Comments on: Ahmadinejad: US, ‘big prison’

By: vineyardsaker

vineyardsaker — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:12:30 +0000

cowbot – I did not make a single calculation of my own, all I did is take together various sources to paint a general picture. Having various sources, with various definitions, based on data collected at different times and from different countries it was rather obvious to me that there would be marginal discrepancies. Adding your own source, however legitimate, only added to the latter. My point was not to come up with one internally consistent methodology, but to provide an overall context. This is why I added the part about the 16 intelligence agencies, not something relevant in a strictly police sense (apples and oranges), but still something highly relevant when looking at the huge, bloated, bizarre and ever present *government protection structure* which is constituted by the conglomeration of very different agencies.
While apples and oranges are different fruits, they can all be counted together to get a picture of the garden.
You see what I mean?
Cheers!

By: Resistance « Marisacat

Resistance « Marisacat — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:33:12 +0000

[...] has a provocative post on Ahmadinejad’s description of America as a “big prison.” He posts this chilling data [...]

By: cowbot

cowbot — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:27:33 +0000

I see the FBI site does puts population @ 278,433,063 and police @ 970,588 which = 3.49 / 1,000 in 2004. My source for the 292 million was http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/001632.html

You write, just below the 836,787 figure [i]“All this adds up to a national rate of full-time law enforcement employees per 1,000 inhabitants of at 3.5 (in 2004)”.[/i]. This is wrong; the 800k figure does not in fact add up to 3.4%. And the following claim, [i]“which also the highest in the world.”[/i] is contradicted by the very source you linked..

I made the mistake of repeating that last piece of hyperbole to someone else before checking the facts, so I felt I should to point-out the error here.

I do appreciate your blogging, else I wouldn’t be reading. Keep up the good work.

By: vineyardsaker

vineyardsaker — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:52:21 +0000

cowbot: I suppose the discrepancy comes either from dates or from definition. check out the original post for all the links to the sources: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2007/09/ahmadinejad-us-big-prison.html . On the FBI sources listed (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/law_enforcement_personnel/index.html) you have the sentence “The national rate of full-time law enforcement employees per 1,000 inhabitants remained at 3.5 in 2004, unchanged from the 2003 rate” so I got it wrong, by one decimal TOO LOW. While there are countries which have a higher ratio, none are bigger than a small US state which really makes the comparison useless with the possible exception of Italy. HTH

By: cowbot

cowbot — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:42:53 +0000

How are you coming up with these figures?

837 k cops (kilocops / 292 million US citizens in 2004 = 2.87 per 1000, and *not* 3.4.

The site you linked under “HIGHEST IN THE WORLD” doesn’t list the USA for me. The 837 kcop number puts the USA into the rank #21 – near the top of the European nations – almost spot-on with Spain.

#1 Montserrat: 7.81501 per 1,000 people
#2 Mauritius: 7.28432 per 1,000 people
#3 Dominica: 6.40311 per 1,000 people
#4 Italy: 5.55565 per 1,000 people

#18 Germany: 2.91153 per 1,000 people
#19 Ireland: 2.8989 per 1,000 people
#20 Hungary: 2.88528 per 1,000 people

#21 Spain: 2.86696 per 1,000 people

#24 Poland: 2.61367 per 1,000 people
#27 Norway: 2.42412 per 1,000 people
#28 Turkey: 2.38057 per 1,000 people
#32 Australia: 2.09293 per 1,000 people
#33 France: 2.049 per 1,000 people
#34 United Kingdom: 2.04871 per 1,000 people
#35 Switzerland: 1.93617 per 1,000 people
#36 Netherlands: 1.92448 per 1,000 people
#37 Denmark: 1.91716 per 1,000 people

This is not to detract from your point, or from Ahmadinejad’s characterization of the USA as a ‘prison’. From the same website we get a figure of 0.7% of the US population incarcerated.

By: MCLA

MCLA — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:56:25 +0000

Land of the obedient?

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:37:06 +0000

Not just a prison, but a debtors' prison. US national debt as a percentage of GDP = 64.7% (source, see 'Public Debt'). For comparison... Australian national debt as a percentage of GDP = 14% (source, see 'Public Debt'). And let's not put up with any of that recycled New Deal "it's a debt we owe ourselves" crap. Writing about the British war debt from the Napoleonic wars, and writing back in 1917, F.W. Hirst, the then editor of 'The Economist' had this to say: "It was argued that the magnitude of the national debt in 1816 need cause no alarm because most of the national creditors were British taxpayers, " and a debt owing by one part of the community to another is in effect no debt at all." This resembles the defence of a housebreaker, who, being convicted of carrying off a shopkeeper's money, replied that it had caused no loss, for he had used the money to buy goods from his victim's shop." It's all just shackles and chains...

