Six days after the Pentagon announced it was ending the ban on transgender service members in the United States military, the highest profile transgender soldier in the U.S. Army was rushed to the hospital after reportedly attempting suicide.

Her name is Chelsea Manning.

Depending on who you ask, Manning is either a courageous whistleblower who revealed war crimes, or a cowardly traitor who recklessly revealed state secrets and endangered American lives. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violations of the Espionage Act by leaking classified information to WikiLeaks while deployed as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009.

I personally believe Mannings conduct to be criminal and deserving of punishment. That is not, however, what I am here to discuss. In the immediate wake of the end of the ban on transgender Americans serving openly, Mannings story offers a cautionary tale on the inequality that non-gender conforming Americans face. It reveals the hazards of discrimination and the stakes of implementation.

The day after her sentencing, Manning, who had until then been known as Bradley Manning, revealed she identified as a woman and her name is Chelsea.

5 transgender service members defying military norms

On July 5, reports surfaced that Manning was rushed to the hospital from the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after an apparent suicide attempt.

No one knows the circumstances around Mannings attempted suicide. The Army rejected a request by the Associated Press to interview her. Mannings attorneys have also reportedly been denied access to her.

We do know, however, that the rate of suicide in the transgender community is staggering. In fact, it is 10 times higher than the rate of suicide nationally.

More than four in every 10 Americans adults who are gender non-conforming will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, according to a 2014 study from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. The study found that 41% of gender non-conforming Americans have attempted suicide. By contrast, just 4.6% of the overall U.S. population will attempt suicide.

A June report in the New England Journal of Medicine connected the substantial discrimination transgender Americans face with a variety of mental health factors, including risk of suicide.

Before this week, Manning already had a long and tragic history with suicide. When she was just 12 years old, her mother attempted suicide, and Manning sat in the backseat of the car while her older sister rushed her mother to the hospital, because their father was too drunk to drive the car.

"Unfortunately my 12-year-old brother had to go back there and make sure his mom was still breathing," Mannings sister, Casey Major, said of Manning in a 2013 report in the Guardian.

When she was initially arrested for her crime in 2010, Manning, under detention in Kuwait, wrote on a form asking if she had ever contemplated suicide, forever planning, never acting.

She was found to have made a noose out of her bedsheets, and told a psychiatrist in Kuwait that if she could be successful in committing suicide, I would.

When she was transferred to the brig at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, Manning was under a suicide-watch, forced to stand naked in front of prison personnel, and subjected to solitary confinement.

In social media posts, Manning described feeling isolated and alone as a young U.S. Army soldier, long before she broke the law. Mannings isolation in the period leading up to her crime was a direct failure of U.S. policy. At the time of her crime, Manning identified as a homosexual male, and was banned from being openly gay. Her former roommate from the Iraq deployment testified at trial that when he began to suspect Manning was gay, he cut off all communication. If she had been out as a transgender woman, she would still have been in violation to U.S. policy. In either case, she was not allowed to be herself, not allowed to speak to peers or supervisors about her true identity or life.

Keeping queer Americans out of uniform is both unjust and impractical, and for years, the military adopted policies that forced those service members to live false identities.

Lifting the ban on transgender service members being able to serve openly in the U.S. military is a good step toward equality. The U.S. military will not achieve equality until every American has an equal chance to serve in the interest of national defense. True equality will evade us as a society so long as transgender Americans in or out of the military lack the resources and support systems to have an equal shot at success. Merely lifting the ban is not enough. Its not enough to suddenly say, its OK to be transgender. The military needs to empower its service members to be secure in their gender identities, and leaders must stamp out discrimination wherever it may rear its ugly and destructive head.

Manning herself, writing for the Guardian on July 1 on the end of the transgender ban, said, When it comes to trans inclusion in the military, at this point, there are still too many questions.

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Chelsea Mannings Suicide Attempt Shows Were Far From ...

By Michael Whitney At roughly 1:00 pm [January 23], upon driving onto the base at Quantico, David House and blogger Jane Hamsher were detained by military guards. House, who is on the Quantico Brigs visitation list, has been visiting Bradley Manning in confinement since last September.

In December 2010, House came forward with testimony that he witnessed a deterioration in Mannings physical and mental state due to the conditions of Mannings solitary confinement. House traveled to the Quantico brig to check up on Bradleys well-being after a week in which Mannings lawyer filed an Article 138 complaint over Mannings mistreatment at Quantico. House and Hamsher also planned to deliver a 42,000-signature strong petition calling for an end to the inhumane conditions that Manning is being held. Upon arriving at the main entrance at Quantico, House and Hamsher were stopped and detained by military police who provided no explanation for detainment aside from a statement from one MP that his orders to detain had come from the top.

