Free Chelsea Manning

Throughout the suffering Manning has had to endure so far, from inhuman solitary confinement to a widely publicised military  court martial,the mainstream media has somehow neglected to cover this defendents greatest inner struggle. That she had been forced to live as a he throughout it all.
One day after being sentenced to 25 years in prison , the Army Private the world knows as Bradley Manning issued a statement about who she really is. " As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy treatment as soon as possible. I hope you will support me in this transition. I also reqeust that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and the use of the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility.'
The US army is refusing to give Chelsea Manning  the hormone therapy she has requested. I strongly object to this situation and believe Chelsea deserves the treatment she wants. Chelsea Manning should have her crushing 35 year sentence commuted by President Obama to the three and a quarter years she's already spent behind bars awaiting trial and sentence.
Manning is likely to serve her time at Fort Leavenworth, which does not offer hormone therapy or sex-reassignent surgery to prisoners, I just hope that the authorities see sense and do the right thing.
Mannings's leak of military data was driven, she says, by 'love for our country and a sense of duty for others'. and there was an undeniable interest in the public knowing more about the conduct of the US military in Iraq and in places like Afghanistan. With the Apache helicopter killings for instance, Reuters haas sought release of the cockpit video via Freedom of Information legislation, a route that proved totally unsuccessful.
Sometimes leaks are the only way.
Though Manning will be eligible for parole after serving a third of her sentence, many are finding the sentence completely disproportionate  when compared to the sentences given to other soldiers convicted of more serious crimes such as murder.
So in the meantime we must raise our voices, shouting free Chelsea Manning.

http://www.freebradleymanning.net/

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Petition one can sign here

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/manning-treatment

Bradley Manning's Post Sentence Statement

' It is dangerous to be right in matters in  which the established autorities are wrong'
- Voltaire

After 3 years, 12 weeks and 4 days , Bradley has escaped the death penalty, it is still too long for someone who in my opinion has done no wrong, jailed for being a conscientious human, for speaking the truth, jailed because his voice cared, and because being  brave  refused to succumb to silence.

 Bradley Manning's  has been sentenced  to 35 years in military prison, Manning's civilian defense attorney read a statement from Manning, which will be included in a filing requesting a pardon from President Obama.

 In this deeply moving testimony Coombs also describes what Manning was like after the sentence was announced. He recounted how he and his other defense attorneys had been crying. Manning looked at him and said, " It's okay, it's alright. I know you did your best. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to get through this."

Mannings's remarks to Coombs once again give an indication of the resolve and strong character that Manning  has as a  a human being.

Please sign this petition and stand together with Bradley Manning.
We owe him our thanks and gratitude for all the service he has done for humanity.
I will continue to support any further transition, until freedom is gained.

/http://www.standwithbrad.org/

Bradley Manning's statement appears below:

'The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of the concern for my country, and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We have been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on a trasitional battlefield. Due to this fact, we've  had to alter our methods of combatting the risk posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help fefend our country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we are doing. It wwas at this time that I realsed that our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity.
We consciously elected to devalue life both in Irag and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we percieved were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent children, instead of accepting resposibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached  countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionabble acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually an American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-concieved mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtue of democracy - the Trial of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism and the Japanese-American Internment camps - to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, there is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret thsat my actions hurt anyone or harmed the Unite States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified  information, I did out of a love for my country and my sense of duty to others.

If you deny my request for pardon, I will serve my request knowing that some time you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceieved in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.'

Statement from Nigel Kennedy on the BBC's censorship:

On Thursday 8th August, musician Nigel Kennedy performed at the Proms with the Palestine Strings - a group of young Palestinian musicians from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.
Towards the end of the concert, Kennedy said "We all know from experiencing this night of music tonight that giving equality and getting rid of apartheid, gives a beautiful chance for amazing things to happen."

The concert.including the quote was available on iPlayer here, although it's now unavailable:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b037v4q1

A recording of the concert was due to be aired on Friday 23d August at 7.30 pm.
Following ressure from pro-occupation lobbyists, including Baroness Deech, the Jewish chronicle has announced that the BBC will be cutting Kennedy's remarks from the televised broadcast amounting to political censorship on the part of the BBC

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/110366/bbc-cut-kennedy-slur-proms-broadcast

The article says the BBC confimed on Tuesday that his remarks would be edited out of the concert when it is shown on BBC 4 on August 23.

I believe to cut these comments would be an act of political censorship, seeing as there was nothing in Kennedy's actions or comments that were innacurate or untruthful. I believe that Mr Kennedy acted out against apartheid and have complained to the BBC about it's stance which you can do here:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Suppressing free speech and political dissent is the norm for state broadcasters under dictatorships. It gets kind of worrying when we start to see this kind of supression being practiced by our own state broadcater the BBC.

Interesting article here, which helps define apartheid in relation to Israel.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/defining-apartheid-israels-record/4095

and here is an online petition that you could sign if you have the inclination

http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/don-t-censor-the-palestine-prom?time=1376841379

Here is  an official statement from Nigel Kennedy about the BBC's unprecedented decision to censor his brief statement about Apartheid during his prom.
https://www.facebook.com/yaronstavi/posts/10151880378849048

'Nigel Kennedy finds it incredible and quite frightening that in the 21st century it is still such an insurmountable problem to call things the way they are. He thinks that once we can all face issues for what they really are we can finally have a chance of finding solutions to problems such as human rights and even, prhaps, free speech. His first reaction to the BBC's censorship & imperial lack of impartiality was to refuse to play for an employee who is influenced by such dubious outside forces.

Mr Kennedy has, however, reminded himself that his main purpose is to provide the audience with the best music, he can deliver. To withdraw his services would be akin to a taxi driver refusing to drive their customer due to their political incorrectness. He, therefore, is not withdrawing his services that he owes to his audience, but is half expecting to be replaced by someone deemed more suitable than him due to their surplas of opportunism and career aspirations.

Mr Kennedy is glad, however, that by censoring him the BBC has created such a huge platform for the discussion of its own impartiality, its respect (or lack of it) for free speech and for the discussion of the miserable apartheid forced on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government supported by so many governments from the outside world.

Mr Kennedy believes his very small statement during his concert was purely descriptive and not political whatsoever."

PSC & Pink Floyd's Roger Waters condemn BBC for 'Political Censorship' over Nigel Kennedy

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/nigelkennedy/

E.M Forster (1/1/1879 -7/7/70) - In praise of reciprocal dishonesty

 

 

' I do not bang or blow them about as much as I should, or oil their leather backs, or align those backs properly. They are unregimented. Only at night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, and the lights are turned off, do they come into their own and attain a collective dignity. It is very pleasant to sit with them in the firelight for a couple of minutes, not reading, not even thinking, but aware that that they, with their accumulated wisdom and charm, are waiting to be used, and that my library, in its tiny imperfect way, is a successor to the great private libraries of the past. 'Do you ever lend books?' someone may say in a public-spirited tone of voice at this point. Yes, I do, and they are not returned, and still I lend books. Do I ever borrow books? I do, and I can see some of them unreturned around me. I favour reciprocal dishonesty.'

From
My Library (1951)
Ditto.....

Charles Bukowski ( 16/8/20 -9/3/94) - Alone With Everybody / Be Kind / Oh Yes

Cheers and thanks Charles whose  birthday would have been  today

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but  keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds
fresh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the jukyards fill
the madhouse fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills


Be Kind

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious,
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with kindliness,
especially if they are
aged
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see,
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear,
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted life
among so many
deliberatelt
wasted
lives
is.

Oh Yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realise this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than t
too late.

DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM

This is a video from Amnesty International  with the link below that  tells you

DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK

http://www.ifoundtheletter.org/secretvideo

That contains a secret  message from well known Chinese contemporary  artist and social and political activist Ai Weiwei, promoting free expression.


' My opponent makes  a move then I make the next one -  Ai Weiwei

http://www.facebook.com/amnestyglobal?fref=ts

REMEMBER

NEVER BLINDLY FOLLOW RULES

It's Not Unusual To Boycott Apartheid

Sir Tom Jones is due to play in Israel later this year. Please ask him to heed the Palestinian call for boycott and ask him not to play in apartheid Israel.

Sir Tom Jones: Please don't play in apartheid Israel

Join the campaign here:-

https://www.change.org/en-GB/organisations/cardiff_psc

International Welsh superstar Tom Jones is scheduled to perfprm in Israel at Tel Aviv's Nokia Arena on 26 October.

We say Why? Why? Why?

Israel is guilty of ongoing ethnic cleansing, land and water theft and stands accused of war crimes. It is the subject of several UN resolutions which it routinely ignores.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank since 1967 and continues to impose a harsh blockade on Gaza, which even UK P.M David Cameron has called the largest open air prison in the world.

