Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Fucilazioni che non fanno notizia

I due criminali che a Cuba hanno assassinato due turisti italiani, oltre
ad altri stranieri, a scopo di rapina verranno fucilati tra qualche
giorno. Con questi il totale delle pene di morte inflitte dai tribunali
cubani (almeno quelle ufficiali) sale a 12. E' strano come tutte le
anime belle, cantautori, giornalisti e intellettuali non protestino come
fanno - giustamente - quando lo stesso accade in Texas. Trovo veramente
fastidioso il mito, quasi puramente italiano, di questo paradiso che
dovrebbe essere la Cuba castrista.
A.
--
Posted from root@[192.106.104.183]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - 
http://www.mailgate.org

dovrebbe essere la Cuba castrista.
Cuba non si atteggia a "modello morale per il mondo" come fanno gli
Stati Uniti.


Non vorrei mai vivere negli Usa. Però quello che scrivi, ed è quello che scrivono
molti, è quantomeno discutibile. Gli Usa sono la nazione più contraddittoria e
autocritica del pianeta. Non si atteggiano proprio a niente. E' un problema culturale:
gli americani sono educati male e credono che il mondo finisca da una parte a New York
e dall'altra a Los Angeles. Il resto del mondo per loro è folklore. Però questo non
significa che siano un impero del male, volto alla dominazione ed alla sottomissione,
come sembra che la pensino quasi tutti in questo NG. Gli americani sono pragmatici, ed
è questo che fa il loro successo, ed allo stesso tempo la loro mediocrità. Sono
senz'altro la nazione più multietnica del mondo. E non raccontiamoci cazzate sul
razzismo: c'è senz'altro, ma non certo più di quanto ci sia da noi, o in Francia, o in
Germania. Negli Usa qualunque idea è accettabile e potenzialmente rispettabile. E'
qualcosa che da europei non riusciamo bene a capire. Fondamentalmente, negli Usa non
esiste una vera cultura: è un gran pasticcio di cose, mischiate in fretta e furia,
sotto un'egida di efficientismo e pragmatismo anglosassone. In America quasi non
esistono monumenti, non c'è quai storia, e non tanto perché esistono solo da 200 anni,
quanto perché nessuno ha la lungimiranza di pensare gli Usa in maniera veramente
culturale. Però le culture etniche si rispettano... insomma, è un gran bordello, ma
nessuno mi convincerà che un paese in cui puoi vivere come vuoi, dire quello che vuoi
e vestirti come vuoi debba essere una specie di dittatura.


e vestirti come vuoi debba essere una specie di dittatura.
A sentirti parlare quasi non si direbbe che è il Paese con una delle
polizie più brutali, feroci e repressive (Zero Tolerance e cop-crimes
diffusi) tra quelli cosiddetti "democratici" e che incarcera una
percentuale della sua stessa popolazione maggiore rispetto a quella di
tutti gli altri.

On 7 Jun 1999 02:26:11 +0200, 
ahas...@geocities.com
 (Alessandro
Palmesino) wrote:
"Penso che la gente creda che la nostra unica strategia sia quella di
mettere un sacco di poliziotti per strada e provocare la gente e fare
un sacco di arresti per infrazioni di poca importanza. Beh, certo,
questo fa parte della nostra strategia, non c'č dubbio". 
(Daryl Gates Capo della Polizia di L.A. - da "La cittŕ di Quarzo" di
M.Davis,1993) 

On 7 Jun 1999 02:26:11 +0200, 
ahas...@geocities.com
 (Alessandro
Palmesino) wrote:
Un articolo che ho trovato estremamente interessante...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRIVATE PRISONS: PROFITS OF CRIME
By Phil Smith
from the Fall 1993 issue of Covert Action Quarterly
Private prisons are a symptom, a response by private capital
to the "opportunities" created by society's 
temper tantrum approach
to the problem of criminality.
At Leavenworth, Kansas, within a perimeter of razor wire, armed prison
guards in uniform supervise hundreds of medium- and maximum-security
federal prisoners. Welcome to one of America's growth industries-
private sector, for-profit prisons. Here in the shadow of the
federally-run Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks and the
Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA) runs a short-term detention facility for medium- and
maximum-security prisoners. Under contract to the U.S. Marshal's
Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the CCA
Leavenworth facility is not an anomaly but part of a trend. In the
last decade, from juvenile detention centers to county jails and work
farms to state prison units to INS holding camps for undocumented
aliens, private interests have entered the incarceration business in a
big way. Where there are people detained, there are profits to be
made.
Imprisonment is an ugly business under any regime, but the prospect of
a privatized prison system raises difficult and disturbing questions
beyond those associated with a solely state-operated prison system. It
has been, after all, a common assumption that the criminalization and
punishment of certain behaviors-the deprivation of physical liberty
and even of life itself-are not amenable to private sector usurpation.
Some of the arguments that inform this assumption are ethi cal, some
legal, and others practical, but all are being chal lenged by a
growing group of special interests.
Illustration by Eric Drooker
Prisons for Profit
Surprisingly, private prisons are nothing new in U.S. history. In the
mid-1800s, penny-pinching state legislatures awarded contracts to
private entrepreneurs to operate and manage Louisiana's first state
prison, New York's Auburn and Sing Sing penitentiaries, and others.
These institutions became models for entire sections of the nation
where privatized prisons were the norm later in the century. These
prisons were supposed to turn a profit for the state, or at least pay
for themselves. Typically, privatization was limited: The state leased
or contracted convict labor to private companies. In some cases, such
as Texas, however, the corrections function was turned over wholesale
to private interests which prom ised to control delinquents at no cost
to the state. As the system spread, labor and businesses complained
that using unpaid convict labor constituted "unfair" competition. Of
equal concern to reformers-but of less weight to politicians-was the
issue of prisoner abuse under the private corrections regime.
Anecdotal evidence from across the country painted a grim picture:
While state officials remained indifferent or were bought off by
private interests, prisoners suffered malnourishment, frequent
whippings, overwork and overcrowding. A series of investigations of
state prisons confirmed the tales of horror and produced public
outrage. l As with anti-trust legislation and the progressive reforms
which followed, public pressure impelled government regulation of
private sector abuse. By the turn of the century, concerted opposition
from labor, business, and reformers forced the state to take direct
responsibility for prisons, thus bringing the first era of private
prisons to an end.
Three Trends Converge
But as the twentieth century stumbles to an end, the hard lessons of a
hundred years ago have been drowned out by the clamor of free market
ideologues. Again, privatization is encroaching ever further on what
had been state responsibilities, and prison systems are the target of
private interests. The shift to privatization coalesced in the
mid-1980s when three trends converged: The ideological imperatives of
the free market; the huge increase in the number of prisoners; and the
concomitant increase in imprisonment costs. In the giddy atmosphere of
the Reagan years, the argument for the superiority of free enterprise
resonated profoundly. Only the fire departments seemed safe, as
everything from municipal garbage services to Third World state
enterprises went on sale. Proponents of privatized prisons put forward
a simple case: The private sector can do it cheaper and more
efficiently. This assortment of entrepreneurs, free market ideologues,
cash-strapped public officials, and academics promised design and
management innovations without re- ducing costs or sacrificing
"quality of service." In any case, they noted correctly, public sector
corrections systems are in a state of chronic failure by any measure,
and no other politically or economically feasible solution is on the
table.
More Prisoners, More Money This contemporary push to privatize
corrections takes place against a socioeconomic background of severe
and seemingly intractable crisis. Under the impetus of Reaganite
social Darwinism, with its "toughness" on criminal offenders, pris on
populations soared through the 1980s and into the 1990s, making the
U.S. the unquestioned world leader in jailing its own populace. By
1990, 421 Americans out of every 100,000 were behind bars, easily
outdistancing our closest competitors, South Africa and the then USSR.
By 1992, the U.S. rate had climbed to 455. In human terms, the number
of people in jails and prisons on any given day tops 1.2 million, up
from fewer than 400,000 at the start of the Reagan era.
While incarceration statistics have skyrocketed, crime rates have
increased much more slowly. In fact, from 1975 to 1985, the serious
crime rate actually decreased by 1.42 per cent while the number of
state and federal prisoners nearly doubled. The number of people sent
to prison is actually determined by policy decisions and political
expediency. Politicians of all stripes have sought cheap political
points by being "tough on crime." They throw oil on the fire of public
panic by portraying the urban underclass (read: young, black males) as
predator. Ignoring the broad context of economic policies that have
effectively abandoned large segments of the population, they have
instituted mandatory minimum sentences, tighter or no parole
schedules, and tougher "good time" regulations. Adding to the
overpopulation these putative measures wrought, the War on Drugs-which
aimed its frenzy at the inner city-stuffed the nation's already over
crowded prisons with a large crop of mostly African-American and
Latino nonviolent offenders. In state after state, budgets have been
stretched to the breaking point by the cost of maintaining and
expanding this massive correctional archipelago. In California, the
nation's largest state prison system, the corrections budget increased
seven-fold during the 1980s to $2.1 billion annually at the end of the
decade-and the system was still operating at 180 percent of capacity.
The huge costs associated with the choice to deal with social problems
by mass imprisonment are a fundamental part of the drift toward
private prisons. The converging trends (rampant free-marketism, higher
prison population, and escalating costs) are part of a larger
trend-the sharpening of Reaganite class war and the social meanness
that accompanied it. The last time the U.S. faced such an influx of
prisoners was after the Civil War when freed blacks, who were
previously punished and controlled within the slave system, were sent
to formerly all-white prisons. The present situation is not perfectly
analogous, but once again, policy-makers faced with burgeoning and
