The Globalist Prison Quiz - Revised from 2010

QUESTION

Around the globe, over nine million people were in prison in 2010. Currently eleven million men, women, an children in prisons not counting Gaza. In 2010 that number was equal to the size of the population of Sweden or Bolivia. Today Honduras, Haiti, Belgium, and Cuba. Which country has the highest number of prisoners?

ANSWERS

A. China B. Russia C. United Kingdom D. India or E. the United States

A. China is not correct. China has the second-highest number of prisoners in the world with almost 1.7 million. That number does not count Tibetans or Uighurs, however on a proportional basis, it has the 113th-highest incarceration rate, with 119 people out of every 100,000 in jail (according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London 2026). This number, though, excludes the hundreds of thousands of people in administrative detention facilities.

The four BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – all rank in the top five in terms of prison population totals.

B.

Russia is not correct.

Russia has a total of 890,000 prisoners ranking third worldwide in 2026, however,the 632 people in jail per 100,000 incarceration rate is the second-highest incarceration rate. Of all prisoners in Russia, 7.4 percent are female, compared with 4.9 percent in China and 9.1 percent in the United States. The global average is about 5 percent.

C. United Kingdom never really was in the top five with 89,000, unless counting the Irish population of Ulster, the stolen province. The UK no longer answers the call at the 18th-highest number in the world nor the highest in the European Union. Poland has the most prisoners in the EU ranking 16th with 88,000. The United Kingdom has a relatively low incarceration rate of 152 prisoners per 100,000 people – the 86th-highest rate in the world.

Brazil is # 3 with a total over 900,000 prisoners, India # 4 with 511,000 and Turkey with 420,000 comes in # 5 edging out Thailand with 310,000. El Salvador at present has imprisoned 109,000 many of them awaiting trial incluing ICE forced migrant from the USA, but its incarceration rate is the world's highest at 1659 per 100,000

The correct answer is the USA the same as in 2010 an for all of this century, The United States with less than 5% of the worlds population, but about 25% of the global prisoners. It has the highest absolute number of people in jail and prison ranging from 1,800,000 to 2.3 million prisoners according to the day – and also has the one of the highest incarceration rate with 751 people in jail for every 100,000 people. After incarceration rates remained stable at 110 prisoners per 100,000 people from 1925 to 1975, they experienced a spike in large part due to an increase in efforts to combat illegal drugs. Lengthy U.S. prison stays are not the only way in which U.S. incarceration legislation is more strict. Some states in the United States take the right to vote away from citizens who have completed their sentences.

The above comes from the Globalist, an online news service.

See www.theglobalist.com

PS the US prison population had plateaued as states realize that their budgets can not support further expansion of the penal colonies. Convicted felons are stripped of their electoral rights, however if given them back the prison population would have a greater political impact than the following states and territories;

New Mexico - 2,009,671
Nebraska - 1,796,619
New Hampshire - 1,324,575
Maine - 1,318,301
Hawaii - 641,694
Rhode Island - 974,989
Montana - 974,989
Delaware - 885,122
South Dakota - 812,383
Alaska - 698,473
North Dakota - 646,844
Vermont - 621,760
District of Columbia - 599,657
Wyoming - 544,270
Guam - 178,430
U.S. Virgin Islands- 109,825
Northern Mariana Is. - 88,662
American Samoa - 65,628

USA USA USA WE’RE # 1

FOTO PNS DEER LOGE 1995 NOW CLOSED

Pattaya Always Pattaya - 2010

Back in the 1970s Miami Beach was a neglected beach resort populated by ancient retirees in moldy art-deco apartment buildings. Elderly snowbird males dine at Wolfie's Deli sporting Sta-press shirts, plaid trousers, and gleaming white shoes. Attired in their polyester finery these septuagenarians trolled Miami Beach for blue-haired widows with a little extra income.

The tropical sun set early in Florida. Darkness was not an old man's friend. Females in their 70s looked 50 to a man with poor night vision. Desire youngified every senior female on Collins Avenue. The sidewalks emptied after dusk and the windows female compatriots in looked better than good after dusk and the sidewalks were empty by the end of dusk. Hotel windows glowed with TV lights and the ACs hummed to frost the bedroom to the temperature of the Belleville morgue.

That somnambulant elegance had been vanquished by the trendification of South Beach in the 90s. The decaying hotels  had beenrenovated by New York hoteliers, the decayed rooms had been  filled with hipsters, and the night was animated by bars and discos for the first time since MIAMI VICE.

The city was re-born as a super-cool destination. Nothing kills a city faster than a hipster.

I lived in Pattaya from 1998 to 2008. The population was 90,000. A good mix of Thai go-go girls, drag queens, and fugitive farangs. It was good fun and citizens avoided the Costa de Mafia like we had the pox, then Pattaya was discovered by the squares thanks to the Internet. Worse was to come. Most recently I have viewed the horror of Pattaya under siege by Russian draft dodgers and perverted drunken Indians.  Not a pretty picture.

