Defend Chelsea Manning

A quick word about Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) who has been sent back to prison for not testifying to a US Grand Jury against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. I never planned to say anything just felt I needed to say something.

But there's more I should have said.  People can get their organizations, churches, school clubs, and most importantly their union locals to pass resolutions condemning the US government's actions and that she be released.

As I say in the clip above, if you have not seen the video Collateral Murder do so. This is why the US state apparatus was intent on ridding itself of this person as she courageously made it possible for the rest of us to see it.   Despite all the lies and rumor about Manning's role as a whistleblower and that it hurt US troops, this was not the case. They want Assange primarily because they want Wikileaks shut down. This is about knowing the truth, sharing the truth with the masses of the people. All the rest is phony.

If you are in a union, introduce a resolution condemning the US government in pursuing Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks; get it sent out to the higher bodies and anyone else that will take it up. Getting it passed is almost secondary to having it discussed. The power can be tamed simply by making an issue public and debating it, especially if working class people are debating it.

This is a free speech issue and its important we support those on the front lines. The other issue I think of as I write is that the initial persecution of her was also to warn working class people and their allies in the military to keep their mouths shut.

Another attack on Wikileaks and Assange from Capitalist Press

Above are parts 1 and 2  of a recent interview of Julian Assange by Megan Kelly of Fox News. In part 2, Assange responds briefly to the accusation recent Wikileaks releases have harmed innocent people in Saudi Arabia.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

The supporters of this blog have consistently taken a strong position in support of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange. Six years ago we were engaged in a series of internal discussions to determine how to deal with the accusations of sexual abuse and rape that were being directed at Assange in light of our commitment to taking any and all accusations of rape and abuse of women very seriously.

We decided that under no conditions could we support handing Assange over to any institution of  global capitalism in particular the US bourgeois, many of whom have called and are still calling for his murder or assassination or death through a drone attack. Even among women and feminist groups there was contentious debate about this issue.  Our position six years ago we believe was correct. Read more on Assange and our position on the rape accusation here.

Now new accusations have arisen in an article written by two writers, Raphael Satter and Maggie Michael who work for the capitalist mass media outlet, the Associated Press. The AP as it is called is a "non profit" organization owned and run by major US newspapers, television and media outlets. In other words, it is capitalist media organization. See the table of its directors below.  We first saw the article in the Times of  Israel which we assume got it from AP though it has also been published in Slate Magazine and perhaps other sources. This time Wikileaks has been accused of releasing information that has harmed people, in particular, women and gay people in Saudi Arabia.  Apparently thousands of pieces of information have been published and the two journalists in their article give two or three examples with quotes from some of the people who could be harmed by this information if the quotes are accurate.

The UK gay publication Pink News also picked up the story and wrote: "Among the thousands of documents, the data includes personal information identifying at least one man with a gay sex conviction – as well as a number of rape victims and people living with HIV."  If true, these details could be very harmful to people living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most barbaric and ruthless US allies in the region.

As we were 6 years ago, we are extremely suspicious when the US mass media, and the global capitalist press attacks Wikileaks and Assange. The organization faced a similar assault when it published the video Collateral Murder that the whistleblower Chelsea Manning released, and for which she is serving 35 years being subjected to torture and inhumane treatment. As Assange points out in the interview above,  even the US government admits that no US personnel have been harmed due to that publication.  It is the US government that places the sons and daughters of the US working class in unnecessary danger. We have reason to believe that Wikileaks does its very best to ensure what it releases does not contain information that would harm innocent people and we reject accusations in the media that this all about Assange's personality.

We do not know for certain if these accusations are true or not. We contacted Wikileaks and were told they are not. Assange says little about the accusations in the Fox News interview above other than it is a "nonsense Story." that has arisen in the aftermath of the release of thousands of cables detailing the dirty goings on and e mails of Hillary Clinton.

So Facts For Working People is not going to join a witch hunt against Wikileaks and Julian Assange based on this recent information. It is also suspicious that a significant follow up is absent form the Wall Street Journal this week; this journal of the 1% detests Wikileaks. And again, we are suspicious of the source.

It is not ruled out that Wikileaks could make a mistake and release material that would harm innocent people. The global bourgeois are at war with Wikileaks and would like to destroy it and murder its  co-founder. The group is under tremendous pressure and needs money as well. But we cannot see why they would do such a thing intentionally if they did it at all. And there is nothing to indicate the group or Assange is hostile to gays. After all, they have stood by Manning. They never "outed" her as the source of the collateral Murder video.

So Facts For Working People starts from the following understanding of the objective situation in which these events arise. Lets look at what Wikileaks does. This organization has basically uncovered and published the dirty, dishonest communications that take place between the ruthless and violent characters, the war criminals, that rule the world. In particular, they have embarrassed the world's most powerful ruling class, the US bourgeois. We all know that these people are murderers and thieves and that their diplomacy is phony, but when we read their notes to each other that confirm that as far back as 2006 the US ambassador to Syria urged the US government join with the Saudis and the notorious Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to destabilize Syria that led to the current crisis for example. Or that they cover up the most violent crimes committed in our name, that they spy on each other and are architects of wars and death all for profit and personal gain. This makes it social fact, it pulls the mask from their phony diplomacy, this is one major reason they want Assange's death and an end to Wikileaks. Capitalism cannot exist without its secrets and lies; its capitalist diplomacy.

We cannot underestimate the crisis that Wikileaks has caused within the US ruling class in its panic to keep its secrets from the American people and the world.  In the introduction to the The Wikileaks Files, Julian Assange points out that the US State Department is like a state within a state. Its role is to put a "friendly face" on one of the most ruthless and efficient killing machines in history. Each working day 71,000 people "representing twenty seven different US government agencies" go to work at the 169 embassies and other US missions abroad while as of 2014 there are more than 5.1 million Americans with active security clearances.  This is "big government"  that does us no service. Given today's technology and the vast numbers involved, the potential for leaks is immense.  It is inconceivable that there aren't thousands of potential Edward Snowdens and Chelsea Mannings out there.

For potential whislteblowers, the heroic people who cannot with good conscience keep quiet any longer, it is the fear of the all powerful state, the possibility of death or life in prison at the hands of torturers honed in their art through years of practice on the mentally ill, the incarcerated in the US that capitalism has abandoned and the victims of imperialist aggression in Guantanamo or various CIA prisons in throughout the world.   Chelsea Manning's treatment and her 35 year sentence was a warning to them all to keep their mouths shut especially those in the military.

The existence and in particular success, of Wikileaks in protecting its sources as it did Manning and providing a hub, a publishing house through which the truth can be disseminated to the rest of us is correctly seen as a serious threat to the stability of US capitalism and the capitalist world order. It will encourage more people, Americans and others, to bring to light information that the public should see knowing  there is a secure outlet with a long record of protecting sources. It is capitalism's worse nightmare. Without doubt, there is panic among the US bourgeois as they cannot safely talk to each other behind closed doors.

