When people are fearful, they do irrational things. Tom Englehardt looks at who benefits from all these allegedly terrorist plots that have been uncovered with great fanfare and which seem to be aimed purely and simply at keeping people scared.

We now live not just with all the usual fears that life has to offer, but in something like a United States of Fear.
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Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.
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This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.
In a sense, both the American national security state and al-Qaeda are building their strength and prestige as our lives grow more constrained and our treasure vanishes.

[Read more…]

I have written before about ‘jury nullification’, the right of juries to decide that a law is wrong and refuse to convict someone of a crime even if the facts are clear that that person is guilty. (See here and here.)

I said last year (see the post script to this) that drug laws against minor offenses such as possession of marijuana in small amounts are the most likely to be nullified and recently there was another example of this.

Manning’s lawyer David Coombs (a former Army major who has served in Iraq) describes Manning’s conditions of solitary confinement that have lasted over seven months. Among other things:

His cell is approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length.

The cell has a bed, a drinking fountain, and a toilet.
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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.
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PFC Manning is held in his cell for approximately 23 hours a day.

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.
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He is prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop.

He does receive one hour of “exercise” outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk. PFC Manning normally just walks figure eights in the room for the entire hour. If he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell.

When PFC Manning goes to sleep, he is required to strip down to his boxer shorts and surrender his clothing to the guards. His clothing is returned to him the next morning.

Glenn Greenwald recounts the arguments of all the people who argue that what Manning is being subjected to amounts to torture. Why? In order to break him down so that he will incriminate Julian Assange and WIkiLeaks.

Yesterday US sources revealed that prosecutors are awaiting a decision from the American Attorney-General, Eric Holder, on what form of plea bargaining they should offer to Manning in return for him incriminating Mr Assange as a fellow conspirator in disseminating the classified information.

Officials at the US Justice Department, who are under acute pressure to prosecute, privately acknowledge that a conviction against Mr Assange would be extremely difficult if he was simply the passive recipient of the material disseminated by Private Manning. Any evidence that he had actively facilitated the leak, however, would make extradition and a successful case much more feasible.

Friends of Private Manning stress that so far he has refused to co-operate with the prosecutors. However, they also say that after seven months of solitary confinement in at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia he is in an increasingly fragile condition.
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David House, a computer programmer who visits Private Manning in prison, said in an interview: “Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing. His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to regulations has affected his physical appearance in a matter which suggests physical weakness.”

The authorities had initially stated that Manning was being kept in solitary confinement for his own safety. Friends like Mr House now believe it is being done for punitive purposes and to exert pressure on his vulnerabilities.

Of course, the people who are authorizing this torture are not interested in the truth. They will continue to treat him in this and even worse ways until he agrees to say what they want him to say. The political leadership and the mainstream media will not raise a fuss about this, because they have all bought into the idea that in the glorious ‘war on terror’ the government has the right to do anything it wants to whomever it designates as its opponents in order to ‘keep us safe’. If they are willing to ignore Obama’s claim that he has the right to order the murder of even US citizens anywhere in the world, why would they bother their heads over mere torture? A recently initiated probe by the United Nations office for torture in Geneva might lead to some redress but given the US’s ability and willingness to pressure the UN for its own ends, I am not too hopeful.

Applying such cruel methods of psychological pressure on someone to break them down and get them to confess and incriminate others are the hallmarks of a brutal police state, not those of a democracy whose leader is supposed to be a constitutional scholar.

The treatment of Manning, along with the Obama administration’s plans to promulgate an executive order that would allow indefinite detention without trial is one more piece of evidence of Obama’s reckless disregard for the constitution. He is basically asserting the right to create a new legal system just on his say so that completely bypasses the constitution and centuries of legal practice based on it.