Bradley Manning convicted of "espionage" but not "aiding the enemy."

My take on Bradley Manning is that he is the poster man for courageous whistle-blower resistance and an American Hero. There aren't many real heroes anymore in the age of mindless distraction, media distortion, blind obedience, and Orwellian government surveillance.  When I told the government to stick it 45 years ago, when they wanted me to kill Vietnamese people ("kill, kill, kill" was drilled into our heads as soldiers) fighting for their own sense of self determination during the Vietnam war, it wasn't as if I didn't realize that they would come after me and imprison me in conditions much worse than the LA County jail--you know what they are going to do--and you hope that you can survive it, and that you will be home within a few years. But Bradley Manning didn't just tell them to stick it, he exposed and brought transparency to the whole imperial, dirty, insane, and criminal U.S. foreign policy enterprise. He did it with the release of videos like "Collateral Murder" showing the senseless American killing of Iraqi civilians, and with his release of thousands of State Department emails that revealed the duplicitous nature of our dealings with other countries. That took the kind of real courage that is sadly lacking in America today. My hat is off to the Bradley Mannings and Edward Snowdens who risk everything--their long-term liberty and potentially their actual lives--to inform the American people about what their government is doing to them and the people of the world.

So after three years of abuse in a military prison, confinement called cruel, inhuman and degrading by the UN, Bradley Manning has been convicted of the crime of telling the truth in yet another kangaroo military court dead set on setting an example to others who would have the courage to follow their ethical convictions and resist the developing American fascist state.

Here are several articles, statements, an audio, and video, about the conviction of Bradley Manning for reporting the truth to the world concerning the behavior of our military and foreign policy establishment.
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The Moral Verdict on Bradley Manning: A Conviction of Love in Action

By Norman Solomon

July 30, 2013 "Information Clearing House -  

The sun rose with a moral verdict on Bradley Manning well before the military judge could proclaim his guilt. The human verdict would necessarily clash with the proclamation from the judicial bench.

In lockstep with administrators of the nation’s war services, judgment day arrived on Tuesday to exact official retribution. After unforgiveable actions, the defendant’s culpability weighed heavy.

“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house,” another defendant, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, wrote about another action that resulted in a federal trial, 45 years earlier, scarcely a dozen miles from the Fort Meade courtroom where Bradley Manning faced prosecution for his own fracture of good order.

“We could not, so help us God, do otherwise,” wrote Berrigan, one of the nine people who, one day in May 1968 while the Vietnam War raged on, removed several hundred files from a U.S. draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, and burned them with napalm in the parking lot. “For we are sick at heart…”

On the surface, many differences protrude between those nine draft-files-burning radical Catholics and Bradley Manning. But I wonder. Ten souls saw cruelties of war and could no longer just watch.

“I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy,” Manning wrote in an online chat. Minutes later he added: “I think I’ve been traumatized too much by reality, to care about consequences of shattering the fantasy.” And he also wrote: “I want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Those words came seven weeks after the world was able to watch the “Collateral Murder” video that Manning had provided to WikiLeaks. And those words came just days before military police arrived to arrest him on May 29, 2010.

Since then, huge numbers of people around the world have come to see Bradley Manning as personification of moral courage. During the last several months I’ve read thousands of moving comments online at ManningNobel.org, posted by signers of the petition urging that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The comments are often stunning with heartfelt intensity of wounded idealism, anger and hope.

No verdict handed down by the military judge can change the moral verdict that has emerged from people all over the world, reciprocating what Bradley Manning expressed online a few days before his arrest: “I can’t separate myself from others.” And: “I feel connected to everybody … like they were distant family.”

The problem for the U.S. government was not that Bradley Manning felt that way. The problem came when he acted that way. Caring was one thing. Acting on the caring, with empathy propelling solidarity, was another.

Days ago, in closing argument, the prosecutor at Fort Meade thundered: “He was not a whistleblower, he was a traitor.”

