Gavin Newsom and Bradley Manning, February 2009 autographed photo. Credit: bradleymanning.org

Back in February of 2009, accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning contacted a gay activist, Zachary Antolak aka Zinnia Jones over AIM, after watching and identifying with Zinnia’s political video blogs on YouTube. Bradley formed an online friendship with Zinnia. This week, Zinnia released the chat logs documenting their personal conversations to New York Magazine and the UK Guardian.  Here is our analysis of those logs: Importance of the newly released Zinnia Jones-Bradley Manning chat logs. The article includes a link to the full chat logs.

Chase Madar is a New York lawyer and frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, the American Conservative magazine, CounterPunch.org, and Le Monde Diplomatique. He is currently working on a book about Bradley Manning. This week his opinion piece, “4 reasons why Bradley Manning deserves a medal,” appeared on the front page of CBSNews.com as well as on a number of alternative news sites.

The renowned scholar and political theorist Noam Chomsky made a statement of support for Bradley this week in an interview with the U.K. Guardian on the topic of Venezuela, in which he criticizes both Venezuelan and U.S. treatment of prisoners. He says:

It’s obviously improper for the executive to intervene and impose a jail sentence without a trial. And I should say that the United States is in no position to complain about this. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is. The president in fact intervened. Obama was asked about his conditions and said that he was assured by the Pentagon that they were fine. That’s executive intervention in a case of severe violation of civil liberties and it’s hardly the only one.

The awesome “Wikileaks-movie.com” has unleashed their latest movie poster remix, Saving Private Manning.