Nationalism: Do You Actually Think America is Better Than Other Countries?
05-28-2012
, 01:59 AM
05-28-2012
, 02:05 AM
05-28-2012
, 02:26 AM
05-28-2012
, 03:51 AM
A lot of good points have been brought up, but how are we ignoring the 9000 pound gorilla in the room?
http://www.alternet.org/rights/47815/
http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/12/1201.html
But, yeah, hurray for open carry.
One good thing going for us--we have the freedom to act in political dissent. Unfortunately, that right is being attacked as well.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_...ned_at_border/
Look, the United States has some great things going for it. But we really need to reexamine where we are going as a country. Both parties get an F grade on these extremely important issues.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/47815/
Quote:
According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.
Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.
Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.
Quote:
America imprisons over a million nonviolent offenders
Nonviolent prisoners increasing faster than violent prisoners
Washington, DC - Coming just a week after the Justice Department announced that 1.8 million Americans were behind bars, a new report by the Justice Policy Institute has found that, for the first time, over one million nonviolent offenders were incarcerated in America in 1998.
"Prisons are built and mandatory sentencing laws passed on the specter of Willie Horton," stated Vincent Schiraldi, the Institute's Director; "But increasingly, those prisons are filled with the 'gang that couldn't shoot straight'."
Entitled America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners, the JPI analysis of recent United States Justice Department data showed that over the past 20 years, the nonviolent prisoner population has increased at a rate much faster than the violent prisoner population, and that 77% of the people entering prisons and jails were sentenced for nonviolent offenses. Since 1978, the number of violent prisoners entering America's prisons doubled, the number of nonviolent prisoners tripled, and the number of persons imprisoned for drug offenses increased eight-fold.
Nonviolent prisoners increasing faster than violent prisoners
Washington, DC - Coming just a week after the Justice Department announced that 1.8 million Americans were behind bars, a new report by the Justice Policy Institute has found that, for the first time, over one million nonviolent offenders were incarcerated in America in 1998.
"Prisons are built and mandatory sentencing laws passed on the specter of Willie Horton," stated Vincent Schiraldi, the Institute's Director; "But increasingly, those prisons are filled with the 'gang that couldn't shoot straight'."
Entitled America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners, the JPI analysis of recent United States Justice Department data showed that over the past 20 years, the nonviolent prisoner population has increased at a rate much faster than the violent prisoner population, and that 77% of the people entering prisons and jails were sentenced for nonviolent offenses. Since 1978, the number of violent prisoners entering America's prisons doubled, the number of nonviolent prisoners tripled, and the number of persons imprisoned for drug offenses increased eight-fold.
But, yeah, hurray for open carry.
One good thing going for us--we have the freedom to act in political dissent. Unfortunately, that right is being attacked as well.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_...ned_at_border/
Quote:
One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files. No search warrant is needed for any of this. No oversight exists. And there are no apparent constraints on what the U.S. Government can do with regard to whom it decides to target or why.
*snip*
A 2011 FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that just in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people — roughly half of whom were American citizens — were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. Typifying the target of these invasive searches is Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old dual French-American citizen and an Islamic Studies Ph.D. student who was traveling from Montreal to New York on an Amtrak train in 2011 when he was stopped at the border, questioned by DHS agents, handcuffed, taken off the train and kept in a holding cell for several hours before being released without charges; those DHS agents seized his laptop and returned it 11 days later when, the ACLU explains, “there was evidence that many of his personal files, including research, photos and chats with his girlfriend, had been searched.” That’s just one case of thousands, all without any oversight, transparency, legal checks, or any demonstration of wrongdoing.
* * * * *
But the case of Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and intrepid journalist, is perhaps the most extreme. In 2004 and 2005, Poitras spent many months in Iraq filming a documentary that, as The New York Times put it in its review, “exposed the emotional toll of occupation on Iraqis and American soldiers alike.” The film, “My Country, My Country,” focused on a Sunni physician and 2005 candidate for the Iraqi Congress as he did things like protest the imprisonment of a 9-year-old boy by the U.S. military. At the time Poitras made this film, Iraqi Sunnis formed the core of the anti-American insurgency and she spent substantial time filming and reporting on the epicenter of that resistance. Poitras’ film was released in 2006 and nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
*snip*
But Poitras’ work has been hampered, and continues to be hampered, by the constant harassment, invasive searches, and intimidation tactics to which she is routinely subjected whenever she re-enters her own country. Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
*snip*
A 2011 FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that just in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people — roughly half of whom were American citizens — were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. Typifying the target of these invasive searches is Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old dual French-American citizen and an Islamic Studies Ph.D. student who was traveling from Montreal to New York on an Amtrak train in 2011 when he was stopped at the border, questioned by DHS agents, handcuffed, taken off the train and kept in a holding cell for several hours before being released without charges; those DHS agents seized his laptop and returned it 11 days later when, the ACLU explains, “there was evidence that many of his personal files, including research, photos and chats with his girlfriend, had been searched.” That’s just one case of thousands, all without any oversight, transparency, legal checks, or any demonstration of wrongdoing.
* * * * *
But the case of Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and intrepid journalist, is perhaps the most extreme. In 2004 and 2005, Poitras spent many months in Iraq filming a documentary that, as The New York Times put it in its review, “exposed the emotional toll of occupation on Iraqis and American soldiers alike.” The film, “My Country, My Country,” focused on a Sunni physician and 2005 candidate for the Iraqi Congress as he did things like protest the imprisonment of a 9-year-old boy by the U.S. military. At the time Poitras made this film, Iraqi Sunnis formed the core of the anti-American insurgency and she spent substantial time filming and reporting on the epicenter of that resistance. Poitras’ film was released in 2006 and nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
*snip*
But Poitras’ work has been hampered, and continues to be hampered, by the constant harassment, invasive searches, and intimidation tactics to which she is routinely subjected whenever she re-enters her own country. Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.
05-28-2012
, 06:02 AM
05-28-2012
, 08:37 AM
05-28-2012
, 09:09 AM
05-28-2012
, 09:23 AM
05-28-2012
, 09:27 AM
05-28-2012
, 09:44 AM
05-28-2012
, 09:50 AM
05-28-2012
, 09:57 AM
05-28-2012
, 10:11 AM
Quote:
A lot of good points have been brought up, but how are we ignoring the 9000 pound gorilla in the room?
http://www.alternet.org/rights/47815/
http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/12/1201.html
But, yeah, hurray for open carry.
One good thing going for us--we have the freedom to act in political dissent. Unfortunately, that right is being attacked as well.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_...ned_at_border/
Look, the United States has some great things going for it. But we really need to reexamine where we are going as a country. Both parties get an F grade on these extremely important issues.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/47815/
http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/12/1201.html
But, yeah, hurray for open carry.
One good thing going for us--we have the freedom to act in political dissent. Unfortunately, that right is being attacked as well.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_...ned_at_border/
Look, the United States has some great things going for it. But we really need to reexamine where we are going as a country. Both parties get an F grade on these extremely important issues.
05-28-2012
, 10:33 AM
05-28-2012
, 10:36 AM
