Trump attacks war crimes whistleblowers Assange, Manning

This 11 April 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Assange and Manning Under Arrest: Trump Admin Goes All Out Against Whistleblowers (Pt 1/2)

Shortly before Assange’s arrest in London Thursday morning, we spoke to former National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn about Manning’s refusal to testify against Assange and the precarious situation Assange is in.

This 11 April 2019 video from the USA is the sequel.

FOX NEWS HOST LOBBIED TRUMP TO PARDON WAR CRIMINALS News broke at the weekend that Trump is preparing to pardon several U.S. servicemen involved in high-profile cases of gunning down civilians or killing detainees. “Fox & Friends” co-host Pete Hegseth has pressed the president for months to support accused and convicted servicemen. [Daily Beast]

SENATORS SLAM TRUMP PLAN TO PARDON WAR CRIME VETS President Donald Trump’s reported plan to pardon several U.S. servicemen accused or convicted of war crimes elicited bipartisan criticism in the Senate Tuesday. “It’s a terrible idea to pardon someone who is legitimately convicted of committing war crimes,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told HuffPost. [HuffPost]

War crimes whistleblower Chelsea Manning in solitary confinement

This 18 September 2018 video from Australia says about itself:

After Chelsea Manning’s 2017 release from military prison, she became one of the world’s most prominent activists around areas of data privacy, surveillance, and trans politics. Meet one of the truly extraordinary changemakers at the height of her powers.

Chelsea Manningappeared via satellite at ANTIDOTE Festival for a conversation with journalist Peter Greste. They were introduced by Sydney Opera House Head of Talks & Ideas, Edwina Throsby.

By Kevin Reed in the USA:

Chelsea Manning held in solitary confinement for more than two weeks

25 March 2019

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) are playing a leading role in organizing opposition to the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning and the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Meetings and rallies are currently scheduled for Tuesday, March 26 at San Diego State University and Northern Virginia Community College. Click here for more information.

On Saturday afternoon, Chelsea Manning’s support committee issued a press release reporting that she has been subjected to solitary confinement since her incarceration at Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia beginning March 8.

Manning was jailed more than two weeks ago by US Eastern District Court of Virginia Judge Claude Hilton on charges of contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury empaneled for the purpose of crafting frame-up charges against WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder and publisher has himself been living under extremely isolated conditions in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 under a grant of asylum.

The malicious imprisonment of Manning in solitary confinement is an effort by the US District Court to force her to testify before the secret grand jury that is drawing up an indictment against Assange. It must also be seen as an effort to mete out further retribution on Manning for courageously exposing US war crimes in the Middle East.

In 2010, Manning leaked documents revealing innumerable war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, including the now infamous “Collateral Murder” video which shows a 2007 US helicopter gun ship assault in Baghdad that killed 16 civilians, including two Reuters journalists. Manning was arrested by the military in 2010, under the Obama administration, and subjected to years of imprisonment and solitary confinement. After a trial, she was sentenced to 35 years in military prison, of which she served seven before her sentence was commuted by Obama in 2017.

Condemning the latest measures against Manning as torture, the support committee demanded that the courageous whistleblower be freed from solitary immediately. The statement reads in part, “Since her arrival at Truesdale on March 8th, Chelsea has been placed in administrative segregation, or ‘adseg’, a term designed to sound less cruel than ‘solitary confinement.’ However, Chelsea has been kept in her cell for 22 hours a day.

“Chelsea can’t be out of her cell while any other prisoners are out, so she cannot talk to other people, or visit the law library, and has no access to books or reading material. She has not been outside for 16 days. She is permitted to make phone calls and move about outside her cell between 1 and 3 a.m.”

Prison officials have claimed that high profile prisoners are kept in “adseg” for their own protection and Dana Lawhorne, the sheriff of Alexandria, Virginia told a CNN reporter that claims of torture were “not accurate” and it is “unfair to claim that there is a ‘conspiracy’ of any kind.”

However, the Manning support committee statement points out that her confinement for more than 15 days actually constitutes “prolonged solitary.” The committee’s online press release provides a link to a document called “A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement,” by Juan E. Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, that substantiates both their claims of torture and prolonged solitary confinement.

If not for the brave stand taken by Manning, the existence of the grand jury and the possibility of US charges against Assange would likely not be known to the world. The brutal treatment of Manning and the secret case against Assange are coming up at this moment for obvious reasons.

A major premise of the Special Counsel probe of Robert Mueller—whose full report has just been delivered to the US Justice Department—hinges on the unsubstantiated assertion that the Russian government hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) mail servers and delivered the email contents to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks before the 2016 US elections.

Assange has repeatedly denied this explanation for how the DNC messages were provided to WikiLeaks. The publication of those messages—especially those of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta—one month before the 2016 elections exposed the depth of political conspiracy within the Democratic Party against the candidacy of Bernie Sanders as well as the obsequious relationship between Hillary Clinton and the Wall Street oligarchy.

Concerns about how solitary confinement will impact Manning’s health are very real. However, the committee statement says firmly, “Chelsea is a principled person, and she has made clear that while this kind of treatment will harm her, and will almost certainly leave lasting scars, it will never make her change her mind about cooperating with the grand jury.”

As exposed in a legal motion filed by her attorneys opposing the grand jury subpoena, Manning has been the subject of continuous harassment and illegal electronic surveillance since her sentence was commuted on January 17, 2017 and she left the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. Manning is recognized worldwide as a soldier who stood up against and exposed the secret operations of the most criminal enterprise the world has ever known, the US military.

Workers, students and young people must continue their efforts to demand the release of Manning from prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena that violates her First and Fifth Amendment rights and is a blatant abuse of the grand jury process.

The fate of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, political prisoners victimized by US and world imperialism for exposing imperialist crimes and conspiracies, must be a focus of attention of the entire working class and all those who defend democratic rights: here.

Monday, April 01, 2019, by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). Chelsea Manning Again Takes Fall for Defending Public’s Right to Know. I can’t find any editorials in US corporate media in support of Manning, or of journalists’ right to inform the public, or of the public’s right to know, by Janine Jackson.

Chelsea Manning is out of solitary confinement after 28 days.

US President Donald Trump signed a grant of clemency for former US Army first lieutenant Michael Behenna on Tuesday, fully pardoning him of war crimes for which he was convicted in 2009. Behenna was found guilty of the 2008 murder of Ali Mansur Mohamed in Iraq and has been associated with a group of US military personnel convicted of war crimes often referred to as the “Leavenworth 10”: here.

Free Chelsea Manning, her supporters speak

From the World Socialist Web Site in the USA:

Students and youth across the US demand freedom for Chelsea Manning

13 March 2019

The courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning was sentenced to jail by the US government on Friday after she refused to testify before a secret grand jury against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. WikiLeaks published Manning’s “Collateral Murder” cockpit video in 2010 along with other leaked documents that exposed to the war crimes committed by the US military.

The International Youth and Students for Socialist Equality (IYSSE) and Socialist Equality Party are leading the fight to organize opposition to the attack on Manning and Assange by holding a series of meetings and rallies across the US.

The IYSSE campaigned for the rallies at college campuses throughout the US, where students and youth voiced powerful support for the freedom of Manning and the defense of democratic rights.

Alycia, a journalism student at NYU, said, “Arresting Chelsea Manning is setting a dangerous precedent. The people should be able to hold the government accountable. This is what she was working for. Hardly anyone among the journalists is openly defending her.”

Dayna, a theater student at NYU, said, “I’m attending [the rally to defend Manning] because I think that they’re holding her in prison, without proper medical care, simply because she won’t falsely testify, which is disgustingly undemocratic. She risked everything to expose the imperialist machine, and I think that same machine is using this flimsy excuse to make an example of her to discourage others from damaging them further.”

Cheree, another NYU student, told the IYSSE, “I love whistleblowers. I think [Chelsea] is a hero. I believe the American people have a right to know these things. It’s admirable that she and Edward Snowden are still continuing their efforts. I’ll join the rally!”

Elias, also an NYU student, said that he supported the rally because “the only way I can keep the ideals of public service alive is work like this rally, to ensure that when institutions abuse the trust we give them, we call them out and demand a system that works for us, for the people, not the elite, the people with money.”

Noah, a student from Northern Virginia Community College, said that the incarceration of Manning was “an attack on democratic rights.” Manning and Assange were being punished for exposing “war crimes committed by governments around the world to the working class.”

For this reason, Noah said, “the only people that can free Chelsea Manning, along with Julian Assange, is the international working class. An attack on Manning is an attack on the working class as a whole.”

Rhi, a biology major at Northern Virginia Community College, felt Manning had been right to refuse cooperation with the Trump administration. “Manning rightly demonstrated a distrust in the grand jury process, being that it is a facet of the U.S. judicial system which functions as nothing less than an arm of the state.”

She called the attacks on whistleblowers an “increasingly desperate attempt to quash political dissent and cover up the casualties of American imperialism.” She declared that youth and students had the duty “to defend her unreservedly and unequivocally in her fight to survive possible detention.”

Linda, a psychology major at San Diego State University, said, “I think it’s imperative that workers and students come to the defense of Chelsea Manning and demand her release. The fact that she is being jailed for uncovering the murderous war crimes of the US and refusing to testify against Julian Assange is disturbing and should concern everyone. Her imprisonment has far-reaching consequences and implications for us all and for anyone willing to put their life on the line for exposing the truth about the US military apparatus.”

Jonathon, a student at Eastern Michigan University, said, “Chelsea Manning is one of many who want to bring to light the role of American imperialism in the massacres of civilians that are going on abroad that the United States is willingly committing. It is horrifying because of how it is ingrained into American society that America is the one which holds up democratic rights, America is the one which protects individuals, America is the one which is going around the world trying to keep people safe, and yet America is the one which is killing them.

“I used to be a Democrat, a staunch nationalist, because that is what my parents were. But I began to realize that I was more to the left because I believed in peoples’ rights and I believed that there should be more equality for everyone. I started seeing how much of a wealth gap there really was and how unfair it was and how so many people could be oppressed. And that is when I found true socialism, rather than Stalinism, and being able to align myself with it.”

Luke, a high school student in Midland, Michigan, said that the American ruling class “has knowingly issued a provocation to the world over, threatening the freedom of the press and democracy itself with the jailing of one of its strongest voices. Chelsea Manning, like the man she has valiantly put her freedom on the line for, has once more become a class prisoner of the sadistic political superstructure that couldn’t get its fix with just seven torture-riddled years of imprisonment.

“It can only be through the organization of the working class and students around the globe in opposition to this appallingly grotesque assault on democracy and the freedom of the press orchestrated by the oligarchs of the land of the free that Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and the voice of truth and democracy can be saved.”

IYSSE holds rally at University of Michigan to defend Chelsea Manning: here.

Voices at the London Solidarity Vigil in defence of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning: here.

Unsealed documents shed light on state conspiracy against Chelsea Manning: here.

Free war crimes whistleblower Chelsea Manning now

This 19 May 2017 video from the USA is called Chelsea Manning Free! Here Are Crimes She Revealed.

Unfortunately, now the Trump regime and the CIA are taking cruel revenge on Ms Manning.

By Andre Damon in the USA:

Free Chelsea Manning!

11 March 2019

On Friday, a federal judge ordered the courageous whistle-blower Chelsea Manning imprisoned for refusing to testify before a secret grand jury that is drawing up fabricated charges against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange on behalf of the Trump administration. In a savage action, the judge sentenced Manning to remain in jail until she purged her contempt of court by agreeing to testify or the term of the grand jury expired, i.e., for an indefinite period.

Despite being offered immunity, Manning took a brave and principled stand by refusing to testify in the Star Chamber proceeding against Assange, who remains effectively imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy while the United States and Britain plot to have him evicted and extradited to the US to face espionage and/or conspiracy charges that could result in his execution. Upon refusing to cooperate with this pseudo-legal travesty, Manning was immediately jailed.

The imprisonment of Chelsea Manning is cruel, criminal and totally unjustifiable. The White House wants to set a precedent for jailing whistle-blowers and journalists who publish information critical of the military and state apparatus.

In 2010, Manning made public, via WikiLeaks, the Collateral Murder cockpit video of the July 12, 2007 US helicopter airstrike in Baghdad that killed 16 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in cold blood.

Nine years after the start of the war in Afghanistan and six years after the invasion of Iraq, Manning made the courageous decision to expose to the public these and other war crimes that had been covered up by the Bush and Obama administrations with the aid of the corporate media.

As an intelligence analyst deployed in Iraq, Manning was able to obtain information documenting innumerable crimes and conspiracies, including footage of the May 4, 2009 airstrike in Granai, Afghanistan, which killed up to 147 Afghan civilians.

WikiLeaks worked with news outlets, including the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, to publish a series of documents leaked by Manning, later known as the Afghan War logs, the Iraq War logs and hundreds of thousands of State Department cables. The Iraq War logs showed that out of 109,000 recorded deaths in the Iraq War, 66,081 were civilians. The US diplomatic cables exposed American imperialist intrigue and conspiracies in dozens of countries.

No one involved in the planning or execution of this mass murder and criminality has been charged, let alone convicted and jailed. But Manning, then an army private who felt morally compelled to tell the world about these crimes, is once again behind bars.

The military, under Obama, arrested Manning in 2010. After spending years in solitary confinement in a military prison while awaiting her court martial, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, of which she served close to seven. She was subjected to punitive measures that the United Nations said were tantamount to torture, driving her to attempt suicide on two occasions.

The imprisonment of Chelsea Manning and persecution of Julian Assange will forever stain the presidency of Barack Obama, who, running on a slogan of “hope and change”, presided over eight years of war, assassination and domestic spying. The Democratic Party has used the unsubstantiated allegation, denied by both Moscow and Assange, that WikiLeaks collaborated with the Russian government to publish emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as the central rationale in its drive to censor the internet.

…

While the organizations of the affluent upper-middle class have made clear their indifference to fundamental democratic principles, the real force capable of defending Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is the international working class.

The documents provided by Manning to WikiLeaks, including more than 250,000 State Department cables, helped propel a series of working-class upheavals all over the world, starting with the 2010–2011 uprising in Tunisia.

These protests spread throughout much of the Arab world, toppling the regimes of Tunisian strongman Ben Ali and Egyptian dictator Mubarak. US teachers and public-sector workers protesting education cuts and attacks on pensions in the United States carried signs bearing the slogan “Walk like an Egyptian.”

Heroic individuals like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden cannot fight the state, with its vast apparatus of repression, on their own. Their struggles depend on the development of a social movement of the working class, which grasps that its struggle for social equality is inseparable from the defence of democratic rights.

Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are class-war prisoners. They are imprisoned because the financial oligarchies that dominate the United States and the world see their efforts to inform the public about state crimes and conspiracies as an existential threat to their continued rule.

The jailing of Manning has sparked outrage among workers and young people all over the world.

Last weekend, hundreds of people attended a rally in Melbourne, Australia organized by the Socialist Equality Party to demand freedom for Manning and Assange, with thousands more all over the world viewing the live stream broadcast of the event. This followed an SEP rally the previous weekend in Sydney that also drew a substantial audience, and included speeches by renowned journalists John Pilger and Joe Lauria, as well as civil rights leader Stuart Rees.

SEP National Secretary James Cogan, speaking at the Sydney rally, warned that the Trump administration’s persecution of Assange was an essential component of an international attack on democratic rights and move toward dictatorship by the capitalist ruling classes all over the world. This was confirmed just days later with the jailing of Manning.

These rallies were organized on the basis of the perspective that the struggle to defend democratic rights must be based on the mobilization of the working class. The demonstration in Melbourne was read a statement of support from teachers in Oakland, California.

Amid an expanding global strike wave, from the United States to Latin America, Europe, North Africa and Asia, workers must take up the defense of democratic rights, including centrally the demand for the freeing of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and all other class-war prisoners.

This fight must be connected with the struggle against war and social inequality, and their source in the capitalist system.

The Socialist Equality Party (US) is playing a leading role in organizing opposition to the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, which is inextricably linked with the fight to defend Julian Assange. Today we are announcing public meetings and rallies throughout the United States to demand her freedom.

We urge all of our American readers: Join the struggle to free Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange by attending the meeting or rally in your area!

Around 300 workers, students, young people, professionals and retirees attended a rally in Melbourne on March 10 to demand that the Australian government take immediate action to free Julian Assange and call for the release of Chelsea Manning, who has been reimprisoned in the US by the Trump administration in a bid to coerce her into testifying against WikiLeaks: here.

Trump threatens to jail Chelsea Manning again

This 1 October 2018 British TV video says about itself:

Chelsea Manning interview on Trump, running for office, and prison life

Chelsea Manning gives her opinion that it’s time to “dismantle many of these authoritarian systems that we assume we need.” There’s no love lost between her and President Trump, who has called her an “ungrateful traitor”.

By Mike Head:

US government threatens to jail whistleblower Chelsea Manning for refusing to testify against WikiLeaks

8 March 2018

In a heroic and principled stand in defence of fundamental democratic rights, former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning yesterday refused to answer questions before a grand jury in Virginia. Manning stood firm and refused to incriminate WikiLeaks and its publisher Julian Assange—or any other media organisation and individual—over her courageous 2010 disclosure of hundreds of thousands of documents that exposed US war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies.

For refusing to give evidence that prosecutors hope to use in their prosecution of Assange, Manning has been ordered to appear at a contempt hearing today. She could be jailed again, barely two years after being released from close to seven years’ incarceration on espionage-related charges.

Manning’s bravery underscores how much is at stake in defending Assange against the intensified operation by the Trump administration and the US Justice Department to railroad the WikiLeaks leader to jail, or onto death row, for broadcasting to the world’s people the truth—which was only brought into the light of day by Chelsea Manning—about US militarism and foreign policy.

The threat to jail Manning marks a further escalation of Washington’s drive to force Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted political asylum in 2012. The Trump administration is moving to publicly unveil charges against him and demand the Ecuadorian and British governments comply with a warrant to extradite him to the US on false allegations of espionage or conspiracy.

Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, has issued the following statement:

“The Socialist Equality Party unequivocally condemns the US government’s vindictive and criminal persecution of Chelsea Manning.

“Chelsea suffered solitary confinement, abuse and torture, and over six years of imprisonment for letting the American and world population know the truth. Yesterday, she once again stood firm to fundamental democratic principle and refused to assist the Trump administration in its vendetta to falsely incriminate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She is a heroic figure and she must be defended.

“Working people all over the world will never forget Chelsea’s courageous exposure, at vast personal cost, of the crimes of American imperialism. Amid a growing global strike wave, the Socialist Equality Party will do everything in its power to mobilize the working class to defend Chelsea, and free Julian Assange and all other class war prisoners.”

Although Manning was offered immunity in exchange for testimony—a device employed to entice witnesses to assist prosecutors—she refused to answer any of the Trump administration’s questions, citing her rights under the US Constitution.

Manning, in a press release issued after the hearing, stated:

“Yesterday, I appeared before a secret grand jury after being given immunity for my testimony. All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013. I responded to each question with the following statement: ‘I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.’

“On Friday, I will return to federal court in Alexandria, Virginia for a closed contempt hearing. A judge will consider the legal grounds for my refusal to answer questions in front of a grand jury. The court may find me in contempt, and order me to jail.

“In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles. I will exhaust every legal remedy available. My legal team continues to challenge the secrecy of these proceedings, and I am prepared to face the consequences of my refusal.”

A more principled and heroic statement could not be expected of anyone.

Judge Claude M. Hilton could now remand Chelsea Manning, after all she has suffered, into custody as a recalcitrant witness. She could be held in contempt and jailed for as long as 18 months, or until the end of the life of the grand jury.

Earlier this week, Hilton, who was appointed to the Federal District Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, rejected motions by Manning’s attorneys to quash the subpoena or make the full record of her testimony public.

Horrified by what she saw of US military and diplomatic crimes following her deployment to Baghdad in 2009, Manning leaked a vast array of “classified” documents to WikiLeaks. These included the Collateral Murder video showing US helicopter gunships shooting down civilians, including children and two Reuters journalists.

During her 13-week court-martial in 2013, Manning testified that she acted on her own, anonymously, to send documents to WikiLeaks. She refused to incriminate Assange or WikiLeaks, despite the brutal treatment she was forced to endure. This included prolonged solitary confinement and other abuses that were condemned internationally as torture.

Manning was convicted by the military court under the US Espionage Act for leaking portions of 227 documents. With Barack Obama in the White House, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison—more time than anyone has ever received for disclosing classified US government records.

In one of his last acts, Obama commuted Manning’s sentence in 2017, but refused to grant her a pardon, ensuring that her conviction remained on her record. A spokesman for Trump, who was about to take office, called the decision to release Manning “disappointing” and “troubling”.

The renewed persecution of Manning confirms that the vendetta against Assange has nothing to do with the fabricated claims that WikiLeaks colluded with the Russian government to secure Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election.

Manning was subpoenaed by the same Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia that was convened in 2010 to decide whether to file charges against Assange over WikiLeaks’ publication of the Manning leaks.

Various sources have reported that the Grand Jury did charge Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act and sealed the indictment. A court document dated August 22, 2018, apparently mistakenly divulged in an unrelated case, specifically stated the case was sealed in order to “keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

Another judge, in the same court, this year declined a reporters’ group motion to unseal those charges. The federal prosecutor who tried that case, Gordon D. Kromberg, also requested the subpoena compelling Manning’s testimony.

David House, who reportedly befriended Manning in 2010, testified under immunity before the grand jury last July. He said he, too, was asked about the war logs Manning shared with WikiLeaks.

The Obama administration apparently pulled back from charging Assange over Manning’s disclosures because some of the material was published in partnership with leading corporate media organs, including the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Under Trump, the US authorities are seeking to overcome that problem by coercing Manning into saying that WikiLeaks conspired in the leaking of the documents.

The threat to Manning is part of a bipartisan offensive against freedom of speech, aimed at suppressing critical and independent journalism. She has taken an essential stand, in contrast to the corporate media outlets and pseudo-left groups that have turned cynically against Assange.

Manning’s plight underscores the importance of the Socialist Equality Party’s campaign to demand that the Australian government immediately intervene to secure the right of Assange—an Australian citizen—to leave the Ecuadorian embassy and return to his home country, with guaranteed protection from any US extradition request.

Support is growing. Hundreds of people participated in a demonstration in Sydney last Sunday to demand Assange’s freedom, which won the endorsement of a number of well-known intellectuals and artistic figures, including Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, journalist John Pilger, and civil rights activist Stuart Rees.

The working class must come to the defence of Manning and Assange. As the line-up in Washington against them demonstrates, essential democratic rights—including freedom of speech—can be defended only by the independent political mobilisation of the working class in opposition to the pro-capitalist political parties and capitalist state.

