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This is your Moment of Clarity #241: As the trial of Bradley Manning continues, Edward Snowden comes out as the NSA whistleblower who revealed the secret massive surveillance state.

Keep fighting,

Lee

By Jeff Gerth, ProPublica

In 1994, a scientist studying her company's new medical imaging dye reached troubling findings. Her boss, she recalls, told her to "burn the data."

That alleged request surfaced this week in a groundbreaking trial over the dye, which is injected into patients to sharpen MRI scans and has been owned since 2004 by GE Healthcare. At issue is whether GE did enough to protect patients from a rare but devastating side effect of the dye: a disease that causes large areas of the skin to become thick and hard. ProPublica investigated the dye in 2009 and 2010, revealing that GE ignored the advice of its own safety experts to "proactively" restrict its use.

GE's lawyer, John Fitzpatrick, didn't dispute the request to burn the data in his opening statement to the jury on Tuesday. But after this story was published, the company told ProPublica that the scientist's boss denies having told her to destroy data. Fitzgerald also confirmed that an outside researcher will testify that he would not have published a study stating the dye was safe if he had been shown certain internal company research.

But Fitzpatrick insisted that GE's accusers were twisting such evidence to falsely impugn the company and wrongly suggest that it had endangered patients. He insisted GE had always acted ethically with regard to the dye, known as Omniscan.

After settling several hundred other cases out of court over the last several years, GE went to trial this week in federal court in Cleveland — the first opportunity for the drug's history to be fully aired. The plaintiff, Paul Decker, 61, contends that he contracted the skin ailment, known as nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, because of an injection of Omniscan in 2005. He was diagnosed in 2010.

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During an interview on CNN Wednesday night, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange warned that mass surveillance was becoming a worldwide problem as technology progressed. Assange has just published a new book about the internet, called "Cypher Punks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet."

Assange told CNN host Erin Burnett that the Internet has merged with global civilization, giving governments and others an unprecedented ability to spy on virtually anyone, because the technology to do so has become cheaper.

"Rather, the new game in two is strategic surveillance," he said. "It is cheaper now to intercept all communications in and out of a country. Store it permanently than it is to simply go after one particular person."

Now while you get the impression, at first, that Mr. Assange is a guest on CNN to discuss his new book. It could have indeed been quite an interesting topic, but that doesn't seem to be what Erin Burnett had in mind as she continuously tries to interrupt...

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On Sunday, dozens of supporters gathered for an event to raise awareness about the crisis for WhistleBlowers in America and to raise money for Bradley Manning's Defense Fund.

The defense for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, filed a motion calling for all charges with prejudice to be dismissed because the United States government has “trampled upon” Manning’s “speedy trial rights.”

Under military rules, the defense contends the delay of an Article 32 hearing, which was eventually held in December 2011, and its “inexcusable failure to understand its basic discovery obligations have completely flouted” reasonable diligence standards. “If Pfc. Manning’s right to speedy trial is indeed fundamental,” the motion suggests, “There can be no doubt that the government’s tremendous lack of diligence in the processing of this case violated that fundamental right.”

Manning is currently scheduled for trial on February 4, 2013. Manning has been held in military custody for more than two years, much of that in solitary confinement. “The Empire State Building could have been constructed almost two-and-a-half times over in the amount of time it will have taken to bring Pfc. Manning to trial,” the defense notes.

Advocates for child victims of sexual abuse are calling on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett to grant clemency to Terrance "Terry" Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on October 3. In 1986, Williams was convicted of killing Amos Norwood. What the jury in that case did not know is that Norwood had sexually abused Williams and had allegedly violently raped him the night before. Furthermore, Williams had suffered years of physical and sexual abuse by older males. Most recently, evidence has emerged that prosecutors tried to make robbery seem like the motive for the murder, even though Williams’ co-defendant knew about the sexual abuse. A hearing on this part of the case was set to take place Friday in Philadelphia. Now, as Williams’ execution is set to take place in less than a month, five of the jurors in his case have since come forward to say they believe life without parole would have been the appropriate sentence because they did not know all the facts.

A full transcript is available at DemocracyNow!

Aerial footage from May of 2010 by John Wathen shows the extent of the devastation created by the BP oil spill. H/T Treehugger.

The Department of Justice presented examples of “gross negligence and willful misconduct” on the part of BP leading up to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The case is set to go to trial in a New Orleans court in early 2013, and the government is trying to demonstrate that most of the blame for the spill—the largest American spill ever—rests with the British company. “The behavior, words, and actions of these BP executives would not be tolerated in a middling size company manufacturing dry goods for sale in a suburban mall,” government lawyers fumed in an August court filing in New Orleans.

