by cameron | Jun 7, 2008 | Cuba, Iraq, US politics
So much for being “The Land Of The Free”: Human Rights Watch has just posted up the latest stats which show the USA incarcerates nearly 7 times the number of it’s citizens are other democracies such as the UK and Canada.
Statistics released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a branch of the US Department of Justice, show that as of June 30, 2007, approximately 2.3 million persons were incarcerated in US prisons and jails, an all-time high. This represents an incarceration rate of 762 per 100,000 US residents, the highest such rate in the world. By contrast, the United Kingdom’s incarceration rate is 152 per 100,000 residents; the rate in Canada is 108; and in France it is 91.
“The new incarceration figures confirm the United States as the world’s leading jailer,†said David Fathi, US program director at Human Rights Watch. “Americans should ask why the US locks up so many more people than do Canada, Britain, and other democracies.â€
He goes on to say even though the majority of drug users in America are white, the majority of people imprisoned on drug charges are black.
“The ‘war on drugs’ has become a war on black Americans.â€
So let’s see:
- America jails more of it’s people than any other country in the world (including Cuba, Iraq, Russia and China)
- America has more gun deaths per capita (by a huge margin) than any other country in the world.
- America has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world.
- America has financed more terrorism and supported more dictators than any other country in the world in the last century.
The question in my mind is: Is America the most violent country in the world? And why, when they have it so good?
by cameron | May 22, 2008 | Australian politics, Cuba
Australia slipped two places to be ranked only the 27th most peaceful out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index 2008, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, while neighbour New Zealand is fourth.
The USA ranked 97th, below China, Cuba and Libya.
I wonder who much coverage this will get in the MSM. Are you, as a citizen of Australia, happy with the result? Do we want to be a peaceful nation?
by cameron | Mar 3, 2008 | Cuba, Uncategorized
I watched an average 2007 film SHOOTER tonight on DVD. Marky Mark’s always pretty good, playing that tough guy with a heart of gold character. Some interesting stuff about life as a sniper in the film (apparently all true according to the doco and Wikipedia, but I’ve got a mate based in the Middle East who knows this stuff who I’ll ask). Anyway, onto my point.
The top bad guy in this film is Senator Charles F. Meachum played fairly by-the-cards by Ned Beatty (who to me will always be “Otis” from the bad SUPERMAN movies of the 70s and 80s). in the film he’s a Senator who’s got a black ops organization running around doing his private bidding, killing villagers in Ethiopia to make way for an oil pipeline, assassinating an Ethiopian Archbishop who is about to reveal the truth when he’s about to receive an award from the US President, etc. The Meachum character has one great line though. When he’s facing off with Marky Mark’s good guy sniper character in the false climax of the film (there’s another climax coming a few minutes later…. I’ve got so many lines I could make here but I’m holding back… for the second climax… get it?? It looked like I wasn’t going to make a cheesy line but then I did… damn I impress even myself sometimes with my sneakiness), he (the bad Senator in case you’ve forgotten where we were) delivers this line to Marky Mark’s character “Swagger”:
Senator Charles F. Meachum: You got any plans after this? You have a rather unique skill set. I’d be interested in offering you a job.
Bob Lee Swagger: Work? For you?
Senator Charles F. Meachum: It’s not really as bad as it seems. It’s all gonna be done in any case. You might as well be on the side that gets you well paid for your efforts.
Nick Memphis: And what side are you on?
Senator Charles F. Meachum: There are no sides. There’s no Sunnis and Shiites. There’s no Democrats and Republicans. There’s only HAVES and HAVE-NOTS.
That’s certainly my perspective on the system of party politics we have in the West. We’re given the illusion of choice. Democrats or Republicans. Labor or Liberal. Conservatives or Labor. Channel Nine or Channel Seven. The Age or The Herald Sun.
There was a time when, if you were poor, you knew who to hate. You hated the King, the Queen, the Duke, the Baron, the Bishop. You knew the name of the rich guy who oppressed you, who owned you, the land you worked, who told you what to do and when to do it and beat you when it wasn’t done properly (or sent the guys to beat you).
Today those names are usually disguised by a ‘brand’. Whether it’s the brand of your political party or the brand of the media company who pimps them, you usually know the names of the brands but the average joe in the street doesn’t know the name of the person BEHIND the brand. And I’m not talking about just the CEO of the company – he (or she but usually still a man these days) is just the front guy. The CEO isn’t the person who really pulls the strings – that would be the major investors, the Board of Directors, the puppet masters, who hire and fire the CEO. And it isn’t the Prime Minister or President – again, just front men. And usually, these days, BLAND front men. Look at the guys who end up in these jobs – if you met them at a party, and you didn’t know who they were, how long before you made some lame excuse about having to relieve the babysitter to get the hell away from them? John Howard? Please. I’ve met lime jellies more interesting. Kevin Rudd? Come on. Nancy boy who, I bet, blushed all the time when he was taken to the infamous strip club in the US. George W Bush? A jock with a rich daddy who probably still puts fart cushions under the asses of his cabinet for a laugh.
