U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning tried to kill herself on July 5 in her cell at Fort Leavenworth military prison. Now, military officials are considering filing charges in connection to the suicide attempt that could make the terms of her imprisonment much more punitive — including indefinite solitary confinement — while possibly denying her any chance of receiving parole.
According to a charge sheet posted by the American Civil Liberties Union, Manning was informed by military officials on Thursday that she is under investigation for “resisting the force cell move team,” “prohibited property,” and “conduct which threatens.” In the weeks following her suicide attempt, she has been active on social media, thanking her followers for their moral support.
Manning’s treatment in prison since her 2010 arrest has repeatedly generated outrage among civil liberties advocates. The punitive tactics that have been employed against her include stripping her naked in her cell on a nightly basis, extended solitary confinement, and denial of medical necessities like eyeglasses. In 2011, then-State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley publicly described Manning’s treatment in prison as “ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid.”
Following a 14-month investigation into Manning’s treatment by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, the U.N. accused the U.S. government of holding Manning in conditions that constituted “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” particularly with regard to the extended use of pretrial solitary confinement. The harsh measures the military has employed during Manning’s detention have led to suspicions that the government is attempting make an example of her over her whistleblowing activities.
The latest threat to charge Manning with offenses related to her own attempted suicide seems to be proceeding in the same spirit of abusive treatment.
“The government has long been aware of Chelsea’s distress associated with the denial of medical care related to her gender transition and yet delayed and denied the treatment recognized as necessary,” ACLU attorney Chase Strangio said in a statement. “Now, while Chelsea is suffering the darkest depression she has experienced since her arrest, the government is taking actions to punish her for that pain. It is unconscionable and we hope that the investigation is immediately ended and that she is given the health care that she needs to recover.”
In a statement released by Manning after her 2013 guilty plea on espionage charges, she asked for a pardon and said that she had been motivated by moral outrage over details of U.S. military killings and torture of civilians in Iraq. “In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture,” she said. “If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society.”
Manning is currently six years into serving a 35-year sentence.
Top photo: Fort Leavenworth.
Colonial repression, nothing new in the history of the western colonialism. Whoever stand up against the war and war crimes, he/she will be punished and harassed by spies. If there is any board to control intelligence agencies in the united billionaires of America, they should be fired.
I hope Manning will get support from outside, that’s the only way to help her: to make media pressure on the government to change behavior about her. The news should be repeated one time per week in more media, demanding different behavior, questioning publicly the head of the prison, etc.
// __ INDEPENDENT REVIEW REPORT TO APA
http://www.apa.org/independent-review/revised-report.pdf
~
I applaud APAs desicion to let USG know not everybody is morally deafferented. but I don’t know of any licensed psychologist who has been banned for working in torture chambers and prisons or torturing targeted individuals.
RCL
How do we know Manning tried to commit suicide? Because the government says so?
IMHO, your question is irrelevant. As Nazis, the East German police and USG well knows, pretty much anyone can be driven to the point of committing suicide, or do anything. Don’t you see how people even pay for their TV sets? All you need is someone talking FOX news off the box
USG is abusing Manning in subtle and not so subtle psychological ways (probably even poisoning/lacing her food and “no-touch” torture) to the point that she will whole heartedly believe, committing suicide to be “a way to assert her free will” …
I would suggest:
// __ The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing– February 25, 2015, by Joost A. M. Meerloo
amazon.com/Rape-Mind-Psychology-Menticide-Brainwashing/dp/1614277877/
~
// __ The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | full movie (2014)
youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ
~
RCL
Ricardo Camilo López
// __ Age of Fear: Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror
youtube.com/watch?v=YA_MwaRLzm8
~
RCL
The most interesting piece I find in there is: ” … it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions”
Doesn’t it sound familiar? … “so many”, now, imagine the NSA with access to all tangible information about our lives
They are talking here about the 101 room in Orwell’s “1984”. If they discover you have a specific phobia towards rats, they will strap you and keep you face stuck to a cage for a huge rat to slowly feed on it. And everyone has their phobias and “issues”. I remember once I was in prison, this guy who was definitely not OK and had been convicted as a repeated killer fuming in anger because he had found out that his girlfriend “had started to smoke” ;-)
In Manning’s case they use (the importance he vested on) his sexuality. In mine, they know I am some Aspie and that my brain has the insatiable necessity to constantly work, that I have a hard time lying, pretending; that I am very sensitive to noises and smells, so they constantly create noises around me (which other people can barely hear only if they specifically pay attention to them).
They use sonic guns from passing cars, drones and/or helicopters. Some of those sonic guns aren’t audible ones but they make cars abruptly noise off as you walk by them. They also make the buzzers of buildings go off exactly at the moment you walk pass a building.
