>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 04/26/00 01:38AM >>>
Hi Jacob:
>The question raised might the comparative freedom or lack of freedom in
>these societies. Simply to raise the number of the prision population do
>not address the actual oppression in Cuba and North Korea which is
>significant and ought not to be underestimated. Yoshie argues that
>repression in communist countries needs to be balanced by Foucault's idea
>of the panopticon or the internalization of social norms which prohibts
>certain actions or belief not through law but through the construction of
>the self through various disciplines, such as schools, hospitals etc. I
>certainly accept this as a description of western "individualism" but this
>repression is of a different kind than the limitation of thought that
>happens to everyone in Cuba and North Korea
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CB: Yea, the American, capitalist dictatorship, Big Brother, abstract panopticon , television-led mind control system is of a WORSE kind, an order of magnitude worse, qualitatively worse than the form taken in the dictatorships of the proletariat. The U.S. control is aggrievated by the evaporating effectiveness of Bill of Rights and Liberties through crafty subversion especially of First Amendment freedoms or freedom of consciousness/conscience/speech simultaneous with a drift toward open terrorist rule as in NYC and LA.
By the way, freedom , and encouragement to bullshit excessively is just one clever way to get people to waste some of their freedom of speech energy and time; in other words, sometimes the bourgeoisie use finesse , and encourage , rather than repress , speech and thought as a way to dominate and control it. Fomenting proliferation of dumb , passive thought , as with television consciousness, is using "freedom" of thought to dominate and control thought. _________________
Comrade Furuhashi comments: A high rate of incarceration does not simply signify the loss of civil liberties for prisoners; it is also a loss of political liberties, including freedom of speech. Machiavelli writes in _The Prince_: "One has to remark that men ought either be well treated or crushed." The ruling class & governing elite of the USA do not treat the working class well (even by capitalist standards), so they must crush them, especially the population made surplus by capital's counter-offensive (= neoliberalism). Christian Parenti explains the war on crime as a two-phase political response to the crisis of capitalism:
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The first phase is obviously repression of political freedom, in response to militant blacks, anti-war activists, etc., and has been recognized as such (besides it was practiced in tandem with COINTELPRO, etc.). The second phase, however, should be also counted as political repression: not the repression of actual political activists, but a kind of *preventive detention* of those who might *potentially* become political activists.
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Capital has realized (learning the lesson of the late 60s) that it is too late to repress people *after* they develop political consciousness and begin to exercise their political freedoms, including freedom of speech, in a fashion threatening to the conditions of accumulation. It is far better to lock up the poor *before* they become political activists. The war on drugs and crime has killed political speech by locking up potential subjects of political speech. Needless to say, the war on drug and crime has also limited political speech of those who remain outside prisons. It has helped to manufacture the consent of the governed to the dialectical twins of the police state & neoliberalism.
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CRITICAL RESISTANCE: ANGELA DAVIS, Icon, Idol, Personality, Great Leader of Freedom of Thought
5. Critical Resistance/Deep Dish Web Site Highlights Voices And Images From Prisons http://www.prisonactivist.org/critical/netcast The Prison Activist Resource Center and Deep Dish Television present Audio documentation of the Critical Resistance Conference which took place in Berkeley, Ca., September 25-27, 1998 Listen to audio clips from conference Download Realplayer: free..