in prison for 35 years for the heinous crime of letting the American public know the nature of the war we were fighting in Iraq; Chelsea Manning, who had survived months of solitary confinement - considered torture under UN treaty; Chelsea Manning, who proved herself stronger than the government ever knew, nonetheless had hit a wall and tried to commit suicide.

I was able to report that she survived and described herself as well and glad to be alive.

What the government has put her through - with, we can and must assume, the full knowledge and approval of the Amazing Mr. O - is outrageous enough, but this latest news goes beyond the bounds of even minimal decency.

According to the ACLU, which is representing her, on July 28 she was informed that she is facing serious new charges based on her attempt to commit suicide. In other words, having brought her to a moment of such despair that she tried to kill herself, the Army is now talking about punishing her for that very act.

These so-called "administrative offenses" include:

- resisting a group of prison guards called "the force cell move team," which is truly odd because she remembers nothing of the night and was unconscious when they got to her cell;
- having "prohibited property," with no indication of what that "property" would be; and
- "conduct which threatens" because she apparently threatened someone or something by trying to kill herself.

Chelsea Manning

If she is convicted of these "offenses," she could be reclassified into maximum security, have an additional nine years in medium custody added to her sentence, or even be placed in solitary confinement indefinitely, up to and including the rest of her 35-year sentence.

This is not the first time the Army has tried this: Last year, she was threatened with solitary for possession of LGBTQ reading material and - I'm serious - an expired tube of toothpaste.

Chelsea Manning is a transgender woman being forced to serve out her sentence in an all-male prison who has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender dysphoria - the anxiety and depression connected with the stress of experiencing a conflict between one's physical characteristics and their gender identity - a denial that has continued even after her suicide attempt.

Chelsea Manning had a moment where her emotional pain had grown to such an extent she couldn't bear it - and now the Army wants to punish her for being in such pain.
      
It is indecent, it is unconscionable, it is an outrage.

Sources cited in links:
https://www.aclu.org/
https://www.aclu.org/news/chelsea-manning-faces-new-charges-indefinite-solitary-confinement-related-suicide-attempt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chelsea-manning-faces-possible-charges-for-suicide-attempt_us_579a7c94e4b0e2e15eb52a11?
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/gender-dysphoria

Left Side of the Aisle #122

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of August 22-28, 2013

This week:

Clown Award: Orson Scott Card
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/orson-scott-card-gay-marriage-amendment-one_n_1478936.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/chris-christie-gay-conversion-therapy-new-jersey-95666.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/orson-scott-card-racist-obama_n_3762891.html
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2013-05-09-1.html

Hero Award: Sharon Snyder
http://www.kansascity.com/2013/07/28/4373583/jackson-county-circuit-judge-fires.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/sharon-snyder-robert-nelson_n_3759185.html

Update #1: Ray Kelly on short list to replace Janet Napolitano
http://justsaynow.firedoglake.com/2013/07/15/why-ray-stop-and-frisk-kelly-possibly-being-nominated-to-dhs-would-be-so-dangerous/
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/ray-kelly-stop-and-frisk-homeland-security-95628.html

Update #2: Gov. Scott Walkalloveryou admits watching a protest is not illegal
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/08/left-side-of-aisle-120-part-5.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/09/1229961/-Walker-forced-to-back-off-from-arresting-observers-of-Solidarity-Sing-
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=40587
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/state-officials-say-they-won-t-issue-citations-to-solidarity/article_b976c2fb-e5f6-59af-a53b-b6eb9f3d362e.html
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=40690

Update #3: PBS Newshour considers civil forfeiture
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/08/left-side-of-aisle-120-part-1.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nation/july-dec13/assets_08-19.html

Update #4: Strike three for State Dept. report approving Keystone XL pipeline
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/04/left-side-of-aisle-102-part-8.html
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/315351-state-dept-watchdog-launches-inquiry-into-keystone-environmental-report#ixzz2cQqCIRKl
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/20/interior-state-keystone-xl-pipeline-impact?google_editors_picks=true
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/28/obama-reservations-keystone-pipeline-project

I laugh so I don’t weep: Texas replies to DOJ suit over redistricting
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/06/left-side-of-aisle-114-part-3.html
https://www.aclu.org/voting-rights/voting-rights-act-0
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/08/1216-update-voter-suppression-comes-to.html
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/06/25/that-was-quick-texas-moves-ahead-with-discriminatory-voting-laws/
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/25/feds-to-sue-to-force-texas-to-keep-pre-clearing-voting-changes/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/13/1230932/-Texas-Defends-Voting-Laws-We-Don-t-Want-Democrats-To-Vote?detail=email
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/08/10/texas-on-voting-rights-its-not-about-race-just-politics/
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/08/sec-3-the-secret-weapon-for-protecting-minority-voters/
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/19/conservatives-prepare-to-finish-off-the-voting-rights-act/

Outrage of the Week: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-sentence-bradley-manning-today/2013/08/20/85bee184-09d0-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/bradley-manning-sentenced_n_3787492.html
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/bradley-manning-s-sentence-doesn-t-mean-his-story-is-going-away-20130821
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/bradley-manning-prison_n_3789867.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/bradley-manning-sentence_n_3696501.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-manning-trial-20130801,0,3249325.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/in-sentencing-us-tries-to-prove-harm-by-manning.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-usa-wikileaks-manning-idUSBRE97J0JI20130821
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/bradley-manning-trial-six-things
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/07/left-side-of-aisle-119-part-6.html

