After days of international pressure online and offline.against internet censorship legislation, the US congress has announced they are postponing votes. This is what happens when people join together. Millions and millions of people united to a common cause.
But make no mistake , this fight is far from over, this is not the end.... to be continued.....
their are still those in murky corridors who want to take away our free speech....
Stand up against these devastating bills that are due to be voted on by the Senate on the 24th of January.
If any of these bills are passed it would essentially shut down websites like youtube and as a consequence probably me and many other blogs. It would even have the powers to block google and facebook.
Sign this petition and help the fight http://www.mspaintadventures.com/blackout.html
A lot of things get taken for granted, the internet is one of them, we think we are free and can do what we want, but in reality we are very limited and restricted. The United States at this moment in time wants to hinder this even more by censoring the internet, despite wordwide protest. Many others out there are completely unaware that what they take for granted is under attack. What they want to do is basically destroy free speech, by search engine censorship, website censorship. The U.S Justice Department in their attempt to block websites that distribute links to/or hold pirated files.Credit card companies and payment gateways like Paypal could be asked to block payments and companies could be blacklisted by the U.S Justice Department if they attempt to place adds on these sites.
In solidarity websites like Wikipedia and Reddit went dark on Wednesday to protest against this proposed legislation.
Their plans will affect anyone who desires the freedom to browse anonymously, speak freely without fear of retribution, or protest without fear or arrest. SOPA will legitimise censorship in Americas continual quest for domination. If passed the U.S would be able to brand any website as illegal and cut of all support to it. This strikes me as something that dictators and repressive regimes would do. Draconian and not something I would have expected from a Western democracy, but that's what they disguise themselves as I guess.If people dared to openly critisice the U.S Government, well we would not be able to do it online anymore.
Over 9 million people have already signed petitions online and the American Government has made statements appearing to back down. but this fight is NOT over, and we must continue piling on the pressure, and keep telling Obama and his Congress to keep their filthy hands of our free speech and keep it's grubby hands off the Internet.
" Well, we have to imitate China and Syria. for our safety... to catch criminals...uhm... well... its like this see, ... when the States do it, it is OK, right? But when other countries who we do not like do it, then that is bad... yeah, that's the ticket!"
Here are Bradleys words as used in chat logs. Lamo's bits have been cut out, so we have Bradley talking to himself so to speak, talking things through.... it becomes a prose poem of much depth. thanks to all at http://wiseupforbradleymanning.wordpress.com/ and those who are keeping his torch alive.
"one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of asymmetrical warfare."
EXCERPTS FROM CHAT LOGS
hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for a long time... say 8-9 months... and you saw incredible things, awful things... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC... what would you do?
or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that matter
things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people
say... a database of half a million events during the iraq war... from 2004 to 2009... with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures... ? or 260,000 state department cables fromembassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?
Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack, when they wake up one morning, and finds an ntire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public...
uhm... crazy, almost criminal political backdealings... the non-PR versions of world events and crises... uhm... all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what theactual content of "aid packages" is: for instance, PR that the US issendind aid to Pakistan includes funding for water/food/clothing... that much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it isfor F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afhanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis
theres so mush... it affects everybody on earth... everywhere there's a US post... there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed... Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madagasgar, if its a country, and its recognised by the US as a countyr, its got dirt on it
it's open diplomacy... world-wide anarchy in CSV format... its Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth... its beautiful, and horrifying...
and... its important that it gets out... i feel' for some bizarre reason.
it might actually change something
i dont believe in good guys verses bad guys anymore... i only a plethora ofstates acting in self interest... with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless
i mean, we're better in some rspects... we're much more subtle... use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimise everything
its better than dissapearing in the middle of the night
but just because something is more subtle, doesn't make it right
i guess i'm too idealistic
i think the thing that got me most... that made me rethink the world more than anything was watching 15 detainess taken by the Iraqi Federal Police... for printing "anti-Iraqi literature" the Iraqi Federal Police would not cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate te matter, find out who the "bad guys" were, and how significant this was for the FPs... it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki... i had an interpreter read it for me... and when i found out that it was a benign critical critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trial within the PM's cabinet.. i immediately took the information and ran to the officer to explain what was going on... he didn't want to hear any of it... he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding MORE detainees....
