Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney's contradictory statements on Bradley Manning sentence.

Here's Alex Gibney's (who recently directed a documentary on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks titled WE STEAL SECRETS) interview with veteran Hollywood columnist Anne Thompson (contradictory statements highlighted by me):

Anne Thompson: Is this heavy sentence a miscarriage of justice?
Alex Gibney: "Yes, he's been scapegoated. In a way that's the equivalent of the British army hanging someone from the yardarm. The Obama administration wanted to set an example, and have done it in a brutal way with forms of torture beginning with his confinement. They charged him with aiding the enemy, which thankfully he was found not guilty of, but also of many counts in the Espionage Act. This is the great crime of the Obama administration, trying to turn leaks into treason when they're really not the same thing."

Is the Obama administration, in its fight against terrorism, continuing the practices of the Bush era?
"In this way they're behaving worse. It's the Obama administration going overboard, using the Espionage Act to prosecute leakers. In this way they've gone beyond what the Bush administration has done. You have to look at the overall spectrum of what the Obama administration was willing to do in the larger sense of justice. The Obama administration refused to prosecute anyone for torture. Jose Rodriguez of the CIA intentionally destroyed videotaped enhanced interrogations which were evidence of crimes. Nothing happened; he wasn't even prosecuted. While Manning gets 35 years for leaking material, not to a foreign government, and he didn't get any money. He may have been naive, but he leaked it to the world and the press because he thought it was important information that people should know. Much of the information he leaked was important."

I'm glad that I saw that drone video. 
"The video is shocking and frankly should never have been classified. The Army claims it wasn't, but they play games all the time with classification. Documents show that both the Bush and Obama administrations grossly underrated war crimes in a context of mendacity. Revealing their criminality was important for public debate in a democracy. I want to hold them to account, but I don't want a world where every private leaks everything on his computer. He pled guilty on a number of charges. They're charging him as a spy. He did not damage U.S. national security. He did cause embarrassment. But to send someone away for the rest of his life for causing embarrassment seems a perversion of justice."

Here's a link to the Thompson On Hollywood column with the interview:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/wikileaks-director-alex-gibney-reacts-to-bradley-mannings-35-year-sentence-a-perversion-of-justice

Bradley Manning's defense attorney on Manning's prison sentence.

From the GUARDIAN coverage of Bradley Manning's 35-year prison sentence for whistle blowing:

Here's a summary of the news conference with David Coombs, defense attorney for Bradley Manning:

• The Manning legal team is formally applying to President Barack Obama for a pardon "or at the very least [to] commute his sentence to time served". Requesting a pardon, Manning will tell president Obama he acted "out of a love to my country, and a sense of duty to others".

• Manning, who will be imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, comes up for parole in seven years, Coombs said. If parole is not granted he would receive a new parole hearing each year. Coombs vowed to master the legal intricacies of parole requests and to carry the Manning case forward. 

• Coombs held out hope that Manning would be released "in the near term": "I'm hoping that he goes on with life and becomes productive. If so this doesn't have to define him."

• Coombs described shock and sadness at the length of the sentence, which he depicted as unfair. After the sentence was read he and his legal team cried, Coombs said. Manning did not cry. "He looks to me, and he says, 'It's OK. IT's alright. I know you did your best. I'm going to be OK. I'm going to get through this."

• Coombs said the trial was unfair because it was closed. "A lot of stuff that happened would not have happened, because the American public would see it and say, 'that's not fair,'" Coombs said. 

• The long sentence would discourage future potential whistleblowers, Coombs said: "This does send a message, and it's a chilling one."

• The Edward Snowden case emerged at an inconvenient time for the Manning defense, Coombs said, in the sense that government frustration over whistleblowers was redoubled. "But it also had some benefits for us," Coombs said, "because it brought attention back to [Manning's] case."

THE NATION on Bradley Manning.

Excerpt from Chase Madar's article in THE NATION "The Trials of Bradley Manning:
There is a proper response to the hypocritical and dysfunctional inconsistency of our secrecy laws, and that would be the swift declassification of some 99 percent of our state secrets (government documents are classified at the rate of about 1.83 million per week), with real security for the tiny remainder of legitimate secrets (nuclear launch codes, for example). And for the record, neither Julian Assange nor Bradley Manning has ever called for “total transparency,” a straw-man position often attributed to them by the self-important guardians of extreme government secrecy.

Instead of more open government, we are getting more secrecy, more prosecutions of whistleblowers and the altogether creepy “insider threat” program, which requires officials to report on the infosec failings of colleagues or face prosecution. (This institutionalization of mutual suspicion is not limited to national security organs but extends to agencies like the Education Department and the Social Security Administration.) Progressives who naïvely believe the solution is more congressional oversight should note that many in Congress have been pushing for even more leak probes and harsher prosecutions than the president.

