#Prison Infrastructure Modernization

[datastring]

🚨 Penal System Fixtures Market to Reach $642.9 Million by 2035 Amidst Rising Infrastructure Upgrades and Tech Integration

Industry revenue for Penal System Fixtures is forecast to grow from $328.3 million in 2024 to $642.9 million by 2035, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.3% over the period.

Detailed Analysis - https://datastringconsulting.com/industry-analysis/penal-system-fixtures-market-research-report

Penal system fixtures are essential across applications such as institutional corrections, rehabilitation centers, production facilities, and private prisons. The report highlights key growth levers across segments like Material Type, Product Type, Application, Technology, and End-User, alongside detailed industry revenue projections.

🏗️ Industry Dynamics and Key Players

The market is driven by a surge in prison infrastructure modernization, the adoption of smart technologies, and increased public and private investments in correctional facilities. Leading market participants include:

3M Company

ASSA ABLOY Group

Allegion PLC

Axis Communications AB

Stanley Security Solutions Inc.

Bosch Sicherheitssysteme GmbH

Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co.

L3Harris Technologies Inc.

United Technologies Corporation

Honeywell International Inc.

Brinks Incorporated

Lockheed Martin Corporation

These companies compete on technological innovation, integration with surveillance and access systems, durability, and compliance with strict safety regulations.

🌍 Market Expansion & Demand Centers

The growth trajectory is reinforced by:

The increase in incarceration rates and longer sentencing trends

Technological upgrades in surveillance, locking systems, and biometric access

Government reinvestment programs aimed at overhauling outdated correctional infrastructure

Key markets driving demand include the U.S., UK, Germany, China, and Australia, while India, Brazil, and South Africa present strong opportunities for regional diversification and Total Addressable Market (TAM) expansion.

🔄 Supply Chain Trends & Market Challenges

While North America and Europe remain core regions, the industry is responding to evolving dynamics such as:

High upfront costs of installation and integration

Inconsistent standardization across facility types and jurisdictions

Shifting supply chains from component acquisition through manufacturing and distribution

Industry players are focusing on flexible design, security innovation, and partnerships with facility operators to remain competitive and compliant.

🧠 About DataString Consulting

DataString Consulting is your trusted partner for actionable market research and business intelligence. With over 30 years of combined industry expertise, we offer tailored insights for clients across 15+ industries, helping businesses decode complex markets and uncover growth potential.

[fatehbaz]

was thinking about this

To be in "public", you must be a consumer or a laborer.

About control of peoples' movement in space/place. Since the beginning.

"Vagrancy" of 1830s-onward Britain, people criminalized for being outside without being a laborer.

Breaking laws resulted in being sentenced to coerced debtor/convict labor. Coinciding with the 1830-ish climax of the Industrial Revolution and the land enclosure acts (factory labor, poverty, etc., increase), the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 establishes full-time police institution(s) in London. The "Workhouse Act" aka "Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834" forced poor people to work for a minimum number of hours every day. The Irish Constabulary of 1837 sets up a national policing force and the County Police Act of 1839 allows justices of the peace across England to establish policing institutions in their counties (New York City gets a police department in 1844). The major expansion of the "Vagrancy Act" of 1838 made "joblessness" a crime and enhanced its punishment. (Coincidentally, the law's date of royal assent was 27 July 1838, just 5 days before the British government was scheduled to allow fuller emancipation of its technical legal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean on 1 August 1838.)

---

"Vagrancy" of 1860s-onward United States, people criminalized for being outside while Black.

Widespread emancipation after slavery abolition in 1865 rapidly followed by the outlawing of loitering which de facto outlawed existing as Black in public. Inability to afford fines results in being sentenced to forced labor by working on chain gangs or prisons farms, some built atop plantations.

---

"Vagrancy" of 1870s-onward across empires, people criminalized for being outside while being "foreign" and also being poor generally.

Especially from 1880-ish to 1918-ish, this was an age of widespread mass movement of peoples due to the land dispossession, poverty, and famine induced by global colonial extraction and "market expansion" (Scramble for Africa, US "American West", nation-building, conquering "frontiers"), as agricultural "revolutions" of imperial monoculture cash crop extraction resulted in ecological degradation, and as major imperial infrastructure building projects required a lot of vulnerable "mobile" labor. This coincides with and is facilitated by new railroad networks and telegraphs, leading to imperial implementation or expansion of identity documents, strict work contracts, passports, immigration surveillance, and border checkpoints.

All of this in just a few short years: In 1877, British administrators in India develop what would become the Henry Classification System of taking and keeping fingerprints for use in binding colonial Indians to legal contracts. That same year during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, and in response to white anxiety about Black residents coming to the city during Great Migration, Chicago's policing institutions exponentially expand surveillance and pioneer "intelligence card" registers for tracking labor union organizing and Black movement, as Chicago's experiments become adopted by US military and expanded nationwide, later used by US forces monitoring dissent in colonial Philippines and Cuba. Japan based its 1880 Penal Code anti-vagrancy statutes on French models, and introduced "koseki" register to track poor/vagrant domestic citizens as Tokyo's Governor Matsuda segregates classes, and the nation introduces "modern police forces". In 1882, the United States passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1884, the Ottoman government enacts major "Passport Nizamnamesi" legislation requiring passports. In 1885, the racist expulsion of the "Tacoma riot".

Punished for being Algerian in France. Punished for being Chinese in San Francisco. Punished for being Korean in Japan. Punished for crossing Ottoman borders without correct paperwork. Arrested for whatever, then sent to do convict labor. A poor person in the Punjab, starving during a catastrophic famine, might be coerced into a work contract by British authorities. They will have to travel, shipped off to build a railroad. But now they have to work. Now they are bound. They will be punished for being Punjabi and trying to walk away from Britain's tea plantations in Assam or Britain's rubber plantations in Malaya.

Mobility and confinement, the empire manipulates each.

---

"Vagrancy" amidst all of this, people also criminalized for being outside while "unsightly" and merely even superficially appearing to be poor. San Francisco introduced the notorious "ugly law" in 1867, making it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view". Today, if you walk into a building looking a little "weird" (poor, Black, ill, disabled, etc.), you are given seething spiteful glares and asked to leave. De facto criminalized for simply going for a stroll without downloading the coffee shop's exclusive menu app.

Too ill, too poor, too exhausted, too indebted to move, you are trapped. Physical barriers (borders), legal barriers (identity documents), financial barriers (debt). "Vagrancy" everywhere in the United States, a combination of all of the above. "Vagrancy" since at least early nineteenth century Europe. About the control of movement through and access to space/place. Concretizing and weaponizing caste, corralling people, anchoring them in place, extracting their wealth and labor.

You are permitted to exist only as a paying customer or an employee.

[metamorphesque]

September 19, 2023, marks one of the darkest chapters in Armenia's modern history.

As a result of another large-scale military aggression by azerbaijan, the entire population of Artsakh, native to the land for over 3000 years, was subjected to ethnic cleansing and was forced to leave their homeland. This operation followed a nearly 9-month blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only land route connecting Artsakh to Armenia. The blockade created a severe humanitarian crisis, cutting off food, medical supplies, and other necessities for the people of Artsakh. Even after nine months of illegal blockade, the armed forces of Artsakh fought with exceptional heroism in defense of the homeland, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.

