back to article Wikileaker Manning peace gong petition backed by thousands

Nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition calling for Wikileaker Bradley Manning to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Private First Class Manning, 25, is facing 20 years behind bars for divulging 250,000 classified US intelligence documents - a cache of which ended up on Julian Assange™'s Wikileaks website. But the private …

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  1. Chris Miller

    Damn, 3 days too late

    But after Obama (let's not even mention Kissinger), no recipient of the Nobel Peace prize can be too silly.

    1. Ole Juul

      Unlike Obama

      I do think Manning has done a lot for world peace. I also think that if he got the Nobel Peace Prize, it would contribute further.

  2. Tank boy

    Poster boy for capitol punishment

    The US Army should reinstate hanging just for him. He's not even worth the bullets of a firing squad.

    1. John Deeb
      Pirate

      Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

      And why stop with him really? It would be nice to see some pools again in each city centre. Put the fear of God back in us! (disclaimer: this is not a serious proposal or related to my personal world view)

    2. No, I will not fix your computer
      FAIL

      Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

      Capitol punishment? isn't that a wrestling event?

      1. Naughtyhorse

        Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

        he was obviously fucking his sister in the trailer when they taught spelling at school.

    3. Tony Green
      Thumb Down

      Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

      The quality of your thinking is evident from the quality of your spelling.

    4. Matthew Hale

      Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

      Is that like Universal punishment or EMI punishment?

      Dunce!

      1. Danny 14
        Joke

        Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

        I vote death by "Robin Gibb" for EMI punishment.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

          Not gonna work - there is a reason why he was singing "Staying alive"..

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

      Corporation USA - Land of the Nazi Regime.

      Reading this is a real eye opener. (minus pictures and vids and links)

      http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html

      Banking Blockade

      For information on how to beat the banks visit our donate page.

      For further information on the banking blockade against WikiLeaks download this PDF.

      A kit with full information on the blockade and tools to assist WikiLeaks through it can be downloaded here.

      Created: 24th October, 1pm GMT

      WikiLeaks has published the biggest leaks in journalistic history. This has triggered aggressive retaliation from powerful groups. Since 7th December 2010 an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade has been imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. The attack has destroyed 95% of our revenue. The blockade came into force within ten days of the launch of Cablegate as part of a concerted US-based, political attack that included vitriol by senior right wing politicians, including assassination calls against WikiLeaks staff. The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency. The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicized US finance companies continues regardless.

      As a result, WikiLeaks has been running on cash reserves for the past eleven months. The blockade has cost the organization tens of millions of pounds in lost donations at a time of unprecedented operational costs resulting from publishing alliances in over 50 countries, and their inevitable counter-attacks. Our scarce resources now must focus on fighting the unlawful banking blockade. If this financial attack stands unchallenged, a dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic precedent will have been set, the implications of which go far beyond WikiLeaks and its work. Any organization that falls foul of powerful finance companies or their political allies can expect similar extrajudicial action. Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and other international NGOs that work to expose the wrongdoing of powerful players risk the same fate as WikiLeaks. If publishing the truth about war is enough to warrant such aggressive action by Washington insiders, all newspapers that have published WikiLeaks’ materials are on the verge of having their readers and advertisers blocked from paying for their subscriptions.

      The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has openly criticized the financial blockade against WikiLeaks, as have the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. The blockade erects a wall between us and our supporters, preventing them from affiliating with and defending the cause of their choice. It violates the competition laws and trade practice legislation of numerous states. It arbitrarily singles out an organization that has not committed any illegal act in any country and cuts it off from its financial lifeline in every country. In Australia, a formal, US triggered investigation into our operations found that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange have no case to answer. In the US, our publishing is protected by the First Amendment, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by a wide variety of respected legal experts on the US Constitution. In January 2011 the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geithner, announced that there were no grounds to blacklist WikiLeaks. There are no judgements, or even charges, against WikiLeaks or its staff anywhere in the world.

