The People's Record

“The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemingly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have.” - Pfc. B. Manning on the Collateral Murder video, which shows a US Apache helicopter indiscriminately firing on more than a dozen people, including a journalist & rescuers, in Iraq in 2010. Two children were also seriously injured in the attack.

Listen to Manning in their owns words in the leaked audio from the court martial proceeding despite a court ban on recordings. You can also download it here.

Pfc. B. Manning pleads guilty to misusing classified data; pleads not guilty to aiding the enemy under the Espionage Act
February 28, 2013

The U.S. Army private accused of providing diplomatic cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website pleaded guilty on Thursday to misusing classified material, but denied the most serious charge in the case, aiding the enemy.

Private First Class B. Manning, 25, entered the pleas prior to the court martial, which is set to begin on June 3, in a case that centers on the biggest leak of government secrets in U.S. history.

“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, dressed in full military uniform, testified calmly.

Reading from a 35-page statement as they remained seated next to their lawyers, the short, slight private described their feelings after they submitted the secret information to WikiLeaks.

“I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience,” said Manning, who spoke under oath for more than an hour.

At the hearing, Manning pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, through their attorney. Manning, who has been jailed at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia for more than 1,000 days (Note: the legal limit is 120 days), could face life imprisonment if convicted of that charge.

Manning pleaded guilty to a series of 10 lesser charges that they misused classified information at the hearing before military judge Colonel Denise Lind. They face a maximum of 20 years in prison for those charges.

Under a ruling last month by Lind, Manning would have any sentence reduced by 112 days to compensate for the markedly harsh treatment they received during their confinement. While at Quantico, Manning was placed in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day with guards checking on them every few minutes. (Plus psychologically tortured, which is rarely mentioned)

Manning admitted to unauthorized possession and willful communication of information from military databases, including the Combined Information Data Network Exchange Iraq and Combined Information Data Network Exchange Afghanistan.

They also admitted to misuse of documents from the U.S. Southern Command pertaining to Guantanamo Bay, a memo from an unnamed intelligence agency, and records from a military operation in Farah province in Afghanistan.

Manning, an Army intelligence officer, was arrested in May 2010 while serving in Iraq and charged with downloading thousands of intelligence documents, diplomatic cables and combat videos and forwarding them to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks began exposing the U.S. government secrets in the same year, stunning diplomats around the world and outraging U.S. officials who said damage to national security from the leaks endangered U.S. lives.

Source

Manning faces life in a military prison for exposing war crimes while those who actually commited the war crimes have not been arrested, let alone charged.

FREE MANNING!

Pfc. B. Manning has now spent more than 1,000 days imprisoned without trial. The legal limit for military court is 120 days. 

Manning allegedly released classified cables to Wikileaks, including the Collateral Murder video, the Afghan War logs, the Iraq War logs, State Department cables & Guantanamo Bay files. 

The soldier has been imprisoned in conditions which Juan Mendez, a UN Special Rapporteur on torture deemed “cruel, inhumane & degrading”. Manning faces 22 charges. The most significant charge is that of “aiding the enemy.” If convicted of “aiding the enemy,” they would serve life in prison without parole. 

The leaks have revealed indiscriminate murder of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the murder of two Reuters journalists among a group of unarmed civilians in Baghdad, prisoner abuse & torture in Iraq, US officials covering up child abuse by private contractors, such as DynCorp, in Afghanistan, hundreds of innocent people are being held at Guantanamo, an official account of civilian deaths in Iraq & Afghanistan that the Obama administration previously maintained didn’t exist (between 2004 and 2009, the U.S. government counted a total of 109,000 deaths in Iraq, with 66,081 classified as non-combatants), the inner-workings of Obama’s then-secret drone campaign in Yemen among other incidents of corruption & crimes against humanity.

Manning has become the face of Obama’s war on whistleblowers, an attempt to shield the government’s war crimes & human rights violations.

An international call to action: Nearly 40 events will mark Pfc. B. Manning’s 1,000 day imprisoned without trial across the world - show your support for the WikiLeaks whistleblower & exposing war crimes this Saturday, February 23. 

