...look at those dead bastards!

(12:15:11 PM) bradass87:...if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time...say, 8-9 months... and you saw incredible things, awful things... things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC... what would you do?

Bradley Manning, 23 year old former US-Army intelligence analyst has been arrested in may 2010. He is accused of of violating military computer security and leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

(Side note: WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media)

Manning faces 22 charges, including “aiding the enemy", for which he could get the death penalty if he's convicted. 
The material Manning allegedly forwarded to WikiLeaks, included the so-called "Collateral Murder" video, some of you might already have seen. It shows a helicopter attack of US soldiers on Iraqi civilians, wounding and killing 12 people, including children. Even worse are the soldier's comments on the scene: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards". "Nice" (around 4 minutes)

Bradley Manning exposed war crimes. In a chatlog he says to Adrian Lamo (a fellow hacker who later reported him to the US authorities):

(02:28:10 AM) bradass87: i want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public

The conclusion of this whole story is that Manning has been put in jail and the war criminals are still going on leading their normal lifes. Manning has been tortured and humiliated during his imprisonment until pressure coming from the public became too massive, so that he's in better circumstances now.

And I know that there are very contrary opinions on whether you should make secret information public or not. And I do understand that our system's not working without intelligence and that governments didn't like their secrets to be exposed.
Nevertheless it's important that there are whistleblowers like Manning, who let us know what's really going on, to help us shape an informed opinion. Either way, this 23 year old boy is facing a life in jail for blowing the whistle on war crimes. For informing the public. For letting people know what we all shouldn't know about. This is what injustice feels like.

That's why we organized a vigil in front of the American Consulate in Amsterdam on August the 1st, to demand Manning's immediate release. It was pretty good and we had a loooooooot of press. We signed a petition and wrote postcards to Bradley. 

(Credits for the pictures go to Jim Forest.)


If you want to have more information about Bradley, have a look at those two sites:
www.bradleymanning.org
www.wiseupforbradleymanning.wordpress.com

And if you want to support him yourself, one thing you can do is to write him:

Bradley Manning
c/o Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Avenue #41
Oakland CA 94160
USA


In the end of our vigil, the consul came outside to recieve the petition. Yet another drop in the ocean. Another important one, if you ask me.

Huisfeest - 23rd anniversary

On the 23rd of july our house celebrated its 23rd anniversary. A community that's so small and vulnerable could survive and most important grow during the years - truly a wonderful miracle!

I'm still not quite sure how we managed to turn a more or less normal apartment into a place, where around 70 guests fit into.
Nevertheless the preparations were huge. We started 3 days earlier with cooking, baking, organizing enough plates and so on. Our cook was even cooking during the night, but it was so worth it - 300 delicious Russian blini were awaiting our guests (and us, of course ;).

I was mostly busy distributing coffee, tea and cake and being nervous about the upcoming service. It was the first time for me co-organizing a service, taking that much part in carrying it out and playing the guitar in front of people for the first time in two years. As an accompanist, but still. It made me really happy to see how touched some people were and also to be told that my dad - who was on a visit these days - had a proud grin on his face, everytime i was talking.


Further, due to the huge preparations and the start of the children's vacation, the house was completely full with people for almost one week. Everyone enjoyed these days and our party although we all were reeeally tired in the end :)