WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning and US military war resisters today
Tuesday, March 10th 2015, Weaver Hall, Church of the Crossroads,1212 University Ave., Honolulu Hawaii Presentation by Jeff Paterson, former Kaneohe Bay Marine who publicly refused to...
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WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning and US military war resisters today - Video
Manning later moved overseas to Wales with her mother, whose marriage had crumbled. She began high school and sought friends she could trust. "There were a lot of points where I would start to come out, face stern resistance and mockery from people I thought were my friends, and then reverse course. I was scared," she says. "I don't think I ever said 'I'm gay' or 'I'm trans.' It was more like, 'Is it normal for guys to crossdress a lot?'"
Manning's father, Brian Manning, has sharply different memories, recalling a child who liked to play with Legos and the family computer, not in Casey's room. He remembers a happy household, no bullies at school. He does not believe that Manning could have leaked hundreds of thousands of documents alone without catching the attention of colleagues. Having worked in information technology for 30 years, he says, "I know what you can do and what you can't do."
Manning's mother, Susan Manning, said through a representative at the Private Manning Family Fund that her child has always been idealistic and she believes this is the root of any leaks. She said she supports Manning "one hundred percent" in her desire to live as a woman.
More turmoil followed Manning's return to Oklahoma after high school in 2005. She lived with her father and got an internship as a software programmer and designer, but both the job and the relationship with her dad went south. A period of homelessness followed, during which she largely lived out of her truck in Chicago. She later moved in with an aunt near Washington, D.C., enrolling at Montgomery College. She worked 60 to 70 hours a week at two sales jobs to pay for it, she says, and the juggle became "insane."
Thoughts of living as a woman loomed. "But my schedule was hectic, and therapists cost a lot of money," she says. "And even though I started seeing a psychologist with the specific intent of exploring my trans identity, I panicked and never brought up the subject with her. It was all exhausting me to the point I was turning to soda, cigarettes, and the Internet for an escape."
A future in the military came into focus, urged on by her father. "I was following the coverage of the Iraq war and the ongoing 'surge,'" she says. "I began to wonder if I could help out. Sure enough, I enlisted." Another thought occurred too: Perhaps the macho environment would distract her from thoughts of living as a woman.
AP Patrick Semansky
Basic training in Missouri in 2007 was rough. "I absolutely was caught off guard by the intensity," she says. "There were points when I was humiliated pretty badly. One of the drill sergeants who inventoried my personal belongings made comments about my phone: It was pink. I didn't think much about bringing it with me I just liked it."
One difficult night, she says, is "burned in my memory." It came after a long day of marching with weapons loaded with blank rounds. "We arrived at a range where you low-crawl under razor wire," she says. As she was crawling, she says, her weapon got stuck in semiautomatic-fire mode. She became frustrated and tried to force the switch back. "This was a stupid idea," she says. "It went off." The blast infuriated the tired recruits. The next night, "I was jumped by two of the guys who lived with me," she says. "They turned off the lights and tried to push me into my wall locker so they could lock me inside of it. I fought back." A sergeant came as Manning was ready to strike a blow, she says, and she was sent to a behavioral health clinic for "fits of rage." She says she kept the locker incident to herself, and the guys "respected that and left me alone."
Manning went on to become an Army intelligence analyst in New York and prepared to deploy to Iraq. She entered a happier phase, beginning a relationship with a student at Brandeis University. "I fell in love with him. He was not my first relationship, but he was certainly the most serious one," she says. He was the first person Manning recalls telling about her desire to be a woman.
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Chelsea Manning Shares Her Transition to Living as a Woman ...
InterAksyon.com The online news portal of TV5
WASHINGTON -- Chelsea Manning, the US soldier imprisoned for spilling state secrets, has said in an interview that much of her life has been marked by a lonely anguish over her gender identity.
In her first interview from Fort Leavenworth military prison where she is serving out a 35-year sentence for a massive leak of classified documents, Manning, 27, described her life behind bars in an article published Wednesday in Cosmopolitan magazine.
She said she is pained by rules that still forbid her from growing her hair long.
After Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was convicted and sentenced in 2013 for the massive document dump, the US Army private announced she was a female and requested medical treatment -- including hormone therapy -- to enable her to become a woman.
Manning has won partial legal victories and judges have backed her request to be referred to as a woman. But while she is undergoing hormone therapy and allowed make-up and female underwear, authorities do not permit Manning to grow her hair long.
