Free Chelsea
Manning-Again, Again -Stop The Civil Contempt Madness To Have Her “Fink,” “Play
Ball With The Law” To Get WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange
By Frank Jackman
The heroic Wikileaks
whistle-blower Chelsea Manning who in
2010 passed (as Bradley Manning before she was able to come out as a tran) plenty
of important information to that on-line publication about American military
atrocities and cover-ups in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to be built in the Daniel
Ellsberg mold (he of Vietnam War era The Pentagon Papers which blew the
lid off the government’s longtime lies and duplicity over several administrations
about what was going on there as the body counts got higher and the light at the
end of the tunnel blew out). Ms. Manning seems to be organically incapable of
not resisting every attempt since that time to get her to “cooperate,” to
snitch on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who has his own legal problems in
England with a long drawn out extradition to the United States process ahead.
The odd thing
is that Chelsea, despite a 2013 court-martial down in Fort Meade in Maryland
and conviction and sentencing to thirty-five years, thirty five hard years for
a woman at all male Fort Leavenworth prison out in the wheat fields of Kansas
on espionage charges, has already taken personal and political responsibility for
her actions in giving the information out. Now with “bigger fish to fry,” Assange,
since she had her sentence commuted as President Obama left office they want “her
to play ball with the law” to get at Assange. She has rightly and righteously refused
to say “squat” to use an old Army term and so she is being held in civil confinement
down in Virginia where a grand jury has been convened looking into the Wikileaks
matter.
No, and here
is where the “again and again” part comes in, she has for a second time refused
to squeal. Under the rules of federal grand jury investigation Chelsea was brought
before a previous grand jury looking into the same matter earlier in the spring.
She refused to speak then and was committed for civil contempt and held for a
couple of months until that grand jury was dismissed in early May. A week later
another grand jury had been convened, and she was dragged before that with the
same result except now she can be held up to sixteen months, the life of the current
grand jury minus two months from the previous sitting. On top of that they are taking
the unusual step, and weird given Chelsea’s financial situation, of incremental
fines from $500 to $1000 per day until she squawks. As of today she sits like Buddha
in that detention center down in Alexandria while her legal team tries to get
those onerous fines dismissed and more importantly spring her.
This whole
mess this spring has left Chelsea’s supporters scratching their heads. Especially
guys like Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris from Veterans for Peace who have been
supporting his case since they first heard about it at an ACLU forum at Boston
University in 2010. (The photograph used in this piece is actually from a stand-out
when she was being tried at court-martial but has the same sentiments as now,
and the same guys trying to keep her case in the public eye.
They understood the need to
defend Chelsea when the government, when the Army was holding her in solitary
down at Quantico in Virginia in tortuous conditions and had gone down there to
protest her midnight incarceration. They had held a million stand-outs for her
in various locales in Boston and Washington, D.C. They had attended her
court-martial in 2013. They had started a petition campaign to have then President
Obama pardon her (especially once she publicly declared her true gender-identity).
As previously mentioned he did commute that sentence. With that Ralph and Sam held
a house party to raise funds for Chelsea to get a fresh start. They thought she
was through with her legal problems. Not
so. Sam and Ralph set up another set of stand-outs of late for her defense but
that “scratching their heads” part is due to the crazy unfairness of the grand jury
system no matter its hallowed origins. And to the flat out craziness that except
for raising defense money and morale this case is not as easy to raise publicity
on as her previous struggles. Free Chelsea Now, again.
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