And Another... The Torture of Bradley Manning - Truthout.org

[WillyT]

Found this through Rachel Maddow, from Michael Moore:

After the interview with Rachel Maddow last night, filmmaker Michael Moore took to the Twitter machine.

Moore signed off with a retweet of "The Torture of Bradley Manning," the Wikileaks source who has been in solitary confinement for half a year.

Link: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_more/section/archive?year=2010&month=12&ct=a&pc=25&sp=25#December 2010 archive_nav

The Torture of Bradley Manning
Tuesday 21 December 2010
by: Ralph Lopez | t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

<snip>

One peculiar outcome of the new clampdown on whistleblowers is the spectacle of Americans cheering on the destruction of their own rights, as in the case of avowed tough guys commenting in blogs that people like Bradley Manning "did the crime and now does the time," deserve no sympathy and merit the clear torture he is now undergoing. The tough consistently miss the point that while Manning has been accused of leaking classified military and State Department files to WikiLeaks, he has been convicted of nothing. The treatment he is undergoing has become the new norm in the case of high-profile cases purportedly involving national security.

The peerless Glenn Greenwald in this case gets it wrong when he says Manning's treatment is "possibly" torture. Isolation is torture and has been proven to be so. Hardened prisoners have said they would take almost any other punishment for misbehavior over isolation and its effects on the mind and the spirit. According to Greenwald, Manning has been kept in his cell without any human contact whatsoever for 23 out of 24 hours every day for six months, is prohibited from exercising in his cell, takes his meals alone and is being administered what he is told are anti-depressants by the prison doctor to keep his mind from snapping from the effects of the constant, steady quiet, the artificial light which makes it impossible to distinguish night from day and the aloneness with one's own thoughts. Hard as it may be to understand without experiencing it, interaction with other humans, even other accused, is a vital part of the touchstones with reality which frame our psyche. In testimony introduced at the trial of another prisoner accused of material assistance to terrorists, Fahad Hashmi,who was held in isolation for two years, doctors concluded that:

"after 60 days' solitary detention people's mental state begins to break down and gradually develops into psychosis as the mind disintegrates."

Prolonged isolation produces fear, anxiety and stress as lack of human contact denies the victim the opportunity to affirm the validity of what they are thinking. Victims hear voices and begin to question who they are. Stuart Grassian MD, wrote in "Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement":

"over 400 published investigations of the effects of social isolation on primates show such deleterious effects as self-mutilation and disturbances in perception and learning. They found that in adult rhesus monkeys even brief periods of social isolation produce compromised cognitive processing."

Grassian also notes:

"McKinney, Suomi and Harlow (1971) produced symptoms of depression in rhesus monkeys by confining them for 30 days.... isolation-produced fear in dogs has been clearly demonstrated (Thompson & Melzack, 1956)."

All this is taking place before Manning has been convicted of any crime. He has undergone, for six months, the punishment many convicts dread most, before setting foot in a courtroom. Greenwald reports that David House, who has visited Manning several times in Quantico, has described "palpable changes in Manning's physical appearance and behavior just over the course of the several months ... "

<snip>

More: http://www.truth-out.org/the-torture-bradley-manning66147

:kick:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. "Justice" American style...for a whistlebloer who embarrasses the bosses.

[Ellipsis]

2. Well written.

"The tough consistently miss the point that while Manning has been accused of leaking classified military and State Department files to WikiLeaks, he has been convicted of nothing. The treatment he is undergoing has become the new norm in the case of high-profile cases purportedly involving national security".

[RandomThoughts]

3. The worst of that is the forced medication.

It may be he is sane, and the guards are the crazy people. And the drugs are to dull his conscious. Since what he may say would show that.

Although that might be in metaphor.

Hard to discuss the 'manning case' because of the mixed metaphors, so more talking about the use of drugs to dull when people see wrong in society, since that seeing may be to inspire effort to make things better.

And isolation is from fear that his argument is correct.


Without discussing the actual individual, but the concepts of forced medication and isolation, I hope those in that situation are given comfort.

[WillyT]

4. Kick !!!

:kick:

[WillyT]

5. And One More...

:kick:

[rhett o rick]

6. It is very important that this is happening under a Democratic Admin. Is there no hope? nm