While ethnic cleansing was taking place, the azeri government arrested eight former members of Artsakh’s government and advocates for the self-determination of Artsakh, including Ruben Vardanyan, an influential Armenian philanthropist who in 2024 was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Vardanyan and the seven others join over 50 Armenians arrested during the conflict, some of whom have been held for years by azerbaijan. Anyone acquainted with azerbaijan would not be shocked to learn that political prisoners are held in conditions that breach basic standards for the treatment of detainees.

The occupation of the Republic of Artsakh has resulted in staggering material losses, impacting both cultural heritage and essential infrastructure. The recorded damage includes:

12 cities

241 villages

13,550 houses (30% over 100 years old)

11,450 apartments

60 factories

15 plants

200 cultural centers

9 cultural hubs

25 museums

232 schools

7 colleges

4 universities

11 art schools

400 medieval cemeteries

385 churches

60 monastic complexes

2,385 khachkars (cross-stones)

4 reservoirs

5 canals

37 hydroelectric power stations

48 mines

11 hospitals

230 medical centers

This extensive damage reflects not just a loss of property, but an assault on the cultural identity and historical legacy of the region.

Eternal glory to the Armenian heroes who sacrificed all for their nation and their homeland.

[sexboobomb]

Why do online leftists seem to think that voting is a matter of moral purity instead of a purely utilitarian action done in concert with other more effective forms of advocacy and direct action?

Inability or unwillingness to break down what voting actually means I guess. Whether they realize it or not, everyone not voting as a matter of solidarity with Gaza is effectively making themselves a single-policy voter, thus signaling that all the myriad of other very important factors are unimportant to them.

Trump wants to genocide trans people, while Biden doesn't? Doesn't matter because they're both terrible for Gaza.

Trump wants poor people to be thrown in prison and made to work under our modern-day chattel slavery prison system, while Biden wants to legalize marijuana and forgive nonviolent crime? Doesn't matter because they're both terrible for Gaza.

Trump wants to reduce taxes on the rich and stop funding public works and infrastructure, while Biden is putting billions of dollars into trying to revitalize rail-based infrastructure and public transit? Doesn't matter because they're both terrible for Gaza.

Like, I get it! I really really do! I want so fucking badly for America to stop being a fucking menace to the rest of the world and to stop fucking propping up Israel as a legitimate state that is constantly committing genocide. I really really do! But I have to recognize that I do not have the power to change that part of this country, much as I might loathe it, by not voting!

The best thing I can do right now is try to do everything I can to prevent things getting worse, and to improve the few things I can. I can't start some glorious revolution. I can't write up a world-changing manifesto that magically convinces the entire country to change the system to something better! I just can't, and that sucks!

It really really sucks to be helpless to change things, particularly when that thing is literal genocide, but putting your head in the sand and letting it get even worse is not the right play.

[thedialoguedilemma]

Donald Trump has proposed to “rebuild and reopen” Alcatraz prison in San Francisco.

1) Alcatraz prison closed in 1963 due to high operating costs and deteriorating infrastructure. If your goal is to cut spending, why would you propose to “reopen” a prison that was closed due to high operating costs?

2) It is currently designated as a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and houses a Museum which receives over a million visitors every year. It is literally one of San Francisco’s top tourist destinations.

3) it would be extremely costly to turn Alcatraz into a functioning prison again. According to ChatGPT it would cost $500 million to 1 billion to modernize the infrastructure, staff transportation, food, emergency services and more. The prison itself is on top of a large hill on an island.

[myfriendpokey]

tunnel notes

i wrote some extra little notes and thoughts for the bonus tunnels in anthology of the killer, and then removed them before release; i didn't like the prescriptive feeling of leaving that stuff in the "final package" as if it was something people should feel obligated to engage with. but as of today it's been 30 days since the loader came out, so i figured i'd dump some of them online, for the benefit of whoever is interested in these things.

History: HISTORY IS A NIGHTMARE FROM WHICH I AM TRYING TO AWAKE is one of many famous zingers given to Stephen in Ulysses and I’ve always wondered if it’s especially Irish as a sentiment, Ireland sort of feeling like the “Oops! All Peasants” edition of European history as a whole – same misery, exploitation and death minus the occasional episodes of feudal colour or triumphant empire-building that seem to make the past tolerable for other people, and give them their own sense of demarcated time. But then I’ve never been much good on Irish history, which has always just felt like an interminable, indistinguishable series of massacres and betrayals and missed shots. Was I not paying attention or was this how it was taught in school? Well, it would have fit the style at the time – I was born in 1989, smack at the start of the famous end of history era. The 90s in Ireland meant the peace process and infusion of American capital to our backwards shores, all the more reason to cosign the idea of an abrupt and permanent break with a history notably lacking in the non-depressing or picturesque. All our history textbooks seemed to trail off at the point we’d joined the EEA. And even as this new modernity just started seeming like the monstrous antiquity dressed up in different clothes – hooded prisoners transported to torture sites through Shannon airport, our patchy social infrastructure dismantled by burghers, ghost estates and half-completed monuments scattered around like the ruin theory of value with more leprechaun imagery – there was still a sense that any change was off the table. You didn’t want to drag us back into history, did you? History seemed to have “ended” in the same sense Freddy Krueger did – done away with in ways that none of the grown-ups ever wanted to talk about, and now officially a non-presence, even if all the kids in town were mysteriously disappearing.

--

Art: One reason I wanted to do an episodic series is just to see what would turn up, if any recurring interests would build despite a minimum of planning. One of the themes turned out to be, “art” – or specifically modernist art – and I am curious about why that would be. A recurring tendency in modernism was the idea that only by destroying the world as it currently existed could we clear space for anything better to emerge. Under the cobblestones, the beach! But this was always attended by a kind of fear: that clearing away the old structures would just allow something even worse to emerge, unmasked. Under the cobblestones, more corpses! And that the bleakest tendencies of the period would now run free without even the emptiest symbolic constraints to chafe against. Max Ernst’s painting of the fascist victory in Spain, of a huge, grinning oaf rampaging over the landscape like a kaiju while a miserable birdlike figure remains haplessly grafted to its leg – is titled both “The Angel Of Hearth And Home” and “The Triumph Of Surrealism”. As if to suggest that these are each the same thing, as though a cause of creative liberation worth devoting your life to and an empty cliché of domestic repression had so little light between them as to not even be worth the effort of distinguishing.

Part of the reason works like that make their way into the games in little ways is because I just like them, and go back to thinking about them. But the status of modernism in the 21st century is an odd one; the most tentative and inventive parts got dropped, while the brashest and stupidest aspects curdled into a kind of official state ideology – the idea of “creative destruction”, which just seems to mean a vague sense that it’s punk rock to create ridesharing apps. The monkey’s paw curled and the emptiest version of the modernist credo became something we all have to live with.. and yet I still can’t help but be moved by the source works and the goofy, ridiculous temerity of that wish to transfigure the world. sometimes it feels like only way to keep faith with those ideas is to travesty them, to try returning to them some of that sense of fear and doubt without which they just sound like so many web design agency manifestos. Kept alive in the breast of so many grimacing waxworks, underground.

Another reason to put this stuff in a horror game: to try getting at that feeling in a dream of looking in the eyes of people you know, people you love, and seeing nothing there anymore, seeing them look right past you. An earlier horror game idea I used to think about would have ended with the protagonist being dismembered and eaten by Gertrude Stein.

