vrijdag 29 maart 2013

The Empire 910



Dinsdag 26 maart berichtte de International Herald Tribune: 

C.I.A. guides Syria arms aid. The C.I.A.’s role has schown a U.S. willingness to help support lethal aid for rebels in the Syrian conflict.

En hoe loopt de ‘arms pipeline to the Syrian rebels’ oftewel de ‘arms airlift guided by C.I.A.’? Wel volgens de IHT via pronkstukken van democratische beschaving, te weten Saoedi Arabie en Qatar, Jordanie en Turkije.

Op grond waarvan meent Washington het recht te hebben om zich met een burgeroorlog te bemoeien? Wel op grond van ondermeer het volgende:
In the US, 2.3 million people are in prison, but another 4.9 million are out of jail but still on parole or probation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, meaning they’ve been in prison already, and are still under the control of prison and police authorities. That’s over 3 percent of the US population, counting kids and old people. We lock people up at six times the rate, relative to population, of the average for all industrialized nations. Our lock-up rate is five times Britain’s, nine times Germany’s and 12 times Japan’s, yet we have crime rates far in excess of those more enlightened countries.
America has turned everything in to a crime. We get locked up for actions that rarely lead to prison in other modern societies — things like writing bad checks or using recreational drugs…or purse snatching. And US prison sentences are much longer than sentences for the same crimes in other more enlightened countries. Take burglaries. In the US, the average sentence for a burglary is 16 months — almost a year and a half. In Canada, it’s five months, and in England, seven months. Of course, we stand out too as having one of the busiest execution programs in the world, trumped only by China and Iran, two countries that are not particularly laudable for the quality of their justice systems.
Of course, the US justice system, if it can even be called that these days, is also rife with racism. The BJS reports that although blacks do not commit crimes at a rate significantly different from whites, they account for 39.4% of the US prison population, while accounting for only 13.1% of the general population. Hispanics, who account for 20.6% of the prison population nationally, represent only 16.3% of the population. Another way of looking at things: In 2010 black non-Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 4,347 inmates per 100,000 in the US. White males were incarcerated at the rate of 678 inmates per 100,000. Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 1,755 inmates per 100,000 U.S.
The system is also rigged against the poor or whatever race, many of whom are actually or in practice denied the Constitutional right to a lawyer.

Geen opmerkingen:

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...