Hey everybody, I'm Scott.
It's fundraising time again at Antiwar.com.
We need your help, and here's how you can help.
Stop by Antiwar.com/donate or call Angela Keaton, our development director, at 323-512-7095.
That's 323-512-7095.
Or you can shoot her an email over to A. Keaton at Antiwar.com.
Thank you very much for your support.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
Our next guest is Kevin Zeese.
Of course, he's put together the website and the book ComeHomeAmerica.us and is helping to lead the push for a new political realignment in the United States.
No more of this left-right nonsense.
You're either good on war, the Bill of Rights, and bank bailouts, or you're bad.
It's us versus them.
And Kevin Zeese, he's one of us.
Welcome back to the show, Kevin.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
Well, I'm really happy to have you here, and I'm extremely pleased to find out that you are part of something called the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund.
Boy, you get it done over there with suing people and organizing groups and getting books published and realigning American politics.
A lot of great work you do, Kevin.
Well, thank you very much.
I think the Bradley Manning case is one that deserves a lot of attention.
He's accused of being the WikiLeaker.
It should be clear he's not accused of giving information to Iran or China or Russia.
He's not accused of selling information to get wealthy.
He's accused of giving information to the media, allegedly so that Americans can have a debate about our foreign policy.
And as you've seen what's been going on in the Middle East, the WikiLeaks documents have had a major effect on overturning dictatorships and creating democracy in a very short time compared to what U.S. diplomacy has done, which has been propping up dictatorships.
So Manning needs our support.
I'm part of the Bradley Manning Support Network, which is at BradleyManning.org.
And today we're pleased to endorse the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund, which is BradleyManningAdvocacyFund.org.
And that's to really help to make sure Bradley Manning's story is told in the media by people who are friends of his, people who are retired military, people who can really discuss this issue in a more balanced way than we've seen so far in the corporate media.
We hope to see improvement with the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund.
That's BradleyManningAdvocacyFund.org, where you can support getting Bradley's story out in the media.
Well, you know, I don't want to kind of overstate this or anything, but it certainly seems to me that the current wave of revolution against dictatorship and against, for that matter, the American empire, is at least in part due to Bradley Manning's heroics.
It was the WikiLeaks State Department cables about the corruption in Tunisia that created the background for the outrage that finally exploded at the instance of the young man burning himself to death.
But it had been, what, a couple of weeks that the media in North Africa, and particularly in Tunisia, had been covering these WikiLeaks documents about the corruption of Ben Ali and his wife and her family.
And it was in that context that when the man set himself on fire, I should have memorized the guy's name by now, I'm sorry, I forgot it, but when he burned himself and it started the uprising, that was sort of the broader context there.
And then once the revolution spread to Egypt, of course, WikiLeaks, I guess, Afton Poston and the Daily Telegraph in London started publishing all kinds of documents about the tortured dictatorship in Egypt and America's relationship with it, which may or may not have helped spur that revolution along anyway.
But it seems to me that Bradley Manning really did change the world in exactly the kind of way, probably much more than he ever imagined, but along the same lines as what he was hoping for.
What you're saying is very true.
The one thing I disagree with on is that Bradley Manning is accused of this at this point, he's not guilty of it, so I would insert the word if he's guilty of what he's accused of, he's alleged to have done this stuff, then I think that everything you're saying makes sense.
I think it's important also for your listeners to know that even though Bradley Manning has not been indicted or faced a trial or been found guilty, he is being subjected to pretrial punishment that is more abusive than most people who are convicted of crimes faced.
In other words, he's virtually in solitary confinement now for eight months, 23 hours a day in his cell, only about an hour a day to exercise in shackles, visitors once a week for a couple of hours.
He is being treated as if he has been guilty of a crime and he's not even tried yet.
So one thing the advocacy fund, the bradleymanningadvocacyfund.org, is trying to do is to get that message out that the unfair treatment that Bradley Manning is receiving, and frankly, he should be released on bail at this point.
There's no threat of him fleeing.
He is willing to stand trial.
He's not indicating anything differently.
There's no need to hold him pretrial.
There's a right to bail in the Constitution, and that should be respected and Manning should be released so he can prepare for his defense of this very important case.
As I said again, this is not someone who is even accused of leaking documents to American enemies, not accused of trying to get rich off these documents.
He's accused of leaking documents to the media so there could be a public discussion in the Arab world and in the United States and around the world about U.S. foreign policy, and that's a discussion that's long overdue.
I suspect that if we look back on the Bradley Manning case and that we will look at what WikiLeaks is in publishing as documents that were heroic in really changing American foreign policy for the better, and so Bradley Manning, if he's guilty of what he's accused of, is more of a patriot than a hero.
You don't see an honest discussion at this point.
We're starting to see the media get it because the people working with this fund, the Fitzgibbon media, have done a good job of working with reporters who cover the Department of Defense, who cover foreign policy, and trying to get Bradley Manning's message out.
So you're starting to see some questions being asked and more needs to happen along those lines.
This could be the John Peter Zenger case of the 21st century.
The Zenger case, you know, was one that pretty much led to the establishment of freedom of the press in the United States.
We're now at a moment in history where freedom of the press in the 21st century is under the microscope, and Hillary Clinton has made two speeches about Internet freedom.
The loftiness of her rhetoric about how U.S. supports freedom of the press and freedom of speech is all beautiful, but the actions and how they're approaching Bradley Manning and how they're trying to threaten Union Assange and WikiLeaks shows an inconsistency, some would call it maybe even hypocrisy, between her words and her actions.
And so we want Bradley Manning treated fairly.
He should be released on bond.
He should be given a real trial where he can defend himself and his side of the story can be told.
I think if that happens, we'll see a very different image that we're seeing right now in the media and how he's being treated.
So I hope people will go to the BradleyManningAdvocacyFund.org and make a donation, and also come to BradleyManning.org.
Bradley Manning Support Network, so you can be part of actions that we're taking to try to defend Manning both in court and in the court of public opinion.
All right, now back to the question of his alleged role.
He's only charged with actually downloading some documents, not uploading them to anything.
Apparently they don't think that they can prove that much of it, the actual tie to WikiLeaks.
They're just charging him so far, I believe, with downloading the information to an unauthorized computer, right?
Well, there are two right now.
There's going to be more charges, we suspect.
So what he's charged with now, he's facing 52 years for, which is long enough.
And he mainly charges with the collateral murder videos, the primary video that's of concern.
If you haven't watched that video, I'd urge people to Google collateral murder and watch his video, which essentially shows U.S. helicopter gunships killing civilians in Iraq really for no good reason and enjoying it, it seems like.
It's really not a very flattering video for the United States, and it's one that really shows what I think many would look at around the world and see war crimes there.
That's the kind of thing that needs to be debated.
If he did release that video, and he's also likely to be accused of releasing the Iraq and Afghanistan war diaries as well as the diplomatic cables, that's what we suspect will happen, then those will be tremendous leaks that really provide the public with a glimpse of foreign policy.
He was not accused of releasing top-secret documents like happened in the Pentagon papers.
He's accused of releasing low-level classified documents, but they give us a very important glimpse.
So please go to BradleyManningAdvocacyFund.org and support the effort to get his view out.
Well, hang tight, because we've got more to talk about here.
It's Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund, Kevin Zeese.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio, talking with Kevin Zeese from ComeHomeAmerica.us and Voters for Peace about the new Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund.
And as Kevin was explaining, they're trying to recruit friends of Bradley Manning, qualified friends of Bradley Manning, to speak to his side of the issue in the mainstream media, because otherwise all we get is kind of offhand, unproven references to his treachery.
But as Kevin was referring to, it's clear, it is, I think, an established fact that if we accept the premise that the wired transcripts are actually, really, communications between Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo, the rat, it says right there why he did it.
It has nothing to do with gain for himself at all.
He says in, you couldn't make up exactly, you know, the perfect Jeffersonian terms that he uses to say that, you know, the people have a right to know because the people can't decide whether this is what they want to do or not if they don't know.
They don't have the chance to know.
And if America is supposedly a democracy and all these things, and what our government does is, you know, supposed to represent, you know, our will exercised or something, then we have the right to know the truth.
And there are things going on here that, you know, he had good reason to believe the American people would not approve of, such as the footage in that collateral murder video, such as the truths in the Afghan and Iraq war logs.
And so forth.
So, and this goes to the question of his guilt too, Kevin, which is that to me, and I know there's a bit of cognitive dissonance here, but I don't care.
To me, he's a hero, and that's a fact.
When it comes to whether he's a criminal, I say he's alleged only, and maybe he was 50 miles from there and had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
But as far as the accusation that he's the greatest American hero of the 21st century, then I think that's an open and shut case beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Well, Julian Assange describes him saying that he's guilty of what he's accused of.
He's the number one prisoner of conscience in the world.
And the way that the U.S. military is treating him, holding him in essentially solitary confinement for eight months before he's even had a trial, and certainly before he's even found guilty, makes him even a stronger case for that.
By the way, let me ask you a minor point along those lines.