verything started slipping after that... i saw things differently
i had alays questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth... but that was a point where i was a part of something. i was actively involved in something that i was completely against.
but i was part of it...
and completely helpless...
event occurs in 2007,
i watch video in 2009,
with no context,
do research,
forward indfomation to group of FOI activists,
more research occurs, video is released in 2010, those involved come forward to discuss publically, even add them as friends on FB. without them knowing who i am.
they touch my life, i touch their life, they touch my life again.. full circle
i just couldn't let these things stay inside ofthe system...and inside of my head
i recognised the value ofsome things.
knew what they meant..dug deeper
i watched that video cold, for instance
at first glance it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by helicopter... no big deal... about 2 dozen more where that came from right. but something struck me as odd with the van thing... and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officers's directory... so i looked inyo it, eventually tracked down the date, and then the exact GPS co-ord.. and it was like ok, so thats what happened.. cool... then i went to the regular internet.. and it was still on my mind... so i typed into google, the date and the location.
( this is NEW YORK TIMES REPORT OF INCIDENT as it DIDN't happen.
i kept this in my mind for weeks. probably a month and a half... before i forwarded it to them
it was unreal.. i mean, i've identified bodies before.. it's rare to do so, but usually it's just nobody
it humanized the whole thing... re-sensitized me
i dont know... im just, wierd i guess
i can't seperate myself from others
i feel connected to everybody.. . like they were distant family
i care?
i probably shouldn't have read sagan, feynman, and so many intellectual authors last summer...
(sigh)
we're human... and we're killing ourselves... and no-one seems to see that....
and it bothers me
apathy
apathy is far worse than the active participation
i prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy.
i think i've been traumatised too usch by reality, to care about consequences of shattering the fantasy
i'm not brave, im weak
like i've said before... im not so much scared of getting caughtt and facing the consequences at this point... as i am of being misunderstood, and never having the chance to live the life i wanted to...
well, it was forwarded to WL and god knows what happens now, hopefully worlwide discussion, debates and reforms... if not.. then we're doomed...as a species
i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens
the raction of the video gave me immense hope. CNN's iReport was overwhelmed... Twitter EXPLODED
people who saw, knew there was something wrong
i want people to see the truth
regardless ofwho they are
because without infomation
you cannot make onformed decisions as a public
if i knew then, what i knew now.... kind of thing...
or maybe im just young, naive and stupid
im hoping for the former
it cant be the latter
because if it is
... we're FUCKING SCREWED
well,
IT SHOULD BE BETTER
its sad
i mean what if i were someone more malicious
i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank
Why didn't you
Lamo asks.
because it's publc data, Bradley replied
i mean, the cables Lamo asks
it belongs in the public domain
infomation should be free
it belongs in the public domain
because another state would just take advantage
of the infomation.... try and get some edge
if its out in the open...
it should be a public good...
i'm just me
im crazy like that.
END OF EXTRACTS
Jack Omer - Song for Brasley Manning
The truth is out there another world is possiblee Bradley is a brave man, time to set him free.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Rosa Luxemberg being shot and murdered When her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. She has continued to inspire, a rousing figurehead to many.
Born in Russian controlled Poland, she was a Marxist theorist, philosopher and economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a nanturalised German citizen. She became a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDK Pil), and then the Social Democrat Party of Germany (SPD), and the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and the Communist Party of ermany (KPD).
In 1915 after the SPD supported German involvement in Word War I, she and Karl Liebnecht co-founded the anti war Spartacist League which became the Communist Party of Germany.
The Spartakists attempted an uprising , and subsequently she and Liebnecht were singled out by the authorities and she and other supporters were captured and murdered.
