Barry Grey
WSWS

Even as the United States preaches the sanctity of human rights to the world—in order to disguise its efforts to prop up besieged dictatorships in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain and install a new client regime in Libya—President Barack Obama is defending the torture of a US citizen at home.

State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley is a casualty of Obama’s determination to defend the Pentagon’s sadistic abuse of Private Bradley Manning. Crowley, a long-time government public relations official, resigned Sunday, forced out for publicly criticizing the military’s treatment of the 23-year-old Army intelligence specialist accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Last Thursday, speaking before a small audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Crowley was asked about the treatment of Manning, which the questioner described as the military “torturing a prisoner in a military brig.” Crowley, who has played a prominent role in the US government witch-hunt of WikiLeaks and its co-founder, Julian Assange, defended Manning’s incarceration but called his treatment “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Crowley was responding to mounting international protests over the treatment of Manning, including denunciations by Amnesty International and other human rights groups and the launching of a formal investigation by the United Nations.

At a White House press conference Friday, Obama was asked about Crowley’s remark and responded by defending the abuse of Manning—who is being held in maximum custody and virtual isolation, locked in his cell 23 hours a day, kept under 24-hour surveillance, stripped of his clothing at night, and permitted only the most limited access to reading material. Earlier this month and for more than a week, he was forced to stand completely naked for morning inspection in front of his cell.

Manning is incarcerated in the brig at the Quantico, Virginia Marine Corps base, where he has endured these conditions for nearly 8 months. He is awaiting a court martial, and has neither been tried nor convicted of any crime. His cruel treatment is designed to break his will and force him to provide evidence against WikiLeaks and Assange.

At the press conference, Obama dismissed Crowley’s criticism by saying he had received assurances from the Pentagon that “the terms of [Manning’s] confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.”

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Noga Malkin
Desert Peace

Hiding in the cemetery where her parents are buried, Hakma al-Turi, an Israeli citizen, has watched bulldozers demolish her village — al-Araqib — more than 20 times. The Israel Land Administration first demolished the 45 structures on this patch of land in the Negev desert eight months ago. When the 300 Israeli Bedouin who lived here defiantly rebuilt tarp-covered shacks, the Israel Land Administration demolished them again and again, the last time on March 7.

But the Land Administration inspectors and the police officers escorting them have so far been reluctant to enter the cemetery adjacent to the village, where the extended al-Turi family has been burying family members since 1907. So Hakma, a mother of nine, devised a plan to protect her most fragile possessions: she put her family photographs, children’s medicines, and a small refrigerator full of milk in an improvised wheeled cart. When the bulldozers came, her husband would tie it to their car and drag it from their house and into the cemetery.

But on January 17, as the tenth demolition took place, Hakma’s family was too slow. Police officers caught them on the way to the cemetery, commandeered their car, forced in five other “illegal” residents, and drove it at what Hakma thinks was a deliberately reckless speed over unpaved roads to the police station. “They broke the cart and most of what was in it flew out; they confiscated the rest,” Hakma told me.

The extended al-Turi family lived in al-Araqib from Ottoman times until 1952, when the Israeli army commander told them to leave for six months for military training, according to a government report citing village elders’ testimony. Israeli authorities never allowed them to return, refuse to recognize Bedouin ownership claims, and consider the village illegal.

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Evelyn Mervine
CFACT

[A mother tries to talk to her daughter who has been isolated for signs of radiation after evacuating from the vicinity of Fukushima's nuclear plants, at a makeshift facility to screen, cleanse and isolate people with high radiation levels in Nihonmatsu, northern Japan, March 14, 2011, after a massive earthquake and tsunami that are feared to have killed more than 10,000 people. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao. More images here and here]

This Q&A briefing provides a concise overview of much of what you need to know on the nuclear emergency in Japan. Nuclear engineer Mark Mervine gave this interview to his daughter Evelyn Mervine. It was originally posted on her blog, Skepchick. ['skepchick'] Mark and Evelyn Mervine are not associated with CFACT.

My name is Mark Mervine. I graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1981, and went into the Navy nuclear power program. I was in submarines, and while I was in the Navy I qualified on two different types of Navy nuclear power plants and served as an instructor in the Navy nuclear power program.

Q: OK, and then after you got out of the Navy?
A: After seven years of active duty, I went into the Reserves, and I stayed in the Reserves and I retired as a commander in the Navy Reserves. I went to work, initially, for Wisconsin Electric, which at that time had a 2-unit Westinghouse pressurized-water reactor in Turbridge, Wisconsin. While I was there, I completed my SRO certification, which allowed me to do senior review and oversight, as a member of the plant management staff. And I also qualified and served as a shift technical advisor, which is a position that was added in the nuclear power industry, after Three Mile Island, that is a degreed engineer position, that’s available to the on-shift crew on a 24-hour basis. Some plants do it on an 8 hour watch, at that time, Wisconsin Electric did it on a 24 hour watch, so I would actually stay at the plant for 24 hours; we had a place where we could sleep, and my job was to advise the crew whenever they needed advice on what was happening with the plant.

After a few years at Wisconsin Electric, I went to work for Vermont Yankee, where I also completed the SRO certification, Senior Reactor Certification, which allowed me to do senior level reviews as a member of the plant management staff, and I also served on the Outside Review Committee, which is a very high-level committee for the main Yankee nuclear plant, until it closed, and also Vermont Yankee.

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Stephen Lendman

Discount all official government statements and major media reports repeating them instead of demanding expert, unbiased views.

Officially, Japan's nuclear emergency is under control and contained. In fact, lies substitute for truths, denial for reality, and managed news for honest reporting.

Point of fact: Besides its catastrophic quake, tsunami, destructive aftershocks, and resulting humanitarian crisis, Japan is experiencing a developing nuclear catastrophe, the full extent not known until independent sources reveal it.

On March 12, a huge explosion rocked Fukushima's Unit 1 reactor. Reports said its containment chamber was intact. Independent experts are skeptical, believing at least some damage occurred, perhaps a major breach now covered up. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) blamed a core meltdown for the explosion, releasing hazardous atmospheric radioactive cesium-137 and iodine-131.

Greenpeace said:

"This proves once and for all that nuclear power cannot ever be safe. Japan's nuclear plants were built....to withstand natural disasters, yet we still face potential meltdown" disaster.

Nuclear expert Helen Caldicott said atmospheric cesium-137 and iodine 131 releases pose grave human health risks. "All of these substances can cause cancer and genetic diseases either in the near or long term." Why are "we mad enough to introduce this disastrous form of energy into our lives," knowing major catastrophes are inevitable, especially in earthquake prone areas like Japan, California, and other vulnerable locations, many throughout the world.

Caldicott added in an email to this writer that the situation is "beyond terrifying!!!" Moreover, downplaying the potential severity is outrageous, irresponsible and criminal. Literally, millions of lives potentially are at risk. Further, nothing short of shutting down and dismantling all nuclear facilities is crucial. They're all ticking time bombs waiting to explode, especially ones in seismically active areas.

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