--

The moral: I’ve seen people express a sense, now, that merely working in the negative is not enough; to just outline what’s bad without also trying to give a vision of the good, some glimpsed utopia to shoot for. For the benefit of these people here is an epilogue. Imagine it’s the future and the long nightmare of prehistory is over; history proper unfolds as the full expression of human powers unhindered by material subjugation. Some students are given an assignment by a professor to investigate the meaning of a term that no longer exists, the meaning of horror. Well, the students do their best: they watch lots of old movies, put on rubber masks, comb through old fragments of the world that was. They’re enjoying themselves and that enjoyment warps the process, they keep drifting into pleasure, unsure what’s meant to be funny and what’s not. They get lost, get confused, lose the thread, famous faces appear under the wrong names, espousing things that are the opposite of whatever they believed. In the end they all have to admit defeat: they hand in their assignment with a note saying that in the new world, we can’t even imagine what horror may have been. The professor reads their findings, nods, and gives them all an F. No moral.

[image source: James Ensor, "The Intrigue"]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Art by Barry Blitt. Title: The First 100.

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 29, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Apr 30, 2025

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt popularized the idea that the first 100 days of a presidency established an administration’s direction. As soon as he took office on March 4, 1933, he called Congress into special session to meet on March 9 to address the emergency of the Great Depression. Congress responded to the crisis by quickly passing 15 major bills and 77 other measures first to stabilize the economy and then to rebuild it. On July 24, 1933, FDR looked back at “the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”

In a Fireside Chat broadcast over the radio, FDR explained that his administration had stabilized the nation’s banks and raised taxes to pay for millions in borrowing. That federal money was feeding starving people, as well as employing 300,000 young men to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps planting trees to prevent soil erosion, building levees and dams for flood control, and maintaining forest roads and trails. It was also funding a public works program for highways and inland navigation, as well as state-based municipal improvements. The government had also raised farm income and wages by regulating agriculture and abolishing child labor.

FDR was speaking on July 24 to urge Americans to get behind a program of shorter hours and higher wages to create purchasing power that would restart the economy. “It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the Nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about,” he said. “If I am asked whether the American people will pull themselves out of this depression, I answer, ‘They will if they want to.’”

Today is the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office. He marked it by delivering what amounted to a rally outside Detroit, Michigan, in which he claimed his had been “the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that’s according to many, many people…. This is the best, they say, 100-day start of any president in history, and everyone is saying it. We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet.”

In fact, Trump has signed just five measures into law: the Laken Riley Act, which Congress passed before he took office; a stopgap funding measure; and three resolutions overturning rules set by the Biden administration.

But Trump’s administration does parallel FDR’s in an odd way. Trump set out in his first hundred days to undo the government FDR established in his first hundred days. Trump has turned the nation away from 92 years of a government that sought to serve ordinary Americans by regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, protecting civil rights, and stabilizing global security and trade. Instead, he is trying to recreate the nation of more than 100 years ago, in which the role of government was to protect the wealthy and enable them to make money from the country’s resources and its people.

Trump set out to destroy the modern American state, gutting the civil service and illegally shuttering federal agencies, as well as slashing through government programs. His team has withdrawn the U.S. from its global leadership and rejected democratic allies in favor of autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. At home he has imitated those autocrats, ignoring the rule of law and rendering migrants to prison in El Salvador without due process, and using the power of the state to threaten those he perceives as his enemies.

As is typical with autocratic governments, corruption appears to be running deep in this White House. The president and his family are openly profiting from his office. And it would be hard to find a better example of a government letting cronies profit off public resources than Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s relinquishing of control over the department to a DOGE operative, or of a government permitting businesses to profit from ordinary Americans than billionaire Elon Musk’s apparent creation of a master database of Americans’ information.

Trump’s dismantling of the modern American state has been a disaster. Trump spoke tonight in Michigan to tout his hope that his new tariffs will center auto manufacturing back in the U.S., but the economic chaos his tariff policies have unleashed has turned what was a booming economy 100 days ago sharply downward. That economic slump, along with Trump’s illegal renditions of men to El Salvador and the gutting of services Americans depend on, has given Trump the lowest job approval rating after 100 days of any president in 80 years.

And that suggests another way to look at the first 100 days of a presidential term. For all that the 100-days trope focuses on presidents, the first 100 days of Trump’s second term have shown Americans, sometimes encouraged by their allies abroad, pushing back against Trump to restore American democracy.

Democratic attorneys general began to plan for a possible Trump second term in February 2024, preparing for cases they might have to file if Trump followed through with his campaign promises or implemented Project 2025. California, with 5,600 staffers in its department of justice, and New York, with 2,400, carried much of the weight. They were able to file their first challenges to Trump’s January 20 executive orders on January 21. Their lawsuits, and those of others, have been so successful that they have sparked both Trump and MAGA Republicans to attack judges and even the judiciary.

Early observers of the movement to stop Trump’s destruction of the modern state argued that the opposition was too burned out to mount any meaningful pushback against a newly emboldened Trump. But, in fact, people were not in the streets because they were organizing over computer apps and at the local level, a reality that burst into the open at Republican town halls in late February as angry voters protested government cuts at the hands of Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

On March 4, Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC), the head of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, told Republicans to stop holding town halls to stop the protests from gaining attention. So Democrats began holding their own packed town halls in the absent Republicans’ districts.

On March 20, 2025, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) launched their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour in Las Vegas. Unexpectedly huge crowds flocked to their rallies across the West, revealing a deep well of unhappiness at the current government even in areas that had voted for Trump.

At 7:00 on the evening of March 31, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) launched a marathon speech attacking the Trump administration and imploring Republicans to defend democracy because, he said, he had “been hearing from people from all over my state and indeed all over the nation calling upon folks in Congress to do more, to do things that recognize the urgency—the crisis—of the moment. And so we all have a responsibility, I believe to do something different to cause, as John Lewis said, good trouble, and that includes me.” Before he finished twenty-five hours later on April 1, his speech—the longest in congressional history—had been liked on TikTok 400 million times.

The quiet organizing of the early months of the administration showed when the first call for a public “Hands Off!” protest on April 5 produced more than 1,400 rallies in all 50 states and turned out millions of people. Organizers called for “an end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration; an end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on; and an end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.”

On April 11, Harvard University rejected the administration’s demand to regulate the “intellectual and civil rights conditions” at Harvard, including its governance, admissions, programs, and extracurricular activities, in exchange for the continuation of $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and a $60 million contract.

Harvard’s lawyers wrote: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle…. Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

Last Sunday, April 27, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker gave a barn-burning speech to Democrats in New Hampshire, telling them to “fight—EVERYWHERE AND ALL AT ONCE.” “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now,” he said.

“These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact— because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”’

And so, even as Trump tries to erase the government FDR pioneered, Americans are demonstrating their support for a government that defends ordinary people, and proving the truth of FDR’s words from 1933, that when people act together they “can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he wants to reopen the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, to house "America's most ruthless and violent Offenders"—an asinine idea that critics say will cost an absurd amount of money. In a Sunday night post on Truth Social, Trump wrote:

[REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. No longer will we tolerate these Serial Offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets. That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders. We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally. The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! ]

Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz is imbecilic. The prison was closed in March 1963 because of its crumbling infrastructure, and even then it was too expensive to operate, as all supplies needed to run the facility had to be brought in by boat.  “For example, the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week. The Federal Government found that it was more cost-effective to build a new institution than to keep Alcatraz open,” the Federal Bureau of Prisons wrote in a post about the history of the facility.

Even when it was a prison, three people notoriously escaped from its walls—so it’s not like Alcatraz is some impenetrable fortress. And making it operational again because Trump—a convicted felon in his own right—thinks Alcatraz sounds like a scary place to put criminals is prohibitively expensive, as it hasn’t operated as a place to house prisoners in more than 60 years and would require millions in renovations.

