meehawl

So Kuroshin has this story about a new report saying prison rapes are now a leading vector for AIDS and Hep infection in the general populace. Sadly, it only addresses the general economic cost of organized prison rape and not the social reasons behind its widespread deployment as a disciplinary tactic within overcrowded prisons.

Sometimes I wonder how short people’s cultural retention is. This is an old, old story. It’s one of the reasons the US sided with the Axis of Evil to attempt to ban prison inspections for torture, and even Salon covered it ages ago. The Human Rights Watch have a lot to say about the organization and official compliance with Male Rape In US Prisons.

The Soviet gulags often used rape as a way to control the large population of inmates, and The Gulaging of America draws an obvious parallel with methods popular in the Soviet gulags and the astonishingly high percentage of the US population now incarcerated and subject to the same normative techniques.

Some other facts about prisons I gleaned from some prison articles:

America has the world’s largest prison population as well as the world’s highest incarceration rate, surpassing China and Russia. The U.S. has 5% of the world population, but a staggering 25% of the world’s prisoners. In 1973 one in 1,042 Americans was in prison. Today, one in every 137 Americans is behind bars.

Fourteen states forbid prisoners with felony convictions and ex-cons from voting. 1.4 million black men are currently banned from voting. In at least 8 states, one in four black men is not able to vote due to a felony conviction. 90% of New York State drug offenders behind bars are black or latino.

Since 2000 the U.S. prison population has hovered around 2 million. The proportion of offenders being sent to prison each year for violent crimes has actually fallen during the prison boom … the enormous increase in America’s inmate population can be explained in large part by the sentences given to people who have committed nonviolent offenses.

The U.S. spends more on prisons then on foreign aid, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, combined.

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So Segway’s apparently managed to “convince” some tame Congressman to push through Cali legislation to enable them to be driven on paths, while motorized scooters and suchlike are still relegated to duking it out on roads with cars and motorbikes. Of course, the prospect of being run down by a 30 Kg Segway driven by its probably obese 125+ Kg owner is now a real issue for concern. These lawyers are prepared to help you sue. at the charmingly named sue-it.com.

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So it has come to this. Dr Marten’s Boots are being “de-emphasized” by their makers in favour of wussy, friendlier styles. Prozac gets part of the blame, apparently. Bye bye Docs, we hardly knew ye.

I think Alexie Sayle put it best in the Young Ones when he sang…

It’s not class or ideology,
Color, creed, or roots
The only thing that unites us
Is Dr. Marten’s boots

Dr. Marten’s boots of the world
So that everybody can be free
They’re classless, matchless, ageless and waterproof
And retail for only 19 pounds and 99p

What should everyone be wearing?
Those boots with the air-flow soles
And your boots will have a meeting
And your boots will take control

Thanks to Dr. Marten everyone will have warm feet
Thanks to Dr. Marten they’ll be dancing in the street
No. Don’t You Want Me.
OK, Boots. Do your stuff!

Dr. Marten’s, Dr. Marten’s, Dr. Marten’s boots!
Dr. Marten’s, Dr. Marten’s, Dr. Marten’s boots!
Dr. Marten’s, Dr. Marten’s, Dr. Marten’s boots!

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So now I’ve got a couple of emails from people saying they found my site through that skinmag FHM and can they have password to some of the “good” stuff. What the hell? I’m assuming FHM ran some link to the Korean Arse Shooter or something, but this is weird. What’s also disturbing is the extraordinary degree of misspellings (or dyslexia) evident in FHM “readers”.

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So this article reveals that the US compensation payments to the civilians wrongly killed during the recent attack on a wedding party put a value on dead Afghans that’s a minute fraction of the worth of European and Chinese civlians. Basically, you can kill ten thousand Afghans for the price of one Italian. A bargain at any price.

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So two congressmen with no shame have drafted a nutty bill that would allow movie and music companies to hack into people’s personal computers and networks to erase or destroy “copyrighted” material. Most notably, it indemnifies corporations against personal torts resulting from their error for damages under $250. So even if you’ve almost finished the greatest novel ever written but failed to find a buyer yet, if they erase it, you get nothing. If they destroy your hard drives but show the replacement value is below $250, you lose. And so on.

