Editor: The views expressed in the following article is that of the writer and not of the TF or the editors. This article is published more for its amusing style than as a serious policy consideration even though there are some grains of truth in the article.

Shoeb Amin

Here’s the quick way to get that number down to… zero (Give or take a few.).

A few weeks ago I covered the mind-blowing facts about American prisons that should make anyone and everyone rethink/detest/abhor the entire institution. Now, I want to examine the reasons people find themselves locked up in the largest prison state in the world (the Land of the Free) and see if we can’t decrease the number of inmates to something more reasonable …like, zero. Or one. …One guy who’s a real grade-A ***.

I’m well aware that many of you are already yelling, “But what about murderers and rapists?!” We’ll get to them in a minute. Keep your pantaloons fastened. Besides, “What about murderers and rapists?!” is a really abnormal thing to yell at something you’re reading. Come to think of it, maybe you’re not fit for society. Maybe we should lock you up.

First, out of our 2.3 million-person prison population, let’s talk about those not yet convicted.

According to a 2020 report by PrisonPolicy.org, 470,000 of those held in local American jails have not yet been convicted. This begs the question: what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? Wasn’t that a thing bored teachers taught us in third grade classes while we secretly focused on trying to flirt with the girl/boy next to us? Clearly the not-yet-guilties need to be released seeing as they haven’t yet been proven to have done anything.

Boom! You just released 20% of our prison population. They’re no longer prisoners. Doesn’t that feel good? You just released from bondage nearly half a million human souls. You should feel like the Moses of thought experiments right now. (True, you did it with a little help from me, but I’ll graciously let you take most of the credit.)

Now it gets a little trickier. Next up — drug offenders. Yes, I’m referring to those dastardly 328,000 convicted drug offenders who account for 18% of our swollen prison population. Yet, we shouldn’t have those people locked up because drug problems are a health issue, not a crime issue. Furthermore, prisons really only have two main goals — either rehabilitation or punishment. If rehabilitation is your directive, then drug offenders should be sent to rehab centers, not cages. If punishment is your goal, then drug offenders don’t need to be punished because they’re already being punished. Many say  they’re harming themselves with drugs. We don’t need to harm them more. Doing so is akin to walking up to a cutter and exclaiming, “Cutting yourself is terrible! To teach you a lesson, I’m gonna spray lemon juice on you.”

At this point some people blurt out, “But drug users do harm to others! They steal and break stuff.” Well, even if that were true, those activities are illegal. It’s illegal to steal — so, sure, arrest them for the stealing. We don’t need to double arrest them. And if they aren’t committing other crimes, then we shouldn’t arrest them for peacefully harming themselves. Isn’t that the right of any American — to peacefully harm ourselves? That’s half the reason I get up in the morning. I can’t wait to find new ways to harm myself. Today maybe it’ll be whiskey and partaking in an amateur rugby match. Tomorrow perhaps cocaine, bungee jumping, and unprotected sex (at the same time!)

To go back to the whole “drug addicts steal” idea for a second, ask yourself: Do they steal more than the thieves on Wall Street? Of course not. But investment bankers aren’t arrested for gambling on people’s mortgages.

Inmate 1:  What’d the cops bust ya for?

Inmate 2:  Eh, I had 100 subprime mortgages hidden up my rectum.

Next, some people will argue, “Well, drug doers hurt the social fabric. They ruin our community.” Even if that were true, all kinds of people hurt the social fabric much more than someone on drugs — polluters, bankers, lobbyists, bad drivers, dudes with no necks playin’ Creed real loud — the list goes on. But we don’t arrest them for any of those things unless they commit some other crime. So the same should be true for drug use.

Alright, so we just freed all the drug users from jail and sentenced them to a rehabilitation plan instead. Then that leaves the drug dealers.

Well, if drugs were decriminalized, then drug dealing would not be the brutal activity it is. Besides, what’s the most harmful drug in the country by amount of damage done? Alcohol. Therefore, one could argue, the most harmful drug dealers are those serving alcohol. But — here’s the thing, fair reader — I’m a fan of alcohol, and I’m a fan of anyone who sells it to me. Those people are my friends. So on behalf of them, I proclaim, “Drug dealers are good people!”