unruly minority resistance of their own making seem to have chosen a
similar course: "Lock 'em up and throw away the key."
The Buslnes of Punishment
Punishment is not only a crucial and ever-larger state function, it is
also big business. Private ownership and/or operation of prisons,
while an increasingly significant part of the corrections system,
represents only a fraction of the "prison-industrial complex." The
cost of corrections-in cluding state, local, and federal corrections
budgets-ran to more than $20 billion a year in the early 1990s. The
cost of constructing enough cells just to keep up with the constant
increase in prisoners is estimated at $6 billion a year. This figure
does not address existing overcrowding, which is pandemic from city
jails to federal prisons. The public sector imprisonment industry
employs more than 50,000 guards, as well as additional tens of
thousands of administrators, and health, education, and food service
providers. Especially in rural communities where other employment is
scarce, corrections assumes huge economic im portance as a growth
industry which provides stable jobs.
The punishment juggernaut of the Reagan-Bush years also spawned an
array of private enterprises locked in a parasitic embrace with the
state. From architectural firms and construction companies, to drug
treatment and food service contractors, to prison industries, to the
whole gamut of equipment and hardware suppliers-steel doors, razor
wire, communications systems, uniforms, etc.-the business of
imprisonment boasts a powerful assortment of well-or ganized and
well-represented vested interests. Privatized prisons, then, are not a
quantum leap toward dismantling the state but simply an extension of
the already significant private sector involvement in corrections. The
public-private symbiotic relationship was well-established long before
1984, when CCA first contracted with the INS to operate detention
centers for illegal aliens. With private firms already providing
everything from health care to drug treatment, the private management
of entire prisons was a natural progression, especially given the
tenor of the times.
Prison Prlvateers
The growing private prisons industry-several dozen companies
contracting with state entities to provide and/or operate jails or
prisons-is oligopolistic in structure. CCA and Wackenhut Corrections
Corporation dominate the upper tier, control more than half the
industry's operations, and run 29 minimum- and medium-security
facilities with more than 10,000 beds. Beneath the big two is a tier
of lesser players: a cluster of smaller regional companies, such as
Kentucky-based U.S. Corrections Corporation and Nashville-based
Pricor; and small corrections divisions of international concerns,
including construction giant Bechtel Corporation. The boom has created
a shadier realm of speculators ready to turn a quick profit from the
traffic in convicts. Compared to the big three, these smaller
companies are undercapitalized, inexperienced, understaffed, and are
more likely to fail eventually. Run by hucksters, fast-talking
developers, and snake-oil salesmen, they sell for-profit
prisons-disguised as economic development-to depressed rural
communities desperate to bolster their budgets and local economies.
The pitch is simple: Prisons are overcrowded! Build a prison and the
prisoners will come to you! You'll reap the benefits in terms of jobs
and increased tax revenues! Reality is a bit more complex. Quirks in
the federal tax codes remove exemptions for prison bonds if more than
ten percent of prisoners are out-of-state, if state prison officials
are reluctant to have their prisoners housed out-of-state, or if large
cities with severe overcrowding are unwilling or unable to pay to
transport local prisoners hundreds of miles. In short in the trade in
convict bodies, supply and demand don't always match. Prisons built on
a speculative basis are a risky venture-at least for the towns or
counties involved; the speculators take their money off the top.
Wackenhut
Historically, this bottom tier has been the locus of most of the
publicized problems and abuses. But although these bottom feeders
attract "60 Minutes"-style scandal of banal corruption, it is in the
top tiers that the most serious potential for abuse exists. Wackenhut,
founded by former FBI of ficial George Wackenhut in 1954, is the
largest and best known, as well as the oldest and most diversified.
From its beginnings as a small, well-connected private security firm,
Wackenhut has grown to a global security conglomerate with earnings of
$630.3 million in 1992. Prison management is only the latest addition
to its panoply of security and related services. When the Coral
Gables, Florida-based firm first entered the prison business in 1987,
it had one 250-bed INS detention center. It now operates 11 facilities
in five states housing nearly 5,500 prisoners. Wackenhut maintains two
medium security prisons in Australia and boasts of "prospects for
additional facilities in the U.S., South America, Europe, and the
Pacific Rim.'' While some of its competitors in the private repression
industry have specialized-Pinkerton and Burns, for example, lead the
"rent-a-cop" field-Wackenhut tries to cover all the bases. Its 1991
revenues reflect its corporate diversity: The private security
division contributed 43 per cent; the international division, 22
percent; airport security services, 15 percent; contracts to guard
nuclear installations and Department of Energy facilities, 10 percent;
and, last but not least, private corrections contributed 10 percent.
Given the high rate of return in its corrections division-10 percent
compared to 1.8 percent overall-Wackenhut has indicated that it wants
to see that area grow.
Corrections Corporation of America
Its closest rival is CCA, which despite its youth and small size
compared to the Wackenhut empire, has emerged as the pioneer and the
industry leader. But unlike Wackenhut, CCA -like the second tier
companies such as Pricor, U.S. Corrections, Concepts, Inc., and
Correction Management Af filiates-is almost completely dependent on
private imprisonment for its revenues. Founded in 1983 by the
investors behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, CCA used the sales skills of
Nashville banker/ financier Doctor R. Crants and the political
connections of former Tennessee Republican Party chair Tom Beasley-
co-founders of the company-to win early contracts. The next year, CCA
cut its first big deals: to operate INS detention centers in Houston
and Laredo, and to run the Silverdale Workhouse (Hamilton County
prison farm) in its home state, Tennessee. In the next nine years, CCA
grew steadily to become the industry leader, with 21 detention
facilities hous ing more than 6,000 prisoners in six states, the U.K.,
and Australia. Its profits are up by nearly 50 percent from its 1991
end-of-the-year figures.
Pricor
Once number three behind CCA and Wackenhut, Pricor has taken a
different tack from its competitors. It carved out a specialized niche
within the private prison industry by convincing underused county
jails in rural Texas that they could profit by accepting inmates from
overcrowded national and statewide prisons. After cutting its
corporate teeth on juvenile education and detention and halfway
houses, expan sion into adult prisons must have seemed a natural step.
In 1986, its first year of adult prison operations, Pricor opened
minimum security detention facilities totaling 170 beds in Alabama and
Virginia. By 1990, the company looked west to Texas, with its
seemingly unending supply of prisoners and profits. Soon, it operated
or had contracts pending for six 500-bed county "jails for hire,"
mainly in underbudgeted and underpopulated West Texas, and also with
one 190-bed pre release center operated under contract with the Texas