We appeal to our readers in Australia and the UK to take part in the demonstration called to free Assange and now, defend Chelsea Manning, this Sunday, March 10, at the State Library in Melbourne at 1:00 p.m. and in the vigil outside Ecuador’s London embassy on the same day, starting at 3:00 p.m. in London.

The author also recommends:

US court upholds subpoena of whistleblower Chelsea Manning
[6 March 2019]

The political lessons of the March 3 Free Assange rally
[5 March 2019]

Chelsea Manning jailed for refusal to testify against WikiLeaks: here. And here.

Chelsea Manning speaks in New Zealand

This 8 September 2018 video says aboout itself:

Former US soldier and perhaps the world’s most famous whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, has landed in New Zealand, declaring that President Trump is “not unusual” in American politics.

Ms Manning was denied a visa to Australia, and the [right-wing] National Party said the same should happen here. But she has pushed ahead with her plans to speak in Auckland.

“It’s quite inspiring to be out here. I’m glad you all let me in”, she said, speaking exclusively to 1 NEWS. …

[She] was caught releasing thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks in 2010.

Among the leaks was video showing the US military gunning down civilians in Iraq.

Ms Manning was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment for putting the United States’ security at risk, but after seven years in jail, then-president Barack Obama released her.

“On a personal level I’m extremely thankful”, Ms Manning said. However, on a political level she said Mr Obama was a compromised leader.

And as for the current US leader, Ms Manning said, “I want to be clear on this, Donald Trump is not an aberration. He is not an abnormality. He is not unusual in American politics.”

By Tom Peters in New Zealand:

Chelsea Manning speaks in New Zealand

13 September 2018

On September 8 and 9 whistleblower Chelsea Manning spoke to meetings attended by hundreds of people in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand.

The Australian government denied entry to Manning, who had been scheduled to appear in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. She defied this attack on free speech and freedom of movement by addressing Australian audiences via live video link.

New Zealand’s opposition National Party and sections of the media had demanded a similar ban. The Labour Party-led government, however, faced with widespread public support for Manning, allowed her to enter the country.

In 2010, Manning, then 22-years-old and a US army intelligence analyst, known as Bradley Manning, leaked hundreds of thousands of US military documents and embassy cables to WikiLeaks. This courageous action exposed war crimes carried out by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the murder of journalists and innocent civilians shown in the “Collateral Murder” video.

WSWS reporters attended the event in Wellington, where Manning began by talking about her difficult early life, including periods of homelessness as a teenager, followed by her decision to join the army. Her father had also been in the military.

Manning said she had not been anti-war before seeing the brutal reality of the US war in Iraq. After arriving there in late 2009 she explained, “I started to slowly realise, I’m not working with statistics. These are people’s lives… I processed everything that was happening over time and I couldn’t separate my job from the reality, I couldn’t do that anymore… We couldn’t keep doing what we were doing.” Manning decided to leak the military documents in early 2010 while on leave in the US.

She described the brutal conditions she experienced while being detained in solitary confinement, including in “a cage” on a military base. “I had no sense of time… I was completely cut off from the outside world”, she said. “I went two months without even knowing whether or not my family knew I was alive.” Eventually, after being court-martialed, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Manning’s sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama and she was released in 2017, but not pardoned. She has spent seven years, most of her adult life, in prison.

“A lot of people want to focus on what I went through, but in the US there’s 2.2 million people in prison”, she said. She explained that those behind bars supported and “stood up for each other” and “the most violent people in prison were the prison guards”.

Asked if she felt she had got her life back after her unexpected release, Manning said she did not know. She pointed to the militarisation of every-day life in the US: “I have freedom of movement, that’s different from being in prison. But we’ve got razor-wire walls on the border now, we have police running around our neighbourhoods with AR-15s [assault rifles].

“The reason I was so bothered by what we were doing in Iraq was that we were the occupying force”, Manning continued. “I see that now, in the US, we’re our own occupying force; we have a domestic military occupation, especially in the most vulnerable communities. Trans people are disproportionately affected by that, so are people of colour and immigrants.”

Manning was interviewed for just over an hour by former Labour Party MP Georgina Beyer, the world’s first openly transgender parliamentarian, before taking questions from the audience.

Beyer criticised the Australian government’s decision to ban Manning from the country, saying “they suck up to the US”. She then admitted that New Zealand was also part of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network.

In fact, Beyer herself was part of the 1999–2008 Labour government, which greatly strengthened New Zealand’s military and intelligence relations with the US and sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. NZ’s Special Air Service forces have been implicated in war crimes in Afghanistan.

The current Labour government of Jacinda Ardern has kept NZ forces in both countries and is further boosting military spending and collaboration with the US, including in the military build-up against China and North Korea.

Manning elaborated that “different groups of people are dealing with different problems that are coming from the same source: the same military, police and intelligence apparatus, this gigantic whirling death machine that we’ve built over several decades… So what we can do is be in solidarity with each other, even though we’re affected in different ways.”

The United States, she continued, “has the largest military in the world. We spend $700 billion a year right now, up from only $550 a couple of years ago” along with the largest prison system and intelligence apparatus.

Manning answered numerous questions from audience members, many of whom thanked her for coming to New Zealand and expressed appreciation for her courage. …

“And the things I do know about my own case, I can’t talk about because the court-martial’s classified. Even though I want to talk about stuff, I can’t, and it places me in an uncomfortable box.”

Following the publication of Manning’s leaks, WikiLeaks has been labelled a “hostile” organisation by Democrats and Republicans in the US. Its founder, Assange, has been persecuted and there are plans to imprison him for the “crime” of revealing US war crimes and anti-democratic operations throughout the world. In March, Ecuador’s government sought to appease Washington by cutting off Assange’s internet access, isolating him from the outside world.

