Courage to Resist’s Pacific Northwest Tour, “The Campaign to Free Bradley Manning” has officially begun. Next stops include Portland, Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, and Lakewood. Don’t miss out! Jeff Paterson, director of the Bradley Manning Support Network, will be speaking about Bradley’s case, and about the campaign to free him. He will also report on the article 32 pretrial hearing, and introduce the new Courage to Resist book “About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War”. (Read more)

“Government secrecy is literally out of control” reads the Salon.com headline by Justin Elliott. The Obama administration campaigned on promises of transparency and openness but “several pieces of news about government secrecy emerged this week that show just how far away the United States has gotten from the principle of open government.” This isn’t only a story about Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks – it is also a story about ongoing over-classification of information. “There are still 50,000 ages of government record relating to the JFK assassination” that have yet to be released even though an act was passed to make sure they were released, he writes. The government has been classifying so much information, that it is almost impossible that they could have ever done so following proper procedures. In order to de-classify the material, as they must do, it would take an enormous team – there is a backlog of over 400 million pages. It took two years to declassify 26.6 million pages. The task is impossible – and we must wonder how and why so much information is being classified in the first place. (Read more)

A WikiLeaks lawyer tells of her chance run in, at the Sundance Film festival, with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder is a key figure in the governments ongoing crackdown on whistle-blowers, and in the governments attack on WikiLeaks. At Bradley Manning’s article 32 hearing, it became clear that the government was going after Bradley Manning as part of its strategy against WikiLeaks,

“it was apparent during the Manning hearing that concerns about the U.S. seeking Assange’s extradition are justified. Repeated references were made to the relationship between the Manning proceedings and the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation into Assange and WikiLeaks. Manning’s defense counsel stated explicitly that the Justice Department had an interest in plea-bargaining with Manning in order to get him to implicate Assange, and argued that the number of charges against Manning (particularly those carrying life imprisonment) was designed to pressure him into making a deal.”

Holder however has been unwilling to comment publicly, and so it was fortunate that one of WikiLeaks lawyers managed to find herself sitting near him. “As the lights dimmed and the film began, I wondered: How could I speak to Eric Holder?” she writes. With little time, Robinson engaged Holder, politely guiding the conversation from one of government legacy, before gently introducing herself as a lawyer from WikiLeaks, and concluding with the question so many have asked – “will the Department of Justice state publicly whether or not you intend to prosecute Julian?”. “We will see” he replied. (Read more)