Obama has launched eight prosecutions based on the Espionage Act of 1917—more than all previous presidents combined, who together have managed only three such trials. Maybe he feels he has nothing to lose, since this clampdown placates the national security apparatus and wimp-proofs his right flank, while those who care about civil liberties were probably not going to vote Republican anyway. As a result, the former constitutional law professor who ran as the whistleblowers’ best friend in 2008 is now their scourge.

It would take great powers of imagination to blame any part of our recent military debacles on leaks and whistleblowers. If someone had leaked the full National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, would more people have decided—like then-Senator Bob Graham, who voted against the invasion after reading the unredacted report—to oppose the war before it began? If the Afghan War logs had somehow come out during Obama’s months of deliberation before escalating that conflict, would he have made the same decision—one that has yielded only thousands more civilian and military casualties?

But it is Bradley Manning we have put on trial, not the impresarios of war, not the CIA torturers or their lawyers. The Iraq War, which began with a lurid overture of secrecy and lies, is now getting its dissonant coda: a private court-martialed for telling the truth, a trial unfolding behind a thick wall of official secrecy, in which the court’s media center was, on the day of the prosecution’s closing statement, patrolled by armed soldiers peering over the shoulders of typing reporters. “Pfc. Manning was not a humanist. He was a hacker,” said prosecutor Maj. Ashden Fein. “He was not a whistleblower. He was a traitor.” The past decade has witnessed the carnage unleashed by militarized cluelessness. In the story of Bradley Manning, who has been the ethical citizen and who the rampaging criminals?

The full article can be read at http://www.thenation.com/article/175512/trials-bradley-manning?page=0,0#axzz2akyLbxf1

NEW YORK magazine's Frank Rich on the Bradley Manning verdict.

From http://www.nymag.com

Yesterday, Private Bradley Manning was convicted on multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act (which could result in 136 years of prison) but was found not guilty of the most serious charge against him, "aiding the enemy." What do you make of the verdict?What matters here is not that Manning was found guilty of leaking — which he admitted to and will not get anything like 136 years for — but that he was found not guilty of “aiding the enemy.” That “not guilty” is a good thing, but it doesn’t mitigate the reality that “aiding the enemy” was a bogus and dangerous charge in the first place. The fact that the government would even pursue it is chilling to a free press. Under the prosecution’s Orwellian logic, essentially any classified information given by a whistle-blower to a journalistic outlet (whether WikiLeaks or the Times, which published Manning-WikiLeaks revelations) amounts to treason if “the enemy” can read it. Well, the enemy, whomever it may be at any given moment, can read anything it wants on the Internet, the government can (and does) stamp its every embarrassing action “classified,” and so almost any revelatory investigative reporting on national security (the Pentagon Papers, the Abu Ghraib revelations, you name it) could in principle lead to the death penalty (even if that punishment wasn’t sought in the Manning case). That’s a powerful deterrent, clearly designed to stop whistle-blowers, reporters, and news organizations from taking the risk of uncovering government misbehavior. It’s a particularly devastating blow at a time when investigative journalism is shrinking anyway because of the financial woes of the news business. The Obama administration’s increasingly virulent efforts to shut down hard-hitting journalism — exemplified as well, recently, by the attempt to force Times reporter James Risen to testify in another leak case — is not just outrageous on First Amendment grounds but also makes you wonder what else the White House is hiding. Let’s not forget that high among Manning’s revelations were the cockpits videos chronicling the killing of civilians in an American air strike. What else is there that the Obama administration is so desperate to keep quiet that it will take on leakers with a virulence unmatched by any modern White House?

Sharing an e-mail from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) re Guantanamo, WikiLeaks and detention.

Dear Mr. McCarty:

 

Thank you for your letter regarding the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  This is an important issue, and I welcome the opportunity to share my point of view with you.

 

I continue to support the closure of Guantanamo Bay, consistent with the need to prosecute, transfer, or hold the remaining detainees appropriately. 

 

Upon taking office in January 2009, President Obama ordered that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba be closed within a year.  He also established task forces, which reviewed U.S. interrogation and detention policies and evaluated how individuals currently held at Guantanamo should be handled – whether to prosecute them, transfer them to the custody of other nations, or continue to detain them in other circumstances.  For various reasons, as you may be aware, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is still in operation today. 

 

I have long felt that Guantanamo has tarnished the American image abroad and done great harm to our Nation's efforts to combat international terrorism.  In 2007, I introduced the first legislation in the Senate to require closure of the facility.  I continue to believe that the United States is capable of handling the detainees at Guantanamo Bay through alternatives that utilize the strengths of the American justice system without compromising national security, including the option of prosecuting detainees for violations of U.S. law or the law of war – both in federal criminal courts and military commissions. 

