Notes on life, love & liberation by Andy Stepanian. Activist rabble rouser & co-founder of
The Sparrow Project You can email me

Yesterday I joined Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir & Marc Lamont Hill on Huffpost Live for a discussion of the “I Stand With Edward Snowden” efforts.  I was enthused to find out last night that #IStandWithEdwardSnowden was the top trending tag on twitter (in the USA) yesterday afternoon.

You can share the segment HERE

You can learn more about the #IStandWithEdwardSnowden efforts HERE

New Yorkers Declare “I Stand With Edward Snowden”: Hundreds Rally For NSA Whistleblower at NYC’s Union Square (Today 6/10/2013 at 12pm EST) [NEW YORK, NY]   At 12:00pm EST activists, journalists and concerned New Yorkers will assemble at New York’s Union Square for a rally in solidarity with National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, Edward Snowden.  Snowden, a contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton and the source behind The Guardian’s near-weeklong stretch of blockbuster scoops highlighting PRISM and similar pervasive surveillance programs under the authority of the NSA, has  become a household name overnight.  Similarly, this revelation has created a groundswell of concern for Snowden’s welfare, who is currently seeking refuge in Hong Kong and may in the near future require political asylum from a criminal investigation opened yesterday, 6/9/2013, by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).  The call to “Stand With Edward Snowden”, which was issued online shortly after journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald published Snowden’s video testimonial, is the first of what is expected to be many events spanning multiple cities, in support of the NSA whistleblower. View Post

New Yorkers Declare “I Stand With Edward Snowden”: Hundreds Rally For NSA Whistleblower at NYC’s Union Square (Today 6/10/2013 at 12pm EST)

[NEW YORK, NY]   At 12:00pm EST activists, journalists and concerned New Yorkers will assemble at New York’s Union Square for a rally in solidarity with National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, Edward Snowden.  Snowden, a contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton and the source behind The Guardian’s near-weeklong stretch of blockbuster scoops highlighting PRISM and similar pervasive surveillance programs under the authority of the NSA, has  become a household name overnight.  Similarly, this revelation has created a groundswell of concern for Snowden’s welfare, who is currently seeking refuge in Hong Kong and may in the near future require political asylum from a criminal investigation opened yesterday, 6/9/2013, by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).  The call to “Stand With Edward Snowden”, which was issued online shortly after journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald published Snowden’s video testimonial, is the first of what is expected to be many events spanning multiple cities, in support of the NSA whistleblower.

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Loud Words call for Even Louder Actions: Activists Gathering for Left Forum will March on Metropolitan Correctional Center in Solidarity w/ Jeremy Hammond [New York, NY]  As Friday night’s plenary at the Left Forum at NYC’s Pace University comes to a close activists will gather outside at 9:15pm for a march to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) to protest the unjust and politically motivated detentions of activists Jeremy Hammond & Gerald Koch, and to create a boisterous show solidarity for all political prisoners housed at the MCC. View Post

Loud Words call for Even Louder Actions: Activists Gathering for Left Forum will March on Metropolitan Correctional Center in Solidarity w/ Jeremy Hammond

[New York, NY]  As Friday night’s plenary at the Left Forum at NYC’s Pace University comes to a close activists will gather outside at 9:15pm for a march to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) to protest the unjust and politically motivated detentions of activists Jeremy Hammond & Gerald Koch, and to create a boisterous show solidarity for all political prisoners housed at the MCC.

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PLEASE REBLOG & SIGN THE PETITION BELOW

I cried while editing this video in support of jailed activist Jeremy Hammond.  Please consider sharing it with your followers, as well as signing the petition to Judge Preska asking for a lenient sentence for Jeremy’s selfless acts. 

You can sign the petition at Change.org HERE

I am also attaching Jeremy Hammond’s public statement on why he plead guilty yesterday…

May 28, 2013 

Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline.

