Tortured Until Proven Guilty: Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Conf

[CactusCarlos]

Tortured Until Proven Guilty: Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x99592

Tortured Until Proven Guilty: Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement
Posted by kpete on Fri Dec-31-10 08:29 PM

    Lynn Parramore

    Editor of New Deal 2.0; Co-founder of Recessionwire
    Posted: December 31, 2010 10:36 AM

    Tortured Until Proven Guilty: Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement

    .......................

    Charles Dickens had a keen interest in prison conditions, having witnessed his father's detention in a Victorian debtor's prison. When he heard about the latest American innovation in housing convicts, he came to see for himself. At Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary, the wretches he found in solitary confinement were barely human specters who picked their flesh raw and stared blankly at walls. His on-the-spot conclusion: Solitary confinement is torture. Dickens wrote:

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers...I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.

A man who had seen his share of inhumanities, Dickens pronounced solitary confinement to be "rigid, strict, and hopeless...cruel and wrong."

That was 1842. Since then, piles of scientific studies, along with the vivid accounts of victims, have confirmed what was obvious to Dickens. Solitary confinement is worse than smashed bones and torn flesh. When human beings are deprived of social contact for even a few weeks, concentration breaks down, memory fades and disorientation sets in. Eventually, many prisoners experience explosive rages, hallucinations, catatonia, and self-mutilation. Some become irretrievably insane. Far from promoting safety, the most commonly cited justification, solitary confinement often amplifies violent impulses, turning prisoners into ticking time bombs who are far more dangerous to human society upon release than they ever were to begin with (see National Geographic's documentary on the subject, available on Netflix).

Human beings need social contact for normal brain function. Solitary confinement is thus a method of inflicting traumatic injury upon the human mind. "It's an awful thing, solitary," wrote former Vietnam prisoner John McCain in Faith of My Fathers. "It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment." Among its legion perversities, solitary confinement turns medical doctors into torturers; renders violent criminals more aggressive, and makes prisoners cut off from human society incapable of functioning in it.

In 1890, the United States Supreme Court nearly declared the punishment unconstitutional. It is banned by the Geneva Convention, condemned by the United Nations, and either prohibited or restricted in most civilized countries. And yet today, as Atul Gawande revealed in his gut-wrenching 2009 New Yorker article, tens of thousands of Americans are tortured in this fashion every day, out of sight, in the "Supermax" prisons that have popped up like poisoned mushrooms on the American landscape since the 1980s. Some prisoners are consigned to these Houses of Unholiness for violations - both major and minor -- of prison rules. Some for gang activity. Others for trying to escape. Or for violent behavior. Some are placed there because they are mentally ill and there is nowhere else to put them -- the equivalent of casting a sufferer of pneumonia onto an Arctic tundra.


MORE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-parramore/tortured-until-proven-gui_b_803018.html

[Carl]

Oh well...whatever.

[Chris_]

Well, we can't let him go.  I suppose the only solution is to hang 'im.

[CactusCarlos]

I suppose the only solution is to hang 'im.

Without the interrogation part - just until he pees himself.   

[DefiantSix]

Ohh (say it with me, now) poor widdle bay-bee...  Widdle Bwadee is aw by hisself, wiffout any other traitorous peter-puffers to fwuck widdle man up the ass wike he wants.

Asshole.

[compaqxp]

I've stopped caring for him, but then again I never did. He broke the law and he knew the consequences so why should I care?

If I break the law then I'll get punished for it and so should he.

[DefiantSix]

While not precisely on topic, somehow this feels appropriate for all of the fellating the DUmbshits do to Bradley Manning.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aotlEpmAFVQ[/youtube]

[Chris_]

While not precisely on topic, somehow this feels appropriate for all of the fellating the DUmbshits do to Bradley Manning.

It certainly is

[compaqxp]

While not precisely on topic, somehow this feels appropriate for all of the fellating the DUmbshits do to Bradley Manning.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aotlEpmAFVQ[/youtube]

The Onion! America's Finest News Source.

Love the onion and that video:)

[dandi]

We're not talking about Papillon-style solitary here, where you're kept in pitch darkness with nothing but an occasional cockroach for company. He has a TV and light and reading material and the presence of the guards. He has nutritious food and medical care and opportunity for exercise and hygeine activities.

The DUmbasses would have you believe he's in a 14th century dungeon somewhere with a red hot poker shoved up his ass.

[thundley4]

The DUmbasses would have you believe he's in a 14th century dungeon somewhere with a red hot poker shoved up his ass.

If that were the case the DUmmies would do their best to get locked up at the same place. 

[longview]

Prisoners in Wyoming are routinely kept locked up 23 hours a day and let into a solitary pen for one hour.  No DUmmies should risk coming to Wyo.

(I've been dropping hints so Bobo the Hobo doesn't decide to show up and now this.  My goal?  Keep them out.  How am I doing?)

Oh, and Wyoming has very scimpy social safey net programs. 

[txradioguy]

The DUmbasses would have you believe he's in a 14th century dungeon somewhere with a red hot poker shoved up his ass.

C'mon now.  This is a group of...people...that believe no one should ever go to prison.  It's not their fault they did what they did...it's SOCIETY and people like you and me who are just too judgemental dammit.

Seriously...you know as well as I do that there is a segment of the DUmp that doesn't believe anything is every serious enough to be put in prison for.

And the other half...due to their hatred of America...think this POS is a hero for selling out his country.

[Ballygrl]

OK, and I'm supposed to care about that Traitor named Manning why?

[GOBUCKS]

C'mon now.  This is a group of...people...that believe no one should ever go to prison. 

Except Bush, Cheney, and all of us.