tagged w/ Bradley Manning
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A federal court ruled this Wednesday that David House will after all, have his day in court, despite the government's attempts to get the case dismissed. US customs agents had detained House, confiscated his laptop, thumb drive, and digital camera, and held on to the equipment for 49 days. He was also detained and questioned for over 90 minutes about his relationship with Bradley Manning, his work on the support network, and any association with Wikileaks. He argues that his first and fourth amendment rights were violated, as this was politically motivated. House joins the show to discuss
http://youtu.be/MMSN_qc3BqYA federal court ruled this Wednesday that David House will after all, have his day in... more
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Patriot Act, Extraordinary Rendition (Disappearance), Summary Execution, Indefinite Detention, Torture, Warrant-less Wiretapping, Spying on American Citizens, Counter Insurgency (Counter Occupy Movement), Homegrown Terrorist Act, Protesting Made Illegal...the list goes on and on. The United States has turned its back on the lessons from the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva conventions. It has rejected true liberty and true democracy for oligarchy and fascism. The world is a more dangerous and terrifying place, not because of Islam or Communism or Socialism....NO SIR...it's the way it is because of American Exceptionalism, Neo-Liberal Economic Policies, Empire Building and Global Domination. What Hawks call terrorism, is in actuality freedom-fighting and liberation, it's desperation in the face of huge gargantuan monster of fascist capitalism and the terrible machine of war it wields.
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer103.html Instead of hailing Bradley Manning as a national hero, he is being portrayed as a traitor, a whistleblower of the the worst kind who betrayed the oligarchy war hungry ravenous fascist hawks....his defense is portraying him as a troubled homosexual, instead of the noble intelligent and true patriot that he is...for exposing the war crimes of the people in our government and the traitorous diplomats and CIA agents who do their bidding.
From William Blum's website "The killing of hope":
Here are Manning's own words from an online chat: "If you had free reign over classified networks ... and you saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you do? ... God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. ... I want people to see the truth ... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
Is the world to believe that these are the words of a disturbed and irrational person? Do not the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Geneva Conventions speak of a higher duty than blind loyalty to one's government, a duty to report the war crimes of that government?
At the link you will read many, many of the startling revelations from what WikiLeaks has revealed. There is much, much more to come, more serious things. That is why there is such a concerted effort being directed at Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. The old timers with their tried and true propaganda are using double speak to push the buttons of their brainwashed millions in the United States to blindly follow their leaders in their churches and in their caucuses. Truly America has forgotten the lessons from the Nuremberg Trials, they have forgotten how fascism wielded its power in Europe and that is why they fail to see fascism rearing its ugly head with its fangs and claws here in the United States. Truly a tragedy to behold.
Do you believe that there is higher duty than your own church or your own country? Do you feel that crimes should be reported and truth revealed, even though it may lead to the failure of entire institutions? Should these institutions be allowed to continue if the foundations upon which they are built are lies and insubordination of the constitution of the United States?Patriot Act, Extraordinary Rendition (Disappearance), Summary Execution, Indefinite... more
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jubal
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2 months ago
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Bradley Manning to face life in prison?
http://youtu.be/FsHFDEL6TaI
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The Campaign Against Whistleblowers in Washington
How telling the truth could leave you unemployed, bankrupt, and even jailed.
—By Peter Van Buren
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.
Kiriakou's plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don't go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.
Punish the Whistleblowers
The Obama administration has already charged more people—six—under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)
Kiriakou, in particular, is accused of giving information about the CIA's torture programs to reporters two years ago. Like the other five whistleblowers, he has been charged under the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act.
That Act has a sordid history, having once been used against the government's political opponents. Targets included labor leaders and radicals like Eugene V. Debs, Bill Haywood, Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman. Debs, a union leader and socialist candidate for the presidency, was, in fact, sentenced to 10 years in jail for a speech attacking the Espionage Act itself. The Nixon administration infamously (and unsuccessfully) invoked the Act to bar the New York Times from continuing to publish the classified Pentagon Papers.
Yet, extreme as use of the Espionage Act against government insiders and whistleblowers may be, it's only one part of the Obama administration's attempt to sideline, if not always put away, those it wants to silence. Increasingly, federal agencies or departments intent on punishing a whistleblower are also resorting to extra-legal means. They are, for instance, manipulating personnel rules that cannot be easily challenged and do not require the production of evidence. And sometimes, they are moving beyond traditional notions of "punishment" and simply seeking to destroy the lives of those who dissent.
The well-reported case of Thomas Drake is an example. As an employee, Drake revealed to the press that the National Security Agency (NSA) spent $1.2 billion on a contract for a data collection program called Trailblazer when the work could have been done in-house for $3 million. The NSA's response? Drake's home was raided at gunpoint and the agency forced him out of his job.
