The People's Record

President Obama prosecutes more whistle-blowers than all previous administrations combined.

‘Illegal we do immediately; unconstitutional takes a little longer’: Kissinger in new mass WikiLeaks document release
April 8, 2013

WikiLeaks has published the ‘Kissinger Cables’: its largest public release of documents in nearly a year, totaling some 1.7 million classified files, including information on the US’s secret diplomatic history.

A variety of files have been collected and collated, including from congressional correspondence, intelligence reports, and cables.

Julian Assange, who heads the organization, told the Press Association that the documents were illustrative of the “vast range and scope” of global US influence. He is to present and mark the release of the documents on Monday in a mass-press conference.

Assange is currently residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, under the threat of arrest if he leaves.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is quoted as saying, “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer’,”during a 1975 conversation which included a Turkish and Cypriot official.

Among the other information released is the revelation that that the Vatican may have collaborated with the US in supporting the Pinochet coup in Chile, which saw in a regime of bloodshed and disappearances.

In a cable dated 18 October 1973, it is stated that “Archbishop [Giovanni] Benelli, Vatican Deputy Secretary of State, expressed to illing [sic] his and Pope’s grave concern over successful international leftist campaign to misconstrue completely realities of Chilean situation.” 

The events which preceded Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship were dismissed as overblown.

“Bellini labeled exaggerated coverage of events as possibly greatest success of Communist propaganda, and highlighted fact that even moderate and conservative circles seem quite disposed to believe grossest lies about Chilean Junta’s excesses.”

It went on to admit that there had been bloodshed during what they labeled ‘mopping up’ procedures in Chile, but followed it up with the statement that the Junta was making ‘every effort’ to return the situation to normal.

Documents had previously come to light about US involvement in the bloody Chilean coup. One CIA document released in a 2003 book of collected works stated “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup…it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [US government] and American hand be well hidden.”

The WikiLeaks releases additionally suggest that former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Ghandi, worked as a negotiator for Swedish company Saab-Scania, which was trying to sell its Viggen fighter aircraft to Chile in the 1970s.

The documents are comprised of the 250,000 leaked state department memos made previously available through the ‘Cablegate’ release, alongside the new 1.7 million US State Department files from Kissinger’s time in the SoS position, from 1973-1976.

Although the 1.7 million had been officially declassified, and accessible through the National Archives and Records Agency, members of the WikiLeaks team consider their importance to be too significant for them to stay subtly tucked away.

“The Kissinger Cables provides unparalleled access to journalists and the general public,” said WikiLeaks in a statement.

Assange himself commented on the role that their publication of the documents’ played in preserving all sides of US history.

“The US administration cannot be trusted to maintain the history of its interactions with the world. Fortunately, an organization with an unbroken record in resisting censorship attempts now has a copy,” he said. He went on to call it the single most significant the single most significant body of geopolitical material ever published.

The lack of accessibility was also commented upon.

“One form of secrecy is complexity. That’s the reason why we decided to merge these files with our existing cables and put a lot of effort into making a user-friendly and accessible database” a WikiLeaks spokesperson, Kristinn Hrafnsson, told Forbes.

WikiLeaks has voiced additional concern over the possibility that some documents could be reclassified.

Julian Assange’s confinement in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy means the country has already spent some $4.5 million on police officers patrolling the building on 24-hour watch. He has been resident in the building since he lost a UK court case demanding his extradition to Sweden. (for questioning on sexual assault accusations)

WikiLeaks dropped a bombshell when it released over 250,000 leaked US cables in 2010, infuriating the US, as many related to the war in Iraq. The material released by the organization included the infamous ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which was shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, and documented direct attacks on unarmed Iraqi civilians. (Released by Pfc. B. Manning, who was been in prison under “cruel, inhuman & degrading” conditions, found by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Mendez for 1049 days)

Source

New WikiLeaks cable reveals US embassy strategy to destabilize Chavez government
April 6, 2013

In a secret US cable published online by WikiLeaks, former ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez’ government.

Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield — now an Assistant Secretary of State — the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”

The memo, which appears to be totally un-redacted, is plain in its language of involvement in these core objectives by the US embassy, as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), two of the most prestigious agencies working abroad on behalf of the US.

According to Brownfield, who prepared the cable specifically for US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the “majority” of both USAID and OTI activities in Venezuela were concerned with assisting the embassy in accomplishing its core objectives of infiltrating and subduing Chavez’ political party:

“This strategic objective represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela. Organized civil society is an increasingly important pillar of democracy, one where President Chavez has not yet been able to assert full control.”