      The most powerful players in the banking industry have shown themselves to be a politicized arm of Washington. This collusion has occurred outside of any judicial or administrative process. The reach of these companies is global and violates the most basic principles of sovereignty. In Europe, VISA and MasterCard together control 97% of the card payment market. Alternatives have been aggressively opposed by VISA and US embassies. The European Central Bank announced plans in 2008 to introduce a European card system. A similar 2010 proposal in Russia together with a bill banning individualized VISA transaction records from going to the US were met with intervention by the US Embassy in Moscow. VISA calls itself the world’s largest currency, but every transaction is controlled by the VISA corporation and the groups that influence it. VISA is a national security problem and a threat to state sovereignty. No state, individual or organization has full economic autonomy or privacy if they rely on VISA. It is able to provide significant intelligence on not only individual behaviour and economic relationships but on large sections of the entire microeconomy and the movement of labour.

      The Bank of America is one of the principle promoters of the WikiLeaks financial blockade; it is also the creator of VISA, which until 1976 was called the “Bank Americard”. In February this year, it was revealed in detail that the Bank of America had commissioned, through Washington lawyers Hunton & Williams, a consortium of three US intelligence contractors, including HBGary, to propose a systematic US $2 million/month multi-pronged attack to hack and smear WikiLeaks. HBGary was referred to the bank’s lawyers by contacts within the US Department of Justice. The correspondence and proposals, which include plans to target journalists and lawyers supporting WikiLeaks, are now public. An extract from the proposal to sabotage WikiLeaks can be found on page 16 of plan 6:

      Feed the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions of sabotage or discredit the opposing organizations. Submit fake documents and then call out the error.

      Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed not to be secure they are done.

      Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward.

      Media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities. Sustain pressure. Does nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt among moderates.

      In order to ensure our future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents. We have commenced pre-litigation action against the blockade in Iceland, Denmark, the UK, Brussels, the United States and Australia. We have lodged an anti-trust complaint at the European Commission and expect a decision by mid-November as to whether the European Competition Authority will open a full investigation into the wrongdoing of VISA and MasterCard.

      Trimmed due to size:

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Oh4FS Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

        "..... unlawful financial blockade....." oh please quit your whining, lying propaganda. If it was illegal then it would have been very easy for Dickileaks to over-turn the "blockade" in court, and there would be plenty of luvvies and socialist legal types falling over themselves to help out. The fact is VISA et al are quite within their rights under their terms and conditions to choose not to risk the prosecution of their management by potentially assisting a group likely to be charged with espionage by the US government, and for Dickileaks to call it illegal - and for you to repeat the assertion - is potentially libelous.

  3. mhenriday
    Pint

    Mr Manning would have to pluck the prize

    from Thorbjørn Jagland's (né Johansen) cold, dead hands, so the odds of this happening are one big goose egg. But it would, admittedly restore the grievously injured reputation of Den norske Nobelkomite in one fell swoop....

    Henri

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Where can I sign ..

    .. for Malala Yousafzai?

  5. Don Jefe

    Ugh

    Bradley Manning did nothing to forward peace, he published a bunch of embarrassing stuff that had no real value whatsoever.

    What he did do successfully is betray his oath, fellow servicemen, and his country. You shouldn't get prizes for that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ugh

      True. On the other hand, his actions did lead to keeping Julian Assange off the streets. Surely that's got to be worth some sort of reward?

    2. Tony Green

      Re: Ugh

      He drew attention to the systematic war crimes of the world's biggest rogue nation. Frankly, ANYBODY who betrays a country like that is a Good Bloke in my eyes.

  6. Phil W

    No no no no no no.

    Bradley Manning has done absolutely nothing to aid world peace.

    What he has done is potentially expose his fellow forces personnel to danger by leaking classified material to someone he knew would make it publicly available.

    You could argue that he helped expose illegal or improper activities on the part of the US military, but that's not really work towards peace.

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: No no no no no no.

      One of the best ways to stop forces personnel being exposed to danger is to stop invading other people's countries....

      But maybe you could explain how covering up US war crimes helps promote peace? Presumably you mean the sort of uneasy peace that an occupying force brings...