Left Side of the Aisle #99 - Part 4

Update: Bradley Manning

Hopefully, you remember Bradley Manning. He's the Army private being court-martialed for crimes up to and including “aiding the enemy” for daring to be a whistleblower and revealing, via WikiLeaks, the truth about US foreign policy and particularly what the US was doing in Iraq. He is being court-martialed after being held in solitary confinement for over a year in what appears to have been a futile attempt to break him to force him to provide testimony that could be used against Julian Assange, the director of WikiLeaks. I should do and I have been meaning to do a thorough update on his case and situation, and I still should, but this brief update will have to do for now.

Manning has plead guilty to 10 of the least serious of the 22 charges filed against him. All of those 10 involve unauthorized disclosure of some document or group of documents, each document or group being a separate charge. In effect, he has acknowledged what everyone already assumed: He was the source for WikiLeaks. He is pleading not guilty to the other charges, including not only "aiding the enemy," but violations of the Espionage Act, and various accusations of having "stolen" the documents in question - which is a rather silly charge since these are computer files and he took copies; the originals are right where they always were.

Seemingly in exchange for his plea, the judge in charge of the court-martial, one Col. Denise Lind, allowed Manning to read into the record a 35-page statement explaining in detail his actions and reasons for them. Unlike what that might make you think, a 35-page statement, this was no rambling manifesto à la the Unibomber, it was a tight chronology of his career as a soldier and what he learned which caused him to become a whistleblower - in the course of which he noted that he had offered the material to the Washington Post and the New York Times, and neither one was interested.

[A link to the statement is below.]

One other update on this: For the third year in a row, Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I can't give him that, but I can give him my Hero Award, which is given to people who in some way, big or small, just do the right thing.

Sources:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/bradley-manning-pleads-guilty_n_2781855.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/manning_offers_his_plea/
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2013/03/bradley-manning-nominated-for-nobel.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/bradley-manning-nobel-peace-prize-nomination-2013/5325138

Link to Bradley Manning's statement:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-3113-bradley-mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-docs

Left Side of the Aisle #119

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of August 1 - August 7, 2013
This week:

Update 1: NC passes abortion restrictions
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/pat-mccrory-abortion-bill_n_3673393.html?ref=topbar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/pat-mccrory-motorcycle-abortion-bill_n_3588466.html

Update 2: Impact of gutting of Voting Right Act increasing
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/us/politics/after-Supreme-Court-ruling-states-rush-to-enact-voting-laws.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/black-america-2013_n_3647789.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/florida-voter-purge_n_3649516.html
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/07/congress-wont-fix-the-voting-rights-act.php?ref=fpb
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/eric-holder-texas-voting-law_n_3652367.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-sb-bb%7Cdl2%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D349180

Clown Award: Lauren Green, Fox News
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/virginia-foxx-make-college-affordable_n_3654419.html?ref=topbar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/ted-cruz-immigration_n_3660728.html?ref=topbar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/house-gop-acorn_n_3672557.html?ref=topbar
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/acorn-accusations/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/reza-aslan-fox-zealot_n_3665211.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiocracy-in-full-effect.html
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/fox-news-anchor-to-religious-scholar-why-would

Outrage of the Week: List of al-Qaeda's "associated forces" is classified
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/pentagon-war-classified_n_3659353.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/07/the-long-classified-war/
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/07/22/is_the_us_ramping_up_a_secret_war_in_somalia_al_shabab?page=0,0&utm_source=Africa%20Center%20for%20Strategic%20Studies%20-%20Media%20Review%20for%20July%2023,%202013%20&utm_campaign=7%2F23%2F2013&utm_medium=email

Food Stamp (SNAP) benefits to be cut in November
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/food-stamp-cuts_n_3671142.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/food-stamp-work-requirements_n_3649357.html?ref=topbar
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3899
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/26/2220511/americans-paycheck-to-paycheck/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/28/poverty-unemployment-rates_n_3666594.html
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/23/2340411/the-rich-feel-poor-if-they-make-less-than-5-million/

On the Bradley Manning verdict
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/how-the-bradley-manning-verdict-avoided-a-serious-chill-on-whistleblowing-20130730
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/bradley-manning-guilty-charges-aiding-enemy/story?id=19797378
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/us/bradley-manning-verdict.html?_r=0
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57596093/bradley-manning-acquitted-of-aiding-the-enemy-for-giving-secrets-to-wikileaks/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-announce-verdict-in-bradley-manning-case-today/2013/07/29/e894a75c-f897-11e2-afc1-c850c6ee5af8_story.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/usa-wikileaks-manning-idUSL1N0G00PY20130730
http://boingboing.net/2013/07/25/journalists-at-bradley-manning.html
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/national/south/2013/07/bradley_manning_acquitted_of_aiding_the_enemy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=youtube_gdata
http://collateralmurder.com/

24.5 - News on Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

News on Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

Something I wanted to bring up just because hey it's my show so why not.

