Torturing the isolated continued

At the end of this story I literally gasped. Please read the whole story here
A mouse and a murder
Here  is an excerpt:

" I had written a complaint against a SHU officer (for all the no good it would do) days before Mouse was killed, and in the days that followed he would let me know that it was he who had done the deed. I had known it immediately anyway, before he began taunting me about my friend’s bloody death.
On top of the sadness I felt over the loss of my buddy, I was angry in a monumental way, the Irish in me working its curse through a fiery temperament. I thought about making a counterattack on the man in blue who had murdered Mouse to punish me for writing what was a totally truthful complaint, but in the end I chose to handle the blow without riposte rather than get myself in serious trouble by serving the cop the comeuppance that he rightly deserved. Back then, in my younger and more foolish days, I did not always make this sort of smart choice: I did not always let an injustice or misdeed be served up to me without seeking to make the one who had served it wish to God that he had not, no matter what the consequences of the payback might be.
But we live and learn, and if we are smart we gain some wisdom along the way. I like to think that I have.
A complaint about one's treatment and going through correct channels usually leads to retaliation. I have written before about complaining about very late mail weeks to a month old then after complaint I receive mutilated mail, and I am a free  person.

Thank you for reading if you have a story please leave comment

Only in America by Tommy Silverstein

I have transcribed Tom's hand written article. Tom is not allowed a type writer even for legal work.
        
Only in America

by Tom Silverstein
December 4th 2014

In life, I feel, there are some things that one can never understand in any meaningful sense without firsthand experience; and no amount of verbalization or philosophical talk can ever do justice to describing the way one feels when it comes to such ordeals. My experience of extreme seclusion with no human or meaningful interpersonal socialization for three decades, I believe, is just one of those things that only I will ever fully comprehend. It has been something so horrifying to the human mind that the only even remotely comparable parallel I can imagine is to be literally buried alive, not for a day or a year, but for an entire life time.

