Video. Guantánamo Bay files: 'The vast majority were not extremists'
Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, discusses the 'extraordinarily thin' evidence used to hold prisoners and the 'nonsense' cooked up by a group of serial informers to get privileges.
The crowds that attend demonstrations on behalf of alleged Wikileaks-contributor Bradley Manning seemed to grow in their numbers with each new report from outside the military brig at Quantico, in Virginia.
The video taken over the weekend (below) is of controntation between what appeared to be as many Virginia State Police as protestors. The conflict culminated in arrests after sit-ins by members of the crowd led to police removal of famed Pentagon Papers leaker, Daneil Ellsberg, and Colonel Ann Wright.
The sit-in was staged after the protestors were denied access to the base of the World War II memorial of Iwo Jima, to lay flowers commemorating the 'uncommon valor' of Bradley Manning.
Michael Whitney at FDL is running the twitter feed from Jane Hamsher, right now, who was being harrased by the military at Quantico along with David House, They were there with the required visitor's pass to meet with the the alleged leaker of #cablegate, Bradley Manning, to Wikileaks in order to deliver a petition concerning Manning's treatment:
BREAKING: Military Harassing David House, Jane Hamsher for Visiting Bradley Manning
Jane Hamsher is with David House who is trying to visit Pvt. Bradley Manning at Quantico today while carrying a petition with 42,000 signatures requesting humane treatment for Manning. The military isn’t making it easy at all and detained Jane and David for two hours. We’re publishing her tweets as well as David House’s tweets here as a post in case you haven’t been able to follow them on Twitter (@JaneHamsher and @DavidMHouse
UPDATE: At 2:50pm the military released Jane and David, and told David he could go off base and come back on to visit Bradley. But visiting hours end at 3pm, so Bradley won’t get a visit. We’ll have more soon.
Welcome to Bananastan, USA. Where the real media of the day get detained by the military and their car towed away and the fake media will probably file a report blaming them for being angry Bloggers.
Update below the fold...
The maxim embraced by holders of power in governments throughout history is, "What they don't know, won't hurt you."
The author of My Lai, WikiLeaks and the Pacification of Perception begs the question,
From My Lai to WikiLeaks, America's individualistic and nationalistic perceptions of the world and humanity has always been one of turning away, as if everything was normal. But was/is it?
Cross posted at dKos
There are an estimated 18 Americans still missing in Iraq.
The missing cover a wide range of citizens, from a civilian installing water bottling equipment to military personnel to civilian and government contractors to private security. At least four of the missing are Iraqi American - one of whom is a Staff Sargent.
The WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs (mirror site) includes a number of the earliest known incident reports for the kidnappings of most of these Americans. And of some of the kidnapping victims, absolutely nothing is known beyond what is in these early reports.
To this day, some of the victim's identities have never been revealed to the public.
Discretion: avoiding offense and protecting privacy. Discretion, or rather lack of it, is at the heart of the Wikileaks free-for-all. And, against what one might expect, it's not the discretion of Julian Assange that's in question. (In fact, the whole Assange to-do is more of a sideshow than anything else: if it hadn't been he, it would have been someone else.)
Just how far in advance? We have yet to figure that out. 6 Months? At the very least. More? Anything to suggest it wasn't years in advance? This is more Wikileaks news from #cablegate searches and brought to light by the Guardian.
Remember how the Bush administration insisted that every bank had to be bailed out "now, Now, NOW!" in this unforeseen crisis or else the entire universe would financially implode?
It seems that must have been the script since there was no sudden crisis that came out of nowhere and that the Bankers were plotting their bailouts at least 6 months in advance:
Just some quick Open Thread links below the fold to drive home the importance of Wikileaks:
Also, see NWC Calls for Correction of Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act
Senate Passes Bill That Destroys Existing Whistleblower Rights (source)
The Senate passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 372) on Friday, December, 10th, by unanimous consent. As the National Whistleblowers Center has repeatedly stated S. 372 is a bad deal for whistleblowers. There are two poison pills in the bill that fundamentally undermine the small advances in the bill. There is still time to fix the bill.