Chelsea Manning

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated the release of Chelsea Manning from prison. At the time, the  only image I had of her was a black-and-white selfie of her wearing a wig - an image I have since learned was never supposed to be circulated: She sent it privately in an email to her therapist and commanding officer and it somehow got out.

Anyway, I wanted to note that we now have this new one. That is Chelsea Manning, in her first photo as a free transgender woman.

Unavoidably intertwined with Manning's case is that of Julian Assange, director of Wikileaks, an organization the Obama administration, demonstrating its claimed commitment to transparency, tried to bankrupt by blocking any source of funding. The Department of Justice tried every way it could think of to find something they could charge Assange with that did not also implicate major publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which published portions of the documents that Wikileaks released.

There simply is no rational question but that the highly harsh treatment of Manning, including extended solitary confinement, and the massive and threatening charges filed against her, were an attempt to force Manning to finger Assange as having induced or better yet directed her to copy and send him the documents involved, giving the US a way to get Assange without worrying about little things like freedom of the press.

When they couldn't break her, they were left without a case against Assange.

Julian Assange

But that didn't mean they gave up trying. And now, after seven years of effort, according to reports, they think they have found a way to get Julian Assange and Attorney General Jeff "too racist to be a judge" Sessions said recently that getting Assange is a "priority."

Meanwhile, in one of those moments of deliciously overt hypocrisy, CIA director Mike Pompeo has labeled Wikileaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia" and proclaimed that "we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us" while calling Assange himself "a fraud," "a coward," and "a narcissist."

This is the same Mike Pompeo who last July gloated over the DNC emails released by Wikileaks, calling them "proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down," and who during the fall campaign repeatedly referred to those emails to attack Hillary Clinton.

As a final note on this, Sweden has dropped its fishy-fron-the-start "investigation" of Assange, an investigation that, contrary to the impression you no doubt got from the media, never involved actual charges. Supposedly, he was only wanted for questioning, and the Swedish prosecutors have now said they are giving up because there is no way to question him - even though he has previously offered to be questioned in the Ecuadorian embassy where he has been given asylum or by videoconference; significantly, he even said he would go back to Sweden if the government would guarantee he would not be extradited to the US. Sweden refused all proposed compromises.

The UK still says Assange will be arrested the instant he steps out of that embassy (which is in London) on a charge of missing a court date. Like Sweden, the UK will give no assurance that if he gives himself up he won't be bundled off to the US on whatever charge the DOJ can conjure up in the hopes of destroying Assange and Wikileaks along with him.

Once more into the leak

On Wednesday, supporters of US hero Bradley Manning went public with complaints about the harsh conditions of his imprisonment, conditions which, as Glenn Greenwald wrote, "constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture."

For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed.... For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.

That very last part, about what he can watch on TV, is disputed by a Quantico official named Lt. Brian Villiard, but as Greenwald notes, that is both different from all other reports and ultimately a really minor point since Villiard pretty much confirmed all the rest.

The supporters decided to go public after complaints to the military got no response.

"We were aware of those situations [of Manning's confinement] and we were hoping that they would improve without applying public pressure through the media," Jeff Paterson, who runs Manning's legal defense fund, told The Huffington Post. "His attorney and supporters were hoping that this could be taken care of through the appropriate channels."

Paterson says that Manning is "very annoyed" at the conditions of his confinement, adding that he is primarily upset at his inability to exercise. "He sits in this small box, for the most part only to take a shower - he just sits and eats and four months have gone by."

Greenwald argues that the purpose of the treatment is to get Julian Assange by coercing Manning into testifying that Assange colluded with and/or actively encouraged him to leak the documents in order to justify charging Assange as a "co-conspirator" in the leaking. That argument is given extra weight by the report in the Belfast Telegraph (UK) that

US sources [have] revealed that prosecutors are awaiting a decision from the American Attorney-General, Eric Holder, on what form of plea bargaining they should offer to Manning in return for him incriminating Mr Assange as a fellow conspirator in disseminating the classified information.

Friends say Manning has so far refused to cooperate but express worry at his "increasingly fragile condition" after seven months in solitary confinement.

This even as John Conyers, still-for-now chair of the House Judiciary Committee, defended WikiLeaks during a committee hearing on Thursday,

arguing that the controversial actions of the anti-secrecy outlet are protected under free speech. ...

"[B]eing unpopular is not a crime[," Conyers said in prepared remarks, "]and publishing offensive information is not either. And the repeated calls from politicians, journalists, and other so-called experts crying out for criminal prosecutions or other extreme measures make me very uncomfortable." ...

"And so whatever you think about this controversy, it is clear that prosecuting Wikileaks would raise the most fundamental questions about freedom of speech, about who is a journalist, and about what the public can know about the actions of its own government," Conyers said.

That issue is the driving force behind the DOJ's attempt to come up with a case for a conspiracy charge, even if doing so requires torturing Bradley Manning until he agrees to testify so that, in the words of Robert Feldman, a US lawyer specializing on security issues, "a picture can be drawn of an Assange, an older man, who manipulated an emotionally disturbed younger man" into doing the evil deed. The aim, that is, is to avoid "awkward questions about why it is not also prosecuting traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose information the government says should be kept secret," says an article in the NY Times.