This is the context, these are the conditions under which these these attacks are taking place on this information agency. And recognizing this must be the starting point when workers, socialists and all of those fighting to build a better world decide where we stand.

Board of Directors of the Associated Press: (source: Wikepedia)

Mary Junck (Chairman)	Lee Enterprises, Inc.
Donna J. Barrett	Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.
Richard A Boehne	The E.W. Scripps Company
Elizabeth Brenner	The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
	Journal Communications, Inc.
Robert Brown	Swift Communications
William Stacey Cowles	The Spokesman-Review
	Cowles Publishing Co.
Kirk Davis	GatehouseMedia, LLC
	New Media Investment Group
Michael Golden	The New York Times Co.
Bill Hoffman	Cox Media Group
Rob King	ESPN
Terry J. Kroeger	BH Media Group
	The Omaha World-Herald
Isaac Lee	Univision Communications, Inc.
	Fusion
Robin McKinney Martin	The Santa Fe New Mexican and The Taos News
Gracia C. Martore	Gannett Co., Inc.
Jim M. Moroney III	A. H. Belo Corporation
William O. Nutting	The Ogden Newspapers Inc.
David M. Paxton	Paxton Media Group
Steven R. Swartz	Hearst Corporation
Patrick J. Talamantes	The McClatchy Company
Paul C. Tash	Times Publishing Company

Three Years Anniversary: Free Chelsea Manning

As readers are aware, we have given considerable time and space to the plight of Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning who is serving a 35 year sentence for informing the American public and the world of the crimes committed by the US military through its illegal and predatory wars, particularly in Iraq, a nation and people that never threatened or harmed the US in  any way. Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are heroic figures and workers owe them a debt of gratitude. Rumsfeld, Bush, Obama, Wolfowitz, and all those representatives of US imperialism who have cooperated in this mass murder including spying on and undermining the rights of the American people and imprisonment of Manning are war criminals. 

The  piece below is an excerpt from The United States vs Pvt Chelsea Manning, an account of Manning's court-martial published from the transcripts by OR Books. In it she describes some of her prison conditions.  FFWP also recommends reading When Google Met Wikileaks also at OR Books and The Wikileaks Files.  This book has an introduction by Julian Assange—writing on the subject for the first time—exposes the ongoing debates about freedom of information, international surveillance, and justice.  With contributions by Dan Beeton, Phyllis Bennis, Michael Busch, Peter Certo, Conn Hallinan, Sarah Harrison, Richard Heydarian, Dahr Jamail, Jake Johnston, Alexander Main, Robert Naiman, Francis Njubi Nesbitt, Linda Pearson, Gareth Porter, Tim Shorrock, Russ Wellen, and Stephen Zunes.  RM

From The United States vs. Pvt. Chelsea Manning

The United States vs. Pvt. Chelsea Manning

A Graphic Account from Inside the Courtrom
by Clark Stoeckley

BUY THE BOOK MORE ABOUT CHELSEA MANNING




www.orbooks.com

Panic sets in and calls for Assange's murder get louder as the US political crisis deepens.

"You don't publish a million secrets a year without making a few enemies" #WikiLeaks https://t.co/MsNZhrBYvb pic.twitter.com/H7ujQAFErm

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 7, 2016

"So, the freedom of communication, in some sense, is the fundamental right, because it is the enabling right that allows us to speak to each other to understand the importance of all our other rights. And so, when the freedom of communication is degraded or maligned, when whistleblowers are prosecuted, when one organization starts to develop a monopoly on the internet and interfere with our communication, then all our rights suffer, because this fundamental enabling right is degraded." Julian Assange

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Member GPUSA

I am frustrated at the moment. I read the Tweet from Michael Grumwald who says he "can't wait" to praise the drone strike that murders Julian Assange. In the video above we hear all the pimps, the supporters of a rotten decaying social system, condemn Assange and call for his murder or assassination. Academics, economists politicians, news reporters and those like Grumwald who claims to be a journalist are on the front lines of the mass media war against Assange. Information has a purpose, it has class character. Grumwald is an enemy of workers, the middle class and the poor. The mass media is owned by a few thousand people, the unelected clique that determines how we live our lives and how society is governed; who lives and who dies.

I have met a few people in the last few days since returning from the Green Party Convention who have not heard of Assange and others who have have bought in to the propaganda that he has harmed American interests, and the American people.  Well he has.  The question is which "American" interests and people has he harmed.

What has Assange and Wikileaks done that has made the politicians, billionaires, finance capitalists and the US ruling class call for his death?   Most recently Wikileaks released thousands of e mails that are very unfavorable to one of the two candidates of the US ruling class, Hillary Clinton. This is very disturbing as she is one of the two most unpopular presidential candidates in US history but is the first choice for the serious US bourgeois in November's election. Donald Trump is so unstable, so damaging to business and profit taking, that those who hate Clinton with a passion, conservatives and misogynists alike, will support her. After all, money and profits is the trump card in the capitalist game.

Wikileaks also released millions of diplomatic cables between US diplomats who are supposedly representing us, and their foreign counterparts as well as between the diplomats of of other countries. It was Wikileaks that released the Collateral Damage video allegedly leaked to the news agency by Chelsea Manning who was arrested, tortured and sent to prison for 35 years.

I urge readers to read The Wikileaks Files as the information included is all from the horses' mouth. It is information the citizenry should know in a democracy.  We know how rotten our own government is. When there's a strike, the media is anti-American worker and pro-American capitalist------it has a class base.  There are no "United We Stand" billboards directed at workers unity when a union or group of workers are on strike, are fighting for their lives against a corporation here at home, even a foreign owned one.

What Julian Assange and Wikileaks has done is open the files of the US ruling class, the unelected clique that manages society in their interest not ours and shared them with the American working class, with you and me.  This is a good thing. The 1% as they are called are frantic. Their phony diplomacy, has been revealed, their lying, double crossing thieving methods are there for us all to see. We always believed it but Assange has made it social fact; is this the face of America we want foreigners to see?  This is why they hate him and want his head, This is why they want Wikileaks destroyed.

Wikileaks and Assange, as well as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have done us all a favor, we owe them a debt of gratitude.  But we must do more than that, we must send money. We must defend Wikielaks and counter the lies of the representatives of the 1% when we talk to co-workers and neighbors about this.  I have said in earlier commentaries that the left has missed the boat on this issue. The Green Party had Assange speak to its convention and it must be commended, it is a courageous thing to do. Jill Stein, the GPUSA candidate for president has said she would appoint Edward Snowden to a cabinet post. But the left and all anti-capitalists must collectively take this issue up and there should be weekly demos at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Assange has been holed up for 5 years to avoid the US governments death squads.