"The government convinced themselves I was a bad guy, an enemy of the state, and went after me with everything they had seeking to destroy my life, my livelihood, and my person—the politics of personal destruction, while also engaging in abject, cutthroat character assassination, and complete fabrication and frame up," Drake told Antiwar.com. "Marriages are strained, and spouses' professional lives suffer as much as their personal lives. Too often, whistleblowers end up broken, blacklisted, and bankrupted," said the attorney who represents Drake.
In Kiriakou's case, the CIA found an excuse to fire his wife, also employed by the Agency, while she was on maternity leave. Whistleblower Bradley Manning, accused of leaking Army and State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks, spent more than a year in the worst of punitive conditions in a US Marine prison and was denied the chance even to appear in court to defend himself until almost two years after his arrest. Former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Morris Davis lost his career as a researcher at the Library of Congress for writing a critical op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and a letter to the editor at the Washington Post on double standards at the infamous prison, as did Robert MacClean for blowing the whistle on the Transportation Security Administration.
Four employees of the Air Force Mortuary in Dover, Delaware, attempted to address shortcomings at the facility, which handles the remains of all American service members who die overseas. Retaliation against them included firings, the placing of employees on indefinite administrative leave, and the imposition of five-day suspensions. The story repeats itself in the context of whistleblowers now suing the Food and Drug Administration for electronically spying on them when they tried to alert Congress about misconduct at the agency. We are waiting to see the Army's reaction to whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who documented publicly this week that senior leaders of the Department of Defense intentionally and consistently misled the American people and Congress on the conduct and progress of the Afghan War.
And this remains the most partial of lists, when it comes to recent examples of non-judicial government retaliation against whistleblowers.
Government bureaucrats know that this sort of slow-drip intimidation keeps people in line. It may, in the end, be less about disciplining a troublemaker than offering visible warning to other employees. They are meant to see what's happening and say, "Not me, not my mortgage, not my family!"—and remain silent. Of course, creative, thoughtful people also see this and simply avoid government service.
In this way, such a system can become a self-fulfilling mechanism in which ever more of the "right kind" of people chose government service, while future "troublemakers" self-select out—a system in which the punishment of leakers becomes the pre-censorship of potential leakers. At the moment, in fact, the Obama administration might as well translate the famed aphorism "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent" into Latin and carve it into the stone walls of the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, or the main office of the State Department at Foggy Bottom where I still fight to keep my job.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/campaign-against-whistleblowers-washington-john-kiriakou-espionageThe Campaign Against Whistleblowers in Washington
How telling the truth could leave... more
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by John Glaser,antiwar.com - A lawyer for Bradley Manning, who leaked classified information to WikiLeaks, wants to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the trial.by John Glaser,antiwar.com - A lawyer for Bradley Manning, who leaked classified... more
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This Week; Bradley Manning rides the Kangaroo,
Kick the can politics again, The Doc is in. Eve of destruction.
Ed croft holiday wishes, tasered for shooting a lawnmower, Hippy woman reports from Texas.
Areosmith gets booked, our asshole of the week and more…This Week; Bradley Manning rides the Kangaroo,
Kick the can politics again, The Doc... more
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A day after a government forensic expert testified that he’d found thousands of diplomatic cables on the Army computer of suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, he was forced to admit under cross-examination that none of the cables he compared to the ones WikiLeaks released matched.
Special Agent David Shaver, a forensic investigator with the Army’s Computer Crimes Investigations Unit, testified Sunday that he’d found 10,000 U.S. diplomatic cables in HTML format on the soldier’s classified work computer, as well as a corrupted text file containing more than 100,000 complete cables that had been converted to base-64 encoding.
Six months after Manning was arrested for allegedly leaking documents to WikiLeaks, the site began publishing 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables that ranged in date from December 1966 to the end of February 2010. But Shaver said none of the documents that he found on Manning’s computer, and that he then compared to those that WikiLeaks published, matched the WikiLeaks documents.
Shaver wasn’t asked how many cables he compared to the WikiLeaks cables, or which dates those cables had, he just said he matched “some of them.” In re-direct examination, however, he noted that the CSV file in which the cables were contained was corrupted and suggested this might indicate that it had not been possible to pass those cables to WikiLeaks for this reason. The defense objected to this assumption, however, noting that Shaver could not speculate on why the cables were not among those released by WikiLeaks.
The cross-examination of Shaver focused on establishing that there might have been legitimate reasons for the State Department cables to be on Manning’s computers, since intelligence analysts were given access to them to do their job. One of Manning’s superiors testified earlier in the hearing that he had sent a link to Manning and other analysts directing them to the location where they could find the cables.
