An uncomfortable backdrop to the Abu Ghraib story is the knowledge that various sorts of abuse are endemic throughout the American prison system. Along those lines, here's a clip from a piece in Saturday's Times by Fox Butterfield: "The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system."
But our current crop of leaders doesn't do shame. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
At least there seems to be a consensus against privatisation of prisons in Europe and prison rape is not something that is almost celebrated in popular culture. And, thankfully, we have the ECHR.
And no one should be surprised it happens, considering the literature they read at Saint-Cyr. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