The trade union leaders we know are a disgrace, they refuse to even defend their own members against the very same forces that are seeking Assange's death and the shutting down of Wikileaks. They refuse to call for Snowden to be hailed a hero along with Manning. There is no evidence that what has been released has hurt the American people, the young men and women in the military or the millions of us that are suffering due to the austerity agenda of the 1% or the poor, the millions incarcerated and those that lost their homes to the bankers. Assange has opened the doors to the 1%'s vaults and let us in

If you are in a trade union you should discuss this issue on the job and at the union hall. You should pass resolutions supporting Assange, Snowden, Manning and Wikileaks, all whistleblowers.

Lastly, a DNC staffer was shot dead last month in a possible robbery attempt although it's not been confirmed  if it was a robbery. “If it was a robbery, it failed, because he still had his watch, he still had his money, he still had his credit cards, still had his phone, so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life.” said his father. This follows the "mysterious" death of process server Shawn Lucas who filed a lawsuit against the DNC and its chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on behalf of Bernie Sanders. "It leveled the following serious charges: fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence." See what Assange said and read more here

The media is trying to portray Assange as "fanning" the flames of conspiracy by commenting on the alleged robbery attempt saying as he does in the video that he and journalists are concerned when things like this happen. But why would they not be concerned?

Given the successful offensive against US workers over the past 40 years, the power of the mass media, the absence of a workers political party and the complete capitulation of the heads of organized labor to capital, class consciousness is low and conspiracy theories abound. But remember Jessica Lynch , the Gulf of Tonkin incident?  And how we were convinced of WMD's in Iraq. The CIA has assassinated or assisted the forces that assassinated hundreds of political opponents abroad. Lumumba, Allende, Walter Rodney, a failed attempt at Chavez. The Reuters journalist was killed in the collateral murder video and an Al Jazeera journalist was also killed by US fire in Baghdad. And as anyone that reads this blog knows, I believe Pat Tillman was assassinated by the US military.

There is every reason for Assange and Journalists to be "concerned".

We have an expression here in the US when we ask people how they are or if we express concern about something: "It's all good" people say.  But all's not good by any measure of success. US society is in a deep economic and political crisis. We have come through an unbelievable election period the last year. Trump cannot win and we have right wing Republicans and bourgeois supporting the hated Hillary.

Now Wikileaks is constantly undermining her election run.  There is panic behind the scenes we cannot imagine how deep that panic runs; the US ruling class is well aware of the explosive history of the working class and oppressed peoples in this country.  The American people to a great extent are in a bubble, sports, stupid reality shows, partying, all diversions under the mantra, "its all good".  But there is alongside this a "real" reality and in the last analysis consciousness, ideas, have a material base and this base is, massive debt and insecurity, a crude health care system that does not provide the basic care for millions of people and often leads to bankruptcy for others.  Homelessness or the fear of it, the lost job, lost home, remnants of the Great Recession fear of hunger. The phony reality of the mass media and other detours will only work for so long.

I read today that a child starved to death in West Virginia.West Virginia is a basket case, a third world country within our borders as are many urban areas, wracked with unemployment and drugs, but it's all their fault we are told. It's all due to personal failure and individual choice the mass media and dominant ideology would have us believe. Accepting that argument is part of the psychological warfare against us and we will free ourselves of that malady when we come to realize the crises around us are due to policies coming out of the US Congress written by representatives of the very people calling Assange our enemy and that he should be a victim of a drone attack. Our resistance to them is met with police violence, more security and spying.

It's time to get off your asses fellow workers. If you love your community, your friends, your children and grandchildren, your camping trips, hunting trips, the great outdoors, you cannot avoid a fight any longer, a fight against the real enemy and those who harm us most are not outside our borders, not in exile in Russia like Snowden or Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London or Manning serving 35 years for telling us the truth

They're here in the US and we outnumber them.

Chelsea Manning speaks about her health.

Chelsea Manning

There is an address at the bottom where you can write to Chelsea Manning. Please do that and thank her for what she did for you and your children and grandchildren if you have them. Here is the video that cost her a 35 year prison sentence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

Chelsea confirms health status with attorneys

July 11, 2016
Today, Chelsea Manning spoke with her attorneys for the first time since her hospitalization last week. They have released the following statement on her behalf:

For Immediate Release: July 11, 2016
Contact: Christina DiPasquale, 202.716.1953, Christina@balestramedia.com

Chelsea Manning Confirms Health Status Through Her Attorneys
From ChelseaManning.org

Today, Chelsea Manning’s attorneys Chase Strangio, Vincent Ward and Nancy Hollander released the following statement jointly:

“After not connecting with Chelsea for over a week, we were relieved to speak with her this morning. Though she would have preferred to keep her private medical information private, and instead focus on her recovery, the government’s gross breach of confidentiality in disclosing her personal health information to the media has created the very real concern that they may continue their unauthorized release of information about her publicly without warning. Due to these circumstances, Chelsea Manning requested that we communicate with the media and her friends and supporters on her behalf.

“Last week, Chelsea made a decision to end her life. Her attempt to take her own life was unsuccessful. She knows that people have questions about how she is doing and she wants everyone to know that she remains under close observation by the prison and expects to remain on this status for the next several weeks. For us, hearing Chelsea’s voice after learning that she had attempted to take her life last week was incredibly emotional. She is someone who has fought so hard for so many issues we care about and we are honored to fight for her freedom and medical care.”

###
You can write to Chelsea with your messages of support. Mail must be addressed as follows:
CHELSEA E. MANNING     89289
1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD
FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304

Assange is not a prisoner becasue society cares about rape victims

Manning: 35 years jail for telling  people the truth

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

This blog has taken a strong position in defense of Julian Assange and others like him, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for instance.  In Assange’s case, when accusations of rape arose, we were very firm in arguing that under no condition should he be handed over to the capitalist courts or any capitalist institution and most certainly not to the US government or any arm of US capitalism. 

This does not mean we do not take the issue of violence against women seriously. We reprint below what we wrote about how this investigation of the accusations could be dealt with.  A lot of time has passed since then and we would probably update and fine tune update these comments but the general position would be the same. The most ruthless and violent force on earth, the US ruling class, wanted his head.

Meanwhile Assange has been under house arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for five years.  What has Assange done that would lead dominant world powers like the US and the UK to hound this man?

Think of this: Why would the British police alone spend $15 million ensuring Assange can’t leave the embassy and the country, he can’t go to Ecuador, the country that has given him asylum? Why would Chelsea Manning get 35 years in prison after 18 months of torture for revealing to the American people atrocities our government was committing in our name? No US service personnel have suffered death or maiming due to Manning providing Wikileaks with information the US public should know about. Why would Edward Snowden be facing death or prison for doing the same? Bush, Obama, Rumsfeld, Clinton, and the nefarious Henry Kissinger are all murderers.

It surely can’t be because the US and British authorities place rape, a violent and vicious crime high up there on the list of anti-social behavior.  It’s can’t be due to a strict and constantly vigilant war against rape in the courts and society as a whole.   Most women don’t even report rapes because having their personal lives being dragged through the courts and being treated like the cause of a crime rather than the victim of one isn’t worth it.

6 months in jail for rape

The US military alone is a haven for rapists.   And as I write, I read in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle that a college student at Stanford University, a former champion swimmer, who raped an unconscious woman he’d met at a party just got 6 months in jail. Naughty boy.  He “   thought he was having consensual sex with the woman, who authorities said was ‘completely unresponsive’ as she lay near a tree and a trash bin.”, the Chronicle reports. He was drunk.  

The woman this young student raped, he never referred to it as a sexual assault apparently, finally got to address him in court.

“I shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers that said “Rape Victim” and I thought something has really happened. My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the pine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down, they said it’s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs inserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my vagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions.

After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.”

Speaking to her assailant directly she said,  “You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice,” the victim told Turner at the sentencing hearing. “The damage is done. No one can undo it.”

You can read her entire statement at Buzzfeed.

No, Julian Assange is not having his freedom curtailed because he is wanted on questioning by authorities with regard to accusations of sexual assault. Cases like the above show how important rape is to the justice system. The power in society doesn’t give a damn about rape.

That there is not a worldwide movement, from the left and from workers organizations in particular for the release of Assange, of Manning, and a pardon for Snowden is a disgrace.

Note: Here is what we wrote in relation to the case of Assange when it happned.

#Support Wikileaks in its distribution of the documents and materials it has available.

#Support Wikileaks in its safeguarding of these documents by downloading them and storing them as they suggest.

#Support Wikileaks by being part of the international campaign to release Assange and Manning and to free all its financial assets and financial accounts of these activists and of Wikileaks.

#Boycott all organizations that are involved in attacking Wikileaks.

#For an international coalition of all forces that are defending Wikileaks.

#Investigate the allegations of the women against Assange but in an a forum totally independent of any capitalist state. In any institution of a capitalist state it will be a show trial. For the investigation to be held in an elected body made up of elected representatives from a women's union, anti-rape groups, representatives, male and female from the shop floor, and representatives from the trade union movement as a whole.

#Build Hands Off Wikileaks committees in the workplaces, neighborhoods, trade unions, labor organizations, regionally, nationally and internationally. In this way give a democratic structure to the movement in defense of wikileaks. A structure which can make decisions democratically and which can have a collective leadership which can replace itself when and if capitalism removes some more of of its members.

#For priority in publication of the 250,000 documents to be given to those which show the internal workings and dirty dealings of the financial institutions, the bail- outs for the rich, the reasoning behind the capitalist classes internationally as they pursue a course of cutting wages, jobs, conditions and social services. Wikileaks say they have a trove of documents on Bank of America and other banks. These should be immediately released and all the documents which show the financial, industrial and economic dirty tricks of Capitalism. This would strengthen the understanding of the working class as to where it stood.

#The attack on wikileaks, Assange and Manning originate from capitalism's biggest powers and ruling classes/circles. They are meant to defend the capitalist system as a whole from critical or even just honest eyes. Capitalism cannot exist without its secrets and lies, its capitalist diplomacy. When a tiny minority rules the great majority and when this tiny minority live in unimagined wealth and the majority live in great poverty and want, then capitalism must obscure this reality, must obscure this class struggle. The role of capitalist diplomacy is to do this. It is to lie. The peoples of the world cannot afford capitalist diplomacy, cannot afford capitalism's secrets and lies. They need to know what is what. The defend Wikileaks campaign needs to work not just to end the secrets and lies of capitalist diplomacy, we also have to work to end capitalism, the system with which these secrets and lies are inseparably linked. We have to work to build a Democratic Socialist World.

Chelsea Manning Celtic Warrior.

Chelsea Manning

Stephen Morgan

To hear that Chelsea Manning was a Celt from an Irish/Welsh background reminded me of an ironic connection to Celtic history. People will know of the racist insult "to welsh or welch on someone" I think Clinton actually banned it during his presidency. The meaning is to renege on a promise and sometimes a bet, or to betray someone.

The origin of the phrase comes form the Middle Ages, when the English used to dragoon Welshmen into the English armies. Since none of the Welsh spoke English, they were organized into Welsh regiments. But the problem for the English was they could never rely on them. In battle after battle, the Welsh soldiers would turn on the English troops and start attacking them.

The most famous of these was the Battle of Falkirk for Scottish independence from the English, portrayed by Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Before the battle began the Welsh soldiers turned on the English troops, slaughtering hundreds of them and threatening to go over to the side of William Wallace's Scottish army. Finally, the Welsh leaders cut a deal with the English and participated in the battle, as did hundreds of Irish sling-shooters also on the English side.

But another irony, it made me think of is not only the Welsh/Irish connection, but the Scots/Welsh connection, although it might irk some Scottish readers. And that was that Wallace's name meant "Welshman" in the old English of the time, so he would have been known known as William the Welshman, and he is descended from a Welsh family. Up to the 13th century most of southern Scotland was Welsh-speaking. It was referred to by the Welsh as North Wales and the "Old North". Glasgow is actually a Welsh word meaning the green hollow.

The region of Cumbria, which includes the Lake District and stretches down from South West Scotland to Liverpool and modern North Wales was also Welsh-speaking - the name Cumbria comes from the Welsh word for Wales,“Cymru.”

As you probably guessed, I'm Welsh, and true to the traditions of the story-telling bards and druids, I could rattle on forever about things like this.

The point is that Celtic Chelsea Manning is following on with the best traditions of the old Celts by "welshing" on the Anglo-Saxon ruling class.

Happy birthday Chelsea Manning and thank you

We reprint this from the Irish Times

Ruairí McKiernan

What Manning did was to help shine a light on how wars like that in Iraq help fuel fundamentalism

Ruairí McKiernan

 

What would you do if you uncovered something you knew to be profoundly wrong, something that the public had a right to know about but you weren’t supposed to tell? What if talking about it meant risking your job, your reputation, and maybe your freedom? Most of us would like to think we’d do the right thing. Yet how many would go the distance?

These were no doubt some of the questions whirling around in the mind of 23-year-old Chelsea Manning when, back in 2010, she leaked classified information while working as a US army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

The leaks included the chilling “collateral murder” video that showed soldiers in a US helicopter killing several Iraqis while laughing about the dead and the dying. They contained evidence of a mass killing of Afghan villagers, US opposition to a $5 per day minimum wage in Haiti (where leading clothing companies have factories), as well as revelations of torture at the Guantánamo Bay camp. They are also credited with revealing US complicity with repressive Arab regimes, a factor that contributed to the overthrow of corrupt Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

In discussing her actions, Manning told Amnesty International: “Humanity has never had this complete and detailed a record of what modern warfare actually looks like. Once you realise that the co-ordinates represent a real place where people live; that the dates happened in our recent history; that the numbers are actually human lives – with all the love, hope, dreams, hatred, fear and nightmares that come with them – then it’s difficult to ever forget how important these documents are.”

Manning, whose grandfather, Billy Fox, emigrated from Dublin to Wales in 1948, wanted the world to understand the reality of war, the brutality and bloodshed that lie behind media headlines and depictions in video games, and the cowardly nature of drone-style warfare.

This is particularly important in the context of the Iraq war, a war widely accepted to have been based on lies, propaganda and the pursuit of oil.

“When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.” Manning stated during her 2013 trial.

Her motivations were in keeping with the sentiments of Nobel Peace laureate Dr Martin Luther King when he once said “an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law”.

War crimes and state terrorism

Indeed there are some who say that Manning is a traitor, that the leaks endangered lives and risked national security. This does not however take into account that they helped expose war crimes and state terrorism, regardless of them being cloaked in the language of freedom and democracy.

What Manning did was to help shine a light on how wars like that in Iraq help fuel fundamentalism. The deaths of approximately 150,000 Iraqi civilians and a country decimated has left a generation vulnerable to the hate-mongering of vengeful minds. Destroying Iraq was always going to guarantee that the cycle of violent retribution continues.

|When I met Chelsea’s mother, Susan, in Dublin back in 2013, she told me Chelsea’s grandmother used to always say to her “if you can’t tell the truth then don’t bother talking”. It struck a chord with me. I was left wondering what influence this had on Chelsea’s moral compass as she journeyed into adulthood. Could it be that Manning, like Edward Snowden, HSBC Swiss bank leaker Hervé Falciani, and the growing chorus of courageous whistleblowers, was prepared to walk the talk on that most basic human value – the truth?

In a statement following her sentencing, Manning declared “sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”

Hero of truth

It is Chelsea Manning’s birthday today. She turns 28 and will spend it in Fort Leavenworth military prison where she has been for the past 5½ years as part of a 35-year prison sentence. Yet she refuses to lie down, continuing to campaign on foreign policy, transparency and gender issues, writing opinion pieces for the Guardian and the New York Times, and tweeting under the handle @xychelsea by using phone calls to dictate tweets to intermediaries.

In times of spin and geopolitical war games, it can be hard to know where to turn for the truth. This is why people like Chelsea Manning are so important. They offer to light the darkness, risking their freedom so we can have ours. This is all the more reason they should not be forgotten, especially on their birthday.

Human rights group Afri is holding a birthday vigil for Chelsea Manning at 6pm at the GPO, Dublin, today.

Ruairí McKiernan is a social campaigner, Fulbright scholar and member of the Council of State. ruairimckiernan.com

Question for SA on Postal Union and Sanders.

Sean O'Torain.

Question for SA on Postal Union and Sanders. 

I would like to ask Socialist Alternative what its position is on the postal union endorsing Sanders, one of the candidates for presidential nominee of the capitalist Democratic Party. I ask because the SA speaks so glowingly of Sanders that I wonder do they advocate that the unions such as the postal union and other unions endorse Sanders. If not why not.

What is your thinking on this?  Did you vote against the postal union endorsing Sanders. Did you speak against it endorsing Sanders. If not why not. After all you speak so positively about Sanders and pose arm in arm with him clarification is necessary. Surely you could not have sat quiet. Please explain. Comrades and brothers and sisters in the SA you have tied yourselves in knots with your wrong position on Sanders.

You should have from the beginning taken the position of those of us in Project For A Working Peoples World (PWPW) and come out definitively against supporting Sanders, a nominee for the capitalist party the Democrats, and a Zionist. You should now break from your past incorrect methods and openly and publicly admit to your mistakes. You should accept your mistake in relation to Sanders. This is impossible to deny. Sanders himself has recently and openly rejected the idea that he is a socialist and insisted that he is a loyal member of the Democratic Party. What more can you put up with?  Of course in an effort to keep his idealistic youth base he will still mumble the S word now and then. He has even claimed that the cops are socialist. Please SA do yourself a favor and accept that you  have made a bad mistake. 

Ireland Votes for Same Sex Marriage. Facing up to my past mistakes.

Sean O'Torain.


I emigrated from Ireland in 1965. This helped me to evolve somewhat from the anti gay prejudice with which I had been brought up by Irish society. This was good. But I came back to Ireland and joined the struggle for civil rights and the socialist movement. Specifically the Militant group, now  the Socialist Party, which was and is affiliated to the Committee for a Workers International. I was the first member of that group in Southern Ireland and the first full timer in Ireland as a whole. At that time we were working in the Labor Party and in particular trying to win the leadership of the Labour Youth. The climate in the country then was very anti gay and also anti women's right to choose. Against that background I and the now Socialist Party took an opportunist if not reactionary position on women's and on LGBT rights. While we within our group, the then Militant, argued for and stood for women's right to choose we did not try to win the Labor Youth to this position as we thought this would give the Labor leadership the chance to close it down. This was an opportunist and thoroughly contemptible position. I unconditionally accept this mistake on my part. I share this experience and mistake for many reasons. One is to further consolidate within myself the approach that I am now fighting for and that is to honestly and publicly face up to my mistakes of the past and to learn from these. And the other is to help others and the movement to learn from these.

But there is another reason. While I had broken from my prejudice against gay people individually and personally, I still held reactionary views on this issue. I still did not fight for same sex marriage and full unconditional rights for GLBT people. I still did not try and win the Labor Youth to fight for these rights. In fact I argued against this both on tactical reasons, if we had done so the Labor leadership would have closed down Labor Youth, and also while I personally did not feel any prejudice against gay people, I also was not anything like sufficiently consciousness of my responsibility to fight for gay peoples rights. On top of this I did not see that not fighting for the rights of LGBT people added to the divisions in the working class and helped the capitalist class in their divide and rule strategy. As well as my own mistakes a major reason for not having the right position on this issue was the position of the CWI. It did not fight for Gay Rights. I remember one of the top leading figures of the CWI internationally explaining how women were not strong enough to do jobs such as driving buses. Incredible. In fact I had a more progressive position on LGBT rights before I joined the CWI than after I joined them.

So what is the lesson here? I remain a revolutionary socialist and a Marxist. I have long since been expelled from the CWI, not for issues relating to gay rights except in the sense that the CWI will never admit its mistakes. But the lesson here for me is not to be arrogant not to think you know everything. Instead listen to people, listen to that magnificent movement of people in Ireland and who came back to Ireland to vote yes. Ireland and Irish people and people from Irish background wherever they live will never be the same again. It is wonderful. This movement was not led by any Marxist group. Yet it was a movement such as was never seen in Ireland before. Just because you consider yourself a Marxist and have read all the books does not mean you can interpret the ideas, does not mean that you can fight for what has to be fought for. In fact what I can say is that when I joined the CWI in the early 1970's this threw me back in terms of my position on the rights of LGBT people. For opportunist reasons I  did not fight for these. Not only that, but grasping some of the basic ideas of Marxism made me arrogant. I thought I knew everything. Joining the CWI, learning the basic ideas of Marxism had a dialectical affect upon me. On the one hand it helped me understand many aspects of the world and society but on the other hand it shackled my mind on many other aspects of the world and society. I think the revolutionary left, the Marxist left, the CWI,  played very little role in this magnificent movement in Ireland for same sex marriage. It has changed Ireland forever. And not only that it is of worldwide significance, impacting Irish people and people from Irish backgrounds wherever they live. I am looking forward to my next vista to my Irish pub here in Chicago.

For those of who see ourselves as Marxists, and by the way Marx always denied he was a "Marxist", this great victory in Ireland teaches us many things. One is we have to be self critical and conditional in what we believe. But we have to go further than that. We have to see that Marx was not right on everything. In fact he was plain wrong on some issues. One was his lack of sufficient attention to and analysis of the special oppression of women. And much much more so the special oppression of LGBT people.

Pvt. Manning attorney on speaking tour

Pvt. Manning attorney to speak in LA, Oakland, Seattle

David Coombs, attorney for American prisoner of conscience US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, will speak at three upcoming West Coast events hosted by the Private Manning Support Network. Mr. Coombs continues to represent the heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower recently sentenced to 35-years in military prison.

Sunday, Dec. 8 at 7:00pm — Los Angeles CA
The Church in Ocean Park, 235 Hill Street, Santa Monica CA 90405
Monday, Dec. 9 at 6:30pm — Oakland CA
Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland CA 94612
Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 7:00pm — Seattle WA
University Temple United Methodist Church (Fireplace Room), 1415 NE 43rd St., Seattle WA 98105

Events will include Q&A with Mr. Coombs, and a fund pitch by the Support Network to benefit Pvt. Manning’s ongoing defense efforts, including pending legal appeals. 

Oakland event is presented by Courage to Resist, with the support of the Bay Area Military Law Panel, Veterans for Peace-SF, War Resisters League-West, Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation, SF Women in Black, World Can’t Wait-SF Bay, CodePink Women for Peace-East Bay; Golden Gate, OccupySF Action Council & Environmental Justice Working Group, OccupyForum, SF LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, Queer Strike, National Lawyers Guild-SF, and the Civilian-Soldier Alliance. $5-$10 donation requested at the door to cover event expenses. Wheelchair accessible. For more info, contact: Courage to Resist, 510-488-3559.

Bradley Manning statement after his sentencing

From Democracy Now

Bradley Manning: "Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society"

 

The following is a transcript of the statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday 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 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.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."

I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others. If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

Bradley Manning's apology doesn't change a thing.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired


"Manning's conduct was of a heedless nature that made it actually and imminently dangerous to others. His conduct was both wanton and reckless,"

So says the judge that's going to send Bradley Manning to prison, most likely  for the rest of his life.  But Manning's treatment at the hands of the US military, years of physical and mental abuse and massive media attention portraying him as a traitor and a lunatic, has one purpose and one purpose only, and it's not simply to hurt Manning.  Manning's abuse is all about warning the rest of us, particularly the young workers in the 1%'s military, that we should all keep our mouths shut.

Many experts have admitted that nothing Manning has done placed our young working class men and women in the military, the 1%'s cannon fodder, in any danger whatsoever.  But the thugs that run and profit from the military industrial complex demand loyalty.  The Nazi's also demanded loyalty.  I was thinking about that blog I posted yesterday about the historic act of defiance by Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman at the 1968 Olympics.

The response from the same forces that are about to condemn Manning to a life in prison was to demonize these individuals, destroy them, in the US and they encouraged the racist filth to attack them and harass them.  Peter Norman died a broken man.

The judge says that Manning's conduct was "dangerous to others". Was it now? And which others might that be?  How about Cheney, Rumsfeld, the imbecile Bush and their puppy dog Blair from Britain and all the fortunate sons and daughters who have the honor of orchestrating the most brutal and violent massacres of human beings over the last century.  As Sean pointed out in his post earlier today, the US bourgeois will drop nuclear bombs on their own cities if their privileges are threatened. These are the "others" that the judge is really talking about.

What was reckless about letting the world know that the US government was wantonly murdering civilians and others who oppose their wars on behalf of the corporations?  Bradley Manning hasn't put our young people in harms way, the 1% and their political representatives have, both Republican and Democrat.  If you haven't watched the video that Manning is being imprisoned for sharing with the American people, you should. It is sickening in that people who have not harmed us or threatened us in any way are slaughtered like lambs.  But even more, those Americans doing the slaughtering have obviously lost there humanity. They have lost some of what makes us compassionate and loving creatures or what gives us the potential to be such. They have been dehumanized by the 1%'s regime.

Thousands of our young people will come back from these predatory excursions on behalf of the corporations severely mentally damaged, not to mention the physical damage they endure. More protective armor has meant than American soldiers die less frequently but the injured multiply. We have earlier blogs about how double amputations are on the increase due to protective armor.  In earlier days, they would just die.  Then there is the mental damage. I remember seeing The Ground Truth, a really good documentary about returning veterans.  One of them said how he got in trouble about domestic violence and how ridiculous it was that he was supposed to come back from Iraq and then go down the mall with his wife and kids like nothing has happened to him. Suicide and domestic violence is rampant among veterans.  No, war is not like it is portrayed in Hollywood movies. I grew up in a military family and my father spent almost four years as a prisoner of the Japanese. This had a very destructive effect on our family life.

After years of physical and mental abuse, the authorities dragged an apology from Bradley Manning. So what.  They broke him or it might help him win his freedom before his 80th birthday but he has nothing whatsoever to apologize for. The judge is simply doing her job as a paid flunkie for the 1%.  Their legal system is rotten, their laws are rotten and their whole damn system is rotten.

