Slavery

Rihana,

Thank you for your response. When one acts as a policeman of the world, such role comes with added responsibility. One needs to be disciplined. What right the US gets to talk about human right violation elsewhere, when our country is filled with such abuses?

We are all raised with discipline in life and we never encounter legal system much. But still a grandpa who is innocent walking around the subdivision gets slammed to the ground becuase he could not speak English. Isn't it human rights violation? Is this the way any country treats a guest who is visiting a relative?

This country has all flaws we see in other countries. Only differences is it happens in plain sight elsewhere whereas it happens here under cover. That is all.

Honestly, I never knew how the sentencing worked. There is a minimum and maximum penalty for every crime. Now I am beginning to understand there is a whole system that works under cover. If this is bad enough, I can't even imagine how the plea bargains work. I am certainly not questioning the entire judiciary as there are many sincere professionals in judiciary. But a few rotten apples are good enough to feed an entire undercover profiteering group.

Viswa

 

Dear Ramya,

Welcome back to IL and let this new year bring the best in you and yours. I don't blame you for not being aware as the Americans themselves were unaware of this industry flourishing well with the collaboration of the governments, legal system and private corporations. It all started in 1980 but now it is growing alarmingly rapid pace. There are journalists who report on this subject and even the President recently made a surprise visit to one of the detention centers and made a public statement for not detaining people who have not committed any violent crime for a prolonged period of time. Awareness is building thanks to the social, political and human rights forums.

Corporate greed in this country brought the financial industry down on its knees in 2008 with Subprime market crash. The industry forget the need to look at a key ratio called Debt/Equity and just kept lending based on overvalued assets. They forgot about the person's ability to repay the debt just to make commissions out of every debt. As you rightly pointed out, every such atrocity against humanity will not continue for long and the nature has it's own way of correcting it.

The best facility available to the citizens of the US is to make a phone call or send emails to their Representative and/or Senator and they would always respond. If each one of us write about it and increase the awareness through social media, there will be substantial pressure on them to put an end to this human right violation. The top 1% wealthy in this country are talking about charities, world welfare, etc. but the very same people are part of this exploitation. They don't raise voice against this system as it benefits their businesses.

Viswa

 

Dear Satchi,

Thank you for your response. The sad part of this atrocity is, it is happening under the very nose of the judicial system which we are supposed to approach for legal disputes. This in my view is one of the largest human rights violation. It is done under the pretext of "keeping the criminals off the street" principle. Well, what is the meaning of calling them as correctional facilities if people will have to encounter exploitation by big corporations?

Most profitable business in the US now is building private prisons. These corporations get thousands of talented individuals in the average age of 34 and their captive time could be used for making money from big corporations. In some states, the prisoners are not even paid minimum wages legislated by the state laws.

Can you believe 2 million American citizens are locked up inside the prison? This is even higher than China's prisoners. The terrorists, hard core repeat criminals, criminals facing death penalty for murder, etc can be counted easily but vast majority of the prison population consist of people who committed non-violent crimes such as possessing illegal drugs, trespassing, minor thefts, etc. Some of the states have legislated three strike formula. If someone commits misdemeanor three times, he/she could be imprisoned for a prolonged period of time.

If 2 million people get an average minimum wages of $10 per hour (assuming they are all minimum wage earners) and work 8 hours a day for 300 days in a year, the total cost of labor could be $48 billion per year. I understand that there are some states who pay the prisoners only 25 cents per hour and many states are paying less than the minimum wages. That is why it is a multi-billion dollar industry. The corporations get captive employees who would never ask for vacation and would never go on strike.

I wouldn't say public awareness is not there as yet. It exists but prisoners' exploitation is not in the forefront. I am sure most, if not all, judges use their discretion on sentencing right and as per law but again blaming the prisoners for bad behavior in the prison is still under the discretion of the jail system.

Satchi, I am going to be writing a lot of such social issues and some of them would surprise you even more. When I started writing about the social issues, all of a sudden I don't see anything but such social issues. Today's Wall Street Journal carries an article on how the rural hospitals are inclined to perform more surgeries because of the financial incentives. Greed wins over humanity, it looks like.

Viswa

 

Dear Kamla,

Yes I did write this post and I am going to continue this trend for a while as well. I may not be able to fix the system but at least I can voice my view in a public domain.

I am flattered by your statement that you are addicted to my spiritual snippets but the reality is your responses to such snippets were very practical and relevant to the real world. How good it is to be spiritual, if I don't recognize and respond to the sufferings of the fellow-beings?

When big money is behind an action in a capitalistic environment, it takes a lot of humanity to fix the unwelcome trend. Even my snippet is a small candle light in a dark forest of inhuman behavior for profit.

Viswa

 

Dear Balajee,

Thank you for the congratulatory note. I was in India from Jan 7th to Jan 30th and returned only a few days back. I had a very unreliable internet connection back in India and hence couldn't log in.

Viswa