Bradley Manning's voice, and "Providence"

Made by dissident American filmmaker Laura Poitras and the artist Jenny Perlin, this five-minute video—built on leaked testimony from February’s pre-trial hearing of whistleblower Bradley Manning—is starting to gain some traction on the internet.

It’s not easy to watch if you haven’t already seen the “Collateral Damage” video that Manning gave to Wikileaks in February 2010, along with thousands of classified Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and State Department diplomatic cables.

But in presenting the U.S. army intelligence analyst’s motivation in his own words—one of the charges against him is "aiding the enemy"—“Providence” crystallizes the indefensible treatment he’s received since being detained in May 2010 under conditions that, as Glenn Greenwald and many others have charged, qualify as torture.

Manning’s full testimony was secretly recorded against the instructions of the court, and then leaked by the the Freedom of the Press Foundation—an organization co-founded by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. It’s available here.