(FWD) Citizens on the Web: Chains of the World Prison (fwd)
Leslie Schentag (wy497@victoria.tc.ca)
Sun, 19 Jul 1998 15:26:40 -0700 (PDT)
'nuff said.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 15:26:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Leslie Schentag <wy497@victoria.tc.ca>
To: Geneva Hagen <ws222@victoria.tc.ca>
Cc: magz@inreach.com, Stephen DeMeulenaere <shigeru@hokkai.or.jp>,
Glenn Schentag <gschentag@gddc.com>
Subject: (FWD) Citizens on the Web: Chains of the World Prison (fwd)
This just came in..
looks like canada is following the US lead.
go to prison, just because you are poor..what's next..?
forced labour camps..look at any prison that has industries..
they pay you $1.00-$6.00 per day to work from 8 am-4 pm with an hour for
lunch in between.
My lawyer was right when he said "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, IT'S JUST US".
Maybe Hitler should have won the war!!!!
At least you would know where you stand in life.
Not like these back-stabbing smiling scumbags that say they represent all
the people, and then have you arrested for trying to survive.
Get ready kids, the war is about to start..and all I have to say is
"I TOLD YOU SO!!",
L.
p.s. nothing personal Glenn.
but take a look around and tell me what you see.
despair and death..robbers and junkies..
shootings in broad daylight..in your own neighbourhood
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 16:46:29 -0700
From: Graeme Bacque <gbacque@idirect.com>
To: hpn@aspin.asu.edu
Subject: (FWD) Citizens on the Web: Chains of the World Prison
---------forwarded message---------
To: Citizens@smtp.interlog.com
From: command@interlog.com
Subject: Citizens on the Web: Chains of the World Prison
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 22:16:41 -0500
Break the Chains of the World Prison
& Zero Tolerance of the Kids
By Gary Morton for Citizens on the Web
http://www.interlog.com/~cjazz
In Toronto and elsewhere in West there has been a trend toward social
cleansing or pushing poor and low-income people out of neighbourhoods
and even society itself. Jail is usually their new home.
I am a bit disturbed by some of the latest news in the Toronto media
and statements from city councilors and business groups regarding the
poor. The Toronto Sun just posted an article on the New York program
of zero tolerance for poverty stricken squeegee kids and others and
how they swept them up with arrests and charges.
The correct view is to have zero tolerance of Poverty. Not zero
tolerance of human beings living in poverty.
The United States is rapidly changing from the Great Satan to the
Great Prison because of this zero tolerance of the poor problem. The
US now has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the history
of the world. In 1995 alone, 150 new US prisons were built and
filled. In the District of Columbia 70 percent of black males are
either in jail or in a court process that may lead to jail. This is
hardly from just the war on drugs. A police and court system has
developed there that is just a meat line sending bodies into
incarceration in privatized prisons. The prison corporations lobby
for harsher laws all of the time as they profit from more prisoners.
Zero Care for human beings and democracy is having terrible effects
around the Globe. The real world government is now the Triad --
International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the World Trade
Organization -- and their trade agreements like NAFTA, MAI and GATT.
It is a government of bankers only interested in protecting the
rights of international investors. The IMF in its new bailout policy
for Indonesia just decreed that half of the citizens of that nation
are not only to be unemployed by year's end, but that they are to
starve by year's end.
The collapse in Asia came because the first wave of Globalization
runs counter to democracy. Bankers can't produce democracy, they can
only try to suppress it. The failure is tied to the fact totalitarian
systems are not accountable. You can't trust them when they invest
billions because they are free of public scrutiny. And also free to
destroy themselves. Take a look at Japan -- 600 billion in bad loans
that will never be repaid, all because the bankers bet on the
miracles of cheap labour, free trade and dictatorship.
Free Trade itself is never free. There are no free markets. It is
mostly multinationals trading with one another and controlling the
distribution networks, making it so that small businesses in the
nations can't compete.
The New Globalization is the world movement of citizens groups
opposing the old Globalization with humanity. We know if we continue
on the same road nations will lose their sovereignty - democracy will
be a thing of the past - the world government will be the triad and
the multinationals. A government that can't be a government of the
people, as they can only treat people as disposable commodities. It
will be a world prison. The poverty crises will continue in the same
way it is now with ten percent of the richest growing richer and all
the rest of us growing poorer. The only social program in the end
will be incarceration, as is happening in the US now. And the world
will be best described as a place of poverty, misery and jail.
The answer is of course democracy and government of the people. The
choice is clear nowadays. There are really only two systems --
Democracy and Police State Poverty.
The bankers and right wing ideologues put us in this situation in the
first place. Yet we are told by leaders in all political parties that
globalization is the new order and we can trust the banker
organizations the multinationals to solve the crisis we face.
Obviously they cannot. In Canada we pay 20 some percent of the Gross
National Product as interest on a debt that would not exist had we
not started borrowing from the private banks instead of the bank of
Canada. Our social programs were chopped for no reason other than bad
monetary policy. And it is of the course the banks and the forces of
the old globalization that created this policy. Nearly all nations
are being crushed and impoverished by similar policies.
So have no doubt that they are the enemy, strongly positioning
themselves against all citizens and organizations that want reform.
When they don't starve us the new masters have only one social
program and institution ---- The Prison, is replacing all social
programs worldwide under this system.
In New York, where their middle class is declining, none of these
zero tolerance city councilors have noticed that part of the decline
has to do with poverty. People slip in and out of poverty; there
isn't a permanent class of the poor. So when you create a system that
arrests and criminalizes people at their point of poverty -- a system
that prevents them from rebuilding -- you prevent them from rising
back up in society to become useful members of the middle class.
Toronto activist groups are opposing special bylaws, and opposing
trials of homeless men by the Transit Commission. Even now the TTC
cops are like a bumstead squad, using a trial system to build charges
against panhandlers and loiterers and then going into the hostels to
move them from there to jail.
It is important that all attempts to meat wagon citizens into jail be
opposed -- we must block the meat wagon or we'll have the Great
Prison in Canada and a huge number of people hardened by the jails.
And it is important to oppose privatized prisons or any state prison
system that profits from incarceration.
The new opposition needs a global outlook, and to be active at all
levels from the local to the international. A multi-pronged attack
that includes fighting mass incarceration and fighting for democratic
reform of the banking systems, political systems and so on.
When I read of councilors with social cleansing plans here in
Toronto, I wonder if they really know what they are doing and why so
many groups in Toronto are opposing their efforts.
Activist groups know why they are opposing this American-based idea
of intolerance. They know what that system is --- and can't give up
and let mega-city council or any other level of government succeed in
implementing it.
And even on social programs --- look at the silly comments from some
politicians. Saying it is discrimination against other poor folk if
money is spent to help the squeegee kids get jobs, etc. Yet they
don't think it is discrimination to pass special laws designed to
arrest squeegee kids.
These councilors along with representatives of the Harris provincial
government present themselves as progressive but have no problem
disagreeing with the civil liberties union and no problem with laws
that may be in violation of the Charter of Rights. The truth is that
people who won't look at options other than arrest and incarceration
are not progressive. Especially when they want to sweep people up for
such minor and trivial things. It is also not very progressive to
pick a visible group like squeegee kids and use them as an excuse to
pass laws that will victimize everyone.
People around the world need to wake up and break the chains of the
world prison before we all wake up -- in JAIL!