Convicted felon sociopath Donald Trump wants to waste more of American taxpayer money by seeking to reopen the infamous Alcatraz prison.

Alcatraz closed for prison use in 1963 due to deteriorating infrastructure and all supplies needed to be brought in via boat, and before it would ever be reopened for prison usage, it would need lots of money for rehab to make it align with modern prison security standards.

See Also:

The Guardian: Trump orders reopening of Alcatraz prison for ‘most ruthless offenders’

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

Many Muslims born in the west (both the children of immigrants and converts) want to move to a Muslim country, and many of them do. They want to move because they want their children to learn Quran in school (and not learn LGBTQ+ issues in school), or because they want it to be easier for them to be Muslim in their day-to-day lives (easy access to halal food and jobs that don't expect a lot from the workers during Ramadan), or because they want to fulfill the Islamic requirement to live under Sharia if not actively proselytizing, or they want to get away from Islamophobia in the west, or they are American and just need to get away after realizing how much being American screws one over, or maybe they're just emigrating for work or marriage.

The human rights violations occurring in Muslim countries generally don't occur to them as reasons not to immigrate. They might move to Qatar blissfully unaware that its infrastructure is the product of modern slavery, or move to Saudi Arabia despite being uncomfortable that the state sponsors terrorism, or move to Turkey not caring that their government continues to deny the Armenian genocide, or move to Malaysia and actively consider it a good thing that it's illegal to be gay.

Then those same Muslims assume that Jews who decide to make Aliyah all hate Palestinians and have some colonialist agenda, when in reality most Jews who make Aliyah immigrate because ... they want to send their children to a religious public school, or they want it to be easier to be Jewish in their day-to-day lives (easy access to kosher food and jobs that give shabbat and holidays off), or they want to fulfill the mitzvah of living in the land of Israel, or they want to get away from antisemitism in their country, or they are American and just need to get away after realizing how much being American screws one over, or maybe they're just emigrating for work or marriage. They may or may not be aware of or care about Arabs being tortured in Israeli state prisons, but ultimately every country has human rights violations.

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

“Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader, or anyone else who seems as the target exactly to him. “After the murder of Alexei Navalny, it’s absurd to perceive Putin as a supposedly legitimate head of a Russian state and he is a thug who maintains power through corruption and violence.” “He has just yesterday tried to send us all a clear message as the Munich Security Conference opened, Putin murdered another opposition leader. “So please, let’s not fear Putin’s defeat and the destruction of his regime. Let’s instead work together to destroy what he stands for. It is his fate to lose, not the fate of the rules based world order to vanish.” “Do not ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourselves why Putin is still able to continue it.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's response to Putin's terrorism, including his murder of Alexei Navalny in prison yesterday. Note especially: Putin has NO legitimacy and the modern Russian state he has created has NO legitimacy. This is a terror state that built an infrastructure to protect the endless self-enrichment of thieves, and which murders anyone who gets in the way of that goal. Such a terrorist infrastructure also needs to invade other countries in order to maintain power. PUTIN MUST BE STOPPED NOW.

[girlactionfigure]

🟤DEAL TROUBLES, IRAN CLAIMS - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

( PHOTO - Sunset yesterday, throughout central Israel up to the Judean Hills we could view the INTERCEPTOR MISSILE TRAIL from the interceptor fired at the Houthi Ballistic Missile that morning. )

🎗️GAZA / HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS.. Fin. Min. Smotrich: “We are at a crucial and fateful time for the security, future and existence of the State of Israel. What stands before me is only one thing, and I am concerned with it with all my heart and soul, and that is how to achieve the full goals of the war - complete victory, the complete destruction of Hamas militarily and civilianly, and the return of all our hostages home.”

.. TROUBLE.. Political source:  Hamas has made a false claim that Israel added new conditions in the negotiations - to avoid carrying out the deal.

.. RELATED.. Sources told the Al-Akhbar newspaper that Hamas has informed the mediators of its verbal agreement to the ceasefire and release of the hostages, but has not yet signed the necessary documents. This is because the terrorist organization claims that Israel may shirk its commitments to withdraw.

.. HAMAS NOW CLAIMS.. Lebanese Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the "Resistance Axis", from a "Palestinian source" on the issue of negotiations for an agreement: 

“The behavior of the Israeli occupation so far is delaying the agreement.

The occupation did not present the withdrawal maps from the Gaza Strip nor the details regarding the management of the Rafah Crossing and the entry of trucks.

The occupation did not provide details regarding the prisoner exchange mechanism and did not clarify how the wounded were taken out for treatment.

The general agreement on the part of the occupation exists, but the above-mentioned necessary details are delaying the signing of the agreement and the beginning of its implementation.”

.. NEW ISSUE.. A real crisis: Hamas backs off on the commitment to release wounded men under 50.

▪️ANTI-DRAFT PROTEST.. a group of charedi extremists had an illegal demonstration this morning by the IDF recruitment office in Kiryat Ono.  Despite the police declaring the demonstration illegal, the demonstrators blocked roads and began rioting.

▪️IDF NORTHERN GENERAL SAYS.. "We are looking ahead in the context of our action against Hezbollah. We will continue to enforce and we are enforcing all the time today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday. Since the beginning of the agreement, we have had more than 49 Hezbollah operatives killed. We are responsible for security within the area, we are responsible for ensuring that neither infrastructure construction nor the accumulation of weapons, nor Hezbollah operational activity at all within the area, will take place here."

▪️STRANGE BOAST.. the IDF is boasting about capturing a fair supply of weapons abandoned by the former Syrian Army, including 1,500 RPGs, 2 tanks, 70 grenades, 165 rockets, 20 anti-tank missiles, and various intelligence and military equipment.  (( As an enemy army, of course they had supplies of military equipment.  Boast about “collected and kept from terrorists.” ))

RELATED.. the condition of the equipment (from photos shown) is adequate to poor and aged - MUCH worse condition than the mass equipment captured from Hezbollah, which was new-in-box, modern, advanced.  Much of the Syrian equipment - Chinese.  Much of the Hezbollah equipment - Russian.

🔹IRAN.. Iran's vice president claimed in an interview that Israel had planted explosives in centrifuge technology purchased for Iran's nuclear program and said that explosives had been found planted in centrifuge components purchased by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and that they had been successfully detected and disposed of.

♦️GAZA - IDF: Over the past day, the Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes on over 50 targets in the Gaza Strip, the military says, including against groups of operatives from the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups.

[accidental-king]

BURYING THE NOT QUITE DEAD: A DISCO ELYSIUM FANFIC

My take on the events after the game featuring a multi-fic HarryKim slowburn. I'm also just a sucker for case fics. This is just a snippet from Chapter 1 but I actually have several chapters written. I'll be posting them on AO3 eventually but I'd like to run it by some beta readers first. Feel free to DM me if you're interested!

SHIVERS - As the sun begins to lower over Jamrock, the dome of an old silk mill shines like brass in the golden light. It's not difficult to see a time in which masses of workers filed in and out of its entrances, and the motor lorries lined up along its western wing to collect their wares. Miles upon miles of lustrous textiles to be shipped across oceans and isolas to glide across the skin and furnishings of those few who can afford it. The Revacholiere will never be one of those people. 