The defense also established that it’s possible Manning’s computer could have been used by someone else — it was already established in previous testimony that he shared his work computers with another soldier — and also raised questions about the possibility that other soldiers knew Manning’s password and therefore could have logged into his computer using his credentials and user profile.
In addition to the State Department cables found on Manning’s computer, Shaver also testified Sunday that he’d found links between evidence on Manning’s laptop and two other WikiLeaks releases: the so-called “Collateral Murder” Apache helicopter video and Gitmo prisoner assessments.
Last April, WikiLeaks began publishing a trove of more than 700 Guantanamo Bay prisoner assessment reports.
Shaver discovered scripts for Wget — a web-scraping tool — on Manning’s computer that pointed to a Microsoft SharePoint server holding copies of the Gitmo documents. He ran the scripts to download the documents, then downloaded the ones that WikiLeaks had published, compared them and found they were the same, Shaver testified.
He also said he found two copies of the Apache video on Manning’s work computer in unallocated space.
But Shaver was forced to admit on Monday that he was not aware that soldiers in the secure facility Manning worked in had been viewing that controversial video and talking about in December 2009, months before WikiLeaks published it. That, the defense seemed to suggest, would explain why a copy might be on Manning’s computer.
A second government forensic witness, a private contractor named Mark Johnson who works for Mantech International, testified that he examined the forensic image of Manning’s personal laptop, a Macbook Pro. On that computer he discovered chat logs of conversations that Manning allegedly had with former hacker Adrian Lamo. Johnson revealed that the Adium chat program was installed on Manning’s computer and was used to conduct the chat with Lamo.
In a screen shot of the chat log shown in court, Manning’s name was completely spelled out, as opposed to Lamo’s version of the chat logs — which the hacker gave authorities in May 2010 — and showed Manning’s chats under the name Bradass87.
Manning’s former roommate at Forward Operating Base Hammer also testified on Monday to say that he and Manning shared a room from October 2009, when they first deployed to Iraq, up until the time Manning was arrested in May 2010.
Specialist Eric Baker, a military police officer, said that he and Manning rarely talked. But he told the court that Manning “used the computer quite often” and said that when he’d wake up in the middle of the night Manning would be on the computer. He never saw what was on Manning’s screen, he told the court
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/cables-match-laptop-manning/A day after a government forensic expert testified that he’d found thousands of... more
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- One year ago today (December 17th), Mohamed Bouazizi, a man who had a simple produce stand in Tunisia, set himself on fire to protest his government’s repression. His singular sacrifice ignited a revolution that toppled Tunisia’s dictator and launched revolts in regimes across the Middle East.- One year ago today (December 17th), Mohamed Bouazizi, a man who had a simple produce... more
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Maryland: With his small frame draped in the digitised fatigues of the US Army and his eyes blinking slowly behind thick glasses, the man accused of the largest intelligence leak in American history has appeared in court for the first time.Maryland: With his small frame draped in the digitised fatigues of the US Army and his... more
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Christopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62
Deal reached to avert government shutdown
Accused Army document leaker faces hearingChristopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62
Deal reached to avert government... more
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Defense Response to Government Denial of Witnesses
On December 2, 2011, the defense filed a request for the production of 48 witnesses for the Article 32 hearing. The government responded to the defense's request on December 7, 2011. In the government's response, it opposed the presence of all defense requested witness (with the exception of ten witnesses who were also on the government's witness list).
The defense filed a request to compel the production of the witnesses on December 8, 2011. The Investigating Officer will consider the government and defense requests, and make a ruling sometime later this week.
http://www.armycourtmartialdefense.info/2011/12/defense-response-to-government-denial.html
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The United States: where justice means what the guy holding the stack of money wants it to mean.
We need a call of release to spread within the 99% for Bradley. We cannot let him die in vain.Defense Response to Government Denial of Witnesses
On December 2, 2011, the defense... more
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Novek
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6 months ago
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Days before a preliminary hearing for suspected WikiLeaks aide and US Army PFC Bradley Manning are set to begin, the attorney for the accused whistleblower is asking for two big names to take the stand.Days before a preliminary hearing for suspected WikiLeaks aide and US Army PFC Bradley... more
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Days before a preliminary hearing for suspected WikiLeaks aide and US Army PFC Bradley Manning are set to begin, the attorney for the accused whistleblower is asking for two big names to take the stand.
In a request made Friday, Manning’s attorney provided a 20-page list of defense witnesses that they are asking to appear at the hearing — among them US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After taking his plea to the courtroom, attorney David Coombs made the list publically available on the Internet over the weekend.
The Article 32 hearing, scheduled to begin on December 16, serves as the military’s own version of a grand jury hearing and will determine if the case against Manning needs to be referred to a full-scale court martial. The US military alleges that Manning passed along top-secret documents detrimental to the country’s security to Julian Assange’s WikIleaks website, though his attorneys feel like they have a strong case in support of their client. Despite this, Manning has been held under inhumane conditions for over a year-and-a-half since being detained by American officials.
Should President Obama be subpoenaed to stand trial, Manning’s attorney is expected to question the commander-in-chief over comments that he made earlier this year against Manning. Speaking during a fundraiser in April, the president insisted that the soldier “broke the law,” which the defense says represented “unlawful command influence.”
More............
http://rt.com/usa/news/manning-obama-clinton-coombs-101/Days before a preliminary hearing for suspected WikiLeaks aide and US Army PFC Bradley... more
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Yesterday the United States Army scheduled an Article 32 pretrial hearing for PFC Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist accused of releasing classified material to WikiLeaks. The pretrial hearing will commence on December 16 at Fort Meade, Maryland.Yesterday the United States Army scheduled an Article 32 pretrial hearing for PFC... more
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The U.S. Army announced last week that it had embarked on preparations for Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing.The U.S. Army announced last week that it had embarked on preparations for Bradley... more
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Source: Los Angeles Times
Seventeen months after U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was arrested for allegedly downloading reams of classified information that WikiLeaks would later share with the world, the Obama administration issued a directive Friday that seeks to improve how the government protects secrets on its computer networks.
The executive order, the product of a task force formed in the wake of the WikiLeaks reports, seeks to standardize how agencies protect classified data while also promoting the sharing of intelligence, the White House said in a statement.
Friday’s order requires agencies to designate a senior official to oversee classified information sharing and safeguarding; implement an insider-threat detection and prevention program; and perform self-assessments of compliance with policy and standards, the White House says.
The order also establishes a special government committee that must report to the president within 90 days, and then at least once a year after that, examining federal performance in protecting classified information on computer networks.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5019640
"Hmmm, Great Idea???"Source: Los Angeles Times
Seventeen months after U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was... more
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KB723
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8 months ago
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c7girl
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9 months ago
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Matt Gratz, Political Fail Blog-
A former guard known as the ringleader in the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was released from the same prison Bradley Manning is being held in on Saturday.
Charles Graner Jr., a U.S. Army reservist, was convicted in January 2005 of indecent acts, dereliction of duty, conspiracy to commit maltreatment and assault consummated by battery.
Graner, from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, was credited with good conduct.
What's the price to pay for photographing a detainee being dragged by another guard by a leash wrapped around the prisoner's neck and posing for a photograph behind a pyramid of naked prisoners? Ohh about 6 ½ years at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where PFC. Bradley Manning is currently being held without trial while the government builds a conspiracy case against him.
So what's the lesson today children?
Keep Reading at Political Fail Blog:
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/08/abu-ghraib-torture-ringleader-guard.htmlMatt Gratz, Political Fail Blog-
A former guard known as the ringleader in the... more
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The US is violating UN rules by refusing unmonitored access to the Army private who is accused of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks, the UN's chief torture investigator has said.
UN special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez said the US had has broken rules by insisting on monitoring conversations with Pte Bradley Manning.
Mr Mendez says he needs unrestricted access to Pte Manning to do his job.
Pte Manning, 23, is being held in a military prison awaiting trial.
The intelligence analyst, who joined the US Army in 2007, is accused of leaking 720,000 secret military and diplomatic US government documents.
They were later published by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
Advocates for government transparency have called for the released of Pte Manning, placing pressure on the US government.
'Unfettered access'
After being confined alone in a cell for 23 hours per day in a detention facility in Quantico in the state of Virginia, Pte Manning was transferred to Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas in April.
Mr Mendez said the US had told him Mr Manning was being treated better now than when he was in Quantico.
But the UN investigator said the US must allow him to determine whether the conditions at Quantico that Pte Manning experienced amounted to "torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".
"For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid," Mr Mendez said in a statement.
Mr Mendez said that because the US is a "strong supporter of the international human rights system", the country's actions "must seek to set the pace in good practices that enhance the role of human rights mechanisms, ensuring and maintaining unfettered access to detainees during enquiries".
Pentagon officials have previously said Pte Manning is being held in appropriate conditions considering the seriousness of the charges against him.
He has been charged with using unauthorised software on government computers to download classified information and to make intelligence available to "the enemy", as well as other counts related to leaking intelligence and theft of public records.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14126223The US is violating UN rules by refusing unmonitored access to the Army private who is... more
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