During the past 15 months I have been relatively quiet about the specifics of my case as I worked with my lawyers to review the discovery and figure out the best legal strategy. There were numerous problems with the government’s case, including the credibility of FBI informant Hector Monsegur. However, because prosecutors stacked the charges with inflated damages figures, I was looking at a sentencing guideline range of over 30 years if I lost at trial. I have wonderful lawyers and an amazing community of people on the outside who support me. None of that changes the fact that I was likely to lose at trial. But, even if I was found not guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country. If I had won this trial I would likely have been shipped across the country to face new but similar charges in a different district. The process might have repeated indefinitely. Ultimately I decided that the most practical route was to accept this plea with a maximum of a ten year sentence and immunity from prosecution in every federal court.

Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites. Those others included military and police equipment suppliers, private intelligence and information security firms, and law enforcement agencies. I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right.

I have already spent 15 months in prison. For several weeks of that time I have been held in solitary confinement. I have been denied visits and phone calls with my family and friends. This plea agreement spares me, my family, and my community a repeat of this grinding process.

I would like to thank all of my friends and supporters for their amazing and ongoing gestures of solidarity. Today I am glad to shoulder the responsibility for my actions and to move one step closer to daylight.

Jeremy Hammond

Will the Military Exploit Transphobia in Trial of Pfc. Manning? (Annotated Transcript of "We Steal Secrets" by Alex Gibney)

On June 3rd, will the military and aligned media (like the “We Steal Secrets” producers) will exploit transphobia to… 1.) further marginalize Bradley Manning 2.) Attempt to depoliticize his actions as little more than a tantrum by a “confused” soldier who wanted to lash out against the hazing he was receiving?  

At the link above is a drop on the “We Steal Secrets” transcript (with notes from allies in green) some of it is real eye opening. Attached below is an excerpt that falls in line with the point I was trying to make above.



Jihrleah Showman:
There was never even a possibility that anyone could assume that he had a female personality.

Alex Gibney:
You mean that he wanted to become a woman?

Jihrleah Showman:
Well, we knew that he was at least considering hormone therapy, but no one cared. It wasn’t like ok, he’s going to have to start showering with the females. Literally, nobody cared.

Jason Edwards:
He would call me and cry – very loud, sobbing like a child – just in a state of utter loss, and he kept saying: “I won’t make it, I can’t make it, I can’t do this.” I constantly asked him – do you have someone, do you have anyone to talk to that’s there, that you can see on a daily basis? And he assured me that he did not.

Narration by Alex Gibney:
Manning did reach out for help at least once in an email to his master sargeant. Manning attached to the email a picture of himself dressed as a woman. Several weeks later around dinner time, Manning was discovered lying on the ground. With a knife, he had scrawled on a chair the words “I want”. Later that same evening, Manning tried to go back to work.


Jihrleah Showman:
I was off shift and I had to come in to find something that he should have been able to find, and he was pacing back and forth saying smart comments to me, and I blatantly said: “Manning, how about you fix your shit before you try to fix mine?” And he screamed and punched me in the face, while I was sitting down. My adrenalin immediately hit overload. I stood up, pushed my chair back. He continued to try to fight me but I put him in, you know, what UFC would call ‘guillotine’ and, you know, pulled him on the floor and laid on top of him and pinned his arms, you know, beside his head. At that time, I can’t believe that he’d mess with me. I literally had 15-inch biceps. I was the last person he probably should have punched. 

My superiors decided that it was just escalating too much and that he had to be removed and have his weapon taken away from him. At that point he never came back in the office. He had to go work with the first sargeant in the mailroom.
Note: The chronology is manipulated to frame Manning. Here Gibney tries to diminish Manning’s alleged ethical motivations and frame him as acting out of petty personal revenge. However prosecution documents state just the opposite—Manning’s alleged submissions to WikiLeaks are alleged by the prosecution to have already occurred by the time of the incident described.

Narration by Alex Gibney:
In the mailroom, Manning still had an internet connection to military networks. His gun had been taken away but he still had access to millions of classified documents.

“We swear by the Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. We must fight them as they fight us, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth… I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you. Do you think David Cameron’s going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think the politicians are going to die? No, it’s going to be the average guy, like you.

Woolwich Murderer

Will we look back at this horrific incident as the canary in the coal mine?  …A sign that western foreign policy is so toxic that horror like yesterday’s attack becomes a normalized reflex? 




 

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

(via window-panes)