I am forwarding helow the video of the statement made before a military
court by US soldier Bradley Manning who in accordance with his conscience
leaked the videos and documents of the premedidated and inhuman manner in which
Iraqi civilians were being gunned down by US aircraft in Iraq in a manner as
though a game was being played ;the reasons for his decision to leak the
documents were related to the fact that there was no other way of stopping
these brutalities .
Bradley Manning has endured inhuman cofinement even at the pre-trial stage
when he was denied all clothes and kept under bright lights under the
ostensible plea that he would harm himself .
This courageous US soldier has been proposed by several organizations for the
Nobel Peace Prize which of course it is hardly possible he will receive as the
Peace Prize has been awarded to people like President Obama , Henry Kissinger
among such others .......and is an award which perpetuates the status quo of a
barbaric world order .
Kindly look up his case on the internet and he should be adopted as a prisoner
of conscience the world over .
Niloufer Bhagwat
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam Agarwal
To: activism-news-netw...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Post WSFDiscuss ; Post IHRO ; Jai Sen
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: [ANN:5448] Ed Pilkington - Bradley Manning’s prosecution has
been conducted with a total absence of transparency. That should worry us all
More on the Bradley Manning court proceedings,
Bradley Manning Speaks: In Leaked Court Recording, Army Whistleblower Tells
His Story for First Time
From:
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/12/bradley_manning_speaks_in_leaked_court#story-donate
A leaked audio recording has emerged of the statement Army whistleblower
Bradley Manning delivered at his pretrial hearing in military court late last
month. Manning acknowledged he gave hundreds of thousands of classified
documents to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to show the American public the "true
costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our
foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan." This is the
first time Manning’s voice has been heard publicly since he was arrested nearly
three years ago. We air excerpts of his remarks, hearing Manning describe in
his own voice the moment he decided to release the documents and the outrage he
felt at the "Collateral Murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq.
[includes rush transcript]
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Since his arrest nearly three years ago for the largest leak of
state secrets in U.S. history, Army Private Bradley Manning has not been able
to tell the world his own story. Accusing him of "aiding the enemy" for
providing a trove of classified U.S. cables and files to WikiLeaks, the Bush
administration and Obama administrations have kept Manning in harsh military
detention, including many months in solitary confinement, prompting the U.N.'s
top torture expert to criticize the U.S. for "cruel and degrading" treatment.
Facing up to life in prison, Manning's voice has been silenced by more than
1,000 days behind bars and the full brunt of the national security state.
Well, the silencing of Bradley Manning ends today. A leaked audio recording
has emerged of the statement Manning delivered at his pretrial hearing in
military court late last month. Manning acknowledged he gave the classified
documents to WikiLeaks. He said he wanted to show the American public, quote,
the "true costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the
military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and
Afghanistan."
AMY GOODMAN: During the hearing at Fort Meade, Bradley Manning took
responsibility for leaking files including the so-called "Collateral Murder"
video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq, U.S. diplomatic cables, records
on detainees at Guantánamo. He described the anguish he felt at witnessing the
video footage of U.S. aerial pilots shooting down unarmed Iraqi civilians and
discussed his personal isolation in the military as a gay soldier.
Portions of Manning’s statement were reported by journalists and supporters
who witnessed it inside the courtroom. But military censors prevented the
release of a complete transcript until just this week. Now, Democracy Now! has
obtained a secret recording of Manning’s remarks that allows us to hear Bradley
Manning tell his story in his own words. It’s the first time most people will
hear not just Manning’s story, but his voice.
The recording was released today by the group Freedom of the Press
Foundation, a new organization that funds independent journalism organizations
dedicated to transparency and accountability in government. The full recording
is up on their website, the Freedom of the Press Foundation; it’s called
PressFreedomFoundation.org.
