Saturday's cover, "Deep Inside," is an illustration from Victoria's Blog, linked above. The illustration style is part of a 'pornography transformation project' or reclaiming of porn, turning it into art and story. A number of projects have been created by Victoria around the illustrations, including a sketchbook styled diary focused on her erotic exploration, designed as sex education media. Political Waves by Jude | The bats in the attic... ... of the American psyche are creeping down into plain view -- the assault on the Constitution and on Geneva has been hanging, flapping, squeaking up in those rafters a long long time now.   We've allowed so much to go uncontested, given our duty as citizens away to complacency ... we American frogs have been simmering in hot water for so long we're just noticing we're in the soup.  Our own penal system has been a wart on democratic process for generations, and gone largely unaddressed due to our increasing fear of crime and need to punish ... see?  We let that go ... we turned our heads.  Abu Ghraib couldn't have happened if we hadn't trained ourselves to ignore Folsom and Chino and Attica and the Big Q [San Quentin.]   The studies show that Iraq has become a training ground for terrorism ... what can we learn from such a truth?  Little hint: what have our prisons become a training ground for?  If you're thinking improved criminal activity, you'd be right ... but don't forget improved sadism and cruelty by those who are deemed responsible for such a project, and an improved sense of denial and disdain by the American public. Last night [in my ruthless, and some say highly-masculine, late night channel surfing] I stumbled across a program [likely Discovery or TLC] showing a man with tattoo's [including swastika] from wrist on up past his sleeves, learning computer skills, talking about how he wanted to earn a real living when he got out ... didn't say where he was incarcerated.  The computer training, said the narrator, meant the world to him, meant hope for the future and had made all the difference in his attitude and record.  His self-esteem had improved, as had his behaviors.  Then they cut to show the guy standing, waiting to enter a board room, where the Powers would determine his ability to remain in the program -- seems he had broken the rules, was caught with a cigarette. If you want to know what happened, too bad; I couldn't watch -- I couldn't remain a voyeur as this poor shmuk lost all hope for tomorrow based on a moment of rebellion and/or desire.  And it leaves me thinking this kind of psychology is the Bushian model, the Big Daddy Punishment Awaits Authoritarian Non-nuanced and Makes No Sense model that the public seems to lap up like honey -- and if Americans are raising their children like we're rehabilitating our prisoners, it's no wonder we're in bloody chaos and soul-crisis in this nation. Mr. Bush discussed the problem with the SCOTUS pronouncement with reporters today, saying that the "enemy combatants" at Gitmo don't belong to a city-state ... and that the Geneva Convention was conceived to respond to prisoners of a city-state, not random terrorists.  I had to change that channel too. The punitive and sadistic bats of the our national neurosis and shame are flying these days -- and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. A short collection, here, that illustrates what we've promoted, what we've allowed, what we continue to ignore at our peril. Jude Fiore presents: The United States of Incarceration 07.07.06 http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=21047 Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts John Kifner July 7, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/washington/07recruit.html Raping Hadji Girl by digby http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/ Algerian Tells of Dark Odyssey in US Hands Craig S. Smith and Souad Mekhennet, The New York Times Friday 07 July 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070706O.shtml