Yesterday Truthdig and today Dandelion Salad published an article by Christopher Hedges, who was present at Ft Meade during the hearing in which Bradley Manning delivered his first public statement. Journalist Alexa O’Brien has transcribed Manning’s statement which is also published at Dandelion Salad. Below is Hedges’ entry We Are Bradley Manning:
I was in a military courtroom at Fort Meade in Maryland on Thursday as Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted giving classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as government misconduct. A statement that Manning made to the court was a powerful and moving treatise on the importance of placing conscience above personal safety, the necessity of sacrificing careers and liberty for the public good, and the moral imperative of carrying out acts of defiance. Manning will surely pay with many years—perhaps his entire life—in prison. But we too will pay. The war against Bradley Manning is a war against us all.
This trial is not simply the prosecution of a 25-year-old soldier who had the temerity to report to the outside world the indiscriminate slaughter, war crimes, torture and abuse that are carried out by our government and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a concerted effort by the security and surveillance state to extinguish what is left of a free press, one that has the constitutional right to expose crimes by those in power. The lonely individuals who take personal risks so that the public can know the truth—the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Ron Ridenhours, the Deep Throats and the Bradley Mannings—are from now on to be charged with “aiding the enemy.” All those within the system who publicly reveal facts that challenge the official narrative will be imprisoned, as was John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst who for exposing the U.S. government’s use of torture began serving a 30-month prison term the day Manning read his statement. There is a word for states that create these kinds of information vacuums: totalitarian. (more…)
Following the publication of Aqua Keene Parking Force, another video featuring similar graphic design has appeared on the Fr33manTVraw youtube channel. In this episode, Slavoj Žižek and Charlie Rose discuss the monstrosity of the Stalin regime in historical context. Zizek analyzes the suicidal nature of Stalinism and the implosion of the top-heavy, bureaucratic Central Committee.
If you’ve been reading this blog for the past year, you know that the people calling themselves the “City of Keene” raided my tenants’ home, the Keene Activist Center, in the summer of 2012. The city people had claimed, with no evidence current at the time of the raid, that it was being run as a “tourist home” or “lodginghouse” and is subject to the city ordinances regarding interconnected, AC-wired smoke detectors being mandatory on each floor. Here’s an article with some detail and initial court filings.
“The right reserved to the people by this Article is not such a broad and unlimited right of insurrection and rebellion as to permit any group which is dissatisfied with existing government to lawfully attempt … to overthrow the government by force or violence.”
Of course, I have not advocated force or violence as I point out a second time in my response to their objection. I am engaged in peaceful revolution against the idea of “the state”. Though, I prefer to call it evolution.
Finally, the city’s attorney, Thomas P. Mullins, claims in his objection that:
Requesting Defendant to comply with a fire department regulation designed to protect life and property, including those of Defendant and his tenants, can hardly be construed by a reasonable individual as a “perversion” of the government justifying the right to revolt.
Whoa! Hang on. This has all just been a “request”? (more…)
The Fr33manTVraw channel recently received one of its largest uploads to date. The 82 minute video is the first third of a compilation of raw footage from our group’s first day on the ground for the NATO summit protests. The videos have been released first to the raw channel, and then to Free Concord’s youtube channel as they are edited and narrated to give the footage context. For those looking for the entire journey of the camera, the raw footage includes practically everything filmed. The previous day’s release, Day Zero, is just over nine minutes edited and just under ten raw. Within the coming weeks, a shortened, finished product will publish from the following day. In the meantime, the raw first segment of Day One: Boots on the Ground is live:
Yesterday truth-out.com posted an update on the NATO 3 case in Illinois, where three travelling protesters still remain caged on state-level charges of domestic terrorism after their apartment was raided by police days before the historic protest weekend.
A handful of panels featured at the 2013 New Hampshire Liberty Forum were recorded for Free Concord, and raw footage continues to appear on Fr33manTVraw. Embedded below is Pete Eyre presenting on the project of CopBlock.org that he co-founded in 2010. He offers solid advice from an experienced activator. Check out the playlist set for links to other videos from the weekend in Nashua as they publish.
Posted hours ago to Vice News was an article connecting the zealous prosecutions of Aaron Schwartz and Bradley Manning. John Cornyn, a US senator from Texas authored a letter to current US attorney general Eric Holder inquiring as to whether Schwartz’s FOIA requests related to Manning’s treatment were a motivating factor for his own prosecution. See DJ Pangburn’s article Aaron Swartz and Bradley Manning: How the US Government Contains Those Who Would Free Information.
When Swartz walked into the MIT server room to liberate millions of academic papers (freeing knowledge in the process), he was unwittingly opening the door to his very own cell alongside Manning. One need not be in a tiny room to feel the walls closing in. The law does a great job of that—the shadow of America’s boot heel spreading all around, snuffing out the light. Defendants are forced to deal: plead guilty and serve a short sentence, or fight the system and serve much more time. Justice indeed.
Yesterday Truthdig and today Dandelion Salad published an article by Christopher Hedges, who was present at Ft Meade during the hearing in which Bradley Manning delivered his first public statement. Journalist Alexa O’Brien has transcribed Manning’s statement which is also published at Dandelion Salad. Below is Hedges’ entry We Are Bradley Manning:
![smokeDetector[1]](https://i0.wp.com/freekeene.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/smokeDetector11-150x150.jpg?resize=150%2C150)
If you’ve been reading this blog for the past year, you know that the people calling themselves the “City of Keene” raided my tenants’ home, the Keene Activist Center, in the summer of 2012. The city people had claimed, with no evidence current at the time of the raid, that it was being run as a “tourist home” or “lodginghouse” and is subject to the city ordinances regarding interconnected, AC-wired smoke detectors being mandatory on each floor. 
