Watch these USA military Preps before anything else. What Ae they Preparing For?:
The Chinese Ad for the Euro 2012 or part of it.It caused rational worries
The Clash,Still My favourite band. But British Airways Made this unfortunate commercial out of a dead legendary band.What’s the connection if any?
In this song they sing about OIL Resources.
Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin’ to the top
The sheik he drove his cadillac
He went a’ cruisnin’ down the ville
The muezzin was a’ standing
On the radiator grille
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy casbah sound
But the bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
Now over at the temple
Oh! they really pack ’em in
The in crowd say it’s cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy casbah jive
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the casbah way
As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare
As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
He thinks it’s not kosher
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Fundamentally he can’t take it.
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
You know he really hates it.
On the ’79 original version of the London Calling they sing about a MeltDown.
London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared, and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls
London calling, now don’t look to us
Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain’t got no swing
‘Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing
The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river
London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, you can go it alone
London calling to the zombies of death
Quit holding out, and draw another breath
London calling, and I don’t wanna shout
But while we were talking, I saw you nodding out
London calling, see we ain’t got no high
Except for that one with the yellowy eyes
The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river
Now get this
London calling, yes, I was there, too
An’ you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial
After all this, won’t you give me a smile?
London calling
I never felt so much alike [fading] alike alike alike
Hey My question is WHY the hell a PUNK ROCK group I so Loved had to get Involved in all That. The Olympics,The conspiracies and of course the Big Oil?Since everything points at the Big OIL and the Big PHARMA.. There are no Olympic Games. That is for the sightseeing.
Take a look at the British Airways Commercial: the plane almost crashes onto the stadium and the message is “Dont Fly.. Stay Here..” for what? only UK people will ever know. IF they will ever Know!Good Luck guys Really Hope Nothing Happens Over there
Hey hi ) I dont agree 100% with Alex Jones,Infowars or /and Jesse Ventura but I have to admit they both hit a nerve. Something wasn’t adding up in both disasters.Something wasn’t right. And I say that as an ex Oil Engineer/Researcher.Something wasn’t right from the beginning. My apologies it took me so long to end up on this one.concentrating all theories which.. BTW.. they are not conspiracies.. Those are your only reality.. Scroll back at my older Oil posts.. something is Greasy,many interests not even in conflict but working together.
Digitization of the British Medical Journal and its forerunners (1840-1996) was completed by the U.S. National Library of
Medicine (NLM) in partnership with The Wellcome Trust and the Joint Information SystemsCommittee (JISC) in the UK.
This content is also freely available on PubMed Central.
Department of Urban Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122-2585, USA
Allen M Hornblum, instructor
Correspondence to: 7100 Bustleton Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19149, USA
BMJ 1997;315:1437-41
Summary points:
From the early years of this century, the use of prison inmates as raw material for medical
experiments became an increasingly valuable component of American scientific research
Testimony by American medical experts at Nuremberg allowed American physicians and
researchers to believe that the Nuremberg Code was directed only at Nazi scientists Postwar
American research grew rapidly as prisoners became the backbone of a lucrative system
predicated on utilitarian interests
On 20 August 1947 Gerhard Rose, one of Germany’s most respected physicians, stood in the prisoner’s
dock at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, awaiting his sentence for “murders, tortures, and
other atrocities committed in the name of medical science.” Dr Rose, the department head for tropical
medicine of the Robert Koch Institute, was on trial along with 22 of his medical colleagues, for perpe-
trating “ghastly” and “hideous” experiments on concentration camp prisoners during the war.1
At one point in the trial when the chief prosecution witness, Dr. Andrew C. Ivy of the medical school of
the University of Illinois, underscored the basic principle “that human experimental subjects must be
volunteers,” Dr Rose and his defence counsel vigorously objected, arguing that the United States was
guilty of similar medical practices and giving several examples to support this contention.1
Early experiments on prisoners in US
The Nazi doctor’s first example of American complicity concerned the medical experiments of Dr Richard P
Strong, who performed a series of studies in 1906 with “cholera virus upon inmates of the Bilibid Prison in
Manila.” The Philippine Islands experiment on prisoners already sentenced to death resulted in 13 fatalities
and was eventually attributed to a bottle of bubonic plague serum having been substituted mistakenly for a
bottle of cholera serum.2,5
Strong, who later became professor of tropical medicine at Harvard University, was not deterred by the
error and continued experiments on Philippine prisoners. His beriberi experiments six years later also
resulted in death, but survivors were compensated with cigars and cigarettes.
Another German physician on trial for his life at Nuremberg, Dr. Georg August Weltz, the chief of the
Institute for Aviation Medicine in Munich, offered the name of another American doctor who used prisoners
on behalf of medical science. Dr Joseph Goldberger, a public health official, sought to unravel the mystery
of pellagra, a deadly and at times disfiguring disease that was particularly virulent in the southern United
States.
Goldberger parted company with medical colleagues who blamed the disease on everything from poor
sanitation and personal habits to spoiled corn and flawed hereditary traits for the disease. He believed
pellagra was due to the provincial and poor diet in the south, which supplied calories but not protein.
Milk, vegetables, and fresh meat, he theorised, were the missing staples.
To prove his theory, Goldberger convinced Gover nor Earl Brewer of Mississippi to allow him to perform
an experiment on a dozen inmates of Rankin Farm prison. His plan was simple: to “induce pellagra in
white adult males, the one group in the population that statistics had shown was the least likely to contract
the disease.”6 The inmate volunteers after a promise of a pardon where gradually weened away from their
normal diet and given a steady supply of cornbread, sweet potatoes, grits, and rice. Complaints grew as the
men suffered from lethargy, dizziness, and pains in their backs, sides, and legs. Soon skin lesions began to
appear and the “red flame” of pellagra was identified on each of the test subjects. The governor kept his
promise and pardoned the men. One test subject said he had been through “a thousand hells,” whereas
another swore he would choose a “lifetime of hard labor” rather than go through such a “hellish experiment”
again.6
As part of their defence strategy, the Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg named other examples of dubious
human experimentation in American prisons, but those few cases paled in comparison to what transpired
after Nuremberg.Though American doctors, lawyers, and justices at the Doctors’ Trial excoriated Nazi
physicians and denounced the German medical establishment for horrific and pseudoscientific experiments
on prisoners, the American medical community disassociated itself from the implications of the trial and
from the subsequent code of ethical research principles-the Nuremberg Code-that all doctors were supposed
to observe. By the end of the war, America’s rapidly emerging scientific dominance was not to be hamstrung
by a code of medical conduct that was perceived by the American Medical Association to be directed
specifically towards “the brutalities of Nazi physicians.”7 Moreover, even though American jurists enumerated
10 human rights principles to safeguard the lives of research subjects-and imposed the death penalty on
seven members of the Nazi medical hierarchy for violating such principles-self interest, utilitarianism, and
the aura of science militated against the adoption of the Nuremberg Code in the United States. Research
subjects, particularly prisoners, were considered too valuable.
The realisation that incarcerated criminals had new utility as human guinea pigs did not emerge until the
second world war. Earlier efforts at using prisoners were not embraced by the orthodox medical community,
which thought such practices were the preserve of unsophisticated medical eccentrics investigating offbeat
scientific theories. For example, between 1918 and 1922 a doctor in the state prison system in California
was “transplanting testicles from recently executed convicts to senile and devitalized men.”8 By 1920, the
procedure had been altered so that “animal glands were substituted for the human and were grafted to the
recipient’s testes.” Dr L L Stanley, the resident physician at San Quentin Prison (California), where the operations
were performed, recommended that the material to be used was “best taken from a ram, goat or boar” aged
between a year and 18 months. Hundreds of San Quentin inmates received injections of animal testicular
substance; some received a piece of ram’s testicle the size of a silver dollar, which was implanted into the
scrotum or abdominal wall. The innovative researcher on prisoners was convinced that the procedures had
a “decided effect” on everything from “general athenia” to renewed “sexual stimulation.” He also believed
he was “fortunate” the operations-which he called “practically painless and harmless”-could be carried out
in a prison because of the regimented lifestyle of prisoners.8
San Quentin inmates received testicular implants
One prewar experiment that was less dramatic than testicular transplants, but captured the public’s attention due to extensive newspaper coverage, was the series of tuberculosis experiments
at Denver’s National Jewish Hospital in 1934. After years of trials
on animals, Dr H J Corper claimed a tuberculosis vaccine he had been developing was “now ready for trial on human beings.”9
Two convicts from the Colorado Penitentiary were selected as
the guinea pigs from the 800 who had volunteered for the risky experiment after Governor Edwin C Johnson offered executive clemency to the survivors. Carl Erickson, one of the lucky inmates chosen, said: “I don’t want to die, I volunteered to help so I could
get out of here.”10 Mike Schmidt, his partner in the experiment, was equally suspicious of his good fortune: “I don’t exactly relish the
idea of making an experiment out of myself.”11 Though Schmidt became very ill during the course of the experiment, newspapers eventually proclaimed “Tuberculosis test a success” and the men were granted their freedom.12 Interestingly, not all reviews of the Denver experiment were favourable. One critic, apparently more concerned about crime than disease, commented: “We fail to see any excuse for releasing upon the community two life term fellows because they didn’t
get tuberculosis when inoculated with a prepara tion of microscopic bugs.”13
For the most part, however, experiments on prisoners during the early decades of the century were uncommon
medical oddities of dubious worth. Surprisingly, the practice received a big boost with the outbreak of the second
world war. With American soldiers fighting and dying in Europe and the South Pacific, a whole new industry
utilising “human material” was about to emerge that would shape researchers’ behaviour for decades to come.
The second world war
By the summer of 1942, American prisoners in state penal systems had embarked on a series of dangerous
medical experiments, including injections of blood from beef cattle as a new source of plasma, atropine studies,
and experiments with sleeping sickness, sandfly fever, and dengue fever.14,15 Federal prisoners were recruited
to participate in medical experiments that ran the gamut from exposure to gonorrhoea and malaria to induction
of gas gangrene.16
One of the more widely publicised prison experiments during the war years, and one that was mentioned
prominently at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, was the series of malaria studies at Stateville Penitentiary in
Illinois. Over 400 prisoners were involved in this two year study investigating treatment and purported cure
of malaria. One popular account of the experiment was Nathan Leopold’s book, Life Plus 99 Years. An
enthusiastic participant in the dangerous study, Leopold was one of the famous killers in the 1924 Leopold
and Loeb case. He proudly proclaimed that even though the inmates had to contend with periodic mosquito
bites, raging fevers, nausea, vomiting, blackouts, endless untested medicinal potions, and occasional relapses,
“no one squawked. They all took it like men.”17 The highly publicised Stateville Prison malaria experiments
received much public praise. An editorial in one newspaper proudly wrote that “these one-time enemies to
society appreciate to the fullest extent just how completely this is everybody’s war.”18
The war years had become the transforming moment for human experimentationInmates received a dollar or two a day for participating in this skin study in the 1950’s. in America and particularly
for penal institutions as a site of such scientific
endeavors. What had once been a small, underf-
unded, unsophisticated cottage industry had
blossomed into a well financed, broad clinical
research programme investigating avant garde
procedures, cures, and treatments. Human
experimentation had been legitimised and
prisoners had become the guinea pigs of
choice for scores of inspired researchers.
Public opposition to such medical initiatives
was scant The overriding goal was to win the
war in Europe and Asia; everything else was
secondary, including research ethics and the
issue of consent Millions of American fighters
were risking life and limb daily; at the very least, lawbreakers could contribute to the war effort with
similar commitment And they did. One close observer described it as “another shining light in the galaxy of wartime achievement” by imprisoned Americans.19
Curiously, once the war was over, there was no decline of medical experimentation in prisons. Battlefield victories were replaced by medical triumphs as the focus of governmental concern, and prisoners were once again the subjects of choice for research.
The eradication of disease had become the enemy, and postwar budgetary priorities supported this societal
mission. For example, in the last year of the war, the National Institute of Health received about $700 000,
which had climbed to $36 million by 1955, and over 10 times that just 10 years later. In 1970, $1.5 billion
was awarded to some 11 000 grant applicants, nearly a third of them performing experimentation.20 Called
“the gilded age of research” by Professor David
Rothman, this new era of laissez-faire attitudes in the laboratory ushered in a frenzy for research on prisoners
that lasted for over a quarter century.20 Rothman argues that a “utilitarian ethic” was able to dominate the field
of human experimentation because “the benefits seemed so much greater than the costs” and because “there
were no groups or individuals prominently opposing such an ethic.21
Postwar experimentation
One individual who contributed greatly to the postwar acceptance of prisoners as appropriate subjects for research
was Andrew C. Ivy, an eminent researcher and vice president of the University of Illinois Medical School. Asked by
the American Medical Association to be its representative at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial and the prosecution’s key witness on American medical ethics, Ivy testified to the high ethical standards of American researchers during the
war, including those working in penal institutions. No American prisoner, Ivy reiterated, had ever been experimented
on against his will. Defence counsel strongly objected to Ivy’s sanitised portrayal of American prison research and peppered him with questions about numerous penal experiments both before and during the war.22 Dr Ivy remained intransigent; he did not believe that official coercion was necessarily inherent in a prison environment and restated
his belief that prisoners in the United States had a choice as to whether they should participate in clinical
experiments. Ivy articulated three “principles” for establishing ethical prison research: if “the consent of the subject
was obtained”; if the experiment was based on “animal experimentation”; and if it was directed by “scientifically
qualified persons” the medical procedure was acceptable.22 For American researchers anxious to utilise the
thousands of potential subjects behind bars, Ivy’s emphasis on acquiring voluntary consent from experimental
subjects represented a seal of approval. In fact, the seal of approval came less than a year after the Doctors’ Trial,
when the journal of the American Medical Association published a “special article” that endorsed the “ideal”
medical practice used in the Stateville malaria experiments, where Ivy claimed his principles had been
implemented.23
Although the Doctors’ Trial culminated in the establishment of the Nuremberg Code-whose first principle emphasised that the human subject “should have legal capacity to give consent … exercise free power of choice, without the
element of force … constraint or coercion”-the American medical Community either claimed ignorance of the
document or ignored it.24 The first principle of the code seemed to preclude the use of prisoners, but Ivy, America’s
star witness on medical ethics, extolled the virtues of just such scientific practices. The muddy ethical waters that resulted from the dual codes allowed American medical researchers to follow their own moral guidelines or
utilitarian interests.
The result was tremendous expansion in prison experimentation in postwar America. Federal prisoners, for
example, were enlisted in a broad range of clinical studies that included athlete’s foot, histoplasmosis, infectious hepatitis, syphilis, and amoebic dysentery, and in additional malaria experiments.25 State prisoners were
considered to be equally valuable and were soon utilised for studies of syphilis, malaria, influenza, viral hepatitis,
and flash burns “which might result from atomic bomb attacks.26,30 Some of these postwar medical initiatives were scientifically unsound and placed prisoners at great risk. Louis Boy, for example, a prisoner in Sing Sing (New York), volunteered to become a human blood cleaning agent for a young “girl dying of cancer.”31 For 24 hours the prisoner
and the 8 year old girl were laid side by side, “their circulatory systems linked together with rubber tubing,” in the
hope that her cancerous “poisoned blood” would be cleansed as it proceeded through his body. Unfortunately, the
risky experiment proved unsuccessful and the girl died. However, public interest in the human drama resulted in the prisoner, a lifer, receiving a Christmas gift from the governor-his freedom.32
In the 1950s, American prisons hosted an increasing variety of non-therapeutic medical experiments, some of
which captured national headlines because of the perceived dangers of the tests. The Ohio state prison system,
for example, allowed researchers from the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research to inject over 100 inmates
with live cancer cells. The study was designed to examine “the natural killing off process of the human body”;
inmates were informed they faced “no grave danger. Any cancer that took would spread slowly … and could be
removed surgically.”33 One physician intimate with the study four decades ago recently said that prisoners were a
“stable group of people” that contributed to the “assurance of continuity.” Researchers, he argued, clearly found it ”
more difficult to work with unrestrained, unrestricted” test subjects (C. Southam, personal communication).
Prison experiments during the 1960s
By the 1960s, new drug testing regulations mandated by the Food and Drug Administration permitted
increased human experimentation as large pharmaceutical companies sought stronger relationships with
penal institutions. Phase I drug testing now required larger pools of healthy subjects for non-therapeutic
experiments, and using hospital patients was thought to be inadequate. Prisoners, on the other hand, were in
abundance and, as one pharmaceutical company researcher commented, “guaranteed to show up” (G. Wachs,
personal communication).
The rush to acquire prison testing sites, combined with a relaxed ethical atmosphere and little governmental
oversight, provided a financial opportunity for some opportunistic physicians, while at the same time jeopardising
the health of the unsophisticated test subjects. One of the best examples of this unfortunate but all too common
scenario was the controversial career of Dr. Austin Stough. Claimed to have grossed close to $1 million a year, Stough-and the pharmaceutical companies he worked for profited handsomely, while the inmates he used were
made ill and some even died in an extended series of drug tests and blood plasma projects in Oklahoma,
Arkansas, and Alabama.34
Stough’s high volume plasmapheresis programme attracted great commercial interest, but his poorly trained staff
and shoddy operations resulted in inmate volunteers receiving the wrong blood type and as many as 30 inmates
a month contracting viral hepatitis. “They’re dropping like flies out here,” wrote one alarmed inmate to the outside world.34 Throughout the 1960s the use of prisoners as research subjects remained popular as prisons tested
everything from tropical diseases and respiratory infections to infectious hepatitis and “pain tolerance studies.35,39
In rare cases, some prisons became super-markets of investigatory opportunity for zealous physicians representing aggressive private and public sector institutions. In Holmesburg Prison, for instance, a county facility in Philadelphia,
an array of studies explored everything from simple detergents and diet drinks to dioxin and chemical warfare agents. The long list of sponsors included major pharmaceutical houses and diverse entities such as RJ Reynolds, Dow Chemical, and the United States Army.40
The end of prison experimentation
By the early 1970s, social and political indifference to human experimentation had begun to shift. Events as
disparate as drug scares (thalidomide), hospital embarrassments (the use of 22 senile patients for live cancer cell studies at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in New York City), alarming articles in professional journals
(Dr Henry Beecher’s analysis of unethical medical studies41), and popular books (Jessica Mitford’s Kind and Usual Punishment39) contributed to a growing repugnance towards scientific experiments on unwitting and institutionalised populations. By 1973, with the controversial revelations surrounding the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, lawmakers
and the general public had been chastened by the cavalier use of vulnerable populations for non-therapeutic medical studies.
Legislation was beginning to be introduced “to limit the use of prison inmates in medical research”42; prison administrators were voicing “serious doubts about the ability of prisoners to volunteer for any form of medical research”43; and prison research programmes were being terminated, especially the more controversial
ones such as the decade-long studies in Oregon and Washington that irradiated the testicles of prison inmates.44
The pendulum that represented the public’s acceptance of human experimentation had not only swung, but had
swung decisively. Even physicians who had been long time advocates of the practice were forced to concede that scientific investigators and drug companies could continue their work without the use of prisoners.45 Some doctors-
Dr. Albert Sabin, for example-resisted the new ethical current and continued to argue that prisoners were “a stable,
long time permanent study group” perfect for medical research.46 By 1975, only 12 state prison systems were hosting medical experiments, and their numbers were declining rapidly.47 Less than a year later, the federal government announced the end of medical research on federal prisoners.48
After a quarter century of unrestrained use of prison inmates as cheap and available raw material for medical experimentation, the once widely accepted practice had come to an end. Victims of scientific and social forces,
prisoners were still shunned, but they were no longer seen as the human equivalent of laboratory guinea pigs.
Though some researchers initially resisted this new medical ethic, it gradually encompassed the entire medical community and terminated any thought of “the wealth of test material that there is in penitentiaries.”49
Executions are carried out by hanging, shooting in the back of the head or lethal injection. In many years there are several times more reported executions in China than the rest of the world combined. Even then according to Amnesty International: “Only a fraction of death sentences and executions carried out in China are publicly reported.” The annual toll is not released and is treated as a state secret.
These days many executions are carried out with a lethal injection as opposed to gunshots. Executions generally take place in specialized chambers or vans, away from public view. In 2009, the city of Beijing began using lethal injections in the execution of condemned prisoners instead of shooting them. In January 2008, the Chinese government announced it would expand the use of lethal execution and phase out executions by gunshot.
Severe punishments have traditionally been regarded as a warning, summed by the old Chinese saying “killing a chicken to scare the monkeys.” During the Cultural Revolution executions were often performed in public, and Chinese citizens were often forced to watch as “a form of solidarity with the people against the people’s enemies.”
On August 30, 1983, 30 convicted criminals were executed in a sports stadium before a cheering crowd of 60,000 people. In the 1970s some executions were broadcast on prime time television. Even today there are mass sentencing rallies and public executions.
There have been cases of innocent people being executed. Defendants who face the death penalty are often denied their rights. In one case involved a migrant worker who killed four people the ruling on his appeal was done by the same judge who made the initial ruling.
A suspended death sentence is usually commuted to life imprisonment after two years if the person shows good behavior. This can later be reduced to 20 years or less with good behavior. In 2007 prisoners that received these “death penalties with reprieves” outnumbered prisoners that were executed.
Studies seem to indicate that the threat of capital punishment does little to deter crime. The official position in China is that someday China will abolish the death penalty but that “conditions aren’t right” to do so now.
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980
Websites and Resources
Good Websites and Sources: Wikipedia article on the Death Penalty in China Wikipedia ; Execution Buses news.sky.com/skynews ; Execution Day in Zhengzhou http://www.connexions.org ; Wikipedia articles on Prisons in China Wikipedia ; 2009 Article in Asia Times atimes.com ; Site on Chinese Prisons laogai.org
Justice System: China Law Blog chinalawblog ; Internet Chinese Legal Research Center ls.wustl.edu ; Asian Law Center Links on China law.unimelb.edu ; Basic Info on China’s Legal System asnic.utexas.edu ; China.org, official Chinese government source on Constitution and Legal System china.org.cn ; China.org, on People’s Courts china.org.cn ; China’s Criminal Justice System lectlaw.com ; China’s Legal System lawinfochina.com ; faculty.cua.edu ; Book: Bird in a Cage, Legal Reform in Chinese and Mao by Stanley B. Lubman (Stanford, 2001)
Links in this Website: CRIME IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; TRIADS AND ORGANIZED CRIME IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; POLICE IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; JUSTICE SYSTEM IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; EXECUTIONS AND PRISONS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; DISSIDENTS, POLITICAL ACTIVISTS AND POLITICAL PRISONERS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; TERRORISM AND BOMBINGS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; GOVERNMENT IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; POLITICS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; COMMUNIST PARTY IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; RIOTS AND DEMONSTRATIONS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; CORRUPTION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980
Execution Numbers in China
China executes more people than the rest of the world combined. According to Amnesty International of the 2,400 execution performed in 2008, 1,700 were in China. Hong-Kong-based activist group Dui Hua estimates that 5,000 executions were carried in China in 2009, down from 7,000 in 2007 and 10,000 a year in the 1990s. As many as 6,000 people put to death in 2010. By comparison, according to Amnesty, the country with the next-highest recorded rate of executions in 2010 was Iran, with 252, followed by North Korea with 60, Yemen with 53 and the United States with 46.
Death penalty numbers are derived from press reports. Many human rights believe the real number of executions is much higher. Information on executions is a carefully guarded state secret. Dui Hua’s Joshua Rosenzweig told AFP, “There are a number of problems and uncertainties in the way the death penalty process is carried out. One of the major problems is that it is a very untransparent system.” In March 2010, Amnesty International slammed the Chinese government for not revealing the true number of people executed each year.
John Kamm, founder of the Dui Hua Foundation wrote Washington Post: “Ten years ago, China was executing more than 10,000 prisoners a year. The human rights group I direct estimates the annual rate to be less than 5,000 now, a reduction due in part to President Hu Jintao’s effort to develop a “harmonious society” When Hu took office as Communist Party chairman in 2002, the country was executing as many as 12,000 convicted criminals a year. The annual number of executions could be down to roughly 2,000 by the time Hu leaves office at the end of 2012. Opponents of the death penalty will argue, passionately and correctly, that that number is still a human rights violation of the most serious kind. But the sharp drop in executions is a positive step toward the government’s goal of ensuring that only “the most vile and serious crimes” are punishable by death — and its stated goal of eventually abolishing the death penalty in China. [Source: John Kamm, Washington Post, August 16, 2010]
According to Amnesty International there were 470 executions in China in 2007, the most of any country in the world but way down from previous years. Many see the drop as temporary and a result of new rules on judicial reviews and teh fact that China wants to look good with the Olympics coming up. China has cut back on executions and execution are no longer carried out as swiftly as they were before since China’s highest court was given authority to review death penalty cases in early 2007. According to one human rights group the number of executions in China has dropped 40 percent since Beijing was awarded the Olympics in 2001.
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980 Amnesty International estimated there were at least 1,770 executions in 2005, 80 percent of the world’s total that year. Many believe the true figure is much higher, perhaps around 8,000 or even 10,000. The Chinese don’t release any statistics on executions. Amnesty International comes up with its number from publicized cases. An internal document quoted in a book about the Chinese leadership reported about 15,000 executions a year between 1998 and 2001.
In 2003, according to Amnesty International, at least 5,000 people were executed, or 90 percent of all the world’s executions that year. In 2002, there were 1,060 documented executions in China. In 2001, a total of 2,468 of the 3,048 documented executions worldwide were in China, 139 were in Iran, 79 were in Saudi Arabia and 66 were in the United States. These four countries accounted for 90 percent of all executions, with China accounting for 80 percent.
During one three-month period in 2001, in the midst of an aggressive “Strike Hard” anti-crime campaign, 1,781 people were executed. Amnesty International described the campaign as “nothing short of an execution frenzy” and said, “More people were executed in China in three months than in the rest of the world for the last three years.”
In 1996, a year in another “Strike Hard” ant-crime campaign was aggressively carried out, there were 4,367 (a dozen a day) confirmed executions. More than 1,000 people were executed in the first two months alone and 222 people were executed in a massive one-day crackdown on drug trafficking. On World Anti-Drugs Day on June 26, 769 of the 1,725 people sentenced on drugs charges were given the death penalty.
In 1997, 2,700 people executed; 2,050 were executed in 1994, 1,411 were executed in 1993 and 1,079 were executed in 1992. Between 1983 and 1986, the early years of the Deng reforms, some 10,000 people were executed. In 1995, according to Amnesty International the were 2,190 executions in China, compared to 192 in Saudi Arabia, 95 in Nigeria, 56 in the United States, 50 in Singapore, 47 in Iran, 41 in Yemen, 28 in Russia, 19 in South Korea, 16 in Taiwan and 12 in Jordan.
The majority of executions are for murder, robbery, intentional injury and drug trafficking.
China to Reduce Executions
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980 In August 2009, China’s Supreme Court said the death penalty needed to be used more sparingly and should be reserved for only the most serious cases. In February 2010, China’s top court issued instructions to lower courts to limit the use of the death penalty to a small number of “extremely serious” cases.
In July 2009 Zhang Jun, vice-president of the supreme people’s court, said it would tighten restrictions on the use of capital punishment. But he stressed that the country would not abandon the death penalty, saying it was ‘impossible’ to do so under current conditions. [Source: Tania Branigan, The Guardian, July 29, 2009]
Zhang said the death penalty should be applied to ‘an extremely small number’ of serious offenders. He said the highest court was extremely cautious in imposing the sentence on those who killed relatives or neighbors in disputes. People who pleaded guilty, compensated their victims’ relatives, or were pardoned by the latter also tended to receive more lenient punishments. “Judicial departments should use the least number of death sentences possible, and death penalties should not be given to those having a reason for not being executed,” Zhang said. [Ibid]
In 2008, China’s most senior judge said only ‘extremely vile criminals’ were executed in 2007 as a result of ‘kill fewer, kill carefully’ reforms that gave the supreme court the right to overturn capital sentences handed down by lower courts. The China Daily said the supreme people’s court overturned 15 percent of death sentences handed down in 2007 and 10 percent in 2008. Independent analysts suggested the policy had caused a drop in executions of as much as 30 percent year-on-year. [Ibid]
In September 2007. China’s top court order judges to use the death penalty more sparingly and show more mercy to criminals that cooperate with authorities. A law that went into effect on January 1, 2007 gave China’ highest court—the Supreme People’ Court—the authority to review the death penalty. Before then the final say was in the hands of provincial courts. The law was enacted in part because of complaints about arbitrary decisions and miscarriages of justice involving capital punishment on the local level.
In the early 2000s, high courts were ordered to review all death-penalty cases before the executions were carried out. Before only a small number of cases were reviewed by the high courts. Most were only reviewed by local courts. Some cases have been overturned, including that of a farmer in Anhui who was sentenced to death for the murder of another farmer based on confessions the farmer said was acquired through torture.
In 2004, there was a discussion of reforming the justice system to reduce the number of death sentences given out. The reforms were supported by many in the central government and justice system but opposed by many local officials and police. The issue was addressed partly as a result of growing discontent with the judicial system and law enforcement, which had increasingly been viewed as corrupt, unfair and overly harsh. The reforms were seen by some as a way for the central government to address concerns by ordinary Chinese without relinquishing their control of the courts.
Crimes Punishable by Death in China
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980 According to Amnesty International there are 68 crimes punishable by death in China, or about a forth of all criminal offenses in China, are punishable by death, up from 32 in 1980. Among those that face the death penalty are pimps, embezzlers, livestock rustlers, tax receipts forgers, drunk drivers, credit card thieves, bicycle thieves, bribe takers, arsonists, drug dealers, spies, thieves, prostitutes, cultural relic traders, dike saboteurs and organizers of secret religious groups. In recent years, the group, says people in China has been put to death for tax fraud, stealing VAT receipts, damaging electric power facilities, selling counterfeit medicine, embezzlement, accepting bribes and drug offenses.
Of the 68 crimes, 44 do not involve violence. People have been executed for tax fraud, embezzling money and even petty theft. In December 2004, two Hong Kong men were sentenced to death for smuggling digital player components into southern China. In April 2006, death sentences were given to cooking oil smugglers that bribed customs officials and evaded $300 million in tariffs.
In 1992 a merchant was executed for trademark for infringement because he labeled ordinary moonshine as Maotai, a powerful and popular Chinese liquor. In 1996, a peasant was executed for selling the head for a Buddha statue he found on the ground for $36. In 1997, two peasants in Yunnan were executed for stealing runway lights from the airport in Kunming. In 2001, a 19-year-old was executed for stealing the 60 yuan ($7) and another man was executed for stealing ball point pens and badminton rackets.
Death sentences are arbitrarily meted out with the rules often varying from place to place. Sometimes people are executed for things like prostitution and smuggling, which are largely tolerated in most places in China.
Death Penalty for Corruption, See Corruption
Reducing the Number of Crimes Punishable by Death
In July 2010, the National People’s Congress began considering amending the criminal code. Reforms were said to include reducing from 68 the number of crimes punishable by death, as well as the age at which convicted criminals can be executed. If such reforms are enacted, nonviolent crimes in China will, for the most part, be exempted from the death penalty. The proposals are part of a movement aimed at reining in the indiscriminate use of the death penalty.
In the mid 2000s, the Chinese government was considering scraping the death penalty for some non-violent crimes so that corrupt officials that had fled abroad could be more easily extradited. As its stands now many foreign governments refuse to extradite suspects to China out of concerns their human rights will be denied and they will be executed.
In August 2010, the Chinese government said it was considering dropping the death penalty for 13 “economic-related, nonviolent offenses” from the list of 68 crimes punishable by execution. Among the offenses that were considered were are carrying out fraudulent activities with financial bills and letters of credit, forging and selling invoices to avoid paying taxes, and smuggling cultural relics and precious metals out of the country. There has also been discussion of ending the death penalty for elderly convicts 70 or over. [Source: AP]
In 2007, 15 percent of death sentences handed out by lower courts were overturned by higher courts, citing poor evidence and procedural errors. In late July 2010 the Chinese Supreme Court tightened rules on introducing evidence obtained by torture, particularly in death penalty cases. A number of death the sentences handed down in corruption trials are often said to be politically motivated
New Death Penalty Rules in China
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980 Keith B. Richburg wrote in the Washington Post, “Legal changes that went into effect in May 2011 reduced the number of crimes punishable by death from 68 to 55. The crimes removed were mostly economic-related and nonviolent, such as smuggling cultural relics and robbing graves.” [Source: Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, June 25 2011]
Most significantly, the new rules give provincial courts the option of suspending an execution for two years. If the condemned prisoner behaves well during those two years, his or her sentence can then be commuted to life, which in China usually means 25 years. The Supreme People’s Court said in its 2010 report, released in May, that says lower-level courts should “ensure the death penalty only applies to a very small number of criminals who have committed extremely serious crimes.” It adds that the lower courts “should try their best not to sentence the death penalty with immediate execution.”
The legal experts said the government’s changing attitude toward capital punishment may reflect sensitivity to international criticism — and in this case, unlike criticism of its politics or economic policies, in an area that does not touch on the core ideology of the ruling Communist Party.
The first to benefit under the suspension rule was Hou Qinzhi, a fruit vendor in Nanjing who had his scale seized in August by a city government inspector. The vendor wrestled with the inspector and ended up stabbing him with his fruit knife. He was sentenced to death, but last month the execution was suspended for two years.
But in another high-profile case, public opinion has taken the opposite view. Xia Junfeng was a laid-off worker who sold kebabs from a cart in Shenyang, in China’s northeast. He was convicted of killing two city security guards in 2009 when they confronted him over his unlicensed cart; Xia asserts he acted in self-defense, when the city officials began to beat him. Xia has attracted enormous sympathy around the country as a poor man set upon by local officials. He was sentenced to death, but his lawyers are asking the Supreme Court to spare his life, and the final decision is pending.
Public Executions in China
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980 Often the biggest event during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s was when a criminal was executed. Often the whole town would become as lively as festival time. The writer Yu Hua told the New York Times he remembers the executions as the most thrilling scenes of his childhood, seeing the criminal kneeling on the ground, a soldier aiming a rifle at the back of his head and firing. [Source: Pankaj Mishra, New York Times, January 23, 2009]
Public executions still occur. The Washington Post reported that after the attacks before th Olympics in 2008 the local government inYengishahar county in Xinjiang bused several thousand students and office workers into a public square and lined them up in front of a vocational school to watch the execution of three prisoners, who been convicted on terrorist charges in connections with a plot by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement to disrupt the Olympics.
In August 1983 as part of a “Strike Hard” campaign against crime the authority to execute people was transferred from the Supreme Court in Beijing to provincial officials. Thousands were executed by the next spring festival, six months on. Such spectacles remained commonplace, however, especially in the countryside, prompting Beijing to issue regulations against public executions in 1986. Rumors of executions in sports stadiums plagued China’s bid for the 2000 Olympics, and when bidding for the 2008 Games, Beijing made clear that public executions were not permitted.[Source: John Kamm, Washington Post, August 16, 2010]
Recalling what he witnessed while traveling through the countryside outside Guangzhou in the summer of 1983, John Kamm wrote Washington Post: “As I passed through a small town, a man and his two sons, each tilting forward from the weight of the large white boards strapped to their backs, were driven past, en route to an execution ground. The boards proclaimed their death sentences; the men’s arms were tied behind them. I remember the elder screaming his innocence as a throng of feral youth rushed ahead to get in position to witness the shootings. Farther up the road I encountered another execution scene, this time in a sports stadium with a throng of enthusiastic onlookers.
Wang Shouxin Execution Photos
In the late 2000s there was an Internet fascination with a series of photos from 1980 chronicling the execution of Wang Shouxin, a corrupt female government official from Heilongjiang province and the subject of Liu Binyan’s reportage “People or Monsters.” According to Xinhua she and others were arrested in April 1979 for the crimes of sharing illegal profits and then hiding and covering up the loot. She was sentenced to death on February 28, 1980, paraded in a public meeting and taken in a truck to a field and shot as a crowd looked on.
Wang reportedly embezzled several hundred thousand RMB. According to the People’s Daily: “You can call her a ‘corrupt official’ but she is a merely a manager of a combustible fuel company. Nobody knows what the rank might be in the hierarchy of officialdom but it is probably the lowest possible.” In the late 2000s, the process of her execution was published by the photographer at the scene and then broadly circulated on the Internet. Within a few days after being posted on Sohu.com. they had been seen by 1.132 million persons. Another series of photos entitled Mao Zedong Personally Signed the Approval to Execute Seven Criminals has also been popular on the Internet recently.
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980
Execution Trials in China
Death penalty justice can be very quick. In November 2004, a 21-year-old man was caught after he broke into a high school dormitory and stabbed nine Chinese boys to death in the city of Fuzhou in the central province of Henan. Within two months he was tried, sentenced to death and executed. By contrast prisoners on death row in the United States wait for years before they are executed. In Japan the wait can be more than ten years.
