The words were valuable, sure, and within the ongoing saga of Bradley Manning served to call out Emperor Obama to (simperingly, predictably) defend his administration’s actions. But I didn’t celebrate the man. Crowley didn’t say that the way Manning was being treated was evil, barbaric, unjust, unfair, illegal, inhuman, inhumane, sick, perverted, sadistic, etc. All he said was “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid”.

Some of my allies took his statement to mean that Crowley has a good bone somewhere in his loathsome body. I knew better, but didn’t have enough information on hand to really, strongly object, until this:

From The Guardian:

Part of our strength comes from international recognition that the United States practises what we preach. Most of the time, we do. This strategic narrative has made us, broadly speaking, the most admired country in the world.

[...]

The release placed the lives of activists [ed note.: read: spies, saboteurs, agents provocateur, thugs, liars, assassins, arms dealers, etc.] around the world at risk.

Julian Assange and others have suggested that the release of the cables was to expose wrongdoing. Nonsense.

While everyone can point to an isolated cable, taken as a whole, the cables tell a compelling story of “rightdoing” – of US diplomats engaged in 189 countries around the world, working on behalf of the American people, and serving broader interests as well. As a nation, we are proud of the story the cables tell, even as we decry their release.

Much like the George W. Bush administration, Crowley has clearly divorced himself from the “reality-based community”. A little torture here, a few cruise missiles there, a wee bit of multi-billion-dollar bribery and smidge of rampant corporate imperialism over there, and we’ll just wrap that up in a delicious, low-carb, fat-free, totally non-threatening “strategic narrative” and sell it to the dumbass punters all over the world, with American Exceptionalist sprinkles on top.

P.J. Crowley spoke the truth. But he didn’t speak the truth some of my allies perceived. No, what Crowley said, very clearly, was this: “If the American government (and its fully-vested shareholders, who are not, incidentally, the electorate) intends to perpetuate the animating, exceptionalist mythos which supports its planet-dominating imperial aspirations, it must at least pretend in such a high-profile case that it cares about human rights, the rule of law, etc. For, if it does not, some people might, just for a second, truly perceive the maggot-ridden death’s head face behind the stars-stripes-uncle-sam-and-apple-pie mask, and we can’t have that.”

And from the Empire’s perspective, Crowley’s statement was not out of line. No, Crowley’s unforgivable sin lay not in his words, but that he let them be heard by the public.

I’m off to the ice cream shop. I hear they have a new flavor called “rightdoing”. I’ll bet it’s red, white and blue.

The entire US government is lining up against this courageous young Army Private, including calls for his death, but we’re building a “Stand with Brad” campaign to give voice to the millions who understand what’s really going on here.

“We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad… We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning”, begins our statement at http://standwithbrad.org.

1. Please sign the statement yourself.

2. I’m hoping you can encourage a few friends to also add their name.

3. When talking to folks about this, let them know there is a grassroots support network that has taken responsibility for Bradley’s legal defense expenses… and Bradley could really use their support. http://couragetoresist.org/bradley

For every statement signer, an individual copy is printed and mailed to Army officials on their behalf, regardless of their ability to make a donation.

Thank you.

Peace,
Mike

1. Log into your Twitter account.
2. Go to http://api.twitter.com/apps..
3. Register a new application
4. When you’re done registering, go to http://dev.twitter.com/apps and click on the application name.
5. Copy and save your consumer key and consumer secret.
6. Click “My access token” at right.
7. Copy and save your access token and your access token secret.
8. Download Abraham Williams’ twitteroauth package from github. (If you have any trouble later, download and use the 0.2.0-beta3 branch instead of the latest.)
9. Unpack the archive and transfer the directory it contains to your web server’s public_html or whatever directory is set up as your document root.
10. IMPORTANT: Change the name of the directory to something secret. Make up a string of random letters and numbers. We’ll call this string SECRETDIR.
11. Go into SECRETDIR, edit config.php and insert the consumer key, consumer secret, access token and access secret.
12. Go into SECRETDIR and create a “tweet.php” file, like this:

    <?php

require_once('config.php');
require_once('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');
$connection = new TwitterOAuth(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, ACCESS_TOKEN, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET);
$today = idate('z', time());
$enddate = idate('z', strtotime('31 December 2010'));
$daysleft = $enddate - $today;

$tweetstr = 'Only ' . $daysleft . ' day';
if ($daysleft > 1) $tweetstr .= 's';
$tweetstr .= " left to send out a holiday card for Bradley Manning's freedom! http://bit.ly/dW5w5e #freebrad";

$connection->post('statuses/update', array('status' => $tweetstr));

?>

13. Now create a cron job on your server. I’m tweeting once daily at 9:00am in my webhost’s time zone, so I used:
    00 9 * * * wget http://www.bradleymanning.org/SECRETDIR/tweet.php
14. Enjoy your auto-tweeting goodness!

