Last night, we received the very relieving news that, after yet another suicide attempt while in confinement, a judge has ordered that Chelsea Manning be released after nearly a year of imprisonment for refusal to cooperate with a grand jury. While this is very good news, it doesn’t come without continued challenges. In an attempt…

You can now subscribe to Mutual Exchange Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, and SoundCloud.   Today we are joined by Kelly Wright. Kelly has written for the Center on topics ranging from the history of anarchist thought, transgender liberation, and police militarization. Kelly also served as Chelsea Manning’s Campaign Manager for her run for U.S….

Since the early days of President Barack Obama’s first term, the United States has pursued a high-octane policy of punishing whistleblowers to the fullest extent of the law. If an individual can be identified as having been the source of a leak, and if that individual falls under the jurisdiction of the US or its…

The release of the Panama Papers last weekend — a paper trail of eleven million leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca global law firm — shows how major global banks move assets of billionaire capitalists and major political figures offshore to protect them from taxation. The revelation has stirred up a political hornets’ nest all…

In a speech March 28 at an award ceremony for the Toner Prize For Excellence in Investigative Reporting, the biggest enemy of investigative journalism since Nixon complained of the lack of… investigative journalism. That’s right. President Obama criticized the dominant journalistic culture for its stenographic approach of simply quoting the official statements of public figures…

L’informatore dell’Nsa Edward Snowden continua a gettare la sua ombra sul mondo dell’informazione mondiale. Quasi ogni settimana arrivano nuove rivelazioni dalla montagna di informazioni in suo possesso, rivelazioni che vengono passate a giornalisti e che sono seguite dalle negazioni e tentativi di giustificazione da parte di politici e burocrati, messi a nudo come responsabili di…

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden continues to loom large in the world’s daily news. Revelations from the trove of data he disclosed to journalists roll out on a near-weekly basis, followed by denials and excuses from politicians and bureaucrats he exposes as responsible for rights violations around the world. Citizenfour, a documentary covering his heroic actions on behalf…

1971, the story of the whistleblowing Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI which raided files from a regional FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, made its theatrical debut at New York City’s Cinema Village on January 6. The documentary should spark a rediscovery of the seminal but unrecognized group dedicated to exposing the FBI’s disruption of the anti-Vietnam War and civil…

A new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative documents the overuse of pretrial detention around the globe. The report estimates that around 3.3 million people are currently incarcerated awaiting trial. These people have yet to be convicted of any crime, yet they are locked in cages and subjected to brutal human rights abuses. Martin Schoenteich…

Yahoo News recently reported that an internal U.S. intelligence memorandum warns that the release of a Senate report on torture could inflame anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East. This is a predictably bad argument that usefully serves to keep people worldwide in the dark about the criminal practices of the U.S. government. This argument assumes…

C4SS Media presents Trevor Hultner‘s “Missing Comma: ‘Pass It! Consequences Be Damned!’” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Through their definition of who gets to be a journalist, they’re not. They are making sure that the outlets that crave the most access – the major networks, public radio, major newspapers – are the only…

The Daily Beast’s Geoffrey Stone has drawn the line in the sand when it comes to the Free Flow of Information Act. He has made it clear which side he’s on. He believes that the only way journalism can continue to be free in the United States of got-dang America is if journalists have the…

This was quite the year for left-liberty. Others have already examined the year from different ideological perspectives. This has ranged from Lew Rockwell’s Ron Paul filled piece to Medea Benjamin’s take. It’s time for a retrospective that addresses 2013 from a left-libertarian perspective. There are 4 things worth focusing on. 1) The Canadian Supreme Court’s…

Enjoy review 10! William Pfaff discusses how history will remember Obama Elizabeth Goiten discusses “good guys” and “bad guys” in the War on Terror. Bruce A. Dixon discusses how Obama won a court case to keep sentencing disparities intact. Chris Floyd discusses the murderous character of the American system. Chris Floyd discusses the NSA spying…

Glenn Greenwald opens his latest column for The Guardian with this: “Like many people, I’ve spent years writing and speaking about the lethal power-subservient pathologies plaguing establishment journalism in the west.” He goes on to discuss an article by Chris Blackhurst, a career journalist who had been the editor of The Independent until a few months ago. Greenwald sets forth the…

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that when a garment gets so old, attempting to patch it with new cloth will just tear it up worse. The authoritarian state seems to be reaching that point, beyond which any attempt to patch it up or prolong its life just inflict new damage and hasten…

Trigger warning: The following article discusses rape, sexual assault, and transphobic violence Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower who released evidence of US war crimes to WikiLeaks, has announced that she identifies as a woman. “Given the way I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible,” she wrote…

The U.S. government’s persecution of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning (who came out publicly as a transgender woman after sentencing) is the latest example of a general rule: In the transitional struggle between networks and hierarchies, sometimes networks’ most powerful weapons are the hierarchies themselves. You spend a few thousand bucks to yank a network’s…

At a 2011 press conference President Obama, in response to a question about Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, said “We are a nation of laws. We don’t let individuals make decisions about how the law operates.“ Is this really a nation of laws, though? There’s an old legal principle, “nemo iudex in causa sua,” which translated…

Lately, it hasn’t been clear what exactly the First Amendment protects. Between whistleblowers PFC Manning and Edward Snowden, one awaits a sentencing of potentially 90 years in prison, and the other finds himself trapped in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. Perhaps it’s time to find a better way to protect free speech….