North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?
US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
Can the Radical Left Be Trusted With Free Speech? Sat Sep 27, 2025 07:00 | Steven Tucker Can the radical Left ? increasingly wedded to violence to achieve its unpopular ideals ? actually be trusted with free speech, or will it just keep using it to call for and celebrate our deaths, asks Steven Tucker.
The post Can the Radical Left Be Trusted With Free Speech? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Sat Sep 27, 2025 00:54 | Richard Eldred A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
In Defence of Cancelling the Left Fri Sep 26, 2025 17:00 | Dr James Allan Should the Right take the moral high ground and refrain from cancel culture? Or should it give the Left a taste of its own medicine ? and try to teach it a lesson? It has to be the latter, argues Professor James Allan.
The post In Defence of Cancelling the Left appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Watch: Police Arrest Autistic Man in Middle of the Night for Posting ?F*** Hamas, F*** Islam? on Soc... Fri Sep 26, 2025 15:00 | Will Jones Police officers have come under fire after they arrested an autistic man late last night over an X post which read: "F***?Hamas, F***?Palestine, F*** Islam. Want to protest? F*** off to a Muslim country and protest."
The post Watch: Police Arrest Autistic Man in Middle of the Night for Posting “F*** Hamas, F*** Islam” on Social Media appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
It?s Time to Admit That Christians Are Being Persecuted in Two-Tier Britain Fri Sep 26, 2025 13:40 | Belinda Brown It's time to admit that Christians are being persecuted in two-tier Britain, says Belinda Brown. The flimsiest claims of 'offence' from normal expressions of Christian faith are getting people sacked and arrested.
The post It’s Time to Admit That Christians Are Being Persecuted in Two-Tier Britain appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en Voltaire Network >>
|
US Prisoners Strike
international |
rights, freedoms and repression |
other press
Wednesday December 15, 2010 13:53 by john throne - Factsforworkingpeople loughfinn at aol dot com

Support needed.
In the largest prisoners strike in US history the prisoners in Georgia have united across racial lines. This is a major victory. Please send your support. Some excerpts from an interview with Elaine Brown, Former chair of Black Panther Party and presently part of the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners' Rights which represents the Georgia Prisoners who are on the largest strike of prisoners in US history. Please send messages of support to the prisoners and messages of protest to the US authorities. Scroll back to get the email and other addresses and phone numbers.
ELAINE BROWN:
These men (the prisoners)created what is effectively a spontaneous decision by networking with each other and saying, you know, “We’re tired of all of the abuse we’ve been suffering here, "We’re going to do something, but the something we’re going to do is not to try to initiate a violent response or initiate violence, but to simply say we will not work until we’re paid. We're in day six, and they are still holding out and saying they will not come out and work unless they can sit down at the table and begin to get their demands met and their issues dealt with.
The conditions?
Well, I’m sure they’re not very much different from other prisons, I mean, or as the men would say, the chain gang or the camp they’re in. You know, you have overcrowded conditions. There is no activity other than the work tasks that they’re assigned to do. In other words, there’s no real educational opportunities. There’s no exercise. There’s nothing else. The food is bad. They have poor nutrition. They have crowded—overcrowded cells. A lot of the day-to-day thing, I think the most important part is that, as it was outlined many years ago in a Stanford study conducted by Dr. Phil Zimbardo, one of the most important things is that the constant violence being perpetrated against them by guards, who with their own idle time look to try and instigate an incident here or there, so there’s a lot of screaming, hollering, you know, aggressive behaviors that go on. And so, there’s always some incident jumping off, as it were, and so forth and so on. It’s just a life of idle—idleness and violence and a lack of any basic human condition. I mean, among the conditions, the demands of the prisoners are a living wage for work, talking about being a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. In Georgia, they’re not even paid. They’re not paid one dime in the state of Georgia. I mean, the State Department of Corrections would like to say they have some workers that are paid. There are probably some people doing life without parole who work at the Governor’s mansion, maybe 15 of them who might be getting some money. But the prisoners in the state of Georgia are paid nothing at all. Now, that’s not to say that the prisoners in other states are being paid. They’re mostly being paid a dollar a day to 50 cents an hour. That would probably be the maximum. So they’re not exactly being paid enough money to accumulate anything over the years of their incarceration and maybe come out of the prison with more than the $25 check they give them upon release in the state of Georgia. So, they are not paid one single dime, and they are required to clean the floors, clean the showers, do the yard work, do the dishes, cook the food—in other words, to maintain the prison itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how this largest prison strike in U.S. history was organized, sort of redefining the term "cell phone," Elaine Brown.
