No Chelsea morning for hypocritical world leaders in Paris

When a former U.S. army private awoke in her jail cell just over a week ago -- some 17 months into a 35-year jail sentence -- she could have been forgiven for thinking, in the immediate aftermath of the terrible Paris magazine attacks, that the commutation of her punitive sentence for exercising freedom of speech and conscience was about to be placed on President Obama's desk. Obama, like many world leaders, had just issued stunning, passionate statements about freedom of the press, human dignity, and all the great things that make countries like Canada and the U.S. just so undeniably terrific.

News Outlets Continue To Refer To Chelsea Manning As 'He'

The news on Thursday that Bradley Manning wanted to be known in future as a woman named Chelsea led to controversy when several news outlets continued to refer to Manning as "he."

Manning made her announcement in a letter that was first read on the "Today" show. Despite her stated desire, the Associated Press and Reuters both steered clear of using "she" in their pieces on the story.

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, Sees Bradley Manning's Conviction As The Beginning Of Police State

The NSA surveillance of millions of emails and phone calls. The dogged pursuit of whistleblower Edward Snowden across the globe, regardless of the diplomatic fallout. And the sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for giving a cache of government files to the website WikiLeaks. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg sees these events as signs that the United States is becoming a police state.

"We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," Ellsberg told HuffPost Live Wednesday. "And I absolutely agree with Edward Snowden. It's worth a person's life, prospect of assassination, or life in prison or life in exile -- it's worth that to try to restore our liberties and make this a democratic country."

Bradley Manning To Barack Obama: I Did It 'Out Of Love For My Country'

FORT MEADE, Md. -- The text of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's statement that will be sent to the president, as read by defense attorney David Coombs following Manning's sentencing Wednesday:

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We've been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we've had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.

In Chelsea Manning, We Finally Have a Scapegoat for the Iraq War

Update, 8/22/2013: Yesterday, Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Today, Chelsea Elizabeth Manning announced through her lawyer that she will live the rest of her life as a woman, and we have amended our comment from yesterday in conformity with who she is. Chelsea Manning will most likely be imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, which like all other US military prisons and many civilian ones, does not provide hormone therapy or gender transition surgery to transgender prisoners. These policies should be reversed immediately.
 
The best way to cope with humiliating military disaster is to find a scapegoat. For the Germans after World War I, it was leftists and Jews who “stabbed the nation in the back”—the Dolchstoßlegende that set the global standard. In the resentful folklore that grows like kudzu around our Vietnam War, American defeat is blamed on the hippies and anti-American journalists who sabotaged a military effort that was on the verge of total victory. (More sophisticated revanchists season this pottage with imprecations against General Westmoreland’s leadership.)

8 Real Spies And Actual Bad Guys Who Got Shorter Sentences Than Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning received a 35-year prison sentence on Wednesday, punishment for leaking troves of classified intelligence to the website WikiLeaks in 2010. The former Army private first class faced a maximum of 90 years in prison, and the prosecution was pushing aggressively for at least 60 years, meaning the final outcome was less harsh than it could have been.

But supporters of Manning -- who has maintained that his actions were driven by his desire to expose brutality and wrongdoing being carried out by America's military and diplomatic corps -- argued that he deserves to be pardoned for his part in the revelations. Anti-war activists and civil libertarians have also commended Manning for his part in the leaks, saying that he helped accelerate the drawing down of U.S. military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and provided important fodder for the Arab revolutions in 2010 and 2011.

History Will Pardon Manning, Even If Obama Doesn't

Sometimes things that are fully expected still have the capacity to shock. That’s certainly the case with the news that the former Army private Bradley Manning has been sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. My colleague Amy Davidson, who has been writing about the Manning story since the beginning, has a post on the verdict, which contains more details. I’ll confine myself to three points:

1. Make no mistake, the sentence is draconian.
Judge Denise Lind, an Army colonel, didn’t give Manning the full sixty years in prison that the prosecution wanted, but the whistle-blower still faces the same sort of prison term handed out to murderers and gangsters. Assuming he follows the rules, he will be eligible for parole after eight years (a third of the sentence minus three and a half years, for time served). Even if he is released then, he will have been in prison for well over a decade.

Bradley Manning Headed To Prison, While Those Who Authorized Torture Go Free

FORT MEADE, Md. -- Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday for releasing 700,000 documents about the United States' worldwide diplomacy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Manning was a 25-year-old Army private first class at the time of his arrest. He saw himself as an idealist acting to end the wars, and said in online chats with hacker Adrian Lamo that he was particularly concerned about the abuse of detainees in Iraq. No political or military higher-ups have ever been prosecuted for detainee abuse or torture in Iraq, Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay.

Bradley Manning Deserves 60-Year Sentence, Government Argues

FORT MEADE, Md. -- Bradley Manning's crimes were so serious that he deserves to spend 60 years in prison, the government asserted during closing arguments in the sentencing phase of Manning's court martial on Monday.

