RootsAction’s Norman Solomon just delivered our petition with over 100,000 signers to the Nobel Committee in Oslo -- and major news coverage went around the world.
This week, thousands of newspapers published stories about our petition from Reuters, AFP, and the Associated Press. TV and radio coverage also reached many millions of people across the globe.
Bradley Manning has been convicted for bravely exposing serious crimes by the U.S. government. With sentencing imminent, this would be a very good time to inform people in your community about why you signed our historic petition.
Please contact your local media outlets to urge them to get the story right while reporting on a “local angle” including your own involvement in the ManningNobel.org petition.
Also, please share those wire service stories on social media and urge people to add their names to our ongoing petition at ManningNobel.org.
Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends.
-- The RootsAction.org team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, and many others.
Edited by WD
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Marin activist lobbies in Norway for Nobel Peace Prize for Bradley Manning
By Richard Halstead: Norman
Solomon, a West Marin author and political activist, met with a Nobel
Prize committee official in Oslo, Norway this week to make a case for
awarding the peace prize to Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.
Manning,
25, is facing up to 90 years in prison for leaking 700,000 government
files to WikiLeaks. His trial is scheduled to resume Friday at Fort
Meade Army base outside Baltimore.On Monday, Solomon presented Nobel committee member Asle Toje with a petition with more than 100,000 signatures endorsing Manning for the peace prize. Among those signing the petition was Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire. The signatures, many of which were accompanied by comments, were collected by RootsAction.org, which Solomon co-founded.
"We printed out close to 5,000 pages. I brought the petitions in two boxes in a wagon," Solomon said. " Mr. Toje was very cordial while he didn't give me the impression he was all that happy with the petition."
Typically, the committee receives between 150 and 200 different nominations each year, according to the official website of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Solomon said he told Toje that many of the people who signed RootsAction.org's petition said they believe the Nobel committee needs to redeem itself after giving the peace prize to Obama (the baby bomber) in 2009.
Solomon said Manning richly deserves the peace prize since his actions helped to shorten the United States military involvement in Iraq.
"He exposed diplomatic cables showing a massacre of Iraq civilians, including many children, that had been covered up by the U.S. military, as well as the now infamous so-called collateral murder video that he also provided to the public through WikiLeaks," Solomon said.
The video Solomon referred to featured a sound track of banter as U.S. service members in a pair of gunships fired on civilians in Baghdad. Solomon said the leaks motivated the Iraqi government to insist on legal jurisdiction over alleged criminal acts by U.S. troops.
"And for the Obama administration that was totally unacceptable, so that compelled a swifter, full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq," Solomon said.
Solomon said Manning's disclosures also paved the way for the beginning of the Arab Spring by revealing the corruption of the government in Tunisia, and it's collaboration with the U.S. government.
On Wednesday, Manning, who has been found guilty of 20 of the 22 charges of spying and disobeying orders lodged against him, apologized for the "unintended consequences" of his actions and said, "I'm sorry that my actions hurt people." His defense attorney presented witnesses who made the case that Manning's actions were influenced by confusion over his gender identity and other psychological factors.
Solomon said, "They're in the sentencing phase now and Manning is looking at the possibility of life in prison. It is an attempt to reduce the sentence. I believe Manning is a casualty of war."
Edited by WD
Source
WB7
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