Department of Corrections. Although Pricor, fueled by its West Texas
operations, posted fiscal 1991 revenues of more than $30 million for
its adult corrections division, its Texas project was in shambles by
mid-1992. 
The Critiques ot Prison Prlvatlzatlon
Since the last round of prison privatization ended a century ago, a
strong ethical and practical presumption has grown up that
imprisonment should be solely a function of the state. The practical
challenge centers around the material self interest of the various
pro-privatization constituencies. There are two broad areas of
concern: efficiency, i.e., can private operators be trusted to run
prisons for less without sacrificing "quality of service"; and
accountability, i.e., what oversight mechanisms will assure that
society's interests come before those of the managing corporations. As
to efficiency-leaving aside for a moment critical questions about what
"efficiency" means in prison operations-three well-designed
comparative studies found that private operators did run prisons more
cheaply without sacrificing ''quality.'' Typically, the studies found,
Wackenhut and CCA were able to provide cost savings of five to fifteen
percent while still maintaining high marks for provision of services.
Even in Texas, which has one of the lowest cost per prisoner rates,
both Wackenhut and CCA came in cheaper. But what about "efficiency"?
If the term means nothing more than the ability to house bodies
cheaply while complying with minimal standards, then industry leaders,
at least, appear to be efficient. Imprisonment, however, is generally
acknowledged to include, at best, deterrence and rehabilita tion, or
at least, reduction of recidivism rates. While there is no definitive
private-public comparative study on recidivism, the private prisons,
as opposed to the state, have a direct conflict of interest. By
reducing the number of repeat offenders, they are in effect reducing
the supply of profit producing "customers." It is in the material
interest of these companies, therefore, to produce not prisoners who
have "paid their debt to society," but ones who will continue to pay
and pay on the installment plan. The question of accountability is a
legal sinkhole. Under U.S. Iaw, the state is subject to constitutional
restraints that do not apply to private entities. With prisoners'
rights already under attack from Congress and the federal courts, and
with ambiguous case law on private versus public liability, some legal
scholars are worried. They fear that privatized prisons place inmates
in a legal limbo-caught in a grey area between the state and the
private sector-unable to hold either answerable for infringements of
their constitutional rights. Another accountability issue concerns
monitoring. The profit-motive could cause private operations to cut
corners; leading to poor or unsafe conditions. Privatization
proponents argue that regulation and careful state monitoring of
compliance will sufficiently protect inmates, but that contention must
come as cold comfort to prisoners who have already felt the tender
mercies of the state. The record so far, however, shows that compared
to the murderous outbreaks in state penitentiaries, incidents of
violence, riot, escape and the like have been relatively rare in the
private prisons. Direct comparisons are problematic, however, as CCA's
Leaven worth facility opened in 1992, is the first, and so far only,
private sector institution to handle maximum-security inmates as its
primary function.
Doing Well Beats Dolng Good
Aside from practical issues of superficially defined performance,
there is the fundamental ethical question involved in farming out the
repressive functions of the state to private interests: Should we, as
a society, shift responsibility for the ultimate sanction by which we
measure normative behavior to those whose motive is profit? The deep
philosophical issue is perhaps unanswerable, but the ramifications are
disturbing.
Imagine a full-fledged corporate public relations campaign designed to
whip up crime hysteria in order to increase profits. 
The most worrisome aspect of prison privatization is the inevitable
emergence of a private "prison lobby" concerned not with social
welfare but with increasing its dividends, not with doing good, but
with doing well. Sentencing guidelines, parole rules, corrections
budgets, and new criminal legislation are areas in which private
prison operators have a vested interest and could influence policy
decisions. They could also benefit by manipulating public fear of
crime. Unlike most other public policy arenas, criminal justice policy
is largely determined not by the realities of crime but by its
perception. That the fear of crime is exploited by politicians and
"reality television" programming is a truism; but imagine a
full-fledged corporate public relations campaign designed to whip up
crime hysteria in order to increase profits.
"Prisons Are Built with Stones of Law..."
The practical arguments of prisoncrats and academics, as well as the
more abstract philosophical and humanitarian objections of liberal
critics, betray a certain myopic view of the problem and thus of its
solutions. To accept the current parameters of debate within the
criminal justice community is to beg some questions not only about the
role of private enterprise in corrections, but also and more
fundamentally, about the relationship between state and citizen (or
alien) and the function of imprisonment in contemporary America. By
any criteria for cost-benefit analysis, crime and corrections policy
in the U.S. is a dismal failure. Prisons neither deter nor
rehabilitate, nor do punishment variables seem to have any impact on
crime. Granted, imprisonment does incapacitate and discipline
offenders, but only while they remain behind bars-and only a minuscule
minority of prisoners do not one day return to society. Prisons form a
very narrow platform from which to alter behavior that is shaped by
myriad factors, but these institutions, and the criminal justice
system as a whole, are charged with precisely that task. Given the
failure of corrections to achieve its stated goals, however, it is
appropriate to ask whether imprisonment serves other, latent functions
and what these functions might be. One role that imprisonment clearly
fulfills is that of taking symbolic action against socially defined
deviants. It seems to matter less that prisons stop crime than that
they give the appearance of doing so--or of doing something. In a
society unable or unwilling to address the fundamental social and
economic causes of criminality, this symbolic action substitutes for
substantive reform. Imprisonment also serves to demonstrate the
disciplinary power of the state. In Michel Foucault's view, the prison
is the model, the point of origin, for the entire model of social
control that characterizes industrialized societies. Incarceration is
at one end of a sliding scale of socially imposed surveillance and
discipline. After two centuries of wide spread acceptance, its place
on the continuum is distinguished mainly by the degree of day-to-day
control and the physicality of its bars. The scale of control, in less
extreme and visible form, however, extends throughout the institutions
of society. As for the privatization of prisons, that industry, while
a deeply disturbing phenomenon, is not the fundamental problem.
Private prisons are a symptom, a response by private capital to the
"opportunities" created by society's temper tantrum approach to the
problem of criminality in the context of free-market supremacy.
Dostoevsky once remarked that he measured the quality of a society by
the quality of its prisons. In the present case it may be as
appropriate to judge us by their quantity, too. In either case, the
judgment would be harsh indeed. 