Her appeals for medical care have been difficult because she feels "like a joke" to military officials, Manning told the magazine.
It is "painful and awkward" to be banned from letting her hair grow, Manning said.
"I am torn up," Manning said. "I get through each day OK, but at night, when I'm alone in my room, I finally burn out and crash."
The magazine interview was conducted by mail, as military authorities prohibit inmates from speaking to journalists by phone or in person.
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BECOMING CHELSEA | Manning recounts struggle with gender identity, decries treatment in jail
Chelsea Manning is tweeting from a maximum security military prison
Chelsea Manning, the soldier convicted for sharing national security secrets with Wikileaks, is tweeting from behind bars. Her tweets, dictated from phone calls, began last Friday, but started...
By: 7 NEWS - The Denver Channel
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Chelsea Manning is tweeting from a maximum security military prison - Video
Manning sent this photo to a supervisor in 2010 with the caption "this is my problem." Three years later Manning publicly identified as female and said she wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning.
Reuters
Chelsea Manning, the U.S. soldier who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, has launched a Twitter account. Manning said she will be using a phone to dictate her tweets to communications firm Fitzgibbon Media, reports CNN. Her first tweet went up Friday afternoon, and by Saturday morning she already had more than 30,000 followers.
Manning said she wants to tweet as often as possible but not about frivolous issues. "I'm hoping to stay connected w/ this account as much as poss., but would rather tweet about more meaningful things than not #lessismore," her second tweet said.
Manning also expressed hope she will be able to hold conversations with her followers through the platform. "It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning posted.
Manning was convicted in 2013 of charges related to releasing State Department cables and military records and will be eligible for parole after serving eight years, notes the Wall Street Journal. Shortly after her conviction, Manning, who was then known as Bradley, announced she would seek hormone therapy. A Kansas judge, meanwhile, agreed to her request to change her name to Chelsea.
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Chelsea Manning Is Tweeting From Military Prison
April 5th marked the five year anniversary of WikiLeaks publication of the Collateral Murder Video. The footage of a secret US military video depicted an Apache helicopter killing Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists. It provided an uncensored view of modern war for the world to see. The light that shone in the darkness was the conscience of a young woman. Chelsea Manning (formally Bradley Manning) is now serving 35 years behind bars for her great public service.
After witnessing Manning confess to her role as WikiLeaks whistleblower at the court-martial proceeding in Fort Meade, Maryland, attorney and President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner said that locking her up for even a day is to lock up the conscience of our nation.
Mannings disclosure of secret government documents exposed Americas illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Guantanamo Files revealed the state of Americas offshore gulags and violations of universal human rights according to the Geneva Convention. The secret US embassy cables let us see corrupted diplomacy serving corporate global hegemony through coercion and manipulation. Mannings conscience shed light on the real actions of the US government behind a faade of democracy. Yet, the ugly face of empire was not the only thing she showed us.
This conscience of America reminds us of the ideals that founded this country. For her, the enlistment oath she took went beyond the Constitution to the spirit of equality inherent in the Declaration of Independence. She once spoke of her deeply felt connection to all people in the world, i cant separate myself from others . . . i feel connected to everybody . . . like they were distant family.
This deep bond to others allowed her to feel the words enshrined in the sacred document and to recognize when these truths were violated. This made it possible for her to witness what was really happening behind modern war that was shrouded by the euphemism of collateral damage. This was expressed in her words; were human . . . and were killing ourselves. She was able to recognize the victims of US propaganda wars and began to see those who had been branded enemy combatants as human beings like herself.
In her courageous act of releasing these documents, she demonstrated her loyalty to the core principle of this country. At the providence inquiry for her formal plea of guilty, she read aloud a statement describing facts regarding the incident in the Iraq suburb of New Baghdad. By upholding the self-evident Truth that all Men are created equal, she aimed to account for the actions of the helicopter crew on July 12, 2007.
By calling it seemingly delightful bloodlust, she noted this to be the most alarming aspect of the video and described how the soldiers dehumanized the individuals they were engaging, and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as quote dead bastards and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in larger numbers.
She explained how when a seriously wounded man on the ground was trying to crawl to safety, instead of calling for medical attention, one of the crew members asked for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he would have a reason to engage. She described this incident as similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass.
