History will judge harshly the US military's mistreatment of the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, who turns 25 this week
Amy Goodman
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 December 2012
Pfc Bradley Manning was finally allowed to speak publicly, in his own defense, in a preliminary hearing of his court martial. Manning is the alleged source of the largest intelligence leak in US history. He was an intelligence analyst in the US army, with top secret clearance, deployed in Iraq. In April 2010, the whistleblower website WikiLeaks released a US military video of an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killing a dozen civilians below, including two Reuters employees, a videographer and his driver.
One month after the video was released, Manning was arrested in Iraq, charged with leaking the video and hundreds of thousands more documents. Thus began his ordeal of cruel, degrading imprisonment in solitary confinement that many claim was torture, from his detention in Kuwait to months in the military brig in Quantico, Virginia. Facing global condemnation, the US military transferred Manning to less abusive detention at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
As he now faces 22 counts in a court martial that could land him in prison for the rest of his life, his lawyer argued in court that the case should be thrown out, based on his unlawful pre-trial punishment.
Veteran constitutional attorney Michael Ratner was in the courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, that day Manning took the stand. He described the scene:
"It was one of the most dramatic courtroom scenes I've ever been in … When Bradley opened his mouth, he was not nervous. The testimony was incredibly moving, an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, but particularly, obviously, for Bradley and what he went through. But it was so horrible what happened to him over a two-year period. He described it in great detail in a way that was articulate, smart, self-aware."
Ratner said Manning described being kept in a cage in Kuwait:
"There were two cages. He said they were like animal cages. They were in a tent alone, just these two cages, side by side. One of them had whatever possessions he may have had; one of them, he was in, with a little bed for a rack and a toilet, dark, in this cage for almost two months."
Ratner quoted Manning from his testimony, recalling his words:
"For me, I stopped keeping track. I didn't know whether night was day or day was night. And my world became very, very small. It became these cages."
Ratner added: "It almost destroyed him."
After Kuwait, Manning was shipped to a brig in Quantico. Manning's civilian defense attorney, David Coombs, said earlier this month:
"Brad's treatment at Quantico will forever be etched, I believe, in our nation's history, as a disgraceful moment in time. Not only was it stupid and counterproductive. It was criminal."
The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, attempted to visit Manning, but then refused when the military said it could surveil and record the visit. He reported:
"Solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individuals regardless of their specific conditions."
Manning's cruel treatment was described by officials as necessary, as he was a suicide risk. Yet navy Capt William Hocter, a forensic psychiatrist at Quantico, said he was no such risk, but was ignored. Hocter testified:
"I had been a senior medical officer for 24 years at the time, and I had never experienced anything like this. It was clear to me they had made up their mind on a certain cause of action, and my recommendations had no impact."
This first phase of the court martial, which Coombs calls "the unlawful pretrial punishment motion phase", considered a defense motion to throw out the entire case. While that is unlikely, observers say, the defense asked, as an alternative, that the court consider crediting Manning with 10 days' reduction from any eventual sentence for each day he spent suffering cruel and degrading punishment in Kuwait and Quantico, which could, in theory, trim six years from his prison time.
Bradley Manning is charged with releasing the WikiLeaks trove of documents, which included the Baghdad massacre video, two separate, massive tranches of documents relating to US military records from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and, perhaps most importantly, the huge release of more than 250,000 US State Department cables, dubbed "Cablegate". In an August 2010 assessment, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the document release "has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure."
Manning has offered to plead guilty to releasing the documents, but not to the more serious charges of espionage or aiding the enemy.
Manning turns 25, in prison, 17 December, which is also the second anniversary of the day a young Tunisian set himself on fire in protest of his country's corrupt government, sparking the Arab Spring. A year ago, as Time magazine named the protester as the "Person of the Year", legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg offered praise that rings true today:
"The Time magazine cover gives protester, an anonymous protester, as 'Person of the Year,' but it is possible to put a face and a name to that picture of 'Person of the Year.' And the American face I would put on that is Private Bradley Manning."
Founder of whistleblowing website marks six months' confinement in Ecuadorean embassy with bullish speech
Conal Urquhart
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 December 2012
Julian Assange has said that WikiLeaks is preparing to publish 1m new secret government documents as he marked six months of refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London with a speech from its balcony on Thursday.
The WikiLeaks founder has remained in the embassy to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden on suspicion of sexual offences. There is a permanent police guard and Assange will be arrested if he leaves the premises.
