society

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture...

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed...

Glenn Greenwald, The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention

And what does being held in such conditions do to you? According to the Istanbul statement on the use and effects of solitary confinement, adopted at the International Psychological Trauma Symposium in December 2007 -

UPDATED:
- letter to Oxfam

Oxfam has the following claim up on its website - under the rubric 'Bin the myth'.

Oxfam spends all its money on admin

This one's definitely not for recycling! The fact is we spend just 10p in every £1 donated to Oxfam on support and running costs – money vital to keeping an effective, professional organisation going. Everything we do depends on it – running efficient projects, getting people, equipment, supplies and funds to where they're needed. The whole life-saving shebang.

Bin the Myth: 'Myth' no 2

I wonder how most potential donors interpret that claim. They probably assume that 90 pence out of every pound donated goes towards direct assistance to those who need it most - perhaps on famine relief, medicines, building wells, buying tools or machinery. Some of them may also realise that part of the money will be used to train and build up the skills of local groups and individuals, and may therefore go towards the salaries of Western consultants or 'experts'. But most will probably assume that Western salaries are counted as 'support' and therefore come out of the 10 pence, rather than the 90. And most will probably assume that 'running costs' include those run-up in the local offices, as well as those incurred by staff employed at central office in the UK.

They would be wrong. The claim does indeed imply that all 'support and running costs' are covered by the 10 pence, not the 90. But support and running costs within each country in fact come out of the 90 pence, not the 10 - as we will see if we look at the small print, hidden away at the bottom of page 60 of Oxfam's 2009 Annual Report and Account, long, long after the pretty picture (on page 42) informing readers how the funds were used:

I came up with a cunning plan. Instead of working for a lower wage - which was rejected by the fluffy, corporocratic 'charity' which pays my wages - I would put in a voluntary day. The same wage, but spread over more days. Win-win, you might think: win for the charity, which gets more free labour than it receives already from its numerous unpaid interns - and win for me, because I get what I asked for, only by a different means.

In fact, ever since the charity informed me that it wouldn't contemplate 'paying people differently' - and even though that is exactly what they do already - I have been behaving (a bit) like an intern. And they know it. The cunning plan has been in force for the past 10 months: paid work for 3 days, another 1, or 2 or 3 days as unofficial intern - and fiddling the work plan to make it look as though the work that takes 4, 5 or 6 days can be done in 3. They know it's a lie.

But they won't formalise the lie. They are happy for the lie to lie there, unacknowledged: they get the 4 or 5 days that they wanted me to work, and bank the cash. They are even happy, generally, to take on volunteers, and add them to the balance sheet as 'contributions in kind' (some, not all). But they won't add this contribution; and more importantly, they won't allow the grant that has been allocated to pay for 4 days' of my work to be redistributed: to be used to pay for 3 days' work, with the rest fed back into the project (with the funder's agreement).

The same amount of time would be spent on the project, but the money would go further. It can't be done, apparently.