The long and blocky building projects off of either side of the dome like a russet brick ladybird, splitting its chitinous hide and stretching its wings between half-demolished tenements and modern high rises alike. Its masonry tells tales of a time before the deathblow. A time when even the utilitarian still showed a thread of residual vanity in the form of granite steps, sharp stone arches, and molded concrete cornerstones. Original varve clay brick, brown like dried autumn leaves, sit in contrast to newer, coppery replacements, highlighting the scars of war and neglect in cracks, blotches and even an entire end of one wing. Always visible like a reality you can't unsee. 

ESPRIT DE CORPS - It has been a Police Precinct longer now than it was ever a Silk Mill but its old purpose still lingers in the bones of its columns, trusses, and long abandoned smoke stacks.

INLAND EMPIRE - It’s all that you have left.

What’s to the North?

What’s to the South?

What’s to the East?

What’s to the West?

What’s inside this building?

Shudder and blink

YOU - What’s to the North?

SHIVERS - A peninsula. A district left abandoned by its surrounding infrastructure. Bombed out ruins and mountains of shipping crates slowly turning red. The harbor has been locked up tight since shots rang out in the square. Blood and heavy fuel oil paint an old mosaic red and hang in the air like a fog that dares to challenge the sunlight. Motor lorries still sit abandoned in the circle, where you left them. A bookstore is no better now than your last visit, and a hostel is now empty of guests minus a few lucky souls who now grieve their lost brothers in the Union booth.

INLAND EMPIRE - It was your home for the past week.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - It is your birthplace. Born of a drug and drink deluge, on a floor covered in a lifetime of mistakes. 

YOU - And beyond that?

SHIVERS - An islet of crumbling concrete and steel. The wind whistles through water reeds and swathes of tiny white petals that push through the last spring snow. Ashes of a fire long gone out blow out into the sea to be swallowed like the memories of the cause that built it. Its only resident is gone now, taken away for medical treatment and for a prison sentence that will see him to his final days.

What’s to the North?

What’s to the South?

What’s to the East?

What’s to the West?

What’s inside this building?

Shudder and blink

YOU - What’s to the south?

SHIVERS - An apartment building. Mostly stone, though partially the ivy and wisteria that have done their part to claim it in an attempt to reach the heavens. They are a part of one another now; inseparable without either coming to ruin. Inside, a marriage has been strengthened thanks to an unusual discovery made by an unusual officer of the RCM. Husband and wife embrace as they look over the colorful image between them.

YOU - And beyond that?

SHIVERS - A wind whips down the long stretch of Boogie Street that barely contains the buildings and crowds on either side. Neon signs illuminate dark windows that are rattled by the music within. Lively chatter fills the air both inside and out. A young woman walks out with her lover in hand. She presses close to his side to fight against the chill of the spring air as her dark brunette curls whip about her face. The man flashes a charismatic smile and he pulls her in closer to lead her away to a shiny white lacquer motor carriage parked just off the main street. They each know something the other does not.

What’s to the North?

What’s to the south?

What’s to the East?

What’s to the West?

What’s inside this building?

Shudder and blink

YOU - What’s to the east?

SHIVERS - Seemingly endless blocks of brutalist apartment buildings that tower over the residences that survived the revolution 43 years ago. The whole district lies in a millennium old riverbed, leaving it forever in shadow of Jamrock to its west, the GRIH to its north, Grand Couron to its east. Grand Couron and the Old South district maintain their borders with two of La Delta’s canals. 

INLAND EMPIRE - A mark of constant probability. Everyone of Revachol West is just one bad couple of weeks away from moving to the Eminent Domain or the Burnt Out Quarter.

SHIVERS - Across the water, a woman in a satin robe sits with her elderly dog, surrounded by shining white marble as she peers out her 11th story window. The glass leaves the evening in an emerald tint. She would have the Eminent Domain wiped from the face of the Earth if it meant sparing her view. The canal and a financial cushion are all that separates her from the proles.

And beyond that?

SHIVERS - La rivière Espérance and Revachol East

What’s to the North?

What’s to the South?

What’s to the East?

What’s to the West?

What’s inside this building?

Shudder and blink

YOU - What’s to the West?

SHIVERS - A home you will never see again. Trees and underbrush devoured the old hospital and surrounding buildings of the Pox long before you even had a chance to remember it. Stray vagrants find their way through the bombed out ruins, shuffling past abandoned wire bed frames and rusted carts of broken tare. There is nothing left to be found here but a little bit of shelter from the wind. But the Valley of Dogs lurks nearby and most know never to stay unless they’re entirely out of options. This place will likely never be safe again.

What’s to the North?

What’s to the South?

What’s to the East?

What’s to the West?

What’s in this building?

Shudder and blink

YOU - What’s in this building?

SHIVERS - As day begins to fade and the lights begin to slowly begin to blink on across the city, multi-story factory windows will slowly transition from the concealing darkness to exposing illumination of what is no longer the East Insulindic Textiles Company. The loading docs have now become the motor pool for the 41st Precinct of the Revachol Citizens Militia. An old Coupris 40 whirs past a vehicle of a similar model and one of a decidedly newer model as it turns into the garage for the evening. Both MCs it passed do not belong to the 41st.

Inside the building proper, a stern looking man in a well tailored uniform walks toward the elevator at a brisk pace. His left breast is heavily decorated in medals and ribbons. One from the Suzerain, three from the Commune, most from the Moralist International. He bears the weight of the whole city on his shoulders but he carries it with an air of pride and authority. He’s heard tell of some strange happenings and without seeing it for himself, he’s not sure he believes it. 

Across the precinct, in the East wing, tucked into the far end of the first floor an eclectic group of men sit inside a dimly lit Lazareth. Three surround one in a way not too dissimilar from how the interviewee had been earlier in the day.

What’s to the North?

What’s to the South?

What’s to the East?

What’s to the West?

What’s in this building?

Shudder and blink

YOU - A violent shudder passes down your spine and you find yourself suddenly aware that you have been staring off into the ether for about 3 minutes. You are one with your body once more.

PRECINCT 41 - The Lazareth Office of Dr. Nix Gottlieb is small despite the size of the precinct that it maintains. Cabinets and shelves line just about every surface in some manner or capacity. And each and every surface was crammed packed with medical supplies, specimens, and piles upon piles of folders and textbooks. There isn’t much space to move, let alone work. The center of the room is dominated by a surgical table that is currently sporting a flimsy pad that serves as a cushion for your injured ass.

INLAND EMPIRE - This is the closest thing to private healthcare you’ve seen in years.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Your bullet riddled leg has already been looked over. You’d managed to pull your stitches and partially reopen the injury during your little jaunt about Martinaise and the islet.

PAIN THRESHOLD - You wish you’d been unconscious like the first time you got sewn up. Gottlieb is quick and efficient but he’s merciless in the empathy department. In other words, you cried. And your leg still hurts like a bitch.

EMPATHY - Kim radiated pride and relief behind his subdued expression when the doctor had complimented his work.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - [legendary: failure] He’s just glad it wasn’t worse.

NIX GOTTLIEB - The doctor is a bespeckled elderly man, dressed in civilian clothes, a dark, woven turtle neck covered by a brown blazer that stopped fitting him in the shoulders about 10 years ago. His forehead and brow are permanently creased by stress and a deep look of concentration. His brow deepens when you shake yourself out of the thought. “Welcome back, Detective.”

RHETORIC - That was sarcasm. He doesn’t care.

PERCEPTION [smell] - On his breath, mingled with the scent of Tioumoutiri cigarettes, you catch a whiff of peppermint schnapps.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - If we play our cards right, maybe he’ll share a belt.

VOLITION - We’ve been clean this week. Don’t fuck this up now.

NIX GOTTLIEB - He scratches at his wispy white hair and beard as he speaks over his shoulder at two other men. “And how long would you say these episodes tend to last?”

KIM KITSURAGI - Your partner of the last seven days looks between you and the blue notebook in his hands, occasionally flipping through its pages. He still stands in his field attire; Orange nylon bomber jacket zipped up to his collar, white crew shirt hidden beneath it, brown aviation mechanic pants tucked neatly into his black boots, and his brown leather driving gloves. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He thumbs over a couple of pages before answering, “Anywhere between a few seconds to several minutes. This… is one of his longer episodes.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Wait! Has he been taking notes on you?

LOGIC - [medium: Failure] Of course not. We’ve already established that this is his method of working through his thoughts. This is likely a method of recall for him.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - A lean blonde man in a tailored suit looks over you from where he stands, with fascination glittering in his hazel eyes. You saw a similar light when you spoke with him in front of the defunct Feld R&D when he spoke of their pre-revolution efforts. He was also one of the only ones in the fishing village who stood up for you against your partners onslaught of insults.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - This man is a special consultant taken onto the Major Crimes Unit in C-Wing. His well-traveled knowledge and personable demeanor has lent itself invaluably to the task force.

AUTHORITY - /Your/ task force.

INLAND EMPIRE - Not anymore. You’ll be lucky if they’ll even let you back into the field as a patrol officer, given the circumstances.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “And what do you experience during these… lapses, Harry?”

HALF LIGHT - Don’t. This is a trap.

[RHETORIC - challenging] Explain the skill set

+1 Kim is here -1 Butcher doctor -1 This sounds insane

[VOLITION: legendary] “The city speaks to me sometimes.”

+1 Revelation in the church +1 She loves you -1 This sounds insane

[DRAMA - godly] Convince them your thoughts are normal (lie)

-1 Kim is here -1 Butcher doctor -1 You’re already insane

“A real shit show of internal monologue that drowns out the world around me.” [continue]

Really? Anything else?

YOU - Really? Anything else?

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Nope.

[RHETORIC - challenging] Explain the skill set

RHETORIC [challenging - Failure] What spills forth is a vomited spew of half finished sentences, aborted gestures, and some words you’re pretty sure you’re misusing. You throw in some apologies and self-depreciation for good measure like a dog half-heartedly trying to bury its own shit.

NIX GOTTLIEB - “Try again. But in Vacholian this time.” His arms cross and his fingers drum impatiently on his bicep.

[RHETORIC - challenging] Explain the skill set

[VOLITION - legendary] “The city speaks to me sometimes.”

+1 Revelation in the church +1 She loves you -3 This sounds insane

[DRAMA - godly] Convince them your thoughts are normal (lie)

-1 Kim is here -1 Butcher doctor -3 You’re already insane

“A real shit show of internal monologue that drowns out the world around me.” [continue]

Really? Anything else?

YOU - “Just a real shit show of an internal monologue that drowns out the world around me.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It’s inconvenient at times, but he often comes through with concepts and ideas I never would have considered. Unorthodox as it may be, it was invaluable to the investigation.”

DRAMA - [Medium: Success] He means it, sire.

EMPATHY - He’s concerned about your well being, but he also doesn’t want to see you misrepresented in the eyes of these men.

+1 Morale

[fatehbaz]

In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain [...]. Slavery and industrialization were tied by the various afterlives of slavery in the form of indentured and carceral labor that continued to enrich new emergent industrial powers [...]. Enslaved “free” African Americans predominately mined coal in the corporate use of black power or the new “industrial slavery,” [...]. The labor of the coffee - the carceral penance of the rock pile, “breaking rocks out here and keeping on the chain gang” (Nina Simone, Work Song, 1966), laying iron on the railroads - is the carceral future mobilized at plantation’s end (or the “nonevent” of emancipation). [...] [T]he racial circumscription of slavery predates and prepares the material ground for Europe and the Americas in terms of both nation and empire building - and continues to sustain it.

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019.

---

When the Haitian Revolution erupted [...], slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. [...] Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system. In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment [...] inaugurated [...] "a new system of [...] [indentured servitude]," which would endure for nearly a century. [...] Desperate to regain power and authority after the war [and abolition of chattel slavery in the US], Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. [...] Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. [...] When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.”

Text by: Moon-Ho Jung. "Making sugar, making 'coolies': Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations". The Conversation. 13 January 2022.

---

The durability and extensibility of plantations [...] have been tracked most especially in the contemporary United States’ prison archipelago and segregated urban areas [...], [including] “skewed life chances, limited access to health [...], premature death, incarceration [...]”. [...] [In labor arrangements there exists] a moral tie that indefinitely indebts the laborers to their master, [...] the main mechanisms reproducing the plantation system long after the abolition of slavery [...]. [G]enealogies of labor management […] have been traced […] linking different features of plantations to later economic enterprises, such as factories […] or diamond mines […] [,] chartered companies, free ports, dependencies, trusteeships [...].

Text by: Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. "Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times". Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives (edited by Petitcrops, Macedo, and Peano). Published 2023.

---

Louis-Napoleon, still serving in the capacity of president of the [French] republic, threw his weight behind […] the exile of criminals as well as political dissidents. “It seems possible to me,” he declared near the end of 1850, “to render the punishment of hard labor more efficient, more moralizing, less expensive […], by using it to advance French colonization.” [...] Slavery had just been abolished in the French Empire [...]. If slavery were at an end, then the crucial question facing the colony was that of finding an alternative source of labor. During the period of the early penal colony we see this search for new slaves, not only in French Guiana, but also throughout [other European] colonies built on the plantation model.

Text by: Peter Redfield. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. 2000.

---

To control the desperate and the jobless, the authorities passed harsh new laws, a legislative program designed to quell disorder and ensure a pliant workforce for the factories. The Riot Act banned public disorder; the Combination Act made trade unions illegal; the Workhouse Act forced the poor to work; the Vagrancy Act turned joblessness into a crime. Eventually, over 220 offences could attract capital punishment - or, indeed, transportation. […] [C]onvict transportation - a system in which prisoners toiled without pay under military discipline - replicated many of the worst cruelties of slavery. […] Middle-class anti-slavery activists expressed little sympathy for Britain’s ragged and desperate, holding […] [them] responsible for their own misery. The men and women of London’s slums weren’t slaves. They were free individuals - and if they chose criminality, […] they brought their punishment on themselves. That was how Phillip [commander of the British First Fleet settlement in Australia] could decry chattel slavery while simultaneously relying on unfree labour from convicts. The experience of John Moseley, one of the eleven people of colour on the First Fleet, illustrates how, in the Australian settlement, a rhetoric of liberty accompanied a new kind of bondage. [Moseley was Black and had been a slave at a plantation in America before escaping to Britain, where he was charged with a crime and shipped to do convict labor in Australia.] […] The eventual commutation of a capital sentence to transportation meant that armed guards marched a black ex-slave, chained once more by the neck and ankles, to the Scarborough, on which he sailed to New South Wales. […] For John Moseley, the “free land” of New South Wales brought only a replication of that captivity he’d endured in Virginia. His experience was not unique. […] [T]hroughout the settlement, the old strode in, disguised as the new. [...] In the context of that widespread enthusiasm [in Australia] for the [American] South (the welcome extended to the Confederate ship Shenandoah in Melbourne in 1865 led one of its officers to conclude “the heart of colonial Britain was in our cause”), Queenslanders dreamed of building a “second Louisiana”. [...] The men did not merely adopt a lifestyle associated with New World slavery. They also relied on its techniques and its personnel. [...] Hope, for instance, acquired his sugar plants from the old slaver Thomas Scott. He hired supervisors from Jamaica and Barbados, looking for those with experience driving plantation slaves. [...] The Royal Navy’s Commander George Palmer described Lewin’s vessels as “fitted up precisely like an African slaver [...]".