Between 1:00 1:30 MPs took their IDs and made them sign a form that they could not deviate to the brig or else they would be considered trespassing. At this time, one of the MPs asked for Hamshers auto insurance card. MP Gunnery Sgt. Foster informed Hamsher that her car would be towed after declining to accept a digital copy of Hamshers insurance card. House and Hamsher offered to drive off the base but were denied, despite being detained only ten feet inside the bases perimeter. The MPs then took the Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses of House and Hamsher.

Around 1:40 the tow truck arrived and MPs instructed House and Hamsher to leave their vehicle, informing them that their vehicle would be searched. At 2:00 pm House observed military officers arriving and entering the MP outpost which oversaw their detainment. House expressed concern that he would miss Mannings visiting hours but was told that he could neither exit nor move forward to the base. No explanation for House and Hamshers detainment was provided until 2:50 when they were informed they could leave the base. They were detained for two hours up until Mannings visitation time period expired at 3:00 pm.

In past visits, Hamsher and House have had no problem driving onto the base to visit Manning. This is the first time House has been denied access to Manning. House and Hamshers detainment comes on the heels of Amnesty International calling for an investigation into the conditions of Mannings confinement. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has also announced that the UN will be starting an investigation and Mannings attorney has filed an article 138 complaint citing inhumane and overly harsh conditions on part of the Brig. Now House, Mannings primary visitor outside of his attorney, who has provided public testimony about Mannings deteriorating conditions as a result to his solitary confinement, has effectively been denied access to Manning.

Reposted from Firedoglake.com

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Bradley Mannings Visitors Detained at Quantico

FORT MEADE, MARYLANDJust after receiving a sentence of 35 years in prison for transmitting hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and U.S. Army reports to WikiLeaks in 2010, Bradley Manning was in a surprisingly cheerful mood, according to his attorney.

He said, 'Hey, it's OK. It's all right. I know you did everything you could for me. Don't cry. Be happy. It's fine. This is just a stage in my life. I am moving forward. I will recover from this, his defense lawyer David Coombs said in an interview conducted immediately after the sentencing.

Presiding military judge Col. Denise Lind sternly handed down the sentence to a packed courtroom, stating only, Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, this court sentences you to be reduced to the grade of Private E-1, to forfeit all pay and allowances, to be confined for 35 years, and to be dishonorably discharged from the service.

Coombs was stunned. I look at the sentence, and I cant believe that was actually the sentence he received, he told The Daily Beast. "There is a good young man who did what he thought was morally right and for the right reasons, and he was sentenced the way we would sentence somebody who committed murderthe way we would sentence somebody who molested a child. That is the sentence he received."

Despite the clear devastation among supporters of Manning, however, Coombs said that the defendant was in good spirits. Interestingly, Manning was the one who was cheering everyone up, he said.

While perhaps proportional with the Information Age that Manning was born into, the disclosures were unprecedented in scale and scope and resulted in the largest criminal investigation ever into a publisher and its source.

At trial and sentencing, the prosecution cast Manning as a traitor who was indiscriminately harvesting information for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in willful disregard of the safety of military personnel and the national security of the United States. They asked the judge to put Manning away for 60 years: He betrayed the United States, and for that betrayal he deserves to spend the majority of his remaining life in confinement.

Manning was convicted on six espionage charges on the standard of probable harm from the release. In total, he was found guilty of 20 offenses, including espionage, exceeding authorized access, stealing government property, and the newfangled offense of wanton publication. That charge has never been used in military law and is not tied to any existing federal criminal violation or punitive article under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

He was acquitted, however, of aiding the enemy, one of two offenses under the code that apply to any people and not just members of the military. Lind ruled that Mannings good-faith motive and any actual damage (or lack of damage) were not relevant and thus relegated to the sentencing phase.

The question remains if and when the Department of Justice intends to unseal any possible indictment against Assange, editor in chief of WikiLeaks.

Much of the court recordthe largest of any in military historywas hidden from the public. The public only got access 1,103 days into the legal proceeding. Because so much of the critical parts of the trial were conducted in closed sessions and obscurity, the public has been largely unclear on the actual impact of the leaks. Prosecution witnessesgovernment employees and federal contractorstestified in open session that no death resulted as a result of the leaks. But the prosecution presented evidence of mitigation efforts and temporary disruptions as well as future of possible threats to military operations and diplomatic efforts.