About 80 supporters gathered on Thursday night to hear Assange speak. They carried candles and held placards reading, "Don't shoot the messenger" and "Don't trust Sweden". Some sang Christmas carols as they waited for Assange to speak from the first floor balcony, a short distance from Harrods department store. There were 60 additional police officers on duty.
Assange emerged with a raised fist and greeted the crowd: "What a sight for sore eyes. People ask what gives me hope. The answer is right here."
He was momentarily disturbed when a journalist from Channel 4 shouted questions at him with a loudhailer, but he recovered and delivered a 15-minute speech which was high in rhetoric and low in novelty.
"Six months ago I entered this building. It has become my home, my office and my refuge. Thanks to the principled stance of the Ecuadorean government and the support of its people, I am safe in this embassy and safe to speak from this embassy," he said.
Assange said that as long as the US government sought to persecute him and the Australian government refused to support him, he had no choice but to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.
He said he was willing to negotiate with anyone. "However, the door is open, and the door has always been open, for anyone who wishes to use standard procedures to speak to me or guarantee my safe passage," he said.
Assange said attempts to prosecute him were an attack on freedom of speech before stepping back into the embassy.
Time Blades, 40, one of Assange's supporters, said that he had been coming to the embassy to show his support for the WikiLeaks founder since August.
"I come in defence of freedom of speech and to defend the right of Julian Assange to have asylum granted to him by a sovereign and independent country. This cannot go on for ever. The British government has to permit safe access to Ecuador for Julian Assange. This will only happen as a result of diplomatic pressure and the people pressure," he said.
Ana Alban, the Ecuadorean ambassador, said in a statement that his government continued to support Assange.
even thou its more than obvious what the US is doing it seems to me like the US is winning by keeping him holed up which will be forever. also winning in the "make an example of game" with both assange and manning. yet another example of how "gullible and naive" the american public is.
even thou its more than obvious what the US is doing it seems to me like the US is winning by keeping him holed up which will be forever. also winning in the "make an example of game" with both assange and manning. yet another example of how "gullible and naive" the american public is.
Not sure they're winning as Assange now has a bigger profile than he ever did. He's also gonna release 1 million more cables next year. And this just reveals Britain and the U.S for the fascist states that they are, despite the fact that we get 100 channels of shit on the t.v to choose from, and two identical political candidates every four years.
even thou its more than obvious what the US is doing it seems to me like the US is winning by keeping him holed up which will be forever. also winning in the "make an example of game" with both assange and manning. yet another example of how "gullible and naive" the american public is.
Not sure they're winning as Assange now has a bigger profile than he ever did. He's also gonna release 1 million more cables next year. And this just reveals Britain and the U.S for the fascist states that they are, despite the fact that we get 100 channels of shit on the t.v to choose from, and two identical political candidates every four years.
awesome, he has a huge profile! great, he will release more cables! fabulous, they will depict britain and the us as greedy corrupt countries that could care about true democracy! sadly thou he cannot even grab a cup of coffee at the corner shop because he a prisoner in an Ecuadorian embassy.
do you have the address? i would like to send him a washington generals basketball jersey.
‘Does anyone seriously think this is about a broken condom?’
7 May, 2013
High-profile QC Julian Burnside has said the Swedish government has given away its true motivation for seeking to extradite Julian Assange.
...“I do not believe that all of this fuss and bother is about an arguably broken condom ... it is impossible to believe ... the point of the whole exercise is to get Assange to America,” he said.
“An immense amount of trouble has been taken to get [Assange] to Sweden, ostensibly to ask him some questions about what is a low level offence ... when they could achieve their purpose by accepting his invitation to speak to him where he is.”
Burnside explained that the Swedish prosecutor visited England in December to obtain the European Arrest Warrant seeking Assange’s extradition to Sweden, but chose not to question him at that time, even though questioning was the sole purpose of the warrant.
The Australian Government should persuade Swedish authorities to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, said Burnside, claiming it is “a perfectly reasonable way to resolve the impasse ... you really have to wonder why they don’t do the sensible thing”.
But, he added, the Government has abandoned the WikiLeaks founder and described as “bullshit” claims by Foreign Minister Bob Carr that Australia is doing all it can to assist Assange.
“Australia needs to rouse itself out of its slumber and make a diplomatic effort,” he said. “They know it’s shameful, they know it’s a breach of their duty to him as an Australian citizen.”
Last year, Burnside wrote a letter to the then federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon asking, among other questions, if Australia had enquired whether US authorities are investigating Assange. It also detailed the reasons why Assange feared extradition to Sweden would result in his removal to America, including the fact that prominent Americans have called for Assange to be assassinated or tried for espionage, and Sweden has a witness surrender agreement with the US.
Burnside said he was “completely unsatisfied” with the Attorney-General’s response, which led him to believe that either Australia was aware of American plans from which Assange needed protection, or had suspicions about American plans and preferred to turn a blind eye.
He added that the law relating to treason is the counterpart of the Government’s obligation to protect its citizens, a duty it has blatantly failed to meet in Assange’s case.
The Death of Truth: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange
Sunday, 12 May 2013
'...Assange, Manning and WikiLeaks, by making public in 2010 half a million internal documents from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including children, and two Reuters journalists, effectively exposed the empire’s hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence and its use of torture, lies, bribery and crude tactics of intimidation. WikiLeaks shone a spotlight into the inner workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this it has become empire’s prey. Those around the globe with the computer skills to search out the secrets of empire are now those whom empire fears most. If we lose this battle, if these rebels are defeated, it means the dark night of corporate totalitarianism. If we win, if the corporate state is unmasked, it can be destroyed.
...There are no divisions among government departments or the two major political parties over what should be Assange’s fate. “I think we should be clear here. WikiLeaks and people that disseminate information to people like this are criminals, first and foremost,” then-press secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking for the Obama administration, said during a 2010 press briefing.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and then-Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a Republican, said in a joint letter to the U.S. attorney general calling for Assange’s prosecution: “If Mr. Assange and his possible accomplices cannot be charged under the Espionage Act (or any other applicable statute), please know that we stand ready and willing to support your efforts to ‘close those gaps’ in the law, as you also mentioned. …”
Republican Candice S. Miller, a U.S. representative from Michigan, said in the House: “It is time that the Obama administration treats WikiLeaks for what it is—a terrorist organization, whose continued operation threatens our security. Shut it down. Shut it down. It is time to shut down this terrorist, this terrorist Web site, WikiLeaks. Shut it down, Attorney General [Eric] Holder.”
At least a dozen American governmental agencies, including the Pentagon, the FBI, the Army’s Criminal Investigative Department, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Diplomatic Security Service, are assigned to the WikiLeaks case, while the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are assigned to track down WikiLeaks’ supposed breaches of security. The global assault—which saw Australia threaten to revoke Assange’s passport—is part of the terrifying metamorphosis of the “war on terror” into a wider war on civil liberties. It has become a hunt not for actual terrorists but a hunt for all those with the ability to expose the mounting crimes of the power elite...
...Assange said he sees WikiLeaks’ primary role as giving a voice to the victims of U.S. wars and proxy wars by using leaked documents to tell their stories. The release of the Afghan and Iraq War Logs, he said, disclosed the extent of civilian death and suffering, and the plethora of lies told by the Pentagon and the state to conceal the human toll. The logs, Assange said, also unmasked the bankruptcy of the traditional press and its obsequious service as war propagandists...
...The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel giddily printed redacted copies of some of the WikiLeaks files and then promptly threw Assange and Manning to the sharks. It was not only morally repugnant, but also stunningly shortsighted. Do these news organizations believe that if the state shuts down organizations such as WikiLeaks and imprisons Manning and Assange, traditional news outlets will be left alone? Can’t they connect the dots between the prosecutions of government whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act, warrantless wiretapping, monitoring of communications and the persecution of Manning and Assange? Don’t they worry that when the state finishes with Manning, Assange and WikiLeaks, these atrophied news outlets will be next? Haven’t they realized that this is a war by a global corporate elite not against an organization or an individual but against the freedom of the press and democracy?
...The world has been turned upside down. The pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading rapidly over the earth. The criminals have seized power. It is not, in the end, simply Assange or Manning they want. It is all who dare to defy the official narrative, to expose the big lie of the global corporate state. The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms—propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite—monitor and crush those who dissent. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, scientists, intellectuals and workers will be forced to obey or thrown into bondage. I fear for Julian Assange. I fear for Bradley Manning. I fear for us all.
Amazing to me how all those Americans on here who love squawking about 'freedom' have nothing to say about this case. Just reinforces my belief that the kind of 'freedom' you bleat about has about as much meaning as the term 'freedom fries'.
Amazing to me how all those Americans on here who love squawking about 'freedom' have nothing to say about this case. Just reinforces my belief that the kind of 'freedom' you bleat about has about as much meaning as the term 'freedom fries'.
most americans are to put it nicely "gullible and naive"
Manning's WikiLeaks release made it impossible for America to ignore the moral horror of its foreign wars. That is true loyalty
Molly Crabapple for Creative Time Reports, part of the Guardian Comment Network
guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 June 2013
'...There is an American myth that we do not "just follow orders". Most people do. Faced with innocent people locked in cages, Manning decided not to.
Manning downloaded cables, documents and videos that, in many cases, revealed brutal acts executed by the US military, and then passed them on to WikiLeaks. The first thing WikiLeaks released was helicopter cam footage it titled "Collateral Murder". It shows US pilots gunning down two Reuters employees, then killing an Iraqi Good Samaritan, who, with his children, had stopped to help the wounded. The pilots seem cheerful and trigger-happy. They joke about the sounds a tank makes rolling over a corpse.
Manning confessed his leak to Adrian Lamo after reading about the ex-hacker in Wired. Lamo, pallid and twitchy, is a Judas straight out of Central Casting. He pumped Manning for information, claiming that their communications were protected because Lamo was both a journalist and a priest. Then, he turned Manning over to the FBI.
...Loyalty is life and death for soldiers. But like courage, it's a morally neutral virtue. Its morality depends on how you view the cause it serves. Like any whistleblower, Manning may have betrayed his institution, but he did so out of loyalty to humanity.
If we view the war in Iraq as a murderous failure, entered into with lies and kept going by a refusal to admit our wrongs, the soldiers' fidelity to their mission looks different. The loyal soldiers become gears in a terrible machine beyond their control. They carve out spaces of humanity and solidarity for each other, even as the machine leaves countries covered in blood.
In Manning, a soldier's loyalty collided with the anti-authoritarian ethos of a hacker. Manning refused to be a gear.
The government needs hackers. But while hackers are often hired by the government, they are seldom of the government. Their values are foreign. Like the Mamluk soldier-slaves who would one day take Egypt from their masters, hackers are threatening precisely because they are already inside the walls of power. They have to be kept in line.
Manning's case is just one of dozens where hackers or whistleblowers with access to critical information networks are threatened with decades in prison. From Aaron Swartz to Jeremy Hammond, those who use computers to subvert the actions of the powerful are seen as more dangerous than rapists and murderers.
...Manning was arrested in May 2010 and held in solitary confinement for the next nine months. Guards stripped him naked each night, took his glasses, woke him every hour and allowed him 20 minutes a day to walk shackled in figure-eights. Solitary breaks minds. Shane Bauer, a hiker who spent 26 months in solitary confinement in Iran, wrote, "I needed human contact so badly that I woke every morning hoping to be interrogated … I once yearned to be sat down in a padded, sound-proof room, blindfolded, and questioned, just so I could talk to somebody." Thanks to international pressure, Manning was finally transferred to a normal cell in April 2011. But he has spent three years in jail just awaiting trial – longer than the sentences given to most of the torturers at Abu Ghraib.
Manning's trial begins today, Monday. In a pre-trial hearing in January, he pled guilty to "misusing classified material", and explained his motivations for leaking the information. But he denied the capital charge of "aiding the enemy", for which he faces the possibility of life in prison.
Manning is accused of aiding the enemy because he posted the information to the internet, where al-Qaida could read it. That the information went to WikiLeaks was irrelevant. The prosecution said Manning would be just as guilty if he had leaked it to the New York Times. You might start thinking that the enemy is the internet itself. Or, by extension, that the enemy is us.
Manning's pre-trial hearings have mostly been ignored by the media. The Times only started sending reporters after an opinion piece by its own public editor shamed them for their absence. CNN's Anderson Cooper has never visited Fort Meade.
Alexa O'Brien, an independent journalist who for the past two and a half years has provided the only public transcript of the hearings, said, "The mainstream media doesn't have much respect for Bradley Manning. There's a totem pole of influence. Manning isn't someone they're trying to win something from." O'Brien was threatened with arrest for being "disruptive" in the course of covering the hearings.
"I believe that if the general public … had access to the information … this could spark a domestic debate as to the role of the military and foreign policy in general," Manning testified in court. We now have access to that information, but it hasn't sparked a widespread debate.
America's indifference to Manning shows how morally lazy we have become. Manning gave his freedom to reveal the truth about our wars. We didn't want to be bothered.
We look away from Manning's leaks for the same reason we have always looked away from veterans. We don't want to see the violence that underpins America. We don't want to see the teenager home from war with a colostomy bag and a scrambled brain. We don't want to see Bradley Manning. So we'll let him spend the rest of his life in a hole, until all but a few forget what he did to get there.
"I guess I'm too idealistic," Manning typed to Lamo, days before he was arrested. "I want people to see the truth, because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens."
Maybe the greatest lie that Manning exposed won't have been about what the United States was really up to in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will be the lie we told ourselves – the lie that we cared about the truth.
Comments
Yeah, right!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... stleblower
Bradley Manning's long quest for justice
History will judge harshly the US military's mistreatment of the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, who turns 25 this week
Amy Goodman
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 December 2012
Pfc Bradley Manning was finally allowed to speak publicly, in his own defense, in a preliminary hearing of his court martial. Manning is the alleged source of the largest intelligence leak in US history. He was an intelligence analyst in the US army, with top secret clearance, deployed in Iraq. In April 2010, the whistleblower website WikiLeaks released a US military video of an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killing a dozen civilians below, including two Reuters employees, a videographer and his driver.
One month after the video was released, Manning was arrested in Iraq, charged with leaking the video and hundreds of thousands more documents. Thus began his ordeal of cruel, degrading imprisonment in solitary confinement that many claim was torture, from his detention in Kuwait to months in the military brig in Quantico, Virginia. Facing global condemnation, the US military transferred Manning to less abusive detention at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
As he now faces 22 counts in a court martial that could land him in prison for the rest of his life, his lawyer argued in court that the case should be thrown out, based on his unlawful pre-trial punishment.
Veteran constitutional attorney Michael Ratner was in the courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, that day Manning took the stand. He described the scene:
"It was one of the most dramatic courtroom scenes I've ever been in … When Bradley opened his mouth, he was not nervous. The testimony was incredibly moving, an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, but particularly, obviously, for Bradley and what he went through. But it was so horrible what happened to him over a two-year period. He described it in great detail in a way that was articulate, smart, self-aware."
Ratner said Manning described being kept in a cage in Kuwait:
"There were two cages. He said they were like animal cages. They were in a tent alone, just these two cages, side by side. One of them had whatever possessions he may have had; one of them, he was in, with a little bed for a rack and a toilet, dark, in this cage for almost two months."
Ratner quoted Manning from his testimony, recalling his words:
"For me, I stopped keeping track. I didn't know whether night was day or day was night. And my world became very, very small. It became these cages."
Ratner added: "It almost destroyed him."
After Kuwait, Manning was shipped to a brig in Quantico. Manning's civilian defense attorney, David Coombs, said earlier this month:
"Brad's treatment at Quantico will forever be etched, I believe, in our nation's history, as a disgraceful moment in time. Not only was it stupid and counterproductive. It was criminal."
The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, attempted to visit Manning, but then refused when the military said it could surveil and record the visit. He reported:
"Solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individuals regardless of their specific conditions."
Manning's cruel treatment was described by officials as necessary, as he was a suicide risk. Yet navy Capt William Hocter, a forensic psychiatrist at Quantico, said he was no such risk, but was ignored. Hocter testified:
"I had been a senior medical officer for 24 years at the time, and I had never experienced anything like this. It was clear to me they had made up their mind on a certain cause of action, and my recommendations had no impact."
This first phase of the court martial, which Coombs calls "the unlawful pretrial punishment motion phase", considered a defense motion to throw out the entire case. While that is unlikely, observers say, the defense asked, as an alternative, that the court consider crediting Manning with 10 days' reduction from any eventual sentence for each day he spent suffering cruel and degrading punishment in Kuwait and Quantico, which could, in theory, trim six years from his prison time.
Bradley Manning is charged with releasing the WikiLeaks trove of documents, which included the Baghdad massacre video, two separate, massive tranches of documents relating to US military records from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and, perhaps most importantly, the huge release of more than 250,000 US State Department cables, dubbed "Cablegate". In an August 2010 assessment, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the document release "has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure."
Manning has offered to plead guilty to releasing the documents, but not to the more serious charges of espionage or aiding the enemy.
Manning turns 25, in prison, 17 December, which is also the second anniversary of the day a young Tunisian set himself on fire in protest of his country's corrupt government, sparking the Arab Spring. A year ago, as Time magazine named the protester as the "Person of the Year", legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg offered praise that rings true today:
"The Time magazine cover gives protester, an anonymous protester, as 'Person of the Year,' but it is possible to put a face and a name to that picture of 'Person of the Year.' And the American face I would put on that is Private Bradley Manning."
