Yes, that's definitely an issue. Of course, I'm not in the business of making laws or whatever. I'm not even saying that my thoughts are better than any other. The real issue here (like someone posted in reply) is the environment in which most offenders live. That's what makes them probable candidates for prison. The point I was trying to make is that prisons don't solve the problem that makes people go to prison. Nowadays, prisons are just dumpsters. Expensive, dangerous dumpsters of people that somehow failed to observe the rules. Rules that might very well be unjust in the first place.

There's got be a better system. The ideal scenario would be to somehow make people observant of the rules. But today, we do that by making disrespecting the rules bear very negative consequences for those that do it. This is wrong. The Crime doesn't pay approach has failed. It pays. And pays well. We should be shifting to something like Lawful pays. But that's going to be hard to change for as long as people are living in poverty ghettos. So how does one change that?

Again I'm going to suggest something which I thought of, but it's really just a starting point for a broader discussion. If environment makes you, then change the environment. But what's the environment? I'd say that, grosso modo, the environment is the people. So change the people around, and you change the environment. For example, instead of making social housing neighborhoods, why not rescue derelict of abandoned buildings, rebuild them, and house people there? Disperse poverty amongst richer people. It'll make the poor people see what's really like to be "rich". What's it like to live a normal, working life. Also, most people will help poor people if they're there to help. I mean, no one can reasonably expect people to go into the poor neighborhoods offering jobs or food, except for NGO's. But if you would have someone needing help in your building or street, maybe you'd go and offer some help, or suggest a job you know of, or offer some food or medicine. Or even watch the kids while their parent(s) go to their job, or even just to have a chat and a cup of coffee. This is the help most people need to get on track.

By isolating poor people, we're taking away the community from them. The Christian ideal of poor charity is bogus. When people are fighting for their lives, they tend to care only about themselves. Only after they provided for themselves are they going to help their next. At least this is the scenario we should be working with. Anything better than this is not realistic. So put the poor people living with the rich people. Because rich people are the ones that can (and will, I believe) help. (by "rich" I mean "richer")

While it very well could require more staff, I think it's worth it.

Also, GP says that the people in the system do not have enough integrity, but they still don't have it now, so I don't really see that it would be much worse. I think the current penal model in the West has two issues that we really need to deal with: a) efficiency and b) retribution . And I think they're closely related.

I've given some thought to this and I think that first, we have to separate violent offenders from non-violent. Violent people are the hardest to deal with and in the most serious cases, I think there's really no choice but to lock them up, although it raises the question of how's it going to be when they're released. (At least in countries with no life sentences).

But non-violent (or less seriously violent) offenders, don't really need to spend their whole day just doing nothing, hanging around with other criminals, inevitably exposed to even worse influences than themselves. They can be doing something useful for both themselves and society.
I thought up something along these lines: All elegible (non-violent) offenders, would have to exercise a mandatory occupation, and be assigned a base salary (leveled with minimum wage where it exists) but they will not be able to touch the significant part of it until the end of the sentence. All expenses would be payed for by the offender (taken from base salary).
In fact, sentences might become a value that the offender would be condemned to generate through work, instead of a time length. Each offender could server his/her sentence at a preferred pace.

I know this is quite vague and some points are quite difficult like, how to assign an occupation to each offender? How to make them work? How to stop it from becoming slavery?
These are difficult questions but I think the pros really out-weight the cons: Offenders wouldn't be losing their time while in jail, they'd be doing something productive to themselves and society. Finishing their sentence, they'll have something to live on while trying to find a new job outside. Which would be easier since they haven't just spent 5 or 10 years doing nothing, but instead learned and gained expertise on some trade all those years. And, in case the sentence was wrong and the condemned person is actually innocent, he's in a much more favorable position because the time served was not a complete waste. The state would apply a suitable multiplier to the base salary, and that person could at least look at the time being locked as an intensive period of work with substantial dividends. Might not be much, but it's definitely better than the current situation.

This is just my two cents, but I think it's clear that our penal system is obsolete. It is the most obsolete system implemented in our societies. In it's essencial form, it dates back centuries ago. Someone commits a crime? Jail him.
This doesn't work anymore. A lot of people, especially those that grow up and live in poor neighborhoods and live amongst crime every day, no longer face prison as a punishment. They face it as something they'll just have to endure someday, for whatever reason. They adopt a "stoic" perspective and they just take it. Once they're out, it's business as usual. It's a price they're willing to pay for keeping up with their illegal activities. Furthermore, while inside they get to share experience and knowledge and status with fellow "stoics", possibly finding new partners and contacts in the crime world and building reputation. That is, they're are doing the exact oppose of what they should be doing in prison: rehabilitate. Instead they're sinking even more in crime. At the taxpayers expense.
We should be weary of slavery sure, but we shouldn't let that stop us from improving and changing the system. Just locking people up solves nothing. We need to change people. And people do change. There are plenty examples out there. Prisons should be transformed into schools as much as possible, special schools allright, but schools nonetheless. Places where learning happens.

I'm replying so make sure no one reads your bullshit and thinks it's true.

First and foremost, you are not a troll. You are an asshole. And you think you're spilling out uncomfortable facts in your post?

That's what we hear everyday from neo-con, far-right extremists in America and Europe. The only uncomfortable fact in all of it, the only fact actually, is that it's all bullshit and FUD. You extrapolate and entire heterogenous group that extends from Morocco to Indonesia based on absolutely nothing. Pedophilism, racism, genocides... I'm actually used to see that... in Western or by Western civilizations.

Well, Muslims dominated my country, the whole peninsula where it's located in fact, for ~700 years. That didn't stop both we and the Spanish from still talking a Latin language. It didn't stop the Iberian Peninsula from becoming a stronghold for the Catholic church and Inquisition, from burning people in crosses and other atrocities. It didn't stop us from enslaving large numbers of Africans throughout the Discoveries age and beyond. In fact, one could say (and indeed it is said) that the Muslim occupation of Iberia started a local golden age, from which you can still see the mosques (now churches) in Cordoba and Toledo, or the magnificent Alhambra palace. But you can still see the Romanic churches in Braga (former Bracara Augusta) or Coimbra that date from before the occupation. So, no cultural erasing happened, no genocide happened.

The Moorish culture is part of our culture. It's part of us in our language, our architecture, our way of life. So fuck you and your bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. Crawl back into whatever fear-monger-and-xenophobe-harboring hole you crawled out of. You think the world is full of brainwashed morons like you? Think twice.

Also, you mention something about the Mufti meeting with Hitler... You want really uncomfortable facts? How about this: Hitler cutting deals with Zionists, offering free and safe passage to Palestine in exchange for commercial activities with Germany, among other things That's something you Muslim hate-spreaders never mention, perhaps don't even know, like the effective tools and sock-puppets you actually are.

Stop slandering people you know nothing about. Get a brain instead. And use it.

I disagree. This is a fallacious way of seeing the problem. The root cause of most of the world's problems is a mix of misunderstandings, inevitable cultural xenophobia, and intentional mischief. Religious fundamentalism feeds and thrives on this cocktail.

So, killing all the fundamentalists (I'm not saying that you're saying), isn't going to solve any problem at all. And neither will trying to discredit them. It only aggravates the problem. Makes more people join their ranks.
If you want to get rid of fundamentalism - be it religious or otherwise - you have to get rid of the causes for it. You have to make sure you clear misunderstandings; explain people that, while it's normal to distrust different cultures (and it is), it's to everybody's benefit to be at least somewhat open to learn about them; and expose and criticize mischief when we see it.

Nothing like this is being made. Western news and politicians seem to want to convey the message that fundamentalists appear out of thin air, and are different from everybody else. As if they're almost not humans. As if these politicians actions have nothing to do with the alleged surge of fundamentalism across the World.

In fact, I watch Al-Jazeera English, and read it on the web. And I got to say that, apart from perhaps the BBC, it makes western news organizations look like a joke. They touch issues that western outfits don't even dare to touch and, most importantly, issues that western outfits don't give a shit about: How people live in Gaza, Darfur, secret jails in China, Tibet, Somalia pirates, everything western news media sweeps under the carpet. They have quality shows like Witness (roughly the same format of BBC's Dispatches), Frost over the World (in which Sir David Frost interviews interesting guests), or Empire, that are very worth watching.