In total, USAID spent some one million dollars in organizing 3,000 forums that sought to essentially reconcile Chavez supporters and the political opposition, in the hopes of slowly weaning them away from the Bolivarian side.

Brownfield at one point boasted of an OTI civic education program named “Democracy Among Us,” which sought to work through NGOs in low income regions, and had allegedly reached over 600,000 Venezuelans.

In total, between 2004 and 2006, USAID donated some 15 million dollars to over 300 organizations, and offered technical support via OTI in achieving US objectives which it categorized as seeking to reinforce democratic institutions.

Much of the memo details efforts to highlight instances of human rights violations, and sponsoring activists and members of the political opposition to attend meetings abroad and voice their concerns against the Chavez administration:

“So far, OTI has sent Venezuelan NGO leaders to Turkey, Scotland, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Chile, Uruguay, Washington and Argentina (twice) to talk about the law. Upcoming visits are planned to Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.”

In his closing comments, Brownfield remarked that, should President Chavez win re-election during the December 2006 elections, OTI expected the “atmosphere for our work in Venezuela” to become more complicated.

Ultimately, it seems that the former ambassador’s memo wisely predicted a change in conditions. Following his re-election, President Chavez threatened to eject the US ambassador from Venezuela in 2007, amid accusations of interfering in internal state affairs.

Source

On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released the classified Collateral Murder video to the public.  

The video shows an Apache helicopter indiscriminately firing on a dozen people, including two Reuters staff, in Baghdad. Later in the footage, rescuers, including two children, were also targeted. 

The footage was leaked to WikiLeaks by Pfc. B. Manning, who has been in prison for 1046 days. Manning’s detention conditions have been found to be “cruel, inhuman & degrading” by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Mendez. 

“The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust the aerial weapons team happened to have.” - Manning

Watch the full Collateral Murder video here.

“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.

Revealed by Pfc. B. Manning & WikiLeaks: The Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centers
March 7, 2013

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.

After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding.

Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s “eyes and ears out on the ground” in Iraq.

“They worked hand in hand,” said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. “I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there … the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.”

Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. “Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,” claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.

“Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.”

There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private B. Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after they pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. “I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. “We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.”

The reporter Peter Maass was also there, working on the story with Peress. “And while this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting: ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’ But it wasn’t kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror.”

The pattern in Iraq provides an eerie parallel to the well-documented human rights abuses committed by US-advised and funded paramilitary squads in Central America in the 1980s. Steele was head of a US team of special military advisers that trained units of El Salvador’s security forces in counterinsurgency. Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 while Steele was there and became a major advocate of counterinsurgency methods.

Steele has not responded to any questions from the Guardian and BBC Arabic about his role in El Salvador or Iraq. He has in the past denied any involvement in torture and said publicly he is “opposed to human rights abuses.” Coffman declined to comment.

An official speaking for Petraeus said: “During the course of his years in Iraq, General Petraeus did learn of allegations of Iraqi forces torturing detainees. In each incident, he shared information immediately with the US military chain of command, the US ambassador in Baghdad … and the relevant Iraqi leaders.”

The Guardian has learned that the SPC units’ involvement with torture entered the popular consciousness in Iraq when some of their victims were paraded in front of a TV audience on a programme called “Terrorism In The Hands of Justice.”

SPC detention centres bought video cameras, funded by the US military, which they used to film detainees for the show. When the show began to outrage the Iraqi public, Samari remembers being in the home of General Adnan Thabit – head of the special commandos – when a call came from Petraeus’s office demanding that they stop showing tortured men on TV.

“General Petraeus’s special translator, Sadi Othman, rang up to pass on a message from General Petraeus telling us not to show the prisoners on TV after they had been tortured,” said Samari. “Then 20 minutes later we got a call from the Iraqi ministry of interior telling us the same thing, that General Petraeus didn’t want the torture victims shown on TV.”

Othman, who now lives in New York, confirmed that he made the phone call on behalf of Petraeus to the head of the SPC to ask him to stop showing the tortured prisoners. “But General Petraeus does not agree with torture,” he added. “To suggest he does support torture is horseshit.”

Thabit is dismissive of the idea that the Americans he dealt with were unaware of what the commandos were doing. “Until I left, the Americans knew about everything I did; they knew what was going on in the interrogations and they knew the detainees. Even some of the intelligence about the detainees came to us from them – they are lying.”

