Tag: Prison

  • To Be a Revolutionary Social Worker, or to be a Radical Worker, that is the Question

    To Be a Revolutionary Social Worker, or to be a Radical Worker, that is the Question

    The dichotomy between the social worker as a nine-to-five state agent and five-nine activist is a crucial one. The question can be summarised as: is there space, willingness and scope within social work to engage with broader structural issues that affect the lives of the people we work with? I spent an hour with the […]

  • Artificial Intelligence, Crime and Prisons: Mahmood Revisits the Panopticon

    When does the rot start in a politician?  For some, it commences the moment election to office is confirmed.  Others need to become cabinet ministers before being wholly blighted.  UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood may provide a classic case study.  Given that security matters fall within her purview, it was probably too much to expect […]

  • Ignoring International Obligations: Blocking UN Human Rights Delegates in Australia

    Bureaucracy, in a formulation by the great German sociologist Max Weber, fanatically defends secrecy, and is bound to confect any explanation in doing so. When it comes to swatting away scrutiny by United Nations human rights delegates, local officials can be relied upon to obfuscate, blur and lie about a Member State’s observance of conventions […]

  • Pakistan’s Packed Prisons

    Prisons in Pakistan are overcrowded and jam-packed with thousands of inmates living under conditions that take away their health, dignity, and hope. Behind the bars lies a human rights crisis that goes well beyond the mandate of official reports or the business of courtroom debate. Pakistan’s prisons now confine around 102,026 inmates despite being built […]

  • News Junkie? Those Daily Newspaper Days, the Competing AM v. PM Dailies

    News Junkie? Those Daily Newspaper Days, the Competing AM v. PM Dailies

    “Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can’t fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages.” It is an amazing g-force terminal velocity, neck whipping mad mad mad mad world of cardboard characters, […]

  • Who Was Eugene Debs?

    Who Was Eugene Debs?

    Zohran Mamdani’s quoting of Eugene Debs in his recent victory speech (for mayor of New York City) should awaken interest in the man who gained a name for himself as “Mr. Socialism.” For seventeen years Debs was the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, starving himself of sleep to bone up on politics, economics, and history. With […]

  • Thinking Beyond the Bars: How Higher Education Helped Me Develop Confidence in Myself and Rediscover My Humanity

    Ambitious young people are told that a college degree is necessary to launch a successful career. For me — a “lifer” taking courses from my cell in a state prison — higher education isn’t about job preparation but rediscovering my humanity, about learning to think beyond the bars. I’m not the first person to discover […]

  • US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test

    The US State Department’s latest Human Rights Report condemns Venezuela for serious abuses. Weaponizing human rights, accusations are selectively applied to serve a destabilization campaign. In this article, a mirror is held up to Uncle Sam to see how well “America the beautiful” holds up to the same charges, while also exposing the role of […]

  • Listening to a Mother’s Horror with US Marshals: Perpetual Vicarious Trauma

    Listening to a Mother’s Horror with US Marshals: Perpetual Vicarious Trauma

    The U.S. Marshals always get their kill shot — and a young man, young woman, and two five-year-old children swarmed by SOG, special operations group/gang, in Michigan, and the man bleeds out, the kids are in the house traumatized, and the mother is swarmed in the town getting groceries. I expected to get deep into […]

  • Incomplete Coverage of an Ominous Syrian Situation

    When Japan, already considered an enemy of the United States, sent its air force to U.S. territory and bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, the same date on the calendar that former opposition forces of the Iraq government entered Damascus, the U.S. government and media emphasized the more serious situation ─ the U.S. was at […]

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