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Chelsea Manning

Manning Officially Submits Presidential Pardon Request

September 3, 2013 Staff, rt.com
Chelsea Manning, the former Army private sentenced to 35 years in prison for the largest data leak in US history, has formally submitted a pardon request to President Obama. The former Army private was convicted of espionage and theft on August 21 in connection with illegally turning over 700,000 US diplomatic cables, battlefield reports, and combat video to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Formerly known as Bradley, Manning, 25, said after sentencing that she wanted to live as a woman, requesting media refer to her as Chelsea. A presidential pardon could allow Manning to leave Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas and re-enter society as a civilian. The president has the ability to grant a full and unconditional pardon, to commute a sentence, or to rescind a fine.

Daniel Ellsberg: Whistle-Blowers Are Good For Democracy

September 1, 2013 Robert Scheer, www.truthdig.com , , , , ,
The same is true for Manning. He didn’t put out anything over-secret, and he selected, actually, a body of secret cables that he determined did not even include restrictions on distribution, like “no dis” [no distribution] or “lim dis” [limited distribution]. ...I was surprised to see that there was so much incriminating information at that level that was merely secret. . Apparently, it has gotten so routine to report war crimes, like turning people over to be tortured by the Iraqi authorities and so inconsequential that they are in fact keeping a body count of civilian deaths, which the army had denied keeping. That figure was as high as it was for the army’s secret accounts, 60,000, even though that is probably far less than a tenth of the actual civilian casualties. Still, it’s 60,000 more than they had reported to the public. In short, he had reason to believe that there was nothing in there that would be more than embarrassing to the United States government, and so it has proved.

Secrets Result in Abuse of Power: New Era of Transparency

August 30, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.truthout.org , , , ,
The importance of Chelsea Manning's actions to increase transparency in US foreign policy was underscored by the timing of her extreme 35-year sentence. In the same week, the CIA admitted after 60 years that it engineered a coup d'état against the elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. This secret US and British action changed the course of history, planting the seeds for many of the problems the region and world face today. The Mossadegh coup became the model for secret government action by the United States, often carried out by the CIA. Author and historian William Blum lists dozens of instances of the United States attempting or succeeding in overthrowing foreign, often democratic, governments. He says "The United States has overthrown more democratically-elected governments than any country in world history."

How Cultural Ignorance Is Killing Trans Americans

August 29, 2013 Katie McDonough, www.salon.com ,
And on Aug. 27, while hundreds of mourners prepared to gather for a vigil in Nettles’ honor, “Fox and Friends” opened a segment on Manning with Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady.” These are not unrelated events. Our culture’s ignorance about transgender rights isn’t just a matter of semantics, media bluster or political fault lines; popular narratives that dehumanize the lives and experiences of trans people take a heavy human toll — and come with a body count. “They were called faggots, they were called he-shes, she-males, things of that nature,” Nettles’ mother, Dolores, told WABC of the assault, in which a 20-year-old man violently attacked Nettles after learning she was transgender. Nettles’ story is made more tragic by how common such violence is in the United States.

Manning And The Arab Spring

August 28, 2013 Sami Ben Gharbia, www.medium.com ,
If the U.S. will take 35 years from Chelsea Manning’s life, may it console her that she has given us, Arabs, the secret gift that helped expose and topple 50 years of dictatorships. For me, it all started in mid-October of 2010, with a direct message on Twitter from a good friend of mine. He belonged to a circle of digital activists with whom I worked closely with for years on many advocacy projects in the Arab World, from anti-censorship strategies and campaigns to building and training non-violent protests movements. In that DM he urgently asked me to speak over encryption with him. After one single OTR chat session, he sent me an encrypted zip file containing a trove of around 400 texts files organized in about 15 folders. All the folders were named after Arab countries: Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain, etc. I didn’t know what was in them. He told me just before ending the chat session: do something with them, I trust you and trust your knowledge and judgment.

Chelsea Manning is Willing to Pay For Her Own Hormone Therapy

August 27, 2013 Josh Voorhees, www.slate.com , ,
"It was Chelsea's intent to do this all along," David Coombs told the Associated Press last night, explaining why his client made her announcement so soon after she was sentenced. "It was only after Fort Leavenworth had said that they would not provide any sort of medical treatment that we decided not to wait." In his interview with the AP, Coombs also detailed the specifics of Manning's plan: She's willing to pay for estrogen treatments that would promote female characteristics including breast development, she does not want sex-reassignment surgery at this point, and she expects to be kept with men in prison. Coombs has made it clear that he'll pursue any and all legal options on behalf of his client if the prison prevents Manning from receiving the hormone therapy.