But a “traitor” to what? To the United States … only if the United States is to be a warfare state, where we “cannot make informed decisions as a public.” Only if we obey orders to separate ourselves from the humanity of others. Only if authoritative, numbing myths are to trump empathy and hide painful truth.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

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Scott Horton Radio

7/30/13 Daniel Ellsberg
Exclusive: the first reaction of Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, to Bradley Manning’s acquittal on charges of “aiding the enemy,” but conviction under the espionage act, why journalism is still threatened, Manning’s motives, the positive consequences of his leaks — for instance ending America’s occupation of Iraq once [...] Download

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 Democracy Now! Special Coverage on the Bradley Manning Verdict.
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Glenn Greenwald OWNS Toobin (CNN) Over Snowden, Manning  

 

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Statement by Julian Assange on Verdict in Bradley Manning Court-Martial
30 July 2013, 19:30 UTC

Today Bradley Manning, a whistleblower, was convicted by a military court at Fort Meade of 19 offences for supplying the press with information, including five counts of ’espionage’. He now faces a maximum sentence of 136 years.

The ’aiding the enemy’ charge has fallen away. It was only included, it seems, to make calling journalism ’espionage’ seem reasonable. It is not.

Bradley Manning’s alleged disclosures have exposed war crimes, sparked revolutions, and induced democratic reform. He is the quintessential whistleblower.

This is the first ever espionage conviction against a whistleblower. It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism. It is a short sighted judgment that can not be tolerated and must be reversed. It can never be that conveying true information to the public is ’espionage’.

President Obama has initiated more espionage proceedings against whistleblowers and publishers than all previous presidents combined.

In 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama ran on a platform that praised whistleblowing as an act of courage and patriotism. That platform has been comprehensively betrayed. His campaign document described whistleblowers as watchdogs when government abuses its authority. It was removed from the internet last week.

Throughout the proceedings there has been a conspicuous absence: the absence of any victim. The prosecution did not present evidence that - or even claim that - a single person came to harm as a result of Bradley Manning’s disclosures. The government never claimed Mr. Manning was working for a foreign power.

The only ’victim’ was the US government’s wounded pride, but the abuse of this fine young man was never the way to restore it. Rather, the abuse of Bradley Manning has left the world with a sense of disgust at how low the Obama administration has fallen. It is not a sign of strength, but of weakness.

The judge has allowed the prosecution to substantially alter the charges after both the defense and the prosecution had rested their cases, permitted the prosecution 141 witnesses and extensive secret testimony. The government kept Bradley Manning in a cage, stripped him naked and isolated him in order to crack him, an act formally condemned by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for torture. This was never a fair trial.

The Obama administration has been chipping away democratic freedoms in the United States. With today’s verdict, Obama has hacked off much more. The administration is intent on deterring and silencing whistleblowers, intent on weakening freedom of the press.

The US first amendment states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". What part of ’no’ does Barack Obama fail to comprehend?

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What Does the Manning Verdict Mean for Edward Snowden?

Posted By Elias Groll Tuesday, July 30, 2013

In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union described the Manning prosecution as nothing but an exercise in intimidation. "Since he already pleaded guilty to charges of leaking information -- which carry significant punishment -- it seems clear that the government was seeking to intimidate anyone who might consider revealing valuable information in the future," said Ben Wizner, the director of the group's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. If those activists are looking for confirmation of their fears, they need look no further than a joint statement from Reps. Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: "There is still much work to be done to reduce the ability of criminals like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden to harm our national security. The House Intelligence Committee continues to work with the Intelligence Community to improve the security of classified information and to put in place better mechanisms to detect individuals who abuse their access to sensitive information." 

Click on title above for entire article. 

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 Bradley Manning Cleared of 'Aiding the Enemy' but Guilty of Most Other Charges
• Manning convicted of multiple Espionage Act violations
• Acquitted of most serious 'aiding the enemy' charge
• Army private faces maximum jail sentence of 130 years

By Ed Pilkington at Fort Meade

July 30, 2013 "The Guardian" - Bradley Manning, the source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of secret disclosures, faces a possible maximum sentence of more than 130 years in military jail after he was convicted of most charges on which he stood trial.

Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over the court martial of the US soldier, delivered her verdict in curt and pointed language. "Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty," she repeated over and over, as the reality of a prolonged prison sentence for Manning – on top of the three years he has already spent in detention – dawned.

The one ray of light in an otherwise bleak outcome for Manning was that he was found not guilty of the single most serious charge against him – that he knowingly "aided the enemy", in practice al-Qaida, by disclosing information to the WikiLeaks website that in turn made it accessible to all users including enemy groups. ....See "The Guardian"
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Bradley Manning show trial & May Day

Here are two pieces, both with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, on the important "show trial" of Bradley Manning, the brave young soldier who is accused of releasing whistle blower information (“aiding the enemy” ) to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Manning allegedly is responsible for allowing the American people to understand the depth of the depravities committed by the US military in Iraq, and for releasing other information about US foreign policy shenanigans.

The first piece is Ratner's article about the Manning trial printed last week in the UK's Guardian, and the second is an interview on Scott Horton's Antiwar Radio from today, where Scott and Michael Ratner discuss the article. The interview is well worth listening to.
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Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy
The US government's suppression of all accountability and transparency in prosecuting the WikiLeaks suspect is totalitarian

On 24 April, a hearing in one of the most important court martial cases in decades will take place in Fort Meade, Maryland. The accused faces life in prison for the 22 charges against him, which include "aiding the enemy" and "transmitting defense information". His status as an alleged high-profile whistleblower and the importance of the issues his case raises should all but guarantee the proceedings a prominent spot in major media, as well as in public debate.

Yet, in spite of the grave implications, not to mention the press and public's first amendment right of full and open access to criminal trials, no outside parties will have access to the evidence, the court documents, court orders or off-the-record arguments that will ultimately decide his fate. Under these circumstances, whatever the outcome of the case, the loser will be the transparency necessary for democratic government, accountable courts and faith in our justice system.

In the two years since his arrest for allegedly leaking the confidential files that exposed grand-scale military misconduct, potential war crimes and questionable diplomatic tactics, army private Bradley Manning has been subjected to an extremely secretive criminal procedure. It is a sad irony that the government's heavy-handed approach to this case only serves to underscore the motivations – some would say, the necessity – for whistleblowing like Manning's in the first place.

The most well-known of the leaked files, a 39-minute video entitled "Collateral Murder", depicts three brutal attacks on civilians by US soldiers during the course of just one day of the Iraq war.

Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq

The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

See: Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy
The US government's suppression of all accountability and transparency in prosecuting the WikiLeaks suspect is totalitarian for rest of article.
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Scott Horton Interviews Michael Ratner
Scott Horton, May 02, 2012

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, discusses his article “Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy;” Manning’s quasi-public trial (which is open to observation, yet vital evidence and court documents are withheld from the media and public); why the NY Times is just as guilty of “aiding the enemy” as Manning and WikiLeaks; how President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made a fair trial impossible; and how you can support Bradley Manning in his time of need.
MP3 here. (15:33)
Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

You can support Bradley Manning by visiting the Bradley Manning Support Network.
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Yesterday there were many May Day protests in Major Cities across the US. Just Google the May Day protests, or go to Democracy Now!
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The Occupy Guitarmy with Tom Morello

Stratfor--The Private U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Wikileaks released more that five million emails from the private U.S. intelligence gathering company Stratfor today:


WikiWorld

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The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor.

LONDON—Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example :

"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.

The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the "Yes Men", for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees : "We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t plan to do the perp walk and I don’t want anyone here doing it either."

Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to "utilise the intelligence" it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS : "What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like". The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach’s Morenz invested "substantially" more than $4million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff : "Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral... It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor... we are already working on mock portfolios and trades". StratCap is due to launch in 2012.

The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and "other government intelligence agencies" in "becoming government Stratfors". Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Despite the governmental ties, Stratfor and similar companies operate in complete secrecy with no political oversight or accountability. Stratfor claims that it operates "without ideology, agenda or national bias", yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.

Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused "gravy train" that sprung up after WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan disclosures :

"[Is it] possible for us to get some of that ’leak-focused’ gravy train ? This is an obvious fear sale, so that’s a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don’t, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet... Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of ´leak-focused’ network security that focuses on preventing one’s own employees from leaking sensitive information... In fact, I’m not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution."

Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor’s internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as ’alpha’, ’tactical’ and ’secure’. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as ’Hizzies’ (members of Hezbollah), or ’Adogg’ (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).

Stratfor did secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists – from Reuters to the Kiev Post. The list of Stratfor’s "Confederation Partners", whom Stratfor internally referred to as its "Confed Fuck House" are included in the release. While it is acceptable for journalists to swap information or be paid by other media organisations, because Stratfor is a private intelligence organisation that services governments and private clients these relationships are corrupt or corrupting.

WikiLeaks has also obtained Stratfor’s list of informants and, in many cases, records of its payoffs, including $1,200 a month paid to the informant "Geronimo" , handled by Stratfor’s Former State Department agent Fred Burton.

