Update 8/24/12: Al Jazeera examines Collateral Murder, CNN covers the fight to free Bradley
Ethan McCord, Collateral Murder
Al Jazeera English talks to Collateral Murder victim families. In a short documentary about the video released by WikiLeaks and attributed to PFC Bradley Manning, AJE talks to the families of the innocent civilians and journalists gunned down by a U.S. Apache helicopter gunman, along with former soldier Ethan McCord.
McCord, who can be seen in the video carrying a small child to safety, says of the incident: “This constitutes a war crime in my eyes.” However, none of the shooters in the video have been brought to trial, while Bradley Manning, accused of bringing it to the public’s attention, awaits the beginning of a court martial that could send him to jail for life. (Read more, and see the documentary here.)
CNN covers actions for Bradley Manning, documents the long battle to free him. In a piece for CNN online, Ashley Fantz connects Julian Assange’s recent call to free PFC Bradley Manning with recent protests at Obama campaign offices, demanding freedom for the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower. She chronicles the Support Network’s efforts as well:
“[The Support Network’s Michael] Thurman told CNN that the pro-Manning movement is gaining momentum. “We think it’s outrageous that he’s been in jail for more than 800 days,” he said.
Since its founding in 2010, the nonprofit Bradley Manning Support Network, based in northern California, has organized rallies across the country for Manning. The group has a strong social media presence on Twitter found at #vets4brad, #bradlymanning and#freebrad. Manning’s public Facebook page is usually active.
The network has raised money to pay for Manning’s private attorney and experienced court martial counsel David Coombs. The lawyer has kept a blog for more than a year detailing developments in Manning’s case, often posting full documents online.”
As Fantz notes, we plan more, similar rallies at Obama campaign offices on September 6. (Read more…)
Thank You Al J for your wonderful coverage of this matter! <3 8)
I agree, Denica – I think ‘Permission to Engage’ is particularly good.
It’s beautifully constructed, and I think it would be perfect to show at public screenings together with ‘Collateral Murder’. I think it could be quite pivotal in renewing interest in the issues/bringing us back to basics, and introducing new people to the subject.
It really succeeds in clarifying both detail and broader context and getting across the reality and seriousness of the events and the point they make about the whole war.
The CNN piece is good, and significant, I think. I haven’t seen a lot in the MSM about Bradley Manning and I imagine that it’s brief and not particularly sympathetic when it does exist.
But this does seem sympathetic, and I think – since CNN is MSM and basically markets a product – that CNN is ‘giving the people what they want’ based on their polling. Which means that Bradley Manning’s steadfast perseverance – going on 850 days of steadfast persistence without even a trial!, and filled with truly small-spirited abuse from some penny-ante person who somehow managed to get himself awarded 3 stars – has paid off with ‘my fellow americans’ … Bradley Manning’s fellow americans.
I hope so, anyway. I hope there’s a consensus forming that what’s needed, finally, is the truth.
Someone said that Winston Churchill said – they love to put their words in Churchill’s mouth for some reason – that the Americans will always do the right thing, after everything else has been tried.
And they have tried about everything else but the truth by now.
..After everything else has been tried. Everything!!! Oy!!! (Throws up hands)
Well—–good for CNN for a nice start.
CNN was one of the few to interview nuclear expert and Fukushima warning dove Arnie Gundersen, who says what no one wants to hear: what’s going on in Japan is extremely important.
Brad Manning is extremely important as well and I really hope for more than CNN’s token piece they did on the Fukushima disaster (Tom King was the anchor).
More coverage, more coverage, more coverage, and make it righteous.
Twitter: Jacob Appelbaum @ioerror
19 August 2012
“Is there a daily letter being sent to #BradlyManning about things happening in the world? Who is doing jail support by mail? Anyone?”
RESPONSE: I am not a member of any social media or Twitter, and I am not aware of any daily letter to PFC Manning, but I know that since his arrival at the Marine Base Quantico Brig, an Internet news clipping service has been regularly sending verbatim copies of items on the Internet of likely interest to PFC Manning up to the daily limit of five pages, front and back, including color photos, along with a handwritten post-it note, but some days there is not anything to send, or not enough to fill five pages, or not anything urgent however short it may be. Sometimes there is so much to send that the letters have to be queued to wait their turn to be posted, in order of perceived importance to PFC Manning.
The idea of the Internet news clipping service is to replicate what PFC Manning could find if he had continuous access to a personal computer and could browse the Web anytime he wished. This may help to keep him more fully informed about his case, his situation, public opinion, and related matters of interest. And he gets frequent mail at Fort Leavenworth or Fort Meade from a reliable source until his case is completed.
Personal, handwritten cards, notes and letters to PFC Manning are always a good way to show you care and are thinking about him.
Peace.
That is awesome.
All of us should send Bradley news. Even if it doesn’t reach him right away, it will help the US postal service, which is in desperate straits because Congress is killing it before our eyes.
But more important, if people who matter see Manning getting lots of physical mail, that does make a difference. I fear that things that happen online don’t have enough impact in the 3-D world.
Wonderful idea.
That al Jazeera is very powerful. I’m glad I watched. I’d watched collateral murder before, but was too revolted to take anything meaningful from it, other than revulsion.
wikipedia says :
‘ A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense … ‘
and ‘ During the [Nuremberg] trial, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, stated:
‘ To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’
He was talking about NAZI Germany’s aggression in the 30s and 40s, but today it’s the USA that is the author of aggression, worldwide. That’s the truth and we’ve gotta figure out how to end American aggression.
