Bradley Manning Needs You

Accused whistle-blower Bradley Manning was born in the US on 17 December 1987 to a Welsh mother and American father. He lived in Wales for three years as a teenager and his Mum and other relatives still live in Wales. More background in this previous article. Manning’s military pre-trial ‘Article 32′ hearing in Maryland USA concluded just before Christmas after nearly 19 months of detention and at least nine months of torture; he remains in prison waiting to find out if the state will pursue a court martial against him. Whatever happens, Bradley Manning needs our continued visible and vocal support here in Wales in the coming weeks and months. Can you help?

Having joined the US army in 2007 as an intelligence analyst, Bradley was arrested in Iraq on suspicion of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks and has been held in detention without trial since. He stands accused of leaking the Collateral Murder video, footage which shows unarmed civilians being killed by US soldiers and which the US military had covered up, also the Afghan War Diary, described by the New York Times as "an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war", the award-winning Iraq War Logs that reveal human rights abuses by coalition and Iraqi forces and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables from US Embassies around the world that have proved highly embarrassing and revealing.

No justice for the Cardiff 3

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) incompetence or collusion allows corrupt cops to walk free.

After five months of a trial costing ‘tens of millions of pounds’, eight police officers accused of perverting the course of justice have been able to simply walk away from Swansea Crown Court. They walked free not because a jury acquitted them – the jury didn’t get a chance to pass any verdict at all. They walked free because the CPS and police investigators made such serious and repeated failings in presenting the evidence that it was impossible for the trial to proceed.

This was one of the biggest and most serious cases ever tried in Wales. These police officers had ‘allegedly’colluded to imprison three men for a murder they knew they did not commit,making little effort to find the real killer. They fabricated evidence, and bullied witnesses into committing perjury. One witness recounted that police officers had told her they would

"nail those men and, if I didn't do what they said, they would nail me as well". 

 A forensic witness told of how detectives had ‘strengthened’ a witness account in order to implicate Abdullahi and Actie, two of the three men, known as the Cardiff 3,who were later sentenced to life in prison.

Evade? Avoid? Invade!

Last week a group of like-minded anti-capitalists from the Occupy movement walked through an open window into a massive, neglected space on Westgate Street in Cardiff. Originally built as the High Court and Inland Revenue, the occupation aptly became known as The Great Tax Invasion. Despite displaying Section 6s, we managed to keep a low profile until banners were dropped from the balconies on Saturday.

Our intentions? To protest against tax evasion and avoidance, to highlight the fact that so many buildings are unused and neglected and to transform the space into a much needed community and art project.

Well, it's hardly a secret that the big boys are dodging their tax bills to the tune of £billions, or that more and more folks are losing their homes while the chosen few build luxury hotels and apartment blocks, or even that the government's austerity measures are screwing much needed community and support groups into the ground. The main focus of The Great Tax Invasion collective is on the latter.