"Biased" my ass. When tools say "biased", they really mean - though without knowing it - free of most western lobbies influence, especially the Israeli lobby. That's that. And Israeli top officials are interviewed all the time there. So this isn't even about Israel. It's about the subservience and really poor quality and independence of western news outfits, with Americans leading, and Europeans following closely behind.

Well, i'd rather have a world without nukes, but the fact is that they're here to stay. Now, would I think Iran getting the bomb is a good thing? It depends. If they were the only ones getting it, no. But considering Israel has a nuclear arsenal since some time ago, I think a little equilibrium wouldn't hurt. India and Pakistan are also nuclear, and they're involved in an open conflict, and no nuclear attack occurred. It is naive to think Iran would use the bomb anyway different from any other country* - as a deterrent. Israel knows that once Iran gets nuclear, Iran will become untouchable. Which means Israel will have to rethink its strategy of aggressiveness and complete disregard for the Middle Eastern neighbors, putting Israelis in a very delicate position: no regional allies and one untouchable enemy, which in turn will step up the Israeli lobby in Washington - which, by the way, acts independently of and often against the very Israeli national interest - which, in turn, will drag the US into new embarrassments and hostility in, but not limited to, the Muslim world.

*except the US, which remains the only country ever to have detonated such weapons on the battlefield (if we can even call Hiroshima and Nagasaki that)

And you, troll, are S-A-D. I'm only posting because someone might read this and think it's true. Nobody in Iran ever talked about "wiping Israel off the map". What the president of Iran said was that, one day, Israel would disappear from the map.

The talk about wiping was originated by a botched translation by MEMRI, which poses as an independent Middle East translation agency, but even the slightest investigation reveals they have nothing but Israeli connections and staff, so, hardly independent and unbiased.

It's the extremist government of Israel that is the war-monger. Even against the will of the people it represents. And they don't even hide it no more.

I would additionally suggest that it might have been at least as much a making of the government as it was a making lobbied for by the legal drugs industry - tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals. I can't provide a reference at this point but I remember seeing on documentary about the Iran-Contra affair a claim that the biggest funders for the War on Drugs were tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical industries.

And yet you invade a country on the grounds of freeing it's people and delivering democracy? Perhaps you should look into your own backyard.

And what are the states that compose the union then? Are they not the people? Take the people off the states, and what do you have left?

Laugh all you will, but be careful not to cry later. You think the rest of the world is really going to sit idly watching the US wreaking havoc wherever its corrupt foreign policy makers decide? The Muslims are just the initial reaction. US bowing to the Israeli lobby has already done serious damage to your freedoms. Expect more to come. The Wikileaks cables are bound to have some serious fallout as well. Expect more to come. Then there's China owning the majority of your debt. How's it going to be when it's time to pay? More trouble. So, if you think you can keep oblivious to the rest of the world and just whistle to the side for a lot longer, don't. Like I said before, there was a world before the US, and there will be one after. My country has had stable borders for more than 800 years, we've seen a lot of empires come and go, including ours.

Well then, perhaps we - the rest of the world that so depends on the U.S. of A. - should be allowed to vote on who's the right person to govern us all then. Wouldn't that be the ultimate action of Democracy? You people suddenly realizing that, being the whole world so dependent on who runs the USA, it should be allowed to have a say on who runs it?

I bet this doesn't sound so good to you now, does it? Think about this, before talking about democracy

And FYI, the world has been tearing itself apart - and stitching itself up again - for thousands of years before the existence of the US, and has continued to do so afterwards as well (and, in my opinion, the US teared a whole lot more than what it stitched). My guess is it will continue to do so, with or without America. So, don't get so cocky about it. Your country might be more irrelevant than you think, not to mention the fact that it is de facto controlled by a minority that considers world peace and prosperity the least of its concerns...

So do us all a favor, and pay attention on what you see in the news (and search for more news sources), and do your best to get that minority out of your government, and restitute power to your people.

Your argument doesn't hold. That society has reached a consensus is something you'll have to prove. I have never seen or heard about even one public rally or manifestation for the banning of swastikas.
I have never seen one politician making the ban of swastikas a campaigning issue.

What I've seen is groups of politicians pushing for such bans. Proposing and passing ban laws after they're in power. More often than not, those same politicians are the ones that support and promote unjust and unfair, misery bringing, pain inflicting wars upon their own and foreign peoples. Even when large parts of society cry out in disagreement in massive rallies with thousands of people. So much for the value of consensus.