So all those non-violent drug offenders must be freed. At this point, we’ve released 34% of America’s prisoners. (Gee willikers, at this rate, when we’re through, the U.S. won’t even be one of the world’s greatest human rights abusers. Then what will we put on our souvenir mugs?)

Next up: Non-violent property crimes — burglary, robbery, theft, and fraud . Essentially the stuff teens do on a good, fun Saturday night. Let’s be honest — burglary, theft, and fraud is simply the American way. The entirety of Wall Street is based on it. In fact, it’s an open secret that the stock market is the dictionary definition of a Ponzi Scheme. It’s a giant fraud to extract wealth from the not-so rich and give it to the already very rich. Then of course there’s the trillions in tax havens, trillions of dollars of wage-theft, the sweetheart deals, insider trading, funny math, tax loopholes, greased palms, shell companies, exaggerated numbers, golden parachutes, and probably some golden showers, too. The “property criminals” or “street criminals” in prison constitute a rounding error compared to the breathtaking theft that goes on by the rich — most of it legally (made legal by corrupt legislatures over the years).

Hell, even the police in this country steal more from people nowadays than burglars do. It’s time to accept that being a thieving bastard is simply the American way. Or, if you’re not okay with that, then maybe one should ponder the fact that if we ended inequality by changing our socioeconomic system, there would be little to no theft.

Point is — Shazam! — that’s another 446,000 prisoners we just released.

And yes, we can still have some punishment for an *** who breaks into your apartment and takes your signed poster of Jackass: The Movie. We can force those people to sponge bathe the elderly or clean out the sewer pipes or take *** Cheney for his daily stroll around the block to murder a puppy. (One must remain active in retirement.)

Okay, we only have one million prisoners left. This is going spectacularly well.

There’s 44,000 juveniles locked up — almost none of them for truly awful behavior. 61% of underage prisoners are in jail for truancy, or things like being “ungovernable” (whatever that means), running away, or small crimes like vandalism. The U.S. is one of the few countries that even locks up kids for any real amount of time. So let’s get a grip on ourselves and stop that ***. Yes, we could still have places that troubled youth go to for help, but it doesn’t need to be a goddamn prison.

If we really want to call ourselves adults, we must let the children go free.

Next, the U.S. has somewhere around 60,000 people locked up in immigration detention facilities, which is fucking ridiculous (technical terminology). Locking people up because they crossed a line in a field that you told them not to? What are you twelve? Are we playing tag? Is the floor lava? Grow up.

Not to mention we wouldn’t have so many immigrants if we didn’t destroy their home countries with CIA coups and economic warfare. So if we stopped that behavior, then we wouldn’t have nearly this number of refugees and migrants. And if we don’t cease our belligerent destructive activities, then it only makes sense for the U.S. to take in those fleeing our mass destruction.

Between the juveniles and the immigrants, we’re down to only 900,000 prisoners left.

Next: The 266,000 imprisoned for “public order” crimes. As AttorneysOnDemand.net so succinctingly puts it, “Public order crimes are actions that do not conform to society’s general ideas of normal social behavior and moral values.”

Right off the bat, I can tell this is a load of bunk because what the hell are “normal social behaviors”? I find a lot of normal social behaviors awful — like putting little shoes on your tiny dog or spitting out chewing tobacco in public or owning three cars and a McMansion with a giant yard that requires 11 billion gallons of fresh water every day to keep it greener than the Jolly Green Giant’s *** or the animal torture that goes into creating the meat for a Taco Bell mystery meat Dorito Loco Taco. There’s loads of stuff categorized as “normal social behavior” that’s reprehensible, nauseating, or repulsive. In the past slavery was a normal behavior, genocide against indigenous peoples was a normal and sometimes rewarded behavior. So was slapping children across the face because they looked at you funny or marrying off your 13-year-old daughter to a strange man in exchange for a couple of goats or locking your wife in a kitchen for 10 to 20 years. Those were all normal social behaviors at one time. I don’t think I like normal social behavior.

Nowadays, most public order crimes (other than drug use) stem from prostitution, public drunkenness, and paraphilia. On any given night in America, scores of people are publicly drunk to some extent — it should only become criminal when they do something bad. But then, that’s the crime. If they beat someone up or stab a guy, that’s the crime — not the drunkenness. So you can get rid of that law against public drunkenness. We don’t need it.

Prostitution is often a deal between two consenting adults. Legalize it, make sure it’s not abusive, and then everyone benefits. I’m not saying we need to have it readily available out in the middle of the public jungle gym on a Sunday afternoon. Put it somewhere people don’t have to stare at it with their kids on the way home from the ballpark. You know, put it inside a Segway rental shop — no one’s going in there.

Then  there’s paraphilia, or unusual sexual behavior like voyeurism or masturbating in public. First of all, for the truly strange, mental health care is needed — not a jail cell. If you’re caught humping a post office box that you dressed up like Richard Nixon, then prison is not gonna help you. You need a whole team of counselors instead. And if you’re jackin’ off in public, then, again, you could use someone to talk to, but also, as long as you aren’t leaving puddles around, it’s not exactly a huge problem. In fact, a few years ago a Swedish court ruled that it is indeed legal to masturbate in public as long as it’s not directed at someone specific. So there you have it. Just don’t aim the *** thing at anyone.

Alright, we just canceled the “public order” crimes. And for those that should remain crimes (like sexual harassment), how about the perpetrators pay fines, or do shitty community service, like cleaning out the elephant cages at the zoo? There’s also electronic monitoring bracelets to make sure people stay within a certain area (if you truly need to keep tabs on them).

So we’re down to 680,000 inmates. Basically all that remains are violent crimes. Well, let’s put the murderers and rapists aside for a second. We’re looking at 315,000 inmates who are in for violence that isn’t murder, rape, or sexual assault — meaning they’re in for standard assault.

Sure, there should be punishments for fighting and any form of  and domestic violence, and I won’t deny that assault can be a serious thing. But when you lock someone up for years for punching a guy in a bar brawl, you just turn him into a more efficient, angrier dickhead. You basically sent him to criminal university. You’ve actually torn the social fabric more than the “criminal” did by punching someone. Sure, there should be punishments for assault. Maybe it’s a really boring anger management facility. Get creative with it. But locking people up does not have to be the default answer.

Boom! Just like that, we’re down to only 365,000 prisoners remaining. (Don’t you feel good about yourself?) Even if we left the murderers and rapists in the prisons, we’d only have 16% of the original 2.3 million American prisoners.

The next step is to decrease the insane sentences so even violent criminals receive rehabilitation rather than solitary confinement for 60 years. Pretty soon the U.S. would have the same number of prisoners as — wait for it — other countries. Wouldn’t that be crazy? Americans would be able to view ourselves like adults in the room, just like Iran or Egypt — rather than having ten times more prisoners than them. And we wouldn’t need large-scale penitentiaries because, assuming we had roughly 100,000 prisoners left, we could send a few to each city in the United States. The U.S. has 20,000 cities — so that’s only five prisoners per city. One little house in each town. That’s it. That’s all. One adorable tiny house with a few murderers and a rapist locked up in it. A couple of ’em would probably kill each other — then you’d only have two murderers and a rapist in a wee petite house in every city.

Prison abolition is truly not a crazy idea. It should be a real goal of an evolved species (if such a thing ever shows up on Earth). If prison aboltion is not a goal, it shows we’re no better than the plantation owners who claimed slavery was just the only way things could work. But a lot of people knew that wasn’t true even when slavery was commonplace. And right now, a lot of people know our prison system is a crime against humanity. We could easily abolish prisons if we just thought outside of our social engineering. We could one day see a world with no bars, and no cages.

… Except for Jeff Bezos — that unimaginable *** needs to be immediately locked up.

Submitted by Dr. S. Akhtar Ehtisham

Editor: As Editor of the monthI have received many submissions to the Thinkers’ Forum regarding the Kashmir issue, mostly from the Pakistani point of view. They all blame India for not initiating a self determination referendum and they all claim sympathy with Kashmiri Muslims and they all claim the west of the world is ignorant about the issue or is partisan towards India because the world dislikes Muslims. The article below that I have chosen to publish is no different.

I actually believe that by the formula that Junagadh went to India (Muslim ruler but Hindu Majority population) that Kashmir (Hindu ruler, Muslim majority population) should have gone to Pakistan.

But what all those commentaries conveniently fail to mention is that, like all thorny international issue, there are ALWAYS two sides to the issue. First of all the Maharaja did sign a legal document of accession to India. Why this writer calls it bogus is not clear to me. He may have signed in a panic but it is because he hesitated for a few days.

Secondly, if these writers read the actual UN resolution 47 (see link below), it clearly mentions “Secondly, the Resolution recommended a three-step process for the resolution of the dispute. In the first step, Pakistan was asked to withdraw all its nationals that entered Kashmir for the sake of fighting.” Pakistan never took that first step and of course India has conveniently used that as an excuse not to have a referendum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_47

Thirdly, what these writers fail to note is that all was relatively quiet and peaceful in Kashmir until Pakistan escalated the issue by sending in their fighters into Kashmir and create an unstable situation which again India conveniently used to take very aggressive measures because there was complete loss of law and order.

I am not assigning any party to be absolutely right or wrong; I just wish people looked at the issue from both angles. Pakistan would be in a much better moral ground if it had removed the fighters as per Resolution 47 and then if India never had a referendum. And an even better moral case if it didn’t send its operatives to cause unrest in Kashmir.

Shoeb Amin

Here’s the sample article.

Global Media and Kashmir Dispute 

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai 

May 28, 2021 

I am gratified by this opportunity to explore media influence in the United States on foreign and national security policy regarding Muslim nations and peoples in general and Kashmir in particular. Let me begin by summarizing the case of media detractors, which should tell us whether or not, it is too facile and undiscriminating. 

Doubtless the media is instrumental in foreign policy because public opinion is ordinarily decisive on government decisions, whether in South Asia, Vietnam, the Middle East, Europe or elsewhere. It is charged by many thoughtful critics that the media is biased against Muslims, and that Bosnia was the rare exception that proves the rule. Samuel Huntingdon’s thesis in his “Clash of Civilizations” which pits Islam against the West, is said to be revealed truth to the American media. 

What I submit is that media portraits generally reflect a blending of the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States coupled with domestic voting constituencies, which are more Judaeo-Christian than Muslim. Let’s examine South Asia in last three decades, with a focus on Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. Pakistan and Afghanistan were treated kindly during the approximately 10 years needed to evict the Soviet Union after their December 1979 invasion of the latter. The fragmented Mujahidin were celebrated as freedom fighters opposing Communist secularism and Soviet tyranny. They even received stinger weapons from the Central Intelligence Agency, and irregularities in the distribution of financial and military aid were overlooked. Pakistan was acclaimed for hosting millions of Afghan refugees despite the dislocations on the Pakistan economy and resentment by some indigenous Pakistanis around Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and beyond. Indeed, the media and the American government closed their eyes to Pakistan’s nuclear capability in order to evade the strictures of the Pressler Amendment. 

Now let’s take the case of Kashmir, which is more complex. At the time that the resistance hardened and swelled in 1989, the media in the United States, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and others showed signs of sympathy, but India was never castigated except by human rights organizations in the context of assailing countless other countries.  

The proposition that the United States tilted towards India because of its successful propaganda campaign maligning the Kashmiri resistance as largely so-called ‘Afghan Arab terrorists’ and ‘fanatics’ seems unconvincing. President George H. W. Bush, President Clinton, President George W. Bush, President Obama, President Trump and now President Biden administration always favored India over Pakistan or the people of Kashmir. They made no protests at the United Nations Security Council over India’s violations of its plebiscite resolutions and recently over abrogation of the Article 370, 35A and enactment of Domicile Law that changes the demography of Kashmir. That is tantamount to acquiescence in India’s illegal claim of sovereignty over Kashmir. They all gave India a veto over any third party intervention knowing it would be employed to the disadvantage of Pakistan and Kashmiris. They made no attempt at building moral suasion against India’s human rights crimes and brutalities as was done against South Africa’s apartheid, Yugoslavia’s ethnic cleansing, and Indonesia’s maltreatment of East Timorese.   

