A Nation in Chains

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 23 May 2006 10:49:51 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Chris Floyd at The Moscow Times via LewRockwell.com - Amerika, land on it's knees and home of the slave. Amerika still has more slaves, prisoners, than any other country, in total and per capita. And most of them for non-violent non-crimes. Malum prohibitum makes everyone a criminal. [lew]

Beneath the thunder of the mighty cataclysms unleashed by the Bush Administration -- the war crime in Iraq, the global torture gulag, the epic corruption, the gutting of the Constitution, the open embrace of presidential tyranny -- a quieter degradation of American society has continued apace. And this slow descent into barbarism didn't begin with George W. Bush -- although his illicit regime certainly represents the apotheosis of the dark forces driving the decay.

With the world's attention understandably diverted by the latest scandals and shameless posturings of the Bush Faction -- domestic spying, bribes and hookers at the CIA, military units roaring down to the border to scare unarmed poor people looking for work -- few noticed a small story that cast a harsh, penetrating light on the corrosion of the national character.

Earlier this month, the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London released its annual World Prison Population List. And there, standing proudly at the head of the line, towering far above all others, is that shining city on the hill, the United States of America. But strangely enough, the Bush gang and its many media sycophants failed to celebrate -- or even note -- yet another instance where a triumphant America leads the world. Where are the cheering hordes shouting "USA! USA!" at the news that the land of the free imprisons more people than any other country in the world -- both in raw numbers and as a percentage of its population?

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The main engine of this mass incarceration has been the 35-year "war on drugs": a spurious battle against an abstract noun that provides an endless fount of profits, payoffs and power for the politically connected while only worsening the problem it purports to address -- just like the "war on terror." The "war on drugs" has in fact been the most effective assault on an underclass since Stalin's campaign against the kulaks.

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