Kruel Koncentration Kamp

08-13-2010

Dear kruel world,

What´s it going to take? How many more of us must die before someone steps in and stops this control unit´s moves from destroying your brothers, sons and nephews? Is there a lack of belief on everybody´s part because I came across as unstable and untrustworthy? Maybe I am nuts, maybe I am insane, I´ll grant everybody that. But maybe that´s a prerequisite for surviving this… this place. .. these walls… these words:

“So that I don´t have to drag myself to the door, I stay in front of it. All that I have sits in this hollow with me. I prop my mattress up against the door for a backrest. These officers (peterson, randall, stephens, sgt. lund), delight to kick the door, especially so when they know I´m either asleep or writing.

I´m forced by these officers to be stark naked for more than five years; enduring a triple gum abcess, broken teeth, lost filling for over eleven years; being repeatedly starved and dehydrated; have all of my possessions stole repeatedly.”

Damn huh! Those World War II holocaust victims had it bad, right? Of course they did. But would you believe me if I said these words were written only three days ago by a fifty-three year old man in Utah´s Uinta One Control Unit? Only three cells away from myself I´ve sat in witness to this man Mr John Chaney #123899 torture and starvation and sleep deprivation and sexual harrassments and even religious taunts and oppressions. These words you read are dated August 9^th 2010. These words are why the UTDOC won´t allow any of us media interviews. These words are why Mr Chaney does not receive Prison Watch´s letters mailed to him repeatedly. And why Mr Chaney´s letters he mails out do not make their destinations. These words:

Concerning food: “Officers steal it more frequently than I am given it.”

When he contacted the doctor: “Dr Tubbo came around and stated ´We don´t care and we don´t have to, I´m glad I´m not in your body.”

“Then nearly a year passed in very great discomfort and I´m stricken with scurvy. I asked for help again. The doctor looked at me and asked if my bones always stuck out like they do. I confirmed so. I was given breakfast drink. I can´t count the number of times I´ve eaten it dry” (they turn off his water, etc.).

He ends concerning his religion: “I shall not be guilty, though it cost my life. I am Yeshua´s and YHWH´s friend. I am willing and pleased to die for them. Amen.”

I don´t hear anyone laughing out there. You guys don´t find this at all funny? That´s fucking strange, because these “corrections officers” find this man´s condition and treatment hilarious. Even some of my fellow captives caper and prance around for the benefit and show of these officers. It gets to be so slap-ass happy everyone seems to forget a crippled man is lying huddled against his cell door. Unshaven and hair uncut for almost fifteen years. Unaware that maybe any day another body bag will be popped out and unfurled and unzipped. Then rezipped…

Then I suppose it´s only fair and just that we forget all about sgt fairbanks´ threats to Mr Chaney. Don´t want to get any of the upstanding good guy Mormons in hot water do we? (if you notice traces of anger you´re dead correct).

09-14-2010

One month shy of today and still nothing has been done to correct these abuses and inhumanities. On this day Mr Chaney told me that in the past sgt lund, feikert, fairbanks, scott and officers stated to him that “We´re going to kill you just real slowly so no one gets in trouble.” He came to prison weighing 190 lbs. And now is below 100lbs. He states he only gets one or two meals a week. If that. His exact words:

“I´m going to go pray. I will ask God, my heart palpitates and I become dizzy because I´m weak. I black out and I´m unable to stand. These guards will not provide me anything to stand up with. My body and legs hurt. I´ve written many organizations, etc. No responses. I don´t believe my mail´s delivered.”

This building houses 97 prisoners. Each and everyone of these captives knows about Mr Chaney´s dire straights. Hundreds of men have come and left over the years. Thousands of men know what the UT DOC has buried in its closet. All the guards know about this man´s condition. Along with medical staff and administration.

It´s time for the world to see and pass judgement on what´s occurring here in this building. You see, we Utahns are the only Americans to use the firing squad. We Utahns, and Mormons, believe in blood debts where the spilling of the guilty´s blood is the only way to pay for your sins. We Utahns have district attorneys who brag about signing death warrants on “twitter.” And a board of pardons and parole who hand out three more years for obtaining diploma´s and completing substance abuse therapy.

