Portside

“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.”

While incarcerated people are on partial lockdown and denied outdoor time in a bid to limit their exposure to one another, they nonetheless congregate in the dining hall and share telephone rooms that are not cleaned between uses.

On Thursday afternoon, a District Court judge in Virginia ordered that Chelsea Manning be released from jail, where she has been held since last May for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time...

It is the very definition of torture to submit a person to physical and mental suffering in an effort to force an action from them. Since May, Manning has been held in a Virginia jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury...

Historically, the government has used the (grand jury) process to gather information, surveil and disrupt movements by creating paranoia and fear.

Reader Comments: Impeachment, Obfuscation, Political Corruption; Benjamin Netanyahu; International Solidarity- Bolivia, Chile; Puerto Rico; Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre; Whistleblowers, Amazon; workers rights-Climate Crisis, #MeToo; book sale; more.

There is a history of presidential criminals and whistleblowers. Nixon declared that the chief My Lai perpetrator was “probably a good soldier ... getting a bum rap.” He ordered a secret task force to undermine press stories of the massacre.

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