I am a retired union worker. If the union leaders had any character at all, any balls to put it bluntly, they would be in the forefront of the campaign to free Manning and to absolve Snowden for his courage in warning us about the increased intrusion of the capitalist state in our private lives. As Sean pointed out earlier, the state has beefed up its security apparatus.  They are ready to defend themselves from the US working class that will at some point recognize that we have no alternative but to fight back.  We should fight the distractions and study our history more closely, the Internet gives us the opportunity to do that from our own homes. Our history in the US is a rich and militant one fought against the most brutal and clever ruling class that has existed to this point. It is not the history of Ozzie and Harriet but of Emmet Till, lynchings, deportation, Pinkerton gun thugs and horrific living and working conditions that people died trying to change. It is the history of the genocidal war against the native population and the expansion of an empire.

Bradley Manning's apology doesn't change a thing. He's a hero and the judge has no clothes.

Bradley Manning and Mai Lai massacre. .

Bradley Manning was scheduled to speak yesterday at the sentencing phase of his trial for having leaked 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks. He is widely expected effectively to get a life sentence. But he has already served more time than was served in total by William Calley in the days of the Vietnam war.

Manning was convicted on July 30th of 21 offences. He has been in custody since his arrest in May 2010 – 39 months, 11 in solitary confinement.

The information divulged to WikiLeaks concerned the killing of Iraqi civilians in US airstrikes, massacres by mercenaries employed by the Blackwater company, the politics of rendition and torture programmes, and much more.

Manning says he was prompted to disclose the material by the “collateral murder” video showing US troops shooting a dozen Iraqi civilians from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in July 2007. He declared in his original defence statement: “The most alarming aspect to me was the seemingly delightful (sic) bloodlust they appeared to have . . . congratulating each another on their ability to kill in large numbers.” He had hoped that “the public would be as alarmed as me”.

‘Discredit upon the armed forces’

Manning’s charge-sheet alleged his conduct in releasing the information had been “of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” It wasn’t killing civilians in the name of the people that was accounted reprehensible, then, but allowing the people to know innocent civilians were being killed in their name.

Calley was sentenced to life on March 31st, 1971, for his leadership role in the killing of 504 Vietnamese civilians, almost all of them women and children, in the village of My Lai on March 16th, 1968. He didn’t deny what had happened or his own involvement but insisted he had only been following orders.

The My Lai story was broken by Seymour Hersh in the St Louis Post-Dispatch in November 1969. Hersh’s account and others subsequently compiled told of villagers killed and left in heaps in the huts where they had huddled in terror, arranged into groups and machine-gunned at a range of 10 to 15 feet, made to stand in line at the brim of the ditches their bodies were to tumble into. Women were gang-raped and then shot dead. A child was raped with a bayonet.

Within 24 hours of Calley being sentenced, president Richard Nixon ordered his transfer from military prison to “house arrest” in the officers’ quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was released after 41 months, in September 1974.

Bradley Manning Trial Notes

 Lack of evidence makes overcharging clear

From the Bradley Manning Support Network


Bradley Manning on the cover of Time magazine

The second week of the court martial validated claims that the government has overcharged Bradley Manning. The prosecution seems to lack evidence to support a number of the charges they had levelled, particularly in relation to the transfer of a video of the Farah incident, and to the use of unauthorized software, and unauthorized access to classified databases.

The military could not produce any of the "acceptable use" paperwork that should have been signed by soldiers, and which would explain computer policies. In fact, the military could not produce any such paperwork for Manning or for any soldier stationed along with him. Further witnesses testified that many of the alleged unauthorized programs were commonly used, and music, movies, and even games were often kept on secure machines.

Witnesses also testified that it is normal for intelligence officers to access databases to conduct research beyond the scope of an assignment and that it was normal to download classified documents to their local machines so that they could import such data into spreadsheets. Contrary to government charges, Bradley did have authorization to be accessing the classified files, and to save those files on his work computers.

The prosecution also failed to link Bradley Manning to the Farah video discussed in the chat logs leaked by Adrial Lamo. The Farah airstrike incident involved the massacre of approximately a hundred civilians including many children. There was no evidence that Manning downloaded this video from CENTCOM servers (one of the charges), whereas there is evidence that Jason Katz, who the prosecution failed to link to Manning, did have access to the video. And there was no evidence linking Bradley Manning to Jason Katz.

Lastly, prosecutors introduced online chats between Bradley Manning and a person identified as "pressfoundation", allegedly Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. An open source government database is referenced however on cross examination it was made clear that "pressassociation" never asked Bradley Manning for any documents, nor did they ask about Manning's access to documents.

Read full reports from day 4, day 5 and day 6.

The court also ruled that stenographers funded by the Freedom of the Press Foundation will be guaranteed a media seat throughout the trial. Read transcripts.

                                                  There are more Bradley Manning's


This week, Edward Snowden took responsibility for blowing the whistle on PRISM, a secretive

In an interview with Glenn Greenwald he discusses his intent behind releasing the classified documents, and his reasons mimic those of Bradley. In fact, in the interview he says that Bradley Manning is a "classic whistleblower" and he was "inspired by the public good."

With the public becoming more and more convinced of the importance of whistleblowers, Time magazine has featured Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, two whistleblowers, along with Jonathan Swartz an information activist who sadly committed suicide under duress of government prosecutors. Swartz has since become a symbol against government overprosecution.

government spying operation that monitored American's phones and online communications.

In an interview with Glenn Greenwald he discusses his intent behind releasing the classified documents, and his reasons mimic those of Bradley. In fact, in the interview he says that Bradley Manning is a "classic whistleblower" and he was "inspired by the public good."

With the public becoming more and more convinced of the importance of whistleblowers, Time magazine has featured Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, two whistleblowers, along with Jonathan Swartz an information activist who sadly committed suicide under duress of government prosecutors. Swartz has since become a symbol against government overprosecution.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden Working class Americans to be proud of

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment" *

The release of secret National Security Administration documents revealing the US government agency’s extensive spying and surveillance apparatus has thrown the US capitalist class in to deeper crisis.  Billions of e mails and other private communications between Americans are being stored and processed by the NSA.

Edward Snowden, the young man who revealed himself as the source of the leaks in an interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, is presently in hiding and no doubt fearing for his life.  Snowden’s actions come during the trial of Bradley Manning, the young US soldier facing a life sentence for sharing with the US public, information about US government war crimes and dirty diplomatic deals and as Julian Assange, a founder of the Wikileaks news service that published the material, is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The NSA’s gathering of the personal information of tens of millions of Americans and others, has been made possible in part by the agency having access to the “systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants” according to a top secret document obtained and verified by the Guardian. The access to all this information was made possible through what the media has described as a “previously undisclosed program” called Prism.

The official line is that Prism functions with the assistance of these companies but all the companies involved have so far denied it.  Officials at Apple have said they never heard of Prism. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," some execs have stated.  That is highly unlikely.

