Info about the scandal concerning Chelsea Manning

I have taken great interest in this subject and indeed everything concerned with whistle-blowing. I am not 'transgender' or have a connection with that world, but I sympathise with Chelsea because of what she has suffered, and I support what she has done.

I received the email below and I hope you will act upon it.

***

Chelsea Manning Support Network

Exposing war crimes is not a crime!

Supporters rally for Chelsea outside Ft. Leavenworth military prison
https://www.chelseamanning.org/uncategorized/outside-ft-leavenworth
Nov 24th 2016, 05:01

Chelsea Manning Support Network

November 20, 2016
More the the 60 persons came on short notice to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to rally for Chelsea Manning, on Sunday, November 20, 2016. Photos and reports by Chelsea Manning Support Network Advisory Board member US Army Col. Ann Wright (retired).

Peaceworks Kansas City peace activist and attorney Henry Stoever as the MC for our vigil for Chelsea Manning. 

More the the 60 persons who came on short notice to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for the vigil for Chelsea Manning.

New banner for Clemency for Chelsea Manning at the vigil at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on November 20, 2016. From left to right, Ian, Chase Strangio, attorney and friend of Chelsea’s, Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, a former US Army doctor who refused to go to Gulf War I, was court-martialed and sentenced to 30 months in prison, of which she spent 8 months in Leavenworth, Ann Wright, retired US Army Colonel (29 years in Army and Army Reserve and former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to Bush’s war on Iraq, and Ron Faust, retired minister, with suspended sentence for challenging US assassin drone program at Whiteman Air Force Base and Poet.

Caroline Gibbs of Transgender Institute (transinstitute.org) and transgender woman who had been in Kansas prison speak to Chelsea Manning vigil at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Please help the Bedouin living in Israel

I have written this letter to my Peter Kyle, MP for Hove and Portslade, which is the western part of the city of Brighton & Hove. This is an international question, and I suggest that you write similar letters to the legislators in your own country, if you are not in the UK. If you are in the UK, would you please write to your MP and/or Members of the House of Lords with whom you are acquainted.

***************

Dear Peter Kyle MP,
The Israeli army is about to demolish the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the South of Israel and evict the residents to make way for new villages on the same sites with similar names, but restricted to Jewish Israeli citizens.
The bulldozers are due today (Tuesday 22nd of November) – the only thing that can stop them are international protests, especially from Members of Parliament and from the UK government.

This demolition has been delayed for two years due to international protests at this extreme case of ethnic cleansing, but has now given the go-ahead for the village to be razed, destroying the homes and livelihoods of many families. Following the announcement, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel filed a last-minute request with the Be’er Sheva Magistrate’s Court to freeze the demolition process, which was rejected.
Umm al-Hiran is a village of 700 Bedouin inside Israel. The Israelis plan to demolish the whole village and build a Jewish-only village on the ruins of Umm al-Hiran with a similar name, Hiran.
The Bedouin - who are Israeli citizens - have made it clear they do not object to Jewish Israelis moving next door – there is plenty of room in the Negev desert – but cannot see why their village needs to be demolished and why the two communities cannot live together as neighbours.
I would like you to urgently ask the Foreign Secretary to protest in the strongest terms to the Israeli government:

• That the threat of demolition should be lifted and the present population of Umm al-Hiran should be allowed to continue living there, free of building restrictions
• That the policy of denying services to Bedouin villages, demolishing permanent buildings and relocating Bedouins to townships should be abandoned

There are an estimated 200,000 Bedouin in Israel and over 50,000 in the West Bank, many still engaged in their traditional livelihood of herding sheep, but also many Bedouin doctors, lawyers and teachers who continue to live in traditional villages, despite the denial of basic services such as electricity, water and metalled roads and the repeated destruction by Israeli army bulldozers of schools, kindergartens and clinics – many funded by international donors such as the UK – as well as Bedouin homes and animal shelters.

I urge you to please take urgent action now.

Useful info for supporters of UKIP and the Leave campaign generally

I was very pleased to get this email from Arron Banks as it answered many questions I have been nursing. He was interviewed on the BBC's Today programme on 2 November 2016 at very approximately 7am. It's worth listening to. What will happen to UKIP? They certainly have some problems to get over. I think one lesson we can all learn is: Be very careful who you let into your organisation!

Dear Supporter,

Set shortly after the war in 1950s rural Italy, The Little World of Don Camillo is a book about a catholic priest who speaks to Jesus on the cross and breaks all the rules. The eponymous Don Camillo is deeply flawed, but Jesus forgives him because he does everything for the right reasons, and with all his heart. At a pivotal moment in the book, Don Camillo finds himself alone.

“I feel as if I’m in the middle of a desert” he confided to Jesus, “and it’s no different when I have a hundred people around me because, although they’re right there, only half a yard from me, there’s a sheet of glass half a yard thick between them and me.

“I can hear their voices, but they seem to be coming from another world”.

"It’s fear” answered Jesus. “They are afraid of you”.

“Of me?”

“Of you Don Camillo. And they hate you. They were living warmly and peacefully in the cocoon of their cowardice. They knew the truth, but nobody could compel them to recognise it because nobody had proclaimed it publicly. You have forced them to face the truth.”

Reading these words reminds me of why Nigel Farage is seen by many in the media as divisive, and why UKIP is so hated.

They feared the truth would turn their cosy political consensus upside-down. It took many years to crack that half-yard thick sheet of glass and then shatter it so brilliantly on the 23^rd of June 2016.

The electoral fears of the Conservative party following the 2014 European Election led our then Prime Minister to offer the In/Out referendum and the rest is history!

I am eternally grateful to everyone who backed our incredible referendum campaign, which ended in a huge victory for ordinary voters over the political class as well as the European establishment.

It is thanks to the thirty million leaflets you delivered along with the messages we spread to as many as fifteen million people a week on social media that we were able to change history.

Nearly one million people, voters of all parties, follow Leave.EU every week on social media, an achievement no political party or campaigning group has come close to matching.

The political classes are fighting back. Now more than ever we need a strong UKIP to keep the Conservatives feet to the fire, so I thought I would spend a little time on the UKIP leadership race.

I have been asked many times over the last few weeks for my opinion on the internal strife within UKIP. Having watched a series of incredible events unfold from the centre with Nigel, I hold some strong views!

One of the most distasteful things I found about the referendum campaign, and with politics in general, was the sheer duplicity of most politicians we met along the way.

Little did we expect to find that the worst type of career politicians, the kind UKIP supporters dislike so much, causing so much trouble within our own party.

It is now well known that Douglas Carswell infiltrated UKIP in 2014 with the purpose of “neutralising” Nigel Farage because a group of Conservatives led by Dan Hannan arrogantly believed that the party and Nigel were toxic and would cost us the referendum.

The revelations made in the book "The Brexit Club" have not been disputed by Douglas. Indeed at every opportunity he took the chance to run down Nigel and UKIP supporters in the media.

Shortly after joining he recruited the ambitious Suzanne Evans, the pair then worked tirelessly with their old friends in the Tory Party to marginalise and undermine Nigel during the referendum.

We know first-hand how the UKIP NEC was taken over and controlled by these people rendering the party almost impossible to govern.

Nigel, who campaigned relentlessly for "Brexit' all over the country, found this cancer within the party draining and dispiriting.

Over the last year this fifth column, comprising chiefly of Neil Hamilton, Suzanne Evans and Douglas Carswell, have made Nigel’s life a misery.

It looks increasingly likely that Paul Nuttall will win the leadership race and while I like Paul on a personal basis I cannot support rewarding people who have effectively forced Nigel from the party.

I believe his decision to quit politics altogether was triggered by his disillusionment over the in-fighting and the way he was undermined by these people.
Nigel is a once in a lifetime politician, a statesman who put country before party with career lying far-off in the distance, if at all.

Perhaps in some ways he wasn’t ruthless enough as party leader. In Paul’s call for unity we see a pathway emerging for these gutless career politicians to win.

It’s a sad day for UKIP and perhaps the end, for this was a party meant to stand against everything that was dishonest in the political system.

Kind Regards,

Arron Banks
Leave.EU Chairman