Private First Class Bradley Manning spent his Christmas this year in a 6-foot by 12-foot prison cell at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, where he has been held since May. He is in solitary confinement. He is under continuous surveillance, and must respond to cell checks every five minutes. He cannot keep any personal items in his cell. And he is not even allowed to exercise in his small quarters.

These conditions, as described by Manning’s attorney, David E. Coombs, seem like harsh and cruel punishment even for the most violent, most dangerous convicted criminals. But Manning has not been convicted of any crime at this point. He is accused of being the source of the classified U.S. government documents that Wikileaks has been sharing with the world, but he still awaits his day in military court.

Daphne Eviatar, Senior Associate of the Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, questioned the legality of Manning’s treatment, saying: “At the very least, the conditions would seem to amount to a violation of Article 13 of the [Uniform Code of Military Justice], which states, ‘No person, while being held for trial, may be subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence, but he may be subjected to minor punishment during that period for infractions of discipline.’”

Eviatar continued: “No one has claimed that Bradley Manning has been anything less than completely cooperative with prison guards. And given that he’s not accused of a violent crime, it’s difficult to see why such extreme security measures are necessary.”

According to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, Manning’s detention conditions “constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture,” and are “likely to create long-term psychological injuries.”

The case has caught the attention of the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, who is investigating Manning’s treatment. According to the Washington Post, “The U.N. could ask the United States to stop any violations it finds.” But would it even matter?

I get the impression that the military is trying to get some extrajudicial revenge on Manning. And this is another glaring example of how prisoner rights, the law, and true justice have all taken a back seat since George W. Bush declared his “war on terror”.

This is what America has become. And we don’t have Bush to blame for it now.

Human rights group Amnesty International was mostly silent for quite a while after the Wikileaks scandal hit the fan. Initially, Amnesty had responded only to a handful of select revelations that corroborated its suspicions of human rights abuses, like the airstrikes on Yemen.

Now Amnesty has released a much broader Q&A on the whole Wikileaks matter and freedom of expression. Below are some key excerpts.

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Would prosecution of Julian Assange for releasing US government documents be a violation of the right to freedom of expression?

According to Amnesty International, criminal proceedings aimed at punishing a private person for communicating evidence about human rights violations can never be justified. The same is true with respect to information on a wide range of other matters of public interest.

At the very least, a significant number of the documents released by Wikileaks appear to fall into these categories, so any prosecution based in whole or in part on those particular documents, would be incompatible with freedom of expression.

Would prosecution of employees of the US government who may have provided documents to Wikileaks be a violation of freedom of expression?

US soldier Private Bradley Manning is currently in detention facing charges that include the leaking of national defence information.

While employees of a government have the right to freedom of expression, they also have duties as an employee, so a government has more scope to impose restrictions on its employees than it would have for private individuals who receive or republish information.

However, Amnesty International would be concerned if a government were to seek to punish a person who, for reasons of conscience, released in a responsible manner information that they reasonably believed to be evidence of human rights violations that the government was attempting to keep secret in order to prevent the public learning the truth about the violations.

Is it legitimate for governments to seek to keep their diplomatic discussions and negotiations confidential when they perceive it to be in their national interest?

Governments can of course in general seek to keep their communications confidential by using technical means or by imposing duties on their employees; it is not, however, legitimate for governments to invoke broad concepts of national security or national interest in justification of concealing evidence of human rights abuses.

Is Amnesty International concerned about the potential for harm to individuals as a result of the leaked information?

Amnesty International has consistently called on Wikileaks to make every possible effort to ensure that individuals are not put at increased risk of violence or other human rights abuses as a result of, for instance, being identifiable as sources in the documents.

However, risks of this kind are not the same as the risk of public embarrassment or calls for accountability that public officials could face if documents expose their involvement in human rights abuses or other forms of misconduct.

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The full Q&A can be found at:
http://amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/wikileaks-and-freedom-expression-2010-12-09

Kevin Cooper sits on California’s death row at San Quentin. He was convicted of a quadruple murder back in 1983. Cooper has always denied any involvement with the murders. But a lot of prisoners claim they are innocent, whether or not they really are. So let’s take a look at some facts of the case.

The sole survivor of the murders, Joshua Ryen, told the police that the murderers were three white men. Cooper is black. And Ryen repeatedly told police that Cooper was not involved in the murders.

Several weapons were linked to the crime, suggesting multiple killers, but prosecutors contended that Cooper was working alone. That suggests, as noted by Nicholas Kristof in a recent New York Times column, the unlikely case that “one intruder juggling several weapons overpower[ed] five victims, including a 200-pound former Marine like Doug Ryen, who also had a loaded rifle nearby.”