We should not underestimate the severity of this crisis coming on the heels of the Wikileaks/Manning revelations which shed light on their phony diplomacy, a diplomacy rooted in lies and thievery. The extent to which this affects million of ordinary US citizens adds much more fuel to the fire.

Amid the turmoil, the profiteers and their representatives in Congress and the White House have condemned Snowden much as they have Manning and Assange.  Barack Obama has defended the massive surveillance network begun under his predecessor, the Imbecile Bush saying, "that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing" because "they help us prevent terrorist attacks."

Dianne Feinstein, a one-time darling of the liberals denied Snowden was a whistleblower, and publicly accused him of committing “an act of treason.”

The Wall Street Journal responded in much the same way pointing out sarcastically that, “At least Mr. Snowden has the courage of his misguided convictions” because he publicly identified himself as the source of the leak rather than remaining anonymous although his motives “..appear to be political paranoia and righteous good intentions.”

After all, the Journal adds, “If he did discover abuses, he could have gone to the multiple layers of oversight including congressional committees.”. These “multiple layers” are actually multiple obstacle courses, hoops for people to jump through until they become so fatigued and demoralized they cannot go on and the secrecy and phony façade of government is maintained. The objection to allowing any undermining of military commanders control over rape allegations in their units is motivated by the same concerns.

The Journal then went on to discredit Snowden personally, “His likely career path took him from community college washout to NSA security guard to Central Intelligence Agency IT consultant…”  Normally, a guy who never graduated high school ending up as a well-paid specialist for a major government agency would be good news for Wall Street Journal readers.  But you have to be on the team, you have to be prepared to suppress democracy and keep from millions of Americans information they have a right to know. 

US capitalism is experiencing a political as well as an economic crisis.  We have here a situation where its own internal regime is breaking down. US capitalism, the sole global superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union is spreading itself very thin as it is forced to defend its global influence and the struggle for resources and has to put the US working class on rations to finance it. The self-proclaimed American Century lasted barely a decade. 

After the collapse of Stalinism, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “We Won.”  The society the US capitalist class referred to as “Communism” had fallen under the weight of its own parasitic bureaucracy; the bi-polar world was no more and the US stood alone as the most powerful economic and military force on earth. Full Spectrum Dominance was the new mantra.

Officially known as full-spectrum superiority this term was defined by the U.S. military as:
“The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”,  “Full Spectrum Dominance” became the new order.  US capitalism must be free to travel the world uninhibited.  Even cyberspace must come under US capitalism’s control.  In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid technological advances and the events of 911, cyberspace has become the battleground of the future.

With the official goal of making the world “Safe for Democracy” after the events of September 11^th 2003, the US increased its military presence throughout the world and beefed up it security and surveillance forces at home and abroad to the point that some five million Americans hold US government security clearances. But the wars in cyberspace are real, despite possessing billions of dollars worth of military hardware, the right hacker with the right program can create havoc with a nation’s defense/offense system. The huge increase in private contractors having access to secret information is a product of the increasing cyber warfare and, as the WSJ points out, large US companies are lobbying the government to grant more security clearances for their employees, in part to, “..fend off hackers from Iran, China and elsewhere.”

The changed global relations since the collapse of the Soviets and the bi-polar world has increased tensions between nation states particularly with the rise of China and the Russian Federation.  The rising social movements from Egypt to Greece, Latin America, China and South Africa, very much aided by social media, have increased the need for surveillance and control of the Internet as well as increased police and security presence on the ground.  The US War on Terror is an announcement to the world that US capitalism has the right to wage war anywhere it wants.  Waged under the banner of saving the world for democracy it is a war for global domination and the plundering of global markets and resources; it is a war without end until the planet can no longer sustain it.

Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, are heroic figures.  The war to criminalize investigative journalism, another by-product of the War on Terror also has its heroic figures like Glenn Greenwald and others who refuse to “embed” their journalistic integrity in the cesspool of bourgeois politics.

Apologists for the 1%, as they do with Bradley Manning, claim Snowden is aiding terrorists and placing US troops in harms way.  But it is not terrorists (a term that encompasses any person or persons that oppose US imperialism’s agenda) that Snowden’s leaks were being kept from.  So-called terrorists know full well they are being tracked; the US has been imposing such measure like retina scans on civilian populations outside its borders for years.  It is the US population that was unaware of this extensive invasion of our privacy until Snowden revealed it to us. 

Snowden made it quite clear that had he wanted to harm the US as a nation he could  have. “If I had just wanted to harm the US, then you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon, but that’s not my intention.” He said in his interview with Greenwald.  He has made his intentions very clear:

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy, privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,"

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.”  he said, and that he would be satisfied, “if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

“I’m no different than anybody else…” he went on,  “I don’t have special skills, I’m just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what’s happening and goes, ‘This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs are right or wrong.’”

As this crisis deepens it is forcing some in the US Congress to try and cover their asses and question the level of surveillance activities in the US and a review of the Patriot act has been suggested.  Internationally, Obama and all US government officials will be facing questions form their counterparts throughout the world. They are all involved in this cyber warfare but the US has the big stick.

It is likely we will see more of this in the future and one can only wonder at this point what effect this will have on the Manning Trial.  There is no doubt Snowden has increased his chances of survival by coming out in to the open although the US state apparatus are masters of assassination.  It is the US working class that they are afraid of here; they have become a little overconfident and overconfidence in politics can lead to severe mistakes, even catastrophic ones.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have stood up against the most powerful militaristic force on the planet, two working class young men against the US state.  They are truly heroic figures in every sense of the word. By comparison, if we go to the official website of the AFL-CIO we will see nothing, not a word about this episode that is being talked about across the globe (if there is anything it is hidden). The stifling bureaucracy that sits at the head of the largest national labor organization in the US is best described as similar to the old soviet bureaucracy without state power. For those of us proud of US working class history and those heroic figures who built our movement, the present heads of organized labor are nothing less than criminal in their cowardly retreat in the face of the bosses’ offensive. For organized workers, we are in a war on two fronts, one with the bosses and the other more difficult one with their allies who lead our movement.

Despite this, Republican Rep. Peter King’s statement that  “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”,  belongs in a time passed. US capitalism has limited credibility abroad as its allies are unreliable lackeys, bought, cajoled and bribed in to their camp and its representatives at home among the most hated and distrusted figures in society.

The world has changed much in the past 20 years. These developments are very positive and reflect the growing frustration and opposition to a bankrupt economic system that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. Workers throughout the world should support Snowden, Bradley Manning and others like them, actively where we can. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

It is a good time to be alive. 

*Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds an expert consultant to the US and UK governments on psychological operations, propaganda and diplomacy. source