By: Redrum

Redrum — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:29:33 +0000

That’s an interesting post AA… thanks for that

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:07:33 +0000

“Secure your passports, and make plans for travel to countries that welcome asylum-seekers.”

Israel here I come!

By: Oscar Goldman

Oscar Goldman — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:09:43 +0000

Secure your passports, and make plans for travel to countries that welcome asylum-seekers.

By: m saichek

m saichek — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:39:35 +0000

I really can’t fathom ANY way that citizens or politicians in our country can spin this. It hurts my brain to try understanding how the land of the free and the home of the brave became the land of the imprisoned, home of the slaves….. If king bush goes all caesar on us at the end of his term and refuses to leave the throne, fuck it ill move to canada..

By: Curt

Curt — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:07:47 +0000

Bob,

That is a chilling statistic.

Here is another one I got from today’s democracynow headlines.

82 Billionaires Not Rich Enough to Make Forbes 400 List
In economic news, Forbes has published its list of the 400 richest Americans. For the first time 82 billionaires were not wealthy enough to make the list. The top 1 percent of Americans – those with comes incomes over $350,000 – are now receiving the largest share of national income since 1928.

Return of the Plutocracy(Parenti’s most dire warnings come true in hideous hi-def technicolor.)

By: Bob Bogus

Bob Bogus — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:39:59 +0000

>In 2004 there were more than 800,000 full-time sworn law enforcement officers in the United States

And ya know how much they make? In occupied Taxifornia in many areas (Bay Area, Sacramento, etc.) the average salary pushes 6 figures. That’s AVERAGE and does NOT include benefits and overtime. It pays to live in a fascist police state IF you are the police.

By: AA

AA — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:39:48 +0000

The whole holocaust denial thing is a bit of a red herring. Israeli politicians and even the ADL don’e seriously care about whether or not a public figure has denied the Holocaust. As Norm Finkelstein points out, it is being used to score cheap political victories. Here’s a dicussion that NF had with Amy Goodman that touches on the topic of Holocaust denial:

AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t the ADL come out this week with a statement about Amnesty International?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah, the ADL came out with a statement that Amnesty International is borderline anti-Semitic, and that’s pretty conventional from the ADL, that these organizations are anti-Semitic or then, you know, in other cases, they accuse individuals or organizations of being Holocaust deniers. None of this — first of all, as I said, it’s pretty commonplace in these organizations. The Simon Wiesenthal Center recently issued a statement condemning the United Church of Christ for being not borderline anti-Semitic, but functionally anti-Semitic, because they oppose the wall that Israel is building in the Occupied Territories.

Anyone who’s a critic of Israel becomes an anti-Semite. And the truth of the matter is, the real anti-Semites, they don’t really care about — or the real Holocaust deniers, which is their other favorite epithet to hurl at people or expectorate at people who are critical of Israel –

So you take the case, you know, now there’s a lot of discussion about the Iranian president’s statements denying the Nazi Holocaust. Whether he actually did or not literally, I’m not going to get into now. It’s not so important. For argument’s sake, let’s say he did do it. He denied the Nazi Holocaust. Now, you heard Mr. Weiner. He’s very fond of Abbas. He says Abbas has nothing to do with the PLO. Now, you take Abbas. Abbas is an authentic Holocaust denier. He wrote his doctoral dissertation denying the Nazi Holocaust. He published it as a book in 1982. He said less than a million Jews were killed during World War II. He denied the Nazi gas chambers. Now there you have a real Holocaust denier. You don’t have to really probe the meaning of his words. It’s pretty straightforward. Well, he’s the American favorite now. Everybody loves Mr. Abbas, because he does the American bidding. So they don’t care that he’s a Holocaust denier.

Let me just give another pretty indicative example. Take the case of Ronald Reagan. Nowadays many people are fond of Reagan. You listen to rightwing radio, which I listen to all the time, and you listen — everyone loves Reagan. Everybody forgets Reagan was the one who went to Bitburg, gave the speech saying that the Nazi soldiers, including the Nazi — the Waffen-SS, were victims, just like the Jews in the concentration camps. That was his famous statement at Bitburg. The ADL, which claims to be so vigilant about Holocaust denial, the ADL gave him their Torch of Liberty Award.

