FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is a comic book villain, a corporate stooge who buried his nose in the assholes of Republican lawyers and lobbyists long enough to wield power as a mostly unsung government bureaucrat. Pai, a self-proclaimed technology and small business advocate, has spent the past two decades spitting in the face of prisoners and the poor, while attempting to break apart the Internet into chunks just big enough for a telecom to swallow. He's very efficient.
For some reason (perhaps because I once had a family member who spent three months in jail) the prison phone call thing particularly gets to me.
It's just so dang mean.
What an ugly, cruel, stupid, atrocious thing to do. What a way to humiliate and isolate the prisoner: what a way to punish innocent family members who have actually committed no crime themselves, who merely want to stay in touch with--and who may be the last remaining lifeline for-- somebody they love who happened to get into bad trouble.
We ourselves didn't have any trouble scraping together the money we needed to pay for the calls (which came collect, as a recorded message announced when we picked up the phone, and which were of course monitored, recorded, infrequent, and subject to abrupt and arbitrary termination).
But a whole lot of people--especially the kind of people whose family members don't have the jack buy their way out of a charge of simple possession, say, or the crime of driving without insurance, or a back child support complaint--cannot afford to stay in contact.
It's dehumanizing and stupid and ugly. But then, our whole justice system is fucked--the whole shootin' match is based on cruelty and humiliation and punishment, rather than any concept of rehabilitation, of salvation, of repairing broken human beings.
The patron saint of American retribution is Sheriff Arpaio. We would rather destroy a human being--and we are right smug about the fact ("if you don't want to do the time, then don't do the crime" is right up there with the other jingle of unhinged rhyming hate, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve")-- than help a citizen move on and reclaim his or her life.
In some countries, Norway for instance, jail is someplace where, although your freedom of movement is restricted, you eat decent food, experience a reasonably comfortable environment, enjoy access to therapy sessions, higher education, and vocational training. It is a place where guards do not supplement their meager incomes by setting up black markets or prison rape squads.
Moreover, when prisoners in civilized countries finish their sentences and return to the world, they don't have to notify prospective employers that they once served time.They don't lose their civil rights: they don't bear a permanent stigma that marks them for life and that increases the odds of recidivism to the screaming point.
In American jails and prisons, by the way, speaking of screaming, the death toll due to the kind of horrendous beating that shattered Otto Warmbier's brain over in the godless communistic totalitarian state of North Korea is nearly 5000 a year. Sometimes fellow prisoners do it (and sometimes they do it with the active collaboration of guards); sometimes the guards themselves finish the job, without any help from the inmates.
Now it's MY turn to have no idea what you're talking about haha! These newfangled kids with their newfangled fibers, why I remember when there was ONE phone and you couldn't use it if Daddy was expecting an important call.
Star wars is not scifi, it is a fairy tale, i.e. fantasy.Star trek, while scifi, is pulp-scifi. Still fun, but not any more intellectual than Conan the barbarian comics.You can find deeper explorations of interesting concepts in Schwarzenegger movies.
Example: Total Recall discusses The Lockean Memory theory of mind. http://www.inquiriesjournal...In my opinion the remake is less philosophical and thus less interesting. Good fight scenes though.
And of course, the reason it's evil and stupid and ugly is because a majority, or at least a sufficient number, of our fellow citizens think that is exactly the way it should be.
So it comes back to the same central issue as all of our country's other problems:
How do we enlighten the dumbasses, and can it be done at all?
For some reason (perhaps because I once had a family member who spent three months in jail) the prison phone call thing particularly gets to me.
It's just so dang mean.
What an ugly, cruel, stupid, atrocious thing to do. What a way to humiliate and isolate the prisoner: what a way to punish innocent family members who have actually committed no crime themselves, who merely want to stay in touch with--and who may be the last remaining lifeline for-- somebody they love who happened to get into bad trouble.
We ourselves didn't have any trouble scraping together the money we needed to pay for the calls (which came collect, as a recorded message announced when we picked up the phone, and which were of course monitored, recorded, infrequent, and subject to abrupt and arbitrary termination).
But a whole lot of people--especially the kind of people whose family members don't have the jack buy their way out of a charge of simple possession, say, or the crime of driving without insurance, or a back child support complaint--cannot afford to stay in contact.
It's dehumanizing and stupid and ugly. But then, our whole justice system is fucked--the whole shootin' match is based on cruelty and humiliation and punishment, rather than any concept of rehabilitation, of salvation, of repairing broken human beings.
The patron saint of American retribution is Sheriff Arpaio. We would rather destroy a human being--and we are right smug about the fact ("if you don't want to do the time, then don't do the crime" is right up there with the other jingle of unhinged rhyming hate, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve")-- than help a citizen move on and reclaim his or her life.
In some countries, Norway for instance, jail is someplace where, although your freedom of movement is restricted, you eat decent food, experience a reasonably comfortable environment, enjoy access to therapy sessions, higher education, and vocational training. It is a place where guards do not supplement their meager incomes by setting up black markets or prison rape squads.
Moreover, when prisoners in civilized countries finish their sentences and return to the world, they don't have to notify prospective employers that they once served time.They don't lose their civil rights: they don't bear a permanent stigma that marks them for life and that increases the odds of recidivism to the screaming point.
In American jails and prisons, by the way, speaking of screaming, the death toll due to the kind of horrendous beating that shattered Otto Warmbier's brain over in the godless communistic totalitarian state of North Korea is nearly 5000 a year. Sometimes fellow prisoners do it (and sometimes they do it with the active collaboration of guards); sometimes the guards themselves finish the job, without any help from the inmates.
God help us, what an awful country.
Now it's MY turn to have no idea what you're talking about haha! These newfangled kids with their newfangled fibers, why I remember when there was ONE phone and you couldn't use it if Daddy was expecting an important call.
here up nort in the wilds of ravenswood it's at&t and go fuck yourself.
GREAT STORY!!!! SENT A LETTER AND MADE A CALL. YOU MADE IT EASY. THANK YOU!! MORE OF THIS ON WONKETTE, PLEASE.
it will cost you 10.97 to post that please.
P.S. I've been a supporter of prison reform since Angela Davis was first on the scene. Great piece.
Life of Pai: reading mean tweets that he actually deserves.
Star wars is not scifi, it is a fairy tale, i.e. fantasy.Star trek, while scifi, is pulp-scifi. Still fun, but not any more intellectual than Conan the barbarian comics.You can find deeper explorations of interesting concepts in Schwarzenegger movies.
Example: Total Recall discusses The Lockean Memory theory of mind. http://www.inquiriesjournal...In my opinion the remake is less philosophical and thus less interesting. Good fight scenes though.
:) Thank you
Same as it ever was.https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Yu-Gi-Oh-God-Oh-God-Oh-God-Yes!
As an Indian - I honestly don't know how an evil IT guy came into existence.
Therefore, we are very sorry - and we hope you can return this model back to Bangalore.
Thx.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comic...
And of course, the reason it's evil and stupid and ugly is because a majority, or at least a sufficient number, of our fellow citizens think that is exactly the way it should be.
So it comes back to the same central issue as all of our country's other problems:
How do we enlighten the dumbasses, and can it be done at all?
Also, too Racist!
Not necessarily. The Aryans WERE from India ;)