In a moment, we’ll be joined by Daniel Ellsberg, arguably the nation’s most
famous whistleblower for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. But first let’s
turn to the leaked audio of Bradley Manning’s statement. In this clip, Manning
begins to explain his motivation for releasing a trove of classified
information to WikiLeaks. He starts with what are called "Significant
Activities" tables, or SigActs for short, incident reports from U.S. military
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And you’re going to have to listen closely,
as the audio can be very difficult to hear. After downloading those SigAct
tables, Manning said he began to think about what he knew and the information
he had in his possession.
BRADLEY MANNING: I began to think about what I knew and the information I
still had in my possession. For me, the SigActs represented the on-the-ground
reality of both the conflicts—of both the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I
felt we were risking so much for—we were risking so much for people that seemed
unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and hatred on both
sides. I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves
increasingly mired in year after year. The SigActs documented this in great
detail and provided context of what we were seeing on the ground.
In attempting to conduct counterterrorism, or CT, and counterinsurgency,
COIN, operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets
on lists and on being suspicious of and avoiding cooperation with our host
nation partners, and ignoring the second and third order effects of
accomplishing short-term goals and missions.
I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had
access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables, this
could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign
policy in general, as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time
by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or
even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations
that ignore the debate—that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in
the effected environment every day.
AMY GOODMAN: Bradley Manning went on to discuss the so-called "Collateral
Murder" video of an Apache helicopter—made by military—Apache helicopter attack
in Iraq, July 12, 2007, and admitted for the first time being the source of the
leaked tape. The video shows U.S. forces killing 12 people, including a Reuters
videographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh. Bradley Manning
said he was alarmed by the U.S. pilots’, quote, "delightful bloodlust," which,
he said, "seemed similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass."
Bradley Manning began by saying it was clear to him the helicopter incident
happened because the pilots mistakenly identified Reuters employees as a
potential threat and that the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting
to assist the wounded.
BRADLEY MANNING: It was clear to me that the event happened because the
aerial weapons team mistakenly identified Reuters employees as a potential
threat and that the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting to assist
the wounded. The people in the van were not a threat but merely "Good
Samaritans."
The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemingly
delightful bloodlust the aerial weapons team—they appeared to have. They
dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human
life by referring to them as, quote, "dead bastards," unquote, and
congratulating each other on the ability to kill in a large—in large numbers.
At one point in the video, there’s an individual on the ground attempting to
crawl to safety. The individual is seriously wounded. Instead of calling for
medical attention to the location, one of the aerial weapons team crew members
verbally asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a
reason to engage. For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a
magnifying glass.
While saddened by the aerial weapons team’s true lack—crew’s lack of concern
about human life, I was disturbed by the response of the discovery of injured
children at the scene. In the video, you can see the bongo truck driving up to
assist the wounded individual. In response, the aerial weapons team crew
assumes the individuals are a threat. They repeatedly request for authorization
to fire on the bongo truck, and once granted, they engage the vehicle at least
six times.
Shortly after the second engagement, a mechanized infantry unit arrives at
the scene. Within minutes, the aerial weapons team crew learns that children
were in the van, and despite the injuries, the crew exhibits no remorse.
Instead, they downplay the significance of their actions, saying, quote, "Well,
it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," unquote.
The aerial weapons team crew members sound like they lack sympathy for the
children or the parents. Later, in a particularly disturbing manner, the aerial
weapons team crew verbalizes enjoyment at the sight of one of the ground
vehicles driving over a body.
AMY GOODMAN: Bradley Manning, discussing the video showing U.S. helicopter
pilots killing 12 people in Iraq, including two Reuters employees. Manning went
on to tell the court he was encouraged by the public reaction to the video’s
release. He said he hoped the public would be as alarmed as him about the
conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. Listen carefully.
BRADLEY MANNING: I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the
conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. I wanted the American public
to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to
be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the
pressure-cooker environment of what we call "asymmetric warfare."