They also know that I like to walk, so all of a sudden you start noticing all kinds of people on wheelchairs who almost run on to you on the streets (some even do) and other people acting like they are in so much pain that they can’t walk. Then, days later, your knees hurt and start swelling like hell … while your doctors (of course) can’t see anything wrong with you on the reports of many tests they make
You could also start noticing all kinds of people scratching like crazy in front of you (they do that in exceedingly overt, theatrical, silly ways for you to notice) then spread in your habitat biting arthropods, which always come back after you clean everything. Options are you believe for some reason all kinds of arthropods have started a jihad against you or that there are some agents behind those deeds. If you still have doubts about what you are noticing (doubting is healthy and at times I have been able to notice my own “bias”) all of a sudden without you even sending a private message or posting a public comment about it, you start noticing all kinds of pictures of bedbugs and people being bitten by them being displayed on your computer on pages with very unrelated types of contents …
Once I wrote up a concise document about it
https://ipsoscustodes.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/zersetzung-made-in-u-s-a/
and my doctor (a nice and true guy from my circle of friends I know well) said to me: “what about if you just made up all you wrote”. Now, part of being some niggah is that most people “self-evidently” see reality differently. When people say “they don’t believe you”, what they actually mean is: “I choose not to tax my mind with it, doing otherwise would create way too much conscious dissonance in my mind …” (meaning it is better to believe only freedom-hating East German police and Putin would do those kinds of things to people)
Gringo stasi beat them on that count, too. They use what they themselves Christened as “no-touch” torture direct energy weapons (basically creating high frequency magnetic lobes towards you). Using infrared visors to see the spot you have randomly chosen to sleep on in the sanctuary at church and “no-touch” torture you.
Now, tell me about any other policing institution ever in the history of mankind with a greater world-wide grip on pretty much every individual on the planet and more invasive when it comes to supposedly individual rights to that thing people used to call “privacy”.
Isn’t it kind of ironic that USG is trying to redefine itself, when it comes to persecution of political dissidents, as some sort of much, much modern stasi; and, when it comes to ideological persecution thought police kind of thing, most more “efficient” than The Catholic Church?
truth and peace and love,
RCL
What they are doing to Chelsea is a downright mortal sin. Where are the church leaders speaking on this?
As if American hero, Chelsea Manning, doesn’t have enough hardship: she has to deal with faggots in uniform.
Appallingly sad. Devastatingly unfair. Deliberately cruel. I so pity poor Chelsea who suffers for all of us.
Jesus, people, Do get a grip!
This convict is not being punished for having tried to take his/her life, but for circumstances connected to this (phony) attempt. He/she obviously violated rules applying to all prison inmates equally, like inappropriate behaviour towards prison staff and the possession of items not allowed, and will face punishment ensuing as a consequence. There is no arbitrariness in this. In the contrary. It’s called equality.
This person in the past committed crimes against the laws of the United States, was convicted for doing so, and now simply should serve his/her time like anybody else without permanently acting like a soap-opera drama-queen being done wrong over an dover again.
DO GROW UP, finally, Mister/Miss Channing! See you in 30 years from now.
I tend to recall, relive this poem by Bertolt Brecht when I think of Manning, Assange, Snowden, …
// __ GENERAL YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
youtube.com/watch?v=cpBoq83WjPo
http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?247783-Poem-by-Bertolt-Brecht
I know, I know, Brecht wrote that poem against Nazi militarism …
~
I also dedicated this poem to Rachel Corrie who was run over by an IDF “powerful vehicle” …
http://hsymbolicus.wordpress.com/category/poems/ (lies …)
~
RCL
What seems to be “ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid” to State Department officials is called Zersetzung for the rest of us. They would certainly see those adjectives in a totally different light if they would dare to expose government corruption and abuses, which from their vantage point, they would see plenty if they could.
RCL
ZERSETZUNG …. the state of your brain, i take it!?
I had to look up the definition of the word Zersetzung. I find that it applies quite well in this case. Thank you for your comment.
Good God, that’s an enlightening phrase to look up! Wikipedia dumped a quote on me – I should like to see the original text now, but it’s something obscure –
That is not merely a blueprint for the management of dissidents in East Germany – that is the global capitalist elite’s blueprint for the management of the entire world!
See The Intercept’s July 29 article on Uber for a more detailed explanation of how the elite can dig up dirt on any citizen who displeases them.