Text by: Jeff Sparrow. “Friday essay: a slave state - how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism.” The Conversation. 4 August 2022.

[republicsecurity]

Inside the Watchful Walls: Life of an Enforcer Conscript Prison Guard

By James Dunnett Republic Special Correspondent

The first thing you notice stepping inside the High-Security Reform and Detention Facility #17 isn’t what you expect from a place that houses dangerous prisoners: it’s the quiet. A gentle hum of hidden climate controls, air scrubbers, and soft artificial wind whispering through projected foliage lend an almost meditative quality to the scene. Brutalist concrete, polished smooth, frames expansive windows letting in diffuse, natural light. At times, you forget this is a prison at all.

A Prisoner is taken to court.

But it is—and that’s precisely the point.

“We’re reforming minds, not breaking them,” says Conscript Z3M12 through the sleek, transparent faceplate of his black angular helmet. His voice is even, reassuring, yet carries the weight of ideological certainty that the Security Forces instill deeply into their conscripts. Z3M12, just 19, is already in his second year of conscript duty, stationed here as an Enforcer Prison Guard.

Like all Enforcer Conscripts at Facility #17, Z3M12 wears a matte-black, segmented body armour suit, visually imposing and functionally invulnerable to physical attacks from prisoners. This invulnerability changes the dynamic. Guards can afford to relax, chat, even gently correct and guide prisoners without ever fearing harm.

“The armour removes physical threat, allowing us genuine interaction,” Z3M12 explains as he walks beside prisoners during their daily physical training, offering tips and correcting postures. The prisoners, clad in their regulation orange jumpsuits, occasionally flash smiles of appreciation. There’s respect here—but always a clear line that is never crossed.

The conscripts’ approach isn’t only physical. Every guard knows each prisoner by name, case history, psychological profile. Enforcers undergo conditioning — an ideological blend of unwavering discipline, tempered empathy, and a commitment to the reformative mission of the Republic.

“It’s not just enforcement—it’s personal, ideological care,” Conscript H4T87 says quietly. H4T87, 18, has a young face marred slightly by teenage acne under his sleek helmet. He supervises a prisoner art therapy session. Prisoners paint carefully on canvases in an austere but softly lit studio, encouraged by H4T87's gentle critiques. The guard's suit, powerful and futuristic, contrasts starkly with the vulnerable expressions of creativity he oversees.

Facility #17 represents the subtlety of the Republic’s broader ideological ambitions. Concrete and glass, modernity interwoven with plant projections and engineered tranquility, form part of a sophisticated infrastructure of subtle, omnipresent control. At first glance, it seems humane, even kind. Yet beneath the pristine surfaces and thoughtful features—meditation rooms, art therapy sessions, structured dialogues—a deeper machinery of psychological and political conditioning operates silently.

In a minimalist meditation chamber, prisoners sit cross-legged, faces serene against projected green leaves rustling softly on bare concrete walls. Conscript D5S04 stands motionless, watching from behind a transparent faceplate.

He nods approval, his expression gently inscrutable. D5S04 later admits, "Meditation helps them recalibrate, accept the necessity of personal change."

But what exactly does personal change mean in this context?

“Rehabilitation isn’t neutral,” explains Prison Director Yana Tarrant, a civilian official who oversees conscript conditioning alongside prisoner reform. “It’s ideological. We don’t hide that fact. Every guard, every program here reinforces a vision of what a citizen should be.”

A group of Conscripts Prisons Guards talk to the director of the Prison

To the Republic, a citizen should be disciplined, community-oriented, compliant, and conditioned to serve the collective good above personal desire. The prison thus acts as a microcosm of society—a controlled environment where guards and prisoners alike live under carefully calibrated rules, subtly pushing toward conformity and productivity.

“It’s a long game,” Tarrant says calmly. “Today’s prisoner could become tomorrow’s grade one citizen. We’ve seen it happen. We rely on our guards to make it happen.”

They helps with physical fitness

Back in the gymnasium, Conscript Z3M12 adjusts the form of an older prisoner lifting weights. “Better posture,” Z3M12 says softly, his voice quiet but firm. “We all carry weight here. It’s our job to carry it properly.”

For a brief moment, the guard and prisoner exchange a look—shared understanding, perhaps even mutual respect. But the ideological boundaries remain crystal clear, invisible yet stronger than the thickest concrete walls around them.

As Conscripts Z3M12 concludes, “Reform is about the heart and mind. The armour protects our bodies, yes, but the Republic protects our thoughts.”

There’s a subtle shiver in those words, as gentle yet relentless as the artificial breeze rustling the digital leaves projected onto the concrete walls.

A Enforcer Therapist helps a prisoner

[female-malice]

What Hamas Wants

First, there is Hamas’s notorious charter, a Frankensteinian amalgam of the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the modern era—the very same that have motivated numerous white-supremacist attacks in the United States. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” the document opens. “It needs all sincere efforts … until the enemy is vanquished.” The charter goes on to claim that the Jews control “the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” According to Hamas, the Jews were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about,” as well as World War I and World War II. The charter accuses Israel of seeking to take over the entire world, and cites as proof the most influential modern anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian fabrication that purports to expose a global Jewish cabal.

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” Hamas declares in its credo. “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” In case anyone missed the point, the document adds that “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” In 2017, Hamas published a new charter, but pointedly refused to disavow the original one, in a transparent ruse that some respectable observers nonetheless took at face value.

In any case, Hamas communicated its genocidal intentions not just in words, but in deeds. Before it took control of Gaza, the group deliberately targeted Jewish civilians for mass murder, executing scores of suicide bombings against shopping malls, night clubs, restaurants, buses, Passover seders, and many other nonmilitary targets. Today, this killing spree is widely blamed for destroying the credibility of the Israeli peace movement and helping derail the Oslo Accords, precisely as Hamas intended. And it did not stop there. Since the group took power in Gaza, it has launched thousands of rockets indiscriminately at nearby civilian towns—attacks that continue at this very moment and that have boosted the Israeli right in election after election.

Hamas’s anti-Jewish aspirations were evident not only from its treatment of Israelis, but from its treatment of fellow Palestinians. Despite being the putative sovereign in Gaza and responsible for the well-being of its people, Hamas repeatedly cannibalized Gaza’s infrastructure and appropriated international aid to fuel its messianic war machine. The group boasted publicly about digging up Gaza’s pipes and turning them into rockets. It stored weapons in United Nations schools and dug attack tunnels underneath them. (Contrary to what you might have read on social media, Gaza does have underground shelters—they are just used for housing Hamas fighters, smuggling operations, and weapons caches, not protecting civilians.)

When dissenting Gazans attempted to protest this state of affairs and demanded a better future, they were brutally repressed. Hamas has not held elections since 2006. In 2020, when the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman held a two-hour Zoom call with Israeli leftists, Hamas threw him in prison for six months, tortured him, and forced him to divorce his wife. Why? Because his vision of a shared society for Arabs and Jews, however remote, was a threat to the group’s entire worldview. Jews were not to share the land; they were to be cleansed from it.

