John Lennon, Bradley Manning, Mordechai Vanunu, Sonia and Shimon Peres and Human Rights

Whistleblowers viewed as criminals...

Clockwise from top left: John Lennon, Bradley Manning, Mordechai Vanunu, Sonia and Shimon Peres

(CLERMONT, Fla.) - In an interview John Lennon gave three days before Mark David Chapman murdered him, John said, “I am always complaining about how hard it is to write or how much I suffer when I’m writing—that almost every song I’ve ever written has been absolute torture…except for the 10 or so songs the gods [gave] that come out of nowhere."

And then John told the story of a king who “sent his messenger to an artist to request a painting, he paid the artist the money, and the painter said, ‘OK, come back.’ So a year goes by, and the messenger comes back and tells him, ‘The king’s waiting for his painting,’ and the painter says, ‘Oh, hold on,’ and whips it off right in front of him and says, ‘Here.’ And the messenger says, ‘What’s this? The king paid you 20,000 bucks for this shit, and you knock it off in five minutes?’ And the painter replies, ‘Yeah, but I spent 10 years thinking about it.’”

Mark David Chapman retreated into a fantasy world during in his childhood, and the pre-trial psychiatrists who examined him concluded that, while he was delusional, he was competent to stand trial. Six were prepared to testify that Chapman was psychotic and Chapman himself admitted he suffered from schizophrenia a mental disorder characterized by disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness.

On January 27, 2011, McClatchy Newspapers reported that the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower, US Army PFC Bradley Manning’s, direct supervisor warned that Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking soldiers in the year he was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and advised he not be sent to Iraq, where his job entailed accessing classified documents through the Defense Department's computer system. But superior officers ignored that advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning's skills.

“An Army report into the service's high suicide rate concluded in July that military commanders had become so focused on training troops for deployment that they no longer had the time to address issues such as alcoholism, prescription drug abuse and even violence, and instead hoped they'd disappear in combat…The result was a ‘comedy of errors’ as one commander after another assumed someone else was addressing Manning's problems, one official said.” [1]

Manning has been held in solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for over eight months, and his trial is still months away.

Manning has not been convicted of any crime and is being held in inhumane conditions. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently admitted that the White House was not paying attention to Bradley Manning's extreme confinement conditions, or the fact that pre-approved visitors of Bradley's have been detained and interrogated by military police in order to block their scheduled visit.

“Military pre-trial confinement is supposed to be about ensuring a soldier's presence at court martial, yet for eight months now Manning has been subjected to extreme pre-trial punishment through the arbitrary use of rarely applied regulations--specifically the ‘maximum security classification’ and the ‘prevention of injury’ order. Manning is allowed no meaningful physical exercise, he is allowed no social interaction with other inmates, he is kept in his cell at least 23 hours per day, and he is not allowed out of his cell without restraints…There is no allegation that Manning did anything but share truthful information with the American public regarding the realities of our nation's ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with absolutely no benefit to himself, in order to spark public debate regarding foreign policy.” [2]

On January 5, 2006, I traveled to the Ramallah Headquarters of ADAMEER [Arabic for Conscience] and learned from spokesperson Ala Jaradat that, “The methods and photos from Abu Grahib and Guantanamo were no shock to any Palestinian who had been in prison between 1967 and the '80's. All the methods used in Abu Grahib were normal procedures against Palestinians. In 1999 Internationals, Palestinians and Israelis for human rights threatened a boycott against Israel and that is what forced the Supreme Court to address the torture issue. They did not ban torture and the General Prosecutor can choose not to prosecute those who still use it.”

In June 2005, I began a series of interviews with Mordechai Vanunu and he told me that he was never physically tortured during his 18 years in a windowless tomb-sized cell, but he did inform me of Israel’s intentions regarding his 11 1/2 years in solitary confinement:

Mordechai Vanunu on Israel's Intent RE: Solitary Confinement

In Chapter 26 of my third book, BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010 I begin with this quote from John Lennon:

“Ah, how do you sleep? Ah, how do you sleep at night?” - John Lennon

And I excerpt:

In the 2003, BBC documentary, “ISRAEL'S SECRET WEAPON” investigative journalist Olenka Frenkiel ‘interviewed’ Shimon Peres and said that Vanunu’s kidnapping was, “an illegal act on foreign soil. It was Shimon Peres, then Prime Minister, who had ordered Vanunu's capture. To this day the kidnap remains an official state secret. Peres was the father of Israel's secret nuclear programme and for him Vanunu was a spy.