The top industries supporting Howard L. Berman are:
1 TV/Movies/Music $186,891
2 Lawyers/Law Firms $97,100

The top industries supporting Howard Coble are:
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $35,515
2 TV/Movies/Music $33,483

There is nothing these two “gentlemen” would not do to keep sucking at the media industry tit. Even to the degree of drafting such nonsensical law that clearly violates the “equal treament” under privilege or immunity of the 14th Amendment by immunizing corporations against felonious activities conducted by them against citizens without considering due process.

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So it’s not just me that finds it extraordinary that the US has joined with notable Axis of Evil members such as Libya, Syria, and China to oppose an international ban on torture. I note that at the daily US State Department briefings, the spokesperson Richard Boucher seemed rather shamefaced as he “declined” to comment on the US position advocating looser anti-torture measures.

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So not content with recycling the fruity, vaguely disturbing corporate realist propaganda posters from the 1940s, the Bush Administration has gone slogan crazy recently. Hey, it worked for those guys in Italy and Germany, so why not in the good old US of A?

Among the choicest motto morsels endlessly recycled are:
Protecting the Homeland
Strengthening Our Economy
Working Toward Independence
And so on…

Yet the practice, which involves more frequent and smaller logos placed close to the president’s head to ensure a spot on television, has begun to draw criticism – especially on days when the message looks more like wishful thinking than a description of real events. One Democratic critic called the bombardment of simple slogans “eerie”.

Sour grapes from a politicians who wishes the Dems were ahead in the motto war? Or is the ongoing sloganification of public discourse something to worry about?

Slogans macht frei?

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Did so many firefighters have to die during the collapse of the World Trade Center? This article says no.

Unregulated heroism is part of the U.S. firefighting culture, Klein said. In large part, it is why firefighters die at far higher rates in the United States than in Britain, he said. For every 100,000 firefighters on the job, between eight and 10 died in the line of duty in the United States each year between 1969 and 1999. In Britain, the number was about two.

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The London Times has an interesting story about how, apparently, the European negotiations with the Palestinians were within hours of producing a ceasefire when the bizarre and shocking F16 rocket attack on a Palestinian apartment block killed several children, several civilians, and a Hamas operative, and derailed the peace negotiations. Now, of course it’s alwayys easier to say in hindsight that “Hey, we were just about to turn lead into gold until you bozos junxed it” but still, the timing and execution of this unusually savage attack should give anyone pause who understands how realpolitik operates in the Middle East. Suicide bombs and indiscriminate rocket attacks against crowded apartment blocks are, to me, morally indistinguishable in their disregard for human life and their blatant savagery.

The current phase of suicide bombings was initiated by two provocative assassinations of Hamas leaders by Israeli forces during lulls in the fighting: Mahmoud Abu Hanoud last November and Bakar Hamdan last January. The behaviour of Hamas is actually pretty predictable and you can rely on them to follow up any attacks on them with a spot of ultraviolence — to do otherwise would mean them ceding the “moral” leadership of the violent section of the Palestinian movement. The dogs in the street know this and so do the shadowy bureaucrats and spymasters in the Israeli government that authorize these targeted killings.

Interesting, and sadly, I was doing some checking on Hanoud and I found this interesting titbit – Hanoud was imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority until a botched Israeli assassination attempt using F16s failed last year, freeing him and killing nearly a dozen Palestinian police officers.

Castro Salameh, the Palestinian commander of the Nablus post, told the Times, “Abu Hanoud has been my charge for nine months, and I have kept him under lock and key… But now Israel has liberated him. I have absolutely no idea where he has gone to.”

Sharon is a master of timing. I am still impressed by the impeccable slaughter last January of Elie Hobeika, a key witness for the prosecution who was due to give testimony concerning his first-hand knowledge of Sharon’s direct role in authorisation of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre.

So, the spymasters free the militants, let them dangle for a while, then rub them out. It really is like James Bond, but without the cool gadgets. Meanwhile, ordinary people die.

Earlier here.

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