The Great Dictator

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible—Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, "the kingdom of God is within man"—not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

A Tale of Two Douches

First this report came out yesterday:

A U.N. spokesman says Hamas police in Gaza have seized thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents. Spokesman Christopher Gunness says Hamas police raided a U.N. warehouse in Gaza City on Tuesday evening. He says police snatched 3,500 blankets and more than 400 food parcels.

Then this report comes out today:

The Israeli Navy intercepted a cargo ship headed for Gaza on Thursday, diverting it to an Israeli port where the people aboard were to be questioned, the military announced. The boat, called The Brotherhood Ship, was carrying what its organizers said was humanitarian aid: food, medicine, and toys. ... Among the nine people aboard was the former Greek Orthodox archbishop of Jerusalem, Monsignor Hilarion Capucci.

That's right, both sides fighting in the recent Hamas-Israel conflict are blocking aid meant for Palestinian civilians. What a bunch of douches!

In the case of the raided U.N. warehouse Hamas might either be stealing those supplies for themselves or planning to redistribute it to garner support from civilians. That's the reason they were running the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, to bring in weapons and supplies (which Israel invaded to bomb the shit out of). As for the intercepted supply ship, depending on how Israel proceeds those supplies could still get to needy Palestinians as Israel allows a maximum of 200 trucks of aid though their Gaza blockade a day.

Still, Israel diverted, boarded and pointed guns at a ship with only nine crew members including a former archbishop! Meanwhile...

...the Israeli military acknowledged that its soldiers fired two tank shells on Jan. 16 at the house of Izzeldin Abuelaish, a well-known Gaza doctor, killing three of his daughters and a niece. The military said that it was "saddened by the harm caused" to the doctor's family, but that under the circumstances, it considered the decision to fire toward the building "reasonable."

No, it wasn't. And shut up.

San Quentin and Prison Overcrowding

Laura Sullivan/NPR

NPR's All Things Considered aired a feature today about the crowding and segregation issues at San Quentin State Prison in California, listen to or read it here.

Reporter Laura Sullivan visited the crowded gymnasium shared by over 360 inmates and found the conditions abominable, due of course to the overcrowding problem in California's prison system. The prisoners occupy the gym 24 hours a day, the overhead lights stay on from 5 AM to midnight and simple amenities such as tube socks have been cut back because of funding issues. Combined with limited space this causes unwanted but necessary self-segregation to keep tensions down. The conditions sound like factory farms:

Metcalf arrives at a Spartan bunk draped with white towels. His broad shoulders nearly reach from his bunk to the next. "Man, we don't have a foot and a half between bunks," he laments, his voice rising. "Look at this. You're supposed to have so many cubic feet, but this is not it. We have barely a foot and half on each side of the bunk — where you can breathe in another person's mouth."

Just as Metcalf is about to show me his locker, a deafening alarm blares. Inmates drop to their knees. In the entire gym, I am the only person still standing. The alarm means there's a problem somewhere in this prison, but it's not here in the gym. Each officer carries a personal alarm that sounds systemwide. Somewhere, one of them has felt threatened enough to trigger it. The rule is hands and knees on the floor. If you don't obey, it's up to the tower guard to decide whether or not to shoot you.

An inmate huddled by his bed makes a motion toward my microphone.

"Would you want to live here?" he asks.

Most prisoners there are in for probation violations, many if not most drug related. Why they don't get those people on some sort of drug rehab program instead of rotating them through the system endlessly I don't understand. Ted Koppel covered this grim situation as well last fall on his program Koppel On Discovery in the episode "Breaking Point".