40 Years!!

         I believe it is true to say that the American establishment is the most brutal, savage institution on the planet. It has invaded more countries than any other country on the planet, and it runs its own country with the same ruthless brutality. In doing so it has incarcerated a greater percentage of its population than any other country, and it runs that prison system with the same brutal inhumanity and savagery, and runs the prisons as one massive slave labour camp for the profit of its corporate moguls. 

The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.

        Yet it sits at the head of the table of those nations that go by the name of the most developed and peaceful nations. The greatest illusion ever perpetrated on the human race.

The following is from Salon: 

40 Years A Prisoner.

       Eight-year-old me couldn't imagine not seeing my dad's smiling face on Christmas morning, or drawing my mom a cartoon-filled card covered in thank yous for Mother's Day, or the thousands of other memories small kids get to share with their parents. These types of memories make up the foundation of our traditions and are the things that we pass down to our kids. Mike Africa Jr., who was born in prison, was robbed of the chance of creating those in-person memories with his parents. The Philadelphia police department forced him to figure out life on his own.
        Africa Jr.'s journey is brilliantly related in the new HBO documentary film, "40 Years a Prisoner," directed by Tommy Oliver and available now on HBO Max. Featuring an all-star ensemble of producers including The Roots, Common and John Legend, "40 Years A Prisoner" is a compelling film about the horrors of America's criminal justice system. The story begins in 1978 when Philadelphia police raided MOVE, a back to nature organization based on love, among other peaceful principles. Africa's parents, two MOVE members, were arrested during that raid on trumped up charges and convicted before he was born. In the film, Oliver documents Africa Jr.'s life pursuit of freeing his parents, along with other MOVE members, and a decades-long battle with the Philadelphia police department. I recently got a chance to talk with Africa Jr. and Oliver about the film on an episode of "Salon Talks." 

Read the full article HERE:

 

"40 Years a Prisoner" is streaming on HBO Max.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Capitalism And Slave Labour Camps.

       Capitalism, where is it going? I suppose we could look at the most developed capitalist country in the world and gain some idea. America, King Capitalist, the big boy in the game, the pinnacle of capitalist development, what does it show us? Over the last six years, America's wealth has grown by over $30 trillion, a staggering 60%, over roughly the same period, the number of homeless children has grown by the same staggering figure, 60%. In 2013, 2.5 million children experienced homelessness, 1 in 30. According to UNICEF, America has the highest child relative poverty rates in the developed world.
      Homelessness in America is another indicator of what capitalism brings to people, approximately 3.5 million people experience homelessness in America each year. Roughly 15% of Americans, 4.8 million, live in poverty, with 7.7 million classified as living in poor households. These are figures from the crowning glory of capitalism.
      Apart from the poverty and homelessness in America, there is a much more sinister aspect to American capitalism, the road that we are all heading down, its prison system. America incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, its recent figures stand at 2.3 million, of its citizens locked up, mostly Black and Hispanic. America has locked up half a million more people than China, which has five time the population of the US. America, with 5% of the world's population, accounts for 25% of the world's prison population.

      The prison system in America is big business, the system is highly privatised and a wonderful money maker for the corporate world. 

       “The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work, lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”
     The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”

        The American prison system is slave labour, with a workforce that can be paid less than a dollar a day, has no union rights or representation, never turns up late, never goes on strike, or makes demands for increase wages, and can be punished for not working hard enough. In some cases, private prison are paid by the government for the number of empty beds they have, as the government guarantees a certain occupancy rate, so logically it pays the state to fill the prisons. This of course encourages big business to build more prisons.
       The US prison business is no small-fry production unit, this is BIG business. The American prison system produces for the American market, 

     100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts pants, tents, bags and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93 percent of paints and paintbrushes; 92 percent of stove assembly; 46 percent of body armor; 36 percent of home appliances; 30 percent of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21 percent of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.”
       When you can get that kind of labor for less than a dollar a day, it’s hard to see the government’s motivation for incarcerating fewer people. And it’s all done at the taxpayer’s expense.

        So let's look at America,  and see the future of capitalism, poverty, homelessness and mass slave labour camps by means of state incarceration. This is our future, unless we do something about it, and do it quick.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk