We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades.
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After the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, as Nation editors were trying to figure out what should go into that week’s issue, William Greider, the magazine’s national affairs correspondent, offered some wise words that I’ve never forgotten. “Later, there will be time for analysis of who and what was responsible,” he said. “Right now, it’s time to grieve.”
GRUESOME PHOTOS OF KENYAN MALL SHOOTINGS SPARK DEBATE
Sep. 24 (GIN) – The shocking terror assault at a popular shopping center in Nairobi sent shivers around the world as global news media supplied minute to minute coverage of the deadly event.
Some 68 people were killed and 170 injured in the attack by alleged Somali Al-Shabab insurgents who, for four days, held hostages in a siege at the upscale store.
News photographers at the scene snapped graphic images of frantic store visitors but also victims who lay bleeding and possibly dying. Horrific pictures, on page one of a New York daily and in several papers in Africa, soon sparked a fierce online debate.
“How much blood is too much?” asked columnist Richard Prince in his column Journal-isms. In a piece titled “Race Factor Raised in Graphic Images from Kenya,” he quoted Michael Deibert, a white journalist, who observed: “Quite honestly… I was shocked and dismayed by this… Would the New York Times run photos of blood-soaked dead white Americans after one of the many mass shootings that occur in the United States? I doubt it.”
Senior faculty member Kenny Irby of the Poynter Institute told Prince: “There continues to be an apparent double standard which I refer to as the ‘exotic rule’. The farther away and the browner the faces, the less sensitive I find the ethical rigor. For instance, I could not find a body in the Navy Yard or Boston Marathon shootings.”
NY Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan defended the occasional use of sickening pictures such as those recently published from Syria. “Images of war matter,” she wrote, citing such iconic shots as the brutal execution of a Vietcong guerrilla, a naked Vietnamese girl burned by napalm and the charred corpses of American contractors hanging from a bridge in Falluja, Iraq.
Photo editor Michele McNally added: “I think our audience is very sophisticated. They don’t want us to pull our punches.”
Meanwhile, back in Kenya, a front page picture of a blood-spattered woman shrieking in agony sparked a torrent of furious complaints. It prompted Nation Media Group CEO Linus Gitahi to issue an apology. “Kenyans, we made a poor judgment on our front page photo today. We sincerely apologize for the hurt caused.” The apology was forwarded on Twitter 1,192 times.
Only a couple of weeks ago, as the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have a Dream” speech, I was reminded of the Rev. King’s last birthday, in January 1968.
By Michael Ortiz
We’ve heard the argument over and over. “Of course we’re in a post-racial society; racism is over; slavery is long gone; the president is black, etc.” And then we’ve heard the counterargument over and over. “Post-racial?! How can that be the case when health disparities remain significant along racial lines? When unemployment and incarceration continue to disproportionately affect people of color, etc.?”
By Sean Posey
In the summer of 2008, a tidal wave of liberal and youth activists began to carry presidential candidate Barack Obama on a journey leading inexorably to the White House. Town halls and campaign stops attracted droves of admirers-with Obama taking on a persona more akin to a rock star than to a senator from Illinois. However, during a campaign stop in St. Petersburg, something unexpected happened.
Progressives won big in four arenas over the past two weeks. They played key roles in stopping a military strike on Syria, defeating Larry Summers’s bid to head the Fed, winning basic protections for 1.9 million home health care workers, and forcing companies to disclose the gap between their CEO and worker pay.
Sometimes when data is released on social conditions the numbers do not surprise. Such is the case with the revelation from Census data that poverty in New York City is on the upswing and that income inequality in the nation’s largest city has widened.
The warmongers in Washington have stepped back from the brink of waging war against the Syrian people, but no one should imagine they have been converted to peace or have lost faith in the devastating effectiveness of overwhelming firepower in meeting challenges and making self-serving changes in the world.
St Vincent PM wants Caribbean reparations group established
KINGSTOWN, St Vincent, Friday March 15, 2013 – Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is calling on Caribbean countries to establish a regional reparations committee, pledging to spend the rest of his life seeking compensation from the British for land, genocide against the Garifuna, and slavery.
CONGOLESE NUN RECEIVES HIGH U.N. HONOR
Sep. 17 (GIN) – A Roman Catholic nun who rides a bicycle deep into the bush in the north-eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo to help female victims of war is to receive a top UN award for her courageous work.
Sister Angelique Namaika is a familiar site, pedaling down dirt roads to visit the women and to run a center she called Maman Bongissa in the village of Dungu. The center trains displaced women and girls in basic income-generating activities they could use to improve their lives.
Five years after the beginning of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, where are we? This week, President Obama offered Americans a progress report. He hailed the steps taken to turn the economy around and rescue the auto and financial industries. He used the occasion, sensibly, to challenge Republicans in the Congress not to do more damage to the slow recovery by manufacturing another unnecessary budget crisis.
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