But such an indictment wouldn't avoid those questions, it would enable them, since the stack of revealing documents mysteriously dropped uninvited on a reporter's desk is a virtually complete fantasy - and thus the proposed bizarre new twist on the term "conspiracy" would threaten to criminalize much of investigative journalism. A reporter says to a source "I can't publish just on your word - I need to see the document," the source agrees - and you have a criminal conspiracy.

Then again, considering that the O-gang has been even more aggressive about keeping secrets and going after whistleblowers than even the Shrub gang was, maybe they don't think that's such an unpleasant idea.

Footnote: The Belfast Telegraph also reports that

a number of hackers have claimed they have been offered financial inducements in return for associating with WikiLeaks and gathering evidence of wrongdoing.

One computer specialist told the Washington Post said the US Army offered him money to “infiltrate” the website, but he turned it down because “I don’t’ want anything to do with cloak and dagger stuff.” An Army criminal investigation division spokesman told the newspaper “We’ve got an ongoing investigation. We don't discuss our techniques and tactics."

Techniques and tactics which apparently include spying and entrapment. But I guess once torture is on the table, there's little basis for keeping anything else off.

Another Footnote: Marcy Wheeler passes along the news that employees at AT&T and Verizon are griping that they are being blocked from accessing news articles about WikiLeaks. An update says that a source at AT&T says the sites "are not blocked, at least not consistently or completely" - but I'm not sure if having them blocked only sometimes is a serious improvement.

Left Side of the Aisle #100 - Part 8

Hero Award #2: Bradley Manning in his own voice

The other Hero Award, very quickly.

Last week I said I was giving Bradley Manning a Hero Award, a very well-deserved one. This week I wanted to formalize that, using as an opening to do so the fact that an audio recording of the statement he made to the military court has been made available to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. They don't know who did it or how they did it, but they have it, they have verified it, and now they have released it. A link to it is at my website. [See below.]

To appreciate this, you've got to realize the restrictions on covering his court-martial. Among the rules governing the trial are ones that bar not only all video or audio recordings of the proceedings, but even taking any photographs of Manning. You can't even get a transcript of what is said in court.

What all that means is that this is our first chance actually to hear Bradley Manning in his own voice. Use it.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-ellsberg/bradley-manning-military-court-speech_b_2859353.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/12/bradley-manning-tapes-own-words
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/group-aims-to-be-a-conduit-for-wikileaks-donations/
https://www.pressfreedomfoundation.org

The link to the recording of Manning's statement:
https://www.pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/03/fpf-publishes-leaked-audio-of-bradley-mannings-statement

Left Side of the Aisle #46 - Part 4

Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bradley Manning, the US Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, appeared before a military judge at Fort Meade near Baltimore on February 24 to hear the formal reading of the charges against him. If convicted at his coming court-martial on all 22 counts, he could face life in prison.

He chose to defer his plea and a decision for trial by judge or jury until the case is continued in a couple of weeks.

The idea that the whole thing is a sham, a kangaroo court, was given credence by the insistence of the judge that she had no prior knowledge of the case whatsoever beyond Manning's name and that the case involved classified material.

On the other hand, someone not so reticent about their knowledge of the case is Barack Obama, who declared last April that Manning was guilty, that he "broke the law." So much for innocent until proven guilty for our Constitutional lawyer prez.

However, I really said all that to give me the excuse to say this: Bradley Manning is among this year's nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. I really doubt he'll win - for one thing, there are 230 other nominees - but frankly I really hope he does.

Sources:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/12788/bradley_manning_arraignment/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/24/bradley-manning-quest-for-justice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/nobel-peace-prize-2012-nominees_n_1303614.html
http://rt.com/news/manning-nobel-peace-prize-631/

10.1 - Good News: sentence of Chelsea Manning commuted

Good News: sentence of Chelsea Manning commuted

So let's get to the Good News right away, and this is particularly Good News because I didn't expect it to happen.

Barack Obama, the Amazing Mr. O, has commuted the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning. I sincerely hoped he would do this, but I genuinely did not expect it. And needless to say, I am delighted.

She will be released on May 17.

Chelsea Manning, in case you have been on a bad acid trip for the past several years, is the former US military intelligence analyst who in 2010 leaked government documents to WikiLeaks; some of them classified and others deemed not classified but "sensitive." Those documents included ones showing US forces committing war crimes in Iraq, most particularly the video that became known as "Collateral Murder," which is still available on YouTube. If you haven't seen it, look it up.

Chelsea Manning

Manning was fingered as the leaker after she was ratted out by a supposed friend, the appropriately-named Adrian Lamo. She was held in solitary confinement in a military prison for nearly a year on a claim she was a suicide risk but which many felt was an attempt to break her - since extended solitary is considered torture - to get her to testify against the government's real target: Julian Assange.

That didn't happen, so she faced a show trial before a military court. You should keep in mind that the old saying that military justice is to justice as military music is to music still applies.

On July 30, 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, a sentence an order of magnitude longer than other convicted whistleblowers have faced.

Now, Obama, on the way out the door, has commuted all but four months of her remaining sentence. So Chelsea Manning, American hero, will be freed in May. And how can that not be just great news.

The Erickson Report, Page 6: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

The Erickson Report, Page 6: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

Now we turn to our Outrages.

Here's an outrage for you: American hero Chelsea Manning is still in prison.