Just before Petraeus and Steele left Iraq in September 2005, Jabr al-Solagh was appointed as the new minister of the interior. Under Solagh, who was closely associated with the violent Badr Brigades militia, allegations of torture and brutality by the commandos soared. It was also widely believed that the units had evolved into death squads.

The Guardian has learned that high-ranking Iraqis who worked with the US after the invasion warned Petraeus of the consequences of appointing Solagh but their pleas were ignored.

The long-term impact of funding and arming this paramilitary force was to unleash a deadly sectarian militia that terrorised the Sunni community and helped germinate a civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. At the height of that sectarian conflict, 3,000 bodies a month were strewn on the streets of Iraq.

Source

After their arrest, Manning was then tortured in a military prison for revealing information about torture. The torturers themselves have walked away scot-free & unharmed even to this day.

The stories about human rights violations at the hands of the US are virtually endless. The people of the US government are the terrorists. 

No slack for Manning: Prosecutors to press for life
March 3, 2013

Military prosecutors intend to pursue more serious charges against Pfc. B. Manning despite their having plead guilty to lesser charges. The whistleblower faces life imprisonment if they are found guilty of aiding the enemy.

Manning, 25, admitted on Thursday to handing over a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks. They voluntary plead guilty to 10 relevant charges, carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years.

The move was a ‘naked plea’ – unlike a plea bargain, there is no arrangement with the prosecution to drop other charges. It did, however, give prosecutors the option to only purse the charges to which Manning confessed, and proceed straight to sentencing.

But after the judge accepted the plea, military prosecutors announced they would pursue the 12 other charges, including the rarely used indictment of aiding the enemy. The crime is punishable by the death sentence, but the prosecution earlier ruled that out, saying they would seek life in prison without parole.

“Given the scope of the alleged misconduct, the seriousness of the charged offenses, and the evidence and testimony available, the United States intends to proceed with the court-martial to prove Manning committed the charged offenses beyond the lesser charges to which he has already pled guilty,” a statement from the Washington Military District said.

The court martial will begin on June 3, with 141 prosecution witnesses scheduled to testify. The prosecutors reportedly plan to reveal that some of the documents leaked by Manning were found by the Navy SEAL team that raided Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in May 2011.

Manning’s plea appears to give them little advantage in the trial, apart from probably winning some points from the judge, Col. Denise Lind, for not forcing the government to prove their role in the leak and their breaking the law in the process.

But there may be more strategic consideration, explained Michael Navarre, a former Navy judge advocate and military justice analyst.

“He’s laying the groundwork for a more lenient sentence and laying the groundwork for a potential defense to the aiding the enemy and the espionage charges,” Navarre told AP. “You end up with a more reasonable starting position — ‘I admit I did it, but I didn’t think it was going to harm anyone.’”

Manning has many supporters, who see them as a hero for putting their well-being on the line to expose morally questionable secrets of the US government. The Bradley Manning Support Network has raised more than $900,000 for their defense. A vigil in their honor was held in front of the US embassy in London on Friday.

The case could set a worrisome precedent for free speech: Manning’s alleged crime of aiding the enemy constitutes publishing classified documents on the Internet, allowing enemies of the US to read them. A guilty sentence would mean that any leak of government secrets that ends up on the Internet, event through traditional media, could be subjected to similar charges.

Source

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!

mothernaturenetwork:

NYC coding program pushes for computer science curriculum

The city thinks that every kid should learn to code to keep up in today’s world, and it’s started a program to make it happen.            

It’s pretty rare that I get to reblog stuff that makes me hopeful in a ‘well that’s a good thing’ way and not in a ‘well at least the decay of the system/colonial empire/capitalism is coming right along’ way. This is one of the good ones.

I wish they would offer some free adult coding courses.

Hey brilliant tumblr hacktivists, coders, and knowledgeable people, what are some good resources for self-teaching coding & the like?

The People’s Record News Update: This week in cyber-activism
February 27, 2013

Bahrain bans ‘Anonymous’ Guy Fawkes mask

The Guy Fawkes mask – which has come to represent a universal symbol of protest – has been banned in Bahrain. The move is the latest in a series of measures implemented by the Gulf state to quell a two-year pro-democracy uprising.