Luxury condos replaced decrepit beach resorts with hopes of replacing the its faithful clientele of European sex tourists with more fashionable tourists from the Pacific Rim.

Gucci instead of tee-shirts.

Prada took from knock-offs.

Upper-class Thais from Bangkok besmote by the need to flaunt their success with au courant styles have exiled the lager louts and steroid juice monkeys from Walking Street the same way Madonna pushed Meyer Lansky's widow off the throne of Miami Beach, however this transition will take time in Pattaya, for the city on the Gulf of Siam remains the most unfashionable city in Asia.

Dressing well is considered a sign of respect for yourselves and those around you, so Thais can't understand why farangs dress so badly in their wife-beater t-shirts, soiled shorts, and grubby sneakers. I expect nothing better from retired postal workers from South London and divorced accountants of Berlin.

Slobs are always slobs.

It's in their blood.

And they will save Pattaya for the scourge of the good.

Trains From Hell

Written Jan 9, 2010

Many Americans thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall meant the collapse of Communism, however the Marxist government of China continues to thrive by exporting shiploads of shit that American consumers need to feel good ie TVs, cheap clothing, and just about everything else purchased online. The extraction of wealth has led to a boom in the Middle Kingdom and this winter the Chinese proudly unveiled the swift train traveling from Guangzhou to the central city of Wuhan, shaving six hours off the 1100 klick journey at speeds of nearly 300 mph. The $17 billion dollar project was completed in four years.

For comparison Boston's Big Dig cost $22 billion to bury an existent highway of five kilometers. Amtrak's annual budget is $3 billion. A fraction of the Chinese expenditure and this weekend the gap in train travel revealed itself once again, as an eastbound train from Sacramento was delayed twenty-four hours in Nebraska by ten-foot snow drifts.

Of course the Chinese also aren't spending $100 billion per annum on wars in Asia.

"We #1."

It sounded so true under Bush.

Dead Presidents For Dead Man's Art

A reporter once asked Andy Warhol his opinion about art. The pop icon answered without hesitation. "It's a nice name for a man."

Warhol has been dead for years, yet his paintings made up 17% of auction sales of contemporary art in 2010.

Millions upon millions for his foundation and friends.

Proving that while you can't take it with you, just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't make money.

It's a Smaller World - 2010

My bloodline is divided between my maternal Hibernian roots and my father's Yankee heritage. My Nana was transported from the West of Ireland across the Atlantic in steerage and my DownEast ancestors sailed with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. Both families held strong convictions about the value of hard work and in 1962 my father found my older brother and me a job delivering the morning newspaper for the Boston Globe and Herald to our neighborhood south of the Neponset River. The distributor paid four cents a paper. My brother and I earned more than $10 a week at a time when then minimum wage was $1.15. We were rich boys at 8 and 9. My mother banked the money from the newspapers for our college fund. We got to keep the tips.

Our youthful spending sprees devoted to Yodels, cokes, movies, and comic books didn't deplete our personal stashes and I decided to be charitable with my money. The nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills had organized a fund drive to proselytize the war orphans of Korea. My Uncle Jack had fought with the Marines at Chosin Reservoir. My father had escaped service in that far-off conflict by writing a letter to JFK, then Massachusetts' freshman congressman. They had both done their duty in WWII. My father was exempted from joining the battles against the Chinese hordes. He was the sole source of income for his family. I felt that I owed a debt to the less fortunate children and contributed $15 to the nuns' charity.

My selfless donation was praised by the sisters and I was given the right to name the baby orphans at their baptism. It was almost like having my own children and I gave $30 more for the right to these motherless wards of the Church with names such as Peter Nolan Kim, Chaney Park, and Fabian Lee. The pastor of our parish rewarded my generosity with documentation of my wards' baptism and enrollment in an orphanage with hopes of increasing Christ's army in Asia. I stashed the certificates in my closet. I attended Catholic school only to please my mother. My belief in God had reached a dead-end in 1960, when my best friend, Chaney, drowned in Sebago Lake. He had been 6. No god I wanted to worship would have let someone that young die.

Over the years I would wonder about my wards. I hoped that they had escaped the clutches of the Church. My research into the numerical ranks of the faithful in Korea revealed that many Koreans had rejected traditional beliefs in favor of the more liberal concepts of all men and women sharing equality as espoused by the Catholic and Protestant missionaries. Their proponents ballooned to sizable proportions of the population and in recent years I have Googled the names of my charges without any success. I also have occasion to travel through Korea on trips to Thailand. Korean Air is the best airline in the Orient. Each time I'm waiting in Inchon Airport, I study the name tags of the workers in their 40s. One day I'll meet one of my orphans.

Either in this life or one of the next.

We are all family.