Not torture = torture

Anyone who reads this post from David E. Coombs, Bradley Manning's lawyer will realize that Bradley Manning is being tortured by the United States of America. He is being tortured in our name. Bradley Manning has not been convicted of any crime. Even if he were convicted of a hideous crime, torture would be immoral. The United States claims that it is not torturing Manning, but consider one example of many disgraceful revelations made by David E. Coombs:

The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay.
What the phuque. This is not making sure he is "OK," as the military claims. Rather, this is sleep deprivation and it is a way to damage cognitive functioning. For those who suggest that this is not a problem, would they ever allow this to be done to someone they loved? And why is it that medical websites universally caution that we get enough sleep?
Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later. Metabolism and weight: Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our appetite. Safety: Sleep debt contributes to a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and road accidents. Mood: Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too little sleep can also leave you too tired to do the things you like to do. Cardiovascular health: Serious sleep disorders have been linked to hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and irregular heartbeat. Disease: Sleep deprivation alters immune function, including the activity of the body’s killer cells. Keeping up with sleep may also help fight cancer.
Why would anyone do this to anyone else, other than to torture them? Why, especially, would you do this to a man who has never been convicted of a crime? This is the character of the perennial war-monger totalitarian state coming through loud and clear, and Barack Obama is not willing to step in and call a halt to this despicably immoral situation. Bradley Manning had the guts to speak truth to power, and now, in my name and yours, he is being made into a hideous example so that none of the rest of us get any foolish ideas.

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What passes for education

Chris Hedges discussed education with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, and it is not thriving in America:

The corporatization of universities is far advanced now. You have a withering of the humanities, destruction of philosophy departments. Departments must raise not only their own research and grant money, but often their own salaries. Well, you know, who’s going to pay for that? And so, what we’ve turned our universities into are essentially vocational schools. If you go to a school like Princeton, then you will become a systems manager and go to Goldman Sachs. If you go to an inner-city dysfunctional public school in a place like Camden, you are trained vocationally to stock shelves in Walmart. It’s a kind of solidification of a very pernicious class system, and one that doesn’t train students anymore to think but to fill slots.
Hedges also had harsh words for Barack Obama: [More. . . .]

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Statement by Julian Assange upon his bail

Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who is involved in a Kafkaesque ordeal, made the following statement on December 16, 2010: It's rather amazing how this interviewer doesn't want to understand the situation. Maybe she would get it if she had been accused of a terrible crime by the corporate news media, and her name had been smeared across the Internet despite the fact that the prosecutor never actually brought any charges or produced evidence of any crime. Maybe then she would get it. The interviewer also can't seem to wrap her head around the fact that Assange is likely being smeared by those countries and corporations that are being embarrassed by his devastating leaks of authentic documents. This is nothing short of Kafkaesque.

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Matt Taibbi on Bernie Sanders

For the past few years, I've looked to Matt Taibbi for powerful ways to express, simultaneously emotionally and intellectually, the current national mess we're in. He recently wrote of his admiration for Bernie Sanders at Rolling Stone:

While everyone else in Washington was debating the political efficacy of the deal . . . Sanders blew all of that off and just looked at the deal’s moral implications. Which are these: this tax deal, frankly and unequivocally, is the result of a relatively small group of already-filthy rich people successfully lobbying an even smaller group of morally spineless politicians to shift an ever-bigger share of society’s burdens to the lower and (what’s left of the) middle classes. This is people who already have lots of shit just demanding more shit, for the sheer rotten sake of it. . . I contrast this now to the behavior of Barack Obama. I can’t even count how many times I listened to Barack Obama on the campaign trail talk about how, as president, he would rescind the Bush tax cuts as soon as he had the chance. He stood up and he said over and over again – I can still hear him saying “Let me be clear!” with that Great Statesman voice of his, before he went into this routine – that the Bush tax cuts were wrong and immoral. He said more than once that they “offended his conscience." Then, just as he did with drug re-importation and Guantanamo and bulk Medicare negotiations for pharmaceuticals and the issue of whether or not he would bring registered lobbyists into his White House and a host of other promises, he tossed his campaign “convictions” in the toilet and changed his mind once he was more accountable to lobbyists than primary voters.

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Chris Hedges is not bullish on America

I’m finished watching the first thirty minutes of this talk by Chris Hedges, and much of it is resonating with me. Here are a few of the early points made by Hedges: Those who have been hurt the most by corporate profiteering have been rendered invisible by the corporate media. The corporate media has imposed “a bland uniformity of opinion” upon us. Those who are the most powerful are not those who hold formal titles; It’s our job to make the powerful frightened of us. The question isn’t how to get “good people” into power. It’s how we can limit the damage done to us by people in power. Liberals have lost all credibility. We now have a bankrupt liberal class – one that is nihilist. They “refuse to confront the permanent war economy.” The up and coming fascist movements in America have tapped into the rage of ordinary American because liberals failed to seize the opportunity. We will now increasingly have to deal with politicians whose aim is totalitarianism. They will find scapegoats to blame for America’s woes, and they will not serve as legitimate rulers. Rather, they will, as George Orwell predicted, “cling to power by force and fraud.” We now have “inverted totalitarianism.” It has not been built around a demagogue; rather, it is "expressed in the anonymity of the corporate state." Citizens are utterly impotent within the current system.

Continue ReadingChris Hedges is not bullish on America