0
POPSFrom Russia With Love:Prime Minister Putin
Foreign investments, though at record levels, remain less than 3% of GDP, on the whole foreigners remain reluctant - not to say scared stiff - to touch Russia. Worse yet, though foreign investments have grown, they usually go to mineral extraction, not to production of finished goods. During Putin's reign oil and gas production nearly trebled, to nearly a full third of the entire economy, and four-fifths of all exports. Putin initially capped government spending and ended the derelict printing of cash, last year - according to The Economist - the state bureaucracy expanded by more than 50% to 828,000 people, while government spending rose 20%. PUTIN'S MAIN message has been that the demise of communism and the Warsaw Pact, and even the arrival of former communist states in the EU and NATO, don't yet spell freedom's historic victory. The world has been introduced to a new authoritarianism, one which emulates the kind overseen a generation ago by Chile's Augusto Pinochet
6
POPSPostcard From Jail I see parallels to Guantanamo too. Are we making or breaking criminals? Are we making or breaking terrorists? I don't think unjust treatment or cruel heavy-handedness is doing us any favours. Take away dignity and you have hate.
8
POPSStrange Laws While this is occurring half-way around the world from where I sit and has no real impact on my life, I still find it interesting because of the implecations to religious thought here. No direct correlation exists as far as blasphemy laws here in the States (yet!) but it does point to the cultural bias against religious criticism here in the US.
17
POPSAmerica's "BRUTAL Approach to Punishment. "
Inextricably linked to the long history of racial inequality, with blacks put away in numbers vastly disproportionate to their overall population. The states with the highest ratio of prisoners per population are all former slave states with long traditions of jailhouse brutality, chain gangs and other barbaric practices: Louisiana (816 prisoners per 100,000 people), Texas (694) and Mississippi (669). In many states, blacks are up to 15 times as likely as whites to find themselves behind bars. In Florida, one in three adult black men has a criminal record. Some trends are more recent - tied, in particular, to the mania for tough-on-crime legislation that has swept state after state in the past 25 years. The national prison population up 400% since 1980, the increase fuelled in particular by the "war on drugs" and incarceration of petty drug offenders. Exacerbated a host of problems from overcrowding to prison rape to the formation of ultra-violent prison gangs, many racial
5
POPSWhat is a gang? I read this yesterday and I could see a lot of truth in it. Think Becker's labelling theory for a start. :)
1
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update