Whatever game Wikileaks is about, the imprisonment of Bradley Manning in Supermax type conditions is outrageous and torturous. Glenn Greenwald writes:

“In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado:  all without so much as having been convicted of anything.  And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation. Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture.

In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article — entitled “Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?” — the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, “all human beings experience isolation as torture.” By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that “solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture.”

For that reason, many Western nations — and even some non-Western nations notorious for human rights abuses — refuse to employ prolonged solitary confinement except in the most extreme cases of prisoner violence. “It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his experience in isolated confinement in Vietnam. “It crushes your spirit.” As Gawande documented: “A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam . . . reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.” Gawande explained that America’s application of this form of torture to its own citizens is what spawned the torture regime which President Obama vowed to end:

This past year, both the Republican and the Democratic Presidential candidates came out firmly for banning torture and closing the facility in Guantánamo Bay, where hundreds of prisoners have been held in years-long isolation. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, however, addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture. . . .

This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. . . . Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement . . . .

It’s one thing to impose such punitive, barbaric measures on convicts who have proven to be violent when around other prisoners; at the Supermax in Florence, inmates convicted of the most heinous crimes and who pose a threat to prison order and the safety of others are subjected to worse treatment than what Manning experiences. But it’s another thing entirely to impose such conditions on individuals, like Manning, who have been convicted of nothing and have never demonstrated an iota of physical threat or disorder.”

“I can recall vividly almost the exact moment when I realized that everything I’d believed in, everything I’d ever been told by parents, teachers, movies and the “news” was all complete and utter bullshit.

I wept countless wretched, bitter tears.

It broke my heart and put a jagged tear in my soul that I still periodically patch with chicken wire and chewing gum. That moment changed everything, changed me, changed my understanding of the world.
I was 13.

Since that moment, I have mourned for the Dream of “liberty and justice for all” like a mother for a dead child. The grief is never-ending. The anger, all-consuming.

Now, like the song says, I feel like a stranger in the land where I was born, and I live just like an outlaw, always on the run.”

—   Comment at Veterans Today.

The AP reports:

(As I’ve said before about Wikileaks, live by distrust, die by distrust)

“Leading Pakistani newspapers acknowledged Friday they were hoaxed after publishing reports based on fake WikiLeaks cables that contain crude anti-Indian propaganda.

The reports, which featured prominently in several papers Thursday, cited alleged U.S. diplomatic cables as confirming many right-wing Pakistani views and conspiracy theories about the country’s archenemy India and the disputed Kashmir region.

Much of Pakistan’s media toes a pro-military, anti-Indian line, which was reflected by the papers’ extensive coverage of the fake memos.

The instigators of the hoax remain unclear, though the material appeared to have originated on a news website that features anti-Indian and pro-Pakistani articles.

The Express Tribune, which partners with the International Herald Tribune in Pakistan, said it “deeply regrets” publishing the story. Other papers acknowledged the reports were false.

Still, Jang, which had carried the fake WikiLeaks on its front page, made no mention of the affair Friday, while The Nation daily ran an editorial saying the hoax had exposed “India’s true face.”

The WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated Pakistani media since they appeared, with pundits highlighting elements that appear to confirm their stance on the country’s military and political leaders, as well as the influence of America and other countries on Pakistan’s internal affairs.”

The drama around Julian Assange again betrays intelligence connections.

The press is reading this as proof the charges are trumped up to hurt Assange. Well, they are probably trumped up. …..but maybe not to hurt him. Let’s wait and see.

“Anna Ardin, one of the two complainants in the rape and sexual assault case against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, has left Sweden, and may have ceased actively co-operating with the Swedish prosecution service and her own lawyer, sources in Sweden told Crikey today.

The move comes amid a growing campaign by leading Western feminists to question the investigation, and renewed confusion as to whether Sweden has actually issued charges against Assange. Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, and the European group Women Against Rape, have all made statements questioning the nature and purpose of the prosecution.

Ardin, who also goes by the name Bernardin, has moved to the West Bank in the Palestinian Territories, as part of a Christian outreach group, aimed at bringing reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. She has moved to the small town of Yanoun, which sits close to Israel’s security/sequestration wall. Yanoun is constantly besieged by fundamentalist Jewish settlers, and international groups have frequently stationed themselves there.

Attempts by Crikey to contact Ardin by phone, fax, email and twitter were unsuccessful today.

Ardin’s blog has restarted after a fortnight hiatus, and her twitter feed has restarted after a two-month break. The twitter feed appears to be commenting on her ongoing profile in the media with the latest entry reading: “CIA agent, rabid feminist / Muslim lover, a Christian fundamentalist, frigid & fatally in love with a man, can you be all that at the same time …”

The previous tweet appears to extend support to WikiLeaks, after financial agencies withdrew their services, reading “Mastercard, Visa and Paypal?—?hit it, now!”*

One source from Ardin’s old university of Uppsala reported rumours that she had stopped co-operating with the prosecution service several weeks ago, and that this was part of the reason for the long delay in proceeding with charges?—?and what still appears to be an absence of charges.

News of Ardin/Bernardin’s departure comes as reports circulate of Ardin’s connection to the right-wing Cuban exile community in Miami, something that Crikey readers learnt of months ago. The reports have helped fuel wilder conspiracy theories about the nature of Ardin’s involvement with WikiLeaks and Assange.