      1. Phil W

        Re: No no no no no no.

        I never said that covering up war crimes helped promote peace, or that I condoned doing so. I don't.

        I think what you'll find I actually wrote was that exposing them doesn't help bring peace. An opinion backed up by the fact the US has made no change in military policy or actions since Manning's leaks.

        While I agree with your statement :

        "One of the best ways to stop forces personnel being exposed to danger is to stop invading other people's countries"

        Manning's actions have in no way prevented this sort of action from happening or continuing to happen.

  7. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Devil

    Soooo, let's have fun with maths!

    OK, we'll be generous and round the actual 36,000 people Worldwide that voted for Manning to 40,000. After all, it makes the maths easier to follow, and it really needs to be easy for The Faithful to follow and realise how much of a minority they are. So, just to help them out, we'll do more rounding and take a figure of 8bn for the World population, which means 0.0005% (that's 100 x 40,000 /8,000,000,000) of the World population actually hold the same feeble-minded, blinkered viewpoint. What the heck, let's be really generous and suggest only 2bn of the World's population is web-connected and could vote, we still come out with a pathetic total of 0.002%. Nowhere near the "99%" the morons normally claim, but then I suspect their maths skills are seriously lacking. Congratulations if you fall into that truly exclusive band of almost-inevitable Darwin nominees.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Your point being... ?

      1. Naughtyhorse

        Matt??

        Point????

        Do you see what you did there?

      2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: ObSolutions, Inc

        "Your point being... ?" Doh! It seems even that simple maths was a bit too much for The Faithful.

      3. PT

        @ObSolutions

        Matt seldom has a point to make, that's why his posts always contain ad hominem attacks and insults. Matt's overall theme seldom changes - "The US Government can do no wrong, and its critics are the enemy".

        1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: PT Re: @ObSolutions

          Aw, did some get upset by the simple truth? Does it hurt you to realise you are not going to "save the World" or whatever you have convinced yourself you can do? It's always fun to see you lot thrashing around, whining and bleating, rather than facing facts.

  8. Tony Green
    Megaphone

    Beware of signing the petition

    The bastards then take it as carte blanche to spam you about all kinds of things you have no interest in whatsoever.

    Good job I always create a new email address whenever I sign up to anything new...

  9. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Pretty Darned Obvious Inconvenient and Uncomfortable Truth

    Meanwhile, the US government claimed the diplomatic cables leaked by Manning could have cost people their lives and hurt the country.

    There are those who would tell you that Uncle Sam has the monopoly on that because of what they do willy nilly with no intelligent thought as to the inevitable delf-destructive consequence, and all the leaks did, and leaks do, is summed up in this observation shared in the midst of a comment elsewhere on a Weird: BOE Supports Chinese Financial Domination ……… thread.

    Quite so, taxesbyanyothername, and today, with the Internet GIG [Global Intelligence Grid] rocking old worlds with new smarter messages, and earlier sad ignorant and arrogant messages which reveal that established traditional analogue leaderships are not nearly as clever nor nearly so powerful as they need to be, or even think themselves to be for operational command and control, and therefore are not at all in control of anything really ……. and we can thank the Wikileaks modus operandi/vivendi for revelation of that revolutionary fact, which might help you to understand the pathetic witch hunt and staking out of the Ecuadoran embassy in London ….. is Mankind becoming smarter very quickly because those individuals who have learned and are learned and always learning have decided to share freely what they know, so that secrets cannot hide the truth of what is discovered to favour the few who would not share them for the executive advantage which they selfishly enjoy for free? ….. Posted 04/04/13 11:05 AM

    They really are gonna have to get someone who virtually knows what to do, to turn things around for them globally, for whenever things go from bad to worse, is it a sure sign that the wrong folk are at the helm spouting nonsense as instruction and guidance to follow and be followed into a sink hole and dark rank dank matter pit.

    1. Danny 14
      Pirate

      Re: Pretty Darned Obvious Inconvenient and Uncomfortable Truth

      {{Citation needed}}

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