The UN special rapporteur on torture, said: "I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government"

i love diplomatic-speak...

pre·var·i·cat·ed pre·var·i·cat·ing
Definition of PREVARICATE
intransitive verb
: to deviate from the truth : equivocate
— pre·var·i·ca·tion noun
— pre·var·i·ca·tor noun

most of us would call it lying...

A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of being the WikiLeaks source and held in a military prison. It is the kind of censure the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world.

Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: "I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning."

Manning's supporters claim that the US is being vindictive in its treatment of Manning, who is held at the marine base at Quantico, Virginia, in conditions they describe as inhumane.

Mendez told the Guardian: "I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture … until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely."

Mendez said the vast majority of states allowed for visits to detainees without conditions. But the US department of defence would not allow him to make an "official" visit, only a "private" one. An official visit would mean he meets Manning without a guard. A private visit means with a guard. Also, anything the prisoner says could be used in a court-martial.

Mendez said his mandate was to conduct unmonitored visits. He had met representatives from the state department and the Pentagon on Friday and learned their decision over the weekend.

Although he was prepared to meet Manning with a guard present, he would continue to press for an unmonitored visit.

"I am insisting the US government lets me see him without witnesses. I am asking [the US government] to reconsider," Mendez said.

Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We cannot, under Quantico brig practice, guarantee the UN special rapporteur an unmonitored visit. At Quantico, such a guarantee is only reserved for attorney-client communications. As in the federal prison system, and for security reasons, the department of defence does not guarantee unmonitored communications with confinees except for privileged communications or in other special circumstances not present here."

the level of hypocrisy is positively laughable as glenn so eloquently points out...

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The US has exported an economic model with the idea that everyone can organise themselves under that model

how horribly embarrassing when a united nations special rapporteur, banned from exercising her duties in the united states by the bush administration, finally gets to do her job and discovers that, under the capitalist rock, the rock at the centerpiece of the "shining city on the hill," are all sorts of creepy-crawlies...

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing.

"The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

She added: "I think those who are suffering the most in this whole situation are the very poor, the low-income population. The burden is disproportionately on them and it's of course disproportionately on African-Americans, on Latinos and immigrant communities, and on Native Americans."

equally shameful is that the major media exposure on this story - no surprise, unfortunately - comes via the uk guardian...

and equally shocking - again, if not surprising - is this...

"One of the first meetings I had at the state department they clearly told me: here, adequate housing is not a human right," [Rolnik] said.

the mindset that has been assiduously fostered in the united states, through an endless stream of propaganda, is that if you're poor, it's your own goddam fault... by definition, you must be lazy and no damn good... and yet my country has taken this bogus philosophy and is pushing it down the throats of people around the world... it's people like rolnik, who is, after all only doing her job, that can blow the whistle on this patent bullshit...

rolnik's conclusion...

"The US has exported an economic model with the idea that everyone can organise themselves under that model. It's very important for the rest of the world to know who fits in to this model and who is excluded," she tells her audience.

damn straight...

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