Lady Gaga Decries Bradley Manning's 35-Year Prison Sentence
A little more than three years after his arrest for leaking 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks, a military court has sentenced Private Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison. And while public response to the verdict has been mixed—some view him as a patriot who exposed documented wrongs during the Iraq War while others call him a traitor—Lady Gaga, for one, is resoundingly unhappy.
"The news of Bradley Manning's sentencing is devastating," Gaga tweeted. "If our own [people] can't speak up about injustice, who will? How will we ever move forward?"
Oddly enough, Gaga and Pfc. Manning actually have a history. Before his arrest, the military whistleblower told a fellow hacker how one of Mother Monster's biggest hits played a role in the scandal.
"Listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history," Manning wrote to a friend over instant messenger. "Pretty simple, and unglamorous."
Thanks to the 1,294 days he's already served in jail, Manning is potentially up for parole in seven years. If he does manage to get out in 2020, Gaga and Manning ought to celebrate the tenth anniversary of "Telephone" together.
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