WikiLeaks has built an investigative partnership with more than 25 media organisations and activists to inform the public about this huge body of documents. The organisations were provided access to a sophisticated investigative database developed by WikiLeaks and together with WikiLeaks are conducting journalistic evaluations of these emails. Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents.

END

[See http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html for the following information:]
Public partners in the investigation
Comment
Current WikiLeaks status
How to read the data [including glossary]

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Monday's WikiLeaks London press conference

The sound doesn't start until a few minutes in.



Video streaming by Ustream
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WikiLeaks Publishes 5 Million 'Shadow CIA' E-Mails
Published on Monday, February 27, 2012 by Common Dreams

"Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations”

WikiLeaks announced tonight that it is publishing documents it is calling "The Global Intelligence Files" which includes over 5 million e-mails from the US-based "Global Intelligence" company Stratfor, the Global Intelligence Company described by Barons as the Shadow CIA, according to a statement the organization released Sunday night.

WikiLeaks has partnered with 25 media organizations to publish the documents including the McClatchy newspapers and Rolling Stone.

"The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods."

WikiLeaks will hold a noon-time press conference in London on Monday to explain the files. The full press release is available here.

* * *

UPDATE: Monday's WikiLeaks London press conference has ended. The New York Times reports:

“The material contains privileged information about the U.S. government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks,” the group said. “There are more than 4,000 e-mails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.”

At the London news conference, Mr. Assange said the Stratfor statement seemed to confirm the advice offered by a senior figure in the company in one of the exposed e-mails which he quoted a senior Stratfor executive as saying: “admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.”Mr. Assange appeared Monday at a streamed news conference from the journalists’ Frontline Club in London.

Stratfor said in a statement that some of the e-mails being published “may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic,” the company said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

“We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them,” the statement said.

At the London news conference, Mr. Assange said the Stratfor statement seemed to confirm the advice offered by a senior figure in the company in one of the exposed e-mails which he quoted a senior Stratfor executive as saying: “admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.”

* * *
* * *

Technorati reports:

Wikileaks has begun publishing 5 million e-mails from Stratfor, the Global Intelligence Company described by Barons as the Shadow CIA.

At 00:01 GMT on 27 February 2011, Wikileaks started publishing the confidential e-mail communications between Stratfor and its informants which includes government employees, government agencies and corporations.

In a press release, the inner workings of Stratfor are described, painting a world where the government, corporations and Stratfor are intertwined.

Anti-Sec, part of Anonymous, proclaimed late in December 2011 that they had hacked into Stratfor and had managed to gain access to subscriber data. In a press release, Anti-Sec stated that the main reason they hacked into Stratfor was not for the subscriber data, but the trove of 5 million e-mail data, which would reveal the inner working of Stratfor and government agencies. It seems that it is these e-mails that are now being leaked by Wikileaks.

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See Also:
Glenn Greenwald
SATURDAY, DEC 24, 2011
The intellectual cowardice of Bradley Manning’s critics

And:

FEBRUARY 5, 2012 2:23PM
An Open Letter about Pfc. Bradley Manning (Updated)

Hedges: This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us

Today, as we consider whether Baker City needs tighter control over the behavior of citizens at Council meetings (today's Baker City Herald print edition), whether wolves have a right to inhabit their historic lands, whether the public workers in Wisconsin have a right to organize, whether the national budget should be reduced on the shoulders of the poor or at the expense of military empire, whether Americans have the right to truthfully blow the whistle on the military, whether President Obama should arm the Libyan rebels and declare war on Gaddafi by instituting a no-fly zone, and etc., Chris Hedges reminds us of the greater historically-based context of a pending planet-wide collapse. Laugh it off if you must, but you do so at your own peril. His warning is nothing new, as wise men and women have been warning the same for several decades, but at least take some time to consider it, because the warning signs, even if hidden from view by the popular corporate media and scorned by your beloved leaders, are everywhere.
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This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us
Mar 7, 2011

By Chris Hedges

. . . .

As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break the last vestiges of unions, slashed jobs, froze wages, threw millions of people out of their homes, and stood by idly as we created a permanent underclass of unemployed and underemployed.

The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in “A Short History of Progress,” “… extremists, or ultra-conservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and die. The signs of imminent death may be undeniable. Common sense may cry out for a radical new response. But the race toward self-immolation only accelerates because of intellectual and moral paralysis. As Sigmund Freud grasped in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “Civilization and Its Discontents,” human societies are as intoxicated and blinded by their own headlong rush toward death and destruction as they are by the search for erotic fulfillment.
. . . .