Some courts sentence people to death within only a few days after they are arrested. Amnesty International reported one case that began with three men allegedly stealing a car filled with banknotes on May 21. On May 24, they were arrested; on May 27 they were sentenced to death; On May 28 their appeal was rejected; on May 31 they were executed. In another case a man was executed for murder six days after he committed the crime.
Verdicts are usually foreordained. Victims are sometimes sentenced in public rallies or paraded through the streets on the back of flatbed trucks after sentence. Sometimes tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people gather in town squares and stadiums and cheer the verdicts at “mass sentencing rallies,” which are also commonly shown on the television news. The executions themselves are not usually viewed by the public. Prisoners are often lead away to vacant fields and executed in neat rows when the rally is over.
Photographs of prisoners who have received the death penalty are posted at railroad stations and post offices. After they have been executed a red mark is placed next to the prisoner’s name.
Executions often take place immediately after the final appeal. If a suspect receives a death sentence and then is given a two year reprieve that usually means their sentence will commuted to life in prison.
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980
Typical Execution in China
Prisoners scheduled to be executed are photographed on the night before their execution and the keys to their handcuffs and leg shackles are tested to make sure they can be easily removed after death. On the morning of the execution, prisoners sometimes eat a meal of steamed cornbread and hard boiled eggs with their executioners, who sometimes, before the execution, place a cord around the prisoners’ neck to keep them from shouting anti-government slogans. “They’re trussed up just like pigs before slaughter,” one witness told the Washington Post. [Source: Lena H. Sun, the Washington Post]
The prisoners are rarely blindfolded but sometimes they are granted a final request, such as washing or praying. A 19-year-old soldier executed in 1985 was allowed to eat a large bowl of dumplings. At the execution site the prisoners are forced to their knees, their heads are forced down, and often their pant legs are tied together in case they shit in their pants. [Source: Lena H. Sun, the Washington Post]
When a whistle is blown a soldier fires a bullet from a carbine rifle—selected for its large bullets—into the back of the skull where spinal cord joins the brain. Even though the soldiers fire from point blank range, they sometimes miss. If this occurs another bullet is fired. Both women and men are executed in this fashion.
Many executions are performed at the Beijing Supreme People’s Court 86, located on an arid hill overlooking the capital. “Under an open sky,” Lena H. Sun wrote in the Washington Post, “the prisoners, arms tied behind their backs, their legs in shackles, kneel on the black earth. At the signal, a paramilitary soldier fires a single rifle shot. It is usually to the back of the head”.
“The prisoner topples into the dirt. Death is almost always immediate. Sometimes the corpses are immediately put into a waiting ambulance to be whisked to the hospital ..In some cases, the prisoners family is even billed for the bullet—the equivalent of about 6 cents.” Another frequently-used execution site is near Route 302 in Jiangxi Province, The bodies are often dumped by the side of the road. [Source: Lena H. Sun, the Washington Post]
Wang Shouxin Execution in 1980
Online Mob Demands Death Penalty
Keith B. Richburg wrote in the Washington Post, A 21-year-old music student named Yao Jiaxin was executed this month for a particularly grievous crime: After accidentally hitting a female bicyclist with his car, Yao saw she was still alive, so he stopped, got out and stabbed her eight times to make sure she was dead and could not identify him…The fact that Yao was sentenced to death was not uncommon. At least on the Internet, his crime was widely denounced, with citizens demanding Yao’s death. [Source: Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, June 25 2011]
What was unusual was the intense public soul-searching the case also unleashed. Many legal professionals and others openly questioned whether justice was served by executing a young man who voluntarily turned himself in and confessed, and whose family offered to pay compensation. His crime touched a nerve here — a young man of privilege who killed a poor woman on a bicycle — but many blamed an online mob mentality for forcing a supposedly dispassionate court into imposing a death sentence.
When Yao was on trial, several lawyers declared publicly that he should be spared the death penalty. Li Fenfei, a law professor at Remnin University, wrote a blog post arguing that Yao had turned himself in, that he had acted in the heat of the moment and had not planned to kill the bicyclist. Also, Li said, “he’s quite young, in his 20s. In China, we believe young people can make a mistake.” But after his blog post appeared, Li was bombarded with rude and threatening comments. “You mean that if you have money you have the right to kill? So where do you live?” one anonymous commenter wrote.
“Yao’s case had a big influence on society,” said Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar and member of a small group called China Against the Death Penalty. “A lot of people felt shocked. They felt shocked by the process. Some people thought the netizens pushed the court into giving Yao the death penalty.”
Opposition to the Death Penalty in China
Keith B. Richburg wrote in the Washington Post, “The voices arguing for fewer executions seem to be limited to legal scholars, the urban elite and some newspaper and online commentaries. A majority appears to back executions, particularly in cases involving corrupt officials or those perceived to be members of the elite. [Source: Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, June 25 2011] Abolitionists acknowledge that the majority of Chinese still back capital punishment. “I feel the number of people against the death penalty has grown very dramatically” in just the past year, said He Weifang, a law professor at Beijing University who has always opposed capital punishment. “In the last 15 years, only two or three people in this country were trying to abolish the death penalty.” Now, he said, the abolitionists are gathering strength so fast that “you can call it a movement.”
Drug Executions in China
execution People found guilty of trafficking amphetamines or caught smuggling more than 50 grams of heroin and/or 1,000 grams of opium face the death penalty. Some of those are spared the death penalty are sent to re-education camps or given long prison sentences.
Drug traffickers are routinely executed. International Anti-Drugs Day on June 26 is popular time to execute people for drug-related crimes. In 2001 and 2002, 43 and 64 people respectively were executed in anti-drug day rallies on that day. IIn 1995, 22 drug traffickers were shot to death in a single public execution in Mangshi, near the Myanmar border.
In 1994, courts ordered 466 executions for 6,000 drug-related arrests. On International Anti-Drugs Day in 1996 1,725 people were convicted on drugs charges. Of these 769 were sentenced to death. In the first six months of 2001, 1,457 people were executed on drug charges.
Global anti-drug day in June 2009 was marked with the execution of at least 20 people, the condemnation of around the same number and putting hundreds on trial. Among those executed was a Nigerian man caught with six kilograms of heroin and a Chinese man caught smuggling 197 grams of methamphetamines from North Korea. In Xinjiang authorities destroyed six tons if heroin, opium and cannabis smuggled in from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Foreign nationals caught with drugs in China are not spared. In 2004, a Japanese man in his 60s was caught trying to smuggle 1.25 kilograms of stimulant drugs out of China into Japan. He was caught at Shenyang’s airport as he prepared to board a plane to Osaka. He pleaded not guilty but was sentenced to death in 2006. Two other Japanese convicted drug smuggling have been given death sentences.
The widow of an executed man who occasionally smoked heroin in cigarettes and later was recruited to carry heroin told the New York Times, “Our family was always poor and a guy from the Fujian province said to my husband that he would give him a lot of money if he would transport drugs. Our daughter was very sick and we needed money badly.” His last words were “take care of our daughter and try to avoid heavy work in the fields.”
The executions haven’t been much of a deterrent. Many dealers can bribe their way out of trouble if they get caught or purchase protection from Communist Party officials, PLA soldiers or the police. The execution and crackdowns have also had little effect on the drug trade.
Foreigners Executed for Drugs in China
executed girls In December 2009, a British man, Akmal Shaikh, was executed on drugs charges. The first European citizen to be executed China in more than half a century, he was arrested in 2007 for carrying in suitcase with almost four kilograms of heroin on a flight from Tajikistan to China. He told police he did not know about the drugs and the suitcase was not his according to Reprieve, a London-based prisoner advocacy group.
Shaikh was a 53-year-old father of three. His family said he suffered from a bipolar disorder. The protested the execution, , saying Shaikh was mentally unstable and lured into the crime by men taking advantage of his dream to record a pop song about world peace. His trial lasted only half an hour. During his appeal the judges reportedly laughed at his rambling remarks. The incident strained relations between Britain and China. British Prime Minister Gordon voiced his outrage over the execution. [Source: AP]
In December 2009, four foreigners were arrested along with five Chinese in connection with the seizure of 144.5 kilograms of heroin found in 289 bags hidden in bales of cotton in Shenzhen. The drugs had come from Pakistan and were found with the help of a tip and tracker dogs. The four foreigners might face execution.
In April 2010, four Japanese men convicted of drug smuggling charges in China were executed. All four men were caught trying to smuggle or sell more than one kilogram of illegal drugs–in most cases, amphetamines. They included 65-year-old Mitsunobu Akano who was caught with 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine as he tried to board a plane to Japan at China’s Dalian airport in September 2006. In China, people caught smuggling over one kilogram of drugs are often executed.
The executions marked the first time that Japanese nationals were executed in Japan since China and Japan normalized diplomatic relations in 1972. The Chinese government went somewhat out of its way to make sure the executions did not harm Japan – China relations. Akano was allowed to meet with his family before he was executed, which normally is not done. All the Japanese are believed to have been killed by lethal injection.