U.S. Events

Tucson, AZ     Feb 23, 11am-5pm

Tempe, AZ     Feb 23, 5:30-6:30pm

Guerneville, CA     Feb 23, 12-1pm

Cahuenga (L.A.), CA     Feb 23, 9-11am

Los Angeles, CA     Feb 23, 5:30-6:30

Long Beach (L.A.), CA 
Feb 23 at 1pm until Feb 24 at 2pm

Montrose (L.A.), CA     Feb 23, 5:30-7pm

Studio City (L.A.), CA     Feb 22, 6:30-7:30pm

San Francisco, CA     Feb 23, 1-4pm

San Diego, CA     Feb 23, 7-9pm

Denver, CO     Feb 23, 12-3:30pm

Washington, DC     Feb 24, 6:30-9pm

Ft. Lauderdale, FL     Feb 23, 12-1:30pm

Pensacola, FL     Feb 23, 5:30-6:30pm

Tallahassee, FL     Feb 23, 12-1pm

Honolulu, HI     Feb 22, 4-5:30pm

Chicago, IL     Feb 23, 12-1:30pm

Ft. Leavenworth, KS     Feb 23, 1-3pm

Boston, MA     Feb 23, 1-2pm

Augusta, ME     Feb 23, 11:30am-12pm

Portland, ME     Feb 23, 12pm

Detroit, MI     Feb 23, 3-8pm

Minneapolis, MN     Feb 23, 9:30am-12pm

New York, NY     Feb 23, 2-4pm

Toledo, OH     Feb 23, 12pm

Corvallis, OR     ongoing

Philadelphia, PA     Feb 23, 2-4pm

Seattle, WA     Feb 23, 12-4pm

International Events

Melbourne, Australia     Feb 22, 2-4pm

Sydney, Australia     Feb 23, 11am-2pm

Vancouver, Canada     Feb 23, 1-5pm

London, England     Feb 23, 2pm

Yorkshire, England     Feb 23, 11am

Fairford, Gloucestershire      Feb 23, 9:30am-12pm

Cardiff, Wales     Feb 23, 10:30am-2:30pm

Berlin, Germany      Feb 23, 12:30-3pm

Rome, Italy      Feb 23, 4-5pm

Scotland     ongoing

Ireland     ongoing

Slovakia

Spread the word. FREE MANNING NOW! 

The other Pfc. B. Manning: Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond helped expose the inner workings of the surveillance state
February 19, 2013

Activist Jeremy Hammond has been held without bail since his arrest in March. He is accused of hacking into the computers of private intelligence firm Stratfor and giving million of emails to WikiLeaks. He has been called the other Pfc. B. Manning. While Manning revealed government wrongdoing, Hammond is alleged to have leaked information from a private company, helping expose the inner workings of the insidious and pervasive surveillance state.

When he was 22, Hammond was called an “electronic Robin Hood” using hacking as a means of civil disobedience. He attacked a conservative group’s web site and stole user’s credit cards with the idea of making donations to the American Civil Liberties Union. His intention was in the spirit of taking from the rich and giving to poor. He later changed his mind and didn’t use the credit cards.

If he did what he is alleged with Stratfor, it was for the public good. Documents that he is alleged to have obtained and uploaded to WikiLeaks revealed spying on activists and others for corporations and governments. Furthermore, attorney and president Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights Michael Ratner argued that the Stratfor hacking was a clear case of entrapment targeting online activist group Anonymous and Hammond. He explained there was an informant named Sabu and the FBI gave him the computer onto which the documents were uploaded.

Hammond now has been moved to solitary confinement and has been virtually cut off from all interaction with the outside world. On Feb 14, the Jeremy Hammond Support Network posted a message on social media that heavy restrictions were put on him. The Network reported Hammond now is not allowed any commissary visits to buy stamps for letters and food, as he does not get enough to eat. Now visits are limited to his lawyer and telephone contact is restricted to his brother.

His case is another example of the expanding unchecked authoritarian power in the justice system in general. Here Hammond appears to be following similar footsteps as Manning who also was placed into solitary confinement. Nahal Zamani, Advocacy Program Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights argued how solitary confinement is a form of torture and is “clearly cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, the use of solitary has been condemned as torture by the international community.”