Let me tell you for some reason abuse upsets me deeply. I am very angry and I don’t care if Manning is a “she” or a “he” or an “it” or whatever or if you consider my statement respectful or not. Manning had the balls, uterus, guts, lungs, … brain, heart and mind to have the courage to expose what “patriots” were “gloriously”, “freedom-lovingly” doing and how morally deafferented USG has become.
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
I remember when I heard the news that they were torturing Manning by keeping her/him naked, I proposed to my priest and a group of hot head friends at St. Mary’s in Harlem to go to the statute of liberty, disrobe and chain ourselves (and throw away the keys) in solidarity for Manning. They all liked the idea instantly, but then as we planned the move all kinds of “but this and but that” surfaced. Now, I regret we never did.
When we remember, think about Manning, we should also remember the joyfully sick laughter and jokes of “our” “patriots” as they killed totally unsuspecting people, saying it was “his fault” as they shoot people who, acting on their sense of humanity, would compulsively try to help those being shot at by our “patriots”. They were not even shooting at people by “‘clearing’ their machine guns”
Shame. Shame. Shame.
The authority of the US govt is null and void (and has been for quite some time, if it ever existed).
It is an immoral act to support this system in any way, passively or actively. The social contract has been broken. Nothing is owed, they have already destroyed the rule of law, an attack on them does no more harm and can only possibly help make things better for the oppressed and disempowered.
It is unfortunate that the comfortable and selfish have taken us to this destination.
You are correct that the social contract is broken. You are incorrect that an attack will improve the situation. No, attacking any society will only make it more repressive.
This troubled person, whose moral actions for which he is being punished, served the cause of truth concealed by government, being made known to the public in a democracy, ought not to be in prison at all.
For which *she* is being punished. She is a woman.
A civilized “rule of law” nation would lock up Manning’s prosecutors and prison guards. Where are the honest judges providing Judicial Review?
To be honest……. I’d expected worse.
My impression is that U.S. prisons have a reputation of using “suicide watch” – sometimes based on very little evidence – as a way to torture and humiliate prisoners. I’ve read too many stories about people either being raped repeatedly on suicide watch, or else being left tied up for days in their own feces. (Presumably the guards’ fastidiousness makes it difficult to do both)
Looking up this sort of thing, I found a case at Orleans Parish Prison in 2012. ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/3/31/1079460/-SPLC-Louisiana-inmate-has-been-continually-raped-and-tortured-for-the-past-month ) Apparently there was another such case about Mark Hart in 2014 that was dismissed as “frivolous” because as a pro se plaintiff he didn’t reference one filing when he put in another. There was somebody named Adam referenced elsewhere from 2009. As media make a habit of not reporting prisoner names, it is hard to track down which, if any, of these prisoners is still alive to tell the tale. But maybe The Intercept can get to the bottom of some of these, even track someone down to interview?
That NO article broke my heart. A human being, locked up, raped and tortured, and when she cries for help nobody listens. Something is deeply wrong with a nation that silently accepts such cruelty against its own people.
Lots of outrage here, little action.
I’m voting for Johnson. What more am I supposed to do? Form a 1-man picket line?
Can’t & Won’t Mr. Greenwald please revert for a while to his former role as attorney, and litigate this matter gratis on Chelsea’s behalf as one of ‘cruel & unusual punishment’? By virtue of his very high profile and always impeccable rhetoric, Mr. G. would also ensure — in effect — that all Americans would have to bear, prospectively, the moral burden of their government’s and their military’s endemic sadism. (Cf. Abu Gharaib.)
A wonderful plea to GG. As for you, you should work for nothing — that’s what you’re worth.
Vielen Dank. As for your last remark, I very much concur and, to tell you the truth, did always recognize just that — indeed, right from the start of my career when very soon I realized that truly vocational medicine was already by then a thing of the past. And before very long, ich will Ihnen gestehen, money was to become like laughing gas for me, as it is by now for most if not all physicians.
Cunts is too mild. We need some new words for Amerikkka.
Stay alive Chelsea, we’ll get you out one of these days. They are slowly but surely putting us all in their cage. They are murderers and liars and they are about to go too far once they have their new President to hand over the tax dollars and deal more death. If they put you in solitary, ask for it to be in a nuclear bunker, you may need it…
The way the US. goes about with whistle blowers is unheard of.
This underlines only that the government isn’t willing to learn and most of all that it stays intended to cover-up and carry-on with this kind of “behavior” / politics. Still criticizing others on the world stage for similar conduct. It makes them the most hypocrite country.
Solitary confinement equals torture !
The American military’s treatment post-alleged suicide attempt is totally reprehensible. The woman deserves and requires supportive treatment.
The actions of the unintelligent American military can be likened to pushing a drowning victim’s head under the water.