On 7 Jun 1999 02:26:11 +0200, 
ahas...@geocities.com
 (Alessandro
Palmesino) wrote: 
Tu dici che l'America non è una dittatura. Ok, però devi ammettere che
fa abbastanza impressione che una scuola abbia 5 poliziotti a pieno
servizio, 37 videocamere, 6 metal detectors e un "disegno
architetturale studiato per prevenire il crimine"
non sarà una dittatura... ma è molto simile a uno STATO DI POLIZIA,
non credi??
The People
October 14, 1995
Vol. 105 No. 12
DALLAS: 'SOLUTION' TO SCHOOL CRIME: MAKE SCHOOLS LIKE PRISONS 
BY KEN BOETTCHER
Politicians across the country are slashing public education
funds to protect the profits of the tax-paying capitalist
class. At the same time--despite its proven failure as a
"crime-fighting" measure--they are also funding the biggest
buildup of prisons in the nation's history because capitalism
has no other "solution" to the crime bred by the growing
poverty and misery the system produces.
"Forward-thinking" municipal servants and school district
officials in Dallas, however, seem to have hit on another
approach--cut down on schools AND prisons by building schools
as though they ARE prisons.
The school year opened in Dallas last month with a new "magnet"
school that THE NEW YORK TIMES recently described in terms that
would please many a prison warden. Appropriately located next
to the Dallas County Probation Department, the "sprawling new
building...has 37 surveillance cameras, six metal detectors,
five full-time police officers and a security-conscious
configuration based on the principles of crime prevention
through environmental design," the TIMES observed.
There are "no nooks or crannies around which to hide," the
TIMES noted. "Perimeter lights illuminate all public spaces and
an eight-foot iron-pole fence seals off the school from an
adjacent residential area," the TIMES added. Halls are broad
and well-lit to enable security cameras an unobstructed view
and prevent bumping as a source of fights.
Further, "The room that houses the mainframes for the school's
computer system is a security command post, where officers scan
37 cameras monitoring the building and grounds." Thanks to
windows everywhere, the grounds are visible from anywhere
inside.
Townview, the $41-million school in question, is already being
hailed as a model for schools across the nation. But can
patrols and surveillance really halt growing violence in the
schools, or is this experiment destined to become just another
failure of repression as an answer to crime?
Time will tell, but certain factors are already known.
Repression hasn't halted growing violence outside the schools,
and the schools ARE a microcosm of the world around them.
Figures from the National School Safety Center show that during
the 1993-1994 school year 46 students were killed on school
grounds during the school day. Moreover, 3 million felonies and
misdemeanors are committed at schools annually, and the
severity of crimes has increased.
It must be remembered that most violent crimes are crimes of
passion, and all the forms of punishment capitalism has been
able to come up with have not been able to overcome the
alienation, despair, frustration and social anarchy that breeds
violent crime. Haven't the Dallas "city fathers" even heard of
plastic guns and bullets, or the martial arts? In the final
analysis, Townview is a telling commentary on the sickness of
the capitalist system--a system whose solution to growing crime
in the schools is to treat students like prisoners.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACK to the Prison-Industrial Complex Index 