Clearly the real criminals were not in the helicopter, or even in Iraq, they were – they are – in Washington DC. Our job is to regain control of our government, to stop American aggression worldwide, to try to get at-one again with the peoples of the world. We’ll have decades of penance ahead of us, just as the Germans did, sixty years ago.
Al Jazeera could not have made this video, which every american should see, if not for the courageous act of Bradley Manning, or of whomever did get the video into the public domain. Bradley Manning is a hero, whether he delivered the video to wikileaks or not, because of the abuse he’s put up with from his American Commander in Chief and from the 3 star American General who called forth his torturous treatment over the past 820+ days.
Bradley Manning, or whoever did light the lamp, has done his or her job. Now we can see the truth, can see just how far our nation has fallen. And the thousands upon thousands of widows and orphans … american, Afghani, Iraqi, Pakistani, Yemeni, Libyan, Syrian, … that the American Wehrmacht has manufactured and is manufacturing everyday.
By the light of the lamp we can see, now, but it’s up to all of us americans to regain control and to shut the American Wehrmacht down.
We should be thankful that Bradley Manning acted as he did, if it was himself who did act, careless of his own safety, thinking only of the horrendous crimes being committed by, being hidden by, the American Wehrmacht. Bradley Manning, or whoever did light the lamp, is truly an american hero.
I think CNN is malicious to Manning’s case. The wording of the report is awful to me.
First, it uses notorious to describe Bradley Manning. WTF! If Manning is notorious, then what word could be used on the helicopter shooting man? If Manning is notorious, then what word can be used to describe the inhuman wars conducted by US government. CNN just intentionally ignore the war crimes of US military revealed by Wikileak.
Another example,
——————————–
For the past two years, Assange has been careful to not say whether Manning was or was not the source of the information. It’s worth noting that Manning, too, has not said a word on the subject either
———————————-
We can see that CNN tries to suggest Manning and Assange are covering each other. However, I think Assange used to say that he has no way to know the people who provide information through Wikileak website since the information was secured, however I think CNN doesn’t care.
Another example is from the comment by Waddington.
————————————
“The defense has tremendous control over whether Manning gets a speedy trial — or at least a trial that happens before a client spends 800 or more days in jail,” he said. “I have never heard of a case lasting 800 days. That doesn’t happen.”
Most court martial cases — from date of charges filed to actual trial — take between 60 to 180 days, he said.
—————————————–
This is nothing but a whitewash of what US government did ,and put all the responsibility to the defense team.
First of all, he ignore the defense team did send a request of speedy trial on January last year but was denied.
Second, the defense team reported multiple times that they were denied from obtaining key evidences that the prosecutors have. Of course the defense can go to trial quickly but they would not have enough preparation. It is only recently that the judge rule that the defense team can access “parts of the information”. Under such a unfair condition, I would not be surprised that it takes so long for the whole process if the defense team is serious about their client.
Waddington also complained about the motions the defense team fired. I feel so astonished about it. If the defense didn’t pay any attention on the treatments Manning suffered from the marine brig, I bet Manning is now still stay in the marine brig being tortured, not now in Fort Leavenworth.
Also,I don’t agree we should let go all the unlawful treatment conducted by the military during Manning’s pretrial confinement, but this is Mr Waddington’s suggestion.
Even Waddington said “most of the cases” would not take so long, so apparently he know pretty well that not all the case would be trialed in a short time.
Interesting enough, the whole article contains no opinion form Bradley Manning’s lawyer David Coombs. It also mentions nothing about the war crimes that Manning alleged released to Wikileak.
CNN is one of the mainstream medias supporting the invasion of Iraq by performing partial report and by lining up with the government’s claim of “weapon of mass destruction”. It’s not surprising to me that CNN would write such a trash totally adopts the government view to black-paint Bradley Manning and Assange, and whitewash the US government, but reading such an article still makes me angry.
Ugh. Thank you. I commented above before hearing the piece. Guess I will not be listening after all. I’m really sick of seeing this good man painted with the tattered distortive brush strokes authored by sickos.
I mean I need to be clear here, the forces against Manning are among the sickest in our society. It is too bad that CNN supports the distortion. But they already have been all along, by ignoring it. As if it were not even happening.
I have been following this for month. Upset doesn’t begin to express how I am feeling. I am relieved that he is still alive.
I have a question. WTF has happened in America that it’s citizens are not shouting out for a fair trial for this young man.. I remember Vietam. I remember how the people went out into the steets demanding an end to a crazy war. Where are they now? why are they sitting silently in their homes and ignoring the fact that a young American tried to tell them the truth about what was being done in their name?
Wake Up Americans! Get out on the streets and defend someone who had the guts to put his freedom on the line to let you know what is going on in the real world.
They are seated in front of computers, or staring into their gadgets.
They are (we are) conditioned, behaviorally, to do just a few things these days: type and click and fume impotently.
We’re watching the persecution of a man who used machines to show how other men were killing men with machines. We live in a world so totally ruled by machines and those who create them, use them and profit from them, that we are losing our humanity. I really believe this. I have been watching relationships die under the constant focus on machine supremacy. The study of living systems is scorned for the showmanship of putting a camera robot on Mars.
Meanwhile, who will stand in front of these forces? Brad Manning who really only stood up and yelled a little bit, but ended up behind bars for his trouble; Rachel Corrie, plowed under and buried alive by a man in a huge machine just this week vindicated by the courts as having just been mistaken.