Bradley Manning Avoids Most Serious Charge, Still Facing …

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

Yesterday, Private Bradley Manning was charged and faces "up to" 136 years in a cage for being someone Thomas Jefferson would consider a patriot. Considering the world's oldest person died at 116 years old last month it is quite clearly a life sentence. For myself, at 42, I consider anything more than 10 years a life sentence. Not that I couldn't still have fun at 52 but a lot less fun with a lot more viagra.

The most poignant part of it was that I didn't even hear of it until hours after the sentencing. When a hispanic-white man got into an altercation in Florida my CIABook wall was filled with hours and days of vitriol. When a man who tried to show war crime atrocities to the world was kidnapped and killed (life sentence) there was barely a peep. And, of the peeps on the mainstream media comments section it was mostly one of euphoria.

But, perhaps George Orwell put it best.

While I think Thomas Jefferson was a reasonable and decent man (slave raping aside), I think two of the murderers on Mt. Rushmore should be resculpted. Manly, bigoted, warmongering imperialist, Theodore Rosevelt, and the mass murderer and fascist, Abraham Lincoln, should be resculpted into the image of Bradley Manning and now, perhaps, Edward Snowden. Certainly, given the evidence, Thomas Jefferson wouldn't object to this renovation.

Never mind that in leaking that material Manning was upholding his legal and moral duty to expose war crimes after the superiors in his chain of command refused to do anything. But legality and morality don't matter in the midst of the chaos of the total state. Obama and high ranking Army officers have already declared Manning guilty "He broke the law!" long before his trial. And Obama and his Army top brass lost no sleep during the three years they tortured Manning with forced nudity and solitary confinement.

I am a bit surprised that Manning wasn't found guilty of the charge of aiding the enemy. If he had, that ruling would have implied that publishing material that the "enemy" could possibly see was a crime with a life sentence. That would have effectively stopped newspapers or websites from publishing anything that the government didn't want them to out of fear of lifetime imprisonment.

Another person of the ilk of Manning and Snowden is Adam Kokesh. When he worked for the empire murdering men, women and children abroad for profit he was thought of by the system as hero. Now that he pushes back against the gargantuan state and loaded a shotgun on YouTube he still remains in jail as the judge deemed him to be a "very dangerous man".

In the seven-hour closing argument against Manning they mostly came down to calling him an "anarchist" and used that as their main reason for ending his life.

Sure, you can use the argument that he willingly entered into employment with the military and agreed to certain rules under that contract, including keeping certain things secure and private. But, some things go well and far beyond a personal contract. If you were to enter into a contract with a babysitting service and said you'll keep all actions confidential and found out that the main clients and proprietors were people like the BBC's Jimmy Savile and an entire pedophile ring and you broke your contract and exposed them, you'd be a hero. When it is the government, however, as with all things, it appears the opposite is true.

For this reason I suggest just disengaging from anything to do with government. You can't negotiate you can't vote you can't petition or call your congressman and effect real change. The most real change you can make is what the "founding fathers" of the US did and leave your oppressive country and go somewhere else less oppressive and criminal.

We've chosen Chile at the moment. No place is perfect but Chilenos don't have more than a hundred military bases around the world and aren't drone bombing babies while kidnapping and ending the lives of anyone who exposes it.

There are also other countries (most others, really) that are better than the US and Western countries. With a basic subscription to TDV you can meet like-minded "founding father" expatriates in these other countries who can help you escape from a place gone very, very wrong.

Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against mankinds two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff Berwick is the founder ofThe Dollar Vigilante, CEO ofTDV Media & Servicesand host of the popular video podcast,Anarchast. Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the worlds freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business.

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Bradley Manning Avoids Most Serious Charge, Still Facing ...