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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGuardian person of the year: Voters choose Bradley Manning
Forget the Olympics, mummy porn, particle physics, elections galore and the bravery of a young Pakistani girl. The Guardian's 2012 person of the year vote has concluded and the winner, after some rather fishy voting patterns that belied earlier reader comments on the poll, is Bradley Manning, the US whistleblower on trial for leaking state secrets.
It was very much a game of two halves. The overwhelming majority of early votes in the three-day poll went to Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for defending girls' right to education. Malala, who is still recovering from injuries sustained in October, had 70 percent of votes at the halfway stage with many readers predicting a foregone conclusion. "What that kid did really focussed the world on the evil that these men can do - and what evil all people can do when they feel inclined. But it also showed the courage to pull through and the will of others to not succumb to evil," wrote jamieTWC1.
But in the latter stages, following a series of tweets from the @Wikileaks twitter handle telling followers to vote Manning, thousands of voters flocked to his cause. Manning secured 70 percent of the vote, the vast majority of them coming after a series of @Wikileaks tweets. Project editor Mark Rice-Oxley said: "It was an interesting exercise that told us a lot about our readers, our heroes and the reasons that people vote."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2012/dec/10/bradley-manning-guardian-person-of-the-year-2012
MichaelMcGuire
(1,684 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)Mangoman
(100 posts)Haven't been following the Manning issue as close as I should have.
I understand that he has been called a whistleblower ,what did he blow the whistle on ?
What did he see or discover that made him blow the whistle in such a way ?
Sorry for the stupid questions.
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)and is alleged to have released much more to Wikileaks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
He said the incident that had affected him the most was when 15 detainees had been arrested by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing anti-Iraqi literature. He was asked by the army to find out who the "bad guys" were, and discovered that the detainees had followed what Manning said was a corruption trail within the Iraqi cabinet. He reported this to his commanding officer, but said "he didn't want to hear any of it"; he said the officer told him to help the Iraqi police find more detainees. Manning said it made him realize, "i was actively involved in something that i was completely against ...
malaise
(269,022 posts)Rec