You have to wonder what the hell is going through what passes for a military thought process. Already public opinion is against what they have done to Ms. Manning, their present action only serves to compound their abuse.
Time to storm the Bastille?
Juuuust kidding, FBI! My kind of revolution is a velvet revolution, a revolution that sounds like a whisper, an armchair revolution–just sit back, pop open a beer, and vote third party.
I admire your idea, but until we have a legitimate 3rd party, all bets are off. A better than average turn out for the Green Party might just help, but, I’m not too optimistic.
Part of the problem here is the failure to realize that the Green Party IS indeed “a legitimate 3rd party”. It is the legitimate inheritor of all the alternative parties that have been crushed through the years by corporatism and McCarthyism. It fields candidates throughout this country at various levels, and some of those candidates win their races and go on to make a real impact as elected officials. If you live in a non-swing state, you should really use your vote to register a protest against the increasingly fascistic behavior of the U$A. And if you feel as many do, that HRC is just as dangerous as Trump, vote Green wherever you live. Take a stand.
The authority of the US govt is null and void (and has been for quite some time, if it ever existed).
It is an immoral act to support this system in any way, passively or actively. The social contract has been broken. Nothing is owed, they have already destroyed the rule of law, an attack on them does no more harm and can only possibly help make things better for the oppressed and disempowered.
It is unfortunate that the comfortable and selfish have taken us to this destination.
How many of the so-called “feminists” cheering on the nomination of Lady Macbeth are concerned with the treatment of Chelsea Manning? The lack of such concern makes crystal clear that these “feminists” are little more than midogynists with breasts.
Perhaps Chelsea should have chosen the name Cassandra. Much better fitting than the name of the hedge fund playing vile spawn of NutterYahoo’s BFF.
Thank you for this report.
This is indeed unconscionable. Those doing this have no shame. They should find some. And some compassion and humanity.
And yes, we should all be appalled at a system that allows this and demand change.
http://time.com/3734882/chelsea-manning-he-military/
We have as much hate as any country in this world if not more.
NO jail time for those involved in “Collateral Murder”.
Why no “journalists” actually investigating that?
Hellary did 100 times the crimes as Manning, but Hellary Walks, and the “journalists” are mum?
Life sentences are an admission that human beings neither relearn nor change nor adapt. The human race simply does not trust itself. This “throw-away” attitude is compounded by the need to eliminate competition. The conclusion we are supposed to make is that if CM were released, she would make the same mistake all over again. But if that is not true, and is likely not, then the punishment isn’t for the stated purpose in the Consitution but is meant as a terroristic means to strike terror into the population. Barbarism is now a way of life in America and like broken glass, really impossible to put back together. The particular problem with barbarism in the US economy is, it has to pay and be rewarded.
CM made a “mistake”? That’s what we used to call a spelling error, now it’s intentional release of classified material to our enemies.
There’s more than one official in the US government and the US military that need to become wind-chimes at The Hague.
s enough to live that lavish lifestyle? Is it a military official, a contractor, a military company? Is it the bureaucrat sagely deciding that Chelsea Manning needs to be tortured some more?
We make ISIS look like choirboys because we do it while claiming moral superiority. Meanwhile dick cheney lives on with his taxpayers heart. I’m getting ill.
It was the same day FBI Director announced they gave Hillary a pass for her blatant national security violations, intentionally committed to hide personal secrets from scrutiny, and which she’s repeatedly lied to the public about.
Imagine the soul-breaking torture to Chelsea in her circumstances, having guards probably throwing that Hillary news in her face that day. And now, she’s to be punitively punished for a too human reaction some 22 other veterans are choosing, every day.
The empire of the greediest has no clothes – or shame.
Chelsea Manning has expressed her distress at pictures pre-transition… why choose this one for the headline? A little more sensitivity, please… great article
Thank you.
You tried to commit suicide because you find life unbearable? Well fuck you. Here’s some more misery.
Fuck you. I have depression that’s in remission now and I know what it’s like to have emotional sunglasses on 24/7. Luckily I found effective treatment and didn’t attempt suicide. Stop blaming the victim and see a disease for what it is.
Obviously my attempt at sarcasm was a total fail.
I’m sure most of us got it.
AtheistinChief—The measure you use to judge Chelsea Manning will be the measure that will be used on you and every thing that you love. This is someone who sacrificed his life to help the ungrateful, bonded morons like you. Instead of being grateful to her you’re happy to see her in this condition. Millions love her but no one loves you…that is the difference between you and her.
AtheistInChief was speaking in the voice of the torturers to make a point of how vile to the core that they are.
Since you’re at least the second one to misinterpret that, I hope others will take note.
