Additional comment regarding solitary confinement and the PDI: Michigan State University Press is republishing, in four individual volumes, the contents of the anthology "VOICES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press" published in 1991. (See review: May 2, 1991, Los Angeles TIMES Sunday Book Review Supplement) The history of the PDI and its founder Joseph W Grant will be "STOP THE PRESSES! I Want to Get Off," Volume Four. The series (as was the original anthology) is being edited by Ken Wachsberger.

Speakings on imprisonment conditions represents a taboo in any part of the world. Aside of schools, hospitals and asylum, imprisonment is one kind of turning people apart from his homeland, as a result of lack of knowledge to handle unbearable social behavior.
What is worse: convicted people out of jails or innocent or no guilty imprisoned? This question tormented many of rights and law studies.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile".
In Article 11, we find this settlement:.

* (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
* (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

All of this makes me conclude that most of these imprisonments are unlawful and is a mood of attempt against the most elementary rights of mankind.

Readers should look up the case of Ashley Smith in Canada.
Solitary confinement may be required occasionally perhaps.
However it is the SENSORY DEPRIVATION that is the real issue.
Many of those in such conditions can not tolerate this and would choose death as an alternative, if available.
It is a sadistic process.

Does he, or does he not have a lawyer? How is that lawyer paid?

so they are finally getting around to dealing with that criminal Burge? He's been involved in this evil business for a long time. I first heard of him quite a few years ago in regard to Aaron Patterson, who was not only innocent but the son of a respectable cop in Chicago: tortured to incriminate himself; I don't know how that turned out but I know that Burge's crimes have been known for a LONG time..
As for the use of torture in prisons, it is far more common than the public has any idea of; nor is the public's "innocent" belief unusual that prisoners deserve whatever cruelty they are served (by the obviously good and well-meaning guards). In the nineties when the state mental hospitals were closed down ("to save money") a humane and conscientious psychiatrist I knew remarked that the mentally ill would simply be turned over to the prisons. This quite barbaric action has indeed taken place; the state hospitals weren't great, but to put mentally ill in prison at the mercy of ignorant and often cruel guards, is about as uncivilized as a community can become. Anyone who corresponds with prisoners or visits, can tell you the horror stories in the article responding to the shock re: Bradley Manning are not unusual rather they are the prison experience. Get real, America, if you think the Nazis went too far, check in; it's about time.

Having worked in a prison that used solitary confinement in a careful, humane and well-regulated manner, it strikes me that the problem is not solitary confinement alone, it is a matter of prison systems that claim security as a means of avoiding accountability, a lack of clear guidelines and criteria for the use of solitary confinement, and a lack of required training for prison guards who must manage violent, mentally ill, or politically sensitive inmate issues. There are also differing levels of solitary confinement ranging from "holes" like those used at Alcatraz years ago (and still existing in many prisons, to cell tiers with strict security and limited hours of access to sunlight and recreation.

From all reports, what Bradley Manning is experiencing is pre-trial political punishment that ought to be out of bounds for any prison administrator to allow and a violation of Constitutional standards. His attorneys ought to be in court, not just demanding relief, but also initiating a law suit against the military that holds him. This abuse is an exercise of a raw abuse of power that our courts are empowered to stop. The lack of movement to mitigate Manning's situation suggests fear on the parts of those who are to protect him, as well as a judiciary that is supposed to respond and protect him. Thats whats frightening.