GI Rights Network national conference attendees

This week is the one year anniversary of Bradley Manning’s imprisonment, and there are many bloggers and news outlets doing stories on Bradley and Wikileaks. Yesterday was the premier of Frontline’s WikiSecrets, an expose on Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and Bradley Manning. The program featured multiple interviews with Bradley’s friends and family, and video of Bradley before he was incarcerated. It is believed that this video was taken around the same time Bradley is accused of leaking the “Collateral Murder” video. A live online chat held by the documentary reporters today, which was also attended by Brian Manning, David House, and Julian Assange, featured some well-thought-out critiques and statements of support. It is still available for reading online.

The New Yorker has an article called Manning, Assange, and the Espionage Act which looks at the legal issues relating to the potential prosecution of both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. The author, Raffi Khatchadourian, has been writing on major Wikileaks developments for the past year. He states that Bradley Manning “a rational choice: the public benefit of releasing the material was of greater value to him than the obvious personal legal jeopardy” and that neither he nor Assange should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act because it “would be unprecedented, and could erode freedoms that reporters enjoy during their normal work of cultivating sources in government”. Khatchadourian further states that he believes that Wikileaks is political speech that is protected by the first amendment, the same way the Tea Party’s pamphlets are.

Wikileaks continues to bring revelations, including the sexual exploitation of children in Mauritania and the scope of the war in Pakistan. Cables in Mauritanian have revealed that it is common for young girls in Mauritania to be bought and trafficked to wealthy Saudi men, where they are sexually abused and then discarded when they get too old or pregnant, thus forcing them into the sex industry for survival. Per usual, the local government denies this problem and states “trafficking of Mauritanian women did not exist and trafficking to Saudi Arabia was not possible because there was a government law that required women to travel with a male family member”. Meanwhile in Pakistan, the Pakistan Papers from Wikileaks, released through the local media partner Dawn, reveal the presence of American troops in North and South Waziristan, the vast amount of drone attacks, and “wealth flowing to extremists in Pakistan from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates”. Currently it has shown that at least 100 million dollars has come into Pakistan from the Middle East to fund terrorist activity.

A quick reminder that this weekend is Memorial Weekend, which is a perfect time to honor all war resisters by participating in our I Am Bradley Manning initiative. What could be more fun for your holiday cookout than taking a few pictures to support Bradley Manning and all others that have the courage to speak out against war crimes and crimes against humanity?