We Utahns support the prison policy of placing the mentally ill and legally mentally retarded in the hole for years on end. Decades on end. We Utahns have the upstanding retired executive directors Gary Deland and Lane McCotter who started and ran, after stepping down in Utah amid scandal, Iraq´s infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

I quote mr Deland in an April 2010 Deseret News article concerning our firing squad executions which the man boasts of writing the book on. Quote: “I go down about 30 minutes or so before the execution. I just feel if you claim to believe in capital punishment, and you´re not pulling the trigger (5), you need to be able to look the guy in the eye that´s going down and spend some time talking to him.”

Now this is a call to uphold such magnanimous behaviour on the part of the Utah department of corrections. I ask the modern day directors: Thomas E. Patterson, Robyn Williams, Mike Haddon, Lowell Clark, and Steven Turley to follow in Mr Deland´s footsteps.

If you, modern day directors, believe in starvation, torture, religious persecution, sleep deprivation, cruelty, sexual harassment, retaliation, prejudice for filing complaints, intimidation, etc, etc, and the keeping of a man, a fifty three year old man with scurvy and broken teeth with abcesses, so emotionally scarred and bruised he´s afraid to even ask for dental screenings or visits, after fifteen years at the hands of the cowardly public servants like sgts feikert, scott and lund, and officers ritter, fouret, bartolotti, randall, peterson, nelson and stephens; and you´re not the ones kicking his door all night as he sleeps, or refusing him water out of his sink, food or even access to a bible that´s not torn up each chance officers get; if you´re not these men, “killing (him) slowly so no one gets in trouble, ” then you need to look the guy that´s going down in the eye and spend some time talking to him!

I mean, that is, if you believe in that sort of stuff, and allow it year after year, you kind of owe it to the man to attempt to look him in the eye as he looks up from the ground at you, quivering and smelling of rot, eye twitching, with swollen jaws and cheeks and “bones sticking out.”

Because this man is right here. Today I requested of him to sing “Yesterday” by The Beatles. He barely could! Today I witnessed him not getting fed and I heard him being taunted that he doesn´t know the true god and that he is a dirty liar. I listened as officer stephens and officers peterson and randall degraded him in the most disgusting fashion. Again. For the hundredth-thousandth time. They laughed at him as he attempted to defend himself sitting in his “hollow.” Back against the door that they kick and slam the cuffport on.

I´ve got a neighbor with an IQ of 60, who isn´t allowed to move from the hole, because he keeps attempting to obtain reading materials from his friends!

We´ve got the deaf kept without hearing aids and the crippled kept without wheelchairs!

We´ve got 75 year old fed bologna for over nine years. Constantly guarding his dentures and reading glasses from retaliations.

We´ve got 19 year olds in prison for petty burglary, and 8/25/2009 parole dates, catching two 1-15 year sentences and 2012 rehearings of defending themselves from constant harrassments and abuse.

We´ve got 18 year olds with ADHD, clubfeet, deformed hands, learning disabilities (and again mental retardation) being pepper-sprayed and beat, then left to freeze on strip cell with officer Peterson opening outside recreation doors in December.

We´ve got Iraqi refugees whose deaths, so the officers say, will be a cause for celebration. Still!!!

I´m just sick of fucking seeing it and documenting it and being called a liar. Even though it is all on camera and administration has to keep backpedalling to avoid admitting it. Administration has to keep moving new guards and srgts and captains here and there, yet they leave the most sadistic rookies like stains in their coffee mugs, lingering.

So this is just a call to anyone who may consider themselves a progressive or a compassionate soul. I challenge anyone, any organization, to a little one on one face to face with Mr John Chaney. Let´s see you weigh him and look into his yellow blood-shot eyes. Let´s see UTDOC hide this man´s bones sticking out and crumbling abcess teeth.

I welcome everyone again to Utah corrupt (modern day concentration camp) control unit carnival.

In strength (step right up!) and hope,

Brandon Green

Copyright Brandon Green 2010

E7748 outlook

From a concentration camp (Auschwitz) detainee’s diary in Germany during World War II.

E7748 outlook

“You know, if you don’t have the inner strength while you’re here to understand that all outer appearances are a passing show, as nothing beside the great splendor inside us – then things can look very black here indeed.

