This is the sort of solitary confinement cell that Bradley Manning is confined to… in virtually all other countries, such solitary confinement is considered cruel and unusual punishment. What idiots! They have to be “enlightened” by the Roberts Supreme Court… Citizens United told us that the amount of rights that you have is directly proportionate to the size of your bank account. Note well that the GOP is committed to spreading this form of “freedom” by force of arms… America is no longer what it was…
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Read this:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-17/bradley-manning-wikileaks-alleged-sources-life-in-prison/
Take a note of:
He spends 23 hours a day alone in a standard-sized cell, with a sink, a toilet, and a bed. He isn’t allowed sheets or a pillow, though First Lieutenant Brian Villiard, an officer at Quantico, said he is allowed bedding of “non-shreddable” material. “I’ve held it, I’ve felt it, it’s soft, I’d sleep under it”, he told The Daily Beast.
For an hour every day, a television is wheeled in front of his cell and he’s allowed to watch TV, including news, though usually local news, Coombs told The Daily Beast. He is allowed to read the news as well.
He lives alone in a small cell, denied human contact. He is forced to wear shackles when outside of his cell, and when he meets with the few people allowed to visit him, they sit with a glass partition between them. The only person other than prison officials and a psychologist who has spoken to Manning face to face is his attorney, who says the extended isolation… now, more than seven months of solitary confinement… is weighing on his client’s psyche.
If Russia, China, or Iran were to hold a prisoner under similar conditions the denizens within the beltway would scream and have a hissy fit! The Republicans would be the loudest… however (as Chukcha the Wise would say)… the GOP had no problem with secret prisons in Eastern Europe for the torture of “terrorist” suspects, did it?
This young man is supposedly “innocent until proven guilty”… he’s being kept in conditions of isolation worse than those of a Sov Siberian GULag! At least, you had human contact there… here… there’s NONE.
I am ashamed that my country has fallen as low as it has. If you had told people in 1960 that we’d have to carry photo IDs (and that the cops would have the legal right to demand that you present it on demand), that there would be security cameras on every corner, and that you’d have to empty your pockets every time that you went into a government building… they’d look at you like you had two heads. That’s what has happened… we’ve become a police state. The kids don’t know how free it once was… even in the Cold War years.
It hasn’t been the Left that caused it… mainly, it’s been “conservatives” who’ve been in the forefront of restricting freedom… in the name of “freedom”. You see, as Citizens United told us, our freedom is proportional to the size of our wallets. That’s why this poor fellow is suffering… he doesn’t have any power or influence… and his family doesn’t have it either. So… he can rot in solitary confinement.
America was different prior to the time of Reagan… we CAN have it back! Are you willing to pay the price, though?
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
19 December 2010
Albany NY
Voices from Russia 
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