Photo Credit: Daniel Joseph Barnhart Clark [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
June 7, 2013
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Private First Class Bradley Manning is on trial now after
releasing information to the public. He has already spent 1,108 days in
confinement awaiting trial. The information he shared exposed the unjust
detainment of innocent people in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and
served as a catalyst for pro-democracy movements in the Arab world.
Instead of the cold, clean images of drone planes soaring and American
flags waving that mainstream news outlets project, the information
Manning helped release displayed the disturbing, human truth about the
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among other crimes, the whistleblower is accused of “aiding the
enemy”—a capital offense and his most serious charge. A conviction on
this charge would mean life in prison, and a possible death sentence.
Since it’s the public who benefited from this information,
does that make us the enemy? What price will future whistleblowers pay?
These are the questions posed on the Manning support network website,
I Am Bradley Manning. The site is set up in part to promote a new PSA film created by the eponymous group.
The site’s tagline reads, “I am Bradley Manning because I
believe the public deserves the truth and whistleblowers deserve a fair
trial.”
The video I Am Bradley Manning features big-names
including actors Maggie Gyllenhaal, Russell Brand and Peter Sarsgaard;
filmmaker Oliver Stone; musicians Tom Morello and Moby; journalists
Chris Hedges, Phil Donahue and Matt Taibbi; and author Alice Walker
among others, carrying signs to declare they, too, are Bradley Manning.
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg tells the camera, “I was
Bradley Manning.” The video’s participants call the “aiding the enemy”
charge absurd.
The dialogue opens with the question, “When you join the military are you asked to keep any war crimes you might see secret?”
The video proceeds to pose important points that pertain to Manning’s case, including facts like:
The most stark example of war crimes Manning exposed is the video from Iraq titled
Collateral Murder. (None of the people associated with the murder of unarmed civilians and journalists, as shown in
Collateral Murder, have been arrested or tried for their crimes.
)
Shortly after passing the military information to
WikiLeaks, Manning asked former hacker Adrian Lamo this question: “If
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 D.C....what would you do?”
The video echoes this question in a call-to-action
statement at its close. Thousands of people in solidarity have posted
photos of themselves holding “I am Bradley Manning” signs to
iam.bradleymanning.org.
Manning has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and almost 65,000 people have already signed a
Roots Action petition asking that he receive the prize.
“I want people to see the truth, because without it you cannot make informed decisions as a public,” Manning says in a
chat logs with
journalist Adrian Lamo prior to his arrest. He also said he hoped the
publication of the diplomatic cables would ignite “worldwide discussion,
debates, and reform.”
Now it is for the public to influence the future of one whistleblower, and whistleblowers at large.
April M. Short is a Bay Area journalist focusing on social justice reporting.
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