Do you remember Joseph Stalin? Well Joe and Tubularsock were palling around in Tubularsock’s top floor corner office in his under ground bunker over looking Washington, D.C. from Oakland, CA.
Damn. Joe is one funny dude!
Sure, Tubularsock knows what you’re thinking. Joseph Stalin is dead!
Yeah, Tubularsock will grant you that Joseph Stalin is dead but only in the physical body form.
His ideas are very much alive and are being proposed as reality by Michael Stainer the Director, Division of Adult Institutions for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCr).
The CDCr has proposed new censorship regulations changes which fit right in with the Joseph Stalin mind-set. The regulations were created to censor any writings, mailings, and publications that would educate the public to what is really going on the prison system.
Now we all know that the Prison Industrial Complex is based on PUNISHMENT and not really rehabilitation. There is no money in REAL rehabilitation because if that worked then these current prisoners when released wouldn’t return. Now is that any way to run a “Correctional Institution” and profit handsomely?
It appears to be necessary to continually remind the public as well as the CDCr that even though the prisoners are in jail for some sort of crime they are still human beings and as such need to be treated with human dignity. Really. Is that such a stretch of the imagination?
Now there are International recognition of humane treatment of prisoners and of all countries that should be promoting justice for the humane treatment of prisoners should be the United States. That at least is what our government propaganda tells us.
True, the Bush criminals have moved the moral bar closer to hell with promoting torture as acceptable and Obummer and the boys have followed in the Bush downward trajectory. Add solitary confinement to the “torture list” and the CDCr becomes part of the problem as well.
Now solitary confinement for a few days may be agued as acceptable in extreme circumstances BUT 10 YEARS, 20 YEARS??? That is TORTURE plain and simple.
Now just how would these new CDCr changes fit right in with the Joseph Stalin mind frame?
Well according to Mutope Duguma in Pelican Bay Censorship published in San Francisco BayView:
“If these changes are approved, publications mailed to prisoners and considered to be in violation of the new regulations “shall be disallowed into the institution and included on the Department’s Centralized List of Disapproved Publications” – permanently banned.
Prisoners would no longer be able to write to the media outlets that allow us to speak to our suffering.
Our torture would be magnified under these new proposed rules that Stainer and his cronies are introducing by attempting to silence prisoners and publishers whose voices have been prominent in waging struggle against our perpetual suffering. CDCr wants to stifle our truths and disconnect us from society at large.
These new proposed regulations are designed to serve one purpose and that is to censor any writings, mailings and publications that educate the public to what is actually occurring in these prisons.
Allowing CDCr to censor the content of our mail would violate not only the First Amendment but also CCR Title 15, Section 3135(b): “Disagreement with the sender’s or receiver’s morals, values, attitudes, veracity or choice of words will not be cause for correctional staff to disallow mail. Correctional staff shall not challenge or confront the sender or receiver with such value judgments.”’
You see just like the Gulag mentality of Joseph Stalin, Michael Stainer is attempting to create that same type of mentality in the California prison system.
It got Tubularsock thinking ………… if Stainer is like Stalin, who’s the criminal?
If you want to give your opinion about these new “reforms” here’s all you need to know:
The public comment period ends June 17, 2014, at 5 p.m. Written comments can be mailed to: Regulation and Policy Management Branch (RPMB), P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento CA 94283-0001. The contact person is Timothy M. Lockwood, chief of RPMB. If you have inquiries regarding the subject matter of the proposed regulations, call Christopher Abshire at 916-327-5305.
Tubularsock 
I don’t think Gulag Mike regards prisoners as human. He seems to share the same mentality as the rest of the corporate elite that you have have white skin and be worth a half billion dollars to be fully human. The rest of us are subhuman and have to be subjected to state terrorism periodically lest will feel emboldened to challenge the corporate oligarchy that runs the world to further their own personal interests.
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Some states have taken Stalin-worshiping censorship so far as to propose that only postcards be allowed in and out of prisons…that’s like what…PrisonTwitter? Describe the abuses in 140 characters or less…
CA always seems to be at the forefront of nifty new ideas to *help* keep peace and order inside prisons. At least they hold steady on their path of rehabilitative failures.
Even states without BS regulations like this make it impossible to get word to the outside world. We collected over 500 pages of documented abuses out of Utah State…men risked life and limb to get the information out to us. We organized it all, verified as much as we could and then tried to get the media involved…USP refused to allow any interviews or visits. No reporter could *actually* verify the accounts of abuses…so no stories could be printed. Two of the prisoners willing to speak on the record got slapped with extra time for ‘institutional offenses’ and disappeared back into the solitary caves of NeverSeeTheLightOfDay.
Not only is information supposed to be kept IN…all attempts at education are kept OUT. The little newsletter hubby and I published for about 250 prisoners every month got sent back as often as not. If we included anything more newsworthy than “Prisoners train puppies” kind of stories, this prison or that state kicked them back constantly. Latin roots and definitions? DENIED!!!! How dare you teach prisoners…code…a mailroom moron classified LATIN AS CODE and banned us.
Oh, and if you jab the PTB with a stick long enough, they call in the frickin’ DoD to intimidate you…and they do a very, very good job of it. Prisoners tend to belong to gangs…gangs now qualify as terrorist organizations…that’s what DoD/FBOP said I was supporting. Because nothing says national threat & terrorist quite like…a little high school drop out with a soft spot for lost causes..? :-p
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MBW! Excellent and informative comment. Thank you so mush for this added information and taking the time to comment. And sure, Latin as code:Et tu, Brute. Everyone knows those code words! Even Homeland Security. But what if the code was changed to say, Et tu, John! Now see how scary that could be?
Sounds like you’ve been in the mix. I’ll bet DoD is spooky. That is why Tubularsock supports terrorist so he can be in a gang. Otherwise they’d want Tubularsock to get a tattoo and that could hurt!
Take care…….. And thanks for all the likes as well.
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Hey, if we let that Latin thing get out of control, who knows where it could lead?! Next thing, people will start using Greek roots and then where would we be, eh? Educated gangs of people running around…too much competition for the DC Gangsters to deal with…we just can’t have it!
I interviewed a man who blew the whistle on corruption in CA and the guards’ union. He lives on a remote mountain top now…the death threats – from officials, NOT prisoners – had *mostly* stopped after half a decade. People really do underestimate the size and power of the Prison Industrial Complex…we saved screenshots of the IP tracker and hits our sites got…every major private prison, state & federal prisons, more gov’t ABC agencies than I knew existed, security firms…it was WILD to Watch The Watchers Watching Us. We were but a lil band of 3 or 4 broke-as-fuck activists…making billion dollar corporations spend $$ cyber-stalking us…Power To The (Too Stupid To Be Scared) People, baby! 😀
Hope alls been well in your top floor corner office in your under ground bunker over looking Washington, D.C. from Oakland, CA. I still try to keep up on posts and of course, yours are one of my faves. I took on a new project that’s pulled me back to cyberville so hopefully I can start keeping up in a more timely fashion again!
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Well thank you MBW for your kind words. Yeah, any time anyone can cause the system to spy on them then you must be doing something correct. That is why Tubularsock has his underground bunker, just in case. Tubularsock may just stumble on to something and then ………
As Tubularsock often says: “Tubularsock ξέρει τα πάντα για το τίποτα καθόλου”! Oh sorry, Tubularsock forgot and wrote in Greek code, shit! Here’s the translation” “Tubularsock knows everything about nothing at all”.
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