“Having a birthday around the holidays was never easy and, with every successive year, it felt more and more as if celebrating my birthday got thrown into the December holiday mix as an afterthought.”

“At the time of our conversations, Chelsea Manning was 22 years of age - my own age when I made the choice to surrender to federal authorities ... I saw someone very familiar that day, and suddenly felt very old.”

“Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.”

“Having a birthday around the holidays was never easy and, with every successive year, it felt more and more as if celebrating my birthday got thrown into the December holiday mix as an afterthought.”

“In the years preceding my imprisonment, I worked as a software programmer, designing and developing web interfaces, secure databases, and communication software; later, I was employed as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army. Throughout each of these jobs, we used different kinds of encryption to keep prying eyes out of information we handled.”