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12.16.10 - 2:56 PM
White House Anti-War Protest: Dan Ellsberg Puts His Body on the Line
Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg defended Julian Assange and his alleged source Bradley Manning as "patriots" at a D.C. protest Thursday organized by Veterans For Peace. Ellsberg, 79, called terrorism charges against them "absurd and slanderous" before heading to the White House to be chained to its gate.
Photos by Common Dreams Asst. Editor Jon Queally
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49 Comments so far
Show AllThank you, Daniel Ellsberg and the Veterans for Peace who have the courage of their convictions. You are awesome.
i agree 100%. i wish i lived closer to DC i would like to have joined them. galveston tx is pretty far away. i guess i just have to keep up to date on other events like this they will have into next year. it is long past time to stop these 2 bs wars and occupations.
matt
galveston tx
What's to keep us, out here in the southwest, from having our own protest? I protested when W came to my little town a year ago for a high school commencement speech. I was the only person, but I got alot of satisfaction, driving up and down our main street 6 hours a day for four days before the speech, with hugh messages on my car about "GWB, compassionate christian WAR CRIMINAL! Most of the people in this town did not like it! I don't care, I will continue to protest, even though I am disabled.
thank you too. you are right. people have been protesting and speaking out in the houston area also. hopefully that will continue.
matt
Thank you all for protesting...protesters like these individuals are the ones truly keeping us free.
Shame on the Gestapo police...peaceful protesters should not be arrested in the 'land of the free'.
God Bless you, Dan Ellsberg! If their were more like you,the powers that be, would certainly not be able to get a with the lies, and the deceit.
Thank You!
Do you think that the cop knows he has just handcuffed the man that brought Nixon down?
He probably doesn't even know who Nixon was. Nixon? who's Nixon?
You have to admit, Dan Ellsberg, looks and acts like a dangerous terrorist.
To them.
moving.
too bad protest and free speech weren't legal in this country
We should all petition to make our Constitution legal again.
what a man! did you notice his hat? it says 'hate' with the e crossed out--brilliant...
thank you mr ellsberg and the others who are truly committed to making their country a place for which we can all be proud...
Bless you Dan Ellsberg. If only YOU were running this country, this nightmare would be over. The GOOD PEOPLE are handcuffed and taken away while those still in such evil delusion haunt the lives of their fellow beings and all else that lives.
This man is a god.
Very inspiring!
I just noticed he's making the peace sign with both hands as he's escorted away. And I love the hat!
What an absurd and twisted nation where the heroic truth-tellers and principled people are completely marginalized --reduced to being arrested when they can't simply be ignored-- while the corrupt frauds and murderers strut the halls of power and fill our airwaves with garbage and lies.
Thanks go out to everyone at this protest in D.C. today.
those who took to the streets in DC to protest our war and president you have my eternal respect.
I LOVE YOU ALL!!! : )
The arc of his career may be worth considering. I wonder if posters here are aware of his early days: top student, Harvard grad, Marine Corps platoon commander (peacetime, in the late 50s), student of game theory, then a RAND Corp employee. (RAND used game theory for military applications.)
Then to Department of Defense, studying Vietnam involvement, and then a State Department senior liaison officer in US's South Vietnam embassy. Spent two years in Vietnam, often in the field carrying a weapon. (You can find all this info on the web.)
My point here is, he did not begin his career as a leftist-pacifist sort of person. He was pretty much a military-way-of-things man, but that changed, thanks in part to an epiphany inspired by a draft resister named Randy Kehler. (Interested readers can look this up, too.)
I have often wondered about people who have dramatically altered their views on things. Many seem welded to the America-centric worldview that has rewarded them-- think of Dick Cheney or Richard Holbrooke. It can be very hard to walk away from the system that has nurtured you, provided the only frame of reference you have, and offers further opportunity. Others have the rare talent of figuring out that the system is corrupt and leaving it, though it costs them plenty.
Those who wish for social change might ponder how a single person can indeed make a difference in others' lives, for the better. I think we can say that Randy Kehler and Daniel Ellsberg are two who did. Most of us have people like this in our own lives, at some level. Our task, then, is to try to similarly affect the world around us positively. Given that the world is a mess, it should not be too difficult to find small ways to do this...
"I have often wondered about people who have dramatically altered their views on things."
I think real life experience does it. When I finished college I was still a Republican and devout Christian who believed that those who suffered most in the world probably brought that suffering on themselves, or were just inferior humans. It wasn't until many years of working in the real world, volunteering as a community organizer, and just knowing people from all walks of life, that my views shifted to what is now called progressive, unless of course you're the mass media or a Texas bible thumper, in which case it's now called radical lunatic left wing fringe.
i live in galveston tx and i know what you mean about the texas bible thumpers. maybe some of them will wake up and support real justice and peace and work for a real future for this country. many of them seem to see their devine role to be that accumulating more and more wealth.
seeing some of the bible thumpers in action is strange for someone coming from nyc.
matt
galveston tx
I was raised as though American patriotism were the One True God.
Some time in junior high I watched a policeman billy-club one of King's marchers. I sat in my suburban home and saw it on TV. The man's glasses fell off on the street, but he never unfolded his arms or legs as the cop dragged him off. My mother explained that the policeman had done what he'd had to do because the protester was "a troublemaker."
I suspect that I will never stop seeing that man dragged off, or those glasses broken in the roadway.