After the Execution and Organs in China
China executes British drug smuggler After the execution the body is photographed. If no organs are to be removed the body is taken away to a crematoria. The family of the prisoner is not allowed to see the corpse but they do have to pay the costs of cremation and transport to the crematoria. Recently execution sites have been moved to remote locations partly because too many prisoners were yelling anti-government slogans before they were killed. According to a 1986 regulation: “Execution grounds are not allowed to be set up near busy sections of town, near key roads or near tourist sites.”
Organs, corneas and skin used in transplant operations are often taken from executed prisoners. Sometimes the organs are removed in the ambulance two or three minutes after an execution take place. It is not uncommon for prisoners to receive and anti-coagulant hours before the execution to make organs transplants easier. Afterwards the body is taken to crematoria where skin and corneas are removed and the body is quickly cremated, which destroys any evidence that the organs had been removed.
According to some sources most organs used in transplant operations are harvested from prisoners sentenced to death. The use of bullet to the back of the head is ideal for transplants because the bullet does not contaminate the organs with poisonous chemicals as lethal chemicals do and does not directly affected the circulatory system as a bullet through the heart does. “If they want the [corneas] they shoot in the chest,” one official told Sun. “If they want the internal organs, they shoot in the head.” When lethal injection was introduced in the 1990s chemicals were chosen that were suitable to organ harvesting [Source: Lena H. Sun, the Washington Post]
The reliance on prisoners for organs is the result of a scarcity of donors partly resulting from the deep-seated cultural taboo against damaging the integrity of the body. Chinese rarely give doctors permission to take organs from deceased family members. Executed prisoners are treated with different standard. The organs are usually removed without the prior consent of the prisoners or their families. Permission from family members for organs taken from executed prisoners is rarely asked for or given.
Chinese Government, Prisoners, Organs and Transplants
organ harvesting Organ harvesting from executed prisoners has been going on for some time. In 1991, according to the People’s Daily, 2,900 kidneys from executed criminals were transplanted into patients. Hong Kong patients who need kidneys were referred to a medical center run by Guangzhou University if they had enough money. One physician there said he welcomed criminal activity and an increased number of execution to supply the transplant market.
An official report obtained by Human Rights WatchAsia read: “the use of the corpses or organs of executed criminals must be kept strictly secret. Attention must be paid to [avoiding negative] repercussions.” Other countries harvest organs from executed prisoners. Taiwan does but reportedly does so with the consent of the prisoners.
Beijing said on several occasions that allegations that organs were harvested from prisoners were “vicious slander” and “sensational lies.” Finally in 2005, the Chinese government fessed up and admitted for the first that organs were harvested from executed criminals and said it would regulate the trade. Before then the only laws on the books was a 1984 draft document that stipulated that operations for harvesting organs can only take place with the consent of the prisoner’s family or if the body has not been claimed.
The Chinese government insists that organ harvesting is done only with prior consent of the prisoners or their family. Huang Jiefu, the Vice Minster of Health said in November 2006, “Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners. The relevant authorities strongly require the informed consent from prisoners or their families for the donation of organs.” A spokesman of the Health Ministry admitted that poor government supervision has led to a number of “improper” organ transplants.”
In July 2006 a law went into affect that specifically bans the sale of human organs. The law requires that donors give written permission for their organs to be transplanted and restricts transplant surgery to top-ranked institutions that must verify that organs are from legal sources and that surgery is safe and justified.
An August 2009 Ministry of Health statement acknowledged that 65 percent of the 10,000 transplants in China involved organs from executed prisoners.
David Matas, an award-winning Canadian human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former Canadian secretary of state (Asia/Pacific) and crown attorney, co-authored a report on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. The pair estimate that in the six-year period 2000—2005, 60,000 transplantation operations were done in China and Falun Gong practitioners were the likely source for the organs for 41,500 operations. CQ Global Researcher, a leading global affairs journal, quotes Kilgour and Matas and Gutmann as independently estimating over 62,000 practitioners have been killed for their organs in the period 2000—2008. [Source: Matthew Robertson, The Epoch Times, February 15, 2012]
Organ Harvesting Methods
Matthew Robertson wrote in The Epoch Times: Researchers investigating China’s organ transplantation practices were troubled by the remarks and what they implied. “The so called ‘research scene’ that Wang Lijun refers to is either an outright execution site with medical vans, or possibly a medical ward, where peoples’ organs are surgically removed,” said Ethan Gutmann, who has published extensively on organ harvesting from Chinese prisoners of conscience. He added that the injections that the award refers to are probably “anti-coagulants and experimental medications that lower the chance of immune-system rejection as the organ is passed between one living body—heart still beating, soon to expire from the trauma—to another.” Gutmann added that this is “normal medical practice” in China, where hospitals, military hospitals, and public security bureaus intersect.[Source: Matthew Robertson, The Epoch Times, February 15, 2012]
“There is zero guarantee that consent was involved,” Gutmann said. “Ample evidence has come to light that the victims could well have been Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, ‘Eastern Lightning’ Christians or—exponentially more likely—Falun Gong practitioners. In other words, Wang Lijun received an award for, at best, barbarism.” It is not possible to know what proportion of victims Wang referred to in his remark about “thousands” of on-site transplants were criminal prisoners and how many were political prisoners or prisoners of conscience, such as Falun Gong practitioners. Further, in China there is a range of nonviolent crimes that can be punished with the death penalty, but the communist state does not publish statistics detailing the numbers of people executed and their crimes.
In the eyes of experts, a significant question left worryingly open in Wang’s remarks is whether the prisoners actually died before their organs were taken from their bodies. Given the reference to drug injections, it is highly possible that the hearts of the victims were still beating when their organs were removed, these experts say.
“It used to be that China would shoot for execution, then they shifted from shooting to using injections,” says Matas. “In effect they’re not killing by injection, but paralyzing by injection, and taking the organs out while the body is still alive.” When an organ is removed from a still-live body, it is fresher and rejection rates are lower. “It’s possible to source an organ immediately after the victim is brain dead, but much more complicated,” says Matas. “The organ deterioration is more marked once they are brain dead, but if you keep the body alive through drugs you can harvest organs over a longer period of time.”
Wang’s conversations with the U.S. consular officials in Chengdu might shed light on such details as the function of the drugs he used in transplantation operations in Liaoning Province. In any case Wang’s visit to the consulate provides the best opportunity to date of confirmation from a Chinese official of the ongoing practice of forced organ harvesting in China. At a press conference on Monday in Washington, D.C., Falun Gong spokesperson Dr. Tsuwei Huang called on the U.S. government to release the contents of Wang Lijun’s conversations.
Description of Organ Harvesting in China
organ harvesting One medical official told The Times of London that hospitals contact local police and make requests for organs. Later, the police notify them if donors are available. Doctors then travel to execution grounds in specially equipped ambulances with a team of nurses to harvest the organs as quickly after death as possible.
An exiled Chinese doctor, Dr. Wang Guoqi, described the harvesting of organs from prisoners before a U.S. Congressional Committee. He said he participated in the removing of skin and corneas from 100 execution victims, including one who was still alive, at the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital.
Dr. Wang told the Washington Post, security officials are paid $37 a corpse to tip off the hospital that executions were imminent. Removing the skin, he said, took 20 minutes or less. “A circumferential cut was made around the wrist, the neck and the shoulder joint as deep as the subcutaneous fat layer or the layer above the muscles. A longitudinal cut was made on the inner side of the upper limb linking both circumferential cuts, either from top to bottom or in the opposite direction.”
“After all extractable tissues and organs were taken, what remained was an ugly heap of muscles, the blood vessels still bleeding, all viscera exposed.” The skin was processed and chilled for transplants recipients, mostly burn victims, who are charged about $12 for 10 square centimeters of skin.
Wang said he was told to work on a man who was not killed by the bullet to the head and was convulsing on the ground. Doctors were ordered to extract the organs and remove the skin and told the removal of the organs would kill him.
Transplant Operations with Organs from Prisoners in China
selling prisoner organs Wealthy Thais, Filipinos, Russians, Indians, Indonesians, Malaysians and Taiwanese with serious kidneys aliments sometimes travel to China to receive transplanted kidneys taken from executed prisoners. According to AFP the desperate patients pay up to $40,000 for operations performed by unscrupulous and in many cases unqualified doctors. Agents who arrange the operations make huge profits while the patents only have about a 40 percent chance of survival.
The prisoners are often killed in batched. In some cases patients are told in advance when batches of prisoners are going to be killed and waiting in hospitals in anticipation of organs being made available. Potential recipients are often told to be ready around the Chinese Lunar New Year because many executions tale place around that time.
On man from Taiwan told U.S. News and World Report, “We were lucky that there happened to be an execution of a convict…whose blood type marched my dad’s.” A satisfied Israeli customer told The Times of London, “If I had never had my kidney transplant in China. I would already be dead. A Chinese sentenced to death saved my life.”
A Malaysian man who underwent a kidney transplant in a hospital in Guangzhou told the International Herald Tribune:, “They just tell you it was a convict. They don’t tell you what he did.” But often they were “young men” who commit “serious,” “violent” crimes.
Image Sources: 1) Reuters; 2) Wang Shouxin Execution photos from Liu Binyan’s reportage “People or Monsters” ; YouTube
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Is someone you know or love, dying… because the FDA won’t let them have the CURE???
The answer is probably yes!
The FDA and Big Pharma are Killing Us!
It’s happening! See from Forbes Magazine…
“Approve a medication that has an unintended side effect and congressional headline-seekers will be giving officials the third degree. Better to let people die by depriving them of new medicines than to be excoriated by congress“.