So it seems that the self-righteous douches that think they are worth and know better than everyone else is you and all those that support such politicians. Hiding and banning shit out, even on the grounds that some people find it offensive is still censorship. And a symbol is just something that's there. Nigger is something you call someone else, and only in a subset of all the possible combinations of people calling others nigger is such act interpreted as offensive and disrespectful. And in an ironic twist, that word that was a symbol of racism against blacks became a symbol of resistance against that very same racism that coined it, and you can hear it almost every day on television. As the blacks so eloquently have shown, there are much better ways of dealing with offensive symbols than banning them.

So, you get out of your own little world where you can hide all the baddy things that make you shiver and tremble of fear at night, and accept the fact that you live in a global world, and that what offends you might be what delights others, not because they mean any harm, but because they are different from yourself and have different experiences.

I agree with last part. It's indeed a non-issue, except for the part where Microsoft starts passing judgements on why people would like to do something that happens to violate ToS and on those same folks. That's what matters. Although I'd like to see if you'd say the same were they ever decide to only allow users to use hate symbols... It would still be their ToS but somehow I have the feeling a lot of people wouldn't take it lightly. And yet your argument would apply.

Also, for the record, killing everyone that wasn't blonde and blue-eyed was hardly a Nazi ideal. They had plenty of volunteers in their ranks that didn't fit those characteristics, including blacks, muslims, spanish, french, you name it. It's that very exaggeration and disregard for historical accuracy, specially encouraged and kindled by some interest groups that originated and perpetuates this foolish taboo about what is just a symbol with multiple and diverse connotations. In fact, and going yet another bit off topic, the Jew question is pretty much the only thing that distinguishes Nazi Germany from roughly any other war-waging nation in history. But that's a different issue.

Going back on topic and to conclude, let me give an example of how foolish this symbol taboo can or could be. I happen to play Rome: Total War, with the Europa Barbarorum mod, which strives for realism. Now it's well known that Roman legions displayed swastikas among other symbols in their standarts. This taboo would prevent, in Germany for instance, from people to learn and experience how Roman legions really looked like, instead having a light shallow innocuous version of those same legions. It doesn't amount to much, but it's just a simple example. People should be given the chance to see what things really are and what they mean. Only afterwards can they choose to hate them or love them. To say a symbol is banned is just an eufemism for censorship.

True. But since XBox Live != political speech, I really don't see why any symbol should be banned. If someone gets offended by it, that someone has to deal with it. I can be offended by a lot of things, and so can you and everybody else. If we start banning everything that offends anything, we'll rapidly turn our world into an iconoclast one...

Anyway, I believe the swastika is pretty much alone on this one, except for maybe a few obscure racist symbology, that most people don't know of anyway.

More to the actual point, I think the proper answer would be what AC wrote below.

Well, since you mentioned it, as far as I'm concerned, the US engagements in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq have about the same - if not even less (Germany was actually at an extremely disadvantageous position and was being robbed of her money, while enduring the effects of a financial global catastrophe) - legitimacy as the German engagements that eventually led to World War 2. Both used a lame excuse to start a conflict with worldwide repercussions, although in different scales.

But that wasn't my point. My point was - and is - that much of the same people that get all worked up about a symbol, don't seem to oppose actual unprovoked wars that bring actual (not symbolic) devastation and misery to all envolved parties. The fact that you replied the way you did is a strong indicator that my point is probably quite in perspective.

I don't know where you're from, but I'm from a Latin country. Not Latin as in what Americans understand as Latin America, but Latin as of Roman cultural heritage. And the swastika use dates back, at least, to the Etruscan civilization, and was commonly used in the Roman Empire.

So for most intents and purposes throughout the history of my country and continent, it's not a Nazi symbol: It is a symbol used by the Nazis, among others. There's a reason for why they picked it, you know? I do have something to stand on for: 3000 years of history.

Plus if a swastika should be banned and nobody can stand for it, then the same applies for the fasces, picked by the, well, fascists. But that's a bummer eh? It happens to be a symbol used by the federal government of the USA, among others. That must mean that the USA is fascist government! Guess what? It's been in Europe since Rome as well, probably even before.

So if you and your country have no fucking history, that's your problem. But don't you dare say what I have or have not to stand on for.