Manning And The Gangster State

August 24, 2013 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com , ,
There are strict rules now in our American penal colony. If we remain supine, if we permit ourselves to be passively stripped of all political power and voice, if we refuse to resist as we are incrementally reduced to poverty and the natural world is senselessly exploited and destroyed by corporate oligarchs, we will have the dubious freedom to wander among the ruins of the empire, to be diverted by tawdry spectacles and to consume the crass products marketed to us. But if we speak up, if we name what is being done to us and done in our name to others, we will become, like Manning, Julian Assange and Snowden, prey for the vast security and surveillance apparatus. And we will, if we effectively resist, go to prison or be forced to flee.

VIDEO: Acronym TV Weekly Resistance Report 005

August 23, 2013 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.youtube.com , , , ,
Welcome to the Resistance Report, stories covered this week: Bradley Manning gets sentenced to 35 years, changes name to Chelsea Manning and pushes for a Presidential pardon. Also, we have new reports on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and The Wisconsin Solidarity Sing along and with regard to the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington we ask if it is a new call to resistance and rebuilding, or a pep rally for the Democratic Party?

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Ironies Push Resistance Forward

August 22, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , ,
Irony can also be a powerful tool when used by activists in their actions. We love this action against the Keystone XL pipeline. Farmers, ranchers, clean energy and climate activists came together in Nebraska to construct a wind turbine and solar-powered barn immediately in the path of the proposed pipeline. They created a dilemma; if President Obama approves Keystone XL, he’ll then have to tear down clean and locally-produced energy to make way for dirty energy from foreign tar sands. 1BoulderAnd, in Boulder, CO activists have been working for nearly a decade to get their utility to switch from coal to green energy. The company, Xcel Energy, refused so they have been working to create a municipal utility instead. They’ve won three votes by city residents, but XCel keeps fighting them.

Manning Supporters Interrupt Presidential Speech

August 22, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org
On August 22, Ursula Rozum and Amelia Ramsey-Lefevre interrupted President Obama's speech at Henninger High School to bring attention to the imprisonment of US Army whistleblower Private Manning. Rozum and Ramsey-Lefevre were escorted off the premises after shouting: “President Obama, you must free Private Manning. With all due respect, sir, Private Manning exposed war crimes. Private Manning exposed torture. Private Manning aided the public, not the enemy. Private Manning is a hero.” The two women also held banner which read “Free Bradley Manning.”

Bradley Manning Sentence: Chilling Message To Whistleblowers

August 22, 2013 Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, www.popularresistance.org ,
President John F. Kennedy stated: “War will exist until that day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” Today with the outrageous sentencing of Pvt. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison (functionally life in prison) the US has continued to distance itself from any notion of respect for the conscientious objector or commitment to democracy. Through the court martial and sentencing of Bradley Manning the government has sent an unambiguous and chilling message to the American public and in particular to present-day and future whistleblowers that it will not tolerate dissent, transparency or exposing government corruption.

History Will Pardon Bradley Manning, Even If Obama Doesn’t

August 22, 2013 John Cassidy, www.newyorker.com
Well before the sentence came down, supporters of Manning were busy campaigning to get him freed. There were demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere, bumper stickers, and online petitions—one of which Daniel Ellsberg, the former Department of Defense official who leaked the Pentagon Papers, helped to organize. In the wake of the verdict, more protests were planned, including a rally outside the White House on Wednesday night. Amnesty International asked President Obama to release Manning and called on the U.S. government to “turn its attention to investigating violations of human rights and humanitarian law” he helped to uncover. In helping to reveal that the U.S. authorities had repeatedly misled the public about the war in Vietnam, Ellsberg also broke the law, of course. So do most whistle-blowers who are employed by the government. But history tends to be kinder to them than the courts, and I doubt that this case will be an exception. In fifty years, people will look on the Manning case as another blot on a dark era for the United States and the values that it claims to hold dear. As for Manning himself, future historians will surely agree with Ellsberg, who, speaking to the A.P. yesterday,described him as “one more casualty of a horrible, wrongful war.”

Manning: I Am Chelsea Manning

August 22, 2013 Staff, www.today.com ,
As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility). I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.

Manning: I Understand The Heavy Price Of Freedom

August 22, 2013 Bradley Manning, www.PopularResistance.org ,
It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability. In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

President Obama, Pardon Bradley Manning

August 21, 2013 Staff, www.pardon.bradleymanning.org
Join Amnesty International and the Bradley Manning Support Network insigning a petition to President Obama, then submit your photo with a personal message below. After a prosecution which starkly showcased US government officials' misplaced priorities when it comes to human rights, whistleblower and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The information that Bradley gave to the public exposed the unjust detainment of innocent people at Guantanamo Bay, shown us the true human cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and changed journalism forever. There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information.
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