Simply put, what Hamas did two weekends ago was not a departure from its past, but the natural culmination of its commitments. The question is not why Hamas did what it did, but why so many people were surprised. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, quick to discern anti-Semitism in any effort to merely label Israeli products from West Bank settlements, somehow overlooked the severity of the genocidal threat growing next door. Journalists like me who cover anti-Semitism somehow failed to take Hamas’s overt anti-Jewish ethos as seriously as we should have. Many international leftists, ostensibly committed to equality and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis alike, somehow missed that Hamas did not share that vision, and in fact was actively working to obliterate it.

Today, in the ashes of the worst anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, some analysts have admitted their error of sanitizing Hamas. “It’s a huge mistake that I did, believing that a terror organization can change its DNA,” the former Netanyahu national-security adviser Yaakov Amidror told The New York Times. Others on the left have clung to their tortured conception of Hamas as a rational resistance group, despite it having been falsified by events. Perhaps some fear that acknowledging the true nature of Hamas would undermine the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. But in actuality, it is the refusal to disentangle Hamas’s anti-Jewish sadism from the legitimate cause of Palestinian nationalism that threatens the project and saps its support.

(continue reading)

[sarkariresultdude]

China Recruitment Results 2025: Trends, Insights, and Analysis

 As the arena's second-biggest economy, China is still a primary player within the international exertions marketplace. The today's recruitment effects from 2025 display key trends and insights across industries, demographics, and regions. Companies, activity seekers, and policymakers alike can gain from know-how these shifts, as they replicate China's evolving economic landscape, expertise priorities, and marketplace demands.

Recruitment Process In China 

1. Strong Recovery in Recruitment Activity

In 2025, China’s recruitment market noticed a incredible rebound, following years of pandemic-associated disruptions and financial uncertainty. According to statistics from a couple of human resources and exertions market tracking agencies, general job openings in China increased through about 12% 12 months-on-12 months. This growth turned into frequently driven via sectors which include generation, renewable power, superior production, and modern-day offerings, which includes finance and healthcare.

The surge in recruitment pastime is basically attributed to China’s push closer to monetary modernization and innovation, aligning with the government’s "14th Five-Year Plan" and its vision for incredible development. Furthermore, easing COVID-19 restrictions inside the past two years has revitalized domestic demand, especially in urban centers like Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing, wherein expertise demand stays high.

2. Sector-by using-Sector Breakdown

Technology Sector

China’s tech enterprise stays one in every of the most important recruiters in 2025, with hiring increasing with the aid of 15% in comparison to 2024. Companies running in regions such as synthetic intelligence (AI), semiconductor production, cloud computing, and 5G/6G network infrastructure are main the demand. In precise, the AI and automation sectors skilled document-breaking recruitment, as agencies throughout numerous industries put into effect virtual transformation techniques.

Manufacturing and New Energy

Advanced manufacturing—together with robotics, aerospace, and electric vehicles (EVs)—recorded an eleven% uptick in hiring. With China striving to grow to be a global leader in EV production and inexperienced technology, recruitment in battery generation, renewable energy engineering, and environmental technology has also elevated. The expansion of sun and wind electricity initiatives in inland provinces which include Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang has opened new activity opportunities out of doors main metropolitan hubs.

Financial and Business Services

Financial offerings confirmed a moderate but consistent 7% increase in hiring, in particular in fintech, funding banking, and risk management roles. The fast adoption of virtual finance systems and the growth of inexperienced finance initiatives contributed to this upward fashion. Similarly, prison and compliance departments saw a surge in call for, as stricter regulatory requirements and international exchange dynamics precipitated corporations to strengthen their internal controls.

Healthcare and Life Sciences

China’s growing old populace and the authorities's focus on enhancing healthcare infrastructure have boosted hiring within the medical and pharmaceutical sectors. Hospitals, biotech firms, and healthtech startups elevated recruitment via nine% yr-on-12 months. Special emphasis become placed on roles associated with scientific research, clinical trials, and public fitness management, reflecting China's ambitions to beautify its healthcare resilience.

Three. Regional Disparities in Recruitment

While Tier 1 towns like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen hold to dominate in phrases of activity vacancies, there was a major uptick in hiring in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, which includes Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xi’an, and Suzhou. The government’s urbanization strategy and nearby improvement rules are riding this shift. Inland provinces and less-advanced regions are actually attracting extra investment, main to activity advent in industries along with logistics, e-trade, and smart production.

This geographic diversification is also related to the upward thrust of far off work, as agencies come to be more bendy in hiring talent from diverse locations. As a end result, skilled specialists are now not limited to standard financial hubs and are finding competitive possibilities in rising cities.

4. Recruitment Challenges: Skills Gaps and Talent Shortages

Despite the overall high quality recruitment results, several sectors pronounced continual demanding situations, specially regarding skills shortages in high-tech and specialised fields. For instance, the semiconductor enterprise keeps to stand a essential gap in skilled engineers and researchers, while the inexperienced electricity area is struggling to find sufficient skilled task managers and technical experts.

Soft abilties consisting of leadership, go-cultural communique, and trouble-fixing also continue to be in excessive demand, mainly as Chinese organizations make bigger their global operations. Talent shortage has led to accelerated competition among employers, riding up salaries for niche roles and prompting groups to make investments extra heavily in inner schooling and improvement packages.

Five. Demographic Shifts: Youth Employment and Aging Workforce

Youth employment remains a complicated problem in China. While job opportunities for younger graduates have grown along financial recuperation, excessive competition and high expectancies hold to pose demanding situations. The countrywide young people unemployment charge stood at about 14% in early 2025, slightly decrease than in 2024 but nonetheless a subject for policymakers.

In reaction, the authorities has expanded employment subsidies, vocational education initiatives, and entrepreneurship programs focused on young human beings. Additionally, more college students are choosing internships, apprenticeships, and industry-connected educational pathways to decorate employability earlier than commencement.

Meanwhile, the getting old group of workers provides its very own set of challenges. Industries including manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare are increasingly more searching out ways to preserve older employees through re-skilling applications and flexible work preparations.

6. Trends in Hiring Practices

Recruitment practices in China are evolving, with organizations leveraging AI-pushed recruitment equipment, virtual exams, and facts analytics to streamline hiring processes. Many organizations now prioritize candidate experience, the use of era to lessen time-to-lease and improve engagement at some point of the recruitment cycle.

Campus recruitment remains a key approach for principal agencies, mainly in sectors which includes generation, finance, and engineering. However, there may be a developing desire for hiring candidates with realistic revel in, main to greater collaboration between universities and companies to offer industry-relevant guides and internships.

Diversity and inclusion are also gaining traction. Companies are increasingly dedicated to gender balance and hiring talent from numerous backgrounds, which include ethnic minorities and worldwide candidates, specially within the tech and R&D sectors.

7. Outlook for 2025 and Beyond

Looking in advance, China’s recruitment panorama is predicted to remain dynamic. The persisted improvement of emerging sectors consisting of quantum computing, biotechnology, smart towns, and the metaverse will create new employment opportunities, specially for skills with interdisciplinary ability sets.

Policy shifts, which includes similarly liberalization of the hard work market and supportive measures for small and medium corporations (SMEs), may also stimulate job advent. Additionally, the emphasis on sustainable improvement and digital innovation is in all likelihood to reshape hiring priorities, with an growing awareness on inexperienced jobs and virtual literacy.

However, geopolitical uncertainties, change tensions, and worldwide monetary fluctuations will remain key elements influencing China’s hard work marketplace within the close to destiny. Businesses and activity seekers alike will need to stay agile, adapting to changing financial situations and technological advancements.