 

Our federal courts, judges, and prosecutors are the best in the world.  They have proven to be fully capable of dealing with extremely dangerous persons, classified intelligence, and other factors, as was the case with Ahmed Ghailani, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.  On January 25, 2011, a federal judge sentenced Mr. Ghailani to life in prison for conspiracy to destroy the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.  This case shows that despite recent criticism of putting terrorists on trial in our federal court system, federal courts continue to deliver the punishment that terrorists deserve. 

 

On April 24, 2011, the organization WikiLeaks released over 700 files related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.  This was the fourth leak of classified U.S. government documents by WikiLeaks; previously, the organization released files related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and cables from the U.S. Department of State.  I believe these leaks have seriously harmed the national security of the United States. 

 

In regard to the Guantanamo documents themselves, I believe they demonstrate that, in addition to terrorists who participated in attacks against the United States, innocent individuals were wrongly imprisoned for years at Guantanamo Bay.  The documents show that many of those detained at the facility should not have been. 

 

Again, thank you for your letter.  Please be assured that I will continue to do everything necessary to achieve the goal of closing Guantanamo in an effective and safe manner.  If you have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.

Sincerely yours,


  Dianne Feinstein
         United States Senator

Glenn Greenwald on nonconformist political commentary.

Reprinting the opening paragraphs of Glenn Greenwald's article on how the mainstream media keeps Noam Chomsky away from the Cool Pundits table in the cafeteria of acceptable consensus ideas.  And the words/phrases "poets", "poetry community", "writers" and "literary community" could be plugged into these paragraphs (along with names of writers and artists with works and ideas not considered Mainstream)--and Greenwald's comments make sense in another context.
The entirety of Greenwald's column can be found at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/23/noam-chomsky-guardian-personality

One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, "style" and even mental health of those who challenge them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals. In the US, those who take even the tiniest steps outside of political convention are instantly decreed "crazy", as happened to the 2002 anti-war version of Howard Dean and the current iteration of Ron Paul (in most cases, what is actually "crazy" are the political orthodoxies this tactic seeks to shield from challenge).
This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society's most powerful factions and their institutions. Nixon White House officials sought to steal the files from Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office precisely because they knew they could best discredit his disclosures with irrelevant attacks on his psyche. Identically, the New York Times and partisan Obama supporters have led the way in depicting both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange as mentally unstable outcasts with serious personality deficiencies. The lesson is clear: only someone plagued by mental afflictions would take such extreme steps to subvert the power of the US government.
A subtler version of this technique is to attack the so-called "style" of the critic as a means of impugning, really avoiding, the substance of the critique. Although Paul Krugman is comfortably within mainstream political thought as a loyal Democrat and a New York Times columnist, his relentless attack against the austerity mindset is threatening to many. As a result, he is barraged with endless, substance-free complaints about his "tone": he is too abrasive, he does not treat opponents with respect, he demonizes those who disagree with him, etc. The complaints are usually devoid of specifics to prevent meaningful refutation; one typical example: "[Krugman] often cloaks his claims in professional authority, overstates them, omits arguments that undermine his case, and is a bit of a bully." All of that enables the substance of the critique to be avoided in lieu of alleged personality flaws.

SUMMARY OF THE 2013 ACADEMY AWARDS

Whistleblowing (i.e. saying too much) in government and poetry.

From a Peter Van Buren article recently reprinted in SALON about the Obama Administration's dislike of whistleblowers; this could also be interpreted in the context of when poets speak out about perceived inequities (favoring friends/acolytes not so much for quality of writing but because they are friends/acolytes) or less-than-ethical behavior in their communities.  Highlighting by me:

Government bureaucrats know that this sort of slow-drip intimidation keeps people in line. It may, in the end, be less about disciplining a troublemaker than offering visible warning to other employees. They are meant to see what’s happening and say, “Not me, not my mortgage, not my family!” — and remain silent. Of course, creative, thoughtful people also see this and simply avoid government service.
In this way, such a system can become a self-fulfilling mechanism in which ever more of the “right kind” of people chose government service, while future “troublemakers” self-select out — a system in which the punishment of leakers becomes the pre-censorship of potential leakers.

A Glenn Greenwald quote re Bradley Manning NEW YORK magazine profile.

"The hallmark of political and media establishments is to depict meaningful dissent from its orthodoxies as a form of mental illness, and conversely, acceptance of (or at least acquiescence to) its orthodoxies as a requirement for mental health (even when, as is true now, its orthodoxies are themselves warped and ill)."

This kind of get-right-with-us behavior also makes sense in the context of poetry/literary communities.

Glenn Greenwald's full column about Manning, the NEW YORK profile and a miltary vet defending Manning can be found here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/11/manning/index.html