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Reflections on Bradley Manning's Sentence
I have witnessed throughout my life one consistent truth about truth itself. The truth always comes out. Always. It's like a seedling put in the soil, no matter how deep you bury it or if you bury it upside down, the seedling will wind around until it finally finds the light of day.
One day all of the lies that are now being told by the U.S. government and the corporations who own the United States of America will be exposed. They will be exposed the same way the Small Pox blankets we wrapped around Native people were exposed, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments on Black Soldiers, the slave holdings of twelve American presidents, the fact that our third president was a rapist, the outrageous and unnecessary interment of Japanese American citizens in World War II, the unnecessary dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that there really is an Area 51 and on and on and on. They will know that the American Industrial Prison Complex is not about justice but about profit, places where trumped up charges are waged on the poor who cannot afford a proper defense to build America's fasting growing industry. They will know this nation was built on genocide, slavery, the abuse of working people, and imprisonment, not freedom.
People will finally know and have to face that most American wars have been waged to serve the purses of the wealthy. This has been wholly the case for the past 50 years. They will have to face that their loved ones lives were human sacrifices so the obscenely wealthy could become even wealthier, while those who struggle and work for a living earned less and less until most Americans became wage slaves barely eking out survival.
One day our great-children will know all the facts about our history. They will know who tried to speak out, and they will know what was done to those brave souls who tried to stop this endless march of tyranny. They will know about the Bradley Mannings, the Edward Snowdens, the Thomas Drakes, the William Binneys, the Kathryn Bolkovacs, the Karen Silkwoods, the Carol Dymonds, the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Frank Serpicos, the Mark Whitacres, the Coleen Rowleys, the Sherron Watkinses, the Jesselyn Radacks, the Katharine Guns, the Julia Davises, the John Kiriakous, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of others who have put their bodies on the line to expose corruption at local, state, national, and international levels. They will know what we did to these to silence them. They will know we crucified them on a cross we call Capitalism. They will know they were lied to about Capitalism itself. They will know it was a monstrous economic system created by the wealth and propagandized by the wealth to keep slavery, in one form or another, legal. They will know, and they will judge us accordingly.
They will walk to the graves of loved ones sacrificed in war and those who died from the complications of not being rich of lack of healthcare, housing, and adequate nutrition. They will know their loved ones didn't simply die. They were murdered by a plutocracy who used them like they were Kleenex.
They will know. And, all the seas over all the earth will boil out of their banks in agony when they know.
God have mercy on us all.
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Source URL for Mona Shaw's original Facebook posting: https://www.facebook.com/mona.shaw/posts/10151815963105129
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