Unlike Manning, who is subject to the military ‘justice’ system, Hammond is in a civilian court, which is supposed to follow the Constitution. What happens though when one is placed into jail outside of the public eye is that prisoners are more and more being stripped of their rights and treated inhumanely. Once they are behind bars, they become incognito, losing connection to the outside world. Inside the cage is a twilight zone where laws and conventions can be bent by those who are powerful, with little oversight or accountability.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeply flawed justice system combined with an increasingly corporatized prison industrial complex. Prisoners are marginalized and many are forgotten. Hammond shared his personal experience as prisoner at the Metropolitan Correctional Center during Hurricane Sandy. He wrote how because of the storm, the Correctional Center lost power. They had no hot water or heat and prisoners were left behind with no phone calls, no visits and no mail. What was revealed was a callous system that abandons the poor, marginalized and disadvantaged. Hammond noted how as was seen in the Katrina disaster of New Orleans, New Yorkers experienced that relief came not from FEMA and government agency but from grassroots community groups such as Occupy Sandy. He ended his letter saying:

“Very frightening to consider what would happen to us prisoners – already disenfranchised, silenced, marginalized and forgotten – in the event of a more devastating natural disaster. There’s a universal consensus here – ‘they’d probably leave us to die.’”

In addition to this, the US legal system is more and more used to target political dissidents, especially information activists. In November 2012, Hammond was denied bail despite his attorney convincingly arguing that he posed no flight risk and assuring that he would not have access to computers. The prosecutor insisted he is a flight risk and Judge Loretta Preska held a very hostile attitude toward Hammond and stated that the reason for bail denial was that Hammond poses “a very substantial danger to the community.” Hammond now faces indictments against him for various computer fraud crimes which could amount to 37 years to life in prison.

Ratner addressed obvious conflict of interests with judge Preska sitting on the case against Hammond. It came to light that Preska’s husband worked for a client of Stratfor, whose emails Hammond allegedly leaked. Ratner spoke of how the mere appearance of a conflict of interest is enough for her to recuse herself, according to judicial rules.

Jeremy Hammond’s case is showing how broken the rule of law has become in our time. Like Manning, Barret Brown and the late Aaron Swartz, this is another case of a high profile activist being severely targeted by having the book thrown at them with generally specious charges. The courts have become part of a rigged system that favors corporations and those politically connected to them. One thing that these activists seem to have in common is that they actually never really hurt anyone and are driven by one of the higher ideals that this country has been founded on -that of a truly informed populace, while those that are politically targeting them regularly harm and exploit innocent people.

Holding those who abuse power accountable is becoming nearly impossible with the current system. More than ever, checks and balance will only come from the people. It was in response to a public uproar that Manning was moved from Quantico where he had been subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment.

This Thursday, February 21, Preska will make a decision on the defense motion to recuse herself from the case against Hammond and supporters plan to pack the courtroom to demand a fair trial. We all have to stay awake and support those who have passed the twilight gate, who are rendered invisible, marginalized from the rest of the population. A broken rule of law can be corrected through the vigilance and conscience of ordinary people; witnessing injustice and challenging it from all sides. We will be watching.

Source

Here’s the Facebook event for the details about Thursday’s rally to support Jeremy Hammond. 

Right after whistleblowing CIA torture practices, the CIA launched an investigation into CIA veteran John Kiriakou resulting in a two and a half year sentence for leaking the identity of an agent.
January 27, 2013

He was charged on January 23 for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and repeatedly disclosing classified information to journalists.

The former chief of counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan pleaded guilty to the charges set against him as part of a deal with prosecutors, “accepting responsibility for his actions.” In return, prosecutors dropped the charges of making false statements under a World War I-era Espionage Act.

“I want to start by saying I accept my sentence of 30 years in prison – oh my God – 30 months in prison…Oh boy. It was the 30 years I was trying not to get.” Kiriakou said, at press conference on Wednesday.

The charges in question related to an email sent by Kiriakou in August 2008, revealing the name of a covert CIA officer involved in waterboarding to a freelance journalist.

However, Kiriakou and his defense claimed that the email is merely a pretext and the real reason for his sentence is an interview he gave ABC News in 2007, blowing the whistle on torture practices conducted by the CIA that he regards as “wrong and ineffective.”

“I’m headed to prison while the torturers and the lawyers who papered over it and the people who conceived it and the man who destroyed the proof of it, the tapes, will never face justice. And that’s the saddest part of the story,” Kiriakou said.