“It was the young Shimon Peres, back in the fifties who negotiated a secret deal with the French to buy a nuclear weapons reactor like theirs. But while Dimona was going up, intelligence reports reached Washington that Israel was building an atom bomb. Despite claims that Dimona was for peaceful purposes only, Israel's leader Ben Gurion was summoned to Washington. President Kennedy feared an arms race in the Middle East and demanded inspections. But when inspectors finally entered the plant in May 1961 they were tricked. They were shown a fake control room on the ground floor. They were unaware of the six floors below where the plutonium was made.<

“After Kennedy's assassination the pressure on Israel was off. His successor Lyndon Johnson turned a blind eye. Then In 1969 Israel's Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon struck a deal, renewed by every President to this day. Israel's nuclear programme could continue as long as it was never made public. It's called nuclear ambiguity. The term nuclear ambiguity, in some ways it sounds very grand. But isn't just a euphemism for deception?”

Peres replied, “I don’t have to answer any of your questions. I don’t see any reason why.”

In December 2010, I mailed President Shimon Peres a copy of my third book and received this reply:

_

The estranged wife of President Shimon Peres, shunned the limelight and adamantly opposed her husband becoming president. She did not attend his inauguration at the Knesset in July 2007 and never relented in her opposition even after he referred to her in his inaugural speech as the love of his life. It has been said that her heart was always with the public, especially those sectors and individuals who lived in any form of distress.

onia Peres – or Sonia Gal, as she preferred to be called in recent years – passed away in her sleep on January 20, 2011 and at her funeral President Peres recalled how he met Sonia, “One night when we had guard duty, we arrived late and saw a young girl tending the garden, wearing shorts. She had a wonderful face. I knew that it was love at first sight. I learned more from her than I could ever teach her. She was the compass and the conscience of our home. I loved her at first sight, and that love will stay with me until I too close my eyes forever. She loved the country. She loved the people. She did most of her work in secret.” [3]

Sonia’s secret works included washing the floors of an institution for mentally challenged children  and she gave of herself to widows, orphans, new immigrants and to anyone she saw in need. She collected clothes, bedding and household items for them and never asked for acknowledgment. During World War II, Sonia joined the British Army and was sent to Egypt where she served as both a nurse and a driver in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British Army during the war and she regarded peace with Egypt as a matter of great significance.

Three days before his death, John Lennon also said, Even great artists struggle with self-doubt. And art often needs a gestation period, except on those few occasions when the gods offer you the more or less final product as a gift. "The gods generally won't arrive though until after a prolonged period of hard work. Maybe they have an academy up there that gives out Awards for Dedication.”

I don't profess to know about the gods, but I do know I have dedicated the last 5 1/2 years of my life beseeching Israel to let Vanunu go and now I dedicate myself to raising awareness for Bradley Manning.

February 3rd is a national call in day to the White House to support Bradley Manning. When I make my call, I will also be reminding this Administration that they are a cosigner of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 guarantees:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

TO SUPPORT BRADLEY MANNING, the Egyptian people and Vanunu's inalienable right to freedom please call the Whitehouse:

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Eileen Fleming is the Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org, Eileen is a Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com, Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" and the soon to be released "BEYOND NUCLEAR: Some of my Experiences of Mordechai Vanunu and the Holy Land: 2005-2010" youtube.com/user/eileenfleming. Eileen is a unique leader in her state and she intends to run for a Florida Congressional seat in the future, to help speed the process of change that is so demanded today. Like many who walk in similar steps, Eileen, like other writers at Salem-News.com, is an outspoken advocate for humanity and she has no tolerance for the oppressive forces of the world.

You can send Eileen Fleming an email at this address: ecumei@gmail.com