Bradley Manning's Voice
 

"Yesterday Freedom of the Press Foundation published a full, previously unreleased audio recording of Bradley Manning's speech to the military court about his motivations for leaking the Apache helicopter video, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars Logs, and the State Department Diplomatic Cables to WikiLeaks. In this recording he says in his own voice that he wanted to 'spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan." He "hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members,' and he 'wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are 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.'"

https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/b...and-pirate-bay

there is a left wing argument that 'as bad as american foreign policy is, at least there are debates on torture, some freedom of the press etc." the argument says that in a really bad fascist state, manning would have simply been killed a long time ago and we'd never hear about him, and any journos that tried to break this story would be killed themselves.

this argument reeks of comfortable rationalizing. its obvious the american state would resort to these things if it was in dire enough straits. maybe not with obama in charge but when cheneys cyborg clone takes over then its going to happen.

what manning did exposes the fact that we, the good omnipotent liberals who exorcise death away through our hollywood remakes of reality, are actually brutal murdering animals who invaded a country and then shot up innocent journalists for fun.

i think most intelligent people get this on some level and walk around trying to repress or deny it rather than face their despair. or else they angrily deny this fact with arguments so full of logical holes they can't present them calmly.

Have you heard Bernard Manning's voice?

^

He addressed his military court. For about an hour. Someone recorded it. Uploaded it.

You can download the speech directly. You can torrent it.

You can even mash it up with your favorite Black Eyed Peas song if you want.

Or you can not give a fuck.

He was remarkably lucid and intelligent, which is a good sign since the isolation they put him through can easily drive people insane

That, to me, was the most interesting thing.

I needed to change the picture I had of a slightly imbalanced, pissed-off homosexual living under the pressures of don't ask, don't tell. He's clearly a sharp and principled person.

What's bullshit is he fessed up to the leak and got twenty years.

What he's doing now is defending himself from charges of "aiding the enemy," an additional twenty-five years.

This doc is two years old (I think), and one can argue with some of the parts, but it's really worth a watch:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...adley-manning/

Here are a bunch of excellent, up-to-date, must-hear radio shows:


http://www.onthemedia.org/tags/bradley_manning/

wanted to say, the other day, thanks for posting this. i heard it on the amy goodman show, but deserves more exposure.

The Bernard Manning I'm talking about addressed crowds in working men's clubs all over northern England. Here's a taster of one of his addresses. :D

I have a pakistani who lives next door to me,
He said the other day to me "I'm a better man than you"
I said "I never said you fucking wasn't, but what makes you think you're a better man than me?"
He said "I don't have a fucking Paki, living next door to me.

Boom-tish

Hm. Well, BRADLEY Manning isn't nearly as important a figure as BERNARD, but the fellow I meant was the US Army Private who leaked a bunch of diplomatic cables and other things to wikileaks.

I have to say, listening to his speech, I didn't laugh once. I'll have to check out more of Bernie.

------

Good on Amy Goodman, but what the fuck American media? Fucking cowards. This is a really good, important and even interesting story. But no tits or violence, I guess. Can't split the story down partisan lines. Fox can't bitch slap the president, MSNBC can't bitch slap Republicans in Congress, so it ain't a story worth "reporting." Uhg. I'm getting all worked up.

there is a 90's documentary about chomsky that discusses how 'merica does not need force or censorship to distort the presentation of reality in the media. the "free press" is in fact heavily biased. (he probably wrote a whole book or books about it, which i haven't read). however, this was pre-internet days so not everything applies. regardless-- 'merica doesn't need censorship because OBLIVIOUSNESS is a national trait.

having said that, i don't regret being an immigrant. fuck going back to the fire! i mean the frying pan! i mean the fire! i mean...!

He did:

yes! that was the same name as the documentary i think.

The show trial is starting, from Julian Assange's statement

"The government has prepared for a good show. The trial is to proceed for twelve straight weeks: a fully choreographed extravaganza, with a 141-strong cast of prosecution witnesses. The defense was denied permission to call all but a handful of witnesses. Three weeks ago, in closed session, the court actually held a rehearsal. Even experts on military law have called this unprecedented"

"But what about "aiding" in that most serious charge, "aiding the enemy"? Don’t forget that this is a show trial. The court has banned any evidence of intent. The court has banned any evidence of the outcome, the lack of harm, the lack of any victim. It has ruled that the government doesn’t need to show that any "aiding" occurred and the prosecution doesn’t claim it did. The judge has stated that it is enough for the prosecution to show that al-Qaeda, like the rest of the world, reads WikiLeaks."

http://wikileaks.org/Assange-Stateme...First-Day.html

The "Democrats" and the "Republicans" are just playing good cop/bad cop with the American people (shhh, don't tell !@#$%!) . Its a deception. "Republicans" pretend to have conservative social and religious values to manipulate the sentimentally religious people. The "Democrats" pretend to be concerned about "liberal" values when in reality they cave left and right, did we forget this was initially the pro-slavery party and those that chanted "Segregation now, Segregation forever" just recent enough that some of those who supported that mindset are alive and well. America is a farce. Then again, so is most of the rest of the world ;)

wow cynicism sounds so much more authentic and tolerable when spoken by a wigger.

That is cute and all, but again..

know thyself, wigger.