TAKE ACTION! Stop the repeal of existing whistleblower rights
For the first time ever, federal employees will not be protected for blowing the whistle on a violation of law. The excuse given to justify this dangerous rollback is that it only excludes minor violations of law. The fact is there is no such thing as a minor violation of law. Either it is violation of the law or it is not. Federal managers should not be allowed to decide what laws they can violate.
The neat thing about all of the Wikileaks stuff this past week is that everyone has an opinion.
Everyone knows what's right about it, and what's wrong.
Not that anyone agrees with anyone.
Or will agree with me:
"You know what," Hannity replied, "it's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option."
Time to 'Assanginate' Rupert Murdoch.
Remember the "Fair and Balanced" and "We Report, You Decide" messages that remind television viewers of the public stance of the GOP's 24/7 cable news echo-maker, Fox News Channel?
Remember, Dr. Frank Luntz , the talking points-pollster who crafts the Republican agenda into everything from the "Contract with America" through Enron's California power crisis-mandate to change national energy policy ('New Economy technology uses more electrons') to fighting the popularity of health care reform under President Obama?
Media Matters reported, today, that Fox News personalities were directed, by senior management, to make sure that on-air 'reporting' remained in-line with official Fox News verbiage for spinning references to "public option."
There are a lot of people out there screaming about treason and stuff when it comes to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. I am going to completely skip any comment beyond this paragraph about the fact that Assange is not an American citizen and so, after consulting my "Treason For Dummies" book, it is beyond any and all sense of reason to yell that about his being a traitor. But too many of our politicians and some media still managed to echo that crazy. Other charges levied out of Sweden and at Assange appear to be nothing more that a badly choreographed CIA comedy of errors.
As for Bradley Manning?
The video above is Wikileaks v Bill O'Reilly - the War on Journalism - Rap News 5 (ft. Julian Assange).
Hat-tip cotasm of DailyKos.
Enjoy. :)
This is precisely what happens:
Spitzer Whacked For Warning Of Financial Crisis, Bush Fed Targets Taxpayers As Bagholders
Roger Stone is the longtime dirty-trickster who knocked the socks off of Eliot Spitzer in a scandal of high-priced trysts that forced resignation of the NY Governor earlier this year. With a Republican pedigree stretching to Watergate, Stone needed little inducement more than Spitzer's capital "D" affiliation.
But, as the nation's taxpayers await the terms of our extortion by the Bush Administration's 'exempt from oversight' bankers' club under a plan -- including full immunity -- led by Henry Paulson, it's time to consider the political assassination of another White House enemy for the SOP it was.
Sure, Spitzer should have de-socked before his career-ending indiscretion. But we should revisit the prophetic message that was lost to the tsunami of Spitzer's scandalization two weeks later.
Julian Assange take note - This is what happens when you threaten the Banks of Amer, err, the United States of America:
Drip:
"In the coming days, we are going to see some quite startling disclosures about Russia, the nature of the Russian state, and about bribery and corruption in other countries, particularly in Central Asia," says Investigations Executive Editor David Leigh...
Drip, drip:
World-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky discusses the release of more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks.
Drip, drip, drip:
Wikileaks and Latin America: Same Old Imperious U.S. Diplomats | BuzzFlash.org
blog.buzzflash.com
As more and more documents become available from Wikileaks, the public has gotten a novel and close up view of U.S. diplomats and their operations abroad.
Drip, drip, drip, drip:
Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks | Video on TED.com
TED Talks The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him.
Drip, gush, drip, splash:
WikiLeaks on Latin America: Honduras coup 'illegal' | La Plaza | Los Angeles Times
latimesblogs.latimes.com
The June 2009 coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was rooted in an "illegal and unconstitutional" military and civilian plan, says one of the secret U.S. diplomatic cables published online by WikiLeaks.
And the next round of wikileaks may open up a floodgate of assault from the elite as it may expose the Kleptocrtic bank bailouts for what it was and still is:
