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Political Prisoners in America

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Political Prisoners in America - by Stephen Lendman


Noted journalist HL Menchen described "The most dangerous man to any government (as someone) who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable," yet resisting, he faces recrimination - political imprisonment for his beliefs and activism, officials tolerating no opposition to their authority, no matter how extreme or lawless.


In his book "Race to Incarcerate," Marc Mauer focuses on America's obsession with imprisonment, punishment, and the commodification of prisoners to fill beds - harming society's most vulnerable, targeted for supporting ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and political, economic and social equality across gender and color lines, locked away in the "Land of the Free." In submitting a new report to the UN, National conference of Black Lawyers activist/attorney Stan Willis said:


"The United States is very, very concerned when its citizens begin to raise questions in these international forums, because (America) still prefers to posture itself, including the Obama administration, as the leader of the free world and that they don't have any human rights violations, and they certainly don't have any political prisoners, and we have to dispel that notion in the international community."


American officials don't "want to have these issues reach the world's people. How do you go into Iraq (and) Afghanistan telling people about their democracy when (you've got innocent people) locked down in prison for 30 - 40 years as political prisoners....(activists) against social injustice, colonialism, and/or imperialism, (incarcerated for) their political commitments."


Others are victimized by judicial unfairness, get tough on crime policies, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality, three strikes and you're out, and what the Innocence Project calls "McJustice - the crisis of indigent defense."


Also for being undocumented, violating the racist drug laws, for being Black, Latino or Muslim, to fill prison beds, to satisfy the prison-industrial complex, one of America's fastest growing, including a private gulag, prisons for profit, nearly a score of corporations running dozens of facilities with tens of thousands of prisoners, about 8% of state and federal inmates, expected to increase exponentially in the next decade, the Wall Street Journal saying:


"This multimillion-dollar industry has its own advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."


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