International Days of Action for Bradley Manning – September 16 – 19



San Diego Days of Action poster

By Katharine Dawn

Rallies, demonstrations, “Collateral Murder” film screenings, whistle-blowing parties and forums will be held around the world between the 16th and 19th of September 2010 as vital expressions of international solidarity with Bradley Manning.

Accused of leaking a classified US military combat video showing the gunning down of Iraqi civilians (released to the world by WikiLeaks as “Collateral Murder”), Pfc Bradley Manning has been held in isolation since May 2010 and faces 52 years imprisonment.

With concerns high for this young man’s fate, events held as part of the International Days of Action will call for the withdrawal of charges laid against Bradley Manning and his immediate release. Rallying to the slogan “Exposing war crimes is not a crime,” supporters maintain that a young man’s life should not be destroyed for a courageous act of conscience.

As Israel and the US ready themselves to attack Iran — endangering the world with an insane escalation of hostilities in the Persian Gulf — the relevance of the issues for which Bradley Manning has become an icon are acutely intensified.

When US soldier Ethan McCord said “we do this every day” of the civilian slaughter he walked into after the “Collateral Murder” attack, he was stating an established fact. The reality of his statement has been corroborated by many, including UN President of the General Assembly D’Escoto Brockmann, and is irrefutably substantiated by the recently leaked Afghan War Diaries with their endless entries of civilian deaths resulting from authorized US military operations.

Soldiers who try to raise issues of war crimes in the field with their superiors are systematically and sometimes brutally silenced, while those who cannot remain silent by the nature of their conscience are persecuted severely if discovered. Pfc. Bradley Manning, acclaimed as a hero by Daniel Ellsberg (the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War), is a perfect example.

This is, at its heart, an issue of truth in public media.

-thanks to Bradley Manning Support Network