TRA!N-CR4SH

thepeoplesrecord:

Human Rights Watch decries U.S. prison systemJanuary 31, 2013
Human Rights Watch Thursday published its annual World Report, in which it lays out a pointed critique of the U.S. prison system. The enormous prison population — the largest in the world at 1.6 million — “partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law,” notes the report.
The 2013 World Report, a 665-page tome which assesses human rights progress in the past year in 90 countries, highlights particular issues undergirding the U.S.’s blighted carceral system. It notes that “practices contrary to human rights principles, such as the death penalty, juvenile life-without-parole sentences, and solitary confinement are common and often marked by racial disparities.” Via HRW:

Research in 2012 found that the massive over-incarceration includes a growing number of elderly people whom prisons are ill-equipped to handle, and an estimated 93,000 youth under age 18 in adult jails and another 2,200 in adult prisons. Hundreds of children are subjected to solitary confinement. Racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately represented in the prison population.

HRW cite statistics often used to show racial disparities in the U.S. prison system. For example, while whites, African Americans and Latinos have comparable rates of drug use, African Americans are arrested for drug offenses, including possession, at three times the rate of white men.
“The United States has shown little interest in tackling abusive practices that have contributed to the country’s huge prison population,” said Maria McFarland, deputy U.S. program director at Human Rights Watch. “Unfortunately, it is society’s most vulnerable – racial and ethnic minorities, low-income people, immigrants, children, and the elderly – who are most likely to suffer from injustices in the criminal justice system.”
Although noting some progress in 2012 (both D.C. and Connecticut joined the ranks of 16 states to have abolished the death penalty), HRW also stressed continuing injustices in U.S. immigration policies, labor issues and treatment of minorities, women, the disabled and HIV positive individuals. The report was particularly critical when reviewing the U.S.’s counterterrorism policies. The NGO noted in a statement:

Both the Obama administration and Congress supported abusive counterterrorism laws and policies, including detention without charge at Guantanamo Bay, restrictions on the transfer of detainees held there, and prosecutions in a fundamentally flawed military commission system. Attacks by US aerial drones were carried out in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere, with important legal questions about the attacks remaining unanswered.
The administration has taken no steps toward accountability for torture and other abuses committed by US officials in the so-called “war on terror,” and a Justice Department criminal investigation into detainee abuse concluded without recommending any charges. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence completed a more than 6,000-page report detailing the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program, but has yet to seek the report’s declassification so it can be released to the public.

The World Report explicitly mentions Obama’s signing of the NDAA in 2011 (an act he repeated this year), noting, “The act codified the existing executive practice of detaining terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge, and required that certain terrorism suspects be initially detained by the military if captured inside the U.S..”
Next week, the lawsuit against Obama over the NDAA’s definite detention provision will be back in federal court as plaintiffs including Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky seek an injunction prohibiting indefinite detention of civilians without charge or trial.
Comments from HRW’s McFarland point out what’s at stake for the president here: “The Obama administration has a chance in its second term to develop with Congress a real plan for closing Guantanamo and definitively ending abusive counterterrorism practices,” McFarland said. “A failure to do so puts Obama at risk of going down in history as the president who made indefinite detention without trial a permanent part of U.S. law.”
Source
The largest prison system in the world comes as a result of the continuing criminalization of Black & Brown youth, a failed war on drugs & poverty. This is how the New Jim Crow has manifested itself in communities of color all over the “land of the free”: 1.6 million prisoners & counting.

631 ♥

malformalady:

Blood-spattered papers a man named Waleed Al-Remeshi was carrying with him before having his tongue cut.

7224 ♥

Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don’t have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

— Carl Sagan — Ch.21 Real Patriots Ask Questions, The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

285 ♥

train-crash:

North Korean Anti-American Propaganda Poster

3 ♥

1506 ♥

Now because the majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester, if you’re going to get an ultrasound image, as the Virginia law requires, the law states, basically, that any woman seeking to have a legal procedure known as an abortion, whether she wants to or not, first lay back in a chair, spread her legs, (put her) feet in stirrups, and have an eight- to ten-inch wand put inside her — even if the woman in question is pregnant as the result of a rape.

I don’t really have a joke here. I just thought I’d tell you.

— JON STEWART, on Virginia’s inhumane, inhuman and shameful “personhood” law that requires women wanting to get an abortion to, in essence, be subject to rape, on The Daily Show (via inothernews)

5919 ♥

124 ♥

4799 ♥

2 ♥

darksilenceinsuburbia:

ever. Religious Silence in a Comunism context - Mexico City.
More from ever

113 ♥

18906 ♥

fuckyeahfeminists:

Breaking: Five US banks being sued by Attorney General
December 1st, 2011 - A lawsuit has been brought against five major American banks today. Attorney General Martha Coakley of Massachusetts filed the legal action today in Suffolk Superior Court. The defendants include Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC, and Wells Fargo.

“Our suit alleges that the banks have charted a destructive path by cutting corners and rushing to foreclose on homeowners without following the rule of law,’’Coakley said. “Our action today seeks real accountability for the banks’ illegal behavior and real relief for homeowners.”

Continue reading on Examiner.com Breaking: Five US banks being sued by Attorney General - Chicago Feminism

282 ♥

WEATHERED HANDS: The Kara women collect the water, cook for family, harvest the fields, make the clothing, and are the backbone of the tribe. This elderly woman was the only white-haired person I came in contact with. I tried desperately to get a pleasing portrait and caught her hands in my peripheries; the perfect symbol of the woman’s role in tribal society in the Omo River Valley. Her bracelets are made from salvaged AK-47 shell casings, a symbol in itself for the cyclic theme of war and revenge between the Kara and the neighboring tribe, the Nyangatom. Omo River Valley, Ethiopia. (Photo and caption by Nicholas Wiesnet/People/National Geographic Photo Contest)

311 ♥

In 48 hours, political leaders in Russia will vote on a law that makes speaking out as a gay, lesbian or trans person ILLEGAL. Because Russia is a large and powerful nation, the international community has stayed silent. If thousands of us raise our voices, they will be forced to speak out and stop this horrific law

DO SOMETHING!

22919 ♥

liberationfrequency:

Justice – This one has pretty much lost its meaning. Justice is the righting of wrongs. This is, however, not what happens today. People think justice is another word for revenge, a way to get back at people who have wronged them. Justice is about repairing damage, revenge is about causing more damage. How they came to mean the same thing is beyond me. What I do know is that you cannot right a wrong with a wrong. It is not justice, and it is not justifiable.-Anarchei

159 ♥