After the release, I was encouraged by the response in the media and general
public who observed the aerial weapons team video. As I hoped, others were just
as troubled, if not more troubled, than me by what they saw.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Army whistleblower Bradley Manning reading a prepared
statement in court last month—a statement you were not supposed to hear. But
for the first time, this video—this audio recording is being heard,
surreptitiously recorded in the court.
For more, we’re joined by perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower,
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of
U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg is joining us from the University
of California.
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yes, thank you. Now I hear.
AMY GOODMAN: Dan, welcome to Democracy Now! I know you’ve been inside the
courtroom where Bradley Manning has spoken. Can you talk about the
significance—can you talk about the significance of this audiotape? Can you
talk about the significance, Dan, of this audiotape?
We’re going to go to a break to work out the—our connection to the Berkeley
studios. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
Back in a minute.
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 10:28 PM, Jai Sen <jai....@cacim.net> wrote:
>
> Thursday, 7 March 2013
>
> Worlds in movement…
>
> “The Bradley Manning trial poses the greatest threat to freedom of speech
and the press in the US in at least a generation."
>
> Bradley Manning’s prosecution has been conducted with a total absence of
transparency. That should worry us all
>
> Ed Pilkington
>
> In The Guardian Weekly, 1 Mar 2013, accessed 07.03.2013 @
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
>
> (See also the video on Bradley Manning on
>
>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/bradley-manning-wikileaks-1000-days-detention)
>
> Last Saturday Bradley Manning marked his 1,000th day imprisoned without
trial. From the moment he was formally put into pretrial confinement on 19 May
2010 on suspicion of being the source of the WikiLeaks disclosures, Manning has
been on a long and eventful journey. It has taken him from the desert of Iraq,
where he was arrested at a military operating base outside Baghdad, to a prison
tent in Kuwait. From there he endured his infamous harsh treatment at Quantico
Marine base in Virginia, and for the last 14 months he has attended a series of
pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade in Maryland, the latest of which begins this
week.
>
> For the small band of reporters who have tracked the prosecution of Private
First Class Manning, the journey has also been long and eventful. None of us
have been ordered to strip naked or put in shackles, of course, and we have all
been free to go home at night without the prospect of a life sentence hanging
over us.
>
> But it’s been an education, nonetheless. Though we are a mixed bag, we have
been thrown together by our common mission to report on the most high-profile
prosecution of an alleged leaker in several decades.
>
> There’s something else that binds us and that’s the daily struggle to do
our jobs properly, confronted as we are by the systemic furtiveness of the US
government. It’s an irony that appears to be lost on many of the military
lawyers who fill the courtroom at Fort Meade. A trial that has at its core the
age-old confrontation between a government’s desire for confidentiality and the
public’s need to know is itself being conducted amid stringent restrictions on
information.
>
> None of the transcripts of the court martial procedure have been released
to us. No government motions to the court have been published. David Coombs,
Manning’s lead lawyer, has had to plead to be allowed to post his defence
motions, and when he has been granted permission he has often been forced to
redact the documents to an almost comical degree.
>
> The most egregious example of this was the moment in January when the
military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, issued her ruling in an Article 13 motion
brought by Manning’s defence. This was the complaint that the soldier, while at
Quantico, had been subjected to a form of pre-trial punishment that is banned
under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
>
> It was an important moment in the narrative arc that is the Bradley Manning
trial. Technically, Lind had the power to dismiss all charges against the
soldier; she could have, though none of us expected that she would, let him
walk out of that court and into freedom.
>
> The accusations contained in Article 13 also went to the heart of the
defence case that Manning has been singled out for unfair and at times brutal
treatment. During the testimony, Manning himself gave evidence, standing inside
a 1.8-metre by 2.4-metre box that had been drawn on the floor of the courtroom
to replicate the dimensions of his cell. He recalled such humiliating details
as the routine he was required to follow when he needed toilet paper. Standing
to attention at the front bars of his cell, he was ordered to shout out to the
guards who kept him under 24-hour observation: “Lance Corporal Detainee Manning
requests toilet paper!”
>
> So my fellow reporters and I awaited with intense interest Lind’s judgment,
though also with some trepidation. We’d sat through the spectacle of Lind
reading out to the court her rulings, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. The
judge has a way of reading out her decisions at such a clip that it is almost
impossible to take them down even with shorthand or touch typing.
>
> In the event, Lind spent an hour and a half without pause reading out a
judgment that must have stretched to 50 pages, at a rate that rendered accurate
reporting of it diabolically difficult. No copy of the ruling has – then or now
– been made available to the public, presumably on grounds of national
security, even though every word of the document had been read out to the very
public that was now being withheld its publication.
>
> Such is the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the Bradley Manning trial. Why
does it matter? It matters to Manning. The soldier is facing charges that carry
the stiffest punishment available to the state short of killing him. (They
could technically do that to him too, but the prosecution has made clear it
will not seek the death penalty.) If found guilty of the most serious charge –
“aiding the enemy” – he could be confined to military custody for the rest of
his life with no chance of parole, a prospect that makes the past 1,000 days
look like a Tea Party.
>
> The least Manning deserves is stringent fairness in his prosecution, and
stringent fairness cannot exist in the absence of openness and transparency. As
a British appeal court judge wrote in a recent case brought by the Guardian to
protest against excessive courtroom secrecy: “In a democracy, where power
depends on the consent of the governed, the answer must lie in the transparency
of the legal process. Open justice lets in the light and allows the public to
scrutinise the workings of the law, for better or for worse.”
>
> There’s a much bigger reason why the cloak-and-dagger approach of the US
government to this trial should be taken seriously. America doesn’t seem to
have woken up to this yet, but the prosecution of Bradley Manning poses the
greatest threat to freedom of speech and the press in the US in at least a
generation.
>
> The “aiding the enemy” count essentially accuses Manning of handing
information to Osama bin Laden as a necessary consequence of the act of leaking
state secrets that would end up on the internet. When one of the prosecution
lawyers was asked whether the government would still have gone after Manning
had he leaked to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, she unhesitatingly
replied: “Yes”.
>
> If that’s not a threat to the first amendment, then what is? This
prosecution, as it is currently conceived, could have a chilling effect on
public accountability that goes far beyond the relatively rarefied world of
WikiLeaks.
>
> That’s something worth contemplating as Bradley Manning enters his second
1,000 days sitting in a cell. Looked at this way, we’re sitting in the cell
with him.
>
> ______________________________
>
> Jai Sen
>
> jai....@cacim.net
>
> www.cacim.net / http://www.openword.in
>
> Now based in Ottawa, Canada (+1-613-282 2900), and New Delhi, India
(+91-98189 11325)
>
> NEW PUBLICATIONS :
>
> JUST OUT ! : Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds, 2012 – World Social Forum :
Critical Explorations. Volume 3 in the Challenging Empires series. New Delhi :
OpenWord. Available now at http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2012 - Imagining Alternatives, Book 3 in the Are Other Worlds
Possible ? series. New Delhi : OpenWord and Daanish Books
>
> FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS :
>
> Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds, forthcoming (2013a) – The Movements of
Movements : Struggles for Other Worlds. Volume 4 in the Challenging Empires
series. New Delhi : OpenWord
>
> CHECK OUT CACIM @ www.cacim.net, OpenWord @ http://www.openword.in, and
OpenSpaceForum @ www.openspaceforum.net
>
> AND SUBSCRIBE TO WSFDiscuss, an open and unmoderated forum for the exchange
of information and views on the experience, practice, and theory of social and
political movement at any level (local, national, regional, and global),
including the World Social Forum. To subscribe, simply send an empty email to
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>
>
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--
Samantha Agarwal
PH: +91 9818419416/ Skype: Samantha.Agarwal
"Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to
believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way
around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us.
The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission
us. They insist on being told." -Arundhati Roy
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