Oh, dear, where does the time go? While I'm struggling to get my act together, here are a couple of things that I hope will be useful and informative.The Daily Beast has an article on Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of leaking classified material to Wikileaks, which supplements Glenn Greenwald's article of a couple of days ago.
What is clear today is that he’s being held in extraordinarily harsh conditions—notably harsher than Bryan Minkyu Martin, the naval intelligence specialist who allegedly tried to sell military secrets to an undercover FBI agent, and is currently being held awaiting trial, though not in solitary confinement. Manning, who has been convicted of nothing, has spent the better part of a year incommunicado, living the life of a man convicted of sa heinous crime.Free added bonus: more deranged comments, dripping with bloodlust, endorsing any and all punishment of a man who has not yet been convicted of anything.
Extra added bonus, also at Daily Beast: John Avlon, founder of dead-armadillo group No Labels, reports on his "war with Rush Limbaugh," with whom he's evidently on a first-name basis. The article itself is predictable middle-of-the-road mush.
Back to serious matters. I'd been hearing for some time about the planned civil disobedience demo against Obama's wars, planned for Thursday at the White House. There doesn't seem to have been much, if any, corporate media coverage, despite the participation of some fairly high-profile figures. A search of CNN.com brings up nothing, though there are plenty of eulogies for the late war criminal Richard Holbrooke. The New York Times links to Democratic Underground in lieu of any coverage of its own. Here's a report from the Veterans For Peace website:
131 people were arrested at the White House yesterday in an action to End The Wars, including the board executive committee of Veterans for Peace. It is estimated that 2/3rds of those arrested were veterans. Of those arrested a number of women from Code Pink were also arrested. Approximately 500 folks attended the rally. There were dozen of speakers including Daniel Ellsberg and Ray McGovern who were also arrested.But where was Dan Choi? Even one of the crowd of loons at right-wing site FreeRepublic concluded, "There doesn't seem to be much interest in this thread." Only veterans, after all. Once they come home, they're of little interest to the Support Our Troops crowd.
