John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“After 67 Days in Solitary Confinement Maria Butina Now Suffers From Claustrophobia Attacks
“She is being softened up in order to accept a deal with US authorities the Russians believe”
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Response to a comment saying, “It has the world's largest prison population (2.3 million) and its police routinely kill unarmed citizens… America has one of the planet's poorest human rights records”:
Yes, America has the world's largest prison population, by far.
And yes, American police kill civilians regularly. Recent studies say that more than 1,100 Americans per year are killed by their own police.
That’s about three-a-day, more than any terrorist could dream of achieving.
And yes, the reputation of American police, and prison guards, for brutality is well known. I remember some years ago when Amnesty International made a serious issue of it.
One should also understand that because of the high American incarceration rates, there are literally millions of men who aren't in jail but are burdened with criminal records.
Having such a record in America has serious consequences.
It often prevents you from even getting a job.
And in many states of the United States, felons are deprived of the right to vote in elections. So, even though you pay for your crime in prison, America also suspends your citizenship rights.
This all reflects a very dark side of American society which is not fully appreciated abroad.
People abroad are conditioned by Hollywood’s extremely view-distorting films – the ones done about the military and war all done with Pentagon “technical assistance” and “cooperation” – and by the major American news corporations which behave literally as public relations operations for American war and violence.
I think the violence within America reflects gut instincts of a society that carries on abroad with almost constant wars, interventions, coups, and threats.
And, you know, with such massive military operations always underway, there are few, if any, resources left for improvements on the home front.
In colonial wars abroad since WWII, the last time America fought a war that anyone could argue was about self-defence, America is estimated to have killed anywhere from 8 to 20 million abroad in its various wars – that’s from the horrors of Korea and Vietnam to the horrors of Iraq and Libya and Syria.
It is most assuredly not a peaceful society. If it were, it wouldn’t be spending the best part of a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon, plus another huge and secret amount on a number of national security agencies, and be supporting over 800 military bases abroad. It wouldn’t willfully tear up working peace treaties, as it does, and treat many international organizations, such as the UN, with such open contempt.
I think in any society, there are all kinds of feed-back mechanisms between its conduct abroad and its conduct at home. It isn’t possible to be the murderous Mr. Hyde abroad and the goodly Dr Jekyll at home. It just doesn’t work that way.
