THE ONGOING MISTREATMENT OF BRADLEY MANNING
The punitive mistreatment of Bradley Manning has taken another turn. The London Independent summarizes the situation:
The young American soldier who has been charged with leaking confidential cables to the WikiLeaks website is being forced to sleep naked in his cell and stand outside each morning to be handed back his clothes because he made a single sarcastic quip, his lawyer has claimed.
Fresh outrage at the conditions faced by Bradley Manning, a former research analyst in the Army, at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia erupted last week.
“Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib?” Democrat congressman Dennis Kucinich, demanded. At the time, the Army would say only that the order was “non-punitive”.
In a blog post yesterday, the soldier’s lawyer, David Coombs, said he had got to the bottom of the nocturnal nudity requirement: his client was being punished because of a response to a suggestion from his warders they he was being considered a risk of “self-harm”, if not actual suicide.
Since Manning is not on suicide watch, it is difficult to see the warders’ actions as purely motivated by Manning’s health and well being.
Former Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald at Salon is withering on the topic.
Keep in mind, Manning has not yet been convicted of anything, as Scott Lemieux at The American Prospect points out.
THE TIRE IRON AND THE TAMALE
An essay from the NY Times. I don’t want to give away the whole thing. Just read it. Here’s how it opens:
During this past year I’ve had three instances of car trouble: a blowout on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out-of-gas situation. They all happened while I was driving other people’s cars, which for some reason makes it worse on an emotional level. And on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my own car, and know enough not to park on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.
Each time, when these things happened, I was disgusted with the way people didn’t bother to help. I was stuck on the side of the freeway hoping my friend’s roadside service would show, just watching tow trucks cruise past me…
(Thanks for the tip from the always awesome Daniel Kowalski)
MANY STATES TRYING FEWER KIDS AS ADULTS (EXCEPT CALIFORNIA, OF COURSE)
Why is it that our fair state sucks so badly on this issue?
Here’s a clip from the article by the NY Times’ Mosi Secret. (Is that a great name or what?) It is very much worth reading:
A generation after record levels of youth crime spurred a nationwide movement to prosecute more teenagers as adults, a consensus is emerging that many young delinquents have been mishandled by the adult court system.
[SNIP]The changes followed studies that concluded that older adolescents differed significantly from adults in their capacity to make sound decisions, and benefited more from systems focused on treatment rather than on incarceration.
A 2010 report by Wisconsin’s juvenile justice commission to the governor, James E. Doyle, and the Legislature found that “for many, if not most, youthful offenders, the juvenile justice system is better able to redirect their behavior,” in large part because of the greater availability of social services.
Most of the studies pointed to a 2005 decision by the United States Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons that outlawed the death penalty for defendants who were younger than 18 when their crimes were committed, because of the “general differences” distinguishing them from adults — a lack of maturity, greater susceptibility to peer pressure and undeveloped character….
MO DO DOES JERRY
Sunday’s Maureen Dowd column on Gov. EGB Jr. was reasonably amusing. Here’s a clip. (And yes, Jerry Brown is a social justice issue. He always was.)
Once a priest-like bachelor and loner whose only visible attachment was to power, Brown now seems almost cuddly. At an Oscar lunch at the Beverly Hills mansion of Diane Von Furstenberg and Barry Diller, Brown and his wife, 52-year-old Anne Gust Brown, stood by the fire chatting with other guests.
Anne did not know she was coming to the lunch and had nothing to wear, so Brown swept her off to the store of his old friend Von Furstenberg and helped her pick out three frocks. He reminisced about how he had conspired with Von Furstenberg to design his wife’s wedding dress.
Was this, I wondered, the same guy who sometimes showed up in the ’70s with mismatched shoes?
His clever and charming wife, who served as top campaign adviser and is now de facto chief of staff, is a huge improvement over his ’90s Sancho Panza, Jacques Barzaghi, who wore a black beret and made strange comments like: “We are not disorganized. Our campaign transcends understanding.”
Oh, the Jacques Barzaghi stories I could tell….
FEDERAL JUDGE GOES ON A FIELD TRIP TO GANG NEIGHBORHOOD TO BETTER UNDERSTAND A CASE
Better than simply taking the usual ivory tower stance, I guess, although his stroll was not exactly casual, in that it featured an armed retinue.
Tom Hays of the AP has the story.
BE SURE ALSO TO READ….
….The Liberation of Lori Berenson by Jennifer Egan in the NY Times Magazine. It’s a fascinating tale and Jennifer Egan is a wonderful journalist—who also happens to have written one of last year’s best novels. (Really. )
Celeste, I don’t know much about Manning’s background except what I read on Wikipedia but it sounds like he had a strange experience growing up in Oklahoma as a loner and, well different.
On the other hand Julian Assange of Wikileaks had a documented upbringing in Australia as a child of the “Great White Brotherhood” or as it is known today “The Santiniketan Park Association”.
This is a cult in Australia that Assange’s mother and step father were members of and who indulged in not only a bizzare mix of rascism, new age philosophy, eastern religion, among other “philosophies”, but who practiced such methods as having thier childrens hair dyed white or blond, (notice the dark to white to dark to white hair Assange sports), and who also had the children as young as four years old ingest multiple psychotropic drugs including LSD while locked in dark rooms.
This Assange not only looks and talks like some spaced out alien but there is much talk around of Assange being really a plant or a double agent for the CIA, whose supposed outing of CIA documents are a front and in actuallity only really endanger and out secrets and info detrimental to other countries best interests.
More info on Manning is necessary before I make any judgements but in the meantime his association with wierdos like Assange kind of creep me out.
“Oh, the Jacques Barzaghi stories I could tell….”
I look forward to your thinly-disguised roman a clef being published in the last months of the new-old governor’s term.
I think you’re right, reg. I must get right on it.
DQ, I can’t judge Manning personally, but I do know, we shouldn’t be treating him—or anyone else— the way we are. It’s shameful.
Just as the whole Wen Ho Lee mess was shameful.