A pro-India tilt is largely caused by India’s multi million annual lobbying campaign with Congress and the Executive Branch coupled with a soaring number of politically organized Indian-Americans in the media, IT and other industries who command handsome salaries and make generous campaign contributions through political action committees. Election of Kamala Harris as Vice President of the United States, whose mother was from India, testifies to the growing influence of Indian American community. The Indian Caucus in Congress dwarfs a tiny Pakistan counterpart. And the domestic voting clout of Kashmiris and Pakistanis combined is no match to their Indian-American rivals. 

It might be argued, however, that South Asian experts and national security wizards have identified Kashmir as the most dangerous place on the planet because it could trigger nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan. The conspicuous fact is, nevertheless, that President Clinton was the one who was reciting the most dangerous place mantra for years, but did nothing as the President to demonstrate he seriously believed what he was saying. No special envoy on Kashmir or push on Secretary-General of the United Nations to do the same. Not a syllable of criticism of India for its negotiating intransigence. In other words, the United States all along, including Biden Administration treats Kashmir with complacency, although its statements ring with urgency.  Why the discrepancy? 

The point of these observations is to demonstrate that the United States prevailing tilt toward India represents not a brake from the past but a continuity. The reasons for the pro-India sentiments are manifold. A hefty percentage of Americans equate India with Mahatma Gandhi, especially after watching movies that treat him as a virtual deity of peace and non-violence. The economic attractiveness of India as a trade and investment partner played a very important role in its image. Finally, India has maneuvered skillfully to keep its Kashmir atrocities off the likes of CNN and BBC and the front pages of newspapers by the exclusion of foreign journalists or permitting them only carefully scripted and chaperoned visits. No pictures means little international outrage and calls to action.  

I have identified what seems to explain India’s positive image in the United States. I will now turn to what I think explains a less positive or negative image of the Kashmir resistance and Pakistan, which is blurry in the eyes of most non-experts in the field. And they dominate image making. 

After partition on August 15, 1947 when Kashmir became internationalized, the conflict was virtually uniformly treated as a dispute between India and Pakistan, not about Kashmiris and their right to self-determination.  

When India raced to the United Nations Security Council in 1948 over Kashmir, Pakistan answered by itself. It did not insist that even a single Kashmiri be heard during endless argument and debate despite the fact that their political and human rights were at stake, not those of either Pakistan or India. Kashmiris later were not represented at Tashkent, Simla, or Lahore.  Even today, no one persuades India and Pakistan to change track-two  into multi-track diplomacy, with the inclusion of the Kashmiri representative..  

Let me finally address Kashmir directly. Why has its self-determination claim been received with less media and foreign policy sympathy in the United States than Kosovo, Montenegro, East Timor or Southern Sudan?   

The answers do not lend themselves to Euclidean exactitudes, but seem reasonably clear. Most Americans know nothing of Kashmir or its history. They do not understand its international law right to self-determination. They do not know of the Hindu Maharaja’s bogus and invalid instrument of accession to India. Kashmir does not feature internationally renowned political figures like the two Nobel Prize winners in East Timor, Carlos Belos and Jose Ramon-Horta or  personality like Nelson Mandela.

In conclusion, I do believe that Kashmir cause is hurt by ignorance and misinformation. National security interests and domestic political influences are the overwhelming determinants of how any nation or cause is perceived by the United States. Exemplary is Joseph Stalin, who was portrayed as a kind uncle during World War II when fighting with the United States, but then was rapidly transformed into a villain or demon with the onset of the Cold War.  

Let us not gripe about the unfairness of the world, which is as otiose as shouting at the weather. Let us continue to improve our organizing and communications strengths so that our domestic influence in the Unites States and elsewhere will accordingly climb. 

Dr. is the Secretary General of Washington-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum. He can be reached at: 1-202-607-6435    or   gnfai2003@yahoo.com