Comments on: Olympic “Coverage”

By: noelfitz

noelfitz — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:16:47 +0000

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/america/23prison.php

By: Narwen

Narwen — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:08:12 +0000

I haven’t been watching, but it seems that the pagan Olympic tradition of competing in the nude is making a gradual comeback. ( I believe that Christian opposition to this public indecency was a major factor in stopping the original Games.)

By: c-kingsley

c-kingsley — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:06:29 +0000

Who says that “25% of all those in prison in the world are incarcerated in the US”? That’s hard to believe, considering those in prison in China and other communist countries. Where’s the proof of this?

By: noelfitz

noelfitz — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:01:18 +0000

I read:
“In the politically charged atmosphere of this year’s Olympic games, where blatant human rights violations in the hosting city of Beijing cloud the grandeur of the athletic event.”

Good to read this as it is good to remember the human rights of those locked up in Guantanamo Bay. It is also worth remembering that 25% of all of those in prison in the world are incarcerated in the US (over two million), where about 1% of the population is in prison, mostly from minority groups.

“The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate,[3][4] and total documented prison population in the world.[5][6] As of year-end 2006, a record 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.2 million were incarcerated. More than 1 in 100 American adults were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The People’s Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million, despite having over four times the population of the US.[7][8]“

By: Debbie Flick

Debbie Flick — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:51:48 +0000

It’s nice to know that I’m not the only person who thought the same thing. One of my children said, that the swimmers are wearing more clothing and the volly ball team willl be nearly nude by the next olympics. We as a family have been boycotting watching the Olympics also for our persecuted brothers and sisters in China, but unfortunatly watching the evening news you still see too much.
Last year my daughter was involved with a program called Pure Fashion. This is a 6 month program sponsered by the Catholic church but open to all denominations. It teaches girls 14-18 about modesty and purity, becoming a “Model of the Great Designer”.It also teaches them public speaking,ediquette,and at the end they are part of a real fashion show. It was an incredible experience and I strongly encourage ALL teenage girls to get involved with it.through my daughters experience we were able to also talk to our sons about modesty and purity. Check out there website.

By: Mary S.

Mary S. — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:34:08 +0000

Wow! What a thought-provoking article. I’m not watching the Olympics because I believe I can better spend my time doing other things, including praying for my persecuted brothers & sisters in China. However, my husband & daughter have been watching & I happened to notice as I was walking by, that it seemed that the uniforms were immodest, but I sort of dismissed it as “just the way things are at the Olympics”. This article really helped me.