The day after her sentencing Manning performed yet another act of bravery. In a statement publicly thanking all those who supported her through her trial she also came out as transgender.

While many of us in the queer community have known for a while that Manning was a member of our community, this was the first time she publicly addressed this topic. With this act Manning expands the arena where she is a hero, providing inspiration to the LGBT community. I hope her struggle will bring more awareness to the cause of transgender people and transgender liberation. Free Chelsea Manning!

Please read the following statement from Chelsea Manning: The Next Stage of My Life

I want to thank everybody who has supported me over the last three years. Throughout this long ordeal, your letters of support and encouragement have helped keep me strong. I am forever indebted to those who wrote to me, made a donation to my defense fund, or came to watch a portion of the trial. I would especially like to thank Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network for their tireless efforts in raising awareness for my case and providing for my legal representation.

As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility). I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.

Thank you, Chelsea E. Manning

#MinneapolisMN #AntiwarMovement #LGBTQ #PoliticalPrisoners #WikiLeaks #BradleyManning #PoliticalRepression #ChelseaManning #Whistleblowers

Ft. Lauderdale, FL – 20 supporters of whistleblower Private First Class Bradley Manning gathered on the evening of Aug. 21 at the Federal Building in downtown here for an emergency protest. They demanded a presidential pardon for the 25-year old whistleblower.

The action was organized by the anti-war group People’s Opposition to War, Imperialism and Racism (POWIR) in response to the 35-year jail sentence imposed on Manning earlier that day, for sharing military documents and videos of U.S. war crimes with Wikileaks. The sentencing came after Manning had already served three years, including nine months spent in solitary confinement.

As activists from South Florida arrived, they were given tape to cover their mouths as a symbol of how President Obama is silencing whistleblowers during his term. Along the sidewalk in front of the building were large letters on yellow signs spelling, “Free Manning” and demonstrators held signs reading, “Manning leaked the truth,” “Release Bradley Manning,” and “Jail our nation’s war criminals, not our whistleblowers.”

Manning disclosed injustices, human rights violations and war crimes that the U.S. military was involved with and continues to commit abroad. He believed that by exposing these ugly truths to the American public, he could help put an end to them. In her opening remarks at the protest, Pamela Maldonado, a lead organizer with POWIR explained, “Manning's sentence is being used by the Obama administration as a threat to all future whistle-blowers thinking of exposing the truth to the public.”

After the activists removed the tape from their mouths, whistles were distributed for all to blow shrilly in solidarity with Manning. The protesters shouted, “We will not be silent!” and blew their whistles loudly. As cars and trucks passed the busy intersection, many honked in solidarity. Upon seeing the protest, a few passersby picked up signs and joined the demonstration chanting, “Same thing every time, leaking truth is not a crime!”

Towards the end of the action, Victor Agosto, the lead organizer of POWIR and a Veteran for Peace member, read from Manning’s poignant and compelling statement released after the sentencing was announced. The crowd listened in silence. “I realized that in our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity,” Agosto read. “We consciously elected to devalue life both in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Whistles were held until the end and once the statement was finished the crowd whistled in unison.

POWIR, Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, Occupy Miami and Food Not Bombs members demanded that President Obama pardon Manning. The South Florida response was held in unity with actions being led by the Bradley Manning Solidarity Network on the same day. Manning’s defense team is now seeking a presidential pardon. As one of the signs held by the South Florida activists read “Call Obama 202-456-1414 and ask him to pardon Manning.”

#FortLauderdaleFL #PoliticalPrisoners #WikiLeaks #BradleyManning #USImperialism #Whistleblower #ChelseaManning

Tampa, FL – On June 1 over 50 activists rallied at the MacDill Air Force Base, calling for the release of whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Bradley Manning, a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army, is being prosecuted for his role in releasing videos and documents that exposed U.S. war crimes and civilian casualties in Iraq and the Middle East. Manning is charged with “aiding the enemy.”

The U.S. held Manning in solitary confinement for the first ten months of his incarceration, a form of torture that is widely used in U.S. prisons. The case of Manning is drawing worldwide condemnation. Activists around the world are rallying on behalf of Manning and drawing attention to U.S. aggression and illegal acts, especially the ongoing U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan.

The Bradley Manning Support Network called for an international week of solidarity starting June 1, in anticipation of the beginning of Manning’s trial on June 3. Activists mobilized in many U.S. cities, with nearly 1000 protesting outside Fort Meade, near Baltimore, Maryland where Manning’s court-martial trial will take place. Across the globe, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Afghan Peace Volunteers gathered to thank Manning.

Tampa’s demonstration was at the gates of MacDill Air Force Base, the main headquarters for United States Central Command. U.S. CentCom runs the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. An organizer said MacDill Air Force Base is “the center of decisions that slaughter hundreds of thousands globally. Decisions that prompted Bradley Manning to bravely release the truth to Wikileaks!”