Asked what the worst damage from the leaks was, Coombs said, I personally ... I think the most damage done was the sentence that my client received. If you are talking about damage from a standpoint of what he releasedembarrassment. Embarrassment was the most damage.

A congressional official who had been briefed by the State Department in late 2010 and early 2011 told Reuters, "The administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers. The revelations, the congressional aide said, "were embarrassing, but not damaging."

Manning will immediately appeal for clemency to the court-martial convening authority, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, commander of the Military District of Washington, who can dismiss any guilty findings and reduce the sentence. Buchanan cannot, however, reverse a finding of not guilty or increase Mannings sentence. After a review by Buchanan, Mannings case will be automatically appealed to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals.

Mannings lead civilian defense counsel also announced that he is applying for a presidential pardon for his client. The application to President Obama will be joined by a partnership between Amnesty International and the Bradley Manning Support Network on whitehouse.gov to commute his sentence to time served.

Obama said in April 2011, "We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. [Manning] broke the law." Mannings defense team characterized Obamas comments as unlawful command influence. They also sought and were denied the opportunity to depose the president.

Manning is expected to serve his sentence at Fort Leavenworth, where he has been in pretrial confinement since April 2011. Prior to that, Manning was held in pretrial confinement at Marine Corp Base Quantico Brig for nine months. U.N. special rapporteur on torture Juan Ernesto Mndez called his treatment at the Quantico Brig cruel, inhuman, and degrading. Manning was forced to strip and remain on a suicide-risk regime against the recommendations of Brig mental-health professionals. Lind ruled that a portion of his time at Quantico was unlawful, but granted Manning only 112 days of credit on his sentence for it. Mannings sentence of 35 years will also be reduced by 1,293 days for time already served.

Despite being placed in pretrial confinement longer than any accused awaiting court-martial, Lind ruled that the government did not violate Mannings right to a speedy trial. (Many witnesses during the motions phase of the trial concerning Mannings unlawful treatment at Quantico could not remember events clearly because they were so long ago.)

Manning directed defense counsel to engage with the press only using text-based media and to be as "accurate as possible, and try to get to the actual topic, and try to be as factual as possible, and try to be as neutral as possible."

Manning ultimately opted to be tried by military judge alone instead of a panel of officers and enlisted personnel. During the pretrial, the prosecution blocked Mannings defense from adding questions to a questionnaire for panel members intended to determine potential bias toward gay and/or transgender people.

The Washington Post reported recently that Judge Lind was recently promoted to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, where Mannings case will automatically be appealed.

The defense strategy at trial was as much about mitigating as acquitting. During sentencing, the defense emphasized that Manning was young, naive, and good intentioned. They called a forensic psychiatrist who testified that Manning was under the impression that his leaked information was going to really change how the world views the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and future wars, actually.

Mannings defense sought an appropriate sentence that would enable him to still have a life, asking the judge not to rob him of his youth and adding that Manning is a young man who certainly, at this time, was, in fact, youngwas, in fact, naive as to the second and third effects, but certainly was good intentioned. The defense ended by saying, Manning cared about human life. He was a humanist. His biggest crime was that he cared about loss of life that he was seeing.

When asked if Manning received a fair trial, Coombs said, The perception is no. He didn't receive a fair trial and that should be problematic for people. That should be problematic for our military, and hopefully that will be problematic for the president of the United States, and he should do something about it.

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Bradley Manning: I Will Recover From ThisThis Is Just a ...

Imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning is suffering from severe mental health challenges in prison, directly related to her treatment in prison. She isn't getting the care she needs, and she recently tried to take her own life.

Chelsea is a transgender woman who, despite her gender identity being acknowledged by the world, is forced by the U.S. to serve out her sentence in an all-male maximum security prison. To be a woman imprisoned among men is a most gendered form of cruel and unusual punishment, but America's hatred and misunderstanding of trans people allows this to be the norm. Read the rest

The infractions she's charged with are so minor, it's hard to believe.

The soldier convicted of leaking classified military and diplomatic records to Wikileaks has legally changed her name to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning. Read the rest

Amid much talk of Chelsea Manning's transitional status, this interesting factoid shared by Boing Boing pal Andrea James: a Williams Institute study says trans people serve in the US military at rates double that of the general population. Despite the math, "they nonetheless face discrimination during and after service." Read the rest

The Army uses this name and address: Bradley E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 66027-2304. (via Nathan Fuller) Read the rest

[UPDATE BELOW]. A reader who works at CNN shares "the guidance the news folks are following" on how to refer to Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning--the transgender soldier who announced to the world she wished to be publicly seen as female one day after receiving a 35 year prison sentence for leaking secret US government documents to Wikileaks.