And then there is this troubling account by Ninth Circuit Court Judge William A. Fletcher, in a lecture at the Gonzaga University School of Law. Fletcher was among five judges who had dissented the Ninth Circuit’s decision to deny Cooper’s appeal:

“On June 9, a woman named Diana Roper called the Sheriff’s Department to tell them that her boyfriend, Lee Furrow, had come home in the early hours on the night of June 4. He arrived in an unfamiliar station wagon with some people who stayed in the car. He changed out of his overalls, which he left on the floor of a closet. He was not wearing a t-shirt that he had been wearing earlier in the day. He left the house after about five minutes and did not return. Roper called her father the next day to come look at the overalls. They both concluded that the overalls were spattered with blood. Roper turned the overalls over to the Sheriff’s Department and told the deputy that she thought Furrow was involved in the murders. Roper later provided an affidavit stating that a bloody t-shirt found beside the road leading from the murder house had been Furrow’s. It was a Fruit-of-the-Loom t-shirt with a breast pocket. Roper stated that she recognized it because she had bought it for him. She also stated that a bloody hatchet found beside the road matched a hatchet that was now missing from her garage.

“Furrow had been released from state prison a year earlier. He had been part of a murderous gang, but had been given a short sentence in return for turning state’s evidence against the leader of the gang. The leader was sentenced to death. Furrow told friends that while he was part of the gang he killed a girl, cut up her body, and thrown her body parts into the Kern River. The Sheriff’s Department never tested the overalls for blood, never turned them over to Cooper or his lawyers, and threw them away in a dumpster on the day of Cooper’s arraignment.”

Also, another prison inmate, Kenneth Koon, had confessed to his cellmate, Anthony Wisely, that he had committed the murders for which Cooper was convicted. Koon has since recanted his confession, but does it not call for a follow-up investigation just the same? (Rhetorical question, of course – unfortunately.)

All things considered, it appears to me that there is reasonable doubt as to Cooper’s guilt in this case. And there is no excuse to execute someone when there is reasonable doubt that you’ve got the right guy. Indeed, in his dissent from the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision against Cooper, Judge Fletcher stated, “The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

Still, all of Cooper’s appeals have been denied, and his fate now rests with Governor Schwarzenegger.

Accordingly, there is a movement under way calling on Governor Schwarzenegger to commute Cooper’s death sentence before he leaves office. E-mail can be sent to the Governor via: http://gov.ca.gov/interact#email

Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Cooper in 2004, saying that the state and federal courts had reviewed the case extensively and found that the evidence establishing Cooper’s guilt “is overwhelming.” But I contend that the evidence in Cooper’s favor is overwhelming as well.

I hope Governor Schwarzenegger will reconsider now and choose to err on the side of life, not death, in this case. He needn’t play the Terminator in real life too.

The Republicans in Washington keep talking about God and “values”. They like to make it look like they are on the side of God. And they like to make it seem like the Democrats are a party of loose morality, favoring abortion, gay marriage, and palling around with terrorists.

They are experts at crafting and delivering their message – good enough to inspire so many middle-class folks to vote against their own financial interests in the 2010 elections. Their message works because it appeals to people’s base emotions, not their intellects. And reacting is so much easier than critical thinking, especially when we’re so emotionally drained from these years of unemployment and home foreclosures.

They are so effective with their message that they don’t think twice before selling the idea that God wanted George W. Bush to attack Iraq, God favors the Tea Party, and God wants Sarah Palin to be President.

They completely ignore the First Amendment’s separation of Church and State. They publicly thump the bibles on which they were sworn into office. And they make sure they’re seen praying.

But if you set aside the hysteria and look at the facts, Jesus was a liberal, and much of the New Testament condemns the attitude of the so-called right

For example:

Jesus denounced the moneychangers and condemned the greedy rich, saying, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” [Matthew 19:24] And Jesus stood up for the poor and underprivileged, saying, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” [Matthew 25:40]

So then how can the Republicans call themselves Christian (i.e., followers of Jesus Christ) as they hold the unemployed hostage while fighting for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires?

Jesus acknowledged the need for both government and tax-paid government services, saying, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” [Matthew 22:21]

So then how can the Republicans call themselves Christian (i.e., followers of Jesus Christ) as they rail against taxes and “big government”?

Jesus healed the sick – even lepers – for free. He didn’t ask them for an insurance card first, he just healed them because it was the right thing to do. Jesus was the original “socialized medicine” machine.

So then how can the Republicans call themselves Christian (i.e., followers of Jesus Christ) as they condemn the much less socialistic “Obamacare”?

And, as he stood there on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” [Matthew 5:9]

Still, the Republicans call themselves Christian (i.e., followers of Jesus Christ) as they continue to call for endless war, be it legally and morally justified or not.

And they try to justify torture. So I ask them, in the words of the popular button and bumper sticker: Who would Jesus torture?

And I get no good answer to any of it.