The misery here is quite terrible and yet late at night when the day has slunk away into the depth behind me, I often walk with a sprint in my step along the barbed wire and then time and again it stirs straight from my heart – the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world!

Utah’s Finest

To protect and serve or belittle and torture?

To me it’s the same, to them I’m not so sure.

Kind of seems like these pigs they feel that

They enjoy our deaths, our suicides, and body bags.

Abu Ghraib wasn’t a fluke or freak of nature,

Those atrocities pale in comparison to what I see here.

Except this stuff’s okay if it were Americans?

Faces filled with expressions of understanding

Loving benevolence as if they’re doing me favors

And I’m deserving of my cage, not a slave here,

Questioning my motives like: why’s he fighting back?

Your corrections made me this way, they’re real as a heart attack.

Also published here.

Pharaoh Obama

Solitary supermax has become me,

Senses numbed, mind gone crazy,

Losing it, lost it, am lost

Freedom you say? How much does it cost

May I pay in this sweat drip from my brow

Years alone or my tired soul you must tell me how

But don’t even whisper ´Believe in the way this system is´

Not a chance, you greedy imperialistic pig

Please stop the wars, open the Mexican border, leave the Middle East alone

Downsize these concentration camps, let my people go!

Money money, that´s all you are about

Amerika´s guilty

The gavel comes down.

3.187´s

Another suicide body being zipped up

To pig laughter, back slapping and such

I´d cry if I could anymore; or seek a hug if they’d

Open this door.

Down with these prisons, down with these lies

Remove these veils from Americans eyes

We come to prison for petty stuff

Get released, return for serious stuff.

Corrections they preach, while driving us mad

They have my body, my uncles and my Dad´s

R.I.P. Spencer Hooper, Danny Gallegos, Ronnie Easterbrook

I’ll remember what this shady system took

2.4 million of us caged,

Growing steadily along with our rage

A stage for anti-imperialist thoughts.

Declaration of Modern Day Independence

All experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed…

 

December 26th, 2009: US led forces raided a home in Kanur province and
pulled eight young men out of their beds, handcuffed them and gunned
them down execution style. The pentagon initially reported that the
victims had been running a bomb factory, although distraught villagers
were willing to swear that the victims, youngsters, age 11-18, were
seven normal school boys and one shepherd boy. Following courageous
reporting by Jerome Starkey (The Times UK), the US military carried
out its own investigation and of February 24th, 2010, issued an
apology, attesting the boys innocence.

…But when the long train of abuses and usurpations pursuant invariably
the same object evinces a design which reduces them under absolute
despotism…

Control Unit prisons confine people to small cells in isolation for
long periods of time. These Control Units are used for political and
social control of prisoners already locked in secure. They target
Black, Latino and First Nations People who are a disproportionate part
of the Control Unit populations (relative to their already
disproportionate representation in prisons in general). While
conditions vary from prison to prison, the goal of these units is
always to achieve the spiritual, psychological and physical breakdown
of the prisoner.

Utah State Prison Modern Day Abu-Ghraib.

Don Harley 74 years old in solitary 8 years.
Jason Dhalquist 10+ years
Ronnie Gardner 20+ years
Paul Payne 20 years
Troy Kell 20 years
Andrew Lindsey 8+ years
Brandon Green 2 years
John Chaney 5 years
Phillip Hart 2 years
Frankie Vilarino 2 years
Travis Wycherly did 4 years (in part) and now going on 1 year

*Some have paroled. Travis, Jason. But they come right back* Wonder Why?

Spencer Hooper deceased 02/19/2009 in solitary.

The United Nations has put forward clear documents outlining
acceptable treatments of prisoners. These documents reaffirm that
prisoners retain fundamental human rights. Control Units are physical
and mental torture and they very clearly violate the human rights of
prisoners.

…It is their right and their duty to throw off such government and to
provide new guard for future security.

February 12th, 2010: US forces raided a home during a party and killed
five people, including a local District Attorney, a local police
commander, two pregnant mothers and a teenage girl to be married. An
April 5th, 2010 New York Time article clarifies that the US troops
engaged in a deliberate cover-up.

Am I some monster? I got drunk and high and bounced a check. I was
twenty at the time. I’ve been in a cell for almost eight years because
of this and I got until 2021 until I even come from under the shadow
of my probation/parole schedule. I’m from a poor family. Do you think
I’d be here in this prison if I was rich? Seriously.

What about the men who supervise our soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan. Do
you think they might be a tad bit over twenty years of age? Then why
do they continue to do these atrocities? Can we blame them because
they’re just a youngester like I was and lock them away?

These people murdered pregnant women. This Control Unit murdered my
friend Mr. Spider Hooper. If an apology is good enough so that no
punishment needs to occur, I apologized for being stupid and bouncing
that check. Why am I still here?

Mr. Spencer Hooper’s family didn’t even get an apology from UTDOC
administration. Just lies and cover-up.

To blame the soldiers who killed in cold blood (accidentally) is like
blaming these “corrections” officers running Unita One. Who are used
to taking orders. Who have been schooled and boot camped into obeying.

But can’t we blame the Sgt. Or the General? I mean, it’s okay to blame
isn’t it? I’m feeling 1-15 years of blame right now for my actions.
What is the Sgt's or Generals feeling? Applause. Handshakes. Sun on
his face?

Whatever happened to the war protesters and beatniks of the 60’s? Is
General McChrystal an ex-beatnik? Because I’m pretty sure Sgt. F.and
Officer S. were/are.

America, you cannot ignore these atrocities. Can you, and be okay
inside? I myself am ashamed and sad. I want to do something about our
country’s stupidity/cruelty. But I’m in one of its torture chambers.
I’m caged like a rat and fed like a mouse. I’m sick with Hepatitis-C
and deranged from talking to myself. What can I even do? I’m sure not
going to turn on the TV (haven’t seen a TV for over two years anyway)
and shrug the old shoulders and walk away.

Let me touch on some points here. Olympus is Utah’s Mental Health
Unit. It’s over flowing so they send the extras right here to Unita
One.

Now Mr. John Chaney came from Olympus the same way Mr. Spider Hooper
did. The reason you haven’t heard from Mr. Chaney is because he has
made himself a covenant with god not to file grievances or drink water
from his sink (I am not joking). His other idiosyncrasies include
defacing his out-going mail with stupid remarks, so his mail never
makes its destination. Mr. Chaney believes himself the one and only
prophet of god.

Now they starve him as my accounts of abuses show. That includes
withholding milks and juices each meal. This man is in a bad way, in
several ways. He can’t stand up. When they force him out of his cell
every six or so months he is dragged out on a mattress. He has been in
prison for almost twenty years and could go home if he’d only attend
the Board of Pardons. But he refuses to do this. Something to do with
his god covenant.
Now add insult to injury. Mr. Chaney is a fundamentalist Latter Day
Saint. A Mormon who still believes in the polygamist doctrine (kind of
like Mr. Warren Jeffs) the old school Mormons. These guards guarding
us are new school Mormons. So Mr. Chaney is a sort of burr in their
dogma saddle.

Also as I just looked out my window and observed several “corrections”
officers goose-stepping while carrying rifles. Must be another run
through for the upcoming execution. Do you ever wonder what these five
men who shoot a defenseless, tied and blindfolded man will do directly
after they murder an inmate? Will they attend a Mormon service and
christen their granddaughter? Maybe go to their son’s T-ball game or
go to the local Chuck-O-Rama restaurant for hot wings.

I personally would be sick for years, for life actually. That’s one
cloud I do not want to be under, no matter the price, no matter the
command, commandment, direct order or law. No sir’ee.

Where was I?

Remember how I explained how the program works here? They take on man,
the ‘undesirable’ as our Nevada Comrades spoke, and place him in a
section. Each section has one of these usually, sometimes two but
usually one. Then they, the guards, pick and pick until it gets the
inmates to pick. Pretty soon the ‘undesirable’ tore up emotionally and
mentally.

Let me touch on this ‘undesirable’ word here. To use that tag is
dangerous, especially when you yourself are an ‘undesirable’ in many
folk’s eyes. It goes like this:
If you’re a free person, you hate prisoners. If you’re a prisoner, you
hate snitches. If you’re a snitch, you hate sex offenders. If you’re
sex offender, you hate murderers. If you are a murderer, you hate free
people (society) for not allowing you to murder. And on and on.