"Manning hasn't taken any steps yet toward gender transition so use masculine pronouns ('he' and 'him')," the internal guidance reads. Read the rest

After Army judge Colonel Denise Lind announced the 35-year sentence for Bradley Manning on Wednesday, defense attorney David Coombs read a statement from the soldier that will be part of a pardon request to be submitted to President Barack Obama. That statement follows, below.

Speaking at a press conference after the sentencing Wednesday, Coombs also described Pfc. Manning's reaction as the sentence was announced. Coombs spoke about how he and his colleagues on the defense team were crying. Manning turned to them and said, Its okay. Its alright. I know you did your best. Im going to be okay. Im going to get through this. Read the rest

Was the "draconian sentence" delivered in Pfc. Manning's case simply a matter of deterrence, asks John Cassidy at the New Yorker? "From the beginning, the Pentagon has treated Manning extremely harshly, holding him in solitary confinement for almost a year and then accusing him of aiding the enemya charge that carries the death penalty...It certainly looked like an instance of powerful institutions and powerful people punishing a lowly private for revealing things that they would rather have kept hidden." Read the rest

A deterrent, writes Amy Davidson. "A frightening, crippling sentence was the only way to make sure that no one leaked again, ever. What it seems likely to do is chill necessary whistle-blowing and push leakers to extremes. The lesson that Edward Snowden, the N.S.A. leaker, seems to have drawn from the prosecutions of Manning and others is that, if you have something you think people should know, take as many files as you can and leave the country." [The New Yorker] Read the rest

In Ecuador, the nation's head of intelligence agency "has asked the legislature to draft a bill that would outlaw the publication of classified documents, amid growing concerns over a government clampdown on the media," writes Rosie Gray at Buzzfeed. The South American country has been in the news recently for providing shelter to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at its embassy in London, and for offering a travel document to NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Read the rest

At HuffPo, Matt Sledge writes, "Chelsea Manning's lack of access to hormone therapy in military prison could spark a lawsuit and potentially set a military-wide precedent for transgender servicemembers." The military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy ended in 2011, but the Army continues to ban transgender soldiers as "administratively unfit." As Sledge writes, "The official Army regulation uses medically outdated terminology referring to "transvestism, voyeurism, other paraphilias, or factitious disorders, psychosexual conditions, transsexual, (or) gender identity disorder." Read the rest

"An article on The Timess Web site on Thursday morning on the gender issue continued to use the masculine pronoun and courtesy title. That, said the associate managing editor Philip B. Corbett, will evolve over time." How much time does a New York Times editor need to write the word "she" or "her"? Read the rest

One day after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking secret government files to Wikileaks, Pfc. Bradley Manning today announced via NBC TODAY the decision to live life as a woman.

We first wrote about this aspect of Manning's story in 2010, after realizing that a series of chat logs circulating on the internet--which we'd published without understanding the subtle references within--spoke to Manning's desire to transition. Read the rest

Quinn Norton's long essay in Medium called Bradley Manning and the Two Americas that investigates the question of American power in the age of Bradley Manning and his legal martyrdom. It's a very good piece, and it lays out the collision of the idea of America as an imperial bureaucracy and America as a revolutionary democratic experiment, and shows how that collision has been in play through leaks since Ellsberg. Read the rest

In a courtroom at Fort Meade today, Judge Army. Col. Denise Lind delivered the sentence in the trial of Bradley Manning: 35 years in a military prison, less 1,294 days for time served, and a 112-day credit for enduring "unlawful pretrial punishment," when he was held for 9 months at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, VA. During that stay, Manning was confined alone for more than 23 hours each day in an 8-by-6 foot cell.

The 25-year-old former intelligence analyst was convicted of charges related to sharing more than 700,000 secret government documents with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The transparency group published those documents online, and shared them with various news organizations. Read the rest

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bradley manning / Boing Boing

In a courtroom at Fort Meade today, Judge Army. Col. Denise Lind delivered the sentence in the trial of Bradley Manning: 35 years in a military prison, less 1,294 days for time served, and a 112-day credit for enduring "unlawful pretrial punishment," when he was held for 9 months at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, VA. During that stay, Manning was confined alone for more than 23 hours each day in an 8-by-6 foot cell.

