The problem of rape in America's massive gulag of prisons, detention centers and concentration camps continues to worse. It's not just at Baghram or Abu Ghraib or outside the country. The worst of it is inside the US itself. The whole world ignores it since everyone knows the USA is a great place and they don't do that kind of stuff there.
Well they do, and it's getting worse. Human Rights Watch has released an important and horrifying report on the wide and rampant amount of rape and other abuses in America's massive domestic prison complex. It's just unbelievable that the situation is so bad, and even more unbelievable that it's gone on for so long and no one even mentions it or does anything about it. People just don't realize how huge the US prison population is now, or what living hell the prisons are.
When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I'm a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to 5 black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again. One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segragation though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lockdown. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, He suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I've requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He also said there was no where to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things . . . . I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking to hard on all this . . . . I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for. ...
My name is Rodney Hulin and I work at a retirement home here in Beaumont, Texas. I am here today because of my son. He would be here himself if he could . . . . But he can't because he died in [an adult prison]. . . . [At age seventeen], my son was raped and sodomized by an inmate. The doctor found two tears in his rectum and ordered an HIV test, since up to a third of the 2,200 inmates there were HIV positive. Fearing for his safety, he requested to be placed in protective custody, but his request was denied because, as the warden put it, "Rodney's abuses didn't meet the 'emergency grievance criteria.'" For the next several months, my son was repeatedly beaten by the older inmates, forced to perform oral sex, robbed, and beaten again. Each time, his requests for protection were denied by the warden. The abuses, meanwhile, continued. On the night of January 26, 1996--seventy-five days after my son entered Clemens--Rodney attempted suicide by hanging himself in his cell. He could no longer stand to live in continual terror. It was too much for him to handle. He laid in a coma for the next four months until he died.
There are thousands, tens of thousands of accounts like this. It's not just a few people at a few prisons, but nearly everyone at nearly all prisons, in all 50 states. And the wardens, guards and other government officials are involved, and are makiing money off of it as well.
Another problem, nearly as heinous, is the growing extent of slave prison labor by American corporations, which has grown enormously under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Some say slave labor prisons may be one of the largest employers in the country now. That may be exaggerated, no one knows the real extent of it, just that it's incredibly profitable and a booming growth industry. But no one wants to talk about this, it's easier to spread this nonsense about how jobs have moved to Mexico and China and other places.
There are laws to prevent this of course, but the unspeakably vile lawyers who have taken over the government and the legal system (both liberals and conservatives, there's no difference) couldn't care less about the law or human rights. They're interested in making money off the cheap slave labor, and keeping people of color in line. The only organization really working to deal with this problem is Stop Prisoner Rape, which could use your help.
The horrific violence Americans are inflicting in Iraq and other places around the world, is just a reflection of and stems from the violence inside America itself. Until we deal with the core problems, there's no chance of dealing with the warmongering and other stuff, which are just symptoms. Our prison system is nothing more than an organization designed to breed vicious violent people. People, prisoners AND guards, come out there as less than human, and incapable of decency.
Dylan, Not Dark Yet and Trying to Get to Heaven, 2000
Here are a couple of late Bob Dylan compositions, Not Dark Yet and Trying to Get to Heaven, both performed in 2000. Some of his darker ones, not exactly uplifting. But I want to put up examples of his later songs that most people aren't familiar with, they tend to grow on you. There seems to an awful lot of good stuff from his tour of England in 2000. Lyrics here: Not Dark Yet and Trying to Get to Heaven.
Not Dark Yet, Sheffield, Great Britain, 2000
Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
Trying to Get to Heaven, Birmingham, Great Britain, 2000
Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I'll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
Some trains don't pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers, like they did before
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door
Note the reference to Woody Guthrie's This Train is Bound for Glory. Bob's a long way from Woody's " This train is bound for glory, Don't carry nothing but the righteous and the holy. This train is bound for glory, this train." He's been on the train, ridden it a very long way and back again, and he knows that there's more than just the righteous and the holy on it, and now he's waiting for what's next, not exactly looking forward to it. He visualizes getting into heaven the same as trying to make it onto a train pulling out of town, trying to run fast enough to make it before the boxcar door closes.
US donates paltry sum to "study" Agent Orange use in Vietnam.
Guardian article, "US to help fund Agent Orange clean-up". After decades of refusing to acknowledge the long-term effects of the massive use of Agent Orange by Americans during the Vietnam war, the US has finally agreed to donate an incredibly paltry $400,000 to help research ways to remove soil still highly toxic after nearly 40 years. Note that while the article title says the US will help "fund" the clean-up, in actuality it is only helping fund research, not any actual clean-up. And $400,000, in an age where millions and billions are routinely squandered, is less than nothing. It'll probably end up going to some contractors too.
It is beyond scandalous that the US has been refusing for so many decades to acknowledge the long-term effects of its indiscriminate use of Agent Orange (and other chemicals), or to help clean up the toxic soil or help those with birth defects caused by it. The Vietnamese have continue to try to obtain legal redress for this war crime, but have had no luck so far, since the legal systems are controlled by the Americans. They continue to try however. Note that new victims are being born all of the time, this is not ancient history, but an on-going problem.
Two of the approximately four million Vietnamese people with birth defects caused by American use of Agent Orange. (Photograph: Richard Vogel/AP)
The US is to help fund efforts in Vietnam to clean up soil contaminated by the defoliant Agent Orange in a move hailed today as the first step in healing a long-running rift between the two former enemies.
Washington's ambassador to Vietnam said that the US would contribute $400,000 (£210,000) to a $1m study to find ways to removed the highly toxic chemical, dioxin, from earth at the war-era air force base at Danang.
It is one of three hotspots at air bases identified by US scientists, though 70m litres of the chemicals were dropped on southern Vietnam between 1961 and 1975 to strip trees of foliage and expose enemy positions and supply routes.
The move, announced at a joint media conference in Hanoi, is symbolically significant as the US has always rejected Vietnam's claims that Agent Orange — so-called because it was stored in orange barrels — caused birth defects and diseases in four million people.
The US always refused to pay compensation to the millions of Vietnamese said to have suffered from Agent Orange's effects, maintaining there was no proven scientific link. A court action brought against 37 American chemical companies by a group of Vietnamese was dismissed by US courts in 2005, but an appeal has been launched.
If the Vietnamese ever do win any court cases and obtain damages, the payments could be enormous. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but sooner or later the American people will have to pay reparations to the many peoples they've illegally attacked, and they could be in the trillions. Iraq alone will be in the trillions.
Stan Goff has recently published this article, An Appeal to People Outside the United States to Break US Imperial Power, delineating the ways that people outside the US can use to limit and reduce the expansion of American power. It's very well thought out, and realistic. It's been published around the web a bit, but I thought I'd reproduce it here as a reminder that people around the world can learn what they can do. Americans in particular, politically aware or not, should be aware that global boycotts of American goods and services are being organized, and that soon they will be widespread and very effective.
NOTE: Please translate this into as many languages as possible, and distribute as widely as possible.
This series of suggestions is written because my country is on a path that will first destroy other societies -- upon which we depend -- and the biospheric basis of life itself; and this means eventually our own society.
Our society now -- an imperial society -- is deeply alienated, desperately unhappy, and thoroughly indoctrinated into the acquisitive individualism that creates that alienation and unhappiness. We continue down this path because the weight of the system gives it such enormous inertia. We need you to do these things, not just to ensure your own futures... but for our own good.
The United States now exists as a parasite upon the rest of the world. In this system, this political entity called the United States of America is not only a parasite, but a parasite that is destroying its own host. There is only one outcome in the end for such a relationship; we will all perish together. With the help of the people of the world -- and I will outline ten ways you can help us -- we can all escape this fate. Each of us -- with the destruction of US imperial power -- will be in a better position to work for a sustainable and indpendent future for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.
(1) If there is a US military base in your country, begin a concerted campaign to get rid of it. These bases are exercises of imperial power against your own sovereignty. They are creating base-economies of crime, corruption, and prostitution. They are environmental disasters. Wage a sharp political struggle to make them untenable.
(2) If there are US companies, be they factories, financial offices, or retail outlets, in your country, organize sustained boycotts of them.
(3) If you live in a country that owes an external debt to the US or the US-controlled International Monetary Fund, begin a fight to either default on that debt outright, or secure low-interest or no-interest loans from other countries to pay down the principle. Your nations' debt is your peoples' slavery.
(4) Boycott any American agricultural products being dumped on your national markets; and wage a political fight to stop them coming in. US industrial agricultural corporations are heavily-subsidized and predatory monstrosities that destroy the environment and are used as a weapon to destroy your local, traditional agriculture. Ending agriculture for export and supporting your own subsistence and local market agriculture is necessary to break your dependency upon and subjugation to the United States. Fight for you nations' land; and do not let it become an export platform for dollar-crops in the US market.
(5) Boycott American cultural products. They are propaganda aimed at turning your children into mindless consumers and your nations into obedient colonies.
(6) Make these political issues at home. Fight politicians who are called "pro-American," This means they are stooges for US-based transnational corporations or for the US state.
(7) Fight to nationalize your most valuable natural resources; and support politicians who will abrogate agreements that allow US finance capital unlimited access to your national markets.
(8) Try to close down any projects that are run out of the US Embassy by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). These projects are designed to drain talented local people away from national independence movements, and the USAID works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency.
(9) Expose and resist any political activity by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), also operating in concert with the US Embassy. This is a front organization for the purpose of engineering election outcomes in your nation that are seen as favorable to US transnational corporations and the US state.
(10) Mount massive political efforts directed at US Embassies everywhere that oppose the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and demand not only withdrawal, but that no US bases be left behind.
NOTE: I have not called for violence in any of these suggestions. These are generic recommendations.
Wood s Lot. Maybe the most consistently interesting weblog out there. Superb selections on all sorts of topics, especially art and literature. Tons of links too.
Fairvue Central hosts the Bloggies, awards for best weblogs in different categories from all over the world. See the nominees for 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 (in progress).