Kiriakou’s lawyers argued that though initially her client also viewed torture in the CIA as’something the US needed to do,’ he eventually felt compelled to change his mind. As he became more vocal on the issue, publishing a book in 2010 on his experiences called “The Reluctant Spy,” he irritated the CIA, which then launched the “vindictive prosecution” against Kiriakou.

The case against Kiriakou originally came about when authorities stumbled upon a security breach at Guantanamo Bay in which inmates were found in possession of photographs of their interrogators. The subsequent investigation led to the discovery of Kiriakou’s security leak and his indictment in April 2012.

Source

Military judge recognizes what many progressives deny: Pfc. Manning was mistreated
January 9, 2013

“With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.” - Barack Obama, White House Press Conference, March 10, 2011.

_________

Few if any articles that I’ve written produced as much backlash as my 15 December 2010 column reporting on the oppressive and inhumane conditions of Pfc. B. Manning’s detention, the first time that story was reported. The anger at my article primarily came not from right-wing venues but from the hardest-core Obama supporters, who (as they always do since 20 January 2009) reflexively defended the US government. Led by former Obama campaign press aide and now MSNBC contributor (the ultimate redundancy) Joy Reid, these particularly fanatical Democratic partisans literally adopted the anti-Manning rhetoric from the further right-wing precincts and repudiated the liberal tradition of defending whistleblowers and opposing oppressive detention conditions - all in order to insist that Manning was being treated exactly how they should be (this warped reaction was far from unanimous, as many progressives protested Manning’s treatment).

Since then, an internal investigation by the Marine Corps - which operates the brig in which they were held - found that Manning’s jailers violated their own policies in imposing oppressive conditions. The Obama administration’s own State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley,denounced the detention conditions as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” and was then fired as a result. Amnesty International called for protests over Manning’s treatment. The UN’s highest torture official formally concluded after an investigation that the US government was guilty “of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards B. Manning” and “that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture” - exactly what I reported at the end of 2010.

And now, on Tuesday, the military judge presiding over Manning’s court-martial found, as the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports, “that Manning was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention” and is thus entitled to a reduction of their sentence if they are found guilty. Pilkington notes:

“[The military judge’s] ruling was made under Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that protects prisoners awaiting trial from punishment on grounds that they are innocent until proven guilty. The recognition that some degree of pre-trial punishment did occur during the nine months that the soldier was held in Quantico marks a legal victory for the defence in that it supports Manning’s long-held complaint that he was singled out by the US government for excessively harsh treatment.”

This is far from a real victory for Manning. They were seeking dismissal of all charges, or a far greater sentencing reduction, based on claims of unlawful detention. And the judge, while accepting some, rejected many of his claims of abuse on the grounds that there was no intent to punish them before trial. But that’s hardly surprising: this is, after all, a military judge presiding over a case where an Army Private is accused of “aiding and abetting al-Qaida.” The entire proceeding is stacked against Manning: a military judge presiding over a military tribunal in this case is about the least objective and trustworthy arbiter on these questions.

That’s why this ruling is so significant: even the military judge recognized that, in multiple ways, the treatment of Manning was unfair, excessive and illegal. Politico’s Josh Gerstein explains:

“The decision is a significant victory for Manning’s defense and a vindication for human-rights groups that complained the intelligence analyst was being treated unfairly. The ruling also runs counter to President Barack Obama’s statement at a March 2011 news conference that Manning’s treatment at the brig was ‘appropriate.’”

Amazingly, Obama’s defense of Manning’s treatment - repudiated even by this military judge - came less than a week after the New York Times first reported that brig officials had begun stripping Manning of all his clothing and forcing him to remain naked.

The willingness of some of Obama’s most devoted followers to justify all this and lash out at critics surprised even me, and underscored just how blindly supportive they are no matter how extreme and odious the behavior. As Charles Davis detailed in an excellent analysis at Salon last April, these Obama-defending progressives - in order to attack Manning and defend their detention conditions - copied almost verbatim the playbook used by Nixon officials to malign Daniel Ellsberg and anyone else who exposed wrongdoing on the part of the US government. Just as Bush followers did for years with the controversy over torture, these Democratic partisans alternated manically between denying that these oppressive conditions existed, justifying their use, and mocking concerns over them.

John Cole, one of President Obama’s most steadfast supporters (and a former Army soldier), repeatedly condemned the abusive treatment of Manning, and in doing so, continually provoked the scorn of his Obama-supporting readers. Yesterday, after reading news of the military judge’s decision, Cole sarcastically wrote:

“I don’t understand how this is possible. What kind of commie liberal is this judge? Is she from Code Pink? For months, when I said he was being abused, all the keyboard commandos assured me that military protocol was being followed and that if they didn’t abuse him like this and keep him naked and without his glasses, if he killed himself firebaggers like me would blame Obama.

“Many of you internet tough guys continued with this line of invective even when the DOD Inspector General said he was being treated not in accordance with rules… .

“Anyone with half a f****** brain could tell he was being treated differently than any other person in custody at Quantico, and the reason for it was he had embarrassed the Brass and the National Security State.

“For alleged liberals, there’s not a dimes worth of difference between many of you and [Bush torture advocate] Marc Thiessen.”

Watching self-proclaimed progressives attack and malign a courageous whistleblower, while defending the US military’s patently abusive detention practices and steadfastly defending the government’s extreme secrecy powers, is one of the most potent symbols of the Obama presidency.

An equally potent symbol is that at the very same time that B. Manning is prosecuted and threatened with life in prison for exposing serious war crimes, a government official who supported if not participated in those war crimes is being promoted to CIA director. This takes place in the same week when, as FAIR put it on Monday, “the only person to do time for the CIA’s torture policies [John Kiriakou] appears to be a guy who spoke publicly about them, not any of the people who did the actual torturing.

As usual, those who commit serious crimes in government are not punished but rather rewarded. Only those who expose those crimes are punished. That’s the story of B. Manning, and what makes it all the more remarkable and telling are the hordes of Democrats who have spent several years justifying and cheering for this.

- Glenn Greenwald

Source

It’s really no surprise that someone like Barack Obama, a president who has escalated illegal drone wars, committed war crimes & not only kept Guantanamo Bay open but led a renovation of it, supported B. Manning’s torturous treatment at Quantico. 

Pfc. B. Manning is a hero for exposing these war crimes to Wikileaks, including the Afghan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs & the Collateral Murder video.

Free Pfc. Manning!

Bradley Manning: A tale of liberty lost in America
December 3, 2012

Over the past two and a half years, all of which he has spent in a military prison, much has been said about Bradley (also known as Breanna) Manning, but nothing has been heard from him. That changed on Thursday, when the 23-year-old US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks testified at his court martial proceeding about the conditions of his detention.

The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected, including prolonged solitary confinement and forced nudity, have been known for some time. A formal UN investigation denounced those conditions as “cruel and inhuman”. President Obama’s state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning’s treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning’s conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.

Still, hearing the accused whistleblower’s description of this abuse in his own words viscerally conveyed its horror. Reporting from the hearing, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington quoted Manning: “If I needed toilet paper I would stand to attention and shout: ‘Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!’” And: “I was authorised to have 20 minutes sunshine, in chains, every 24 hours.” Early in his detention, Manning recalled, “I had pretty much given up. I thought I was going to die in this eight by eight animal cage.”

The repressive treatment of Bradley Manning is one of the disgraces of Obama’s first term, and highlights many of the dynamics shaping his presidency. The president not only defended Manning’s treatment but also, as commander-in-chief of the court martial judges, improperly decreed Manning’s guilt when he asserted in an interview that he “broke the law”.

Worse, Manning is charged not only with disclosing classified information, but also the capital offence of “aiding the enemy”, for which the death penalty can be imposed (military prosecutors are requesting “only” life in prison). The government’s radical theory is that, although Manning had no intent to do so, the leaked information could have helped al-Qaida, a theory that essentially equates any disclosure of classified information – by any whistleblower, or a newspaper – with treason.

Whatever one thinks of Manning’s alleged acts, he appears the classic whistleblower. This information could have been sold for substantial sums to a foreign government or a terror group. Instead he apparently knowingly risked his liberty to show them to the world because – he said when he believed he was speaking in private – he wanted to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”.

Compare this aggressive prosecution of Manning to the Obama administration’s vigorous efforts to shield Bush-era war crimes and massive Wall Street fraud from all forms of legal accountability. Not a single perpetrator of those genuine crimes has faced court under Obama, a comparison that reflects the priorities and values of US justice.

Then there’s the behaviour of Obama’s loyalists. Ever since I first reported the conditions of Manning’s detention in December 2010, many of them not only cheered that abuse but grotesquely ridiculed concerns about it. Joy-Ann Reid, a former Obama press aide and now a contributor on the progressive network MSNBC, spouted sadistic mockery in response to the report: “Bradley Manning has no pillow?????” With that, she echoed one of the most extreme rightwing websites, RedState, which identically mocked the report: “Give Bradley Manning his pillow and blankie back.”

As usual, the US establishment journalists have enabled the government every step of the way. Despite holding themselves out as adversarial watchdogs, nothing provokes their animosity more than someone who effectively challenges government actions.

Typifying this mentality was a CNN interview on Thursday night with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange conducted by Erin Burnett. It was to focus on newly released documents revealing secret efforts by US officials to pressure financial institutions to block WikiLeaks’ funding after the group published classified documents allegedly leaked by Manning, a form of extra-legal punishment that should concern everyone, particularly journalists.

But the CNN host was completely uninterested in the dangerous acts of her own government. Instead she repeatedly tried to get Assange to condemn the press policies of Ecuador, a tiny country that – quite unlike the US – exerts no influence beyond its borders. To the mavens of the US watchdog press, Assange and Manning are enemies to be scorned because they did the job that the US press corps refuses to do: namely, bringing transparency to the bad acts of the US government and its allies around the world.

Bradley Manning has bestowed the world with multiple vital benefits. But as his court martial finally reaches its conclusion, one likely to result in the imposition of a long prison term, it appears his greatest gift is this window into America’s political soul.

Source

Glenn Greenwald is a great source on the Manning case. He’s a former civil liberties lawyer & has been covering WikiLeaks/Manning for several years now. Subscribe to him via the Guardian.

Activists demand judge step down in Jeremy Hammond case
December 1, 2012

Supporters of Jeremy Hammond, the Chicago hacktivist denied bail by a federal judge in New York for his role in the hack of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, are now demanding the judge in the case recuse herself. Judge Loretta Preska denied bail to Hammond in court last week, saying that the alleged anonymous affiliated hacker posed a “substantial danger to the community.” Information revealed since her ruling shows that Preska’s husband, Thomas Kaveler is employed by Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, a client of Stratfor, and Kaveler himself was a victim of the hack.

According to a press release from the collective Anonymous, Kaveler’s email address and other data was published by Wikileaks after the Stratfor hack. Preska never disclosed this information and supporters of Hammond say that conflicts with her ability to give him a fair trial. “Judge Loretta Preska’s impartiality is compromised by her husband’s involvement with Stratfor and a clear prejudice against Hammond exists, as evidenced by her statements,” the press release stated.

Truthout reports Gideon Oliver, president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild told supporters at a rally in New York on Thursday that, “The court regularly releases people accused of crimes more serious than the crimes Jeremy is accused of. Jeremy’s continuing pre-trial imprisonment will severely hamper his attorney’s ability to prepare a defense and defend Jeremy at trial.”

Hammond potentially faces 30 years to life imprisonment if convicted. He has been held for eight months without bail or trial and is not expected to take the stand until next year.

Source

Bradley Manning takes the stand: Being detained in Kuwait
November 30, 2012

The media had been anxiously awaiting the moment that the defense would call Pfc. Bradley Manning to the witness stand to testify on his confinement conditions while in pretrial confinement. This afternoon, the defense called Manning to the stand and, for the first time, Manning spoke about the treatment he experienced while at Quantico—treatment which stirred outrage and developed into a scandal for the military.

Manning’s defense lawyer, David Coombs, said, “I know this is a little nerve wracking,” as Manning sat down. Coombs began with the day he was detained —May 27, 2010. He was brought into a room at FOB Hammer. He did not waive his rights. He then sat for an hour and a half waiting for his belongings to be brought to him in “brown paper bags.”

He remained there for two to three days being escorted everywhere but staying in living quarters. He had a pretrial confinement hearing at Camp Liberty in Iraq in the final days of May and then was placed by magistrate in pretrial confinement.

Manning was transferred to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait and brought into a military tent that had two cage-like cells inside. It was 8 x 8 x 8 and had a rack and toilet. He was held there for 72 hours. He was here throughout the “indoctrination period”—the first part of his detention.

He said he was able to read a manual for guidance of inmates, “which is basically their booklet on rules in the facility.” It was pretty much all he could. He had sheets, a pillow, some blankets, toiletry items and he stayed in the cell except when going to the shower. He was not allowed to talk to anyone but interacted with guards when they brought meals. He could not make phone calls.

Manning described how on the second day he collapsed in his cell. The lights were not on and the air conditioning was not working. The tent was hot and dark. Two figures came in the tent and started to talk to him. He couldn’t understand what they were saying and fainted. When he woke up, a Navy officer was standing above him. He fainted because he was “dehydrated.”

After “indoctrination,” he was brought to a tent with other pretrial detainees, where he stayed in the daytime and slept. It was a twenty-man tent.  He was able to be in an open bay area. Wake-up call was at 2200 Military time. A typical day ended at 1300 or 1400.

He would have a brief recreation call every day and walk around outside. There was a track area in between the fences of the facility where he would go to chow. There was a dining facility tent. He would stay there with other detainees and in a recreation tent at other times.

In the recreation tent, there was an old TV set, VHS player and some library books. There were also a lot of “old VHS tapes.” He would spend between 4 and  10 hours in the tent and other times he would be in the recreation tent with the TV.

He had limited phone privileges but was able to call family.  ”I didn’t have a lot of phone numbers,” he explained. “I had my aunt’s phone number. That’s one I memorized.” When he did call his aunt, it had been nine days since he had contacted family. It was “good to know” he “wasn’t completely cut off from the world,” he said. Manning could also schedule phone calls with his attorney. There was a special area for phone calls.

Manning was moved from his open bay tent to back to a segregated tent about two weeks into his confinement in Kuwait. It was the tent with cages and cells, possibly between June 14 and June 18. He was not told why he was moved and it was the same cell he was in during “indoctrination.”

No detainees was in cell adjacent to him. He had sheets, a pillow, a pillow case, a uniform, a couple changes of clothes and books that I checked out of library.

After being moved back to segregation, there still were no formal charges. He didn’t know what was going on. He was limited, he said, and it was “very draining.”

He was not sleeping much. “Nights were my days. Days were my nights. It all blended.” Generally, he said, he was a “social and extroverted person.” Being in a cell by himself was difficult.

His phone privileges were removed after three calls and they would not explain why. At the camp, they did not allow news. They did not allow radio. There was no way for him to get news of current events in the world.

Manning said he started to “deteriorate in terms of awareness of my surroundings and what’s going on.” Everything was “more insular and I sort of lived inside my head.”

Source

921 days after being detained (120 is the US military law maximum)… Manning takes the stand.

The testimony comes on the two-year anniversary of Cablegate, WikiLeak’s (arguably) most influential leaks of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables, allegedly exposed by Manning. Cablegate revealed unprecedented civilian murders in Iraq, as well as “systemic evasion of accountability for atrocities & killings,” says Julian Assange.

Manning also revealed information collected in the Afghan & Iraq War Logs, as well as the Collateral Murder footage.

This photo is heartwarming. After everything Manning has been through, there’s still a smile. Pfc. Manning is an American hero - Exposing war crimes is not a crime. 

Democracy Now! Exclusive: Julian Assange on Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, Cypherpunks & the Surveillance State

“When we look at what happens when civilization moves onto the Internet, how is it controlled at the moment? A lot of the problems we face on the Internet & the idea of the Internet is guys with guns can simply turn up to any Internet server & tell the people there to behave in a certain way just like they do with oil wells or they do with customs.

So as an international news civilization, a forum were people intellectually express themselves, where we deposit our history, political ideals & ambition, the Internet is suffering from mass interception, but on the other hand it is still subservient to the physical force in the various states that its infrastructure is located in.

Cryptography offers a way, an abstract a way from the physical world, to create as a sort of mathematical barrier between the physical world & the intellectual world, & in that way slowly declare independence from nation states. Our intellectual world cannot simply be deleted or taxed in the manner which we have suffered from for so long in nation states.”

Compare Amy Goodman & Juan Gonzalez’s great interview to CNN’s really annoying, unprofessional interview with Assange yesterday.