Obama rebuked on Bradley Manning torture as Clinton condemns China rights abuses

As Hillary Clinton points her human rights violation finger at China, an outpouring of United States legal professors have signed a letter condemning the present human rights violations of alleged WikiLeaks source, Sgt. Bradley Manning, only one of an untold number of American prisoners reportedly tortured and suspected war criminal, Torture Judge Jay Bybee is protested for his continual serving on the bench in Pasadena, California.

US human rights abuses spotlighted this week

"The letter regarding humiliation of Manning, signed by 250, mostly law professors, and the previous letter signed by over 100 law professor, regarding ethics, or lack thereof, in conduct of the US Supreme Court justices are unprecedented, as far as can be remembered," stated Dr. Joseph Zernik of Human Rights Alert on Monday.

The over 250 law faculty members are contesting that Bradley Manning's "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture according to Guardian.Co.UK.

The latest State Department report criticizes the Chinese government for restricting human rights "as it takes additional steps to rein in civil society, particularly organizations and individuals involved in rights advocacy and public interest issues and increased attempts to limit freedom of speech and to control the press, the Internet and Internet access."

Clinton criticised China's "worsening" record -- "citing the detention of artist Ai Weiwei and others – as she released the annual state department survey of the human rights situation around the world. An introduction to the Chinese document, by the state news agency Xinhua, said the report was 'full of distortions' and the US "turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation," reports the Guardian in its Monday report, "China accuses US of human rights double standards."

Following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's latest attack on China for its human rights abuses, China said for the U.S. to stop preaching human rights to it.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that the United States "should reflect more on its own human rights problems and not be a "preacher" of human rights," according to UPI today.

In its cruel and inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning, the U.S. government is sending a clear message of suppression to Americans and to the world according to Lynn Parrymore, co-founder of Recessionwire: "blow the whistle and your brain will be mutilated before you even have a trial."

Harsh restrictions of Bradley Manning have been denounced by a host of human rights groups, including Amnesty International. As Clinton points the finger at China, Manning's treatment is being investigated by the United Nations' rapporteur on torture.

The Guardian reported this weekend:

"The US soldier has been held in the military brig since last July, charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of thousands of embassy cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website.

"Under the terms of his detention, he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called "prevention of injury order" and stripped naked at night apart from a smock.

"Tribe said the treatment was objectionable 'in the way it violates his person and his liberty without due process of law and in the way it administers cruel and unusual punishment of a sort that cannot be constitutionally inflicted even upon someone convicted of terrible offences, not to mention someone merely accused of such offences.'"

Hillary Clinton has also come down heavily on Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, North Korea, the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus for alleged human rights violations - all while turning a blind eye to United States torture.

The Bradley Manning protest letter written by two distinguished law professors, Bruce Ackerman of yale and Yochai Benkler of Harvard, was published in the New York Review of Books.

In what the Guardian called "a stinging rebuke to Obama," the law professors stated that Obama "was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency".

"Benkler told the Guardian: 'It is incumbent on us as citizens and professors of law to say that enough is enough. We cannot allow ourselves to behave in this way if we want America to remain a society dedicated to human dignity and process of law.'"

The list of professors who have signed the protest letter includes leading figures from all the top US law schools, as well as prominent names from other academic fields. Among them are Bill Clinton's former labour secretary Robert Reich, President Theodore Roosevelt's great-great-grandson Kermit Roosevelt, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union Norman Dorsen and the novelist Kwame Anthony Appiah. (Guardian)

Torture Judge Bybee continues with impunity

Clinton is also failing to address human rights abuses at home involving suspected war criminal Judge Jay Bybee. To many, Bybee epitomizes the hypocrisy of U.S. human rights abuses involving torture.

As assistant attorney general in President George W. Bush's Justice Department, Judge Jay Bybee was responsible for the notorious torture memos that enabled excesses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other secret United States operated prison hellholes.

Reprieve estimates that 80,000 people have been through the U.S. war on terror "rendition" system, kidnapped and taken to secret prisons. According to specialists such as U.S. Air Force reservist, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, the American public has only seen the "tip of the iceberg" of torture horrors secretly practiced in their name. (See: "Bye-bye Bybee movement mounting, protesting 'torture judge' healthy")

It is partially due to Bybee that Bradley Manning is being inhumanely treated. As stated in the article, LA Human Rights defenders to take on Torture Judge Bybee at Court, "Torture 'in some situations' has become acceptable for many Americans because of people like Judge Jay Bybee who gave it a judicial green light.

"But here he is in Pasadena, looking regal in his black Robe," stated Sharon Tipton this weekend.

Tipton has been leading the human rights campaign to oust Bybee. She is associated with Pasadena's Orange County Peace Coalition social justice group.

"Meanwhile, Spain has gone forward with war criminal cases against Bybee, Yoo and the rest of the 'Bush 6,' said Tipton.

Unlike Secretary of State Clinton, Ms. Tipton will again lead a protest against Jay Bybee this Wednesday in Pasadena.

"For those of us who still have a conscience, a memory, and a sense of history, we know that the line Jay Bybee crossed can't go unopposed," Tipton said in December 2009.

The Youtube video embedded on this page documents what happened to one American who was among protesters at Portland Oregon's Pioneer courthouse, handing out fliers about Judge Jay Bybee's support of the human rights violation of torture.