San Francisco Bradley Manning Pride Board Meeting Mess

Includes the only photos from inside the meeting! "They say court martial! We say grand marshal!" Why did Pride cancel making Bradley Manning Grand Marshal of Pride 2013 ? Why did they ban the press from their meeting ? Sure looks like the corporate sponsors want a nice, squeaky clean party with no reminders that Pride is about fighting for human rights and that the celebration honors a RIOT. Forget the Pride committee. The community has spoken: Bradley Manning IS Grand Marshal.

Related : SF Pride Chief Operating Officer Resorts to Lies as Scandal Around Honoring Bradley Manning Continues

1,000 days in jail for Bradley Manning ; 1,000 days of silence from Christine Quinn

1,000 days in jail for Bradley Manning ; 1,000 days of silence from Christine Quinn

Today, LGBT Army PFC Bradley Manning marked his 1,000th day imprisoned without a trial, reported Raw Story. PFC Manning is "suspected" of being the source of making government transparency disclosures to WikiLeaks.

PFC Manning is an LGBT service member, and many groups and leaders have been advocating for justice for PFC Manning. But New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been eerily silent.

"It has taken him from the desert of Iraq, where he was arrested at a military operating base outside Baghdad, to a prison tent in Kuwait. From there he endured his infamous harsh treatment at Quantico Marine base in Virginia, and for the last 14 months he has attended a series of pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade in Maryland, the latest of which begins next week," reported Raw Story.

Among the violations of due process, government transparency, torture, and other charges, the government's prosecution of PFC Manning includes blatant acts of censorship.

No statement of support from LGBT leader Christine Quinn, who has her own murky history of redacting government documents.

What kind of an LGBT leader is Speaker Quinn if she remains quiet about the government's violations of PFC Manning's constitutional rights ?

Accused WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning Testifies He Thought He Would "Die in Custody"

Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, has testified for the first time since he was arrested in May 2010. Speaking on Thursday, November 29, 2012, at a pretrial proceeding, PFC Manning revealed the emotional tumult he experienced while imprisoned in Kuwait after his arrest in 2010, saying, "I remember thinking, ’I’m going to die.’ I thought I was going to die in a cage."

Read more : Accused WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning Testifies He Thought He Would "Die in Custody"

Nobel Peace Laureates Slam The U.S. Over Bradley Manning Case

Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Northern Irish activist Mairead Maguire, and Argentine artists Adolfo Pérez Esquivel have authored a statement to be published in an upcoming issue of The Nation that condemns the United States’ persecution of the 24-year-old Army private and implores the rest of America to question the country’s secretive torture of a soldier that the prize winners say defended democracy.

“As people who have worked for decades against the increased militarization of societies and for international cooperation to end war, we are deeply dismayed by the treatment of Pfc Bradley Manning,” the laureates write.

Left unaddressed by the Nobel laureates was why supposedly progressive, LGBT politicians, such as Christine Quinn, are questionably silent about the persecution of PFC Manning.

Read more : Nobel laureates slam the US over Bradley Manning case

Christine Quinn Betrays The LGBT Community

Christine Quinn Betrays Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgenders :

What measurable, real, and tangible actions have openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn taken in respect of LGBT civil rights ?

Let's examine the following examples of LGBT civil rights violations, to which City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a high-profile openly lesbian politician, has been spineless in her response :

• When over 30 men where being entrapped and were the targets of sexual orientation profiling by the NYPD, what did Christine Quinn do ? That's right, she did nothing to hold the NYPD accountable for their systematic discrimination of LGBTQS men.
• In the interest of public health, New York City hands out free condoms, and then NYPD arrests LGBT New Yorkers for carrying condoms. And Speaker Quinn looks the other way, of course. Read more : New York City's Condom Bait-and-Switch
• Look at the case of Jabbar Campbell. If LGBT New Yorkers get beat up by haters, you can count on Speaker Quinn to elbow her way in for photo opportunities. But if the haters are NYPD officers, you can count on Speaker Quinn to look the other way.




• In her YouTube video announcing her mayoral campaign, Speaker Quinn did not say that she was a lesbian, and she did not mention her wife. Is this another case of self-hate or internalised homophobia ?
• Each year, Speaker Quinn allocates taxpayer money to support hate groups that discriminate against LGBT New Yorkers. Ask yourselves : What is an openly lesbian politician doing by funding groups that discriminate against LGBT New Yorkers ?
• On the evening when Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the historic marriage equality bill into law, the NYPD raided the Eagle Bar in yet another demonstration of sexual orientation profiling. What has Speaker Quinn done to hold the NYPD accountable for their systematic discrimination of the gay men patrons of the Eagle ? That's right, she's done nothing.
• Before New York State enacted its historic marriage equality law, Speaker Quinn was already being non-committal about fighting all the way to win, which is her usual strategy on everything.
• After the Obama administration violated the due process rights of an LGBT whistleblower, what did Speaker Quinn do ? She turned the other way and pretended not to look.
• When one of her own staffers, Tony Simone, dropped the F-bomb on gay rights leaders Allen Roskoff and Donny Moss, what did Speaker Quinn do ? She did nothing.
• When Mayor Michael Bloomberg appealed the 2005 landmark marriage equality ruling by Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, what did Christine Quinn do ? BINGO ! She did nothing.
• Speaker Quinn's position of Paid Sick Leave has ramifications for the LGBT community.
• Even though the stop-and-frisk policy of the NYPD targets the transgendered New Yorkers, Speaker Quinn supports NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who is adamant about maintaining the unconstitutional police program.
• When former Mayor Ed Koch passed away, lesbian NYC mayoral candidate Christine Quinn released a statement calling Koch a 'great mayor' and a 'great man,' even though Mr. Koch was mayor during a period of time during which the AIDS epidemic broke out -- a crisis that many have said Koch essentially ignored during his time in office. Many AIDS activists found Speaker Quinn's statement tone deaf and dismissive of the tens of thousands of local AIDS deaths attributable to the former mayor.
• Related : Two gay men explain their beef with Christine Quinn

With an LGBT record like this, LGBTQS New Yorkers would do good to question Speaker Quinn's integrity and commitment to LGBT civil rights.

Make a pledge today to support Roots of Betrayal : The Ethics of Christine Quinn on Kickstarter.

President Obama praises Pentagon Papers Publisher, but not War Crimes Whistleblower

Obama eulogizes NYT publisher Sulzberger ; Still Persecuting Whistleblower Manning

After the death of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was announced yesterday, President Barack Obama praised the courage of Mr. Sulzberger throughout his journalism career.

Although President Obama didn't mention Mr. Sulzberger's risky -- but legal -- decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, President Obama acknowledged the important role that Mr. Sulzberger has played in improving our democratic form of government.

"He was a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press -- one that isn't afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told," Mr. Obama said.

But Mr. Obama made no connection between his praise for Mr. Sulzberger, but his continued campaign to prosecute the government whistleblower, PFC Bradley Manning.

Activists question how could the Obama administration reward Bradley Birkenfeld for his acts of whistleblowing, but then prosecute PFC Bradley Manning for exposing war crimes ?

Save Bradley Manning Rally Outside Obama NYC Campaign Headquarters

On the Evening of President Obama's Acceptance Speech at the Democratic National Convention, Activists Demand Freedom and Liberty for PFC Bradley Manning.

A coalition of activists and members of groups, like World Can't Wait, Veterans For Peace, and others, showed up for a rally outside of President Barack Obama's NYC campaign headquarters to demand freedom for LGBT service member and whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning. PFC Manning faces 22 charges in an unjust court martial, which denies him due process and other basic civil rights. PFC Manning faces government accusations that he released government documents and videos to WikiLeaks.

For more information, please visit : BradleyManning.org or CourageToResist.org or WorldCantWait.net

If you believe that whistleblowers should not be prosecuted, please ask President Obama to release PFC Manning -- send Tweets to the White House at : @whitehouse and @BarackObama

War on Whistleblowers

Manning and Assange are each just "test case" for Governments' hostile treatment and retaliation against Whistleblowers.

The pre-trial hearings in the case of Bradley Manning, accused of the biggest classified data leak in U.S. history, have kicked off in Maryland. But there's growing concern over their fairness, with the U.S. government withholding more than 200 thousand relevant documents from Manning's defense.

By neglecting whistleblower protection laws and escalating the Manning and Assange cases, the US government is setting a precedent to be applied to journalists, future whistleblowers, activists and bloggers, activist Sibel Edmonds told RT. ­Edmonds is the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers coalition, an independent alliance. The activist believes Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are just the beginning.

WikiLeaks Twitter Subpoena Scandal

UPDATE : The Guardian newspaper : WikiLeaks Demands That Google And Facebook Unseal U.S. Subpoenas

WikiLeaks is reportedly demanding that Google and Facebook unseal any secret court orders that the websites received in connection with the U.S. government's retaliation against WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks' demand followed news that was reported that a court in Virginia had issued a secret order to Twitter to produce personal information belonging to accounts of five individuals associated with WikiLeaks.

All of the secret court orders are providing ''strong evidence'' that the U.S. government has empaneled a grand jury to begin a broad, large-scale data mining operation that seeks to collect surveillance in a retaliatory act against WikiLeaks. In late November, WikiLeaks began a coördinated reporting collaboration with several respected journalism outlets, including The New York Times, to publish thousands of United States embassy cables.

In A Clear First Amendment Violation, The U.S. Government Has Issued A Judicial Order To Twitter In An Effort To Collect Information About WikiLeaks And Its Supporters.

Officials from the United States Department of Justice have applied for, and received, a judicial order that has been issued to the social media website, Twitter, in an effort to collect information about political dissidents. In some countries, activists are under constant harassment from their governments.

In growing numbers of mainstream media reports, the news has been reporting that the U.S. government has served Twitter with what are being described as ''subpoenas'' for the private messages, contact information, and other personal forms of information belonging to Julian Assange, who is the spokesperson and editor in chief for WikiLeaks. Other targets of the subpoenas include Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, and Birgitta Jonsdottir, who is a member of parliament in Iceland. Ms. Jonsdottir was also a former WikiLeaks volunteer. Also mentioned in the judicial order are other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp.

According to Salon.com, the information demanded by the WikiLeaks subpoenas issued by the U.S. Department of Justice is ''sweeping in scope.'' Salon.com has posted online the Department of Justice order for the Twitter information.