Incarceration Nation (Alternative Radio)

Prof. Michelle Alexander, AlternativeRadio.org; Wisdom Quarterly

AR (Program #ALEM001) recorded in Santa Fe, NM, Sept. 12, 2012. (Nessom-Marshall)

 

Prof. Alexander (AR)

From the auction block to the cell block, there is a trajectory from slavery to Jim Crow to the best pretext for systematic racism and segregation ever devised, the "War on Drugs." 

The latter has resulted in mass jailings characterized by deep racial disparities.

 

The US is likely to send about one-third of young black men to jail. The criminal "justice system" -- which is more criminal than just -- functions as a modern system of racial control. Millions of people, primarily poor people of color, are being swept into the nation’s prisons at a profit to some and a cost to all.

Overcrowding is more profitable for guard's union (AP)

Those millions are then relegated to a permanent subordinate-class status which strips them of basic civil and human rights supposedly won for all during the Civil Rights era. The numbers are numbing. In all, the US holds 2.3 million behind bars and 4.8 million more on probation and parole. 

The more people who are locked up, with just cause or not, the more some profit: police departments who get additional funding for more incarcerations rather than lower crime rates, who keep assets seized even if no one is charged or, if charged and tried, found not guilty. 

• LISTEN NOW

Not only do rural areas get paid to have prisons located in their precincts, millions are employed as guards and other functionaries within the "prison-industrial complex." The industrial part of the complex is called the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison owner and operator. 

  

Prisons are bad enough when run by the state, miserable warehouses with torture and abuse dispensing collective punishment and wasting lives rather than rehabilitating anyone. They get much worse when a corporation cuts corners at every turn to increase their profit margin at the cost of  human misery and a disservice to society.

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Penguins are sexually depraved perverts (video)

Periscopepost.com expanded by Wisdom Quarterly

Are penguins perverts? New pamphlet reveals “sexual depravity” of birds

[It's not just rapist ducks.] Century-old Antarctic account alleges necrophilia and sexual abuse among penguins.

  

Background

Deviants? (slapthepenguin.com)

A pamphlet has emerged detailing apparent sexual depravity among penguins. Written by George Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition, Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin contains observations of necrophilia and sexual coercion and abuse carried out by gangs of “hooligan” penguins.

  

According to the BBC Levick’s account was considered so shocking that it was left out of the official version of his published work on penguins, with the Natural History Museum suggesting a compromise: “The then keeper of zoology at the museum, Sidney Harmer, decided that 100 copies of the graphic account should be circulated to a select group of scientists.”

• "Depraved" sex acts by penguins shocked polar explorer 
• VIDEO: Cute baby penguin filmed meeting first human

Only two copies remain, one of which was recently discovered among the museum’s papers. This isn’t the first time the sexual behavior of penguins has hit the headlines. In 2011, a Canada [Toronto] zoo sparked outrage after deciding to separate “gay” penguin couple Buddy and Pedro in order to encourage them to find female mates. The story was dubbed “Brokeback Iceberg.”

WARNING: Gay themes in comedic gay context, coarse language! "Homo-
sexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one." 
The many gay animal species bring the practice's abnormality into question.

 

But will the latest allegations of necrophilia and sexual abuse damage the penguin community’s cute image for good? 

  

Calm down, dears, they’re just penguins

Dr. Levick's notebook coded in Greek (BBC)

“What is happening here is the projection of human values onto a different species,” wrote Tim Stanley on a Telegraph blog. We seem to forget that penguins – and indeed other animals – don’t make moral choices, or have a sense of sexual identity. “At the same time that we more ruthlessly exploit animals than ever before, we also seem determined to find qualities within them that we can empathise with. We want to turn them into mirrors of ourselves,” Stanley said. 

Further research clarifies penguin “perversion”

Douglas Russell, curator of birds at the Natural History Museum, told The Observer that this apparently depraved behavior can be easily explained: young adult penguins are sexually inexperienced and simply don’t understand how to behave during mating season. “A dead penguin, lying with its eyes half-open, is very similar in appearance to a compliant female. The result is the so-called necrophilia that Levick witnessed and which so disgusted him,” Russell explained.

Scary scene in "Happy Feet" of seal predation and Robin Williams shtick

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Welcome to the Military (trailer)

NewVideoDigital

Coming to theaters June 22, 2012. Facebook: Invisible War movie

THE INVISIBLE WAR is a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of our country's most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within the US military. Today, a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. The number of assaults in the last decade is in the hundreds of thousands. More male soldiers are raped by fellow US male soldiers than women. Focusing on the powerfully emotional stories of several young military women, the film reveals the systemic cover up of the crimes against them and follows their struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. THE INVISIBLE WAR features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the perfect storm conditions that exist for rape in the military, its history of cover-up, and what can be done to bring about much needed change.

• Ian Masters interview  Whistle blowers speak out. Directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering discuss their groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape in the US Armed Forces. It has claimed half a million victims, yet there are institutions that perpetuate a cover up.
• Madeleine Brand interview: Exposing serial rape and molestation  Rape in the military, of women and men, is the subject of a new documentary called "The Invisible War," which debuted at Sundance this year and now opens theatrically in Los Angeles.

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Monks walk away from sex-abuse cases

Text: Megan Twohey (Chicago Tribune, July 24, 2011); Wisdom Quarterly

Across the U.S., temples frustrate investigators by insisting they have no control over monks' actions or whereabouts. The scourge is not limited to Catholic priests and nuns.

 

The meeting took place at Wat Dhammaram, a cavernous [Thai] Theravada Buddhist temple on the southwest edge of Chicago.
  
A tearful 12-year-old told three monks how another monk had turned off the lights during a tutoring session, lifted her shirt and kissed and fondled her breasts while pressing against her, according to a lawsuit.