Her faith was a socialist idea that combined the powerful passion of both mind and heart. She devoted herself to the cause of revolution,and its preparation. She lived and breathed its fire, with selflessness and devotion, in every waking moment she dedicated herself to its cause. Standing bravely up for freedom with a strong powerful intellect. An individualist, she formulated her own ideas, using her own words to energise and radicalise the people and bring about a socialist revolution. She argued that " The mass strike is the first natural, impulsive form of every great revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and labour, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become. The chief form of bourgeois revolutions, the fight at the barricades, the open conflict with the armed poor of the state, is in the revolution today only the culminating point, only a moment on the process of the proletarian mass struggle."
She followed no leader, was no ones puppet and when she criticised Lenin, it was in relation to dictatorial aspects. She said " Terror has not crushed us. How can you put your trust in terror."
She quoted Leon Trotsky saying
"As Marxists we have never been idol worshippers of formal democracy." She went on
"All that really means is: We have always distinquished the social kernal of social inequality and lack of freedom hidden under the seet shell of formal equality and freedom - not in order to reject the latter but to spur the working class into being satisfied with the shell, but rather, by conquering political poer, to create a socialist democracy to replace bourgeois democracy - not to elininate democracy altogether....... but socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land, after the foundations of socialist economy are created, it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of poer by the Socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorshiip consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class - that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses, it must be under their direct influence, subjeected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the political training of the mass of the people."
Possibly her believe in democracy is what failed her philosophically, nevertheless the questions she posed still worth looking at today. She also wrote " the revolution is the sole form of war, and this is also its most vital law - in which the final victory can be prepared only by a sense of defeat.".
She had determination by the buckets and a steely willful commitment. A combatant who strove for peace, who did not hesitate in her beliefs, to speak and proclaim with her own independent reason her own opinion. For that alone I respect her. Her idellible mark has been left on the world, who combined ideals with action, so or long may Red Rosa be remembered.
Red Rosa
Epitaph by Bertolt Brecht is a short poem written by Bertolt Brecht in honour of Rosa Luxemburg.
Rosa Luxemburg: A reapraisal - Lelio Besco
Andre Deutsch, 1975.
Rosa Luxemburg: A life
- Elizvieta Ettinga , Beacon Press 1987.
"either capitalism will continue, with fresh wars and a rapid plunge intp chaos and anarchy, or else capitalist exploitation will be abolished." Rosa Luxemburg 14/12/18 Rote Fahne
"Revolutionary idealism .... can be maintained over any period of time only through the intensely active life of the masses themselves under conditions of unlimited freedom." Rosa Luxemburg
Surrealism is the business of poets who cannot benefit by surrealism. It
was the first appearance of the Logos that said, " The public be damned,"
by which he did not mean that they did not matter or he wanted to be
crucified by them, but that really he did not have a word to say to them.
This was surrealism
But even the business of ignoring the public is the business of the poet
and not the surrealism of the poet. The surrealism of the poet could not
write words.
To be lost in a crowd. Of images, of metaphors (whatever they were),
or words; this is a better surrender. Of the port who is lost in the crowd of
them. Finally.
16
it does not have to fit together. Like the pieces of a totally unfinished
jigsaw puzle my grandmother left in the bedroon when she died in the
living room. The pieces of the poetry or of this love.
Surrealism is a poem morethan this. The intention that things do not
fit together. As if my grandmother had chewed on her jigsaw puzzle
before she died.
Not as a gesture of contempt for the scattered nature of reality. Not
because the pieces would fit in time. But because this would be the
only way to cause an alliance between the dead and the living. To magic
the whole thing toward what they called God.
To mess around. To totally destroy the pieces. To build around them.
Rimbaud
They said he was nineteen; he had been kissed
So many times his face was frozen closed.
His eyes would watch the lovers walking past
His lips would sing and nothing else would move.
We grownups at the bar would watch him sing.
Christ, it was funny with that childish grace
He sang our blues forus; his frozen lips
Would lift and sing our blues out song for song.
