Watch the video and find out.
Watch the video and find out.
Christianity is the belief in a cosmic Jewish zombie who can give us eternal life if we symbolically eat his flesh and blood and telepathically tell him that we accept him as our lord and master so he can remove an evil force present in all humanity because a woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from an apple tree.
That was.. Quite Interesting!
Once again started waiting for Duke Nukem =)
"A legal system based on baseball just seems bizarre"
I live in Canada, which is a totalitarian state. - Ben Kenobi
Rappers don't have to be musicians - Al. B. Sure
Oh, those Eurocommies will say anything. And you're a socialist who hates America for posting that, Oerdin.
I'm consitently stupid- Japher
I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned
Of course, of course.
Christianity is the belief in a cosmic Jewish zombie who can give us eternal life if we symbolically eat his flesh and blood and telepathically tell him that we accept him as our lord and master so he can remove an evil force present in all humanity because a woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from an apple tree.
And you're okay with that?! Is there no depth to your depravity!?
I'm consitently stupid- Japher
I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned
Sheesh. Theben, you say "America hating socialist" like it is a bad thing.
I live in Canada, which is a totalitarian state. - Ben Kenobi
Rappers don't have to be musicians - Al. B. Sure
Those prodution numbers are obvioulsy BS.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
We're number 1! We're number 1!
Not bad, that's more prisoners than GULAG has ever held at the same time.
That's an interesting video.I must day this is a very controversial video. This is a case that would be difficult to handle from if reached at this situation.
Jimmy Carr
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato
Then prove otherwise...Originally Posted by Patroklos
People watching QI!
I watched Stephen Fry make Ann Widdecombe look like a batshit crazy fundamentalist catholic loony on TV last night...
"People would rather die than think, and most people do." - Bertrand Russell
Is there a particular reason you are latching onto those numbers when a cursory common sense examination refutes them easily enough?
The US Army's Interceptor body armor adopted in 2003 and its current replacement the Improved Outer Tactical Vest are both produced by Point Blank Body Armor, NOT the US prison system.
Similarly, the MICH TC-2000 Combat Helmet which is used by all of the Army with the exception of a few National Guard units where the old PASGT has yet to be phased out is produced and aquired through myraid private firms, NOT the US prison system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improve..._Tactical_Vest
And seriously, slave labor? Find me one source that proves that prisoners are REQUIRED to work in such non self supporting industry (like laundry and gardening). Seriously, why would you accept such retarded hype at face value?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct...trial_Facility
Yeah, they are varitable plantations. God forbid we let inmates do something with their time besides masterbate and shank people.
Last edited by Patroklos; February 8, 2010 at 09:07.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
You know, your country never ceases to surprise me for the absolute worst of reasons: talk about my only scratching at the surface!
After a couple of minutes of digging about the slavery issue…
http://www.counterpunch.org/flaherty06102008.html
You’re right, QI were wrong IIRC: they quoted about 2 million people in US prisons – not 7 million! They quoted 1% of the US population – not 2%!Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation
Organizing for Freedom
By JORDAN FLAHERTY
At the heart of Louisiana’s prison system sits the Louisiana State Prison at Angola, a former slave plantation where little has changed in the last several hundred years. Angola has been made notorious from books and films such as Dead Man Walking and The Farm: Life at Angola, as well as its legendary bi-annual prison rodeo and The Angolite, a prisoner-written magazine published within its walls. Visitors are often overwhelmed by its size – 18,000 acres that include a golf course (for use by prison staff and some guests), a radio station, and a massive farming operation that ranges from staples like soybeans and wheat to traditional Southern plantation crops like cotton.
Recent congressional attention has again brought Angola into the media limelight. The focus this time is on the prison’s practice of keeping some inmates in solitary confinement for decades, especially two of Angola’s most well-known residents – Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Woodfox and Wallace are the remaining members of the Angola Three, political activists widely seen as having been interned in solitary confinement as punishment for their political activism.
