puellavulnerata

What an utterly depressing thing this was to read:

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.

That sounds bad enough, and, depending on how vigilant they are about waking him in the night, awfully damn close to sleep deprivation of the type the Stasi used to use.

At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.

In combination with this, it really does start to sound like torture via sleep deprivation: he's unable to get an uninterrupted sleep at night, and then forced to remain awake (and what could there conceivably be to wake up *for*?) fifteen hours a day.

He is allowed to receive letters from those on his approved list and from his legal counsel. If he receives a letter from someone not on his approved list, he must sign a rejection form. The letter is then either returned to the sender or destroyed.

That sounds like such a little thing, but I think it sent chills down my spine more than anything else: it's not enough for them to interfere with his correspondence in that fashion; he must be made to sign personally, as if it were his rejection rather than his captors'.

They can do this much to someone for such a fundamentally heroic, noble act, and they can do it without charging him with anything for seven months, and the mainstream media raises not a word of protest. The bleating masses presumably are in the main supportive of it, quivering with vindictive glee as they watch the State annihilate this man who has stood up against it and thus shown the rest of them for the slavish cowards they are. This culture has turned so much toward this mood of vicarious sadism, more and more over the years; 'fascist' is far overused as a generic political epithet, but that more than anything else must be its defining characteristic.

This comment seems to sum it up perfectly:

Why am I not surprised? Put to a vote, I'm almost certain over 50% of Americans today would say PFC Manning is getting off easy, and many would vote to hang him with no trial.

This is the new America we're witnessing, and it will no doubt worsen as we slide from world leader to world leper. This isn't the America of my youth. It is not the America that reached out to a destroyed Europe and helped it rebuild.

I've really got to find a way out of here soon. It can only get worse from this point.