Activists held giant banners that said “Free Bradley Manning” and received honks in support from guests entering the base. Supporters from the LGBTQ community held rainbow flags in support of Manning. Protesters chanted “Free Bradley Manning!” and “Jail a hero, what a shame, we know CentCom is to blame!” Members of the Tampa Light Brigade held giant letters that spelled out, “Bradley leaked truth.” In the middle of the protest, activists participated in a silent skit, with actors portraying the brutality of the war on Iraqi people and the resilience of Arab Spring protesters against U.S. backed dictators.

Jailing activists who stand against U.S. wars and occupations is not a new phenomenon, nor is using court-martials or grand jury trials as a tool of political repression. From the Anti-war 23, raided in September 2010 for their anti-war and international solidarity activism, to Bradley Manning, U.S. government agencies, such as the FBI, continue to attempt to silence those who speak out against U.S. war and aggression.

The Tampa Bay Bradley Manning Support Network, Veterans for Peace, Students for a Democratic Society, Tampa Light Brigade, Occupy Tampa and others vowed to fight these attacks and build resistance against political repression in the U.S.

#TampaFL #AntiwarMovement #WikiLeaks #BradleyManning #USImperialism #InjusticeSystem #FBIRepression

Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Integration reported June 19 that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrived at its London Embassy and asked for asylum. Assange stated that with a, “regrettable factual statement of abandonment received by the authorities of my country, Australia, who state that they will not defend even my minimum guarantees before any government and delegate in the constitution of a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and treason, and the guarantees it offers to its nationals, ignoring the obligation to protect its citizens, who is persecuted politically.

“Such statements make it impossible for me to return to my home country and puts me in a state of helplessness by being requested to be interrogated by the Kingdom of Sweden, where its top officials have openly attacked me, and investigated me for political crimes in the United States of America, a country where the death penalty for such offenses is still in force.”

The government of Ecuador states that it is evaluating the request of Julian Assange and any decision on it will take into account respect for the rules and principles of the International Law and the traditional policy of Ecuador to safeguard human rights.

#UnitedKingdom #AntiwarMovement #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Ecuador #WikiLeaks #JulianAssange

The Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression expresses our solidarity for Julian Assange. Amy Goodman reported in the Guardian that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has a sealed indictment in the U.S., according to leaked emails from Stratfor, an intelligence company. The emails were hacked by Anonymous and then published by WikiLeaks. The Guardian and other sources had already reported that a secret federal grand jury in Virginia was investigating Assange for allegedly violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified U.S. State Department documents.

This news brings to mind parallels with our situation. Our committee is organizing in solidarity with the 23 peace and international solidarity activists who have been subpoenaed to testify at a secret federal grand jury in Chicago that alleges material support for terrorism. This investigation is because of their activism.

We believe that the grand jury in the case of the Peace 23 was convened in August 2009, but we are unaware of whether or not it is still meeting. The prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago have told their lawyers repeatedly that they are expecting multiple indictments, but we don’t know when this will occur or if, like in Assange’s case, they have the indictments and are waiting until later to release them. Either way, the Peace 23 wake up every day not knowing if the FBI will be back their doors again – this time to take them into custody.

The grand juries that investigated Assange and that are or were investigating the Peace 23 are similar in many ways. Both meet in secret and are fundamentally undemocratic. Suspects and witnesses are subpoenaed to testify to the grand jury but no one is allowed representation by a lawyer. Both have a wide scope for their “investigation” and neither is limited by a judge or even by much of a time table. Not surprisingly, 99.9% of all federal defendants called before a federal grand jury are indicted, since the grand jury system has been designed to help prosecutors.

Another similarity is the political nature of these cases. Assange is being investigated for publicizing the truth about U.S. foreign policy and the Peace 23 are being targeted for opposing U.S. foreign policy. Materials published by WikiLeaks have been invaluable to the anti-war movement. The true horrors of U.S. occupation in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been documented. Exposing war crimes is not a crime! And neither is solidarity or anti-war activism! End grand jury repression now!

#MinneapolisMN #InJusticeSystem #WikiLeaks #JulianAssange #grandJury #MinnesotaCommitteeToStopFBIRepression #PoliticalRepression

In April 2010, a video leaked from top secret military files revealed a 2007 U.S. Army helicopter assault on Baghdad where eighteen civilians were murdered, including two journalists from the news agency Reuters. The video created international uproar over the brutality of U.S. war on Iraq and infuriated the Pentagon.

The U.S. government is scrambling to catch the people responsible for releasing the video, trying to prevent further leaks. A second leaked video that is soon to be released depicts a 2009 massacre in Garani, Afghanistan, where 140 civilians were killed in the occupation’s bloodiest massacre. Most of the victims were children and teenagers.

A 22-year old army soldier, Bradley Manning, supposedly confessed to releasing the videos and other secret files to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Since the video, called Collateral Murder was released by Wikileaks two months ago, it has been viewed by millions, fueling anger over the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Until its release, the U.S. maintained that all the victims were “insurgents.” The video had previously been security encoded and hidden in top secret files by the U.S. government, which refused to release the video for three years, until it was leaked.

