The serial deceit of Geoff Morrell

Bradley Manning and the stench of US hypocrisy

Earlier this week, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of confidential documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, was handed an additional 22 charges as part of his ongoing court martial process. The 23-year-old, who has been in solitary confinement for more than seven months, stands accused of computer fraud, theft of public records and willfully communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it. He now also finds himself faced with a rare charge known as "aiding the enemy" – a capital offence for which he could face the death penalty.
The revelation will no doubt have come as a blow to Manning, although given his ongoing treatment it is likely he already feared the worst. Made to endure strict conditions under a prevention of injury order against the advice of military psychiatrists, he is treated like no other prisoner at the 250-capacity Quantico Brig detention facility in Virginia. Despite that he is yet to be convicted of any crime, for the past 218 consecutive days he has been made to live in a cell 6ft wide and 12ft long, without contact with any other detainees. He is not allowed to exercise or have personal effects in his cell, and for the one hour each day he is allowed free from his windowless cell he is taken to an empty room where he is allowed to walk, but not run.
One of the few people to have visited Manning, David House, spoke yesterday of how he had witnessed his friend go from a "bright-eyed intelligent young man" to someone who at times has appeared "catatonic" with "very high difficulty carrying on day to day conversation". House drew similarities with the case of Bobby Dellelo, an American prisoner who developed psychosis after a lengthy period in solitary confinement conditions similar to Manning's. "For me this has been like watching a really good friend succumb to an illness or something," he said. "I think that Bradley Manning is being punished this way because the US government wants him to crack ahead of his trial."
While there has been widespread and well publicised condemnation of issues surrounding Manning's detainment, his conditions have failed to improve. In fact, things may have got worse, not better, for the Oklahoma-born soldier who is incidentally entitled to UK citizenship through his Welsh mother. Just two days ago, for instance, only 24 hours after having been told he now faces a capital charge, Manning was made to strip naked in his cell for no apparent reason. According to David Coombs, Manning's lawyer, the soldier was then left without clothes for seven hours. When the wake-up call sounded for the detainees at 5am, in an act of forced humiliation, Manning was made to stand naked at the front of his cell.
The incident, described as "inexcusable and without justification" by Coombs, is symbolic of the entire twisted saga: a gross injustice on a nauseating scale. We must bear in mind, of course, that Manning allegedly leaked military files because he, according to unverified internet chat logs, saw wrongdoing and had no other course of action because his superiors told him they "didn't want to hear any of it". He did not want to be complicit in war crimes, and felt that by leaking the files he could prompt "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms".
In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.
"Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," said Barack Obama in 2008. But the stench of his hypocrisy is no longer bearable. It is time, now more than ever, that Bradley Manning received the justice he so clearly deserves.
Ryan Gallagher @'The Guardian'

Libya removes itself from the net

As fighting inside the country intensifies, Libya's links to the net appear to have been completely severed.

Net monitoring and security firms are reporting that no net traffic is entering or leaving Libyan net space.
Renesys said the outage was more than just a "blip" as many sites have been unreachable for more than 12 hours.
Net traffic into and out of the country had been intermittent during recent protests but the cut coincided with a push to oust rebels.
During the early days of the rebellion in Libya, net access was restricted but in early March net traffic started to pick up in areas no longer under the control of Colonel Gaddafi's government.
Graphs of net activity maintained by Google show a steady rise in traffic to its sites throughout this week. In particular, Libyans were making heavy use of YouTube to post images of the conflict.
This changed late in the evening of 3 March when net traffic stopped flowing into and out of the troubled nation.
Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro, said the approach to cutting net links was different to that taken by Egypt.
While all routers reported that lines to Libya were live, any traffic sent was not reaching its destination and was probably being "blackholed", said Mr Ferguson.
Attempts to trace the routes that traffic could take into the country ended a hop short of official Libyan net space, said Mr Ferguson.
This meant that not only was Libya cut off from the net, but those inside the country would not be able to send messages or browse sites either.
@'BBC'

ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald

Bradley Manning forced to remain nude again last night - http://is.gd/vR47NZ - Remember back when forced detainee nudity was scandalous?

???

a_greenberg Andy Greenberg

Why did Interpol issue a red notice for Julian Assange but only an orange notice for mass-murderer Gaddafi? http://bit.ly/fLw6IH

Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most Of U.S.

Picking Your Poison: How Everyday Chemicals Are Affecting Us

Serfs Up!