Manning also questioned the attitude and actions of the soldiers in the helicopter at the time of the second engagement on the video; the aerial cannon shooting of the unarmed bongo truck (a van with two adults and two kids in it) that had stopped to help a wounded man. She expressed how deeply saddened she was by the aerial weapons teams lack of concern for human life and their response of the discovery of injured children in the van, showing no remorse or sympathy for those they killed or injured.
In her request for a presidential pardon, Manning wrote how her time in Iraq made her question the morality of Americas military presence since 9/11 and she realized that in our efforts to meet the risks posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our Humanity.
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Chelsea Manning and the Call of America’s Conscience by ...
By Faith Karimi CNN
(CNN) -- Imprisoned soldier Chelsea Manning can now communicate with the world -- in 140 characters or less.
Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents, appears to have joined Twitter this week.
In a series of tweets, the prisoner formerly known as Bradley Manning said she will be using a voice phone to dictate her tweets to communications firm Fitzgibbon Media, which will post them on her behalf.
She is not allowed Internet access in prison, according to The Guardian.
"It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning posted to her nearly 26,000-plus followers.
Manning was sentenced in 2013, and in August of that year, she said she wanted to transition to a female.
The Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, where she is serving her sentence, has authorized hormone therapy for her treatment.
Manning said she suffers from gender dysphoria. Her lawyers describe it as "the medical diagnosis given to individuals whose gender identity -- their innate sense of being male or female -- differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, causing clinically significant distress."
Last year, a Kansas judge granted her request to be formally known as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.
Former U.S. Army specialist Chelsea Manning has joined the social medium Twitter and is now tweeting to the outside world from inside Fort Leavenworth Military Prison, where she is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified U.S. military information.
According to the Guardian, the whistleblower is forbidden to access the Internet from inside prison, but is instead dictating messages to supporters by phone, who then post them to her Twitter account at @xychelsea.
Manning who was born Bradley Manning, but who is now transitioning to female and has adopted the name Chelsea was arrested and convicted for making a massive trove of U.S. military documents public on Wikileaks.
Her Twitter profile features a drawing of Manning as shed like to be seen. Military authorities have steadfastly refused to allow her to grow out her hair while incarcerated. After a legal battle, however, Manning was allowed to take hormones to transition, the first U.S. military member in history to be granted that right.
Before her first tweet, the Guardian reported that Manning already had more than 1,000 followers. As of Saturday afternoon, she had garnered more than 35,000.
Then, on Friday, she wrote:
This is my new twitter account =P
Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) April 3, 2015
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Tweeting from prison reqs a lot of effort and using a voice phone to dictate #90sproblems
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Chelsea Manning got 1,000 followers on Twitter before her ...
Story highlights Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents She says she will be using a voice phone to dictate her tweets
Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents, appears to have joined Twitter this week.
In a series of tweets, the prisoner formerly known as Bradley Manning said she will be using a voice phone to dictate her tweets to communications firm Fitzgibbon Media, which will post them on her behalf.
She is not allowed Internet access in prison, according to The Guardian.
"It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning posted to her nearly 26,000-plus followers.
Manning was sentenced in 2013, and in August of that year, she said she wanted to transition to a female.
The Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, where she is serving her sentence, has authorized hormone therapy for her treatment.
Manning said she suffers from gender dysphoria. Her lawyers describe it as "the medical diagnosis given to individuals whose gender identity -- their innate sense of being male or female -- differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, causing clinically significant distress."
Last year, a Kansas judge granted her request to be formally known as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.
The former Army intelligence analyst was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks in what has been described as the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history.
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Chelsea Manning's jail tweets
Story highlights Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents She says she will be using a voice phone to dictate her tweets
Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents, appears to have joined Twitter this week.
In a series of tweets, the prisoner formerly known as Bradley Manning said she will be using a voice phone to dictate her tweets to communications firm Fitzgibbon Media, which will post them on her behalf.
She is not allowed Internet access in prison, according to The Guardian.
"It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning posted to her nearly 26,000-plus followers.
Manning was sentenced in 2013, and in August of that year, she said she wanted to transition to a female.
The Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, where she is serving her sentence, has authorized hormone therapy for her treatment.
Manning said she suffers from gender dysphoria. Her lawyers describe it as "the medical diagnosis given to individuals whose gender identity -- their innate sense of being male or female -- differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, causing clinically significant distress."
Last year, a Kansas judge granted her request to be formally known as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.
The former Army intelligence analyst was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks in what has been described as the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history.
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Chelsea Manning is tweeting from prison - CNN.com