I alone truly know how terrifying to the human psych this endless utterly barbaric torture has been and yet, since taking the matter to the courts; I have had to suffer through the stench of pontifical puke as I never imagined a rational mind could spout.
How is it that these sheltered, robe wearing, juridical casuists could sit up on their high horses and explain away the 31 years of mental excruciation that I have endured day by unrelenting day as though they could relate to it and therefore knew it to be neither cruel nor unusual? To me at least, is as high a height of hypocrisy as one could ever ascend.
In detailing how 31 years of no-human contact solitary confinement feels, the most recent opinion(from the 10th circuit court of appeals) dismissively swept aside any lack of interpersonal socialization I've experienced, by explaining that, indeed, I've had contact all along with prison officials  on a daily basis when, for example, they have brought my meals (or exercised their authority over me in a manner that called for physical propinquity, like during thousands of strip searches when they eye ball my anus after forcing me to spread my ass-cheeks and jiggle my genitals).
Forget the fact that these people were extremely antipathetic and openly hateful towards me, the most reviled guard-killer in the B.O.P.<(bureau of prisons), just the fact that were real humans who I could, in theory at least, talk to, was enough in the mind of the court to disprove my claim of no-human-contact. And this insensibility to the true (antagonistic) nature of those guard-killer/prisoner hater relationship exemplifies just how out of touch with reality the court really was. It is beyond ludicrous to suggest that my isolation from human contact was alleviated by the contact I had with the very people who were turning the screw on my mental rack, day after agonizing day. This was not "Human Contact". It was 'Dehumanizing contact'. And far from lessening the effects of my isolation, it exacerbated them because these people competed with each other to see who could rattle my cage the loudest (so to speak).
Another primary factor relied upon by the court in justifying my treatment was the numerous times I was "evaluated" by mental health professionals. Never mind the fact that virtually every single one of these so-called evaluations consisted of nothing more than a half-minute "Hi how are you?" to which I'd give the standard albeit meaningless, reply of "Fine". And having "examined" me in this fashion over a period of years, Dr. Denny informed the court that he was quite impressed with my apparent resilience in maintaining my sanity under such extreme conditions of confinement.
Ironically, it was this opinion by Dr. Denney regarding my "resilience" that the court fixated on in rejecting my claim of cruel and unusual punishment, implying that it was my own ability to withstand the torture that prevented it from being cruel and unusual.
In other words, prison officials may feel free to torture one as much as they want as long as the individual is strong enough to bear it.
To me, the entire opinion really begs the question of just how far prison officials can go in their inhumanity to man before the 10th circuit will call it "cruel and unusual"?
Consider, for example, the  following quotation from the court
       We have held corrections officers are responsible under the eighth amendment "to provide          humane conditions of confinement by ensuring  inmates receive basic necessities of adequate food, clothing shelter and medical care and by taking reasonable measures to guarantee the inmates safety."
I saw a futuristic movie on the SYFY  Channel recently, about a space based Supermax prison where prisoners were maintained in a state of suspended animation hooked up to nutrition tubes and cryogenically preserved for the length of their sentences. This, or even Neil and Leo's Bubble-Chamber existence in the Matrix, would pass Constitutional muster under the Tenth Circuit's cruel and unusual punishment standard. Food, clothing, shelter, medical care and safety-the "minimal civilized measures of life's necessities"- if that is all the Constitution requires then we are truly not far off from induced vegetative unconsciousness as a Constitutionally acceptable form of punishment.
The point I'm trying to make is that my case shows quite clearly that when it comes to prisoners; the courts define humanity primarily in relation only to human body and essentially disregard the human mind altogether. My being isolated from everyone but those who have openly hated me for 31 years; was not a factor as far as the court was concerned. Indeed, they even went so far as to say this proved  I was not deprived of human contact. How out of touch with reality does one have to be to even imply such an absurd notion? It really is one feature of the court's opinion that I will never be able to read without complete stupefaction. As if the only thing that prevented these people from giving hug was the bars of my cell. I'm trying to think of a common example from everyday society that remotely exemplifies the degree of stress a human mind experiences from purely hate-based interactions- the tyrannical boss, the mentally abusive spouse, the irate mother-in-law; such things, while truly unpleasant and stressful, do very little justice as frames of reference to my unique experience as an object of perpetual animosity .In no way am I suggesting that anyone (perhaps myself most especially) is constitutionally entitled to kindness or sympathy in any form. Passionless professionalism is perfectly appropriate for a prison guard. But my situation included quite the opposite of that. Instead of no passion at all, there was passion a-plenty; heated, hateful and malicious. Quite often accompanied by a great many spit-laced meals, a myriad amount of other spiteful vicious antics designed purely to antagonize me.
For the court to say the eighth amendment entitles me only to be kept alive with adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical attention is one thing. That may, indeed, be the extent to which our maturing society has progressed with its evolving standards of decency since the constitution's creation. (The Supreme Court's "cruel &unusual" measurement standard). And had the court stopped right there in its opinion of (how my life has felt), I would be far less incensed on this issue. But for the court to go from there, all the way to the absurdity of saying that the very people who have openly and actively reviled me every single day, , equal by essence of their presence, some sort of consolation to my isolation, bespeaks a level of misunderstanding so profound as to defy any attempt to explain it.
Only in America will you find a court conscientiously averse  to espousing such sophisticated hogwash. And only in America will you find a government system so engorged with hubris and inflated with its own self-righteousness that it can not apprehend the degree of hypocrisy it takes to dish out the sort of torture I've endured with its one hand; while simultaneously using the pointed finger of its other hand to accuse the rest of the world of human rights violations that pale in comparison to its own. And when the duplicity of this "Sweet Land of Liberty" is exposed, "America the beautiful"; will simply change its stripes to fit whatever occasion it seeks to justify.
Consider, for example, the recent expose from Amnesty International entitled "Entombed: Isolation in the U.S. Federal Prison System" . In this scathing critique of the U.S. regarding its violations of international treaties (including the United Nations convention against torture and other  cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 'ICCPR'), Amnesty International, after detailing at length America's solitary confinement human rights atrocities, went to note that:

The USA  has sought to limit its obligation under article 7 of the ICCPR and article 16 of The Convention Against Torture, by entering reservations upon ratification of treaties stating that it considers itself bound by article 7 and 16 only to the extent "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" means the "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited under the U.S. Constitution.