Modern plantation
Norris Henderson, co-director of Safe Streets/Strong Communities, a grassroots criminal justice organization in New Orleans, spent twenty years at Angola – a relatively short time in a prison where 85 percent of its 5,100 prisoners are expected to die behind its walls. “Six hundred folks been there over 25 years,” he explains. “Lots of these guys been there over 35 years. Think about that: a population that’s been there since the 1970s. Once you’re in this place, it’s almost like you ain’t going nowhere, that barring some miracle, you’re going to die there.”
Prisoners at Angola still do the same work that enslaved Africans did there when it was a slave plantation. “Angola is a plantation,” Henderson explains. “Eighteen-thousand acres of choice farmland. Even to this day, you could have machinery that can do all that work, but you still have prisoners doing it instead.” Not only do prisoners at Angola toil at the same work as enslaved Africans hundreds of years ago, but many of the white guards come from families that have lived on the grounds since the plantation days.
Nathaniel Anderson, a current inmate at Angola who has served nearly thirty years of a lifetime sentence, agrees. “People on the outside should know that Angola is still a plantation with every type and kind of slave conceivable,” he says.
Prison organizing
In 1971, the Black Panther Party was seen as a threat to this country’s power structure – not only in the inner cities, but even in the prisons. At Orleans Parish Prison, the New Orleans city jail, the entire jail population refused to cooperate for one day in solidarity with New Orleans Panthers who were on trial. “I was in the jail at the time of their trial,” Henderson tells me. “The power that came from those guys in the jail, the camaraderie…Word went out through the jail, because no one thought the Panthers were going to get a fair trial. We decided to do something. We said, ‘The least we can do is to say the day they are going to court, no one is going to court.’”
The action was successful, and inspired prisoners to do more. “People saw what happened and said, ‘We shut down the whole system that day,’” he remembers. “That taught the guys that if we stick together we can accomplish a whole lot of things.”
Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were inmates who had recently become members of the Black Panther Party, and as activists, they were seen as threats to the established order of the prison. They were organizing among the other prisoners, conducting political education, and mobilizing for civil disobedience to improve conditions.
Robert King Wilkerson, like many inmates, joined the Black Panther Party while already imprisoned at Orleans Parish Prison. He was transferred to Angola, and immediately placed in solitary confinement (known at Angola as Closed Cell Restriction or CCR) – confined alone in his cell with no human contact for 23 hours a day. He later found out he had been transferred to solitary because he was accused of an attack he could not have committed – it had happened at Angola before he had been moved there.
In March of 1972, not long after they began organizing for reform from within Angola, Wallace and Woodfox were accused of killing a correctional officer. They were also moved to solitary, where they remained for nearly 36 years, until March of this year, when they were moved out four days after a congressional delegation led by Congressman John Conyers arranged a visit to the prison. Legal experts have said this is the longest time anyone in the US has spent in solitary. Amnesty International recently declared, “the prisoners' prolonged isolation breached international treaties which the US has ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture.”
Wilkerson, Wallace, and Woodfox became known internationally as the Angola Three – Black Panthers held in solitary confinement because of their political activism. Wilkerson remained in solitary for nearly 29 years, until he was exonerated and released from prison in 2001. Since his release, Wilkerson has been a tireless advocate for his friends still incarcerated. “I’m free of Angola,” he often says, “but Angola will never be free of me.”
This history of struggle and resistance brings a special urgency to the case of the Angola Three. Kgalema Motlante, a leader of the African National Congress, said in 2003 that the case of the Angola Three “has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire US system.”
Purchasing testimony
Wallace and Woodfox have the facts on their side. Bloody fingerprints at the scene of the crime do not match their prints. Witnesses against them have recanted, while witnesses with nothing to gain have testified that they were nowhere near the crime. There is evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, such as purchasing inmate testimony and not disclosing it to the defense. Even the widow of the slain guard has spoken out on their behalf. Most recently, their case has received attention from Representative Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, and Cedric Richmond, chair of the Louisiana House Judiciary Committee, who has scheduled hearings on the issue to begin this month.
But this is more than the story of innocent men railroaded by a system. The story of the Panthers at Angola is both inspiring and shocking. It is a struggle for justice while in the hardest of situations.
“They swam against the current in Blood Alley,” says Nathaniel Anderson, a current inmate at Angola who has been inspired by Wallace and Woodfox’s legacy. “For men to actually have the audacity to organize for the protection of young brothers who were being victimized ruthlessly was an extreme act of rebellion.”
Like many prisoners during that time, Norris Henderson was introduced to organizing by Black Panthers in prison, and later became a leader of prison activism during his time at Angola. The efforts of Wilkerson, Woodfox, Wallace, and other Panthers in prison were vital to bringing improvements in conditions, stopping sexual assault, and building alliances among different groups of prisoners. “They were part of the Panther Movement,” Henderson tells me. “This was at the height of the Black power movement, we were understanding that we all got each other. In the night-time there would be open talk, guys in the jail talking, giving history lessons, discussing why we find ourselves in the situation we find ourselves. They started educating folks around how we could treat each other. The Nation of Islam was growing in the prison at the same time. You had these different folk bringing knowledge. You had folks who were hustlers that then were listening and learning. Everybody was coming into consciousness.”
Insatiable machine
The US has the largest incarcerated population in the world – twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners are here. If Louisiana, which has the largest percentage imprisoned of any US state, were a country, it would have by far the world’s largest percentage of its population locked up, at one out of every 45 people. Nationwide, more than seven million people are in US jails, on probation, or on parole, and African Americans are incarcerated at nearly ten times the rate of whites. Our criminal justice system has become an insatiable machine – even when crime rates go down, the prison population keeps rising.
The efforts of the Angola Three and other politically conscious prisoners represented a fundamental challenge to this system. The organizing of Wallace, Woodfox, and Wilkerson, though cut short by their move to solitary, had an effect that continues to this day.
Prison activism, and outside support for activists behind bars, can be tremendously powerful, says Henderson. “In the early 1970s people started realizing we’re all in this situation together. First, at Angola, we pushed for a reform to get a law library. That was one of the first conditions to change. Then, we got the library; guys became aware of what their rights were. We started to push to improve the quality of food, and to get better medical care. Once they started pushing the envelope, a whole bunch of things started to change. Angola was real violent then, you had inmate violence and rape. The people running the prison system benefit from people being ignorant. But we educated ourselves. Eventually, you had guys in prison proposing legislation.”
This was a time of reforms and grassroots struggles happening in prisons across the US. Uprisings such as the Attica Rebellion were resulting in real change. Today, many of the gains from those victories have been overturned, and prisoners have even less recourse to change than ever before. “Another major difference,” Henderson explains, is that “you had federal oversight over the prisons at that time, someone you could complain to, and say my rights are being violated. Today, we’ve lost that right.”
Working for criminal justice is work that benefits us all, says Henderson. “Most folks in prison are going to come out of prison,” he states. “We should invest in the quality of that person. We should start investing in the redemption of people.”
After decades of efforts by their lawyers and by activists, Wallace and Woodfox have been released from solitary, but the struggle continues. Wallace and Woodfox remain behind bars, punished for standing up against a system that has grown even larger and more deadly. And the abuse does not end there. “There are hundreds more guys who have been in [solitary] a long time too,” Henderson adds. “This is like the first step in a thousand-mile journey.”
Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a journalist based in New Orleans. Most recently, his writing can be seen in the anthology Red State Rebels, released this month by AK Press. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.
I actually keep forgetting just how barbaric and backward your country is!
Aren't you in any way ashamed of this?
"People would rather die than think, and most people do." - Bertrand Russell
Cutting into masturbation time.
I was thinking to use a male-male jack and record it. - Albert Speer
When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah
Read you own quote mob.
That doesn't say that 7 million are in prison.Nationwide, more than seven million people are in US jails, on probation, or on parole,
The OT at APOLYTON is like watching the Special Olympics. Certain people try so hard to debate despite their handicaps.
So your rebuttal is the completely irrelevant fact that a prison is built on top of property that was once a plantation?
In addition your brilliant position is that since the inmates do agricultural labor and slaves used to do agricultural labor then the inmates = slaves? Seriously?
Do you know what a slave is?
In any case, the video made a very specific claim that I have proven to be utterly false. Why are you so invested in it?
Last edited by Patroklos; February 8, 2010 at 09:44.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
I'd still love some disputing or corroborating stats on the amount of goods produced by prisons. That was the most shocking stat of the piece.