• In fairness to the monks, but more so to the abused, they probably do not know that outside of pious Thailand and other Buddhist countries, where this sort of behavior may be tolerated and kept as a terrible secret behind layers of agonizing shame and dysfunctional fear, in this country, "Homey don't play that!" In other words, expect legal troubles. This is not Rome. In no way can this behavior be tolerated, condoned, excused, or covered up. It is the ruin of the monastic Sangha and Buddhism.
• U.S. has about 350 Theravada Buddhist temples 
• Buddhist temple embroiled in bitter dispute
• WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? What would allow monastics to stay on the path rather than endangering themselves, child victims, and Buddhism? Sexual contact is a serious offense; moreover, any kind of penetration means immediate and irreversible defeat and expulsion. Only practicing the meditative absorptions (jhanas) works in the long run, and only liberating insight finally frees one permanently. The Western Buddhist nun Ayya Khema explains this (at Minute 3:25) from first hand experience. This also applies for non-Buddhist clerics and monastics because the absorptions are not limited to the Buddha's teaching.
• VIDEO: "Losing My Religion" (R.E.M.)
  

Editor: Prof. Cabezon, UCSB

Shortly after that meeting, one of the monks sent a letter to the girl's family, saying the temple's monastic community had resolved the matter, the lawsuit says.
   

The "wrong doer had accepted what he had done," wrote P. Boonshoo Sriburin, and within days would "leave the temple permanently" by flying back to Thailand. "We have done our best to restore the order," the letter said.

   

But 11 years later, the monk, Camnong Boa-Ubol, serves at a temple in California, where he says he interacts with children even as he faces a second claim, supported by DNA, that he impregnated a girl in the Chicago area.

   

Monastics are often beset by defilements.

Sriburin acknowledges that restoring order did not involve stopping Boa-Ubol from making the move to California. And it did not involve issuing a warning to the temple there. Wat Dhammaram didn't even tell its own board of directors what happened with the monk, he said.

"We have no authority to do anything. … He has his own choice to live anywhere," Sriburin said.

   

A Tribune review of sexual abuse cases involving several Theravada Buddhist temples found minimal accountability and lax oversight of monks accused of preying on vulnerable targets.

   

Because they answer to no outside ecclesiastical authority, the temples respond to allegations as they see fit. And because the monks are viewed as free agents, temples claim to have no way of controlling what they do next. More

Documentary: A Thai Buddhist temple in Florida (Thomas Livezey)

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Sexual Abuse Isn't Just a Catholic Issue.

I may be wrong on this but it seems rare to hear of a sexual abuse scandal in the Buddhist world but there has been one brewing for some time now in the American Zen circle:

"This article, among other revelations, presents a face of Zen not ordinarily visible to the general public. That is, how well known Zen rōshis and leading Zen figures spoke and acted; or failed to speak and act, in the face of deeply troubling allegations and really severe problems. Thereby, the article also points to the underlying interests of these rōshis.

The letter makes it clear that the teachers have heard first hand reports of Eido Shimano's activities directly from a number of the women involved. The repetitive nature of the allegations over a three decade period during which these alleged transgressions occurred without any formal public investigation or adequate resolution was so great that it motivated eight prominent Zen leaders from across America to sign the document, in the name of the greater North American Zen Maha-Sangha."

James: These are some of the allegations that really seem to show the Roshi as having acted highly inappropriately. If true, (and they seem true) he has also defaced and mocked the American Zen tradition. As well as Buddhism in general:

Over the past three decades, we have interviewed many former students of Shimano Roshi. Their stories are consistent: trust placed in an apparently wise and compassionate teacher, only to have that trust manipulated in the form of his sexual misconduct and abuse. Some of these students elected to continue their practice with us; most of them wanted nothing further to do with Zen Buddhism.

James: This is extremely serious. This trusted monk was supposed to show people how to liberate themselves from suffering--not increase their suffering!! What an appalling perversion of Buddhism!! And he allegedly did it multiple times over DECADES!! He not only allegedly abused them but he has also lead people astray from the path, which is a very egregious action in Buddhism. And if other Zen teachers knew of these transgressions and did nothing about it are just as culpable in my view. A lot of Buddhists believe it is rare to find the path of the Buddha and to lead people astray from it is to hold the enlightenment of fledgling beings in the palm of your hand and then tossing that into a deep, dark and muddy hole. The karma that such a false leader incurs must be enormous.

There is a saying in a Jataka which can be summarized as follows: “When a herd of cattle is traveling, if the leading bull strays, the whole herd goes astray. So it is with the people. If the appointed leader practices adhamma or unrighteousness, the multitude will also practise it. The whole nation will suffer if that one fails to abide by the Dhamma. When a herd of cattle is traveling, if the leading bull keeps to the proper course, the whole herd will do the same. So it is with the people. If the appointed leader abides by the Dhamma, the multitude will do likewise. The whole nation will be content if the leader upholds the Dhamma. This Buddhist saying is quite clear. The behavior of the leader is of great consequence to the masses as they will inevitably follow his example."

James: The Vinaya, which is a body of rules of monastics states, "Like a person, whose head is cut off, is unable to live with that mutilated body, a bhikkhu having associated with sex becomes a non-samana and non-sakyan-son (i.e. loses his monkhood and the membership among the Buddha’s sangha)." It might be tempting by some to ignore this uncomfortable issue but if we truly believe the essence of Buddha's message was to help others over-come suffering then we owe it to these victims, and even the Roshi himself to address this completely. It is so sad that this drove some people away from Buddhism but regardless, I hope that they find the peace and relief from suffering that they deserve.

~Peace to all beings~

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