The 25-year-old former intelligence analyst was convicted of charges related to sharing more than 700,000 secret government documents with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The transparency group published those documents online, and shared them with various news organizations.

Manning faced a maximum of up to 90 years in prison. Human rights advocates say prolonged extreme solitary confinement Manning received is a form of torture. No minimum sentence applied in this case. Judge Lind convicted him last month of most charges brought against him by the government, including 6 violations of the US Espionage Act of 1917.

From Ft. Meade, Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola writes, "Guards quickly escorted Manning out of the courtroom as supporters in the gallery shouted, 'Well keep fighting for you, Bradley,' and also told him he was a hero."

Adam Klasfeld at Courthouse News writes, "Though Col. Denise Lind warned spectators not to disturb the hearing, which wrapped up in under five minutes, a gasp was heard after the military judge read the sentence. Two sergeants-at-arms appeared angered - grabbing Manning roughly and pulling him from the courtroom - as dozens of supporters began shouting words of encouragement to their whistle-blower."

"Like his sister and aunt seated in the audience, Manning remained composed during the reading of his sentence," writes Klasfeld. "The wife of lead defense attorney David Coombs meanwhile cried in her seat."

Alexa O'Brien, who has been covering the trial at Fort Meade nearly every day for the past 20 months, has created this detailed chart explaining how various charges were merged, leading to the sentence Manning received today.

Pfc. Manning's sentence is 5 years longer than a man who passed "sophisticated defense secrets to communist East Germany," notes Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake.

As Quinn Norton writes at Medium, "Private Bradley Manning didnt kill anyone, or rape anyone, but by nabbing information from his commanders and giving it to WikiLeaks, he lit up the world, like a match discarded into a great parched forest."

Defense attorney David Coombs has previously said that he plans to pursue all available options for appeal, which may include the Supreme Court. It is very rare that the nation's highest court will agree to review cases of military law, but this may be a likely exception. Other options include a presidential pardon.

Kevin Gosztola:

Manning is unlikely to serve his entire sentence in prison. He will immediately be able to petition for clemency from the court martial Convening Authority Major General Jeffrey Buchanan. A clemency and parole board in the Army can look at his case after a year. After that initial review, he can then ask the board to assess his sentence on a yearly basis for clemency purposes. Manning has to serve a third of his sentence before he can be eligible for parole. Appeals application to the Army Criminal Court of Appeals will automatically be entered after the sentence is issued. If Manning or his lawyers do find issues to press, they can take the case to the Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces and then possibly the US Supreme Court. There is good behavior credit, which can be as much as ten days for each month of his confinement.

Here are transcripts of trial proceedings [PDF], captured by stenographers who were crowdfunded and hired by Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Manning's attorney David Coombs will give a press conference at 130pm ET. Follow this Twitter list, for updates from reporters who are there at the Fort Meade media operations center. Tweets from them gathered, below.

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Hillary Clinton made her first extended public remarks about Edward Snowden late last week, and unfortunately she misstated some basic facts about the NSA whistleblower and how events have played out in the last year. Heres a breakdown of what she said and where she went wrong: Clinton: If he were concerned and wanted to []

The Wall Street Journal was first to report that The Federal Communications Commission will propose new open Internet rules this Thursday that will allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers. Under the new rules, service providers may not block or discriminate against specific websites, but they can charge certain []

The threats to established networks are coming from all directions these days, which means any big company that cant invest in security isnt going stay that way long. Know a thing or two about covert code? Looking to put those skills to good use both ethically and financially? The 2019 Ethical Hacker Master Class []

Get ghosted by Santa this year? Heres a tip: Once Christmas is over, its ok to do a little materialistic self-care. To that end, heres one last sleigh ride through Boing Boings best deals of 2018. Weve got everything from pipes to tech to learning bundles, all at an extra discount for the new year. []

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Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison / Boing Boing

[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 ...

[Editors Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]

US Army Private Bradley Manning is being persecuted for exposing war crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. Like any criminal, the US government wants its wrongful acts to remain secret; it wishes to make the truth illegal.

On June 3rd, the trial of Manning began. He previously pled guilty to 10 offenses that could collectively bring 20 years in custody, but the military prosecutors were not satisfied. They pursued the capital offense of aiding the enemy which can be punished by execution or life imprisonment. This is Obama's warning to anyone else who is tempted to speak truth to power.