I saw this thing that was a story about Bradley Manning that had a picture of a guy that didn't even really look like the same Bradley Manning from the famous pictures of him that we know.
This guy looked really run down and completely out of it.
And I was just wondering, have you seen that picture, and can you verify that that is in fact what has become of Bradley Manning under these conditions?
Well, the person who has seen him the most regularly is David House, someone that he knew a little bit from MIT.
He wasn't like a close friend, but House stepped up and has been visiting Manning virtually on a weekly basis since September.
And he says that Manning is changing, that he can see his mind getting duller, his skin tone changing.
The treatment he's being receiving in Quantico, the Marine brig in Quantico, is certainly having an impact on his physical well-being.
And that's not surprising.
Solitary confinement does that.
But you don't know specifically about the picture I'm talking about?
I'm not sure which picture you're talking about, so that's why I'm telling you what House is saying.
But it sounds very consistent with what you're seeing.
I don't recall seeing a picture of Bradley that recently, but maybe I missed it.
But he's being adversely affected by the treatment he's receiving.
One thing you mentioned about the rights of citizens.
In her speeches on Internet, Freedom of Speech in the 21st Century and Freedom of Press in the 21st Century, Secretary of State Clinton has said that she recognizes that governments rule by the consent of the people, and the people have to know what the government is doing in order to consent.
Well, that's exactly what the WikiLeaks case is about.
That's exactly what Bradley Manning is accused of, is allowing the people to know not top-secret information but low-level secret information, not even classified documents that describe U.S. foreign policy.
It's not very flattering to Hillary Clinton, by the way.
The foreign policy documents that have come out, the diplomatic cables that have come out, talk about Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice both writing memos that essentially turn the State Department diplomats into spies and make the State Department into a nest of spies that spies on U.N. diplomats, which is illegal to do, violates the law, and spies on diplomats at home.
It's like things like your frequent flying number, your credit card number, all sorts of details.
They can almost take over your personality or character if they want to at some point.
But it's a very strange report that Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into a nest of spies and broke the law by spying on U.N. diplomats.
So it's not flattering to her, but she's right.
Consent of the people is required, and the people need to know that.
She is recommending that our diplomats violate the law and that we need to recognize that there's a lot of 100,000-plus civilian casualties that the Department of Defense has not acknowledged in the past from Iraq and Afghanistan.
They're showing these documents.
And, you know, it was so important during the Egyptian revolution that documents came out that showed how Omar Suleiman, who was put in as vice president by Mubarak as hopefully his next taking his place in Mubarak's mind, and Israel wanted him as president to take Mubarak's place for years.
The United States has worked closely with him for years, and he has been wanting to deny democracy to Gaza.
He's wanted to keep the people of Gaza hungry but not starved.
These are all coming from diplomatic cables that are in the WikiLeaks documents.
And for the people fighting for democracy in Egypt to know that about Suleiman was important.
Consent of the governed.
You can't have consent with that kind of thing kept secret.
And, of course, we know from other reports that Suleiman was involved in the torture program, the rendition program that Eric Holder developed when he was working for Bill Clinton.
So Suleiman has been a close ally of the United States in ways that are not positive.
And thank goodness there was enough information out so that people could be aware of that, and he was not allowed to become the follower, you know, to take the place of Mubarak, even though Hillary Clinton said that was her first choice.
So I think what Ballyming is accused of doing is shedding light, and what WikiLeaks is doing is democratizing the media so people who are in government positions can get information out, increase the transparency, shift the power away from secrecy and toward the people.
These are all developments for the new 21st century media that they are at the forefront of.
And if they go ahead and try Bradley Manning, he will either win and be acquitted, and that will be a very important story that will show that the vengeance of the military for the truth being told cannot always be carried out.
So if he loses, he'll be a martyr to a new democratized media, and I expect his case will lead to stronger protections for whistleblowers in the future.
And we see, by the way, this whistleblower movement growing rapidly.
A journalism school at the University of New York has set up a WikiLeaks-type effort called Local Links that links to 1,400 U.S. local papers.
And so people can leak now to that Local Links and get information out.
So this democratizing the economy is happening.
Democratizing the media is happening.
Corporate control is being lost, and that's what the future is going to be.
So this is a very important case, and so I hope you will go to the BradleyManningAdvocacyFund.org and join us in defending Bradley Manning.
All right, everybody, that's Ken Z's quick footnote.
That was the wrong Bradley Manning in the picture.
I just found it.
Okay, good.
So that's that.
But comehomeamerica.us and the Bradley Manning Advocacy Group, thanks very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