She's the former Army intelligence analyst-turned-whistleblower who was court-martialed and sentenced to 35 years in prison for telling the truth about the Iraq War and US foreign policy by leaking documents to Wikileaks. She was in prison for seven years, mored than a year of it in what amounted to solitary confinement and under continuing mental duress designed to break her and force her to testify against - and thus justify charges against - Julian Assange with the goal of destroying Wikileaks. Her sentence was commuted in January 2017.

The goal of destroying Wikileaks has not changed. On March 8 of this year she was arrested for contempt of court after she refused to testify before a grand jury about her association with WikiLeaks, testimony demanded even though it's unclear what it's imagined she could tell about Assange and Wikileaks that is not already known.

Manning says she refuses because of ethical and legal objections to the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, arguing, as many other activists have and do, that such proceedings are designed to be tools for prosecutors to engage in fishing expeditions against peaceful activists. Whether or not grand juries are inherently illegal can be argued, but that they have been used in that oppressive way can't be and yes I know from experience of cases in which I have been involved.

She was released on May 9, when the grand jury's term expired. She was immediately served with another subpoena to appear before a new grand jury on May 16. She again refused to testify and was immediately sent back to jail for what could be 18 months, the term of a grand jury. In addition, a fine was imposed of $500 for each day she spends in jail over 30 days and $1,000 for each day she spends in jail over 60 days, which could ultimately total $441,000.

On August 5, a federal judge denied a motion for a hearing to press the court to reconsider its sanctions, declaring she can just sit in jail until she cooperates.

Chelsea Manning

But not only should they be reconsidered because of their harshness but because they are improper and should not be imposed at all.

Y'see, imprisonment for refusal to testify is, in legal terms, non-punitive. That is, it's not for something she has done but to compel her to do something. Put simply, it's legalized coercion. Which also means that if the sanctions have proven to be ineffective, they should no longer be in place.

Chelsea Manning should be freed.

Chelsea Manning was in prison for seven years and the government didn't break her. They put her in jail for another three months this spring and she didn't back down. They've put her back in prison again for - so far - five more months and she still stands on her principles. What makes them think that some more months will do what the nearly eight years have not?

This is no longer if indeed it ever was about compelling her to testify. This is about making her grovel before the power of the state about proving that they can make her do what they want.

Chelsea Manning is still in prison - and it is an Outrage.

=

You may well have heard about this other one, maybe more than you wanted to, but it can't be allowed to slip away without getting the denunciation it deserves.

On October 17, in a conversation about the 2020 election with David Plouffe on his podcast, Hillary "It Wasn't My Fault" Clinton said this:

I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up. Which she might not, 'cause she's also a Russian asset. I mean, totally.

Hillary Clinton

Okay. It was immediately clear to everyone that the candidate in question, the "favorite of the Russians" who is being "groomed" to be a third-party candidate, is Tulsi Gabbard. Ties to Russia have not been suggested about any other woman running. Indeed, when Clinton shill Nick Merrill was asked if Gabbard was the candidate Clinton was referring to, he said, "If the nesting doll fits."

That was in a Tweet at 11:58 am on October 18, shortly after the podcast was released that morning.

At 5:13 pm, over five hours later and after the negative reactions had started coming in from folks like Noah Schachtman, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, Krystal Ball of Hill.TV, Aaron Blake, a senior political reporter for the Washington Post, Van Jones of CNN, and journalist Glenn Greenwald, Merrill replied by going after the single point that some media had reported that Clinton had said it was the Russians who were "grooming" Gabbard, when in fact, he insisted, she meant the Republicans - the GOPpers.

After a few days of what I'm sure were a long string of furious phone calls from the Clinton people and the DNC to the owners and editors of various media outlets, those outlets started issuing "corrections" that, "yeah, okay, she was talking about the GOPpers there" and media bosses - and Clinton's people - happily dropped the whole thing.

Dropped it, that is, without addressing the fact, the central fact, the main fact, that while she may have been talking about the GOPpers as the ones "grooming" Gabbard, by focusing on that, they avoided having to address the real point, the "this is what matters"point, that she had called Tulsi Gabbard, and whatever you may think about her politics she is still a member of Congress, she had called her a Russian asset! Period. There is no disputing that. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference who is "grooming" her except to the extent it says that Clinton regards the GOPper presidential campaign and Russian propaganda as being the same thing.

Tulsi Gabbard

Do not give me any crap about "she didn't say that!" Of course she did! Note that she said Jill Stein is - quoting - "also a Russian asset." The only conceivable antecedent for that "also," both logically and grammatically, is Gabbard. So yes, she called Tulsi Gabbard "a Russian asset" and she called Jill Stein "totally" a "Russian asset."

Supposedly, US intelligence services make a distinction between the terms "asset" and "agent" in regard to foreign intelligence but that's a distinction that people in normal conversation do not.

So don't give me the crap nitpicking about the precise meaning of "asset," such as Merrill whining on Twitter that "we never said she" - that is, Gabbard - "is a spy." No, what you said - since you now apparently are wrapping youself and Ms. "Dont blame me" into a single package - what you said is that Gabbard is, as Glenn Greenwald put it, someone "who will act to serve the Kremlin's interest," someone who acts with the intent of being of benefit to Vladimir Putin. And you said the same thing - with the exclamation point of "totally" - about Jill Stein.