Yes, using a SECRETDIR as a security (by obscurity) measure is not the best idea, but it does allow for a quick and dirty solution. Other solutions are possible, but this will get you started.

Click through and sign now!

Justice for Bradley Manning petition

In a few weeks, depending on what the response trend is, this will be sent to the DoD and major media outlets covering the story, plus a paper copy to Brad Manning himself.

Your comments are welcome here, but don’t forget to sign over there! Also, please spread this to your friends, colleagues, bloggers you know, etc.

Petition text:

To: US Department of Defense; US Department of Justice

We, the Undersigned, call for justice for US Army PFC Bradley Manning, incarcerated without charge (as of 18 June 2010) at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.

Media accounts state that Mr. Manning was arrested in late May for leaking the video of US Apache helicopter pilots killing innocent people and seriously wounding two children in Baghdad, including those who arrived to help the wounded, as well as potentially other material. The video was released by WikiLeaks under the name “Collateral Murder”.

If these allegations are untrue, we call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.

If these allegations ARE true, we ALSO call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.

Simultaneously, we express our support for Mr. Manning in any case, and our admiration for his courage if he is, in fact, the person who disclosed the video. Like in the cases of Daniel Ellsberg, W. Mark Felt, Frank Serpico and countless other whistleblowers before, government demands for secrecy must yield to public knowledge and justice when government crime and corruption are being kept hidden.

Justice for Bradley Manning!

Manning, 22, is presently said to be detained by the US military in Kuwait pending charges related to the release of the leaked classified video now known as “Collateral Murder“.

At present, the web services include a blog, a discussion forum and a wiki.

Your contributions and suggestions are most welcome.

According to Wired, via cryptogon.com:

[SPC Bradley] Manning came to the attention of the FBI and Army investigators after he contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail. Lamo had just been the subject of a Wired.com article. Very quickly in his exchange with the ex-hacker, Manning claimed to be the Wikileaks video leaker.

“If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?” Manning asked.

From the chat logs provided by Lamo, and examined by Wired.com, it appears Manning sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker. He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.

When Manning told Lamo that he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables, Lamo contacted the Army, and then met with Army CID investigators and the FBI at a Starbucks near his house in Carmichael, California, where he passed the agents a copy of the chat logs. At their second meeting with Lamo on May 27, FBI agents from the Oakland Field Office told the hacker that Manning had been arrested the day before in Iraq by Army CID investigators.

You utter bastard, Lamo!

But it gets worse:

Lamo has contributed funds to Wikileaks in the past, and says he agonized over the decision to expose Manning — he says he’s frequently contacted by hackers who want to talk about their adventures, and he’s never considered reporting anyone before. The supposed diplomatic cable leak, however, made him believe Manning’s actions were genuinely dangerous to U.S. national security.

“I wouldn’t have done this if lives weren’t in danger[...]“

Lives most emphatically are in danger every day in Iraq. And in Afghanistan. And in Yemen and Somalia and all of the 75 countries where President “Change!” Obama has either deployed or opted to continue the deployment of US Special Forces — that is, the American Imperium’s elite death&destruction squads.

But Mr. Lamo is worried about “US national security”, meaning the ability of the American Imperium to continue tax-harvesting its free-range chattel submittizens, legalizing massive privilege to favored members of the American and global ruling classes, carrying out wanton, unlimited bloodletting overseas and generally making life a living hell for millions upon millions of people, all without challenge.

I am not one to praise soldiers, but Bradley Manning did one of the most admirable things he could do as a volunteer member of the gang of evil thugs calling itself the “United States Army” by leaking the video and the other information. Maybe we’ll find out what his reasons were, some day when he’s out of whatever dark hole the US Imperium’s “justice” system throws him into, but he did say some things in his chats with Lamo which interest me:

“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

[...]

“Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying.”

Somehow, Adrian Lamo doesn’t think this is a good thing, and feels so strongly about it that he’s quite okay with Bradley Manning being kidnapped and caged with real criminals, possibly for a very long time.

Adrian Lamo, go die in a hole. Alone. Screaming. And take your “national security” with you.