It looks to me like Bradley Manning is being setup to be a token who may be "saved" as a way for Obama to give the masses their "Barabbas" as a token so they feel they've gotten something when it was really nothing at all.
The only "good news" about Manning is that he has been transferred to a newly
built medium security military prison at Ft. Leavenworth. Where he would
purportedly be treated more humanely instead of the calculated psychological
torture through various physical applied discomforts over time.
“Welease Wodewick!”
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Chris Maden, text nerd <URL: http://crism.maden.org/ >
“Those in power write the history, while those who suffer
write the songs.” — Frank Harte
GnuPG Fingerprint: C6E4 E2A9 C9F8 71AC 9724 CAA3 19F8 6677 0077 C319
Mike D.'s thesis is an interesting one, but I have my doubts. I would guess that the main reason for moving Manning was to get him away from population centers where it was easier to mount protests. It will also be less convenient for his lawyer to visit and make embarrassing reports.
Good comment but I’m not referring to that…I’m saying that well funded Democrats who support Obama and would never vote for anyone else (never a Republican much less a Libertarian) are using him as a token of “change” in a well-publicized event. Small token indeed. It seems like a setup.
Well, a still more interesting thesis. It would look stronger if the event had in fact been well publicized. But this e-mail from Courage to Resist was the only mention of it I've seen. It was a little surprising that the Secret Service didn't disrupt the song beyond a feeble attempt to take a sign out of somebody's hand, but then these were his most loyal supporters.
Well, my turn for a retraction: Just received this from the WSJ, via Truthout. The protesters did indeed pay $5000 apiece for admission to the breakfast, $105,000 all total.
I've clearly been pissing off the wrong types of people. I need to learn
how to piss off the type of people who get back at me by giving me a hundred
thousand dollars.
That's what made it an intriguing protest. The loyalty of these
protesters is clear; they could be heard saying in the video, "We love
you." But precisely in virtue of that, they have an audience with him
they otherwise wouldn't get. Security gave them a whole 2 minutes to do
their song, whose words were fairly harsh. The direct effect on Obama
is surely nugatory; he knows he has their vote no matter what. But this
strong a protest, at the highest tier of supporters, is unprecedented,
as far as I know, and could conceivably have an impact beyond what any
other protest of 21 people could have achieved--or perhaps even what any
other expenditure of $105,000 could have.