Singing Bradley's Song

 
Today is the 17th. of December, which means that it is Bradley Manning's 25th  birthday. As in previous years, the Streetlamp would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that Manning, the alleged source of the largest intelligence leak in US history, including the infamous  "Collateral Murder" video, remains in prison facing 22 counts in a court martial that could see him remain there for the rest of his life.

Manning's trial is expected to begin in February 2013, but he won’t be sentenced by a military judge until March, and at that point he’ll likely have spent over 1,000 days, 10% of his life, in solitary confinement. Earlier this month we were able to hear something of the details of Manning's imprisionment over the last couple of years, at the motion hearing addressing his unlawful pretrial punishment. The information that was made available, such as that immediately upon his arrest on May 26, 2010, Manning was transferred to an 8’ x 8’ x 8’ wire mesh cage in Kuwait which contained just a toilet and a shelf where he remained in solitary for nearly two months are pretty harrowing. Or that at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico , Virginia, he was held for nine months in maximum custody in a cell smaller than the one he saw overseas - just 6' x 8'. For only 20 minutes a day, Manning was allowed to see daylight while shackled in chains. For the remaining 23-and-a-half hours, Manning was deprived of just about everything, including contact with other inmates and often his clothes. He was forced to sleep from 1 PM to 11 PM, naked, and was allowed to do so only when facing his lamp.The list of indignities goes on and full details of this experience can be found elsewhere online.

Today, those of us on the outside must never allow ourselves to forget exactly what has been happening to Bradley Manning, man of conscience, whistleblower and human rights defender. The attempt to completely crush and dishonour him is continuing to play out here in one of the so-called Western democracies. Meanwhile we point our fingers and bleat about human rights violations in other countries who do not support our enthusiasm for the neoliberal project. Manning's case is the clearest example of the relentless suppression of any voice who draws attention to the hypocrisy at the heart of Western democracy. As Manning himself is alleged to have said of the video footage released along with the haul of US diplomatic cables to Wikileaks:

"This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare,”

We have nothing to add to that. If you want to find out how you can support Bradley Manning, visit this site here.

The video embedded below is a fine piece of political hip hop called  'Bradley's Song' by Symphony, a producer and rapper from Southern California.




If you enjoyed that then check out the same artist's  album 'The War Letters' released earlier this year on bandcamp as a free download.

Griff
xx

Griff says; Bring a Torch (for Bradley Manning)

Exactly a year ago today (see 'here') the whistle-blowing organisation Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange were all over the news and I took the opportunity to remind you all of the fate of Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of leaking; a video of the Granai airstrike, around 260,000 US diplomatic cables and the notorious "Collateral Murder" video.


When I last wrote of this, 17th december 2010, Manning was 'celebrating' his 23rd birthday at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico where he had been held in solitary confinement since July 29, 2010. Today, 17th December 2011, on his 24th birthday, he is once again back in the news. Yesterday, after 17 months of pre-trial imprisonment, Manning finally got to see the inside of a courtroom, at the preliminary stage of his military trial at an army base in Maryland.
Since his arrest, Manning has been treated as one of America's most heinous traitors. He faces 23 charges, the most serious of which is that Manning knowingly gave "intelligence to the enemy, though indirect means".

The sadistic conditions to which he was subjected for 10 months at Quantico, which Amnesty International condemned as 'inhumane', are well-documented and provoked an international scandal. Even so, PJ Crowley, a US state department spokesman, was forced to resign after denouncing Manning's treatment. In April 2011, 295 legal scholars and philosophers signed a letter stating that the conditions he experienced amounted to a violation of the U.S. Constitution; later that month the Pentagon transferred him to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, a new medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The attempts to crush Manning, and with him conscientious objection to government venality, are not yet over, however. One of the stranger aspects of the pre-trial is that it begins on a Friday and will run throughout this weekend. The military authorities have indicated that each day's proceedings could be extended late into the night. Jeff Patterson of the Bradley Manning support network has explained this decision thus;

"To run the hearing through a weekend right before the Christmas vacation is clearly designed to minimise both media coverage and public protests,"

It seems that, though it is Manning who is nominally on trial, these proceedings reveal the US government's fixation with extreme secrecy, covering up its own crimes, and intimidating future whistleblowers.

Today, I wanted to bring you a beautiful artistic response to Bradley Manning's treatment at the hands of the authorities, and at the same time, to remind you all that each of us, every one of us,is responsible for keeping the flame of liberty alive during our lives. Below I've embedded the video of the song 'Bring a Torch (for Bradley Manning)' by Cabin of Love.




I think that's truly beautiful. A free MP3 of the song can be downloaded from 'here'. Cabin of Love is Julia and Nathan Bloom, an acoustic duo from Owatonna, Minnesota. They have been making music together since 1988 and the best place to keep up with them is probably their Youtube channel. Julia also has a fine site of her own 'here' where you can read her thought on various issues. 'Bring a Torch (for Bradley Manning)' is based on the 16th. century French Christmas Carol 'Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle' (Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella). To this day, in the Provence region of France, children dressed up as shepherds and milkmaids, carry torches and candles to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, while singing the carol. The wonderful chiaroscuro painter Georges de La Tour was inspired by the carol to paint this exquisite nativity scene.


As I look on those tender and gentle faces looking on the vulnerable yet peaceful child, I am reminded of the hope that must attend all births; the hope of a better and brighter future. This year, 2011, has seen the advent of a spirit of change and optimism throughout the world. The Arab Spring, The Occcupy movement, Los Indignados in Spain, the White Ribbon movement in Russia, and the Europe wide anti-austerity protests have all spoken of the re-birth of old and noble human ideals. The young people involved in these protests are the midwives of that rebirth. They hold in their hands the hopes of humanity; freedom of speech, the freedom to participate in free and open elections, the right to a fair trial, social justice, an end to acquisitive wars. These are the ideals I think of over the weekend of Bradley Manning's pre-trial. These are the ideals that, I believe, prompted Manning to release the material that so damned his own government. In doing so, this 24 year old man lost his liberty but took his place, along with so many of his generation, to endeavour to ensure that the fragile arrival of hope in the world is not crushed by those who would see us live under the weight of fear and hate.
Now is the time to ask yourself,where do you stand? Are you prepared to carry the hope born in 2011 forward and into 2012? Ask yourself, what will you bring into the world? Will it be darkness or light? Are you prepared, as Bradley Manning was, to bring a torch into the darkness and light up the world with hope?


Griff

Griff says; The truth will set you free

I think we are all pleased and relieved that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has finally been released from custody in time for Christmas. Hopefully, he can now go on to successfully refute the allegations against him. However, there is someone else I'd like to write about tonight, someone who is in some senses the forgotten man of this entire episode; Private First Class Bradley Manning (pictured). An article on pfc Manning couldn't be more timely as today he is 'celebrating' his 23rd birthday at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico where he has been held in solitary confinement since July 29, 2010.


For those of you unfamiliar with his story, Manning was an intelligence officer assigned to a support battalion with the Contingency Operating Station Hammer, in Iraq. US army agents arrested Manning in May 2010 based on information received from federal authorities provided by an American informant, Adrian Lamo, in whom Manning had previously confided. Lamo said that Manning claimed, via instant messaging, to be the person who had leaked; a video of the Granai airstrike , around 260,000 US diplomatic cables and the notorious "Collateral Murder" video. This last is a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people on July 12, 2007, in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. The US military had previously refused to reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured. After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement". Please watch the video and make your own mind up. I must stress, however, that the video is extremely disturbing. It is worth noting that although this video is now in the public domain, the Apache crew and those behind the cover up depicted in the video have yet to be charged. Private Manning, on the other hand, continues to be held in solitary confinement and denied exercise. Additionally, he is under a suicide watch, a status most often used as an excuse to humiliate a prisoner by stripping them of their belt, shoelaces, and anything sharp or breakable while implying (to them and to anyone outside) that they are not in their right mind. Manning's lawyer expects a court martial in the Spring of 2011. If convicted of all charges, Manning can expect a maximum jail sentence of 52 years.
If Manning did release this information to Wikileaks then technically he is in breach of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, specifically; communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source. There is a wider sense of justice, which we can apply here, however. I believe that when a government secretly engages in such consequential activities as aggressive wars, justified by at best questionable and at worst fabricated intelligence, covert bombings and assassinations, and diplomatic maneouvering designed to support such global meddling, the people in whose name that government acts – and who could suffer retaliation – have a right to know. Manning may have, allegedly, broken US military law but in doing so he has blown open the furtive, cloak and dagger machinations of supposedly democratic governments and exposed them for the corrupt, self-serving, military-political-economic elites that they are. So tonight, the Streetlamp would like to remind you all of the continuing travails of this man who sought to bring this information to the public at such extraordinary personal cost. So, what was Manning's motivation? Why would he take such a risk, and how many of us could say we'd do the same? Perhaps these extracts (below) from his messages to Lamo in May of this year best convey the ideals that we should all seek to serve:

(2:21:32 pm) Manning: its sad

(2:22:47 pm) Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious

(2:23:25 pm) Manning: i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

(2:23:36 pm) Lamo: why didn't you?

(2:23:58 pm) Manning: because it's public data

(2:24:15 pm) Lamo: i mean, the cables?

(2:24:46 pm) Manning: it belongs in the public domain

(2:25:15 pm) Manning: information should be free

(2:25:39 pm) Manning: it belongs in the public domain

To assist Private Manning, please see bradleymanning.org.

I'd like to finish by offering a beautiful song from a band that normally wouldn't make it into a 'Griff says' piece. The song is Soldier's Poem by Muse and it is written from the perspective of a soldier who cannot find a reason to explain why he has repeatedly risked his life and exposed himself to horror for an uncomprehending and complacent public. According to Muse's Dominic Howard; “It’s about a soldier in prison, who feels abandoned by a country that’s falling apart."



Quite. Tonight, as we think about Bradley Manning languishing in prison, it's worth considering whether, in the words of the song, "you think you deserve your freedom". If you do, and if you think that those, like pfc Manning, who have made the greatest sacrifices to protect that freedom also do, then please consider those small acts that you can perform in the fight for truth and justice. If you think that it's wrong that "There's no justice in the world" then you don't have to accept that it will always be that way. You can fight back. The recent, massive, extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for our democratic rights to a free press and freedom of expression. Never has there been a more vital time for us to do so. That's why I would encourage you to sign the Avaaz petition to stop the crackdown and then copy and paste and forward the link to the petition (below) to everyone you know.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/97.php

Also, find out how you can support Bradley Manning here.

Griff