Snapshots from the United States of Incarceration…
Mickey Z. -- World News Trust
Jan. 26, 2009 -- So, the Pope of Hope announced his (purported)
objective of closing the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba (“Gitmo”) within one year and we’re expected to herald this
announcement as a drastic break from the past.
But -- as some of the
regulars on my blog instantly declared -- if President Obama were serious
about hope and change, he’d close the prison tomorrow, apologize
to the detainees, and offer them financial reparations.
That could be
promptly followed up with the immediate indictment of all government
officials (including those in Obama’s administration) responsible
for supporting torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial
punishment, etc. And why not toss in the immediate closing of the U.S.
military base at Guantánamo Bay and the return of that land to Cuba?
That, I submit, would be a minuscule first step upon which we could
build.
***
Waiting a year to close a single prison
is nothing to celebrate. Transferring those illegally detained humans
is not change anyone can believe in. Public promises about not
torturing have been heard before, and even if we could trust such dubious
assurances, why are we so goddamned appreciative when a U.S. president
merely declares his theoretical intention to think about adhering to
fundamental international law?
The Chairman of Change has made no secret
of how he wholeheartedly adores the bogus war on terror. Closing Gitmo
(an act which still falls squarely into the believe-it-when-you-see-it
category) is at best a strategic sidestep by a cautious and calculating
new president.
***
A related New York Times piece
began oh-so-cleverly: “Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed coming to a prison
near you?” In the Jan. 24, 2009, article: “Guantánamo Detainees?
Not in My State,” journalists (sic) Mark Mazzetti and Scott
Shane wrung their hands over the 245 remaining inmates being “released
into quiet neighborhoods across the United States.” It’s illustrative
of the utter depravity we tolerate as normal in the home of the brave
that war criminals like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Dick Cheney,
Wesley Clark, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton, etc., etc., walk freely among
us while the newspaper of record preys on gullible readers with sensationalism
and xenophobic fear mongering.
***
In that same Times article, Mazzetti
and Shane inadvertently offered another manifestation of America’s
cultural rot when they mentioned a discussion of reopening San Francisco’s
Alcatraz Prison specifically for the assumed terrorists detained (illegally)
at Gitmo. But a spokesman for California Senator Diane Feinstein was
quick to clarify that Alcatraz was a “national park and tourist attraction,
not a functioning prison,” and that the senator “does not consider
it a suitable place to house detainees.”
I suggest you take a few seconds to contemplate
the depth of moral vacuity it requires for a society to accept a former
prison as a national park and tourist attraction. Alcatraz is not an
ancient artifact that curious humans are lining up to explore, but rather,
it’s merely a inactive part of still fully active injustice system.
More than one out of every 100 American adults is imprisoned in the
land of the free while others plunk down cash to tour a prison?
***
As of Dec. 31, 2007: 2,193,157 prisoners
were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails. That’s an
estimated 506 prison inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents. Breaking it down
more specifically, there are…
*481 white male prison inmates per 100,000
white males in the United States.
*1,259 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000
Hispanic males.
*3,138 black male inmates per 100,000
black males.
(Of course, this doesn’t include all
the dis-labeled folks locked in nursing homes against their will and
the innumerable animals in laboratories, zoos, etc.)
As Angela Davis sez: “There’s always
a tendency to push prisons to the fringes of our awareness [so] we don’t
have to deal with what happens inside of these horrifying institutions.”
Take-home message: Gitmo is a symptom.
Barack Obama is a symptom. Obama promising to close Gitmo is like placing
a band-aid over a cancerous tumor.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net