Intemperance of heart and of the mind
Will block their progress to the last abyss
Unwinkingly; they listen to the wind
And find ceiling in the throat.
image by
R.H Quaytiman.
The collected |Books of Jack Spicer: Ed.Robin Blaser.Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975
Despite a pledge by US President to close Guantanemo Bay by 1 January 2010, today marks the day that this illegal prison was first opened, where prisoners, the majority of whom have been released without any charge whatever, have faced years of abuse and detention without trial. Many ssailed with coerced confession, with many have have benn treated to ordeals that amount to torture. In many cases even the circumstances of their detainment are questionable.
It stands in contradiction with agreements and standards of international law.
A total of 779 men have been held since it was opened. Today around 171 prisoners remain detained.
Amongst them is a British resident by the name of Shaker Aamer
who continues to be held despite long being cleared for release. His wife and children await his safe return in London.
For more details about this individual and other cases go here.
Amnesty International has described the legacy of Guantanamo Bay as a "decade of damage to human rights," across the world. " Guantanamo has politicised justice internationally by portraying detainess as having no human rights " Amnestyy has said.
Guantanemo Bay : A decade of damage to hunan rights - amnesty international
10 years on: End detentions at Guantanomo Bay - Amnesty International
So today marks 10 years of evading the law, 10 years of hiding justice.
Today also marks the day where Wikileaks Reveals Secret Files on All Prisoners
Despite the inhuman conditions that inmates have been contained, they were able to pass one another messages, using pebbles to scratch messages into foam cups they got with their meals. They were not however passing along escape plans or infomation about future attacks. They were sending each other poems. They have used words not weapons as power, but often their thoughts were destroyed. But many persevered . How their words survived shows their will and determination.
In the words of Seamus Heaney;
"Poetry has been defined as the imagination passing back against the pressures of reality, and these poems from Guantanemo are vivid proof of the rightness of that definition. Here are voices crying de profunis, yet the very fact of this articulation constitutes a victory, a guarantee of the spirits indomitable aspiration towards freedom and justice."
The U.S authorities have long tried to suppress peoples voices yet they failed to crush these. The human spritt is resiliant, it finds a way. Many carry political messages, but equally others speak of religious faith, home and longing and their thirst for freedom and justice.
To years have passed in far-away prisons,
Two years my eyes untouched by kohl.
Two years my heart sending out messages
To my homes where my family dwells,
Where lavender cotton sprouts
For grazing herds that leave well fed.
O Flij, explain to those who visit our home
How I used to live.
I know your thoughts are swirled as in awhirlwind,
When you hear the voice of my anguished soul.
Send sweet peace and greetings to Bu'mair;
Kiss him on his forehead. for he is my father.
Fate has divided us, like the parting of a parent from a newborn.
O Father, this is a prison of injustice.Its iniquity makes the mountains weep.
I have committed no crime and and and am guilty of no offense.
Curved claws have I. But I have been sold like a fattened sheep.
I have no fellows but the Truth. They told me to confess, but I am guiltless;
My deed are all honourable and need no apology.
They tempted me to turn away from the lofty summit of integrity,
To exchange this cage for a pleasant life.
By God, if they were to bind my body in chains, if all Arabs were to sell their faith, I would not sell mine.
I have composed these lines
For the day when your children have grown old.
O God - who governs creation with providence,
Who is one, singular and self-subsisting,
Who brings comfort and happy tidings, Whom we worship-
Grant serenity to a heart that beats with oppression,
And release thisprisoner from the tight bonds ofconfinement.
Is It True? - Osamas Abu Kamir
Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?
Is ittrue that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?
Is it truethat birds will migrate home again?
Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?
Is it true. This is true, These are all miracles.
But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanemo Bay?
Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?
I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.
To be with my children, each one part of me;
To be with my wife and the ones I love;
To be with my parents, my worlds tenderest hearts.
I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.
But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?
We are innocent, here, we'eve committed no crime.
Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still
Justice and compassion,remain in this world!
