The Brutality Connection: Abu Ghraib and America's Prisons: Quote: "There are about 9 million people residing in prisons around the world. With only one quarter of the world's population the U.S., Russia, and China have half the world's inmates. Adjusted for population, the U.S. has highest incarceration rate in the world. Since 1997 the number of inmates in America's local jails has risen 4.3 percent, a rate of 1,000 each week. In 2002 there were 668 prisoners for every 100,000 Americans, while there were only 59 per 100,000 locked up in Norway, Finland, and Denmark. America's prisons also have a shameful reputation for harsh and violent conditions. In 1999 charges of mock execution of prisoners in a Sacramento jail resulted in a successful class action suit against the sheriff. In Arizona's Maricopa County jails the use of stun guns and restraint chairs, as well as forcing inmates to wear pink underwear, is standard procedure. A training video for Texas' Barzoria County Detention Center encourages the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners. Recently U.S. Army Sgt. Michael J. Smith was found guilty for using unmuzzled dogs to threaten detainees at Abu Ghraib. It is certainly not a coincidence that the CIA has learned that Muslim prisoners are particularly terrified of dogs and very protective of their masculine identities." Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