autocritica del pianeta. Non si atteggiano proprio a niente.
L'azione NATO "morale" e "pedagogica" ("noi siamo il Bene, il nostro
nemico č Satana, Hitler, ecc...") da chi č stata voluta e condotta?

 tutti gli altri.
ehi, ehi...un momento...mi sa che hai le idee assai confuse!
"zero tolerance" verso *il crimine*, non dimenticarlo!
Oppure tu preferiresti una polizia dolce e permissiva nei confronti di
rapinatori e compagnia bella?
Saluti
TC

 wrote:
Forse non hai letto questa frase che ti riporto qui sotto.
E poi il ragazzo di colore massacrato con decine di pallottole dalla
polizia pochi mesi fa era uno studente, era disarmato, non stava
facendo niente. Si trattava di tolleranza zero, ma il crimine era solo
quello dei poliziotti.
ECCO LA FRASE
"Penso che la gente creda che la nostra unica strategia sia quella di
mettere un sacco di poliziotti per strada e provocare la gente e fare
un sacco di arresti per infrazioni di poca importanza. Beh, certo,
questo fa parte della nostra strategia, non c'è dubbio". 
(Daryl Gates Capo della Polizia di L.A. - da "La città di Quarzo" di
M.Davis,1993) 
P.S. non ho intenzione di continuare il thread, in quanto che gli USA
si avvicinino parecchio ad uno "stato di Polizia" è universalmente
noto.
Certo, la CINA è peggio, ma che c'entra? Mica ammiro la Cina!!

 noto.
Nenach'io, perche' dopo quello che hai scritto temo sarebbe assai difficile
dialogare con te.
Come tu faccia a dare giudizi del genere da una frase letta da un libro lo
sai solo tu.
Allora cosa dovresti dire dell'Italia? Che siamo tutti mafiosi, rapitori,
etc..etc..?? Che tutti i politici sono corrotti e collusi con la mafia?
Credo che prima di sbilanciarti in cose "universalmente note" che si
limitano alla tua personale opinione dovresti lasciare spazio alla
discussione con chi non la pensa come te.
Il tuo modo di rifiutare il confronto, semmai, e' assai poco tollerante.
Scrivi la tua opinione, la spacci per verita' assoluta e poi rifiuti un
dialogo civile con chi non e' d'accordo? Ma allora perche' posti su
newsgroup pubblici dove lo scopo e' proprio quello di discutere?
Urlalo alla finestra, cosi' sei sicuro che nessuno puo' contraddirti, no?
Sarei curioso di sapere quanto tempo hai vissuto negli USA....
Ciao
TC


Con la differenza che i cop crimes sono comunque crimes. Non voglio certo dire che sia giusto
che metà della popolazione vada in giro armata e che le galere siano strapiene. Però,
comunque, c'è un altro dato di fatto: se non ti piace, te ne puoi andare. A Cuba no.


> Un articolo che ho trovato estremamente interessante...
(snip)
Certo, interessante. Spaventevole, direi. Però dove è stato scritto? Negli Usa, direi. Prova a
fare la stessa cosa a Cuba, una bella rivista di controinformazione che denuncia il sistema
carcerario o giudiziario castrista.



No, non credo, primo perché questo è un eccesso, una eccezione che conferma la regola, per
quanto sia giusto fermarsi a riflettere su quale direzione stia prendendo l'America (anche da
noi non mancano notizie agghiaccianti su qualunque tema, ma non fotogafano certo la situazione
reale). Secondo, lo stato di polizia (per come mi sembra lo voglia intendere tu, cioè uno
stato in cui il governo e le forze dell'ordine hanno un potere soverchiante ed inappellabile)
farebbe una cosa del genere per controllare preventivamente una situazione, e non per reagire
(anche se in maniera sbagliata). Comunque, ribadisco, non voglio fare l'avvocato degli Usa: mi
limito a dire che è un paese ricco di contraddizioni, ma fondamentalmente libero.