You should see the look on these guards faces when I stick up for
these damn near “picked-clean” individuals. Not to mention the fellow
convicts uneasiness and anger at ignoring the “code” or whatever.
Inmates get mad, too, when their favorite officer gets fired or loses
face.
I’m beyond all of that. I’m beyond giving a single care about what my
upcoming parole chances are after I’ve pretty much taken on the whole
Mormon state; thumbed my nose at them so to speak.

In comparison to our Nevada comrades, which most you are familiar
with, our situation and what’s happening is going to be their
situation if their demands don’t bear fruit. We have nothing, no phone
calls and no visitors. All we can order is stamps, pens and cards
(birthday, mother day, etc.) No books. Sporadic mail. There’s not even
electricity in our cells. The plugs are all cemented over. We do have
light, though it is on 24/7 and we cannot shut them off.

I hope this doesn’t sound weak but its past demands here and more like survival.

But back to Mr. Chaney, after I’ve sort of explained his horrid
condition, look at the abuses. Look at what they’re doing to him. Both
abuser and torture believe God is with them. It’s downright nasty and
horrible and it continues day after day, night after night. The man
withers on his mattress in dehydration fits.

This is just the one section, our section Two. There are seven more
sections at play here, eight in all. Who right now is sitting in
section three or four being abused? If you want to get right down to
it, we all are abused. Long term solitary confinement is considered
torture, at least by the world community and by the United Nations.

Then we look around our country and see Pelican Bay State Prison’s
torture chambers. We see one in Illinois and Colorado’s Florence
facility. Each American state has a solitary, where-as all other
countries have done away with the cruel practice.

This is a shot in the dark here, but I believe along with the US
ignoring torture they’ve ignored UN peace treaties and such in the
Middle East and the Geneva Convention. I remember the whole George W.
Bush controversy. I remember when it was discovered that Iraq had no
weapons of mass destruction. I vividly remember watching the ‘shock
and awe’ bombardment of Iraq from a small house in Monterrey Bay,
California.
I was still a teenager and I was sitting with our puppy and my
girlfriend. I was free then and now I’m not because I made a mistake.
I got drunk and high and thought I was “superman-with-a-checkbook”.
Now I’m paying for that mistake, but why hasn’t America paid for its
mistake? Why is Afghanistan now paying it instead?

I beg somebody to tell me why. I plead for somebody to help me with
any misunderstanding.

According to a March 3rd, 2010 Save the Children report “The world is
ignoring the daily deaths of more than 850 Afghan children from
treatable diseases like Diarrhea and Pneumonia, focusing on fighting
the insurgency rather than providing humanitarian aid”. The report
notes that a quarter of all children born in the country die before
the age of five, while nearly 60 percent of children are malnourished
and suffer from physical or mental problems. The UN Human Development
Index in 2009 says that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in
the world, second only to Niger in sub-Sahara Africa.

Most of my fellow inmates don’t care what happens to Mr. John Chaney.
It seems most of America doesn’t care what happens in Afghanistan. I
keep telling myself, ‘but at least the world and the United Nations
notices and cares about both wrongs’.

Then I am left with the fear that something might have grown callous
in my country after years of seeing such torture and slaughters.
Frankly, it frightens the crap right out of me. I hate to say it but
somebody’s got to. Keep in mind these words from a white
“non-undesirable-classed” convict.

Why all the hate and anger toward a handful of fundamentalist Mormons,
but not a single uneasy glance at the men in charge of these third
world slaughters?

Why such a disparity between the number of non-whites and whites in
prison? Whites, in prison are outnumbered four to one in a country of
80% whites. Are we all racist? If that is a ‘negative’ the why do we
keep voting for more prison expansions?

Why do we spend all this money on Boob Jobs and Viagra when millions
of children starve to death in Africa, Asia, Afghanistan, etc. or die
of preventable diseases?

Why is the American prison system set up for profit? Wouldn’t a
not-for-profit system be more able to focus on “correcting”
individuals? Unless the whole point is to warehouse all non-white
undesirables. No? Maybe the entire nation’s poor?

Why am I the one sitting in a UN declared torture chamber and not the
person who called the Iraq “Shock and awe” disaster? General Petraeus
wasn’t it?

February 21st, 2010: A three car convoy of Afghans was traveling to
the market in Kandahar with plans to proceed from there to a hospital
in Kabul where some of the party could be taken for much needed
medical treatment. US Forces saw Afghans traveling together and
launched an air-to-ground attack on the first car. Women in the second
car immediately jumped out waving their scarves, trying desperately to
communicate that they were civilians. The US Helicopter gunships
continued firing on the now unshielded women. 21 people were killed
and 13 were wounded. General Stanley McChrystal issued a videotaped
apology….
What about General McChrystal?

Who does this guy think he is? A druggie / alcoholic / check bouncer?
What gives him the right to say these sorts of things?

I’m a felon in a Supermax Dungeon. I have no rights, but I am also a
human being with a social conscience who has to live with myself. I’m
the one who has to close my eyes at night and seek an untroubled
sleep. You can call me any name in the book. You can pin on me any
jacket. You can “Undesirable” me to hell and back, but you’ll never
say I didn’t speak up when I saw a wrong committed. You’ll never count
me as one of the living dead.

…The creation of prisons as places designed to break peoples will to
resist, to think and to live is the most compelling testament to the
role of prisons as a means to extermination…

I have every right to just lay down and forget the world’s hypocricies and our country’s social wrongs. Being that I’m ath the very bottom of the gut pile.

…The United $nakes is the world’s leading prison-state per capita. The U.$. imprisons more Black people than did Apartheid South Africa of the era before Mandela was president. The majority of offenders are non-violent offenders and the U.$. government now holds about half a million more prisoners than China; even though China is four times our population. In this so-called “free country” freedom is imprisonment…

What it all boils down to is Uinta One is a control unit that uses long term isolation to break and kill us. And long term isolation is a form of torture condemned by the United Nations. Killing pregnant mothers in Afghanistan is a war crime of the most high.

I don’t think we should be talking about reforming torture or accepting apologies from war criminals. Uinta One should be shut down, along with all Amerikkkan control units, per U.N. Declaration. And General McCrystal should be tried for his crimes per Geneva Convention.

These are the true “undesirables.” The true “criminals.”

In strength (no apologies) and struggle,

B.

Also published on: Utah Prison Watch

We've Nowhere to Go!

If I was to break this whole mess (prison) down into a simpler single term it would just be survival; a group of human beings attempting to survive and see another day and to breathe another breath even if it’s a painful breath.

A little larger look and we have these suicide bombers in the Middle East killing American troops. Their actions, even though they look very far from it, are about survival; right? I mean, do you think a person would blow himself and hundreds of people up, just because of hate? I don’t think so personally. There has to be some love inside their heads. Maybe love for their wives and children who’ve been killed and are being killed, because of the U.S. military occupations over there, the U.S. need for oil. No?

Survival: Simply to survive another day.

We were all born to a mother with this ingrained need to survive, To Live. We all have a mom whether that person is Iraqi or American. It all equals the same thing - human beings, homo-sapiens, surviving.

Now to look back on a past picture maybe. You have all seen the bloodthirsty media’s depiction of an “Indian” with scalps at his belt and blood on his tomahawk. The old west’s “Terrorist” depiction. But if you’ll check history you’ll find that this Indian learned scalping from the men he was fighting against for survival.

Sort of like the way that 19 year old in prison for petty joyriding charges learned rage, hopelessness and cruelty from keepers. People like Curtis Algier (* a Utah man who killed an officer on transport to the University Medical Center*) don’t just step on the scene readymade with batteries included. These Killers are created by their environments.

And please everyone these words are not apologist, justifying words to make a person’s wrongs seem right. These are just objective, reality based conclusions.
Picture if a man at your local Wal-Mart purposely placed small-pox or let’s say some sort of AIDS infection inside your Christmas purchases or bed linen for the family. Both scourges would kill your loved ones but let’s say you survived. Would you not make it your duty to make sure that the man’s blood was soon on your fist, your Tomahawk?

