Roger Waters Slams US, Shows Support For Manning And Assange

British activist and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters showed support on his social media accounts Saturday for WikiLeaks founder and freedom of press activist, Julian Assange, and for former United States Army intelligence analyst and Wikileaks whistleblower, Chelsea Manning.

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"Good news first," Waters said, reporting that protesters are holding "demonstrations and meetings in both London and in Melbourne, Australia in support of Julian Assange and his fight for liberty and against extradition." Waters asked his fans to go and show support for the Wikileaks founder.

Waters cheered another "successful" meeting organized by the Socialist Party in Assange's defense held in Sydney, Astralia last week which bought award-winning documentary film maker and journalist, John Pilger, to the stage as main speaker.

However, Assange's current situation is becoming more precarious as Ecuador and its President Lenin Moreno continue their negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The organization is notorious in Latin America for its role in the continent's economic crisis. Waters denounced the IMF's infiltration into regional politics and its close relationship to the United States.

"Obviously, the United States is trying to extradite Julian Assange and they're bringing on pressure to bear on the new, weak, very right-wing, malleable President of Ecuador by threatening to withhold an IMF loan to Ecuador and use that economic muscle to persuade him to renege upon their agreement to give Julian Assange Ecuadorian nationality, which meant that he could not be extradited, and to give him temporary asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London," the activist said.

Waters also criticized the new round of sanctions against the Venezuelan people. He said that the U.S.-backed attempted coup d'etat against democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro, "so far has failed."

"But the country is still under enormous threat because of the extraordinary financial muscle that the United States can wield in its moves towards regime change," he said.

Finally, the British activist informed his fans that the "really, really, really bad news," was that Chelsea Manning, "the great heroic whistleblower," was imprisoned Friday after refusing to testify to a secret grand jury two days earlier in an on-going investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

On Friday Manning returned to a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia for a closed contempt hearing where U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton told Manning that she would remain in federal custody “until she purges or the end of the life of the grand jury,” a statement from her representatives said.

The United States government has "now imprisoned her again this time and they have admitted this to coerce her into speaking to a grand jury behind closed doors in secret in order to accumulate evidence to try Julian Assange for espionage whenever they manage to extradite him from Ecuador," said Waters.

The British rockstar concluded his statement by singing a song for Chelsea Manning, saying, "We support you completely and we'll work unreservedly to get you released from this insane incarceration that the US government is imposed on you and I'm for you."