The real power is smart enough usually (but not always) to hide behind a construct of front people, to maintain plausible deniability, like the mafia bosses distancing themselves from the guy selling heroin in the streets to the trail doesn’t lead back to them when the heat comes down.
We are given the illusion of choice though so we feel like we are free. The Land Of The Free and The Home Of The Brave. More like The Land Of The Duped And The Home Of The Sheep.
I started thinking about this today when someone criticized Cuba for not having a “free press”. Really, like the US, UK or Australia has a “free press”? We have a press that is owned either by a handful of rich white guys or is operated by the Government which is also, as it turns out, run by a handful of rich white guys who are good friends with the other rich white guys. You don’t think these guys all have the same interests? If you were an old rich white guy, what would your main priorities be? Helping the poor? Forgiving third world debt? Creating an international criminal court? No, your main priority would be staying rich. And if any of those other things contributed to your main priority, then all well and good. And if they don’t? Then they aren’t really going to get much play.
I’m reading a book on the Soviet Revolution at the moment, actually written by one of the guys involved in it, Raphael Abramovitch. He was a Menshevik, the minority party of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (the Bolsheviks, run by Lenin, were the majority party of the RSDLP). The idea behind the Soviet Revolution (a soviet was a worker’s local council, like a labour union) was that the power of government needed to be taken out of the hands of the rich (the minority) and given to the poor, the workers (the majority).
Which gets me back to the illusion of freedom. We have been taught in the West to believe we have choice, we have freedom, we get to vote our leaders in and out. Every four years we get to decide which rich white guy and his friends get to run things. And the rich white guys who own the media tell us over and over again in their newspapers and their televisions and their radios how lucky we’ve got it.
We’re free.
We’re happy.
We’re the good guys.
Aren’t we?
by cameron | Mar 2, 2008 | Cuba, Uncategorized
Marcelo pointed me to this excellent article by Toni Solo, based in Central America, which highlights the bias in the reporting about Cuba in the UK and US media. It’s worth reading, even if you don’t give a damn about Cuba, in order to better understand how the media works to discredit people or countries which buck the system. Thanks again for the link Marcelo.
| Cuba was ranked at 51 in the 2007 UN Human Development Index. One place above Mexico. You will never read that fact in corporate mainstream reporting on Cuba. Nor will you read that around 90% of those eligible voted in Cuba’s recent elections. Nor will you read a thorough comparison between Cuba and similar countries like, say, Jamaica or the Dominican Republic. |
| The Human Development Index is a comparative measure of standard of living among UN member countries. In last year’s Human Development Index, Jamaica sits at 101 and Dominican Republic at 79. Among Caribbean countries only the Bahamas, at 49, and Barbados, at 31, do better than Cuba. Among Central American countries only Costa Rica, at 48, does better. |
| Reporting on Cuba in the corporate liberal press goes to incredible lengths to avoid any realistic account of Cuba. |
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by cameron | Feb 22, 2008 | Cuba, Uncategorized
The Herald Sun. Hardly the bastion of journalism, I know. And this editorial I link to below is a classic example of trashy media.
Just to correct some of their factual errors:
1. Castro was not a dictator by any definition.
2. Castro did not take the world ‘to the brink of nuclear war’ by defending his country with ballistic missiles. That is the right of any country. On the contrary – the United States’ attempt at an illegal invasion of Cuba took the world to the brink of nuclear war.
3. It wasn’t Castro’s actions that “condemned his people to almost Third World status”. It was the actions of the USA. Castro and Che didn’t nationalize American interests in Cuba until after the American government was trying to interfere in the government of the country (in an attempt to bring back to power their puppet Batista).
by cameron | Feb 22, 2008 | Cuba, Uncategorized
A negatively-biased article about Castro in The New Statesman by Isabel Hilton has some interesting reader comments including this one below. It’s fascinating to watch the way the US press is carrying the news. I’ve been trying to read as much of it as I can to see if I can find many pieces which are even *slightly* positive about Castro’s contribution to the people of Cuba and Latin America, Africa, etc. I haven’t found any so far.
Cassandra.says
21 February 2008
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“There have never been death squads in our country, nor a single missing person, nor a single political assassination, nor a single victim of torture. . . . You may travel around the country, ask the people, look for a single piece of evidence, try to find a single case where the Revolutionary government has ordered or tolerated such an action. ”
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Since Fidel made this statement, I have challenged the exiles on the Net who promulgate their own Mythic Cuba to disprove it. Note how low the bar is. They only have to come up with a single case, which would still leave Cuba with the best human rights record in the hemisphere.
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So far they have failed. The long list “murders” by Castro they cite include Bay of Pigs casualties, legalized abortions, people whose cancers were diagnosed while they were in custody, people who drowned in the Straits of Georgia … one assumes that if they had a better case to make, they would make it.
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Fidel, press conference, 2001
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