I was thinking to use a male-male jack and record it. - Albert Speer
When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah
Well the Helmet Number seems to originate from this Article
Article date:October 28, 2003
By Shane Graber, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Oct. 28--BEAUMONT, Texas-- While fighting in Iraq earlier this year, Marine Lance Cpl. Dillon Swearengin was unaware that he was wearing a small but critical piece of home.
So was the guy next to him. And the next guy. And the next guy. And the next guy. They all wore a piece of Southeast Texas atop their heads.
A factory in the medium-security federal prison here manufactures nearly every standard military helmet used by ground troops. Men and women in the fields refer to them as Kevlars or PASGTs personnel armor system for ground troops.
...
while the rest is "According to the Left Business Observer" (sic)
Once again started waiting for Duke Nukem =)
Well, it was a quick cut and paste, what can I say...?
"People would rather die than think, and most people do." - Bertrand Russell
Use your brain, dickhead!So your rebuttal is the completely irrelevant fact that a prison is built on top of property that was once a plantation?
So your brilliant position is that since the inmates do agricultural labor and slaves used to do agricultureal labor then the inmates = slaves? Seriously?
Do you know what a slave is?
When you're forced to work a 40 hour week 'earning' $0.04 an hour* doing work that has remained deliberately labour intensive (i.e. still 19th century), it is slavery by any other name.
Still, way to look like a chump defending the indefensible. As usual.
* Another Angola article
"People would rather die than think, and most people do." - Bertrand Russell
Like I said the PASGTs equipment has been out of use for the better part of decade, which means whether or not the PASGT was prison manufactured or not is irrlevant to a video posted yesterday commenting on the here and now.
Not that there is anything wrong with having prisoners work.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
I like how you refute your own position while trying to defend your position. It makes my life a lot easier.Use your brain, dickhead!
When you're forced to work a 40 hour week 'earning' $0.04 an hour* doing work that has remained deliberately labour intensive (i.e. still 19th century), it is slavery by any other name.
Still, way to look like a chump defending the indefensible. As usual.
* Another Angola article
So are you going to admit the video's accusations are BS or not. Keep in mind I just proved it, you are not going to do your self any favors with this retarded emotional rant of yours.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
No it's not, according to your own quote about the NG. Phasing out does not equate to out of use for the past decade.
"People would rather die than think, and most people do." - Bertrand Russell
Feeding themselves do lessen their burden on the state via their chosen lives of crime. OMG SLAVERY!!!!The crops feed the inmates of Angola and many other "sister prisons" in the state. Warden Burl Cain says the facility spends only $1.41 a day to feed each inmate three meals because so much of the food is grown on prison grounds. Corn, wheat, cotton and soybeans are cultivated there — and crawfish and frog legs are taken from its lakes and ponds. Huge groves of pecans cover the hillsides. It was those pecans that found their way into the prison pralines Wilkerson was secretly crafting in his cell.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=89698695
Seriously, this has got to be the most pathetic pet cause you have ever disgraced with your support.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
Keep making a fool of yourself
Forced labour = slavery
Sorry I'm at work, whilst taking a few minutes to pwn my little patty plaything is OK, youtube might be construed as taking the piss...So are you going to admit the video's accusations are BS or not. Keep in mind I just proved it, you are not going to do your self any favors with this retarded emotional rant of yours.
You haven't proved anything, rantyboy, except what a douchey little retard you are.
"People would rather die than think, and most people do." - Bertrand Russell
The NG has them still BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T GOTTEN THEIR NEW ONES YET!!! That does not mean that they are still being produced for government use.
But that is irrelevant because your video said ALL helmets in the army are prison manufactured. They are wrong, you are wrong (and retarded for not realizing this was BS off the bat), deal with it.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
The video is from a comedy show. It's not like it is from fox news or something so you don't have to take it seriously.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato
Is this how you guys feel when talking to Ben? I understand the frustration now.Keep making a fool of yourself
Forced labour = slavery
Sorry I'm at work, whilst taking a few minutes to pwn my little patty plaything is OK, youtube might be construed as taking the piss...
You haven't proved anything, rantyboy, except what a douchey little retard you are.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
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