Manning was an Army intelligence analyst, stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq. He cited his growing disapproval of the U.S. occupation of Iraq as motivation to put himself at risk to release the documents. Manning allegedly claimed to have released as many as 260,000 government communications that would embarrass Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and thousands of other officials for corrupt deals with foreign puppet governments. This has prompted the U.S. to step up their efforts to stop whistleblowers.

Manning was turned in by an informant in May and is being held without charge at a U.S. military base in Kuwait. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) released a statement on the incident that says, “If true, Bradley's actions are heroic and he deserves our support.”

Wikileaks Targeted by U.S.

Wikileaks, which is set to release the Garani massacre video, has been the second major target of the U.S. government as the Obama administration tries to maintain some support for the eight-year old occupation. The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said he is planning to release video of the Garani, Afghanistan massacre “very soon” but would not give an exact date to avoid a government crackdown. Assange says he does not know who the source of the video was, but he said he will defend Bradley Manning.

Lawyers for Assange said he faces a definite threat from the U.S. government. A recent Wikileaks twitter message read: “Looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S. has.” U.S. intelligence officials have been frantically trying to locate Assange, in order to stop the release of the Garani massacre video and other documents that would expose ugly secrets of U.S. imperialism. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Vietnam War documents in the 1970s and was a target of hit men, told Assange to keep his location a secret. “I think he would not be safe, even physically, entirely wherever he is,” Ellsberg said.

U.S. Cracks Down on Whistleblowers

“The Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks,” according to the New York Times, “In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions.”

In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center named Wikileaks a national security threat, in a secret document that was ultimately leaked to Wikileaks. In the same year, federal courts attempted to shut down the website after it released a secret set of operation instructions from the infamous Guantánamo Bay ‘detention center.’ The website easily worked around the attack, which only disabled their domain name. The U.S. government is now ramping up their efforts to stop the flow of information which is greatly damaging public support of U.S. occupations worldwide.

This month, the U.S. Senate will consider a bill dubbed “the internet kill switch” which would allow the president to seize control of the internet and shut it off completely in case of a “national cyber emergency.” This bill comes just as Wikileaks promises to release the Garani massacre video online.

The Occupation Continues

More massacres are likely, with nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, now more than in Iraq. The military is escalating war on the Afghan people, but have been unable to hold any ground to the resistance fighters, who control huge amounts of the country. The approval ratings of the occupations continue to fall, as more troops are deployed and more troops are killed. While the U.S. is unable to manufacture a positive image of the occupation, they are increasingly relying on censorship, by restricting information from leaving combat zones. Whistleblowers like Manning and Assange will continue to play an important role in defeating U.S. cover-ups. Ultimately, the occupations will not be allowed to continue. The only answer for the Afghan people is complete and immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces.

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #Afghanistan #Iraq #IraqVeteransAgainstTheWar #WikiLeaks #GaraniMassacre #BradleyManning #CollateralMurder #IVAW #JulianAssange #Asia

The organization WikiLeaks released a leaked video today showing footage of U.S. soldiers indiscriminately gunning down Iraqis from an Apache helicopter gunship. In the video, U.S. soldiers are heard laughing while shooting down over a dozen Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists. After the initial shootings, a van stops by to pick up one of the survivors who is crawling away. As Iraqis load the wounded man into the van, the U.S. soldiers open fire again, killing more Iraqis and wounding two young children who were inside the vehicle.

Later, when U.S. troops arrive on the ground to investigate the scene of the killings, a U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle drives over the body of one of the dead, and two U.S. soldiers are heard chuckling over the intercom of the Apache helicopter. The U.S. troops discover two badly wounded children, 10-year-old Sayad and 5-year-old Doaha, and a soldier makes a decision to evacuate them by air to a U.S. military hospital. The order is then revoked and the children are placed in the hands of Iraqi police to be taken to a local clinic, where care is inferior and there will be greater delays prior to treatment.

The Reuters journalists who were killed by U.S. troops were Namir Nour El Deen, age 21, and Saeed Chmagh, age 40. “What Namir was doing was a patriotic work. He was trying to cover the violations of the Americans against the Iraqi people,” said Nabil Nour El Deen, the brother of Namir, speaking to Al Jazeera today. “Is this the democracy and freedom they claim they have brought to Iraq?”

“This is another crime that should be added to the record of American crimes in Iraq and the world,” Nabil added.

The video provides rare insight into the daily reality of Iraqis throughout seven years of U.S. occupation. It is estimated that more than 1.5 million Iraqis have been killed during the U.S. occupation, with hundreds of thousands of deaths directly attributable to the actions of U.S. military forces. What is especially instructive about this incident is how the U.S. military portrayed the event at the time.

As Reuters reported on July 16 2007, “The U.S. military said last week it had called in ‘attack aviation reinforcement’ after coming under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Nine insurgents and two civilians ‘reported as employees for the Reuters news service’ were killed, the statement said.’”

Each day similar statements are issued by U.S. military describing their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many other murderous incidents are hidden by similar statements of “clashes with insurgents?”

Additional photographs and resources documenting the crime are available from WikiLeaks.

#Iraq #Occupation #WarCrimes #WikiLeaks #MiddleEast