Another audience member noted that millions have died due to US-led wars in the Middle East since 2001, yet virtually nothing is said in the media about “the horrors in Yemen, what’s happened in Raqqa [Syria], and Mosul [Iraq].”

Manning agreed that the population was kept in the dark: “You’re not supposed to know about it. It’s supposed to be so overwhelming and complex and unimaginable… that’s why it’s so hard to do activism against [war].”

Asked what she thought about the recent op-ed in the New York Times by an anonymous member of the “resistance” within the Trump administration, Manning replied: “It’s all a sideshow, in my opinion”, adding that “most people in America” did not care about “the palace intrigue” and “half the things that are being debated on television.

“You see people worried about issues in their community, and it’s stemming from the same systemic problem [as] 20 years ago.” The Trump administration, she said, was the outcome of “systemic problems” in the US.

Asked to elaborate on her recent decision to contest the Democratic Party’s primary campaign for the Maryland Senate seat, Manning said she wanted to use the campaign as a “platform… to talk about things that no other candidate in the entire Democratic Party was talking about or even suggesting. It was messy.”

At one point she and her campaign team discussed whether they should “try to win” through focus groups and “figure out what people want to hear, or do we want to stick to our principles?” They made a unanimous decision to stick to “the platform that we believed in”, including the abolition of ICE, rolling back prisons and stop arming the police with military weapons.

Manning explained that she would knock on peoples’ doors and “they would tell me their life story” and posed hard questions to which “I didn’t have answers, sometimes… I had really intense moments on people’s doorsteps.” Not knowing what to do, she said she often felt like hugging people. Following the campaign, Manning decided she could not see herself being a politician in the present system, but considered herself an activist.

On Thursday whistleblower Chelsea Manning disclosed to the New York Times that she has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on March 5. The subpoena provides no information as to what prosecutors intend to ask her, but all indications are that it is part of an effort by the US Department of Justice to escalate its pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: here.

Chelsea Manning yesterday lost the challenge she launched against a subpoena that requires her to be cross-examined by the Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia which was convened in 2010 to decide whether to file charges against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. Various sources have indicated that the Grand Jury did charge Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, in either late 2010 or the first half of 2011, and sealed the indictment. A court document dated August 22, 2018, in an unrelated case, effectively confirmed that the charges exist. The document contained two paragraphs, allegedly inserted by mistake, that specifically stated the case had to be sealed in order to “keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged”: here.

Stop Australian government’s Chelsea Manning ban

This 11 March 2019 video from the USA is called Glenn Greenwald: Chelsea Manning’s Refusal to Testify Against WikiLeaks Will Help Save Press Freedom.

Another video used to say about itself:

30 August 2018

Global Outcry After Australia Moves to Ban Entry of Whistleblower Chelsea Manning

Human rights groups and free speech defenders around the world are speaking out on Thursday after the Australian government moved aggressively to block Chelsea Manning—the U.S. Army whistleblower who was imprisoned by her own government after leaking hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents, including evidence of war crimes—from entering the country as part of a global speaking tour.

By Oscar Grenfell and James Cogan in Australia:

Widespread opposition to Australian government ban on Chelsea Manning

31 August 2018

Over the past 24 hours, opposition has mounted to the Australian government’s threat to deny well-known US whistleblower and political activist Chelsea Manning a visa to enter the country and engage in a speaking tour which is scheduled to begin this weekend.

The Coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday issued Manning with a “notice of intention” to reject her visa application, just days before she was set to address events in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The government is invoking Manning’s criminal conviction for leaking hundreds of thousands of military files and US diplomatic cables to claim that she fails the Migration Act’s “character test.”

As far as hundreds of millions of people are concerned, the actions of Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning were both justified and proved she is a person of the highest character and quality. The publication of the information she leaked by WikiLeaks and its editor Julian Assange exposed the staggering dimensions of the US-led war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the sordid intrigues by the American state around the world.

Manning paid an immense price for her courageous decision to let the world know the truth. She was subjected to what amounted to torture and driven to the brink of suicide. She spent seven years of her life in a prison cell. Large and respectful audiences in Australia have booked tickets to attend the public events at which she will appear.

Chelsea Manning has the right to speak and her audiences and the entire working class has the right to hear her views.

The move to ban Manning from the country is among the first actions of Morrison’s government since he was installed following the backroom political coup that ousted former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last Friday.

It is intended as a signal to Washington and the US and Australian intelligence agencies that the government will intensify the persecution of whistleblowers and investigative journalists and crackdown on widespread opposition to Australia’s central role in US-led wars and military preparations, including in the Asia-Pacific region.

There is little doubt that the threatened cancellation of Manning’s visa was planned in discussions with the US administration of President Donald Trump. It followed, by less than a week, a congratulatory phone call from Trump to Morrison the day after his installment as prime minister. Morrison invited the widely-reviled American president to visit Australia this November.

Significantly, the ban on Manning was preceded by a little-reported meeting of the Five Eyes, the US-led spying network, earlier this week in Australia’s Gold Coast. The event brought together ministerial representatives of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain, including the Trump administration’s Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The joint statement adopted at the meeting called for a campaign against attempts to “sow discord” and “manipulate public discourse”, on the bogus pretext of combating “foreign interference”. It mapped-out plans to enable governments and intelligence agencies to bypass encryption and other online privacy measures.

In other words, the purpose of the meeting was to escalate online surveillance and censorship, the very subjects that Manning had been set to speak against in her Australian talks.

If the government does succeed in blocking Manning, it will establish a precedent to deny other journalists and whistleblowers, along with progressive, left-wing and socialist figures, from entering the country and speaking publicly.

Prominent journalists and human rights organisations have noted that the attempt to silence Manning is part of a broader crackdown on free speech.

In a letter of protest to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, world-renowned investigative journalist John Pilger stated: “Just when it doesn’t seem possible that Australia’s reputation can sink further into a mire of injustice and human rights atrocity, the government of my country proposes to deny Chelsea Manning a visa to enter Australia in order to prevent her taking part in a speaking tour. Australians are to be ‘protected’ from the free speech of this courageous person.”

Pilger demanded that the government reverse its “authoritarian” decision. He concluded: “Australians have every right to hear what Chelsea has to say, and she has every right to say it. If such freedom no longer exists in Australia, tell us now; otherwise welcome this courageous truth-teller.”

Peter Greste, a well-known Australian journalist who was imprisoned by the US-backed military dictatorship in Egypt for more than a year, declared that the ban was “undermining democracy”.

Crikey editor Bernard Keane condemned the government for blocking Manning “who leaked to reveal war crimes and US atrocities.”

Claire Mallinson, the national director of Amnesty International Australia, stated: “By refusing her entry, the Australian government would send a chilling message that freedom of speech is not valued by our government.”

Other rights organisations, including the Australian Privacy Foundation, Digital Rights Watch and the Human Rights Law Centre have likewise called for the visa ban to be lifted. In an indication that Manning is rightfully viewed as a heroic figure by broad sections of the population, online petitions demanding she be granted entry into Australia have been signed by more than 15,000 people.

The response stands in stark contrast to the hostility of the political and media establishment towards the whistleblower.

Federal Labor Party shadow minister Penny Wong issued a mealy-mouthed statement suggesting only that the government “explain” its decision to ban Manning, who she described as a “controversial figure.” Wong did not even pretend to oppose the government’s anti-democratic move.

This is in line with Labor’s protracted support for the US-led persecution of WikiLeaks. When the publisher released the cables obtained by Manning in 2010, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard falsely declared that the “foundation stone” of WikiLeaks was “an illegal act”. She pledged that Australian authorities would collaborate with the US counterparts in the persecution of WikiLeaks and its sources.

The state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has likewise backed virtually every attack on Assange and WikiLeaks. Last year, it featured a fawning interview with Hillary Clinton, allowing her to slanderously declare, without challenge, that Assange was a “Russian agent”. The executive producer of the “7:30” program, Sally Neighbour responded to a complaint from Assange by retweeting a post describing him as “Putin’s bitch”.

The ABC has predictably lined up behind the ban on Manning, publishing a prominent opinion piece by Rodger Shanahan, a former army officer and research fellow at the Lowy Institute think tank with close ties to the intelligence agencies. He baldly declared that Manning “is not a whistleblower and Australia is right to deny her a visa.”

The ABC’s stance reflects the abandonment of any defence of democratic rights, by an entire layer of the self-styled “left” and “liberal” upper-middle class.

The actions of the Coalition government have been directly facilitated by the refusal of this milieu of the Australian political and media establishment to defend Julian Assange, an Australian citizen who has been subjected to relentless persecution for publishing the leaks made by Chelsea Manning.

…

The persecution of Assange and now the threatened ban on Manning stem from the lurch of the political establishment toward authoritarian, police-state forms of rule. It must be opposed as part of the broader struggle to defend and advance all the democratic and social rights of the working class.

New Zealand’s opposition National Party has demanded that whistleblower Chelsea Manning be barred from entering the country. Its immigration spokesman Michael Woodhouse declared that if he were still the minister in charge, he would not grant Manning an entry visa: here.

Australia: Numerous complaints of “bullying and intimidation” have been levelled against right-wing leaders in the ruling Liberal Party by members of parliament who supported Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull before he was ousted last Friday: here.

Australian government, Trump poodles, ban whistleblower Chelsea Manning

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Australian opposition questions government’s decision to bar Chelsea Manning

Labor Party foreign affairs spokeswoman calls for transparency into decision to block the US whistleblower

OPPOSITION Labor Party foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong questioned the Australian government’s decision today to bar entry to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

She said that Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s administration should be transparent about the reason for denying Ms Manning’s entry.

The convicted US whistleblower had been due to begin a speaking tour at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday, her event organiser Think Inc said today.

It had received a notice of intention from the government yesterday and the group is calling on her supporters to lobby new Immigration Minister David Coleman to allow her into Australia.

While she can appeal, past precedent suggests the decision has already been made.

Think Inc said it had given the government more than 10 letters of support for Ms Manning from individuals and organisations.

“Ms Manning offers formidable ideas and an insightful perspective which we are hoping to bring to the forefront of Australian dialogue”, Think Inc director Suzi Jamil said.

Ms Manning was an intelligence analyst for the US army when she leaked military and diplomatic documents [on war crimes in Iraq] to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. She served seven years of a 35-year sentence before then president Barack Obama granted her clemency in 2017.

Amnesty International national director Claire Mallinson accused the government of trying to silence Ms Manning, explaining: “By refusing her entry, the Australian government would send a chilling message that freedom of speech is not valued by our government.”

Lawyer Greg Barns, who has represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said people with criminal records have been allowed into Australia in the past and no-one would seriously suggest Ms Manning was a risk to the Australian community.

The Department of Home Affairs said that, while it does not comment on individual cases, all non-citizens entering Australia must meet character requirements set out in the Migration Act.

Immigration in New Zealand expects to make a decision tomorrow on whether to grant her a “special direction” visa.

Ms Manning had been due to speak in Melbourne on September 7, Auckland on September 8, Wellington on September 9 and then back to Australia’s Brisbane on September 11.

CANBERRA MULLS CHELSEA MANNING VISIT The Australian government is considering whether to refuse entry to whistleblower Chelsea Manning just days ahead of her speaking tour. [HuffPost]

United States police invade Chelsea Manning’s home with guns

This video from the USA says about itself:

Police Broke Into Chelsea Manning‘s Home With Guns Drawn — in a “Wellness Check”

5 June 2018

Shortly after Chelsea Manning posted what appeared to be two suicidal tweets on May 27, police broke into her home with
their weapons drawn as if conducting a raid, in what is known as a “wellness” or “welfare check” on a person experiencing a mental health crisis. Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst turned whistleblower and U.S. Senate candidate, was not at home, but video obtained by The Intercept shows officers pointing their guns as they searched her empty apartment.

