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Private Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), who risked her freedom and her life so that people would see the truth about the US occupation of Iraq, is spending another birthday in prison. This is Manning's fourth birthday behind bars. She was held in solitary confinement (a recognized form of torture) for 10 months, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing the video now known as Collateral Murder and other information to Wikileaks. Not one person was harmed as a result of the information becoming public. On the other hand, the men who cooked up the highly profitable invasion of Iraq continue to live in luxury, commanding high fees for speaking engagements, protected by President Barack Obama , never answering for their crimes. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed , and untold numbers of people wounded and families destroyed, because of their deceit and greed. Until there is justice for Chelsea Manning, let's not forget her. You can write to Pr...

Abby Zimet reports on Common Dreams: Days before Bradley - now Chelsea - Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for helping expose U.S. war crimes in Iraq, the Obama Department of Justice filed a petition in federal court arguing that the perpetrators of those crimes - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al - enjoy “absolute immunity” against criminal charges or civil liability. The filing came in a suit brought by Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, who alleges that the planning and waging of the Iraq war under false pretenses constituted a "crime of aggression" under a law used in the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, after the revolution...

Here are two important things you can do to help support Chelsea Manning. 1. Do whatever you can to work for her pardon. You can sign the petition to President Obama here. You have to create an account, but that only takes a few moments, and the form accepts Canadian postal codes. Please sign and share widely. 2. Write her. According to her support team, she's looking forward to being able to correspond with her supporters for the first time. The mailing address will say Bradley Manning, as that's the only name the military will recognize. But you can and should use her chosen name out of simple courtesy and respect. Bradley E. Manning 89289 1300 N. Warehouse Road Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304 USA Here's a good short piece by John Cassidy in The New Yorker : History Will Pardon Manning, Even if Obama Doesn't .

In case you haven't seen it, this  link at Democracy Now! has the transcript of Bradley Manning's statement, read by his lawyer David Coombs, after Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. 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. I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. 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 in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanist...

My thoughts on the Bradley Manning verdict at Socialist.ca: here .

Earlier this week, Bradley Manning's defense ended its case in Manning's sentencing hearing. Manning made a statement to the military court: an apology. Reading it, I thought of 1984 , when Winston faces the terror of being eaten alive by rats, and he tells his tormentors what they want to hear. I read the apology and I thought,  They have crushed him. Manning has been tortured - physically and mentally. He has been through an ordeal that few of us can possibly imagine. No matter how much we admire him, no matter how we stand with him in spirit or in thought or by donating to his defense, no matter how many of us say "I Am Bradley Manning," only Bradley Manning is Bradley Manning. And he is alone. Manning said: First, your honour, I want to start off with an apology. I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry I hurt the United States. At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continuing to affe...

While I'm not writing, I hope you will read this excellent article by Matt Taibbi on mainstream media coverage of the Bradley Manning court martial. I cannot understand why good writers like Taibbi continue to refer to the "Bradley Manning trial". A trial is, in theory, an impartial hearing, where an unbiased judge and 12 ordinary citizens hear a full range of evidence from both prosecution and defense. Bradley Manning, by contrast, is being tried by his accusers. The accusers are judge and jury, and they write the rule book. What's more, the court martial procedures used by the United States military do not comply with accepted international standards of justice. This was proven in the cases of Chris Vassey and Jules Tindungan , US Iraq War resisters living in Canada. Calling Bradley Manning's court martial a trial connotes justice, fairness, and due process, where none exist.

Even though I'm following several important news stories - from the revelations about the massive NSA domestic spying campaign to the slow-motion implosion of the Conservative Party of Canada to the show-trial of Bradley Manning  - I seem unable to blog about anything but my own life. I remember two other times when this happened: just before and just after we moved to Canada, and when I started grad school. Big Life Change has a way of swamping everything else. Career changes are huge transitions, but librarianship is even more than a career change for me: it's an entire change of lifestyle. With the exception of a few years after graduating university and some scattered months here and there, my working life has been fluid and unconventional. As a writer, editor, and activist, I worked from home, and always had the flexibility of my own hours. The paid employment that subsidized that work was usually compressed into either weekends or evenings, and required very low com...

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has posted the leaked audio recording of Bradley Manning's statement to the military court in Ft. Meade. In it, Manning explains why he leaked more than 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks. FPF also has posted transcript highlights, in case you can't make it through the full 35-page statement. The US military "court" - that is, Manning's accusers - are trying to prevent public access to the proceedings, especially Manning's own statements. We can all help thwart their plans. Listen to the statement here. You can download Manning's statement, in part or in full, and embed the audio on your own website: Help Spread Bradley Manning's Words Across the Internet . For more information on the groups FPF is helping to fund, go here . For more on FPF itself, go here . A man speaks the truth about war crimes and murder, and he is persecuted, tortured, and imprisoned. The people who are responsible for those war crimes co...

Please watch Michael Ratner, the lawyer representing Julian Assange in the US, reporting on Bradley Manning's testimony yesterday. Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and the Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin.