WHAT YOU ARE TOLD IS ON TRIAL

Bradley Manning was arrested in May 2010 for passing restricted material to the WikiLeaks site, which is dedicated to the free flow of information. The material included videos of American airstrikes on Baghdad and Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables that became known as the Iraq and Afghan War logs.

The American government and military were acutely embarrassed. For example, one video consisted of cockpit gunsight footage from a US helicopter that was involved in the series of July 12, 2007 airstrikes on Baghdad in which an estimated 18 people were killed, including two Reuters war correspondents. The military claimed the dead were armed insurgents, and at least two of them had weapons which is common practice in Iraq. The Pentagon buried the footage by refusing a Freedom of Information request from Reuters. When the video was leaked, it showed an indiscriminate slaughter. Its audio captured the unalloyed joy of the Americans as they killed and an absolute lack of remorse when they realized young children were among the dead.

This video was a turning point for Manning who was shocked by the soldier's remarks. At his pre-trial hearing, he stated of the leaked material, I felt I had accomplished something that allowed me to have a clear conscience based upon what I had seen and read about and knew were happening in both Iraq and Afghanistan every day.

The 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg was a turning point in the Vietnam War because it revealed the depth of lies being told by the American government to the American people. Manning's act was a turning point in the Iraq and Afghan wars but it had far wider impact. For one thing, it was instrumental in sparking the Arab Spring; one diplomatic cable discredited the Tunisian government by verifying the raw corruption of the President and his family.

MANNING'S UNFORGIVEABLE SIN

Indiscriminate slaughter and the torture of detainees do not disturb the Obama administration; talking about them does. Manning not only talked but he backed everything up with data. For exposing and embarrassing them, government wishes not merely to punish Manning but to crush him utterly so that his example does not inspire others. To do so, it must make transparency into treason.

The accusation of aiding and abetting the enemy is a drastic and dangerous expansion of the Espionage Act. The exact wording of the charge: Knowingly giving intelligence to the enemy through indirect means. Traditionally, direct means have been required; that is, a person directly and intentionally provided intelligence to the enemy. The prosecutors now contend that the transfer can be indirect and unintentional. They argue Manning should have known Al Qaeda could access the information; his intention of revealing a war crime to the world becomes irrelevant. The New York Times observed, This would turn all government whistle-blowing into treason: a grave threat to both potential sources and American journalism.

The civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald explained further, [The new legal theory] would basically mean that any kind of leak now of classified information to newspapers, where your intent is not to aid the Taliban or help them but to expose wrongdoing, is now considered a capital offense and considered aiding and abetting the enemy.And thats an amazingly broad and expansive definition The expanded theory becomes a de facto gag order, especially in the hands of Obama who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous Presidents combined.

There is no question that Manning broke the law. The fault lies not in Manning but in the military. No person nor organization has the right to force a man to surrender his conscience and mutely watch the slaughter of children. He has an inalienable right to speak the truth. To claim otherwise is to argue that a soldier is literally property, a slave of the military and no longer a man.

In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau declared, Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. Speaking specifically of soldiers who surrender their conscience, Thoreau continued, They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? [B]ehold a marine, such a man as an American government can makea mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity

Manning has already spent 1110 days in prison, much of it in solitary confinement and other conditions that human rights organizations call torture. Even for the most military of men, 1110 days and the prospect of 20 years more should be enough punishment for the 'crime' of retaining a conscience.

WHAT THE TRIAL MEANS ABOUT AMERICA

Roger Williams, the Puritan founder of Rhode Island, was America's first revolutionary. He created the American soul by inextricably linking individual liberty with freedom of belief. In the 1640s, Williams argued passionately for soul liberty that is, an individual's conscience should be free from outside interference and control. [T]o force the Consciences of the Unwilling is a Soul-rape, he declared bluntly. Drawing upon Williams, the contemporary American philosopher Martha Nussbaum further defined soul-rape as forcing people to affirm convictions that they may not hold, or to give assent to orthodoxies they dont support.

Williams won the argument, and the First Amendment was the ultimate result. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press The amendment was first in the Bill of Rights because freedom of conscience and speech is the most fundamental of human rights. Around the world, Americans became renowned as a people who bowed their heads and beliefs to no one; they spoke and believed freely. And, so, the world gravitated toward America because of the hunger within human beings to think and decide for themselves. It is a hunger for human dignity.

The persecution of Manning is an attempt to destroy the core of what it means to be American by destroying freedom of conscience and speech. The police and surveillance state of America wants to control information down to the level of reaching inside people's minds to instill a fear of speaking or deciding for themselves.