Jill Stein

That is at best sleazy, cowardly, innuendo and it's more accurately scummy, despicable, and McCarthyism in its purest form.

Worse than that in fact, because by talking about the whole thing in the context of a third-party candidacy, Clinton - along with those now spewing out nausea-inducing defenses of her - has smeared the very idea of a left third party campaign as one being run and operated for the benefit of, to advance the interests of, a foreign government, whoever the candidate might be.

This is beyond scummy, beyond despicable, beyond contemptible, so far beyond being an Outrage I won't even call it one.

Hill'o'crap Clinton, still desperately trying to weasel her way out of responsibility for incompetently losing an election to - as far as we know - the least popular major party presidential candidate in US history and now trying to connive her way back into the top ranks of the Democratic Party, should do two things, neither of which she will: One, apologize publicly and abjectly to Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein and two, immediately after that shut up and go away and take her sycophants with her.

Left Side of the Aisle #99

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of March 14-20, 2013

This week:
The murder of Marco McMillian
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/marco-mcmillian-dead_n_2780698.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/miss-mayor-candidate-marco-mcmillian-found-dead/story?id=18614617
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/marco-mcmillian-beaten-burned_n_2806435.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/26/17103321-a-year-after-killing-trayvon-martins-father-says-parents-will-never-move-on?lite

Clown Award: Wall Street bankers
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1720/work-work-place.aspx#2
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/03/06/americans-stressed-underpaid-overworked-survey/
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/03/employee-needs.aspx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/bankers-underpaid_n_2853961.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/wall-street-average-salary_n_1952352.html

Update #1: Deepwater Horizon; BP knew the risk
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/bp_exec_admits_knew_of_big_risk_of_explosion/?source=newsletter
http://grist.org/news/bp-knew-of-deepwater-risk/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=mill
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/25/trial_begins_for_bp_over_gulf_oil_spill/
http://business.time.com/2013/03/08/bp-warns-of-rising-costs-from-spill-settlement/#comments

Update #2: Bradley Manning
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/bradley-manning-pleads-guilty_n_2781855.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/manning_offers_his_plea/
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2013/03/bradley-manning-nominated-for-nobel.htmlhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/bradley-manning-nobel-peace-prize-nomination-2013/5325138

Bradley Manning's statement:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-3113-bradley-mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-docs

Update #3: Antonin Scalia is a scumbag
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/03/insensitive-remarks-led-to-young-scalias-firing-by-kinkos.html

Hero Award: Google reveals having received National Security Letters
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/06/fbi-ecretly-spying-on-google-users-company-reveals/
http://www.aclu.org/national-security-technology-and-liberty/national-security-letters
https://epic.org/privacy/nsl/
https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters

Global warming: new scary graph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Floyd
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/03/new-hockey-stick-graph-scarier
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/recent-heat-spike-like-nothing-in-11000-years.php
http://www.wisegeek.org/how-did-agriculture-begin.htm

Outrage of the Week: Death by drone?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/10/paul-filibuster-drones-progressives
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/03/06/rand_paul_is_waging_an_epic_mr_smith_style_filibuster_right_now.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/03/something-i-never-thought-id-be-saying.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2010/04/its-just-question.html
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/rand-pauls-paranoid-rant-they-called
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/rand-paul-drones-filibuster-fundraising-campaign
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/democrats-give-excuses-for-not-joining-anti-drone-filibuster
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/paul-13-hour-filibuster-word-reply-article-1.1282182

20.7 - Everything You Need to Know: Teresa Manning

Everything You Need to Know: Teresa Manning

Now for one of our occasional features, called Everything You Need to Know. This is where you can learn a great deal about something in a very short time.

In this case, it's Everything You Need to Know about TheRump's commitment to reproductive rights in just two words: Teresa Manning.

Teresa Manning is an anti-abortion fanatic who insists that a link between abortion and breast cancer is "undisputed," even though no such link exists, has argued that "contraception doesn't work," and who is opposed to federal funding for family planning - and who is now to be in charge of a federal family planning program for low-income Americans.

Teresa Manning: That is Everything You Need to Know.

22.1 - Good News: Chelsea Manning is out of prison

Good News: Chelsea Manning is out of prison

Starting the week with some Good News, Chelsea Manning is out of prison.

For those of you with unfortunately short memories, she is the former Army intelligence analyst who, hoping to inspire "worldwide discussion, debates and reforms," was the source for one of the largest leaks of classified information in US history, including, perhaps most famously, the viral video called "Collateral Murder."

She was freed Wednesday morning at 3 am Eastern time.

From the very start, from the moment of her* arrest by military authorities after being betrayed by a supposed friend, she was treated terribly and wrongfully.

She was charged, in effect, with treason, with "aiding the enemy," on the convoluted basis that by leaking the information and it then having been published, she had made it possible for al-Qaeda to see it and thereby, hypothetically, benefit from some part of it, making it somehow no different from if she had been spying directly on their behalf. She was not convicted of that but she was convicted of a variety of violations of the Espionage Act.

She was sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was in prison for 7 years, which is more than twice as long as any other whistleblower or leaker has been.