In other words, what the rest of the world calls "torture", and what to them is "cruel, inhuman and degrading", may be cruel, but certainly not "unusual" for the U.S., because we are always "usually", doing it. And since eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit what is only "cruel" unless its "unusual" as well, as long as the U.S. keeps doing it; it will never be unconstitutional. So whether it be an hour's worth of waterboarding, or 31 years worth of extreme no-human contact entombment, in America it will never amount to what the rest of the world calls "torture", so long as its par for our course of cruelties.
But only in America
    

Judge rules conditions not extreme appeal 4

from:http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/10/thomas_silverstein_supermax_extreme.php
ollow That Story
Thomas Silverstein: Judge rules conditions at supermax not "extreme"
By Alan Prendergast Wed., Oct. 5 2011


Silverstein.
Federal judges in Denver are of two minds about the kind of punishment doled out at the supermax penitentiary in Florence. While one is allowing a Tanzanian terrorist's complaint about the prison's restrictions on his mail and visitors to proceed to trial, another has thrown out Thomas Silverstein's lawsuit alleging cruel and unusual punishment as a result of more than a quarter-century of solitary confinement.
Conditions at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum, or ADX, aren't "atypically extreme," Judge Philip Brimmer ruled.
Silverstein isn't subject to the "special administrative measures" reserved for convicted terrorists at ADX, which severely limit their ability to communicate with any outsider, even family or legal counsel. But his journey through the federal prison system has been anything but typical.
A former Aryan Brotherhood leader, "Terrible Tommy" was convicted of four murders while in prison; one was later overturned. He's now serving three consecutiive life sentences plus 45 years. The last killing, the 1983 slaying of a federal guard in the most secure unit of what was then the highest-security federal pen in the entire system, put him on a "no human contact" status that lasted for decades. For close to seventeen years he was housed in a specially designed, Hannibal-Lecter-like cell in the basement of Leavenworth where the lights were on 24 hours a day. In 2005 he was moved to a highly
isolated range at ADX, as first reported in my feature "The Caged Life" (which also appears, with a coda, in The Best American Crime Reporting 2008).
Since Silverstein first filed his lawsuit in 2007, with assistance from student lawyers at the University of Denver, he's been moved from his tomb in Range 13 to D Unit, which is considered "general population" at ADX. Inmates are still in solitary confinement and have meals in their cell, but they also have access to indoor and outdoor recreation and can shout to each other. That lessening in the general degree of Silverstein's isolation seems to have been one factor in Brimmer's decision to dismiss the former bank robber's claims of enduring extreme deprivation and lack of any social contact.
U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials maintain that Silverstein's placement in isolation is necessary because of his own extreme behavior -- "plaintiff's disciplinary record, in addition to the aforementioned murders, shows assaults of three staff members, a threat to a staff member, an attempt to escape by posing as a United States Marshal, and the discovery of weapons, handcuff keys, and lock picks in plaintiff's rectum," Brimmer notes.
But Silverstein hasn't been cited for a disciplinary infraction since 1988, and even the BOP's psychologists have rated the 59-year-old prisoner as having a "low" risk of violence for years.
On his official website, maintained by outside supporters -- incarcerated since the 1970s, he hasn't had much opportunity for surfing the Internet -- Silverstein reports that he's still being moved frequently from one cell to another to prevent any kind of ongoing communication with other prisoners. "ALL they care about (obviously) is maintaining my ISOLATION, by any convoluted means necessary," he writes.