In the wake of Hurricane Isaac, the Coast Guard reported on Sunday that teams surveying for pollution found new oil and oiled animals in the vicinity of two inactive oil production facilities near Myrtle Grove. The crews found three juvenile pelicans with oil exposure, one of which was dead. Ten dead nutria were also recovered in the area. The source of the oil has not yet been identified.

Officials have expressed concerns that the hurricane could stir up remnant oil in the bottom of the ocean from the BP oil spill. Up to 1 million barrels of oil are estimated to remain in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil remains because BP has failed to clean it all up in the more than two years since the tragedy.

A Greenpeace research team took samples of tarballs that were discovered on Alabama beaches on September 2nd, including from an area with hundreds of tar balls in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

[Occupy Wall Street members enter a plaza known as Duarte Square that is owned by historic Trinity Church, one of lower Manhattan's largest land-owners December 17, 2011.]

Eight protesters with Occupy Wall Street that include a retired Episcopal Bishop who won both the Bronze and Silver Stars for his service in Vietnam, have been convicted of misdemeanor trespassing for entering a lot owned by Trinity Church a month after the Zucotti Park encampment was dismantled.

A judge in Manhattan Criminal Court found the protesters guilty Monday after a weeklong trial. One of the defendants was also convicted of trying to slice through the fence's locks with bolt-cutters.

The defendants had been charged after a Dec. 17th incident when protesters scaled a chain-link fence or crawled under it to get to a lot to use it as a new camp site.

The original camp in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan was shut down in November. Protesters had wanted church officials to let them occupy the church-owned property but were refused.

[Via]

Video streaming by Ustream

Hundreds have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but photographer Alexander Arbuckle's case was the first to go to trial, and was acquitted after video footage of the incident showed that he didn't break any law. The best part? Arbuckle was there to document the NYPD's side of the story, hoping to defend police working at Occupy protests with his NYU photojournalism project when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly blocking the street. "I felt the police had been treated unfairly on the media," he told the Village Voice. "All the focus was on the conflict and the worst instances of brutality and aggression, where most of the police I met down there were really professional and restrained."

During the January 1st Occupy Wall Street march, journalist Tim Pool was there livestreaming the event, and in his video footage, later used as evidence along with the NYPD's own video footage, protesters are clearly seen using the sidewalk like they were asked to, with only the swarm of officers blocking traffic. In Pool's video, above, the relevant portion begins at the 31:50 mark, with the arrest action taking place around minute 35.

"What's happening is very similar to what happened in 2004 with the Republican National Convention," Arbuckle's lawyer told the Voice. "It's just a symptom of how the NYPD treats dissent. But what has changed is that there is more prevalence of video. It really makes our job a lot easier to have that video."

[Warning: This video contains graphic images..]

Manuel Ramos, a police officer from Fullerton, California, has been charged with second degree murder for allegedly beating a mentally-ill homeless person to death last year. His co-worker, Officer Jay Cicinelli, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force. This video from a surveillance camera shows Kelly Thomas, the victim, pleading for his life while the officers beat him on the street.

Via:

The case has been particularly emotional for Ron Thomas, who has been forced to watch the video of his son's beating and listen to the heartbreaking pleas. At one point, Kelly Thomas cries out, "Dad, they are killing me!"

In an earlier interview, Ron Thomas said the hardest part of the video and audio "is the sounds of my son calling out."

Rackauckas presented the case himself, playing a dramatic, never-before-seen video that showed a shirtless Thomas being pummeled and held down by Fullerton police officers.

Rackauckas said Ramos "turned a routine encounter into a brutal beating death" while Cicinelli "assisted in the killing of Kelly Thomas" by "smashing his face" with the butt of a Taser stun gun and applying his own weight on Thomas' torso.

A coroner's pathologist said Thomas died of chest compression and blood from his facial wounds.

Thomas, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic, sustained neck and head injuries during his encounter with Fullerton police. He was taken to UCI Medical Center where he spent the last days of his life in a coma, until his parents made the decision to remove him from life support.

Full message from the video:

Dear brothers and sisters. Now is the time to open your eyes!

In a stunning move that has civil libertarians stuttering with disbelief, the U.S. Senate has just passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights in America.

The National Defense Authorization Act is being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn't apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill, it essentially says it can apply to Americans "if we want it to.

Bill Summary & Status, 112th Congress (2011 -- 2012) | S.1867 | Latest Title: National Defense Authorization Act for.

This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a "battleground" upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.

Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting:

Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial

...the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn't limited to foreigners. It's confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas' Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — "U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority."

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