This Wednesday, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration
Committee announced that openly gay Army whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning will
be honored as a grand marshal for the largest gathering of LGBT (lesbian gay
bisexual transgender) people and allies in the United States. SF Pride
describes its grand marshals as “individuals and organizations that have made
significant contributions to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
community.”
A group of past grand marshals selected PFC Manning as this
year’s sole honoree, bestowing one of the LGBT community’s highest accolades on
the soldier who helped reveal unpunished war crimes, the Pentagon’s link to
Iraqi torture (as publicized in a recent UK Guardian documentary), and other
disturbing and previously secret foreign policies.
Responding to the announcement, Bradley Manning Support
Network Steering Committee representative Rainey Reitman stated,
The LGBT community is unique in that being a member requires
a willingness to disclose the truth about ourselves to the benefit of those
around us and society as a whole. As a longstanding Manning supporter, I’m
thrilled to see our community publicly embrace his courage in disclosing
classified truths about the war in Iraq and other facts which empower the American
public to promote smarter future policy.
PFC Manning, awaiting trial for three years behind bars,
cannot attend the Pride celebration in-person. However, Pentagon Papers’
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg will attend in his stead, and hundreds are
expected to march in support of PFC Manning in the parade. In past years,
Manning pride contingents have marched in New York City, Chicago, Washington
D.C., Boston, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Even wider national support is
expected this year, in anticipation of his summer court martial.
In late February, PFC Manning plead guilty to 10 charges
concerning unauthorized use and disclosure of classified information,
explaining his desire to promote “debates, discussion and reforms”
concerning U.S. foreign policy. Those 10 charges alone would carry a
maximum prison sentence of 20 years; nonetheless the U.S. military continues to
pursue a life sentence in prison for “aiding the enemy through indirect
means.”
Supporters argue that without evidence of any damage done to
U.S. national security, this is primarily an attempt to frighten other would-be
military whistleblowers.
BRADLEY MANNING NOBEL PEACE PRIZE NOMINATION 2013
February 1st 2013 the entire parliamentary group of The
Movement in the Icelandic Parliament, the Pirates of the EU; representatives
from the Swedish Pirate Party, the former Secretary of State in Tunisia for
Sport & Youth nominated Private Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Following is the reasoning we sent to the committee
explaining why we felt compelled to nominate Private Bradley Manning for this
important recognition of an individual effort to have an impact for peace in
our world. The lengthy personal statement to the pre-trial hearing February
28th by Bradley Manning in his own words validate that his motives were for the
greater good of humankind.
Read his full statement
Bradley Manning read out a personal statement to the
court in Fort Meade, Maryland, at a pre-trial hearing over his prosecution for
leaking the largest trove of state secrets in US history. It provides the first
account in his own words and under his own name of how he came to download
hundreds of thousands of classified documents and videos from secure military
databases and transmit them to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The US government has refused to publish contemporaneous
transcripts and documents from the Manning court martial, prompting legal
complaints from open government groups. In the absence of a full official
copy of Manning's statement, journalists covering the case have had to rely on
their own note-taking from the courtroom.
Here the Guardian publishes a transcript compiled by
independent journalist Alexa O'Brien, who has been covering the pre-trial
hearings. It provides the most comprehensive and accurate account of a highly
significant statement. This transcript was compiled by O'Brien from her
contemporaneous notes, not from a recording nor from an official document.
Inevitably, it may contain errors.Source :
HERE
3 March 2013:
Alexa O'Brien has made amendments to this text
since the Guardian published it. You can find her latest version
here.
Pfc. Bradley E. Manning's Statement for the Providence
Inquiry
---------------------------
Our letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Reykjavík,
Iceland 1st of February 2013
Dear Norwegian Nobel Committee,
We have the great honour of nominating Private First Class
Bradley Manning for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.
Manning is a soldier in the United States army who stands
accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblower
website WikiLeaks. The leaked documents pointed to a long history of
corruption, war crimes, and a lack of respect for the sovereignty of other
democratic nations by the United States government in international dealings.
These revelations have fueled democratic uprisings around
the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia. According to
journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring
movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on the foreign and domestic
policies of European nations, and most recently contributed to the Obama
Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S.troops from the occupation in Iraq.
Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for more then 1000
days by the U.S. Government. He spent over ten months of that time period in
solitary confinement, conditions which expert worldwide have criticized as
torturous. Juan Mendez, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture and
Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has repeatedly requested
and been denied a private meeting with Manning to assess his conditions.
The documents made public by WikiLeaks should never have
been kept from public scrutiny. The revelations – including video documentation
of an incident in which American soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists in
Iraq – have helped to fuel a worldwide discussion about the overseas
engagements of the United States, civilian casualties of war and rules of
engagement. Citizens worldwide owe a great debt to the WikiLeaks whistleblower
for shedding light on these issues, and so we urge the Committee to award this
prestigious prize to accused whistleblower Bradley Manning.
We can already be reasonably certain that Bradley Manning
will not have a fair trial as the head of State, the USA President Mr. Barack
Obama, stated over a year ago on record that Manning is guilty.
Sincerely,
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Member of Parliament for the Movement,
Iceland
Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament for
the Pirate Party, Sweden
Amelia Andersdottir, Member of the European Parliament for
the Pirate Party, Sweden
Margrét Tryggvadóttir, Member of Parliament for the
Movement, Iceland
Þór Saari, Member of Parliament for the Movement, Iceland
Slim Amamou, former Secretary of State for Sport & Youth
(2011), Tunisia
Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a member of the Icelandic
parliament for The Movement. She can be contacted via her
blogsite
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