The Inhumane Conditions of Bradley Manning’s Detention

[Ed Jewett]

The Inhumane Conditions of Bradley Manning’s Detention

December 15th, 2010 Via: Salon:
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Inhumane Conditions of Bradley Manning’s Detention

December 15th, 2010 Via: Salon:
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.

Alarming.....[along with the rest]....one can be sure these are not the 'normal' antidepressants or just antidepressants!....I'd bet my life on that!....... As I posted a day or two ago, there are rumors he is being tortured, as well...I'll try to track this down further. One who speaks the truth to power can expect NO mercy.....

[Keith Millea]

the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning

Oh man,his lawyer needs to do something quick about this.I bet they have some really good meds just waiting for Assange too.

[Jan Klimkowski]

"Antidepressants" can cover a whole host of MK-ULTRA-thru-KUBARK medications.

See eg mefloquine:

[Carsten Wiethoff]

From http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/0...nfinement/

Solitary Confinement: The Invisible Torture

• By Brandon Keim
  
• April 29, 2009 |
  

[URL="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/image.php?u=/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2009/04/23/solitarycell.jpg"]
[/URL]
The expanding torture scandal has left the American public horror-struck at how casually the Bush administration and its employees countenanced torture techniques like sleep deprivation, waterboarding and stress positions. However, another form of torture was not just used on detainees, but is being used on at least 25,000 Americans right now.
That’s the number of people currently held in long-term solitary confinement in the United States, living for years in 80-square-foot concrete cubes lit by round-the-clock fluorescent light, with little or no human contact. The U.S. is alone among developed countries in using long-term solitary confinement on a regular basis.
Academic scientific analysis of solitary confinement is still in its early stages, but the results are obvious, and echo the experiences of Americans who’ve been held in solitary confinement by terrorists or as prisoners of war. Human beings evolved to be social creatures. Solitary confinement drives us mad.
Wired.com spoke with psychologist Craig Haney of the University of California, Santa Cruz, an expert on long-term solitary confinement. Asked if it’s torture, Haney replied, “For some people, it is.”
Wired.com: Everybody’s talking now about waterboarding and sleep deprivation and stress positions, but I haven’t seen solitary confinement mentioned much. Why is that?
Craig Haney: My interpretation is that the other techniques are generally regarded as more severe. But solitary confinement is in the background of all this. It’s assumed to be part of the environment in which torture is occurring. And it is itself a painful, potentially harmful condition of confinement.
Wired.com: What have you seen in your own work?
Haney: First let me note that solitary confinement has historically been a part of torture protocols. It was well-documented in South Africa. It’s been used to torture prisoners of war.

There are a couple reasons why solitary confinement is typically used. One is that it’s a very painful experience. People experience isolation panic. They have a difficult time psychologically coping with the experience of being completely alone.
In addition, solitary confinement imposes conditions of social and perceptual stimulus deprivation. Often it’s the deprivation of activity, the deprivation of cognitive stimulation, that some people find to be painful and frightening.
Some of them lose their grasp of their identity. Who we are, and how we function in the world around us, is very much nested in our relation to other people. Over a long period of time, solitary confinement undermines one’s sense of self. It undermines your ability to register and regulate emotion. The appropriateness of what you’re thinking and feeling is difficult to index, because we’re so dependent on contact with others for that feedback. And for some people, it becomes a struggle to maintain sanity.
That leads to the other reason why solitary is so often a part of torture protocols. When people’s sense of themselves is placed in jeopardy, they are more malleable and easily manipulated. In a certain sense, solitary confinement is thought to enhance the effectiveness of other torture techniques.
Wired.com: Is it fair to say that the science of sensory deprivation is “soft,” but the results are hard?
Haney: Yes. Human beings are socially connected organisms. It’s only when people are deprived of that connection that how much we depend on feedback from other people and contact becomes apparent. And all but the most resilient people begin to experience various forms of deterioration in the face of it. I’m not suggesting that everyone doesn’t recover, but not all of them do.
Wired.com: Confusion and loss of self-identity sounds uncomfortable, but is it profoundly damaging?
Haney: It’s certainly profoundly damaging if people lose hold of their own sanity. For some people, their sense of themselves changes so profoundly and so fundamentally that they are unable to regain it.
The other thing that happens more frequently, under even less long-term solitary confinement, is that people lose the ability to interact with others. They have to learn how to live in a world in which they’re in complete isolation. Their ability to be comfortable during social interaction and maintain relationships is permanently impaired.
And for some people, the actual experience of isolation is so painful that it generates an anxiety or panic reaction. People lose their ability to control themselves. They become uncontrollably and sometimes permanently depressed in the face of this kind of treatment. Others become angry and unable to control those impulses.
You also find people who suffer cognitive impairments. Their ability to process information is undermined. And it’s not clear if these skills can be brought back.
Wired.com: How many people in long-term solitary confinement are permanently damaged?
Haney: It’s difficult to estimate precisely, because the long-term solitary conditions themselves vary, and not all people are created equal in terms of psychological resiliency.
There tends to be a kind of sloppiness when we talk about this. Some people will point to a particular study where it doesn’t look like the effects were especially harmful, and conclude that there’s no harm to be concerned about. But there are many other studies showing a higher risk.
I’ve heard word informally that a large percentage of prisoners in Guantanamo have experienced psychiatric problems. Was it all because they were isolated? No. They were subjected to a variety of other things as well.
Wired.com: Based on your own experience with U.S. citizens in long-term solitary confinement, would you be able to hazard a guess as to how many have sustained long-term damage?
Haney: I don’t know. We don’t have good data on follow-ups of people who come out of this environment. This is not something that’s easy to study, and not something that prison systems are eager to have people look at.
But I can tell you that large numbers of them are in pain and are suffering while they’re in solitary confinement. And there is certainly anecdotal evidence that some people have left solitary confinement deeply disturbed. I know such cases. I’ve seen them. These are instances of people going into solitary confinement with no pre-existing psychological problems, who are given a clean bill of health when they go in. When they come out they have psychiatric problems that are permanent or long-lasting.
Wired.com: Does America need to change how it thinks of long-term solitary confinement?
Haney: Yes. In the last 30 or 40 years in the United States, we’ve slipped into more long-term use of solitary confinement. In some cases it’s a more complete form than was used before.
We have an overwhelmingly crowded prison system in which the mandate to rehabilitate and provide activities for prisoners was suspended at the same time as the prison system became overcrowded.
Not surprisingly, prison systems faced with this influx of prisoners, and lacking the rewards they once had to manage and control prisoner behavior, turned to the use of punishment. And one big punishment is the threat of long-term solitary confinement. They’ve used it without a lot of forethought to its consequences. That policy needs to be rethought.
The debate over long-term solitary confinement is always over how much harm it does, not over what positive effects it can have on people subjected to it. That’s because the latter answer is obvious: none. It’s an extraordinarily expensive, extraordinarily wrong-headed way of trying to manage prisoner populations.
Wired.com: Do you consider it legalized torture?
Haney: I don’t think correctional administrators always put people in solitary confinement just to make them feel pain. But to the extent that’s done, to the extent they know that people in these environments will feel that pain, then that creeps very close to the definition of what’s understood internationally as torture.
I think our sloppiness, our carelessness about how this policy has been implemented, raises very severe ethical concerns about the humane treatment of prisoners by both U.S. standards and international standards.

[Peter Lemkin]

A room like that awaits everyone on this Forum and more.....they only need an itsy-bitsy 'excuse' of your doing something 'against the interest of the state [corporations]' or communication with, funding to, acting as, giving comfort to a 'terrorist'........when it is the terrorists who own, build and run these Gulags...which are growing and growing and growing. In the USA it is estimated that in a 'pinch' they can incarcerate 10% of the population. :five:

[Ed Jewett]

They're 'Slow-Torturing' Bradley Manning Right Under Our Noses

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 17:38 Anonymous

by:
John Grant


On December 18, David House, an MIT researcher, visited Bradley Manning at the Quantico, Virginia, military prison where he is being held in solitary confinement. Other than Manning's attorney, House is the rare person allowed to visit him.
House's report is quite thorough in pointing out instances where the military authorities are lying -- or to use philosopher Harry Frankfurt's formulation, "bullshitting" -- about how the 23-year-old Army intelligence worker is being treated.
Here's some of psychologist Dr. Jeffrey Kaye's comment on House's report:
"The human nervous system needs a certain amount of sensory and social stimulation to retain normal brain functioning. ... From what can be ascertained, the effects of solitary confinement are having some effects already on Bradley Manning. His concentration and thinking processes appear somewhat slowed. He avoids certain topics. He has little access to humor. His color is pale, and his musculature is starting to look soft and flabby."
There is, unfortunately, a long and sordid history behind this kind of "slow torture," and the use of it should be a battleground for all Americans still interested in compassion, fairness and justice.
Iraq vet Josh Stieber speaks to protesters outside Quantico prison (Mary Davidson/Potomac Local)
(Iraq infantry veteran Josh Stieber, in the photo above, was a member of the ground unit shown cleaning up after the Apache strike released by WikiLeaks as "Collateral Murder" that showed two Reuters videographers being gunned down, plus two kids being wounded.)
In his book A Question Of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War On Terror, Alfred McCoy connects decades and billions of dollars of "black" US torture research with the current sophisticated techniques Global War On Terror jailers are using to torture human beings without laying a finger on them.
The key is absolute control -- and time. These are clearly the methods now being employed against Manning, who is accused of leaking the WikiLeaks material. The question is, given Manning's high-profile status, do his jailers at the Quantico, Virginia, military facility have the necessary control and time to really scramble young Manning's mind? And what are they after: his mental breakdown and/or his giving up of larger prey like Julian Assange?
House's account from his visit with Manning suggests Manning's jailers, within the limitations they have, are doing their best to break Manning psychologically, Their primary limitation is the publicity surrounding the Manning case and the fact he has a strong, and hopefully growing, support network.
Some of the restrictions House reports would be quite absurd if they didn't make such sense as slow torture tactics.
Guards apparently enter Manning's cell and physically prevent him from doing exercises, which he is permitted to do only for one hour a day -- and that amounts to walking around in a circle in leg irons. He is not permitted any personal items in his cell. His clothes are confiscated at night and he must sleep in boxer shorts under a very heavy, scratchy blanket that causes carpet burns on his skin if he moves too much. A light always shines brightly into his cell, and he is checked on periodically all night by guards, who often enter his cell and wake him. This is his life day-in-day-out.
The fact Manning's jailers are compelled to allow people like House into the prison to talk with Manning makes "slow torture" that much more difficult, since absolute control and the exclusion of human contact are the keys to effective slow torture. Strong advocacy and loud public support can be life-savers.
Matt Southworth, an Iraq vet with the identical intelligence MOS as Manning, speaks in support of Manning
During the mid-2000s, in the case of American citizen Jose Padilla, an entire wing of the South Carolina military brig he was imprisoned in was expensively re-designed for the special requirements ("theater") of his incarceration/interrogation. From the moment of his arrest for planning a "dirty bomb" attack Padilla was a pariah. He reportedly went three years with absolutely no contact from family, friends or lawyers. His only human contact was his interrogators. By the time of his trial for charges unrelated to those he was arrested for he was a walking zombie.
Here's how Alfred McCoy describes the process:
"(S)ensory deprivation has evolved into a total assault on all sense and sensibilities - auditory, visual, tactile, temporal, temperature, survival, sexual, and cultural. Refined through years of practice, the method relies on simple, even banal procedures -- isolation, standing, heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence -- for a systematic attack on all human senses."
Over decades, CIA research delved into the ways these techniques create "a synergy of physical and psychological trauma whose sum is a hammer-blow to the fundamentals of personal identity."
McCoy quotes Otto Doerr-Zegers, a psychologist who treated torture victims of the regime of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, where victims suffered "a loss of interest that greatly surpasses anything observed in anxiety disorders." The subject, Doerr-Zegers reported, "does not only react to torture with a tiredness of days, weeks or months, but remains a tired human being, relatively uninterested and unable to concentrate." Doerr-Zegers discovered that "the psychological component of torture becomes a kind of total theater, a constructed unreality of lies and inversion, in a plot that ends inexorably with the victim's self-betrayal and destruction."
Over decades, with their secret, black budget tax resources, the CIA contracted university professors and psychology departments in the US and Canada to analyze and break down the sensory deprivation process. The goal for the CIA was to achieve the psychic destruction Doerr-Zeger spoke about without resorting to the crude and atavistic methods of physical torture. They discovered that parrot's perches and thumb screws were not needed. The goal was a form of "no touch" psychological ju-jitsu in which the victim's own internal make-up could be manipulated and leveraged so that over time the victim effectively destroyed himself or herself.
"Once the CIA completed its research into no-touch torture," McCoy writes, "application of the method was codified in the curiously named Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual in 1963. The agency then set about disseminating the new practices worldwide."
McCoy quotes from the Kubark Manual that effective interrogation involves "methods of inducing regression of the personality to whatever earlier and weaker level is required for the dissolution of resistance and the inculcation of dependence." The effort is to disrupt the normal psychic process. "Such confusion can best be effected by attacking the victim's sense of time, by scrambling the biorhythms fundamental to every human's daily life." The goal is the "creation of existential chaos."
They want "to manipulate the subject's environment, to create unpleasant or intolerable situations, to disrupt patterns of time, space and sensory perception ... to drive him deeper and deeper into himself, until he is no longer able to control his responses in an adult fashion." This last is Kubark thinking from a CIA training manual used in Honduras during the Contra War in the 1980s.
Kubark and this nefarious research is one of America's dirty little secrets. "The American public has only a vague understanding of the scale of the CIA's massive mind-control project," McCoy writes. "There is a willful blindness, a studied avoidance of this deeply troubling topic."
Since the 1960s when the Kubark Manual appeared and the 1980s when its findings surfaced in places like Central America we've had 9/11 and its reactive Global War On Terror which led to an even wider dissemination of "slow torture" ideas and practices into all sorts of places -- to the point elements of it have been standardized and adapted into the day-to-day practices of prisons all over the United States, most especially in the notorious federal supermax prisons.
Since absolute control of inmate visitation and inmate cultural access is difficult in the United States, thanks to things like the Bill Of Rights, the process has become an imperfect back-and-forth struggle. In the case of Bradley Manning and his high-profile status, that struggle is now on-going. Contact and advocacy from outside is critical. In fact, it may not be excessive to say his sanity and the future integrity of his personal identity are at stake.
Once the fog clears, there are two sides to the Bradley Manning/WikiLeaks story, one legal and one moral. The United States government is playing the legal game because it has a lot to hide under its overwhelming regime of secrecy, which of course is all legal. Evidence suggests they are employing nefarious methods to crush a key voice on the moral side of the dialogue.
Concerned US citizens should do all they can to prevent the government from succeeding.


http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/367

[Ed Jewett]

Written on the Body: The Progressive Torture of Bradley Manning
Written by Chris Floyd Monday, 27 December 2010 23:17 Tonight, in the tenth year of the 21st century, the government of the United States is torturing a young man -- one of its own soldiers -- whom it has incarcerated but not indicted. He has been held in solitary confinement for months on end, subjected to techniques of sleep deprivation taken from the Soviet gulag, denied almost all human contact except from interrogators, constantly harassed by guards to whom he must answer every few minutes -- all in an attempt to break his mind, destroy his will, degrade his humanity and force him to "confess" to a broader "conspiracy" against state power.
His name is Bradley Manning. He is 23 years old. The "crime" he is accused of committing is releasing video evidence of an American atrocity committed years ago in Iraq: the murder of Iraqi civilians by helicopter gunships. Under the American system of jurisprudence, of course, he is considered innocent until proven guilty of this heinous 'crime' of truth-telling. He has not been tried or convicted of this charge, or any other crime.
Yet tonight, in the tenth year of the 21st century, in the United States of America, under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama, 23-year-old Bradley Manning is being subjected to same tortures routinely inflicted on other unindicted, untried captives of the militarist state.
Journalist Andy Worthington, who has been one of the most thorough and assiduous chroniclers of the modern American gulag, has noted the parallels between the treatment imposed on Manning and that doled out to earlier prisoners of the bizarre, lawless limbo concocted by the American war machine for those who threaten -- or are perceived to threaten -- its ever-expanding, ever-more corrupt operations around the world. Worthington states that the conditions of Manning's imprisonment
bear a marked and chilling resemblance to the conditions in which a handful of US citizens and residents were held as "enemy combatants" under the Bush administration. The key elements here are the elements of profound isolation and suffering ... not just the solitary confinement, with no other human being for company, but also the refusal to allow Manning to have a pillow, sheets, or any access to the outside world through the reporting of current affairs.
It is these factors that mark out his conditions of detention as sharing some key elements with the conditions endured by the three "enemy combatants" held on the US mainland under the Bush administration the US citizens Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, and the US legal resident Ali al-Marri.
...

al-Marri, along with two American citizens also held as "enemy combatants" Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla was subjected to the same "Standard Operating Procedure" that was applied to prisoners at Guantánamo during its most brutal phase, from mid-2002 to mid-2004. This involved the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," including prolonged isolation, painful stress positions, exposure to extreme temperature, sleep deprivation, extreme sensory deprivation, and threats of violence and death.

...
There is, at present, no suggestion that Bradley Manning has been subjected to a wide range of "enhanced interrogation techniques," but prolonged isolation is confirmed, and depriving him of a pillow, sheets, or any access to the outside world through the reporting of current affairs are all elements of discomfort and further isolation that were key to the program of belittling and punishing "enemy combatants," and, crucially, "softening them up" or "breaking" them for interrogation. It is, sadly, all too easy to imagine that other techniques designed to disorientate Manning and to further erode his will involving elements of sleep deprivation, threats and sensory deprivation could also be applied, or are, perhaps, already being applied, especially if, as has been suggested by the Independent, the authorities are hoping to cut a plea deal with him, reducing a 52-year sentence in exchange for a confession that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, whom the US is seeking to extradite to the US, was not just a passive recipient of the information leaked by Manning, but was instead a conspirator.
As Glenn Greenwald and others have documented, the known treatment being meted out to Bradley Manning is itself a profound form of torture. Indeed, isolation, sleep deprivation, incessant harassment and constant interrogation were primary methods of the torturers in the Soviet gulag, who in many cases did not resort to more "enhanced" techniques unless the pressure was on from above to produce large numbers of "convictions" and "evidence" of conspiracies in a hurry. These techniques -- the same techniques now used under the command of the Peace Laureate -- were considered highly effective and severely punishing tortures in their own right. They are now at the center of the American gulag's treatment of its captives.And, as Worthington ominously notes, we have no way of knowing at this moment whether "enhanced" techniques are being used on Manning as well.
I am running out of words to describe the depths we are sinking into. I am running out of ways to try to shake people from their stupor and shock them into an awareness of the monstrous evil that is rising all around them. Even those who proclaim themselves the progressive friends of all humankind spend most of their time and energy wringing their hands over the political tea leaves, parsing the strategy and tactics of the partisan squabbles between the two scarcely-distinguishable factions of the militarist establishment. And while they are sometimes bold enough to criticize this or that element of the Peace Laureate's administration, they still fret and fight and pray to keep that administration in power.
But tonight that very administration is torturing a young man -- torturing him -- for telling the truth about the crimes being committed by the machinery of evil that their standard-bearer, the Peace Laureate, now proudly directs. If you support this administration, then you support the torture of Bradley Manning. You are working to guarantee that such tortures, and worse, are inflicted on more and more truth-tellers, more and more people whose consciences have been jolted to the core by the abominations they have witnessed or learned about from others.
The militarist, corporatist, liberty-stripping evil that our earnest lovers of humanity fear will come to pass if those evil Republicans come to power is already here, it is happening before their very eyes. "Oh, that Glenn Beck, how terrible he is!" Yes, he is terrible, but I tell you this: Glenn Beck hasn't tortured anyone. Glenn Beck hasn't killed hundreds of defenseless innocent civilians, men, women and children murdered without any warning by robot drones in an undeclared war on an allied nation. Glenn Beck hasn't "surged" an endless, pointless, murderous, money-making war of domination against a broken land and its terrorized people. Glenn Beck is not going to court to defend torturers. Glenn Beck is not proclaiming he has the arbitrary, unchallengeable power to assassinate anyone on earth whenever he feels like it.
But the Peace Laureate has done all these things. He is doing all these things, and more. No doubt Glenn Beck -- and all the other greasy-pole climbers seeking wealth and domination in our degraded society -- would like to do these things too. But those with their eyes fixed on the potential or fantasized future evil of their partisan opponents are blind to the fact that their own faction is committing gross evils right here and now. Barack Obama is entrenching the machinery of evil deeper and deeper into the structures of government and society; he is strengthening the foundations of evil that others will build upon, just as he is building upon the wars and gulags and corporate whoredom of his predecessor. Progressives who support Obama -- who support this entrenching process -- are in fact guaranteeing that their dystopian nightmares of the future will come true. They are helping Obama clear the path for an even rougher, more merciless beast now slouching toward Washington to be born.
As I said, words are beginning to fail me. And in any case, almost no one is reading the words on this site. [Most of the traffic is drawn by the magnificent -- and shattering -- collection of Iraq War photos compiled by the webmaster, Rich Kastelein.] So let me end with the words of someone else: the incomparable Arthur Silber, whose mighty heart and incisive mind have blazed with light through many dark years:
I repeat once more: these horrors are now what the United States stands for. Thus, for every adult American, the question is not, "Why do you obey?" but:
Why do you support?
Or will you refuse to give your support? Will you say, "No"? These are the paramount questions at this moment in history, and in the life of the United States. We all must answer them. Our honor, our humanity, and our souls lie in the balance.
UPDATE: After putting this post together, I ran across the latest essay by Chris Hedges at Truthdig. Hedges, like Silber, is one of the very few who have the courage to walk the full walk and live fully by their convictions, despite the cost. Hedges was recently arrested outside the White House of the Peace Laureate, one of many protestors hauled off for speaking the truth about the Laureate's wars in a manner deemed unseemly in our great democracy.
His new piece is an eloquent description of how the nightmare dystopia noted above is already coming into being, a horrible mash-up of Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984." You should read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts, beginning with his mention of the Bradley Manning case:
...The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manningwho has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crimemirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of "1984." Manning is being held as a "maximum custody detainee" in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell's dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These "special administrative measures" are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclassAfrican-Americans.
...The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called "near poverty," coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.
...

