PFC Bradley Manning

Bradley nominated for Global Exchange human rights award

Global Exchange annually brings “together activists, supporters, and friends to recognize the efforts of exceptional individuals and organizations working for human rights from around the country and around the world.” This year, PFC Bradley Manning is nominated for the award.

As the Support Network’s own Emma Cape writes, the documents attributed to Bradley

reveal a disturbing trend of corporate influence on the U.S.’s foreign policies, as well as the frequency with which officials around the world actively mislead citizens regarding crimes against human rights and the environment. According to journalists, Bradley’s alleged actions helped motivate the democratic revolution in Tunisia. Also, by highlighting the failure of the military to appropriately address war crimes, they contributed to the Obama Administration finally agreeing to withdraw all U.S. troops from the occupation in Iraq.

Read the whole entry and vote for Bradley here. As of this posting, PFC Bradley Manning is leading the vote count. Voting ends March 19.

UNESCO WikiLeaks conference

Today and tomorrow, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is holding a conference entitled “The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World,” from which WikiLeaks representatives were banned.

FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola has been tweeting and live-blogging the conference. His reporting covers several different issues that WikiLeaks raises, but he notes one particular moment where the impact of WikiLeaks’ releases arose, which has ramifications for PFC Bradley Manning’s trial:

New York Times‘ Ian Fisher said during Q&A that his colleague David Sanger recently spoke to a State Department official, who was very upset with publication of cables. They said in the end the harm was very small and in the end “Pakistanis guarded their fissile material in a much better way after it came out that somebody could possibly get a hold of it.” I think David Coombs should take note of this. He should get this State Department official to testify under oath at Bradley Manning’s court martial.

Read Kevin’s full post here, watch livestream of the next conference session tomorrow here, and see Kevin’s live-tweets on the conference here.

Northwest campaign to free Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning Support Network campaign organizer Jeff Paterson finished an extensive tour of the northwest U.S. discussing PFC Bradley Manning’s case, his upcoming trial, and the efforts to free him.

Here’s video of a recent talk in Portland, Oregon, entitled ‘Saving Private Manning.’

And here is a shorter video of Jeff discussing his personal military history and the founding of Courage to Resist: