CHELSEA MANNING: Victim of American National Security

                                                                       

                       


       

                                                      CHELSEA MANNING (WIKI)

Chelsea Manning
Manning in April 2012
Born	Bradley Edward Manning December 17, 1987 (age 28) Crescent, Oklahoma, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Soldier
Known for	Classified document disclosures to Wikileaks
Criminal charge	Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of theComputer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders[1]
Criminal penalty	35 years in prison, reduction in rank to private (private E-1 or PVT), forfeiture of all pay and allowances,dishonorable discharge[2]
Parent(s)	Brian Manning Susan Fox
Military career
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	2007–present (on active duty appellate leave)
Rank	Private (E-1)[3]
Unit	2nd Brigade Combat Team,10th Mountain Division(former)
Awards	National Defense Service Medal  Global War on Terrorism Service Medal  Army Service Ribbon
Signature

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning^[4] (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was convicted in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly three-quarters of a million classified or unclassified but sensitive military and diplomatic documents.^[5] Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years' imprisonment, with the possibility of parole in the eighth year, and to bedishonorably discharged from the Army.^[2] Manning is a trans woman who, in a statement the day after sentencing, said she had felt female since childhood, wanted to be known as Chelsea,^[6] and desired to begin hormone replacement therapy.^[7] From early life and through much of her Army life, Manning was known as Bradley; she was diagnosed withgender identity disorder while in the Army.^[8]

Assigned in 2009 to an Army unit in Iraq as an intelligence analyst, Manning had access to classified databases. In early 2010, she leaked classified information to WikiLeaks and confided this to Adrian Lamo, an online acquaintance. Lamo informed Army Counterintelligence, and Manning was arrested in May that same year. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike, and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables;^[9] and 482,832 Army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War Logs^[10] and Afghan War Diary.^[11] Much of the material was published by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November 2010.^[12]

Manning was ultimately charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy, which was the most serious charge and could have resulted in a death sentence.^[13] She was held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico in Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011 under Prevention of Injury status—which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused domestic and international concern—before being transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she could interact with other detainees.^[14] She pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the charges.^[15] The trial on the remaining charges began on June 3, 2013, and on July 30 she was convicted of 17 of the original charges and amended versions of four others, but was acquitted of aiding the enemy.^[1] She is serving a 35-year sentence at the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.^[16]

Reaction to Manning's disclosures, arrest, and sentence was mixed. Denver Nicks, one of her biographers, writes that the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, and that Manning was viewed as both a 21st-century Tiananmen Square Tank Man and an embitteredtraitor.^[17] Reporters Without Borders condemned the length of the sentence, saying that it demonstrated how vulnerablewhistleblowers are.^[18]

SONG FOR CHELSEA MANNING (David Rovics)

Private Manning was an analyst if what they say is true 
She was paid to read reports and find the patterns sifting through 
As she read the data the patterns did emerge 
Patterns that were clear both before and since the Surge 
Patterns of abuse of the most horrific kind 
Gunning down civilians out of view and out of mind 
Gunning down the opposition in the middle of the night 
Sending off the scholars to be tortured out of sight 
Sometimes you need desperate measures when you live in desperate times 
And Private Manning saw she was looking at war crimes 
She wondered what to do to allow the dead to speak 
She finally decided to contact Wikileaks 

Now it's all out on the table and everybody knows 
The emperor is naked, he's not wearing any clothes 

Now Adrian Lamo has to live within his skin 
He stabbed Chelsea in the back, called the cops and turned her in 
But not before the soldier took half a million files 
If you printed all the pages they'd stretch on for miles 
Evidence against the state right from the horse's mouth 
Machinations in the west, bombings in the south 
A treasure trove of details for all the globe to see 
How much they need to lie and kill for democracy 
How many drone strikes have hit villages leaving everyone to die 
They blamed on someone else -- the official line, "Not I" 
How many coups have been plotted by ambassadors who say 
That free and fair elections be the order of the day 

Now the Genie's out of the bottle and they're trying to stuff it back 
And stop it from illuminating everything we lack 
Such as the rule of law or playing by the book 
Look you can read it, it's right here, the ship of state is run by crooks 
And they vilify the messengers, call them every name 
For daring to blow the whistle on the nature of their game 
The game of taking lives and endangering the rest 
In order for the wealthy few to do what they do best 
Dominate the world for the corporate elite 
But now their cover's blown from their head down to their feet 
And now the stars and stripes is looking much more like a rag 
The lid is off the box, the cat's out of the bag

                                                                       

                                                  CHELSEA MANNING (AMNESTY)

At Amnesty, we’re calling on US authorities to free Chelsea immediately.

She is spending decades in prison because she shared information that she thought could shed a light on potential abuses and prompt meaningful public debate on the conflict. Prevented from using this in her defence at her tribunal and overcharged as a warning to others, Chelsea has been punished over the odds for actions.

Meanwhile, the US government has not investigated the abuses she exposed – while Chelsea has paid a high price for putting that information in the public realm.

                                                                             

                                                                   BIOGRAPHY


                                          THE WAR YOU DON'T SEE (John Pilger)


                                                                             

                                                                   SUPPORT NETWORK





                                                                                 

                                                THE TORTURE OF BRADLEY MANNING



"To Keep You Silent"     (RYAN HARVEY)

They'll keep you in solitary confinement
For who knows for how long
It's the only way to keep you silent
But your silence is strong

They who are so skilled at torture
At terrorizing faith
Who striped your body naked
To degrade and humiliate

They who are so skilled at killing
Under the banner of peace
Who killed two million in Korea
And four million Vietnamese

They'll keep you in solitary confinement
For who knows for how long
It's the only way to keep you silent
But your silence is strong

They who rode through the Powder River
With the machine gun and the flame
Who shot Crazy Horse in prison
And stormed the Philippines

They who flew the air of the Condor
Where the Madres dared to talk
Who killed thousands in Santiago
You heard it's echoes in Iraq

They'll keep you in solitary confinement
For who knows for how long
It's the only way to keep you silent
But your silence is strong

They who would have you die in prison
And suffer this life through
They act not without reason,
They know there's other just like you

Who would push back against the killing
For some future greater good
Who would give of themselves, willing
As so many of us should.


                                                                           

Immediately upon his arrest on May 26, 2010, Manning was transferred to an 8’ x 8’ x 8’ wire mesh cage in Kuwait with just a toilet and a shelf to keep him company. He had confessed online to a supposed confidant earlier in the week that he had submitted compromised intelligence to WikiLeaks, only for that correspondence to be handed to the FBI.

“Hypothetical question: If you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time ... say, eight to nine ... and you saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you do?” Manning is alleged to have asked in an AOL chat with Adrian Lamo, a hacker whom the private had never met.

“I was the source of the 12 July 07 video from the Apache Weapons Team which killed the two journalists and injured two kids.”

Within hours, the soldier was shackled and succumbing to what he described in court as a complete and total breakdown.

“I just thought I was going to die in that cage. And that’s how I saw it – an animal cage,” he told the judge as he testified for the first time.

The remainder of this blog post was contributed by Scott F,  (Edinburgh, Scotland)









                                                              SONG FOR CHELSEA MANNING



                                                    RYAN HARVEY-TO KEEP YOU SILENT




                                             THE RADICALISATION OF BRADLEY MANNING



                                                           LEAKED RAW VIDEO FOOTAGE      



                                                    REPORTS FROM INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION



                                                     SIXTH CHRISTMAS IN PRISON


                                                      FREE CHELSEA MANNING