About 50 demonstrators in New York are arrested after trying to open a new encampment in a vacant lot (John Minchillo/AP).
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Scott Jones and Alex Thomas became a Web sensation for this photo during riots after the Stanley Cup finals. Meanwhile in more serious protests, Occupy Wall Street launches new encampment closer to the banksters. The police state reacts violently. Not in Obama's America: We will not stand for free speech if it has any chance of affecting monetary policy or, more importantly, campaign donations.
Protestors take a stand against the way Bradley Manning has been treated by the US government (EPA/Al Jazeera English).
Al Jazeera English
The US government is making an example of PFC Bradley Manning to deter others from challenging US empire.Washington, DC - He was just 22 years old when he allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables and video evidence of war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
For that act of legal responsibility and courage, which revealed to the world the true face of the American empire, he is facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
After waiting more than 18 months, half of which he spent in torturous solitary confinement that he was only removed from after an international outcry and the resignation of a top State Department official, Manning is finally getting a shot at justice.
That is assuming anyone can call a military court "justice." His case moves to the pre-trial hearing phase this Friday [Dec. 16]. But whether Manning is ultimately found guilty or not is beside the point: All one needs to know about American justice is that if he had murdered civilians and desecrated their corpses -- if he had the moral capacity to commit war crimes, not the audacity to expose them -- he would be better off today.
Indeed, if Manning had merely murdered the nameless, faceless "other" (enemy, Reuters journalist, Muslim) as his Army colleagues on the notorious Afghan "Kill Team" did, he would not have had his right to a speedy trial blatantly violated.
If Manning had intentionally raped and/or killed unarmed civilians, posed for pictures with their dead bodies, and slashed their fingers off as souvenirs, he would not have had his guilt publicly pronounced by his own commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama, months before he so much as saw the inside of a military court. More
