Many people exhibited extreme apathy with regard to the aggressive manner in which the U.S. government went after Julian Assange and Wikileaks for merely doing basic journalism. Now, after the revelations of widespread spying on mainstream journalists in the AP case, and the criminalization of the profession itself in the case of Fox New’s James Rosen, many people are finally starting to wake up as the chickens come home to roost, as they always do eventually.
As such, I think this is a great moment to turn our attention to the Kafkaesque trial about to get underway right here in the “land of the free.” In this case, I am referring to the trial of Bradley Manning. If you are still unaware of this case, I suggest you watch this extremely powerful 5 minute micro-doc called Providence.
Of course, the U.S. government argues that much of Mr. Manning’s trial must be kept secret due to “classified” information. Sorry, but classified has become one of the most overused, bullshit term in America today. Classified means nothing when the information is hiding criminal behavior or war crimes. Believe me, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot kept much of their information on concentration camps and gulags “classified” as well. Now from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) we find that:
May 22, 2013, New York –Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction asking a federal district court in Baltimore to order the military judge in the court-martial of Bradley Manning to grant the public and press access to the government’s filings, the court’s own orders, and transcripts of the proceedings, none of which have been made public to date. In addition, the lawsuit challenges the fact that substantive legal matters in the court martial – including a pretrial publicity order – have been argued and decided in secret.