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Life in the Empire

The U.S. has the highest prison population in the world, even more than the more populous China. Incarceration Incorporated is the biggest growth industry in the service economy. Indentured Servitude is profitable benefit to this industry.

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Read The Authoritirains as referenced by waldo in the Collapse thread.

I was supposed to go to bed more than a lot of hours ago but I can't stop reading it.

I no longer wonder why America has the highest prison population in the world.
is this the same : http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ ?

I recently read a news item where the Mayor's brother was up in arms about some other construction company, other than his own getting the contract to build the third prison in or near a small town in Arizona. Florence, Arizona. I was only aware of the one they had when I lived near there in the 70s. The question of how they plan on justifying and filling the new prisions is answered more easily than one could wish for.

Extrapolate (?), exaggerate it all a bit and we come up with a future USA, one made up of huge prison areas and fortified highways inbetween. Walls and fences all along all borders. One massive Gulag called WORK = FREEDOM.
ayeeee... reading shit on the internet when i should be reading papers... the last one just fried what's left of me brain... and now im stuck in avoidance. still... this sidebar link from pan's link about prisons was worth the read just to get to "...you bullying shitstain." But here's the best one of all:

First, peep this pic of a 1919 NC-4 to get you in the mood... then get ready for...
Only Yesterday
An Informal History of the 1920s
by Frederick Lewis Allen

...gawd... what a time-warp. i guarantee ye'll dig it. don't know where i got this link... maybe from somebody here. i had it bookmarked... obviously one of those "i gotta get back and read this later" links... so if i got it from somebody here-- thanks! now i gotta go pipe da papes... it's taking me 45 minutes per instead of my usual 30... don't know if it's rust or brain-damage.

...still... History's blood crieth unto me from the ground... migawd... i just now learned this book was written in 1931.
Robot Soldier Rebels

I guess the Army thought Rossum's Universal Robots was just a silly play.
wow... this is weird... once again reading this instead of papes. Once again, more brain damage.
Ohio Man Goes To Prison For Sharing Snack Cake

POSTED: 9:02 am EDT May 9, 2008

MCARTHUR, Ohio -- A judge in southern Ohio has spared a man accused of sharing a Little Debbie snack cake with a fellow inmate prison time.

The case involves 21-year-old Timothy Caudill, who last year was held in a residential community corrections program in Nelsonville for breaking into a bar. While there, prosecutors said he bought the oatmeal cream pie from a vending machine and shared it with a fellow inmate who was on restriction and wasn't allowed to eat the snacks.

Prosecutors in Vinton County asked Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Simmons to revoke Caudill's probation and put him in prison for nine months.

Instead, Simmons said Caudill will spend an extra 30 days behind bars and pay $1,500 for the jail stay.
New from Joe Bageant Old Dogs and Hard Time
I really like to read Bageant's stuff because it's so depressing... and that's not sarcasm- it's the truth. I guess we're the kind of folk who love to go, "oh if you think that's fucked up... check this out." "Naturally, the bunny and cupcake set of Americans are still oblivious..." and like Joe, "...I lay much of this nation's planetary and societal criminality on this three-quarter million dollar fuck-box crowd."

But he really outdid himself with "Old Dogs and Hard Time." Mebbe because I'm aaallllmooost out of "the system," which is why I rarely leave the yard any more. While my blackest bile of hatred seethes for the occupants of "...a police prowl car and two of the department's animal control officers in a police truck " who are just "doing their jobs," I got plenty left for "...Stokes' psychologist, his piss tester, his lie detector service contractor, the people with the sex offender website contract, and all good citizens with investments on Wall Street." I had all of those sphincter-heads vaccing away what little bread i had left.

Now I aint tryin to rationalize my heinous unspeakable crime of riding my motorcycle with a snoot-full... and mebbe it was just the law of averages catching up with my old ass... because if you added up all the altered-state motorcycle spins in 40+ years of bikerdom... the miles would probably stretch to the moon. Yeh yeh... a rule's a rule, fool. I get it. But as I said in a RANT at my mandatory $30 a pop "therapy" group... yeah- we're the "middle class." We couldn't slap $10 grand on our attorney to "make this go away." And the brothers on the other side of us is still in de jail howse. So here we are... "middle-class" schlumps paying other "middle-class" schlumps to prey on us. Nice work if you can fucking get it.

I aint above that shit either. I put in my time at the degree factory... where once when a stood told me how much "my" fucking "class" cost them, I actually kicked a chair into a corner. About HALF of what that one stood paid was what I got for doin' it... and there were 25 of 'em (oh yeah... they promise to keep it below 22... oh well... and that's because us "Comp" pukes are supposed to "read papers." Otherwise, we'd be grad-assist lecture halls with scanner graded "tests" like everybody else)... so i is a predatory schlump just like all the others. But here comes the professional "plugger" ethic...

I believe that if you are any good at what you do, there IS a point where you will refuse to work... because your sense of craft will not allow you to produce shitty work... even if you're a cold-blooded mercenary... and I wouldn't claim to be anything different. Pay me enough... sure I'll produce krap. Let the buyer beware. I is just a ho like evvebody else. BUT- the final get-fired phrase: you want me to do THIS kind of damage... for THIS kind of fucking pay? What part of fucking "NO" don't you understand? Well... we is ALL on the horns of that one...

That's why the incompetent immoral hacks are rising to the top of every occupation. They can compensate for their lack of talent with TOTAL obedience... willing to do the greatest amount of damage for the least amount of pay. THAT'S how the Rich Fatties keep funneling the $ upward to an ever-shrinking corner. As they convert the $ to actual fiefdoms in the "carbon world," stupid and obedient will be the main criteria for admission to the plantation. So be sure to wear your mask.

Today on daddie's day, I shoulda taken a road-trip with the fam. Instead decided to stay at home for the solitude and let them go on ahead. I wanna explore some local connections (more about THAT soon)... play in the dirt... move some rocks.

Hey- if I get more fucked up, mebbe I'll fucking KILL something.
Waldo that was extraordinary, what an evening's reading. And strangely very cheering.
Have planted the Audacity of Depression seed in another field.

a world where thinking is regarded as a rat in the larder of bourgeois smugness.
(Joe Bageant)
Sounds so like here.

This delighted me after reading all of that, Ladakh:

Those poor people are obviously missing the exploitation gene that establishes the prime personality trait of the western peoples. Except for the Amish, perhaps.

Speaking of Amish. Who here thinks we better start studying them? I do. Pretty sure they're gonna be having the last laugh. The irony is...they're too humble for that.

Cooperation is their mantra--not competition. And that folks, is the key.
Wasn't Waldo of a mind to walk east and speak to the Amish at one stage?
Waldo thanks for that Joe Bageant article - the Audacity of Depression -

"fuzzy hearted Hallmark world of mass produced sentiment and emotions, even about "bereavement," a world where thinking is regarded as a rat in the larder of bourgeois smugness. Thinking gnaws away at everything so relentlessly, until it finally breaks a tooth on one truth or another. And one of those truths is that the technology enabling those digital greeting cards that play "Happy Birthday" is systematically destroying nature and toxifying and maiming the millions of drudgery filled souls whose sole purpose for existence is industrial."


Shiver-me-timbers!! He has a way with words ......

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