A ban on orders of the mask – which was popularized by the 2005 Hollywood adaption of the comic book ‘V for Vendetta’ – has been ordered by the Gulf kingdom’s Industry and Commerce Minister, Hassan Fakhro.

Source

DOJ ‘admits’ to targeting Aaron Swartz over his activism

Aaron Swartz’s past activism and ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’ played a part in his prosecution, sources told US media. Prosecutors pursued him even though he had not yet leaked anything, as his manifesto ‘proved his alleged malicious intent’ in downloading documents on a massive scale says Justice Department representatives.

“Some congressional staffers left the briefing with the impression that prosecutors needed to convict Swartz of a felony that would put him in jail for a short sentence in order to justify bringing the charges in the first place,” Huffington Post reported, citing two aides with knowledge of the briefing.

Swartz’s actions were criminalized by the government just because he was an “effective advocate of policies contrary to their views,” human rights lawyer Scott Horton told Mashable.

“Apparently, the DOJ thought it was a reason to throw the book at Swartz, even if he hadn’t actually made any such works available,” Masnick wrote.

The digital library itself has earlier stated it received confirmation from Swartz “that the content was not and would not be used, copied, transferred, or distributed.”

Amid wide public concern over Swartz’s case, the White House issued a directive expanding access to publicly funded scientific research. Last week’s directive was hailed by Open Access supporters as a major victory in a fight in which Swartz took an active part.

Source

US Internet providers start spy program to stop file-sharing

Starting this week, Internet Service Providers will start throttling connection speeds for customers alleged to be pirating copyright-protected materials.

Months after a controversial “six-strike” program was slated to be rolled out by the biggest ISPs in the United States, the Copyright Alert System (CAS) confirmed on Monday that the initiative has gone live.

Source

Google accused of privacy violations yet again

Google is in hot water once again after application developers have discovered that the Silicon Valley giant is sharing its users’ personal information without obtaining their consent.

Non-profit advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has sent a letter to the United States Federal Trade Commission that implores for the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection to intervene in the latest goof-up courtesy of Google.

Source

The FBI is inside Anonymous: Hacker Sabu has sentencing delayed again for helping the feds

The former LulzSec hacker that turned in his colleagues to the FBI will forego sentencing for another six months while he continues to assist the government in catching supposed computer criminals.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, the man behind the hacker alias “Sabu,” was absent from federal court on Friday despite previously being scheduled to appear for sentencing that morning in regards to the 12 criminal charges he pleaded guilty to in mid-2011.

On Monday, the leaking website Cryptome published a copy [.pdf] of a request from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York’s in which the court is asked to adjourn Monsegur’s sentencing date until August 23, 2013 “in light of the defendant’s ongoing cooperation with the Government.”

Source

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President Obama’s recent signing of cyber security executive order seems to be a response to Anonymous, not China
February 25, 2013

Last Tuesday, President Obama signed a new executive order seeking to give the executive branch more power over curbing cyber-security threats, calling it a move to protect against “America’s enemies.”

Although many news outlets are running with stories claiming the new plan was a response to hacking from China, it would appear, at least, that it was also a response to recent hacks to government websites by hacktivist group Anonymous.

At the time of this publication, two government sites, ussc.gov and miep.uscourts.gov, are met with “502 Bad Gateway” errors and cannot be accessed.

Anonymous also successfully hacked the Federal Reserve website.

The hacks are part of “Operation Last Resort,” a response to the death of “Internet freedom” activist Aaron Swartz and a demand for judicial reform. Swartz’s family and friends believe his suicide came as a result of legal pressure that did not fit his crime of downloading academic articles he had legal access to.

It appears Anonymous has not been fazed by Pres. Obama’s new cyber-security executive order.

Shortly after signing, Anonymous successfully hacked Goldman Sachs, leaking sensitive information such as names, addresses and bank account information.

Then, again, last week, the State Department’s website was successfully taken offline. In a Tweet, Anonymous asserted the attack was part of the ongoing Operation Last Resort.

The president is urging Congress to take legislative steps to put restrictions on the Internet, something Aaron Swartz was a champion at preventing.

His organization Demand Progress significantly aided in stopping last year’s SOPA, PIPA and CISPA bills many felt would spell the end to online privacy and Internet freedom. It seems that Anonymous is continuing the fight through the operation dedicated to him.

Emilie Rensink writes about civil liberties, counter-terrorism, cyber-security and political activism. Subscribe to get her articles delivered to your inbox.

Source

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.