 nemico è Satana, Hitler, ecc...") da chi è stata voluta e condotta?
E' stata voluta da un presidente eletto da un popolo, che forse ora si è pentito di averlo
eletto. E poi, da chi è stata seguita? Forse che tutti i paesi europei sono truci macchine di
despotismo? A parte il fatto che questo discorso - il discorso sulla guerra - è un po'
complicato e mi fa piuttosto innervosire questo tuo liquidarlo con un paio di frasi ironiche
(tipico atteggiamento - scusa se lo dico - da pacifista non pensante, se la Nato non avesse
fatto niente avresti detto "Ecco, Clinton si muove solo per il petrolio del Kuwait" - o no?),
sai benissimo che qualunque cosa dica Clinton e i suoi "servi" della Nato, viene vagliata e
giudicata dalla pubblica opinione, un lusso che possiamo concederci solo noi occidentali.
Ripeto, se tu fossi a Cuba, in Cina o nella stessa Serbia, dubito che potresti permetterti
queste critiche a cuor leggero, anche perché avresti vissuto in un sistema culturale che rende
di per sé difficile pensare in modo critico. Un sistema politico che permette, accetta e
addirittura invoglia la critica è un sistema che si può cambiare, che ammette in se stesso la
possibilità di cambiamento, che si mette in discussione giornalmente.


Sarei curioso di sapere quanto tempo hai vissuto negli USA....
Io sarei curioso di sapere da quanto tempo hai raggiunto l'età della
ragione...

dialogare con te.
Caro Tenente Colombo, a differenza di Palmesino che comunque adotta un
approccio problematico, pur se continuo a ritenere che mentre non
corriamo il rischio di una "Cubizzazione" dell'Europa siamo a
fortissimo rischio di "Americanizzazione" e quindi dovrebbe
preoccuparci più 1 cosa storta negli USA che 20 cose storte a Cuba,
perché quella singola cosa storta ha molte più probabilità di avvenire
anche qui piuttosto che le 20 cose storte del comunismo cubano qui
assolutamente irrealizzabile, è evidente che non hai assolutamente
argomenti e che quindi la butti sul personale.
Che gli Stati Uniti abbiano una polizia feroce e ultra-repressiva e un
sistema penale disumano è tanto noto che è uscito addirittura un bel
rapportino di AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL (giorni fa) che raccoglie tutti i
tantissimi abusi e violazioni dei diritti umani all'interno delle
carceri e nelle strade.
E, insisto, IO NON STO DICENDO CHE CUBA O LA CINA SIANO MEGLIO.
LA CINA E' SICURAMENTE PEGGIO, CUBA NON SO, COMUNQUE MENTRE NON
CORRIAMO IL RISCHIO DI CUBIZZARCI O DI CINIZZARCI, E' INNEGABILE CHE
CI STIAMO AMERICANIZZANDO. 
Il fatto che bisogna vivere in america per capire che è uno Stato di
polizia è una pacchiana stronzata. Sono sicuro che ogni Repubblicano
(il 50% degli americani) viva in Usa da quando è nato e vorrebbe
ANCORA PIU' STATO DI POLIZIA contro i pezzenti e ancora meno settore
pubblico in economia. 

 pubblico in economia.
E perche' vuoi piu' settore pubblico in economia?
Leggiti il fondo del Corriere di oggi "l'america cresce l'europa aspetta".
Chi traina e sostiene l'economia europea e' proprio l'economia USA. Se i
risultati dell'intervento pubblico nell'economia sono che ci si deve
agganciare a quelle che ne hanno di meno, bella roba...
Poi, in america e' possibile nascere pezzente e diventare miliardario.
Difficile, ma possibile. In Italia, ad esempio, se nasci pezzente, e non hai
amici o parenti nei posti giusti rimani pezzente nonostante quello che tu
possa valere....
Saluti
TC

 ragione...
Senti Adriano, io non ti ho offeso, ma ho esposto i miei argomenti.
Faresti meglio ad usare i tuoi per costruire una discussione civile.
Frasi come quelle che hai scritto sopra possono essere utili nel farti
superare un momento di frustrazione, ma non conducono a nessun dialogo.
E credo che questo dovrebbe essere lo scopo di un forum quale it.politica.
Sono disponibile al dialogo, ma non a questi livelli. Se vuoi rispondere con
civilta' e rispetto, saro' felice di proseguire, altrimenti tronco qui.
Saluti
TC