One thousand days. Think of where you were one thousand days ago, and all you have done since then. In all that time, Bradley Manning has been in prison. For 62 days, he was held in a cage in Kuwait. For 265 days, he was held in solitary confinement. For 1,000 days, he has been imprisoned. And when Manning does receive a hearing, it will not be a trial. It will be a court martial: his accusers will be the only judge and jury. Manning's "crime" is exposing the truth about the murder of civilians by US forces in Iraq. While the real criminals go unpunished - indeed, while they lead lives of wealth and privilege - a courageous whistleblower is persecuted. This weekend, people in more than 70 cities around the world will stand in solidarity with Manning and mark his 1,000th day in jail without trial. To find an event near you, go here . To remember why Bradley Manning is being persecuted, go here , and watch the video . Good reading: Nobel Laureates Salute Bradley Mannin...

Company abuses animals/the environment/labour. Employee comes forward to make the abuse public. Company tries to silence employee. It's an old story, and it repeats itself again and again, in many different contexts. You've seen it dramatized in movies like Silkwood and Erin Brockovich. It's what Bradley Manning is going through on a grand scale. Whistleblowers risk their jobs, and in some cases their lives, to stand up for others. Often, without whistleblowers, we would never know the truth. That's why we have an obligation to stand up for whistleblowers. If you live in Ontario and watch any television, you've seen the ads for Marineland, with that cloying song: They come from a land of ice and snow, now belugas have a home in On-tar-ee-o... Everyone loves Marineland... Everyone loves Marineland... That chorus is bitterly ironic. If the residents of Marineland could speak, I doubt those marine mammals would say they love living in unhealthy water that causes const...

An important and exciting column by Glenn Greenwald. See original for more links. New press freedom group is launched to block US government attacks Nothing is more vital than enabling true transparency and adversarial journalism, and preventing further assaults on them Several weeks ago, I wrote about the steps taken by the US government to pressure large corporations to choke off the finances and other means of support for WikiLeaks in retaliation for the group's exposure of substantial government deceit, wrongdoing and illegality. Because WikiLeaks has never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime, I wrote: "that the US government largely succeeded in using extra-legal and extra-judicial means to cripple an adverse journalistic outlet is a truly consequential episode." At the end of that column, I disclosed that I had been involved in discussions "regarding the formation of a new organization designed to support independent journalists and groups suc...

Today is the third birthday that courageous military whistleblower Bradley Manning has spent in prison. By the time his court martial begins in March, he will have been imprisoned almost three years, including a full year in solitary confinement - an internationally recognized form of torture. Bradley Manning helped people see the truth about the US occupation of Iraq. And for that he is being persecuted. Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, recently spoke publicly to a group of supporters in Washington DC. Here's an excerpt from his speech: When I'm in the courtroom, I stand up and look to my right, and, I see the United States government. The United States government with all of its resources, all of its personnel, I see them standing against me and Brad. And I have to admit to you, that can be rather intimidating. And I was intimidated. Especially when the President of the United States says your client broke the law. Especially when congress members say your client deserves ...

Further to this post , one more thing we should all know. Not one war crime exposed by WikiLeaks has been investigated. Not one war criminal has been prosecuted. Only Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, who brought the truth to light, have been imprisoned - both before they were even charged with crimes. Thanks to Bradley Manning Support Organization .

I've been avidly following the strange tale of Julian Assange, Ecuador, Sweden, extradition, the lying UK media, and people who suddenly care so much about prosecuting sexual offenders. (This has been an excellent use of Tala's Twitter account .) One of the biggest takeaways has been the constant lies, distortion, and misrepresentation of the facts of this story by the mainstream media. The other is how little this has to do with protecting women from sexual assault. On the latter, I highly recommend reading a piece in the Guardian written by Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff, of the group Women Against Rape . I urge you to read the whole thing. For me, it answers every question about what's really going on. We are Women Against Rape but we do not want Julian Assange extradited When Julian Assange was first arrested, we were struck by the unusual zeal with which he was being pursued for rape allegations. It seems even clearer now, that the allegations against him are a sm...

Daniel Ellsberg , the Center for Constitutional Rights , and the Bradley Manning Support Network are asking for our help. Please sign the petition to free Bradley Manning , and share it as widely as you can.

Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Wolf, Bill Maher, Michael Moore, and Oliver Stone were among the prominent USians who signed a letter urging Ecuador to grant asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Guardian story here. If you're confused about this situation - and if you've been reading about it in the mainstream media, then you are - this will help: Dissecting the Smears: Assange's asylum bid . The most important takeaway: Assange applied for asylum because of the threat of extradition to the US, not to avoid prosecution in Sweden.

This story -- A Montreal university student was detained at the U.S. border, held for several hours, interrogated, had his personal belongings searched and saw his computer confiscated for more than a week. What caught the authorities’ attention? His doctoral research on Islamic studies, he says. In a case that has attracted media attention in the U.S., Pascal Abidor has become embroiled in a drawn-out legal battle with the American government – and a poster child for civil-rights advocates defending the right to privacy and due process. Mr. Abidor, a 28-year-old American and French dual citizen, was returning by train to Brooklyn in May, 2010, when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent stopped him at the border in Champlain, N.Y. ... -- reminded me of my own detention at the border , now 2-1/2 years ago, and the several "secondary inspections" and shorter detentions that followed. I ended up re-reading that post - "the gray area": in which i am detained, hara...