ELAINE BROWN: Well, you know, a lot of people have been fascinated by this, and I’m glad that you made note immediately that—you know, so many people say, “Well, these guys have contraband." Well, the greatest avenue for their obtaining these cell phones is by sales from guards, and these guards are selling these phones at exorbitant prices. I learned the other day that one guy said he paid $800 to a guard for a cell phone that was probably worth about 50 bucks. So, that’s the first point that has to be made, because people imagine that there’s all this smuggling going on—and there is, but it’s on the part of—in the main, on the part of guards that are inside these facilities.
The cell phone played a part, but the other part was that there are leaders of different factions in the prison, and they were able to sort of discuss what could they do. Instead of fighting among themselves, is there anything that they could do to try to change the conditions of being just constantly bombarded with violent attacks, with, you know, idle time, and so forth and so on? And they—at some point, a number of them just decided, "Well, we just shouldn't’t work." And it just became a prairie fire. It was truly the spark that lit the prairie fire. And everybody was saying, “Well, I’m down with that. We’re not going to get up.” And each group—you know, you have blacks in various subsets, and you have Muslims, you have Mexicans and other Latinos, Hispanics, you have Whites, you have Rastafarians, you have Christians—all of them, for reasons that I cannot explain how they suddenly understood how to be unified, decided, “Yeah, we’re not working, and we’re down with this, and we’re not going to get up, and we’re going to stay united.” And across the prisons, in the various sets, they called each other, sent text messages, and they all agreed to do it. And they agreed on the date, and that was December 9.
AMY GOODMAN: Elaine, I interviewed you a long time ago when your memoir came out, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. You’re the former chair of the Black Panther Party. Can you tell us a little bit about your life and how you came to be a prison activist today?
ELAINE BROWN: Well, it’s pretty—you know, it’s sort of organic, very much like this prisoner strike. You know, we used to say in the Black Panther Party, “Repression breeds resistance.” We recognized that our plight was not much different as black people than other oppressed people, and we joined arms and forces with a variety of other groups like the Brown Berets, the Red Guard, the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, and so forth. And then we linked ourselves to the international struggle of people around the world for national liberation in Vietnam, throughout the continent of Africa, and in Latin America, South America. So, we became internationalists. And I remain that person. So it isn’t complicated to draw the line from that struggle to the struggle of the most oppressed group in America: the prisoner class. The prisoners in this country, as you know, make up the largest prisoner group in the world. America confines more people than any single country at a higher rate and a higher—and the largest number. Fifty percent of those prisoners, or nearly 50 percent of them, are black men. And so, we have to ask the question, how did that come to be? Either the black men are the only people—when we consider that we black people make up approximately 12 to 13 percent of the overall population and yet almost 50 percent of the prison population, we have to ask the question, is this the result of some genetic flaw in black people? Are we obviously some sort of criminally minded? Or is there something wrong in the scheme of things? Obviously, the latter is what I would say. And so, I’ve committed myself to bringing people out of prison.
I have a very close friend who was a member of the Black Panther Party here in California, who has been in prison since 1969, over 41 years, Chip Fitzgerald. So I helped to organize the Committee to Free Chip Fitzgerald. These people have been buried in prison for their political beliefs, and they’ve been buried in prison for their poverty. There are no rich people languishing in the prisons of America. So, there’s a class question. There’s a race question. And this is just a continuation of expressing my efforts or of continuing my efforts toward the goal of the liberation of all oppressed people.
AMY GOODMAN: Elaine Brown, I want to thank you very much for being with us and just ask you a final question about what you expect the outcome of—it was planned as a one-day strike, December 9th, biggest strike in U.S. history in prisons. But with the lock down continuing in a number of the state prisons in Georgia, what’s going to happen?
ELAINE BROWN: Well, we—this coalition that you have mentioned, the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner Rights, which includes everything from the NAACP national office and the state office to the Nation of Islam and a number of other organizations, All of Us or None, so forth, across the country, we’ve been talking in conference calls over the last two days. We are having a meeting at this point with either the commissioner or deputy commissioner of the Department of Corrections. We plan on imploring them to first stop instigating the situation and trying to escalate it to a violent confrontation, which is what they are doing by prodding men with everything, turning off the heat, beating people, forcing them out of their cells, turning off the hot water, destroying and trashing people’s property, not feeding them, and so forth and so on, all kinds of tactics to instigate a violent response. So our first goal is to make sure this does not become Attica, although it is not like Attica because the prisoners have not taken hostages or anything of this sort. They are simply not leaving their cells.
Visit us at:
http://www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com
http://laborsmilitantvoice.org
|