Then, just this past — two years ago, Berlusconi, the president [prime minister] of Italy –

AMY GOODMAN: Former.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Former president of Italy, gave this speech praising Mussolini and saying all the charges against Mussolini were false, he was basically a good guy. Three weeks — three weeks after he gave his speech — and remember, Mussolini passed the Anti-Semitic Laws, at the end of his regime, sent Jews to their death. Three weeks after he gave his speech, the ADL, Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, who is now accusing Amnesty of borderline anti-Semitism, they gave him the distinguished Statesman of the Year Award, had a big gala for him, and even fairly conservative economists like Robert Solow, Paul Samuelson, Modigliani — okay, they’re not conservative by conventional standards — mainstream economists. They wrote a very irate letter to the New York Times: Why is the ADL giving this guy an award? Well, the answer was simple. Because at that point, he was the only European leader who was very pro — he was very pro-Israel. They don’t care about Holocaust denial. They have no interest in it.

Let me give you one example, just –

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah, one example, just from what you were airing a moment ago. You heard the speech by Rumsfeld, where he says that Iraq is like the Nazis in the 1930s. Now, remember, the tenet of the Holocaust industry is, never compare the Holocaust to anything else. Never compare, and if you compare, they say you’re a Holocaust denier. But that side is always comparing. The Mufti of Jerusalem was Hitler. Nasser was Hitler. Saddam Hussein was Hitler. Hezbollah is now Hitler. Iran is Hitler. Hamas is Hitler. Iraq is Hitler. They’re the worst Holocaust deniers in the world, by their own definition. They’re always comparing.

AMY GOODMAN: Norman Finkelstein, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. His new book is called Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.

http://www.archive.org/download/dn2006-0830/dn2006-0830-1_64kb.mp3
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2006/aug/video/dnB20060830a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=13:05
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=479

By: vineyardsaker

vineyardsaker — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:22:45 +0000

if it is revealed that the Holocaust has nothing to do with the issue of Palestine
That is definitely a translation SNAFU. What the guy means is that the massacre of Jews in Europe give them no right to Palestinian land.

I’ve never heard of a single serious scholar disputing the number 10 million (6 million of them Jews)
Well, I have (there are *plenty*) but in Europe they are in jail and in the USA they are ignored. Of course, if anyone disputing these figures is *by definition* a kook, then I have only heard kooks making such disputations.

[As an aside, does it not bother you at all that only the genocide of Jews in Europe gets a special name (the "Holocaust") and only this genocide gets an officially approved and always mentioned figure (6.000.000)?] For example: how many Armenians killed? What’s the name for the genocide of Native Americans? Also, denying the fact and disputing the figures, or the mechanisms, are very different things. I remind you that even the official number of deaths at Auschwitz was reduced from the original 4′000′000 to 1′500′000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp#Death_toll). The events of WWII are part of history, not of a religion, and they should therefore not be made into a dogma, I think]

Reasonable people don’t need the help offered by assholes like these
No doubt that Ahmadinejad has the PR skills of a hog driving a tank, but I do not find it useless to remind people that the “land of the free” has an per capita incarceration rate over three times higher than the “theocratic dictatorship of the Ayatollahs”

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:49:58 +0000

No question that America has way too much government, but the last thing we need to do is cite Iranian politicians in that regard (other than to point out what a sad fact it is that we have it worse than Iranians in some ways). Particularly Iranian politicians who make statements such as the above quoted, “if it is revealed that the Holocaust has nothing to do with the issue of Palestine and the figures in this regard are exaggerated, they will have nothing to say.”

Uhhh… Nobody says that the Palestinians were the perpetrators of the Holocaust. This may be the most stupid of red herrings that I have ever heard. And secondly, the only people who dispute the numbers of dead civilians from the Holocaust are the idiots at the IHR and politicians in the Middle East. I’ve never heard of a single serious scholar disputing the number 10 million (6 million of them Jews) and know of plenty who say it all adds up.

The fact remains that Palestinian Arabs couldn’t possibly be construed by any reasonable person to have to make up for crimes committed by the German State.

This is like a 9/11 kook explaining PNAC. Reasonable people don’t need the help offered by assholes like these.