Ever thought about undertaking an act of civil disobedience on behalf of our animal friends? Think again, and while you’re at it, think about the Animal Terrorism Act. That’s right. There’s a federal law on the books under which you might be charged terrorism if you take unauthorized action on behalf of commercial fauna. That’s exactly what happened to the AETA-4. On July 12, 2010, Judge Ronald Whyte ruled to dismiss the indictment of the AETA4. He said the government would contact them with their plans by August 13, 2010. Then this week the prosecution rolled the date up to mid-September. What is the real intent of this new law? If standing outside an animal researcher’s house chanting epithets and ur-indictments amounts to an act of terrorism, then most of us must be terrorists.
Moving right along...
A crafty journo by the name of D. Scriber has this…and now you have it too:
Although Bradley Manning is still alleged to have provided restricted and secret Army documents to the WikiLeaks website, a group of activists will gather at New York City's Times Square Recruiting Station to voice their support for the private first class. Manning, who is being held at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, is accused of leaking video to the site showing unarmed civilians and Reuters journalists killed by U.S. troops in 2007. His name has also come up in connection with WikiLeaks' Kabul War Diary, tens of thousands of Army reports that document numerous incidents, some of them disturbing, such as the slaying of a group of children.
Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst who was stationed in Iraq, is now the darling of activist groups such as World Can't Wait, Veterans for Peace and Code Pink, a sort of folk hero to those who will gather at 5:30 p.m. on Monday evening at the recruiting station. Debra Sweet, National Director of World Can't Wait said in a news release, "Whoever leaks information showing war crimes by the US military is doing the world a great service by shortening the time until the US ends the occupations of Iraq and Afganistan. Bradley Manning should be released whether or not he had anything to do with exposing the underside of the US occupations to the world."
The group also attributes a quote to the whistleblower behind the Vietnam era's Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg is quoted as calling Manning a hero. "I admire the courage of Bradley Manning for sacrificing himself to make the public aware of the futility of the war in Afghanistan," Ellsberg said.- KBOO