Bradley Manning and Wikileaks

M. Spector wrote:

Catchfire wrote:

Yes, well, sadly, that's a game I won't be playing with you. Don't call other babblers "sick fucks." That's about all you need to take away from this.

I didn't call any babblers sick fucks.

And this is not a game.

Yeah, you did actually.  In fact, a search of your most recent posts has turned up a treasure trove of direct and implied insults.  So stop it already.

Bradley Manning Now 'Catatonic': Obama ENOUGH!

http://warisacrime.org/content/bradley-manning-now-catatonic-obama-enough

"As Obama's crime of the destruction of Bradley Manning continues to unfold before our very eyes, Manning's friend David House now tells us that over 8 months in isolation with movement and sleep restrictions placed on him have been having their intended effect. House told MSNBC that by the end of January Manning appeared 'catatonic'...

All for the crime of reporting war crimes and criminal behaviour even among the highest-ranking officers in Iraq.."

webform to Whitehouse letters : please help

Margaret Kimberley wrote:

If members of the Norwegian Nobel committee do not feel embarrassment for making Barack Obama a peace prize laureate, then they are as shameless as the man they foolishly chose to honor. Barack Obama is every bit the authoritarian as his predecessor George W. Bush. He too believes in his right to declare anyone an enemy combatant and restrict their rights to due process. He too has cracked down on whistle blowers and is determined to ferret them out and punish them.

The continued psychological torture of Pfc. Bradley Manning is the latest case in point....

Manning's one hour [per day] outside of his cell allows him only to walk in circles in another room. He is denied the use of sheets and now is forced to sleep naked and stand naked outside of his cell when it is inspected....

Among the files which Manning allegedly leaked is a video showing American soldiers shooting a Reuters photographer and his driver, and an innocent bystander and his young children, and then laughing as an already dead body is crushed by an armored vehicle. The soldiers also enjoy themselves. They are positively gleeful about committing murder, laughing at their victims and pleading with their superiors to allow them to kill more people.

Anyone who reveals this grotesque behavior becomes a de facto enemy of the state. It was so during the Bush administration and now it is so as Obama sits in the oval office. [b]Ultimately, Barack Obama is responsible for Manning's treatment. Even if he did not directly order it, he certainly is aware of it now, and if it continues, it is because he wants it to.[/b]

[url=http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-peace-prize-tortu...

Yep:

[url=http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/13/crowley/ind... fires P.J. Crowley for condemning abuse of Manning[/url]

Glenn Greenwald wrote:

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention as "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid," forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports, Crowley has "abruptly resigned" under "pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case." [b]In other words, he was forced to "resign" -- i.e., fired.[/b]

So, in Barack Obama's administration, it's perfectly acceptable to abuse an American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from exercising in his cell, punitively imposing "suicide watch" restrictions on him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade. But speaking out against that abuse is a firing offense. Good to know. As Matt Yglesias just put it: "Sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning." And as David Frum added: "Crowley firing: one more demonstration of my rule: Republican pols fear their base, Dem pols despise it."

Of course, it's also the case in Barack Obama's world that those who instituted a worldwide torture and illegal eavesdropping regime are entitled to full-scale presidential immunity, while powerless individuals who blow the whistle on high-level wrongdoing and illegality are subjected to the most aggressive campaign of prosecution and persecution the country has ever seen. [b]So protecting those who are abusing Manning, while firing Crowley for condemning the abuse, is perfectly consistent with the President's sense of justice.[/b]

So his great crime was releasing "meaningless unrelated" documents?

At this point, the death penalty would be a more humane prospect than the alternative Manning faces - being driven insane and tortured for the rest of his life.

Quote:

If another country were meting out similarly sadistic treatment to a captured American POW, the Pentagon and the American media would be howling about war crimes. But Manning's treatment has been largely blacked out of the corporate-controlled mass media.

[url=http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/mann-m12.shtml]WSWS[/url]

How the So-Called Guardians of Free Speech Are Silencing the Messenger  - by John Pilger

http://www.zcommunications.org/how-the-so-called-guardians-of-free-speec...

"Reality is no longer what the powerful say it is. Of all the spectacular revolts across the world, the most exciting is the insurrection of knowledge sparked by WikiLeaks. The heroic Bradley Manning is kept naked under lights and cameras 24 hours a day. Greg Barns, director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, says the fears that Julian Assange will 'end up being tortured in a high security American prison', are justified. Who will take responsibility for such a crime?"

Shoe Drops, Boot Comes Out for Crowley  -  by Chris Floyd

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2102-...

"...it was very obvious that Crowley's days were numbered, for he scarcely lasted more than a day before the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate forced him from office for the high crime of causing the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to face the minimal discomfort of having to publicly address his torture of an American soldier.."

Quote:

In our Big Brother security state the military says they do it for Manning's own protection.  It's a lie that does not pass the straight face test.  Once again lies become truth as a compliant press writes it down and reports it as fact. The president re-enforces the lie, telling America he has talked to the Pentagon and they have said it is for his own protection. The president says this with a straight face.

[b]Does anyone believe the president anymore?[/b] This is the president that told us - America doesn't torture.  This is the president who said that Raymond Davis was a diplomat who deserved diplomatic immunity.  In fact, he was a Blackwater mercenary working for the CIA who allegedly killed two Pakistanis. The president's comments to the press were dutifully reported "he is a diplomat who deserves diplomatic immunity" when the press knew he was working for the CIA. The press had been told to lie to us, not tell us the truth and they did as the government demanded until a foreign newspaper told the truth. The president and the press need to lie to us because the truth is terrifying.

Friends - we are here today because we know - [b]we are all Bradley Manning[/b].  That a crime against one of us is a crime against all of us.  We need to stand together, to Stand with Brad, because this is much bigger than Bradley Manning.

We are living through a time of revolutionary change.  We see it around the world and we see it around the nation.  The corporate-government-media does not report the resistance occurring throughout the nation because if Americans knew that their fellow Americans were standing up against corporate-government, real change, shifting power to the people, would be more likely.

And the corporate media is threatened by what Bradley Manning is accused of.  [b]They are losing hold of their monopoly on information[/b] as WikiLeaks shows the way to the democratization of the media.  We are living through the birth of a new media that will shift the power of information control from the few to the many.  Information is a commodity that the corporate-government has sought to control because they know information is power.  But in this new media age we can all be reporters, writers, commentators.  Through email, blogs, websites and social media each of us can share information.  We all can become part of the new media.

[url=http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/manning-must-be-tortured-to-make-an-ex...

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