Read entire article:
This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us
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Bradley Manning could face death: For what?
Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning could face death: For what?
BY GLENN GREENWALD

Under 104(b)—almost certainly the provision to be applied—a person is guilty if he “gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly” (emphasis added), and, if convicted, “shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.” The charge sheet filed by the Army is quite vague and neither indicates what specifically Manning did to violate this provision nor the identity of the “enemy” to whom he is alleged to have given intelligence.

War on WikiLeaks Continued (3): Assange Interview with David Frost; "Courage is Contagious"

IN THIS EDITION:

- Good Assange Interview With David Frost (video)
- WikiLeaks Links
- Conditions that Suspected Leaker Bradley Manning is Being Held In (& Links)
- What Is Fascism?

Latest Julian Assange interview:
The WikiLeaks founder speaks to David Frost about secrets, leaks and why he will not go back to Sweden.

This recently released portion of an hour long interview between long-time professional journalist David Frost and Julian Assange is incomparably better, with much more relevant information, than the interview posted on the blog two days ago, Tuesday, 12/21/12. For one thing, Frost was actually trying to get Assange's side of the story, rather than attempting to reinforce the US and Western media victimization and frame-up of Assange, as was done in the previous interview by BBC. Better yet, it is a video, so one can get an additional measure of the man.

"Courage is Contagious"


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Some Related Links:
Many of these links are via Tom Feeley at Information Clearinghouse
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Julian Assange defends decision not to face questioning in Sweden
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Assange attacks allies [?] and foes
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News Release
Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in WikiLeaks Disclosures
December 7, 2010
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Daniel Ellsberg's Website See Ellsberg & Ron Paul on “Countdown With Olbmermann”
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WikiLeaks to release Israel documents in six months
Thursday, 23 December 2010 01:41
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Chris Hedges: Obama is a "Poster Child for the Death of the Liberal Class"
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Leaked Cable Stirs Animosities Between Palestinian Sides
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: December 22, 201
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U.S. criticized New Zealand for reaction to 2004 Israel spy affair, WikiLeaks cables reveal
The Guardian reports that U.S. diplomats accused New Zealand of using the arrest of two suspected Israeli spies in 2004 to bolster its export of lamb to Arab states.

By Haaretz Service
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WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Vows to Resume Whistleblowing After Release from London Jail
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More on WikiLeaks from Democracy Now!
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Fatah asked Israel to attack Hamas
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WikiLeaks cables: Bangladeshi 'death squad' trained by UK government
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Netanyahu's patience with Abbas has 'run out'
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US cables: Syria believed Israel was behind sniper killing
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US Cables: FBI Now Keeping Tabs on Native Americans -- in South America?
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WikiLeaks Founder Predicts Resignations At Big US Bank
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Reporters Without Borders to host mirror site for WikiLeaks
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Freed on bail – but US steps up efforts to charge Assange with conspiracy
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The full allegations against Julian Assange
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¡Viva WikiLeaks! SiCKO Was Not Banned in Cuba
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Bradley Manning--the alleged source of the links
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Scott Horton Interviews Glenn Greenwald
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As WikiLeaks’ Assange Freed on Bail, Alleged Military Leaker Bradley Manning Imprisoned under Inhumane Conditions
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Bradley Manning Speaks About His Conditions
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UN looking into WikiLeaks suspect's treatment
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UN probes Manning's jail treatment
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A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning


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Fascism

Fascism as defined by an Historic Leading Fascist:

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power: Benito Mussolini
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Elements of Fascism:

Elements of Fascism include:

* Powerful idea of nationalism
   
* Powerful executive control in government
   
* Lower human rights outlook
   
* Military reigns supreme
   
* Corporations wield great power
   
* Idea that National Security is at great risk to some threat
   
* Identifying of enemies/scapegoats that unifies citizens in Patriotism
   
* Mass media controlled by State and Corporations
   
* Fixed elections
   
* Rampant corruption
   
* Unlimited power held by police force

Hyperlink




"The strategic adversary is FASCISM... the FASCISM in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the FASCISM that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us."

Michel Foucault  1926-1984, French Essayist, Philosopher
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"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated.....by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.....
 
"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
 
"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
 
"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
 
"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."

 
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
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"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism & ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

FDR: message to Congress proposing the monopoly investigation, 1938
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