While in prison before her court-martial, she was held in solitary under extreme "prevention-of-injury" conditions, even after a prison psychologist said it was no longer necessary. There is only one possible explanation for this beyond simple cruelty: They were attempting to break her so she would throw Julian Assange, who was their real target, under the bus.

Chelsea Manning

The treatment she received was not only cruel, often it was petty: Even after agreeing to provide the medical treatment she was entitled to and needed - after two suicide attempts and a hunger strike - treatment including approval of gender reassignment surgery, which is an open admission that she is transgender, the military still kept her in an all-male prison and enforced male grooming standards on her until the moment of her release. (In the photo, she is wearing a wig.)

Now she is out. But she is not free: Until the appeals of her conviction are complete, the military considers her to be on unpaid active-duty and so still under rule of military law. And as the saying goes, military justice is to justice as military music is to music.

The one advantage of being on this sort of "active duty" is that she can maintain her access to military medical benefits, including for gender dysphoria and gender reassignment surgery - but she says says she has no interest in using them because after the treatment she endured in prison, she wants to walk away from all of that and provide for herself.

Now, it's highly unlikely that she will be called to serve, but hypothetically, yes, they could call her back, could give orders that she report to some fort or whatever somewhere. More important, however, is that because of this status, any new offense, even if minor - if she got into a fight or even a pushing match with someone - she would be under military jurisdiction, subject to military punishment. She could even get into trouble with the military for speaking and writing anything critical, for saying something some general somewhere doesn't like.

Still, she said "For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea." One of the first things she is looking to do is grow her hair out.

In the meantime, family and friends are keeping her pretty much under wraps to ease her transition. Or as I should say, transitions: from prison to the outside and to a new life as herself.

Amnesty International, which had campaigned for Manning's release, celebrated her freedom but still called for an investigation into the treatment she received and for measures to ensure whistleblowers are never again subjected to, as they called it, "such appalling treatment."

*It would, I suppose, be acceptable to say "he" at this point because she did not come out as transgender until after her conviction, but that seems overly pedantic and I'm just going to say "she" throughout because that's who she is.

050 The Erickson Report for March 17 to 30, Page Five: A Longer Look: Julian Assange Closer to Being Extradited

050 The Erickson Report for March 17 to 30, Page Five: A Longer Look: Julian Assange Closer to Being Extradited

Okay, this is something I keep meaning to talk about, keep thinking to include but for one reason or another keep not doing. This time I'm doing it. It's time for A Longer Look.

On March 14, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom rejected the request by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to appeal an earlier decision permitting his extradition to the United States, where he faces espionage charges and up to 175 years in prison for publishing classified documents that exposed war crimes.

There is one more option, which is the hope that UK Home Secretary Priti Patel will decline to authorize the extradition. The hope is probably a vain one since three years ago, the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid was the one who greenlighted the extradition in the first place.

This business actually dates back to Bush administration, through Obama and Tweetie-pie up to today. For well over a decade the US government has been out to destroy Julian Assange and through that to destroy WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing what governments across the world don't want their citizens to know.

The reason for this long campaign is because WikiLeaks dared to release hidden information that was embarrassing to US foreign and military policy, most particularly release in 2010 of what was called the Iraq War Logs, which documented numerous US war crimes including killing of unarmed civilians and torture of Iraqi prisoners. Something that drew particular attention was a video taken from a US helicopter gunship showing its crew shooting down a group of civilians including two journalists, a video that became known by the title "Collateral Murder." Look it up; you can still find it on YouTube.

The problem, of course, was that by prosecuting Assange or WiiLeaks for release of classified information the government risked involving outfits like the Washington "Post" and New York "Times," which published stories based on those documents - in some cases in consultation with WikiLeaks. That, the government was not prepared to do.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't try to find a way around it. I still recall Eric Holder, The Amazing Mr. O's Attorney General, stating that the DOJ would find something with which to charge Assange even if they had to change the laws in order to do it. (And so much for the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws.)

During the Obama administration (Remember how they came into office pledging a new birth of transparency only to imprison more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act of 1917 than all previous administrations combined?) the idea was floated to relabel WikiLeaks as an “information broker,” something to be declared as entirely separate from journalism and publishing and therefore not deserving of any special First Amendment protection available to the news media. That didn't fly because how then do you separate WikiLeaks from any news aggregator such as, for example, Google News or Yahoo! News.

The Tweetie-pie gang was a little more creative. They got a provision inserted into the Intelligence Authorization Act for 2018 which called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service," a term invented for the occasion by Mike Pompeo, Tweetie-pie's CIA director and Secretary of State and a label subsequently used in proposals from the CIA and the Orange Wig Stand himself to kidnap or kill Assange, then taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Julian Assange

This, by the way, is why Chelsea Manning for several months was held in solitary confinement - torture under international law - by the US military and denied treatment and care for her gender dysphoria: It was an attempt to emotionally or psychologically break her so she would testify against Assange in a charge of conspiracy to release classified documents.

You see, the issue of freedom of the press still hung over the case, but conspiracy - nicknamed "the prosecutor's darling" - was a way around that. But to make it work, they needed Manning's testimony. Because if she initiated contact with WikiLeaks by providing the documents, the government has no case. But if she'd testify that he actually talked her talked her into giving up the information, then two people were involved and ta-da! it's a conspiracy.