* Should Americans die because FDA officials don’t want to be embarrassed?
* Should people die because the FDA has made it so expensive to get FDA approval, that if a cure is not guaranteed to make BILLIONS, it will never make it to market? No matter the benefit, because of the FDA, we can’t have it! Does this make any sense?
The situation is so bad that one doctor that has actually cured many cancers (the FDA even acknowledged it), was prosecuted, for doing so!
The situation is crazy! But it can’t and won’t change unless the public is made aware!
FOR THE SAKE OF THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE, for the your future health and that of your loved ones… SHARE THIS!
This insanity must be stoppled! There are cures that are in existence that we can’t have. Even if you or you children don’t neeed them today…someday they will! If we want them to be availble when we need them, we better start doing something about it, Right Now! It has to start somewhere… why not us?… why not today? Share This!
The following videos are just a couple of exaples of what is being denied to the public.
MORE MEDICINAL OPTIONS? How the FDA Kills Us!
The FDA in conjunction with big pharma has a stranglehold on research and future drug patents. The profit motive combined with the total cowding out of competition guarantess corporate profits and fewer cures!
If you are not big Pharma, you can’t even get to clinical trial.
Big pharma suggested and FDA agreed to require fees just to apply for a trial. It provides the FDA with almost $600 million a year, about half of it’s budget. This puts the FDA on the payroll of the industry it regulates. The FDA now operates as if the customers are the Drug companies, rather than the consumer. What a great way to keep out competition and influence the decisions of the FDA.
Trials often last 5 to 10 years or more and cost upwards of Five Hundred Million to complete. If you don’t have $500 million, let alone have the ability to risk $500 million, no matter how great the medication, you won’t get to trial… UNLESS, you partner up with Big Pharma (another way they control the industry).
Natural Remedies- You can’t patent a nutrient or vitamin and you can’t advertise anything as a cure (even if it is), for anything without FDA approval, which you can’t get for under $500 million. Then, once you get the approval, you can’t profit from it because it is an unpatentable natural product. The result is that if it’s not a drug that can be patented, it will NEVER get FDA approval and therefore, it will never be allowed to be advertised and used for a cure… even if it works!
Whether by design or accident, no cures can be offered to the consumer unless it’s controlled by big pharma through the FDA.. Is this killing us?
It Can’t Be That Bad?
If you came up with a therapy or even CURE for cancer that was head and shoulders more effective than any other approved therapy, you’d get rich right? The world would sing your praises, buildings and towns would be named after you… right?
WRONG!
see the cure for cancer…
specifically 39 minutes into the film.
It happened. A dramatic improvement in treatment (for many, an outright cure that most still have not heard about), was discovered that resulted in complete remission in MANY patients, a much higher remission and cure rate than with any FDA approved treatments… and there were absolutely no side affects. So what did the FDA do in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute? What did our government do? Focus on this fabulous life saving breakthrough, right? Not exactly. They fought it all the way. Put up road blocks, prosecuted the Doctor that made the discovery, tried to destroy him, embroiled him in specious legal battles while surreptitiously partnering with a dishonest associate of the inventing doctor. They, started a “new” company and attempted to steal the patents on it.
FDA Mandates Death?
Assume you are dying, there is no FDA approved cure but there is a new treatment, unapproved but with promising results. If you take it, you might live. You also might die. If you don’t take it, you die. PERIOD.
Thousands, if not, millions face this heart wrenching choice every year. Take the experimental drug and possibly live or maybe die… or DON’T take that chance face an inevitable death because nothing else has a chance.
Most any sane person would choose to take the gamble. Nothing to lose a new life to gain. The problem is, They don’t have that choice. Without FDA approval, even if you want to take that chance, you can’t. If the doctor or practitioner gives you the treatment, they will be put in prison. So your only choice is to die!
Isn’t it your body? Isn’t that what we always hear? Our body, our choice, except when it comes to an incurable disease? Then our only choice is to die??? What are they afraid of? If you don’t take it, you WILL die, If you DO take it you might die but might live?
Cancer and Statins comprise a huge medical industry.
Just as with all other things, when big money is involved, ethics go out the window… people re dying because of it.
ABOLITIONIST FOR ALL CRIMES
Countries whose laws do not provide for the death penalty for any crime
ALBANIA
ANDORRA
ANGOLA
ARGENTINA
ARMENIA
AUSTRALIA
AUSTRIA
AZERBAIJAN
BELGIUM
BHUTAN
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
BULGARIA
BURUNDI
CAMBODIA
CANADA
CAPE VERDE
COLOMBIA
COOK ISLANDS
COSTA RICA
COTE D’IVOIRE
CROATIA
CYPRUS
CZECH REPUBLIC
DENMARK
DJIBOUTI
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
ECUADOR
ESTONIA
FINLAND
FRANCE
GABON
GEORGIA
GERMANY
GREECE
GUINEA-BISSAU
HAITI
HOLY SEE
HONDURAS
HUNGARY
ICELAND
IRELAND
ITALY
KIRIBATI
KYRGYSTAN
LATVIA
LIECHTENSTEIN
LITHUANIA
LUXEMBOURG
MACEDONIA (former Yugoslav Republic)
MALTA
MARSHALL ISLANDS
MAURITIUS
MEXICO
MICRONESIA (Federated States)
MOLDOVA
MONACO
MONTENEGRO
MOZAMBIQUE
NAMIBIA
NEPAL
NETHERLANDS
NEW ZEALAND
NICARAGUA
NIUE
NORWAY
PALAU
PANAMA
PARAGUAY
PHILIPPINES
POLAND
PORTUGAL
ROMANIA
RWANDA
SAMOA
SAN MARINO
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
SENEGAL
SERBIA
SEYCHELLES
SLOVAKIA
SLOVENIA
SOLOMON ISLANDS
SOUTH AFRICA
SPAIN
SWEDEN
SWITZERLAND
TIMOR-LESTE
TOGO
TURKEY
TURKMENISTAN
TUVALU
UKRAINE
UNITED KINGDOM
URUGUAY
UZBEKISTAN
VANUATU
VENEZUELA
ABOLITIONIST FOR “ORDINARY CRIMES” ONLY
Countries whose laws provide for the death penalty only for exceptional crimes such as crimes under military law or crimes committed in exceptional circumstances
BOLIVIA
BRAZIL
CHILE EL SALVADOR
FIJI
ISRAEL KAZAKHSTAN
PERU
ABOLITIONIST IN PRACTICE
Countries which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes such as murder but can be considered abolitionist in practice in that they have not executed anyone during the past 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions. The list also includes countries which have made an international commitment not to use the death penalty
ALGERIA
BENIN
BRUNEI DARUSSALAM
BURKINA FASO
CAMEROON
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
CONGO (Republic)
ERITREA
GAMBIA
GHANA
GRENADA
KENYA
KOREA (SOUTH)
LAOS
LIBERIA
MADAGASCAR
MALAWI
MALDIVES
MALI
MAURITANIA
MONGOLIA
MOROCCO
MYANMAR
NAURU
NIGER
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
SIERRA LEONE
SRI LANKA
SURINAME
SWAZILAND
TAJIKISTAN
TANZANIA
TONGA
TUNISIA
ZAMBIA
RETENTIONIST COUNTRIES
Countries which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes
AFGHANISTAN
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BAHAMAS
BAHRAIN
BANGLADESH
BARBADOS
BELARUS
BELIZE
BOTSWANA
CHAD
CHINA
COMOROS
CONGO (Democratic Republic)
CUBA
DOMINICA
EGYPT
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
ETHIOPIA
GUATEMALA GUINEA
GUYANA
INDIA
INDONESIA
IRAN
IRAQ
JAMAICA
JAPAN
JORDAN
KOREA (North)
KUWAIT
LEBANON
LESOTHO
LIBYA
MALAYSIA
NIGERIA
OMAN
PAKISTAN
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
QATAR
SAINT KITTS & NEVIS
SAINT LUCIA
SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES
SAUDI ARABIA
SINGAPORE
SOMALIA
SOUTH SUDAN
SUDAN
SYRIA
TAIWAN
THAILAND
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
UGANDA
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
VIET NAM
YEMEN
ZIMBABWE
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY SINCE 1976
1976 PORTUGAL abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1978 DENMARK abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1979 LUXEMBOURG, NICARAGUA and NORWAY abolished the death penalty for all crimes. BRAZIL, FIJI and PERU abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1981 FRANCE and CAPE VERDE abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1982 The NETHERLANDS abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1983 CYPRUS and EL SALVADOR abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1984 ARGENTINA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1985 AUSTRALIA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1987 HAITI, LIECHTENSTEIN and the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC1 abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1989 CAMBODIA, NEW ZEALAND, ROMANIA and SLOVENIA2 abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1990 ANDORRA, CROATIA,2 the CZECH AND SLOVAK FEDERAL REPUBLIC,3 HUNGARY, IRELAND, MOZAMBIQUE, NAMIBIA and SAO TOMÉ AND PRíNCIPE abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1992 ANGOLA, PARAGUAY and SWITZERLAND abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1993 GUINEA-BISSAU, HONG KONG4 and SEYCHELLES abolished the death penalty for all crimes. GREECE abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1994 ITALY abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1995 DJIBOUTI, MAURITIUS, MOLDOVA and SPAIN abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1996 BELGIUM abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1997 GEORGIA, NEPAL, POLAND and SOUTH AFRICA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. BOLIVIA and BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1998 AZERBAIJAN, BULGARIA, CANADA, ESTONIA, LITHUANIA and the UNITED KINGDOM abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1999 EAST TIMOR, TURKMENISTAN and UKRAINE abolished the death penalty for all crimes. LATVIA5 abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2000 COTE D’IVOIRE and MALTA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. ALBANIA6 abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2001 BOSNIA-HEZEGOVINA 7 abolished the death penalty for all crimes. CHILE abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2002 TURKEY abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes. The FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA (now two states SERBIA and MONTENEGRO 9 ) and CYPRUS abolished the death penalty for all crimes
2003
ARMENIA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes
2004
BHUTAN, SAMOA, SENEGAL and TURKEY abolished the death penalty for all crimes
2005
LIBERIA 8 and MEXICO abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2006
PHILIPPINES abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2007
ALBANIA6 abolished the death penalty for all crimes. and RWANDA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. KYRGYZSTAN abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2008
UZBEKISTAN, CHILE and ARGENTINA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2009 BURUNDI and TOGO abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2010 GABON removed the death penalty from its legislation.