History has shown what men have done that to other men. The small-pox riddled blankets traded to American Indians, purposely - and survival was a factor in this. The men who gave the blankets out were attempting to survive. They were afraid for their lives and the lives of their children. These Indians were also attempting to survive and fought back against men who were killing their wives and children.
But who was the man who crossed the other man’s threshold?

In modern day parlance if you catch an intruder in your house you legally can shoot him. The first nations people (“Indians”) were and are just that, “First” Nations people.

The pox-blankets of old can be compared to the hummer-tank-underside equipped vehicles the military used today in Iraq / Afghanistan. You’ve all seen those huge sand colored armored vehicles with the V-shaped bottoms to prevent causalities and loss of limb. To prevent Death. To increase survival.

But who’s on whose threshold: Who’s in whose house to speak?
An Iraqi all suited up for war cruising the streets of downtown Salt Lake City would need more than an armored truck. An “Indian”, in days gone by, if he by some weird twist of fate landed on the European mainland and was walking downtown London with war paint and bow and arrow, would need armored truck and more.

I just question why it is that a certain man can cross other men’s threshold and socially this is okay. I wonder why certain men can assault, torture, murder, steal from, starve, sexually harass etc, etc. etc. and because he is a cop or “corrections officer” be free from mans laws. Because Phillip, Andrew, John, Donald, Travis, Spencer, Curtis, William, Paul, etc. and myself are being handed pox-riddled conditions / environments / treatments daily. They’re killing us and in some cases like Curtis Algiers “almost” killing us, poking us with a cruel stick through the bars of our cages so many times that we become snappish, and then releasing us back into society.

And why you ask would they do this? Again it is about survival. The DOC and BOP needs you to be scared of us, (the U.S. needs you to fear Iraqi’s and terrorists) so they expand. So they can justify 2.4 million of us in chains. Justify these wars on drugs and on terror. Because so many folks count on the system for livelihood. And expansion means money…
In essence the American people pay these men and women by way of their taxes to hand out pox-riddled blankets. And not to just anybody either; to your frightened sons, nephews, fathers, grandfathers and fellow man you do this, you pay for this to be done.
Sure death, an end to survival, was the climatic result of pox-blankets. To look at the statistics of these prisons, what they create one could not argue that sure death wasn’t ultimately the final outcome. But sure death comes in many forms. Look at H.I.V. and some cancers. They take time some of these.

The boy that grows up without his father because of an overzealous prison system and ends up lost on drugs, and ultimately overdoses is sure death.

The half-man half-boy who paroles all twitchy and nervous at twenty years old who is unable to find employment because of his record or lack of job skills (*PTSD* Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Unita One parolees cases) and robs somebody just to eat is sure death, eventually.

The girl who was placed in foster care, because both parent waste away in prison
cells for drug charges and pursues an unclean lifestyle that involves AIDS and the transmission of this to hundreds is sure death for many.

War on Drugs you say?

A war on families, on survival, is more like it. A war on our lost children!?

I mean, the crime rate stays the same. It has for decades. Just look into it. But these prisons grow. Why?

And I speak all this and you might question: “If this system was so corrupt and hurting so many then why isn’t the crime rate increasing because those mind scrambled, then paroled, released, etc.” Let me just say too, the crime rate hasn’t lowered either.

But the reason again is survival. The whole in-justice system is about that. A man can survive, however dismally situated, for a quite a whole within this shady system. They know this. He will survive long enough to perpetuate the mass hysteria of a war on crime by being a paroled ‘nut-case’ and providing that ever present Ten-o-clock news high speed chase. Long enough to bring some friends and family members down with him to fill the prison bed space.

Then he’ll die. Then it starts all over again with his son, nephew or brother. By the time he’s served his purpose as the boogeyman “criminal” there should be enough beds open, because of expansion, for all three. *Hello parasitic job security*

68% recidivism rate for inmates paroled from general population. 88% from control units like Unita One. What’s the fastest growing prison type? Control Units! Why? Better odds for those that profit from this system. This system of ‘more-equals-more-money’: more job security. More harsh punishments. More War. More Oil. More ‘turning of a mass blind eye’ to a system that’s proven not to work.

Where do we go from here? More pox-blankets anyone? Please, no.

In strength (brutal reality) and hope,
Brandon G.