Tea Party Leaders Attack Constitution

From Lulz to Labor Unions: The Evolution of Anonymous

It wasn't so long ago that Anonymous staked its identity on relentlessly subverting culture for the lulz. The group became renowned for its mockery of egregious displays of political correctness, hypocrisy, social conservatism and lameness by way of constructing humorous memes, or by mythologizing these flaws in their satirical wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica. Needless to say, their work had narrow appeal -- appreciated mainly by members of the group's forums. It took the inimitable trolling of Oprah -- which led to her hysterical announcement to middle America that a known pedophile network by the name of Pedobear was equipped with "over 9,000 penises that were all raping children" -- to garner the group significant time in the media spotlight.
These days, the narrative could not be more different. Over the past few months, Anonymous has constantly been in the headlines, but for reasons that are political rather than "lulzy." It seems the group has squarely concentrated its efforts on promoting freedom of information and speech by way of illegal, distributed denial-of-service attacks to crash the websites of authoritarian regimes in Africa and bolster the group's campaign for unfettered freedom of expression worldwide.
For the most part, the mainstream media remains befuddled by Anonymous, not knowing quite what to make of the group's mélange of illegal activity, political motivations and sardonic sense of humor. Moreover, as the group does not visibly toil on any ideological coalface, media outlets have been tempted to portray Anonymous as a group of lonesome hackers with nebulous but shadowy intent. Mass rallies -- like the ones in Wisconsin -- make for an easy, linear media narrative. But electronic subterfuge and virtual activism are often depicted as a bloodless sport -- the least compelling kind.
But now, things are getting bloody -- especially in the United States where Anonymous has gained considerable clout. This week, the group's actions spectacularly forced the resignation of beleaguered HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr after it was revealed that HBGary -- in tandem with Palantir Technologies, Berico Securities and Hunton and Williams -- were planning to initiate a disinformation campaign against pro-union organizers and opponents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The group uncovered the astonishing lengths the three firms would go to in order to discredit their enemies: They planned to set up fake personas on social network sites to damage their opponents and contemplated using malware to steal private information. This has now prompted the Democrats to push for a Congressional investigation. (Being Anonymous, they also brandished their signature irreverence by hacking Barr's twitter account and announcing that he was a "sweaty ballsack of caterpillars.")
But certain aspects of Anonymous' methodology continue to divide those outside and inside the hacker community. DDoS attacks are useful for garnering media attention to certain political causes, but they can also be interpreted as an ironic attack on the opposing side's right to free speech. The persuasiveness of this argument depends on the size and character of Anonymous' targets. Multinational corporations and governments may seem fair game, but what about private citizens? Are critics right to suggest Anonymous is eroding an already blurry distinction between public and private spheres?
Pinning down a cogent ideology of the group is difficult, too. We can surmise a few things with confidence: Anonymous is a zealous defender of freedom of information; the free exchange of information; the right to be irreverent; and the necessity of calling out gross abuses of power. But how committed are they to, say, social justice? This excerpt of a recent missive against the Koch brothers goes as far to imply some level of solidarity with America's working classes and union movement, but it is hard to tell if the group's motives are genuine:

"Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people, whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one ... we are calling for all supporters of true Democracy, and Freedom of The People, to boycott all Koch Industries' paper products. We welcome unions across the globe to join us in this boycott to show that you will not allow big business to dictate your freedom."

Generally speaking, as Anonymous is a decentralized, online community of individuals, it is probably misguided to slap a political label on the group. As a member explained to a newspaper in Baltimore: "We all have this agenda that we all agree on and we all coordinate and act, but all act independently toward it." It's a fairly vague description of the group's politics, to say the least. This brand of civil disobedience is a stark contrast to the centralized, "real-life" social movements of the past, which generally had an identifiable leader and hierarchical order. Theoretically, anyone can become a member, as long as they profess a loose identification with the group's objectives. Coldblood, a spokesperson for the group illustrates just how elastic this identification can be, suggesting that Anonymous is in fact an "online living consciousness, comprised of different individuals with, at times, coinciding ideals and goals."
So what happens when these ideals and goals fail to coincide, as was the case when Anonymous threw its support behind WikiLeaks? Well, the results could be kind of anarchic. In the WikiLeaks scenario, disagreement arose over how Anonymous should show its support. Agreeing on the duration of DDoS attacks on Visa, Mastercard and PayPal -- as well as agreeing on the attacks themselves -- proved a point of contention. The group splintered off into factions -- Operation Leakspin, Operation Payback and Operation Avenge Assange -- each outlining different tactics to demonstrate their support. Anonymous even published a press release addressing "perceived dissent" within its membership.
For better or worse, Anonymous is a by-product of the political freedoms we often take for granted. The group's ability to induce actual changes in social and political policy may be limited, but their ultimate value to democracy lies in their capacity to perform vital checks on institutional power. Their methods may be radical, but for now their outcomes have proved nothing more than regulatory.
Gillian Terzis @'the Atlantic'