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.
Hedges also provides a telling passage from Orwell's novel, where the facts of life are explained to Winston Smith:
"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. ... The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
These bedrock truths of our time are now being played out on the body and mind of Bradley Manning. The object of Bradley Manning's torture is not bolstering "national security" or upholding the "rule of law"; the object of his torture is the torture itself: the demonstration of power, the enactment of power, the physical embodiment of power. Power is not a reality until you exercise it -- inflict it -- upon someone else. And that is the essential, the ultimate concern of the militarist empire that rules us today.
*Go here to support Bradley Manning.*

[David Guyatt]

I am running out of words to describe the depths we are sinking into. I am running out of ways to try to shake people from their stupor and shock them into an awareness of the monstrous evil that is rising all around them.

Aye.

[Peter Lemkin]

2011-01-23 David House harassed, detained, and prevented from delivering petition to Bradley Manning
Submitted by Justin Paxton on Sun, 01/23/2011 - 20:26


Today, activist David House and Jane Hamsher, publisher of firedoglake, were detained, harassed, and ultimately prevented from delivering the petition to Stop the Inhumane Treatment of Bradley Manning.

David House reported from his twitter feed:
david house@davidmhouse Detained for 40 minutes now upon entering base. Advised that cannot leave.


Meanwhile visiting hours are expiring... Hopeful that I get to see Brad today. These visits are his only reprieve from solitary.

@davidmhouse david house
My, that's a big shotgun.

@davidmhouse david house
I am on approved visitation list; have been visiting since September. Was planning on asking Brad about his conditions today.

@davidmhouse david house
Vehicle being searched and impounded.

@davidmhouse david house
I am not being allowed to move on-base to see Bradley. The petition is in my lap in a tow-truck surrounded by MPs. Welcome to Quantico.

@davidmhouse david house
MPs still not letting us leave. To clarify I am authorized to be on base; have been on approved visitation list + visiting for 5 months.

davidmhouse david house
RT @janehamsher Quantico Marine brass don't want Manning 2 have sole visitor now. Isolation & enforcement of solitary confinement complete.

@davidmhouse david house
Finally released, right as visiting hours conclude. What's going on in the brig?