There is also a facebook page that you can find here

https://www.facebook.com/Tom.Jones.NotUnusual.Boycott.Apartheid

It should be noted that Sir Tom Jones was persuaded by Welsh campaigners without much difficulty to not go back and play in apartheid South Africa, it would be a lovely achievement if he was able to reconsider his position in relation to performing in Israel.
Artists must  continually  be asked not to contribute  to the whitewashing of Israel's occupation. The logic of cultural boycotts is that they hurt the image of the oppressor state, making it and its products less appealing to the international public.
I would be very grateful if Sir Tom Jones was to pay heed to the call, and join   other high profile performers that I admire, in responding positively to the calls for boycott.

We should never be ashamed  that apartheid, occupation, siege, blockades and institutionalised racism in all it's forms must be challenged and abolished.

P J Harvey releases Guantanamo Protest Song for Shaker Aamer

                                

Pj Harvey last Saturday released a new song to highlight the ongoing detention of the last British resident held inside the US prison at Guantanamo Bay.
The track, called Shaker Aamer, is available to stream  on behalf of the campaigning group Reprieve, which you can find a link for here:-
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/
It follows her politically charged album from 2001 'Let England Shake' which explored the horrors of war, and continues to cement her reputation as one of Britains finest songwriters. This new song describes the agony of it's title subjects four month hunger strike as he endures the prison's feeding tubes, restraining chairs and shackles.
Aamer has been detained in Guantanamo for more than 11 years , despite being cleared for release in 2007, and remains imprisoned without charge or trial. He has a British wife and his four children - the youngest of whome he has never met - were all born in Britain. They live in Tooting, south London.
The British government has repeatedly stated that it wants him back in the UK and only last week under mounting international pressure , the US announced it is to restart transfers from the prison. Concerns remain, though , that Aamer might be forced to be sent to Saudi Arabia and imprisoned there instead of being reunited with the family in the UK.
More than half the detainess inside Guantanamo Bay remain on hunger strike in protest at their indefinite and illegal detention. Aamer has recently alleged that prison guards had been sexually assaulting him and that he is subject daily to often violent 'forced cell extractions'.
Aamers lawyer : Clive Stafford Smith , Reprieves director and Aamers lawyer, said " We hope people listen to this song and think about Shaker Aamer's plight: detained for 11 years, without charge or trial, despite having been cleared for release by both Bush and Obama."
" The UK government must do everything it can to bring Shaker back home to his wife and kids in London, where he belongs. PJ Harvey has written a wonderful song - I know Shaker will be deeply moved by it, and hope that, with the support of the public, he will one day be able to listen to it in freedom."
 Here is a link to a Shaker Aamer campaigning group, which will lead to various petitions and campaigns conducted on his behalf:-
http://www.saveshaker.org/

Shaker Aamer

No water, for three days.
I cannot sleep, or stay awake.

Four months hunger strike.
Am I dead, or am I alive?

With metal tubes we are force fed.
I honestly wish I was dead.

Strapped in the restraining chair.
Shaker aamer, your friend.

In Camp 5 eleven years.
Never charged. Six years cleared.

They took away my one note pad,
and then refused to give it back.

i can't think straight, I write, then stop,
Your friend Shaker Aamer. Lost.

the guards just do what they're told,
the doctors just do what they're told.

Like an old car i'm rusting away.
You're friend Shaker, Guantanamo Bay.

Visiting Hiroshima - Marcel Junod (14/5/04 -16/6/61)

Today marks the anniversary of the devastating effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people and injured more than 70,000 others.
For many across the globe, it is an anniversary that we sadly cannot forget.
Ceremonies are held internationally to commemorate the victims and to remind humanity of the horrors of war and the evil of nuclear weapons. We should not be aloud to forget this war crime, for that is what this action was.
Marcel Junod was a Swiss red cross doctor who was one of the first foreign doctors to reach hiroshima, treating many of the bombing survivors and injured people. The following is an extract from his own personal harrowing account.