Obama is raping the soul of America.

I confess to a quiet love and appreciation for the Obama administration. Not because Obama shares with me a similar complexion, genetic background or non-US citizenship. No, it's because under the Obama administration the US state has finally started to pull off its ridiculous mask of benevolence. No more helpful "world cop", due process, rule of law or checks and balances. Just a stone-cold bully who will steal, spy, kidnap and murder as he pleases.

Obama is like a prophetic fulfillment. He is more than the second Bush II. He is more than his interventionist deified hero FDR. Obama will be remembered as one of the finest silk-tongued totalitarian redistributionist mass murderers. Forget the worn comparisons to Hitler. We're talking Stalin-level here.

Sure, you had other real stinkers atop the illegitimate monolopy on violence known as the US government. There were especially notable crooks like Nixon and Wilson and Lincoln. But I have faith in Obama. I think he has what it takes to trump them all. The man is just hitting his stride and he's still got a couple of years left.

Indefinite detention of US citizens, cosmic level secret government surveillance, demonstratively cruel punishment of whistleblowersObama is just getting warmed up. We may not see the closing of the US borders or actual martial law under him, but he is certainly paving the way. If you've been thinking about TDV's offers to help you get out of the US while the getting is still good, there is no better time than now to get started. Find out more by clicking here.

Regards,

Gary GibsonEditor, The Dollar Vigilante

Excerpt from:
The Soul-Rape of Bradley Manning - The Dollar Vigilante

It's time to stop the war on whistle-blowers.iam.bradleymanning.org | #iambradleymanning

Produced and directed by Logan Price (@kstrel) and Ana Nogueira (@ananogger) as volunteers, with help from the Bradley Manning Support Network. Special thanks to Katie Davison.

Appearances:Maggie GyllenhaalRoger WatersOliver StoneDaniel EllsbergPhil DonahueMichael RatnerAlice WalkerTom MorelloMatt TaibbiPeter SarsgaardAngela DavisMobyMolly CrabappleTim DeChristopherLT Dan ChoiBishop George PackardRussell BrandAllan NairnChris HedgesWallace ShawnAdhaf SoueifJosh StieberMichael Ratner

With expertise and in kind support from:

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---Music via creative commons attribution license:

"I dunno" by Grapes - http://youtube.com/user/smokegrapes/"The Complex" by Kevin Macleod - http://incompetech.com

Originally posted here:
I am Bradley Manning (full HD)

A military judge said Monday that she expects to announce a verdict on Tuesday in the trial of Bradley Manning, a 25-year-old Army private accused of aiding the enemy by facilitating the release of a trove of classified national security documents to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, began deliberating Friday after closing arguments brought to an end the nearly two-month trial. Manning asked for a military judge, rather than a jury, to hear his case.

In addition to aiding the enemy - the most serious charge Manning faces, which could result in a sentence of life in prison if he is convicted - Manning stands accused of federal espionage, theft, and computer fraud for his role in releasing roughly 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables, and pieces of video footage to the controversial organization, which subsequently published much of the material on its website. The unauthorized disclosure represented the largest leak of classified material in American history.

Manning has acknowledged releasing the documents to WikiLeaks, but his defense attorney has said that he did not expect the information to fall into the hands of American enemies or pose a danger to soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the eyes of his supporters and defense team, Manning is a whistleblower, albeit a naive one, who was simply doing his part to expose what he saw as wartime atrocities and unwittingly became ensnared in a snowballing crisis as his disclosure metastasized.

During closing arguments, Manning's attorney David Coombs said his client was negligent in releasing the documents but insisted Manning had no "evil intent."

"He's not seeking attention," Coombs said. "He's willing to accept the price" of his actions.

Manning has said he disclosed the documents to provoke a public debate about the righteousness of America's wartime conduct. At a pre-trial hearing earlier this year, he accused the American military of "bloodlust," saying troops and commanders demonstrated a lack of regard for human life as they prosecuted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Coombs portrayed his client as a "guy who cared about human life."

Manning has insisted that his release was not indiscriminate - that he had access to hundreds of millions of documents as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, but that he culled and released only those that documented legitimate malfeasance.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who himself became a controversial figure and international fugitive in the wake of his organization's decision to release the documents provided by Manning, has sprang to the Army private's defense, lauding him as a whistleblower and accusing the U.S. government of attempting to squelch dissent and dismiss legitimate grievances. He has slammed U.S. officials for waging a "war on whistleblowers."