How can you be so cold hearted? Chelsea Manning deserves help and support. What a dark future to have to endure. Just kidding I got it!
You sould use quotes.
Donate to Chelsea’s legal defense fund here:
https://freedom.press/chelsea
I just did, again.
Don’t be coy: how much?
the harsh treatment and faux outrage surrounding Manning’s whistleblowing is serving its purpose perfectly. no body questions the facts exposed by Manning, the zeal for and careless murder of civilians and children in a warzone,Bush continually expressed at the time that he wasn’t at war with the Iraqi people indeed his aim was to free these oppressed victims of tyrany- turns out the average GI loves killing anything that moves. this outrage-we do not comment on leaks!- is there to deflect from the bloodthirsty truth- Arab lives aren’t worth shit in the eyes of the US- men women children-doesn’t matter, kill ’em all. this is the disgusting truth that Manning exposed- she should be lauded and paraded on shoulders for exposing war crimes.had the uniforms been different and this was Nuremburg she would be star witness for the prosecution not locked up for 35years. shame on the usa
the naked lunch, when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork
appalling, barbaric, contraindicated, depraved, evil, forsaken, ghoulish
Thanks for article.
Amazing evil! Torture someone until they are driven to suicide, and then punish them for trying to escape that torture. The powers that be have no shame and not limit they will not exceed. Frigging unbelievably disgusting. Fortunately we can all be thankful this is not a govenment we have willfully elected.
How many teens will be charged? Will the wanna be rapper who shot himself in the face? Will the people on Jackass, WWE or the military? What about roofers, fisherman. Can police stop and frisk for a slit scars on the rist?
See how stupid this bullsh*t is.
We all know you Government officials want to kill him so he never speaks out again. He crime is = to Snowden. Exposing the military industrial complex crimes.
Please expose the specific officials from top to bottom who are responsible for this attempted slow-torture-murder of Chelsea Manning.
Suicide attempts by imprisoned people are not exactly an uncommon occurrence. What sort of actions do officials at various prisons put in place when suicide attempts happen? Is Manning’s attempted suicide the first and the only suicide attempt ever at Fort Leavenworth Military Prison? Not at at all likely, If not, what exactly were the actions taken by those same officials in this case who are now threatening Manning with slow-torture-murder, and what have been the actions taken by other Fort Leavenworth Military Prions when suicide attempts have occurred? Were the prisoners who attempted suicide in any and all cases threatened with, and ultimately assigned to, death by slow drip murder?
Excellent post!!!
None of the war criminals involved in cooking up the lies about Iraq’s non-existent nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are facing prosecution or jail time; none of the architects of the sadistic torture program employed by the CIA in Gitmo and black sites and by the Army in Abu Ghraib are facing criminal charges; and none of the 2008 financial fraudsters at the heart of the 2008 economic collapse were ever indicted by the Justice Department.
But whistleblowers who expose corruption and unconstitutional activities by the U.S. government are serving long prison terms or are forced to flee the country; even those who have followed the “internal reporting rules” like Thomas Drake are persecuted and fired from their jobs.
There is no impartial justice system in this country, that’s the takeaway conclusion; what we really have here is endemic institutional corruption in the legal system, not “the rule of law.”
Federal justice, military justice, state and local courts and law enforcement – all are deeply flawed, with very different rules for the powerful and the powerless. The war on drugs, for example? Just a war on the poor and minorities. Robbing a bank? Allowed if you work for Goldman Sachs. Bribing a government official? The Supreme Court calls that free speech. What a joke.
I applaud you!!! Knowledge is power. I’m kinda new on this site, so not sure that we agree on everything, but so far so good! I think everyone knows the system is flawed, just different ways to get to the best for society. There will never be “Utopia” for there is always evil out there.
Exactly! We are oppressed. We are tolerated. We are helpless
You are helpless only if you consider yourself helpless. Even though the Democratic primary was in many ways a sham, nonetheless millions of people have just discovered their voice. And even if they – we – cannot win an election that provides the choice between ” cholera and gonorrhea” – as Julian Assange termed it – we can still cast a vote against the two horrific choices presented by the Republican$ and the Democrat$. The Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein is morally far better qualified than Trump or HRC to be president; she is more intelligent than either and has more thoughtfully come to her positions on the issues. She is a physician, by definition an antidote to the dy$topia that busine$$man Trump or the sophistical lawyer HRC would unleash upon us. That dy$topia will envelope you only if you surrender your vote and your voice.
Saddens me to the point of madness. I hope someone makes a movie of his life and exposes what he has suffered. DAMN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT !!
She’s suffered a great deal while exposing government crimes. The least anyone can do is respect her gender transition.