I am no Ellsberg. I am really no one much to anyone but myself. But piece by piece over years and years I have had to release most of what I believed about my government, my schools, my jobs, my parents and uncles and cousins, and leave them in that road beside those glasses, and never know the man's name, or how to thank him, or whether a change which I myself have never served adequately might give him some sense of the value of his own action.
I suspect this is typical.
Daniel Ellsberg, a true patriot for free speech and a citizens activist. To all those standing out in the snow in D.C. as Veterans for Peace, thank you. My late father was also a "veteran for peace" and would have been so proud of Daniel Ellsberg today.
Veterans for Peace is a twenty-five year old organization. These people didn't just show up for the day. They've been working hard for years....
How does our uniquely American freedom feel Mr. Ellsberg? How does it look to the rest of the CD readers? Thank you sincerely for your efforts. The streets will run red with blood of patriots before any freedoms will be won back in our Fascist nation. When will the US have it's own Tienamen Square?
Today (Friday) there has not been one word of this in my local paper (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, a NYT paper) or one word uttered on either my local news or national news on MSNBC. More than 100 people, including Daniel Ellsberg, get arrested in front of the White House yesterday, and not a peep from anyone, like it never happened.
I wonder how the media would have treated a similar event if the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, and the Tea Party crowd had been the arrestees.
I suppose I've already answered my own question....how very, very discouraging.
Daniel Ellserg is a real hero unlike the rescently deceased overrated US diplomat trying at the last moment to make things right by now saying the USA should get out of Afghanistan, though I'll allow better late than never.
AD
Daniel Ellserg is a real hero unlike the rescently deceased overrated US diplomat trying at the last moment to make things right by now saying the USA should get out of Afghanistan, though I'll allow better late than never.
AD
Somehow, someway we need to put a non-violent end to the criminals that have taken our government from us. This insanity has to stop! The real patriots like 79 years young, Dan Ellsberg and VFP are to be applauded. We need to be protected from America's domestic enemies, because they are the "real" terrorists. We need regime change here in America, because this is where the real traitors, terrorists, and enemies to our country are... not thousands of miles away on the other side of the world!
Thank you so much brother Daniel Elllsberg, Ray McGovern, Collen Rowley, Chris Hedges, et al and too long to write all 120 names. Just a few weeks ago, I met Former Attorney General Ramsay Clark, another giant for Truth and they make me see America at its best. I see a small light in my America. My father said, similar words after WWII, if I mentioned what has happened since then, he would jump out of his grave and be arrested too...Be a witness.
Many of us are there in spirit with you. We believe and thank you.
Heaven on earth- thats our mandate.
Look at that smile!! Lovely!
Daniel, Ray and Chris are amazing men and my heroes.
Chalmers Johnson was another that inspired me.
RIP Prof. Johnson.
We need to be there next to them by the thousands.
We all need to join them!
The Vietnam War protests started as a trickle and then turned into a flood - it took time.
Bravo to all who should up to make a point.
Daniel Ellsburg-you are a hero and a true Patriot. You are an inspiration and a great role-model for other who want to know what a real participant in democracy should be doing. May God bless and keep you well, and may you be granted many more fine years to keep doing the wonderful things you do for real Democracy.
The US government claims to "honor veterans", but apparently NOT when they have opinions on the wars they are fighting.
The fighting forces and vets obviously have a unique view of what goes on in those wars. When they say that "this isn't a good thing we are doing", their voices should be heard.
Furthermore, Ellsberg's actions a few decades ago were eventually hailed as "having done a great service". The Pentagon Papers were evidence that the US government is not worthy of the right to keep secrets.
In reviewing "The Pentagon Papers" to justify WikiLeaks:
1] A 1996 article in the New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance"
2] The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions.
3] President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign.
Curiously, these revalations did not stop Pres. GW Bush from misleading the public after the events of 9/11, nor did they cause the American public to demand more government accountability and openness. Perhaps WikiLeaks will??
Isn´t there a "Lifetime Achievement Award" or something like that that he could be nominated for?
The Nobel Peace prize perhaps...oh no,.wait a minute...that prize goes to WAR PROPAGATORS...not war protesters.
Daniel Ellsberg is a true hero of truth-telling.
He is a giant of character and integrity. The photos are beautiful. Love the peace signs, from cuffed wrists. This should be a cover on some magazine.
Trylon
Dear Chained People, all of you:
THANK YOU for putting on those visible chains. Maybe now, people will start to feel those invisible ones.
Perhaps those of you whining for CD to spoon feed you announcements should read other websites and get actually involved with organizations such as Veterans for Peace, Code Pink and many others. I got dozens of notices of the December 16th action but I live in the Northwest and 3000 miles is hard to do without flying. CD is a news compendium not a notice board of upcoming actions. Take some action on your own for cryin' out loud.
Bravo, Dan Ellsberg!
I recommend that anybody who hasn't seen the film "The Most Dangerous Man in America" rent it if they have a DVD player, for this movie is an excellent documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and his exposure of all the dirt that our government has done for so long.
I want to go light candles and sing carols on Christmas eve outside the prison where Bradley Manning is being held in severe solitary confinement
thank you, Mr. Ellsberg, the veterans , the autralian group, for attracting public's attention once more to the key issues.
we should and will do whatever we can to defeat the system.