To his detractors, however, Manning is no whistleblower. Prosecutors portrayed the Army private as a traitor and publicity hound who knew perfectly well where his disclosures would land when he began unlawfully leaking the documents in late 2009. Manning has insisted that his leaks did not begin until February 2010.

"This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped that information onto the Internet into the hands of the enemy," said the prosecutor, Capt. Joe Morrow, during the trial. He said Manning demonstrated a sense of "arrogance" in releasing the information.

The chief prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, said Manning's goal was "worldwide distribution."

Manning "knew the entire world included the enemy, from his training," Fein said. "He knew he was giving it to the enemy, specifically al Qaeda."

In a 2010 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Joe Biden batted down the suggestion that Manning was a whistleblower, saying the private's actions were more in line with those of a "high-tech terrorist."

After he was arrested in May 2010, Manning was held in solitary confinement, sometimes naked, at a Marine base in Quantico, Va. for nine months. Jailers said they stripped him of clothing because he was considered a suicide risk, but Lind previously ruled that Manning had been unlawfully punished during his detention and that 112 days should be shaved off of any sentence he eventually receives.

Manning's sexuality was also at issue during the trial. A gay man serving during the era of "don't ask, don't tell," Manning was barred from revealing his sexual identity to his colleagues and commanders. Defense attorneys have contended that Manning's struggle to fit into a military culture that devalued his own identity may have played a role in his decision to begin leaking classified information.

Manning has already pleaded guilty to reduced versions of 10 of the 22 charges he faces, which could land him in prison for up to 20 years. Lind previously refused to dismiss the accusation that Manning had aided the enemy, saying prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence to justify the charge.

Follow this link:
Verdict near in Bradley Manning trial - CBS News

(10 am. promoted by ek hornbeck)

Cross posted http://www.thestarshollowgazet from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Freedom of the Press Foundation Press, an organization dedicated to press freedom and transparency in a digital age, released an audio recording of Pvt. Bradley Manning reading a statement he made in military court at Fort Meade on February 28 about releasing United States government documents to WikiLeaks. Glenn Greenwald, one of the founders of FPF, had this to say at The Guardian about the audio tape:

The court-martial proceeding of Bradley Manning has, rather ironically, been shrouded in extreme secrecy, often exceeding even that which prevails at Guantanamo military commissions. This secrecy prompted the Center for Constitutional Rights to commence formal legal action on behalf of several journalists and activists, including myself, to compel greater transparency. One particularly oppressive rule governing the Manning trial has barred not only all video or audio recordings of the proceedings, but also any photographs being taken of Manning or even transcripts made of what is said in court. Combined with the prohibition on all press interviews with him, this extraordinary secrecy regime has meant that, in the two-and-a-half years since his arrest, the world has been prevented, literally, from hearing Mannings voice. That changes today.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), the group I recently helped found and on whose board I sit, has received a full, unedited audio recording of the one-hour statement Manning made in court two weeks ago, and this morning has published that recording in full.

The Guardian published the full text of the statement as it was transcribed bu independent journalist Alexa OBrian who has been covering the pre-trial hearings. Here also is the unclassified redacted statement in a pdf file.

Daniel Ellsbreg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, joined Amy Goodman on Democracy Now to discuss the audio of the statement:

What weve heard are people like The New York Times who have consistently slandered him that he was vague and couldnt think of specific instances that had led him to inform the American people of injustices, Ellsberg says. The American people can now, for the first time, hear Bradley in his own words, emotionally and in the greatest specific detail, tell what it was that he felt that needed revelation.

Transcript here

A Salute to Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, As We Hear His Words for the First Time

by Daniel Ellsberg

Today, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that I co-founded and of which Im on the board, has published an audio recording of Bradley Mannings speech to a military court from two weeks ago, in which he gives his reasons and motivations behind leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.

Whoever made this recording, and I dont know who the person is, has done the American public a great service. This marks the first time the American public can hear Bradley Manning, in his own voice explain what he did and how he did it.

After listening to this recording and reading his testimony, I believe Bradley Manning is the personification of the word whistleblower. [..]

For the third straight year, Manning has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize by, among others, Tunisian parliamentarians. Given the role the WikiLeaks cables played in the Arab Spring, and their role in speeding up the end of the Iraq War, I can think of no one more deserving who is deserving of the peace prize.

I see a hero in these wars whose example should inspire others. His name Bradley Manning.

See the rest here:
Bradley Manning Speaks DocuDharma