' The bare cone of Fuijiiama was just visible on the horizon as we flew over the 'inland sea' which lay beneath us like a lavender-blue carpet picked out in green and yellow with its numerous promontories and wooded islands...
Towards midday, a huge white patch appeared on the ground below us. This chalky desert, looking around like ivory in the sun, surrounded by a crumble of twisted ironwork and ash heaps, was all that remained of Hiroshima...
The journalist described the main official buildings of the town, which waere built of reinforced concrete and dominated a sea of low-rooted Japanese houses extending over six miles to the wooded hills I could see in the distance.
'The town was not much damaged,' he explained. 'It had suffered very little from the bombing. There were only two minor raids, one on March  19th last by a squadron of American naval planes, and one on April 30th by a Flying Fortress.
'On August 6th there wasn't a clod in the sky above Hiroshima, and a mild, hardly perceptible wind blew from the south. Visibility was almost perfect for ten or twelve miles.
'At nine minutes past seven in the morning an air-raid warning sounded and four American B-29 planes appeared. To the north of the town, two of them turned and made off to the south, and dissapeared in the direction of the Shoho Sea. The other two, after having circled the neighbourhood of Shukai, flew off at high speed southwards in the direction of the Bingo Sea.
At 7.31 the all-clear was given. Feeling themselves in safety people came out of their shelters and went about their affairs and the work of the day began.
'Suddenly a glaring whitish pinkish light appeared in the sky accompanied by an unnatural tremor which was followed almost immediately by a wave of suffocating heat and a wind which swept away everything in its path.
'Within a few seconds the thousands of people in the streets and the gardens in the centre of the town were scorched by a wave of searing heat.
Many were killed instantly, others lay writhing on the ground screaming in agony from the intolerable pain of their burns. Everything standing upright in the way of the blast, walls, houses, factories and other buildings, was annihilated and the debris spun round in a whirlwind and was carried up ino the air. Trams were picked up and tossed aside as thogh they had neither weight nor solidity. Trains were flung off the rails as though they were toys. Horses, dogs and cattle suffered the same fate as human beings. Every living thing was petrified in an attitude of indescibable suffering. Even the vegetation did not escape. Trees went up in the flames, the rice plants lost their greeness, the grass burned on the ground like dry straw.
'Beyond the zone of utter death in which nothing remained alive houses collapsed in a whirl of beams, bricks and girders. Up to almost three miles from the centre of the explosion lightly built houses were flattened as though they had been built of cardboard. Those who were inside wwere either killed or wounded. Those who managed to extricate themselves by some miracle found themselves surrounded by a ring of fire. And the few who succeeded in making their way to safety generally died twenty or thirty days later from the delayed effects of the deadly gamma rays. Some of the reinforced concrete or stione buildings remained standing but their interiors were completely gutted by the blast.
'About half an hour after the explosion whilst the sky all around Hiroshima was still cloudless a fine rain began to fall on the town and went on for about five minutes. It was caused by the sudden rise of over-heated air to a great height, where it condensed and fell back as rain. Then a violent wind rose and the fires extended with terrible rapidity, beacause most Japanese houses are built only of timber and straw.
'By the evening the fire began to die down and then it went out. There was nothing left to burn. Hiroshima had ceased to exist.'
The Japanes broke off and then pronounced one word with idescibable but restrained emotion: 'Look.'
About two and a half miles from the centre of the town all the buildings had been burnt out and destroyed. Only traces of the foundations and piles of debris and rusty charred ironwork were left. This zone was like the devastated areas of Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe after the mass fall of incendiaries.
At three-quarters of a mile from the centre of the explosion nothing at all was left. Everything haddissapeared. It was a stony waste littered with debris and twisted girders. The inccandescent breath of the fire had swept away every obstacle and all that remained upright were one or two fragments of stone walls and a few stoves which had remained inconcrously on their base.
We got out of the car and made our way through the ruins into the centre of the dead city. Absolute silence reigned in the whole necropolis.

9 September, 1945

REPRINTED FROM:
Warrior without Weapons - Marcel Junod,
Cape 1951

For years the American government refused to release images and photographs, such was the sheer horror that they did not want the world to Know.
Those who did not get incarcented on the spot, were to be traumatised for the rest of their lives. Hiroshima and Later Nagasaki are  remembered  today as the most deadliest slaughter of modern civilains in modern history.
Hibakusha is a term widely used in Japan , that refers to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it translates as 'explosion effected/ Survivor of the Light. This post is dedicated to them and and  to all who were less fortunate.
Hiroshima now stands again, but  68 years laters reminds us why the world needs to get rid of  the madness  of nuclear weapons and proliferation, once and for all.

DEATH IN LONDON : Stop the Arms Fair

28,000 arms buyers and sellers are due to arrive in London in September, but we want to be there to stop them.
Please order postcards and posters if you can spread the word.
Put Sunday 8th September down for massive day of action.
http://www.stopthearmsfair.org.uk/order-leaflets-to-stop-the-arms-fair/