While acknowledging that Manning is young and pleaded guilty to some of the charges against him, Army prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said Manning "betrayed" the United States and "deserves to spend the majority of his remaining life in confinement."

Bradley Manning deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not more hard time

Bradley Manning is expected to be sentenced Wednesday. He faces a sentence of up to 90 years in prison, after being found guilty on a number of counts under the Espionage Act.

The headquarters of the Nobel Committee is in downtown Oslo on a street named after Henrik Ibsen, whose play 'An Enemy of the People' has remained as current as dawn light falling on the Nobel building and then, hours later, on a Fort Meade courtroom where Bradley Manning's trial enters a new stage -- defence testimony in the sentencing phase.

Ibsen's play tells of mendacity and greed in high places: dangerous threats to public health. You might call the protagonist a whistleblower. He's a physician who can't pretend that he hasn't seen evidence; he rejects all the pleas and threats to stay quiet, to keep secret what the public has a right to know. He could be content to take an easy way, to let others suffer and die. But he refuses to just follow orders. He will save lives. There will be some dire consequences for him.

In Defense of Leakers: Snowden and Manning

On the day that Edward Snowden finally left Moscow’s airport in a taxi to take up Russia’s offer of temporary asylum and the sentencing portion of Bradley Manning’s trial continued, it is worth restating what should be obvious. Leaking classified information is a crime, and it can be damaging to the national interest; but, in some circumstances, it can also be a patriotic and useful act that helps bring about necessary reforms.

Setting aside Snowden’s personal odyssey—he’s been holed up at Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23rd—the documents he released detailing the National Security Agency’s spying programs, domestic and global, have already had a transformative effect. For decades, Congress has adopted a hands-off and pusillanimous approach to the N.S.A., appropriating vast sums for its operations—its budget remains classified, but it’s reportedly about ten billion dollars a year—and not examining too closely how this money was spent. As the agency sought to expand its domestic surveillance programs in the aftermath of 9/11, Congress, by passing successive versions of the Patriot Act and other measures, actively enabled it to broaden its remit under the catch-all justification of countering terrorism.

"Bradley Manning Has Become a Martyr"–WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on Guilty Verdict

The sentencing hearing for Army whistleblower Bradley Manning begins today following his acquittal on the most serious charge he faced, aiding the enemy, but conviction on 20 other counts. On Tuesday, Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act and other charges for leaking hundreds of thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks. In beating the "aiding the enemy" charge, Manning avoids an automatic life sentence, but he still faces a maximum of 136 years in prison on the remaining counts. In his first U.S. television interview since the verdict, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange discusses the Manning "show trial," the plight of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the verdict’s impact on WikiLeaks. "Bradley Manning is now a martyr," Assange says. "He didn’t choose to be a martyr. I don’t think it’s a proper way for activists to behave to choose to be martyrs, but these young men — allegedly in the case of Bradley Manning and clearly in the case of Edward Snowden — have risked their freedom, risked their lives, for all of us. That makes them heroes." According to numerous press reports, the conviction of Manning makes it increasingly likely that the U.S. will prosecute Assange as a co-conspirator. During the trial, military prosecutors portrayed Assange as an "information anarchist" who encouraged Manning to leak hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.

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The Trials of Bradley Manning

In late July, the trial of Bradley Manning finally came to a close in a heavily air-conditioned courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland, where the young private from Crescent, Oklahoma, was prosecuted for the largest security breach in US history.

Manning had already pleaded guilty to ten of the lesser charges against him—for instance, unauthorized possession and improper storage of classified material, which together carry a maximum twenty-year term. But this was not enough for the prosecution: it pressed on with a dozen more serious offenses, including the potential capital crime of aiding the enemy as well as charges stemming from the Espionage Act of 1917, which Richard Nixon retooled as a weapon against domestic leakers in his vendetta against Daniel Ellsberg. (Such a use of the statute has never been decided on the legal merits until this case.) Judge Denise Lind announced a verdict that splits the difference, acquitting the soldier of aiding the enemy but convicting him on the Espionage Act charges. Private Manning could still face a prison term of more than 130 years (the sentence will be determined in a separate proceeding). The consequences for American journalism are grave, as the government now has even greater incentive to prosecute as a spy any confidential source who passes classified information to the press, criminalizing what has long been a vital (and tacitly accepted) conduit of essential public information. Such collateral damage to the Fourth Estate will not be mourned by a government that has become aggressively intolerant of leaks, whistleblowers and, it often seems, a well-informed citizenry.

Bradley Manning verdict: Punishing the whistleblower while the war criminals go free

Reactions to the verdict in the Bradley Manning trial were swift on Tuesday.

Though some found solace in the fact that the 25-year-old U.S. Army whistleblower was found "not guilty" on the "most outrageous" charge of "aiding the enemy," voices across the progressive community were expressing mixtures of outrage and sadness after Judge Col. Denise Lind found Manning guilty on 19 other counts that could lead to a sentence of more than 100 years in prison.

The Center for Constitutional Rights put out a statement, which read in part:

    While the "aiding the enemy" charges (on which Manning was rightly acquitted) received the most attention from the mainstream media, the Espionage Act itself is a discredited relic of the WWI era, created as a tool to suppress political dissent and antiwar activism, and it is outrageous that the government chose to invoke it in the first place against Manning. Government employees who blow the whistle on war crimes, other abuses and government incompetence should be protected under the First Amendment.

Bradley Manning Awaits Verdict After Trial Ends with Prosecution "Smears" & Harsh Gov’t Secrecy

Closing arguments have wrapped in the nearly two-month military trial of Army Private Bradley Manning. The presiding judge, Col. Denise Lind, is now deliberating on 21 charges, including "aiding the enemy." Manning faces up to life in prison for leaking more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks and other news sources, the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. Over the weekend, protesters in dozens of cities around the world held rallies to mark an international day of action calling for Manning’s release. We get an update from outside the courtroom with independent journalist Alexa O’Brien, who has been in the courtroom daily since the trial began. "We had armed guards roaming the aisles, actually standing behind reporters, peering into our computers, coming every five minutes behind us," O’Brien says of how journalists were treated last week. "It was quite shocking behavior." We’re also joined by Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a lawyer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who observed the trial’s closing arguments. "The government’s theory is what really is awful here: You can 'aid the enemy' by putting information up on the Internet, intelligence that doesn’t have to be classified," Ratner says. "Because the enemy reads the Internet, you can be accused of aiding the enemy."

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Source: democracynow.org
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Bradley Manning Aided The Enemy Because He Knew Al Qaeda Uses The Internet, Prosecutors Charge

FORT MEADE, Md. -- As military prosecutors wrapped up their case against Bradley Manning just before the Fourth of July, their most serious charge against the Army private first class -- aiding the enemy -- rested tenuously on circumstantial evidence.

When the government brought the charge against Manning in May 2011, the move aroused a firestorm of criticism over fears a dangerous precedent could be set. Manning is being tried in a military court martial, but some have argued that the rarely used aiding the enemy charge might also be applied against civilians. Press freedom advocates claim the charge could be used to give a severe sentence to anyone who uploads sensitive information on the Internet -- by the government's own admission, it would have made no difference if Manning had given his 700,000 files to The New York Times instead of WikiLeaks.

In praise of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are young male models of heroism, duty and self-sacrifice like the Hardy Boys or Tom Swift once were, in an earlier era. They’re the Horatio Whistleblowers of our time.

They weren’t motivated to release secret material by any ideology or mentor. Their motives were naive, moral and direct. In Manning’s statement at his court martial, he said he came in contact with material on the Iran and Afghanistan wars showing how counterproductive they were and thought Americans should have it to think about, too. “For me it’s all a big mess, and I am left wondering what these things mean . . . I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me . . . to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live . . . As I hoped, others were just as troubled — if not more. . .”

Bradley Manning vs. SEAL Team 6

The prosecution of Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks’ source inside the US Army, will be pulling out all the stops when it calls to the stand a member of Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden. The SEAL (in partial disguise, as his identity is secret) is expected to tell the military judge that classified documents leaked by Manning to WikiLeaks were found on bin Laden’s laptop. That will, in turn, be offered as proof not that bin Laden had Internet access like 2 billion other earthlings, but that Manning has “aided the enemy,” a capital offense.

The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning

FORT MEADE, Md.—The military trial of Bradley Manning is a judicial lynching. The government has effectively muzzled the defense team. The Army private first class is not permitted to argue that he had a moral and legal obligation under international law to make public the war crimes he uncovered. The documents that detail the crimes, torture and killing Manning revealed, because they are classified, have been barred from discussion in court, effectively removing the fundamental issue of war crimes from the trial. Manning is forbidden by the court to challenge the government’s unverified assertion that he harmed national security. Lead defense attorney David E. Coombs said during pretrial proceedings that the judge’s refusal to permit information on the lack of actual damage from the leaks would “eliminate a viable defense, and cut defense off at the knees.” And this is what has happened.

As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point

Well, the Bradley Manning trial has begun, and for the most part, the government couldn't have scripted the headlines any better.

In the now-defunct Starz series Boss, there's a reporter character named "Sam Miller" played by actor Troy Garity who complains about lazy reporters who just blindly eat whatever storylines are fed to them by people in power. He called those sorts of stories Chumpbait. If the story is too easy, if you're doing a piece on a sensitive topic and factoids are not only reaching you freely, but publishing them is somehow not meeting much opposition from people up on high, then you're probably eating Chumpbait.

There's an obvious Chumpbait angle in the Bradley Manning story, and most of the mainstream press reports went with it. You can usually tell if you're running a Chumpbait piece if you find yourself writing the same article as 10,000 other hacks.