That this was the intent became even clearer when not long after her court-martial sentence of 35 years in prison was commuted after seven years - still more time in prison than any other whistleblower in US history - she was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury about her dealings with Assange. She spent two months in prison for contempt of court for refusing - and immediately upon her release she was called before another grand jury on the same thing. She again refused and was imprisoned, this time for 10 months plus accumulating $256,000 in fines.

Chelsea Manning

But while it appears the government has given up on trying to break Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is for the moment still free, the government has been able to pretty much cripple WikiLeaks' ability to act. That can be seen from its website by the drying up of new releases since around 2017, with only one release in over two years, that one about two right-wing hate groups in Spain.

This case has sparked on-going concern from press freedom and human rights groups around the world who warn that prosecution of Assange would have far-reaching impacts on journalists and publishers who dare to challenge powerful governments by exposing their secrets.

For example, in January, the Committee to Protect Journalists stated that the US's prosecution of Assange would set "a deeply harmful legal precedent that would allow the prosecution of reporters for news gathering activities" and called on the DOJ drop both the extradition request and charges against Assange.

Meanwhile, Julia Hall, Amnesty International's deputy research director for Europe called the UK Supreme Court ruling "a blow to justice" and said "the US should immediately drop the charges against Julian Assange."

She noted the lower court ruling the UK Supreme Court overturned had recognized that extradition could present a threat to Assange's life or mental health, a risk the Supreme Court airily dismissed based on breezy US assurances that "don't worry, he'll be fine", which Hall dismissed as "empty promises." Considering the US's record of CIA black sites, Gitmo, along with the conditions to be found in almost any US prison, not to mention the treatment inflicted on Chelsea Manning in pursuit of this case and that the US government has a been pursuing Assange for a dozen years across three presidents, the description "empty promises" is extremely hard to deny.

Reporters Without Borders said it was "deeply disappointed" by the court decision and called on the Home Office to refuse extradition and release Assange without further delay.

So why have you heard so little about this? Why has this case not been bigger news? Well, for one reason, major media outlets are convinced that whatever is done to Assange and WikiLeaks will be carefully defined in such a way that it won't affect powerful interests like them. Put more bluntly, they figure they're safe so they don't care what happens to him. "He was useful when he was around, but if he's not, well, so it goes." It's the "He's not really a journalist, so the idea of a free press doesn't apply to him" dodge.

Which is actually quite astonishing, because a key part of what Assange is accused of amounts to working with Manning to conceal her identity, that is, remain anonymous to avoid being caught and prosecuted. But if that is criminal, those outlets are equally at risk. Consider the screen shot from a page of the New York "Times" website: nyt.com/tips. It openly invites people to send tips and information to the "Times" and goes on to discuss ways for the tipster to remain anonymous, including SecureDrop, a system set up by the "Times" for just that purpose.

Screenshot of nyt.com/tips

Which really means that the major media's essential ignoring of this case is based less on "He's not really a journalist" and more on "We're too powerful, they don't dare come after us."

Which may be true of the publishers but not of their reporters, without which the publishers can't get the scoops that bring in the eyes and ears of the public: After the government lost the famous Pentagon Papers case against the NY "Times," the government tried to go after reporter Neil Sheehan on exactly the same charge Assange now faces, using exactly the same "It's a conspiracy!" argument, but failed to get an indictment.

Okay, even leaving all that "can't touch this" corporate attitude aside, you'd think the progressive left would keep pushing it - or even the libertarian right, usually on the correct side when it comes to things like press freedom. Well, some on the left did try - heck I've at least mentioned the case more than 20 times over the years - but the major voices of what passes for the left in the US these days, the faux-progressives, those whose progressive and radical proposals expand and contract with the ideas prominent in current intra-Democratic Party debates, have fallen largely silent. And frankly, we can even pinpoint when that happened. And why.

When Wikileaks released documents embarrassing to the Bush administration, when it released footage useful in opposing the Iraq War, Wikileaks was the hero.

But as soon as Wikileaks first released documents embarrassing to Barack Obama's administration, those faux-progressives started to attack it and stood by silently as the Amazing Mr. O tried to bankrupt WikiLeaks by blocking its access to donations and desperately searched for a way to imprison Assange.

The final break came when WikiLeaks invoked the unforgivable curse in 2016 by releasing emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton, emails showing that during the primaries, her campaign and the DNC had colluded to the detriment of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Well, that was it, criticize the Democratic presidential nominee, and Assange and Wikileaks instantly became part of some anti-American cabal.

Indeed, on one of the and possibly the biggest of the faux-progressive sites, DailyKos, Assange became routinely described by the homophobic term "Putin's butt-boy" with the frequent addendum that he always has been about, that WikiLeaks has always been about, pushing pro-Russian, anti-American propaganda, probably under the direction of the Kremlin.

The fact that this also amounted to an admission that they had been useful idiots during the time they had celebrated WikiLeaks was, naturally, passed over without comment.

This case is something that I have let slide too long and which too much of the supposedly progressive left have simply ignored or even dismissed. That silence can't be allowed to continue. The case against Julian Assange presents a genuine threat to journalism as a principle. This silence must stop. The case should be dropped. Julian Assange should be freed.