A former politics student who had done internships at Sweden’s DC embassy, Ardin completed her thesis on Cuban political opposition groups, many of whom have involvement?—?and funding?—?from the US interests section, the only US diplomatic representation in Cuba. Ardin initially began her research in Havana and left after being advised that her position was no longer safe. She completed the research in Miami.

However, it seems more likely that the Cuban episode is part of the same political nomadism that led her to WikiLeaks. An office holder with the Social Democratic party’s Christian “brotherhood” faction, Ardin is active in a range of causes from Latin America to animal liberation.”

“118 FIRST RESPONDERS HEARD EXPLOSIONS…..”
By Gordon Duff, Veterans Today

“One of the many groups of dedicated professionals insulted by Julian Assange is “Firefighters for 9/11 Truth.”  This is their video.  Assange says they are liars but even Fox News now admits that Building 7 was destroyed by explosives.

Assange staked the reputation of Wikileaks on the public never learning about Building 7.  Who would want to silence the biggest controversy in history?  Why is Julian Assange doing this?  Who is he?….”

“I have absolutely nothing to do with WikiLeaks and I don’t even approve of what they are doing,” he said. “I would distance myself from WikiLeaks. I wish they wouldn’t use the name. They are not a wiki.”

—  Jimmy Wales, CEO, Wikipedia (allegedly in bed with US intelligence…)

Zahir Ebrahim

“As daunting as it might appear to the mainstream television watcher, it is in fact rather straightforward for those unencumbered by blind faith in governments and its statecraft. Just look for the core-lies and unquestioned axioms of empire that are typically retained in the “leaks” and reportage which, in order to sound credible, often openly expose what is mostly already known anyway or judiciously employ some variation of “Limited Hangout” wrapped in a veneer of dissent or ‘freedom of the press’.

It’s the exact same recipe as is used by all the other fabricated and controlled dissent assets of empire when they are not outright spinning patent lies, for spinning half-truths requires far more brilliance. It is not for nothing that James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter Intelligence 1954-1974, is quoted in the 1992 BBC-2 Documentary on Operation Gladio: “Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State”.

“GOLDMUND: Now both flames have died out in me.

I no longer have the animal happiness of ecstasy and I wouldn’t want it now, even if women were still running after me. …and to create works of art is no longer my wish either… I´ve made enough statues…therefore it is time for me to die…and I´m curious about it…really curious. Not of the beyond, Narcissus, I think about that very little..I no longer believe in it. There is no beyond. The dried up tree is dead forever…the frozen bird does not come back to life, nor does a man after he has died…No I´m curious about dying only because it is still my belief that or my dream that I am on the road to my mother..

NARCISSUS: It seems to me you have found peace now..Goldmund.

GOLDMUND:: Do you mean peace with God? No, that peace I have not found. I don´t want any peace with him. He has made the world badly; we don’t need to praise it and he´ll care little whether I praise him or blame him.

But I have made peace with the pain in my chest, yes. In former days, I was not good at bearing pain, and although I sometimes thought that dying would come easily to me, I was wrong. …I was still much too strong and wild to die…

but now it is different…as I rode along , I realized that force and youth and intelligence had already abandoned me…I stumbled  into a gully with my horse and fell into a stream and broke several ribs…and lay there helpless in the water and that´s when I first learned about real pain…As I fell, I felt something break inside my chest and the breaking pleased me, I was glad to hear it. I was content with it. I lay there in the water and knew that I was about to die….but dying no longer seemed terrible to me...I lay there and had burning pains in my chest and I was defending myself against them and screaming when I heard a laughing voice I had not heard since childhood.It was my mother´s voice, a deep womanly voice, full of ecstasy and love. And then I saw it was she, that she was with me, holding me in her lap, and that she had opened my breast and put her fingers between my ribs to pluck out my heart. When I saw that, it no longer hurt. And now when the pains come back, they are not pains, they are not enemies. they are my mother´s fingers taking my heart out. She works hard at it. Sometimes she presses down and moans as though in ecstasy. Sometimes she laughs and hums tender sounds. Sometimes she is not with me but high above in heaven…and I see her face among the clouds as large as a cloud…I had completely forgotten my mother until you conjured her up again..That day too it hurt very much….but even then my mother called me and I had to follow…she is everywhere..

..She was Lise the gypsy, she was Master Niklaus´ beautiful Madonna, she was life, love, ecstasy..she was also fear, hunger, instinct…now she is death; she has her fingers in my chest…I wanted to tell you about my mother and how she keeps her fingers clasped around my heart…my secret dream was to make a statue of the mother…she was to me the most sacred of all the images..only a short while ago it would have been unbearable to me to think that I might die without having  carved her statue…and now see how strangely things have turned out. It is not my hands that shape and form her…..it is her hands that shape and form me. She is closing her fingers around my heart, she is loosening it, she is emptying me; she is seducing me into dying and with me dies my dream, the beautiful statue, the image of the great mother Eve. I can still see it and if I had force in my hands, I could carve it.But she doesn´t want that..she doesnt want me to make her secret visible.She rather wants me to die. I´m glad to die. She is making it easy for me…….

But you , Narcissus, how will you die when your time comes…since you have no mother? Without a mother one cannot love.Without a mother, one cannot die…¨”