Cuba to release 2,900 prisoners as goodwill gesture

[cal04]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16324331

Cuba says it will release 2,900 prisoners, including some convicted of political crimes, in the next few days.

The country's governing body, the Council of State, said the move was a goodwill gesture after receiving "numerous" requests by relatives and religious institutions.

It said many of those being released were unwell, women or elderly.

(snip)
Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal told the Associated Press that the American - who is serving 15 years in a Cuban jail for taking internet equipment to the Communist-run island - "is not on the list".

[DURHAM D]

1. Will they send them to Arkansas?

[joshcryer]

2. About time.

[hughee99]

3. Do they need the jail space to hold healthy, younger political prisoners? n/t

[Boston_Chemist]

4. Cuba vs. USA, rates of imprisonment.

I think the USA needs to release perhaps 200 000 prisoners, as a "Goodwill Gesture."

[Dreamer Tatum]

5. How many prisoners do we have who are known BY OUR OWN GOVERNMENT

as "political prisoners?"

Hint: 0.0.

Yet Cuba is gleaming jewel of socialist wonder...

[Boston_Chemist]

6. Let me guess: You think the USA is a gleaming capitalist wonder?

Seriously?

Highest rate of imprisonmnent, brought about by industry groups lobbying for strict sentencing guidelines. Laws that target poor people and minorities, especially, resulting in scandalous rates of incarceration among black youths.

Are you really going to pick on Cuba, whose system is quite a bit better than ours?

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. Wake me when we have political prisoners.

Yawn.

[Boston_Chemist]

8. What we have is a system that commoditizes people into prisoners.

This is actually worse.

And this is an exacerbation of the wage slavery you actually suffer from. Where the system has decided to criminalize the most minor infractions, and a big, hungry demand for the cheap labor that prisoners represent exists.

Lobbying efforts of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_America#Lobbying_Efforts

"According to the Boston Phoenix, CCA spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws"

Full report here:

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/73092-Freedom-watch-Jailhouse-bloc/?page=3#TOPCONTENT

End result: Whole sectors of society, criminalized. Increased stratification of society, with the resulting wealth polarization that will end in (as predicted by Karl Marx) violence.

Cuba may have political prisoners, but their system is not as batshit insane and destructive as ours is.

[Starboard Tack]

9. Prisons are a profitable industry in this country

Nice loophole for slavery. Gotta love those corporate run prisons. Officially we don't have political prisoners in this country. Technically, the 99percenters who get arrested are not political. Those doing time for drug possession are just taking a rest. Those being held in immigration concentration camps - nothing political about them. And of course Gitmo is actually in Cuba, so it doesn't count. You win - zero political prisoners in the good ole USA. Let freedom rule.

[bemildred]

10. Wake me when we don't.

Yawn.

[boppers]

12. The US, like Cuba, does not have official political prisoners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Austin

[dipsydoodle]

11. US regrets Cuba's decision not to release Alan Gross

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16327408

And Cuba regrets the USA's decision to keep the remaining four of the Cuban Five in prison.

[boppers]

13. Murder and internet links are the same thing!

Oh, wait, they're not.