“This is what a police state looks like”, Manning said. “Guns drawn during a ‘wellness’ check.”

Welfare checks like this, usually prompted by calls placed to 911 by concerned friends or family, too often end with police harming — or even killing — the person they were dispatched to check on.

Manning was out of the country at the time of the incident, said Janus Cassandra, a close friend who was on the phone with her that night. “If Chelsea had been home when these cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead.”

Read the full story here.

Video of Chelsea Manning “wellness check” highlights threat posed by police to mentally ill in US: here.

CANBERRA MULLS CHELSEA MANNING VISIT The Australian government is considering whether to refuse entry to whistleblower Chelsea Manning just days ahead of her speaking tour. [HuffPost]

‘IT DOESN’T LOOK RIGHT’ Four Mesa, Arizona, cops have been placed on paid leave after they were caught on video brutalizing unarmed Robert Johnson, 33, repeatedly kicking and punching him in the head during a May 23 arrest. [HuffPost]

SHOT IN THE BACK Antwon Rose, an unarmed 17-year-old, was shot three times in the back while running away from a traffic stop in Pittsburgh. [HuffPost]

NSA leaker Reality Winner sentenced to more than five years in prison: here.

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning interviewed

By Norisa Diaz in the USA:

Whistleblower and former political prisoner Chelsea Manning speaks to WSWS

2 May 2018

The World Socialist Web Site sat down with Chelsea Manning last month to discuss state surveillance, the current political situation and the growing danger of world war.

Eight years ago, in May 2010, then 22-year-old Pvt. Manning was arrested and charged by the Army under the Obama administration for leaking internal military documents to WikiLeaks, including the video of a deadly Apache attack released in a video entitled “Collateral Murder”. The footage showed US Apache helicopters gunning down 12 civilians in East Baghdad, Iraq in July 2007. The dead included a Reuters reporter and his driver.

Manning leaked 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies, exposing official US “meddling” around the world, including efforts to subvert governments and dossiers on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, revealing that most had no significant role in terrorist operations.

For these courageous actions, Manning was arrested and imprisoned under horrific conditions for seven years, including a year and a half in solitary confinement. In January 2017, her 35-year prison sentence was commuted by Obama, but she was not pardoned, and therefore her conviction still stands.

Manning announced earlier this year that she would run in the Democratic Party primaries for Maryland Senate in elections being held in June. She was in San Diego on April 9 and sat down for a discussion with representatives of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.

We began by asking Manning what she thought of the record of eight years of Obama, the Trump administration and the growing danger of world war.

“This is the direction that if you continue”, Manning replied, “regardless of whether it’s a Democrat or Republican administration at a particular time, the systemic problems are still perpetuated, and they’re not really discussed or addressed.

“For instance, one administration will take the position that we need to go after ‘criminals’ or ‘illegals’, or undocumented people or any different variation of class of people really aggressively. While another will come in and say, ‘Well, we want to make these systems more inclusive.’ It glosses over the systemic problems. They call for more women corrections officers, bigger women’s prisons, trans drone pilots is another good example. You know it’s like, ‘We want trans people to be involved in the bombing.’ So it’s a more diversified system of oppression. An equal opportunity oppression system.”

Throughout the interview, Manning criticized both Democrats and Republicans, though she herself is currently running as a candidate in Maryland in the Democratic Party primaries. She has called for an end to prisons and the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

She added: “As for Obama, I refer to it as ‘eight years of treading water’, where he offered bailouts, concessions, and tax cuts. Underemployment is the stealth issue. I know people with masters’ degrees who are Uber drivers, and on top of it you have to pay your student loans.

“The Democratic Party is a perpetuation of the system. I don’t believe in a two-party system. If you look at the substance of both parties they are both so similar, the difference is in style. Ninety-five percent of the time they agree, and that 5 percent of the time they don’t it isn’t about something substantial but something that is the approach, or the optics of it.

“It is a symbiotic relationship. Both parties are friends, they talk to each other, a lot of media discussion is merely for show. The political discourse in the media, and on Twitter is very much a controlled dog-and-pony show, where both sides are really trying to distract everyone.”

We noted the central role of the Democratic Party in the anti-Russia campaign and the campaign over “fake news”, which is being used to censor the Internet and crack down on individuals like Julian Assange.

On the claims of Russian interference in the US elections, Manning stated, “It’s not a new phenomenon. All states are doing this. We have been using these kinds of techniques over a century in other people’s elections and more aggressive techniques than information flooding.

“It was bad platform and policy positions that drove Clinton’s loss. We can’t depend on a news outlet or Twitter post to give us accurate information, we have to seek that for ourselves. I am not necessarily saying going to alternative news outlets, because they are not necessarily worthy of going to either. Be your own filter, seek out your own information.”

WSWS reporters explained that in April 2017 Google introduced new search algorithms and protocols that block access to socialist, anti-war, and progressive websites. The WSWS in particular was the hardest hit. In January 2018, Facebook implemented changes to its news feed to block access to news, specifically targeting left-wing sites.

“People in technology have tools and resources to address this”, Manning replied. “I work a lot with people in algorithms, people in AI development. There is not a deficit of awareness about these things, but I think there is a deficit of awareness that we in technology can do something about it.

“I’m trying to encourage people in technology to take a stand and say, ‘These algorithms can’t be built and maintained unless I build and maintain them.’ I’ve been encouraging people to look at the labor movement of the 19th and 20th centuries and look at the tactics that they used. I encourage people in technology in particular to address these problems.”

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