Julian Assange: expect more from WikiLeaks
Founder of whistleblowing website marks six months' confinement in Ecuadorean embassy with bullish speech
Conal Urquhart
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 December 2012
Julian Assange has said that WikiLeaks is preparing to publish 1m new secret government documents as he marked six months of refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London with a speech from its balcony on Thursday.
The WikiLeaks founder has remained in the embassy to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden on suspicion of sexual offences. There is a permanent police guard and Assange will be arrested if he leaves the premises.
About 80 supporters gathered on Thursday night to hear Assange speak. They carried candles and held placards reading, "Don't shoot the messenger" and "Don't trust Sweden". Some sang Christmas carols as they waited for Assange to speak from the first floor balcony, a short distance from Harrods department store. There were 60 additional police officers on duty.
Assange emerged with a raised fist and greeted the crowd: "What a sight for sore eyes. People ask what gives me hope. The answer is right here."
He was momentarily disturbed when a journalist from Channel 4 shouted questions at him with a loudhailer, but he recovered and delivered a 15-minute speech which was high in rhetoric and low in novelty.
"Six months ago I entered this building. It has become my home, my office and my refuge. Thanks to the principled stance of the Ecuadorean government and the support of its people, I am safe in this embassy and safe to speak from this embassy," he said.
Assange said that as long as the US government sought to persecute him and the Australian government refused to support him, he had no choice but to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.
He said he was willing to negotiate with anyone. "However, the door is open, and the door has always been open, for anyone who wishes to use standard procedures to speak to me or guarantee my safe passage," he said.
Assange said attempts to prosecute him were an attack on freedom of speech before stepping back into the embassy.
Time Blades, 40, one of Assange's supporters, said that he had been coming to the embassy to show his support for the WikiLeaks founder since August.
"I come in defence of freedom of speech and to defend the right of Julian Assange to have asylum granted to him by a sovereign and independent country. This cannot go on for ever. The British government has to permit safe access to Ecuador for Julian Assange. This will only happen as a result of diplomatic pressure and the people pressure," he said.
Ana Alban, the Ecuadorean ambassador, said in a statement that his government continued to support Assange.
Not sure they're winning as Assange now has a bigger profile than he ever did. He's also gonna release 1 million more cables next year. And this just reveals Britain and the U.S for the fascist states that they are, despite the fact that we get 100 channels of shit on the t.v to choose from, and two identical political candidates every four years.
awesome, he has a huge profile! great, he will release more cables! fabulous, they will depict britain and the us as greedy corrupt countries that could care about true democracy! sadly thou he cannot even grab a cup of coffee at the corner shop because he a prisoner in an Ecuadorian embassy.
do you have the address? i would like to send him a washington generals basketball jersey.
Ecuadorian Embassy Address: 3 Hans Crescent, London, SW1X 0LN, United Kingdom
http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/wig-cha ... ut-a-broke
‘Does anyone seriously think this is about a broken condom?’
7 May, 2013
High-profile QC Julian Burnside has said the Swedish government has given away its true motivation for seeking to extradite Julian Assange.
...“I do not believe that all of this fuss and bother is about an arguably broken condom ... it is impossible to believe ... the point of the whole exercise is to get Assange to America,” he said.
“An immense amount of trouble has been taken to get [Assange] to Sweden, ostensibly to ask him some questions about what is a low level offence ... when they could achieve their purpose by accepting his invitation to speak to him where he is.”
Burnside explained that the Swedish prosecutor visited England in December to obtain the European Arrest Warrant seeking Assange’s extradition to Sweden, but chose not to question him at that time, even though questioning was the sole purpose of the warrant.
The Australian Government should persuade Swedish authorities to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, said Burnside, claiming it is “a perfectly reasonable way to resolve the impasse ... you really have to wonder why they don’t do the sensible thing”.
But, he added, the Government has abandoned the WikiLeaks founder and described as “bullshit” claims by Foreign Minister Bob Carr that Australia is doing all it can to assist Assange.
“Australia needs to rouse itself out of its slumber and make a diplomatic effort,” he said. “They know it’s shameful, they know it’s a breach of their duty to him as an Australian citizen.”
Last year, Burnside wrote a letter to the then federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon asking, among other questions, if Australia had enquired whether US authorities are investigating Assange. It also detailed the reasons why Assange feared extradition to Sweden would result in his removal to America, including the fact that prominent Americans have called for Assange to be assassinated or tried for espionage, and Sweden has a witness surrender agreement with the US.
Burnside said he was “completely unsatisfied” with the Attorney-General’s response, which led him to believe that either Australia was aware of American plans from which Assange needed protection, or had suspicions about American plans and preferred to turn a blind eye.
He added that the law relating to treason is the counterpart of the Government’s obligation to protect its citizens, a duty it has blatantly failed to meet in Assange’s case.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1632 ... an-assange
The Death of Truth: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange
Sunday, 12 May 2013
'...Assange, Manning and WikiLeaks, by making public in 2010 half a million internal documents from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including children, and two Reuters journalists, effectively exposed the empire’s hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence and its use of torture, lies, bribery and crude tactics of intimidation. WikiLeaks shone a spotlight into the inner workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this it has become empire’s prey. Those around the globe with the computer skills to search out the secrets of empire are now those whom empire fears most. If we lose this battle, if these rebels are defeated, it means the dark night of corporate totalitarianism. If we win, if the corporate state is unmasked, it can be destroyed.
...There are no divisions among government departments or the two major political parties over what should be Assange’s fate. “I think we should be clear here. WikiLeaks and people that disseminate information to people like this are criminals, first and foremost,” then-press secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking for the Obama administration, said during a 2010 press briefing.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and then-Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a Republican, said in a joint letter to the U.S. attorney general calling for Assange’s prosecution: “If Mr. Assange and his possible accomplices cannot be charged under the Espionage Act (or any other applicable statute), please know that we stand ready and willing to support your efforts to ‘close those gaps’ in the law, as you also mentioned. …”
Republican Candice S. Miller, a U.S. representative from Michigan, said in the House: “It is time that the Obama administration treats WikiLeaks for what it is—a terrorist organization, whose continued operation threatens our security. Shut it down. Shut it down. It is time to shut down this terrorist, this terrorist Web site, WikiLeaks. Shut it down, Attorney General [Eric] Holder.”
At least a dozen American governmental agencies, including the Pentagon, the FBI, the Army’s Criminal Investigative Department, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Diplomatic Security Service, are assigned to the WikiLeaks case, while the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are assigned to track down WikiLeaks’ supposed breaches of security. The global assault—which saw Australia threaten to revoke Assange’s passport—is part of the terrifying metamorphosis of the “war on terror” into a wider war on civil liberties. It has become a hunt not for actual terrorists but a hunt for all those with the ability to expose the mounting crimes of the power elite...
...Assange said he sees WikiLeaks’ primary role as giving a voice to the victims of U.S. wars and proxy wars by using leaked documents to tell their stories. The release of the Afghan and Iraq War Logs, he said, disclosed the extent of civilian death and suffering, and the plethora of lies told by the Pentagon and the state to conceal the human toll. The logs, Assange said, also unmasked the bankruptcy of the traditional press and its obsequious service as war propagandists...
...The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel giddily printed redacted copies of some of the WikiLeaks files and then promptly threw Assange and Manning to the sharks. It was not only morally repugnant, but also stunningly shortsighted. Do these news organizations believe that if the state shuts down organizations such as WikiLeaks and imprisons Manning and Assange, traditional news outlets will be left alone? Can’t they connect the dots between the prosecutions of government whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act, warrantless wiretapping, monitoring of communications and the persecution of Manning and Assange? Don’t they worry that when the state finishes with Manning, Assange and WikiLeaks, these atrophied news outlets will be next? Haven’t they realized that this is a war by a global corporate elite not against an organization or an individual but against the freedom of the press and democracy?
...The world has been turned upside down. The pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading rapidly over the earth. The criminals have seized power. It is not, in the end, simply Assange or Manning they want. It is all who dare to defy the official narrative, to expose the big lie of the global corporate state. The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms—propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite—monitor and crush those who dissent. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, scientists, intellectuals and workers will be forced to obey or thrown into bondage. I fear for Julian Assange. I fear for Bradley Manning. I fear for us all.
most americans are to put it nicely "gullible and naive"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ruth-trial
Manning's WikiLeaks release made it impossible for America to ignore the moral horror of its foreign wars. That is true loyalty
Molly Crabapple for Creative Time Reports, part of the Guardian Comment Network
guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 June 2013
'...There is an American myth that we do not "just follow orders". Most people do. Faced with innocent people locked in cages, Manning decided not to.
Manning downloaded cables, documents and videos that, in many cases, revealed brutal acts executed by the US military, and then passed them on to WikiLeaks. The first thing WikiLeaks released was helicopter cam footage it titled "Collateral Murder". It shows US pilots gunning down two Reuters employees, then killing an Iraqi Good Samaritan, who, with his children, had stopped to help the wounded. The pilots seem cheerful and trigger-happy. They joke about the sounds a tank makes rolling over a corpse.
Manning confessed his leak to Adrian Lamo after reading about the ex-hacker in Wired. Lamo, pallid and twitchy, is a Judas straight out of Central Casting. He pumped Manning for information, claiming that their communications were protected because Lamo was both a journalist and a priest. Then, he turned Manning over to the FBI.
...Loyalty is life and death for soldiers. But like courage, it's a morally neutral virtue. Its morality depends on how you view the cause it serves. Like any whistleblower, Manning may have betrayed his institution, but he did so out of loyalty to humanity.
If we view the war in Iraq as a murderous failure, entered into with lies and kept going by a refusal to admit our wrongs, the soldiers' fidelity to their mission looks different. The loyal soldiers become gears in a terrible machine beyond their control. They carve out spaces of humanity and solidarity for each other, even as the machine leaves countries covered in blood.
In Manning, a soldier's loyalty collided with the anti-authoritarian ethos of a hacker. Manning refused to be a gear.
The government needs hackers. But while hackers are often hired by the government, they are seldom of the government. Their values are foreign. Like the Mamluk soldier-slaves who would one day take Egypt from their masters, hackers are threatening precisely because they are already inside the walls of power. They have to be kept in line.
Manning's case is just one of dozens where hackers or whistleblowers with access to critical information networks are threatened with decades in prison. From Aaron Swartz to Jeremy Hammond, those who use computers to subvert the actions of the powerful are seen as more dangerous than rapists and murderers.
...Manning was arrested in May 2010 and held in solitary confinement for the next nine months. Guards stripped him naked each night, took his glasses, woke him every hour and allowed him 20 minutes a day to walk shackled in figure-eights. Solitary breaks minds. Shane Bauer, a hiker who spent 26 months in solitary confinement in Iran, wrote, "I needed human contact so badly that I woke every morning hoping to be interrogated … I once yearned to be sat down in a padded, sound-proof room, blindfolded, and questioned, just so I could talk to somebody." Thanks to international pressure, Manning was finally transferred to a normal cell in April 2011. But he has spent three years in jail just awaiting trial – longer than the sentences given to most of the torturers at Abu Ghraib.
Manning's trial begins today, Monday. In a pre-trial hearing in January, he pled guilty to "misusing classified material", and explained his motivations for leaking the information. But he denied the capital charge of "aiding the enemy", for which he faces the possibility of life in prison.
Manning is accused of aiding the enemy because he posted the information to the internet, where al-Qaida could read it. That the information went to WikiLeaks was irrelevant. The prosecution said Manning would be just as guilty if he had leaked it to the New York Times. You might start thinking that the enemy is the internet itself. Or, by extension, that the enemy is us.
Manning's pre-trial hearings have mostly been ignored by the media. The Times only started sending reporters after an opinion piece by its own public editor shamed them for their absence. CNN's Anderson Cooper has never visited Fort Meade.
Alexa O'Brien, an independent journalist who for the past two and a half years has provided the only public transcript of the hearings, said, "The mainstream media doesn't have much respect for Bradley Manning. There's a totem pole of influence. Manning isn't someone they're trying to win something from." O'Brien was threatened with arrest for being "disruptive" in the course of covering the hearings.
"I believe that if the general public … had access to the information … this could spark a domestic debate as to the role of the military and foreign policy in general," Manning testified in court. We now have access to that information, but it hasn't sparked a widespread debate.
America's indifference to Manning shows how morally lazy we have become. Manning gave his freedom to reveal the truth about our wars. We didn't want to be bothered.
We look away from Manning's leaks for the same reason we have always looked away from veterans. We don't want to see the violence that underpins America. We don't want to see the teenager home from war with a colostomy bag and a scrambled brain. We don't want to see Bradley Manning. So we'll let him spend the rest of his life in a hole, until all but a few forget what he did to get there.
"I guess I'm too idealistic," Manning typed to Lamo, days before he was arrested. "I want people to see the truth, because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens."
Maybe the greatest lie that Manning exposed won't have been about what the United States was really up to in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will be the lie we told ourselves – the lie that we cared about the truth.