Sednaya Prison

 SEDNAYA PRISON

I recommend following the developments from Syria.  I realize this is a difficult thing to do if one takes no newspapers, but TV should at least show photos and videos of the conditions inside the prison. Unfortunately, there is little information on how one got there.

We pride ourselves on being modern and progressive:  the future is aglow with possibility.  We live in an age of human potential:  there are no limits to what our imaginations can create.  We are better educated, better nourished, better cared for than any time in history and we expect this to continue for ever and ever - Amen.

I say, however, take a look at Sednaya and read the reports coming from Syria about it and the people that were taken there.  It appears to have been the last stop before liquidation having been tortured, starved and abused elsewhere first.  A person was just picked up by unknown people and disappeared never to be heard from again.  And once you consider this, you have to ask yourself what's so different in the human species from 1560 when  thousands of humans were being burnt at the stake by other humans for purposes of edification and entertainment.

I'm not convinced we have progressed very far.  Take a look at Putin's Russia which now is responsible for several hundred thousands of deaths from their invasion of Ukraine.  You have to ask yourself, just what is that all about?  What has been accomplished?  And, if you have never heard of Chechnya, you may want to Google it - - see what Putin did to it.  

To those in charge in these examples, other people's lives are meaningless.  They don't matter.  Other things are way more important than a bunch of people who either don't do what they are told or ignore you altogether.  

Assad and Putin are in charge you say and they are responsible.  But what I really want to point out is the hundreds and thousands of other human beings who do the work of torture, of starvation, of imprisonment.   Do you remember the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag, the Argentinian and Brazilian and Chilean governments who tortured and killed thousands of their own citizens.  It took vast numbers of people to do the actual work and they did it to people just like themselves.

One needs to remember there is always someone available to throw you out of a helicopter.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo