We are all Bradley Manning

Our top-down strategies can’t fix our problems, whether they be homelessness, joblessness, environmental devastation, faltering health care, failing schools, AIDS, or discrimination. They can’t be solved simply by giving orders or by applying new technologies. They’re complex and interrelated; they touch us all. Solutions therefore depend on widening the circle of problem solvers (Lappé, 2006, p. 9).

I've been writing Bradley Manning lately, the young man imprisoned in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico in Virginia, charged with leaking files to Wikileaks.There are now stories that he is being mistreated, even possibly tortured. Yesterday I got a letter with the return address of the "COMMANDING OFFICER [all caps in the original]. The three-page document, the first two pages of which are a copy of what was given to "Detainee Manning, Bradley," explains in detail that my postcard was being rejected because I'm not on his "mail and visitation list." It finishes with his decision not to appeal this rejection, and Manning's signature below a checked statement:

Furthermore, I choose not to add this person to my mail and visitation list, thereby refusing all incoming correspondence from this individual.

If the stories and allegations about Manning are true, and they appear to be in the instance of his release to Wikileaks of many files, including the ones of filmed war crimes, he has blown the whistle on the military and should be afforded all protection, not imprisonment. There are laws about protecting whistleblowers, right?

Ironically, those laws seem to only cover those whistleblowers who use inside channels, official forms, and this protects the offending federal agency from the public oversight it hates so much. Woe to whistleblowers who shine the light of the "free press" on the wrongdoing. Now the military is seen by the world for what it is: a violent occupying force that guns down civilians in cold blood, literally laughing at its bloody deeds and blaming the victims.

The way that decisionmaking works in a democracy is that we choose who can make the top-down decisions, we elect our representatives. If we don't like a policy we have options:

• elect a different official
• lobby the elected official
• sue
• work to change the policy by bringing civil society pressure to bear
• expose the policy to the public, inviting discourse
• ask for negotiations to amend the policy

So, there are layers of authority involved in the question of Bradley Manning's treatment. There is the GySgt William Fuller, who seems to handle his mail. There is the unnamed "COMMANDING OFFICER" and there are ascending officers in the chain of command, all the way through the military to the Joint Chiefs and then to the civilian Commander-in-Chief, President Obama. With regard to torture, all these layers are also superceded, by law, by the international laws to which the US has signed and ratified, including basic Geneva, Hague, and Nuremberg Conventions, Accords, and Treaties. All apply, all are the Supreme Law of the land, and all are enshrined in the actual rules of the various branches of the armed forces. Viewing just a tiny fraction of what Manning is alleged to have done reveals a prima facie case that he is uncovering serious violations of these rules and laws.

The threats and actions against Bradley Manning are also against our democracy. Civil society is beginning to respond. I can report that, as a former inmate, getting lots of mail that was rejected for one arbitrary reason or another was a very positive thing. My experience was also for directly confronting the military but I was never a member of any military organization and never held in a military prison, so perhaps Manning is having a different experience in all ways, but until I learn better, I am going to regard the Amnesty International principles as valid, which they certainly were in my case. The nature and amount of my abuse and arbitrary mistreatment by the prison system lessened as the volume of supportive mail grew. I was certainly out of my cell much more often, and even when I was in solitary confinement the respect with which I was treated slowly grew as the mail volume increased. When guards and wardens know that the outside world cares about an inmate they seem to adhere to a bit better standard of treatment and they understand that they might be themselves held a bit accountable.

Turns out that the unnamed brig commander is:
Quantico Brig Commanding Officer
CWO4 James Averhart
3247 Elrod Avenue, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-4242 (fax)

So, now I have someone to whom I can write to press for better treatment for Manning and I hope Averhart is deluged with mail.

I also have my next postcard addressed to Manning:

Bradley Manning

USMC Base

Quantico Brig

3247 Elrod Av

Quantico VA 22134

and I hope you will consider writing him too. He just turned 23, he's been in Quantico since July, and needs to know that more of us believe he did the right thing. More mail, even when it's rejected, is a real back-straightener for those who are apparently powerless, shackled and ordered around. We are the threads to freedom for Manning and if all of us are involved in some way, his time of freedom is that much closer. As Lappé notes, we are all stakeholders and problem-solvers in a strong democracy. The guns and steel doors and concrete walls of military brigs are not the strength, we are, if we act.

References

Lappé, Frances Moore (2006), Democracy’s edge: Choosing to save our country by bringing democracy to life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Who gets bail, who gets jail?

Wikileaks talks, murderers walk. Bradley Manning is in prison while the shooters who ripped up a dozen civilians, including a father and children who simply stopped to help a wounded man, are free. Videographic proof of murder is ignored and leaking that proof is regarded as the crime. Orwellian is a mild term for this.

Dick Cheney is still giving public speeches and traveling, while the man who revealed many of the lies around the illegal invasion and illegal conduct of war in Iraq is in Wandsworth prison in the UK. Julian Assange was granted bail by a judge responding to the overwhelming evidence and support, but he was then 'detained' further because bail is exorbitant and, it is strongly rumored, Eric Holder's US Department of Justice wants him extradited, even butting in line ahead of Sweden, who wants to interrogate him about sexual 'coercion' (even though both women note they had no fear of violence by Assange).

The UK failed to extradite Augusto Pinochet, a man who had directly ordered the state terror agents to kill thousands and torture at least 30,000 in Chile, but they may extradite Assange. This is a partial-birth abortion of justice unfolding right before our eyes. Assange neither killed nor threatened to kill anyone, whereas US conservatives are packing up and howling for his blood, literally (even as their money launderers are being charged with $400,000 embezzling for personal enrichment).

Reading major media nowadays is reading a media enriched and informed by Wikileaks, and Assange is not even credited, much less thanked, much less paid, for many of the revelations that form the basis for an untold number of new stories. As you read stories that look like the product of investigative journalism, look for credit. If none is given it is probably a result of Wikileaks. Otherwise, media are rightfully quick to frame their sources as a product of their own efforts. If they gave Wikileaks credit every time they ought to, we would see both sides of this phenomenon concomitantly. We learn much more about the Kazai government, about the Taliban, about warlords on all sides, and about where the US taxpayer monies are going, down war profiteer ratholes in a massive streams, while the primary person responsible for the investigative journalism that uncovered the stories is being prosecuted, ultimately by the very agents of those profiteers.

Assange and good journalism need our support. What many fail to note as they take various positions in this complex environment is well put by Israeli historian

Zeev Sternhell in a recent piece in Le Monde, translated by Mark Jensen, and that basic point is that you have sides, but not sides based on partisanship, not based on religion, not based on national origin, but rather based on enlightenment or fear of enlightenment. I would also assert that this is war system and peace system division, with Islamists, neocons, militarists of all stripes and all the war profiteers on one side, those who try to work for nonviolent human relations on the other, and the true latent power of civil society up for grabs. It is time to stop allowing the

Eric Holder/Alberto Gonzales
functionaries to grab our best. They serve their war system masters well but they do not serve enlightenment, peace, nonviolence nor the interests of civil society anywhere. They will wield that power until civil society stops them.