2012 LATVIA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
Notes:
1. In 1990 the German Democratic Republic became unified with the Federal Republic of Germany, where the death penalty had been abolished in 1949.
2. Slovenia and Croatia abolished the death penalty while they were still republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The two republics became independent in 1991.
3. In 1993 the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic divided into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
4. In 1997 Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule as a special administrative region of China. Amnesty International understands that Hong Kong will remain abolitionist.
5. In 1999 the Latvian parliament voted to ratify Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty for peacetime offenses.
6. In 2007 Albania ratified Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances. In 2000 it had ratified Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty for peacetime offences.
7. In 2001 Bosnia-Herzegovina ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
8. In 2005 Liberia ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
9. Montenegro had already abolished the death penalty in 2002 when it was part of a state union with Serbia. It became an independent member state of the United Nations on 28 June 2006. Its ratification of Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances, came into effect on 6 June 2006.
It’s an automated response of course but really even here in Greece the 3rd world country the death penalty was abolished early 20th century. There are many ways for justice to be served. Not by death. You know how & why Greece abolished the death Penalty? The last one who was executed just wasn’t the guilty one! Which happens every time in USA.. you kill the wrong person!Please STOP KILLING PEOPLE OVER THERE! A life time sentence is much more of a punishment and offers the chance to set the accused one free if proven not guilty!
The heroic struggle to save the life of death-row prisoner Troy Davis from a legal lynching in Georgia is not an isolated one. There are broader issues involved, like abolishing the death penalty, not just in the Davis case but in general. According to the Death Penalty Information Center website, as of Jan. 1 of this year, there are more than 3,250 death-row prisoners.
No millionaire or billionaire sits on death row. Death-row inmates are disproportionately Black and Latino, and the overwhelming majority are poor. These reasons alone are motivations to up the ante to abolish the death penalty. This penalty only serves to strength this terrorist arm of the repressive state apparatus under capitalism. To be proven innocent — as in the case of Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal or Gary Graham aka Shaka Sankofa, who the state of Texas executed in 2000 — is never a guarantee of winning one’s freedom in the biased U.S. courts.
Overall, there are an estimated 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons — the largest such population in the world. An additional 5 million people are either on probation or parole. All totaled, there are more than 7 million people under the jurisdiction of the U.S. prison system. This number does not include tens of thousands of youth in juvenile detention. More young African-American men are in prison than in college.
Repression of the most brutal kind is one aspect of the U.S. prison system. Fighting repression is part and parcel of a much larger struggle against the entire prison-industrial complex. The PIC is tied to restructuring the capitalist system, which has accelerated since the mid-1980s. This has resulted in a booming prisons-for-profit industry that has generated super-profits for Wall Street corporations like the Correctional Corporations of America.
In describing its purpose, CCA states that it “designs, builds, manages and operates correctional facilities and detention centers on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Marshals Service, nearly half of all states and nearly a dozen counties across the country.” It goes on to say that it “owns and operates more than 60 facilities including 44 company-owned facilities, with a design capacity of more than 85,000 beds in 19 states and the District of Columbia.” (www.cca.com.)
CCA, which is based in Nashville, Tenn., is a multimillion-dollar corporation that has close ties to the U.S. government. Between 2003 and 2010, the CCA spent almost $15 million lobbying members in both Houses of Congress, ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Prisons and others in order to secure public monies for governmental contracts to expand its facilities around the U.S.
Commentator Bill Maher stated, “Prisons used to be a non-profit business. … The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That’s why [the U.S.] has the world’s largest prison population — because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.” (Huffington Post, July 27, 2009)
The PIC has nothing to do with rehabilitation. The PIC is based on making profits at the expense of human needs under the most horrific conditions. It has this in common with most capitalist institutions.
Corporations like Victoria’s Secret, Best Western and Boeing outsource jobs to prisons so they can use prison labor to undercut unions. Corporations can increase profits by paying prisoners much less than the minimum wage.
Telephone companies get huge profits by charging exorbitant prices to prisoners forced to make collect calls to their families.
As the poverty rate soars and unemployment grows, so will the incarceration rate. Demanding the dismantlement of the PIC should be tied to the need for a massive jobs program along with eliminating the entire capitalist system. This struggle should be waged in the revolutionary spirit of martyred prisoners like the Attica brothers, Shaka Sankofa and Troy Davis, who is scheduled to be murdered Sept. 21 Source
The Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, and Marvin Lee Wilson appears to fall into that category. But Mr. Wilson, who is on Texas’ death row, may be executed anyway. Mr. Wilson’s execution should be blocked. Beyond that, his case should cause Congress to stop its reckless campaign to make it even easier than it is now to carry out executions.
I just signed the following petition addressed to: Marvin Lee Wilson.
—————-
Stop the execution of low-IQ Marvin Lee Wilson
The Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, and Marvin Lee Wilson appears to fall into that category. But Mr. Wilson, who is on Texas’ death row, may be executed anyway. Mr. Wilson’s execution should be blocked. Beyond that, his case should cause Congress to stop its reckless campaign to make it even easier than it is now to carry out executions.
Dear members of the Board, I have been informed that the governor of Texas has the authority to grant clemency upon the written recommendation of a majority of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Ladies and Gentlemen, I ask and urge you to request Governor Perry to grant clemency to Mr. Marvin Lee Wilson. Please show mercy and save the life of an low-IQ man.
—————-
They RULE: Click on the link and all that we are writing about is right in front of your eyes.Unbelievable relations between Energy Corporations,Food,Pharma,Bio Tech,ANYTHING !!
They Rule
Overview
They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 1000 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations.
Context
A few companies control much of the economy and oligopolies exert control in nearly every sector of the economy. The people who head up these companies swap on and off the boards from one company to another, and in and out of government committees and positions. These people run the most powerful institutions on the planet, and we have almost no say in who they are. This is not a conspiracy, they are proud to rule, yet these connections of power are not always visible to the public eye.
Karl Marx once called this ruling class a ‘band of hostile brothers.’ They stand against each other in the competitve struggle for the continued accumulation of their capital, but they stand together as a family supporting their interests in perpetuating the profit system as whole. Protecting this system can require the cover of a ‘legitimate’ force – and this is the role that is played by the state. An understanding of this system can not be gleaned from looking at the inter-personal relations of this class alone, but rather how they stand in relation to other classes in society. Hopefully They Rule will raise larger questions about the structure of our society and in whose benefit it is run.
The Data
We do not claim that this data is 100% accurate at all times. Corporate directors have a habit of dying, quitting boards, joining new ones and most frustratingly passing on their names to their children who not entirely coincidently are also found to be members of US corporate boards. There is no single easily parsed single authoritative public record containing these shifting datasets. Luckily there is LittleSis.org a community of obsessive data miners who specialize in “profiling the powers that be.” Little Sis has very generously made their data available to They Rule through their API. If you see something that is incorrect you can contribute to both projects by signing up at Little Sis and editing the data there. That correction should become immediately available on They Rule, however, it will not be instantly updated in the auto-mode or in saved maps.
Credits
This site was made by Josh On with the indispensable assistance of LittleSis.org. Special thanks to Matthew Skomarovsky of Little Sis who really went out of his way to help make the data from Little Sis work with They Rule. The latest version of They Rule would not have happened were it not for a fellowship from Renew Media (now Media Artists).
Thanks to Amy Balkin of Public Smog for her help and encouragement. Thanks to Amy Franceschini and Futurefarmers for their support. Thanks to the Mission branch of the International Socialist Organization for putting up with my complete spaciness as I was consumed in the production. Thanks to Media Temple for their great and generous hosting.
Project History
2001
The first version of They Rule was a static set of data gathered from the websites of the top 100 companies.
2004
They Rule was updated to include the top 500 US companies, and added the ability to find the connections between any two of these companies.
2011
They Rule was connected to LittleSis.org and provided users with the ability of users to interface with the top 1000 US companies. It also added the auto-mode which automatically browsed through the interlocking directories with out user intervention.
CRIME DOES NOT PAY... PLUS, THE BUTLER DID IT! AND REMEMBER: WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, WILL -MOST LIKELY- TRY AGAIN... AND DON'T FORGET: TODAY IS A GOOD DAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO DIE.
1rex22
Insomniacs II 