Word meanings.

As somebody who scans Viewpoint pages in newspapers, I have latterly become aware of a subtle and probably systematic attempt by the liberal left to change the meanings of certain words or expressions.
For a long time we have been aware that 'social justice' means anything but and is their code for supporting wasters, the feckless and the undeserving, usually all at the expense of honest and hardworking people.
Recently, there has been a clever attempt to undermine the term 'political correctness' and to use it to describe any wrongdoing by authority for any reason whatsoever. Cunning.
Equally devious has been to entirely change the meaning of 'playing the race card'.
The term has always referred to somebody of limited honesty who has a poor case in a given situation who then pleads their colour, ethnicity or religion as an all embracing trump card to win the trick with a fearful authority which dare not allow itself to be portrayed as racist.
I have recently heard the phrase used to criticise people who have objectively stated some of the problems caused by uncontrolled immigration.
Control words - control minds.
Alice is back in Wonderland!

Hard shoulders.

So, government ministers are supporting the use of M Way hard shoulders to ease traffic congestion.
Experiments on the M40 have apparently been quite successful. It has been stated from on high that traffic flow had improved, journeys completed faster, absurdly low average speeds had increased and pollution was thereby reduced.
Perhaps we can extrapolate from this?
Why do so-called greens insist on curbing roadbuilding? Clearly, all the above advantages would apply - and surely they must be impressed when pollution falls, shouldn't they?
Admittedly this means more land going under tarmac but the benefits of motorways and bypasses are startling. In a country with fewer motorway miles per million vehicles than any other country in W. Europe, we can hardly be surprised at current chaos and pollution levels..
Greens claim that reducing waiting times on car journeys might encourage more people to drive. Proof? AND if their claim were correct, it is hard to see it as being anything above negligible. There is still the need to look at the bigger picture.
FACT. It is not the number of cars owned which is significant. FACT. It is not even the number of journeys taken which matters most. FACT. It is the number of vehicles which are travelling and the amount of TIME they are on the roads which matters. Traffic flow is therefore the key. We need better traffic management and sufficient roads.
For cities, effective Park & Ride schemes for those coming from outside the city must become a must.
As for using hard shoulders as a cheap alternative to roadbuilding - I say no! The motorist has paid for those routes many times over and deserves to have them.

Simple meets simplistic meets cunning.

Every now and again, the liberal left produce a piece of logic which is a real purler.
Back in the 1960s, it was claimed that the 1967 Abortion Act was necessary to prevent backstreet abortions which could injure, damage fertility and even on occasions, kill. [A recent film has even glamourised a 'noble' amateur abortionist who 'just oozed compassion.']
May I point out a slight flaw in the logic? These women were only in that position because they had opted to take an illegal course of action.
Claims of desperation may not be used as an excuse for theft, murder, rape and arson. These crimes are not then legitimised , regularised and legalised because there are consequences for the perpetrators. So how does this work with illegal abortions?
It is no use simpletons like Lib Dem David Steel, co-founder of the original act, pretending that 'nobody could have predicted how it would all turn out'.
Today we have about 3,000 late term abortions annually in the UK and a further 200,000 earlier abortions.
David Steel really couldn't have predicted the effective emergence of 'abortion on demand', eh?
Funny that because my Dad who left school with a basic education aged 14 in 1938 was able to predict precisely that.
Yet again the liberal left conned people into thinking that 'a wrong was being righted' and that they had no other agenda.
I wouldn't mind but how many times have the PC crew actually been proved correct when one of their hobby horse dreams turns into reality? - Not many, I can assure you!
Read Psalm 94.

Bullying.

I am the last person you would expect to want to deflate the many claims of bullying which cast so many of our youngsters today as victims.
As a child, I was slight of build, wore wire NHS glasses, cast off clothing and my Dad was the local copper.
As they say "Don't talk to ME about bullying." I know and fully understand. My problems were compounded by Dad's job requiring frequent changes of school so I was always 'the new kid' and certainly 'punished' in junior school for being the brightest boy in my class.
Certainly, I do believe that bullying is worse these days, more systematic, more frequent and often far more criminal.
BUT I also believe that it it is oft times exaggerated, a regular excuse and sometimes downright wimpishness. All too frequently, it is the bully who claims to have been bullied by the victim - and woe betide any school which dares to suggest that any child may be a bully. A 'victim mentality' seems more common than I can ever remember from my own, not-always-so-happy, school days.
The problem for schools is that staff effectively have to be eye witnesses to the alleged incident/s. 'He said/she said' in a school is actually worse than trying as a JP to sort out incidents of domestic violence.
To complicate matters, 'sweet little girls' are a much rarer breed than ever before and the 'butter wouldn't melt' brigade are capable of utter humiliation of the girls, and in some cases boys, whose faces do not fit.
This is why I find what government expert Tim Gill has to say is definitely worthy of a read.
LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490250&in_page_id=1770

The Mathericks.

So Vincent and Pauline Matherick are to be removed from the lists of acceptable foster parents in Somerset because they are Christians who refuse to teach their charges that homosexual 'marriage' is equal to what God instituted.
How long before homosexuality is made compulsory, I wonder?


LINK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489285&in_page_id=1770

Mathericks win! Authorities backdown. 2/11/07

UPDATE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=491221&in_page_id=1770

Good wine.

When Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, how old was the wine as they drank it?
Was it just a few minutes old or was it at least several years vintage?
I ask because to become a good wine, ageing is required - and we are told that this was 'good wine'.
This was a relatively minor miracle but it begs a question on a rather larger scale.
The fossil record can only show 'gradual evolution' by postulating non-existent [undiscovered?] transitional forms of which many billions are inconveniently missing.
All other so called, evolutionary scientific disciplines from oceanography to genetics, from coal formation to micro biology are easily attacked by non evolutionary scientists.
What is more difficult is the timelines in space. Billions of years for light to......
Well if all the rest is flawed, how can evolutionary theory hold up its uniformitarian ideals just on this single strand?
Perhaps it cannot. Whilst the scientific evidence for a young universe mounts, as we realise that the speed of light is almost certainly not the constant that many scientists have believed it to be [way beyond my abilities here, I am afraid] - the 'wine at Cana issue' kicks in.
Let us assume that God DID create in just 6 days. Everything would have had an appearance of age - JUST LIKE THAT WINE.
Okay, I am aware that this site has attacked the weaknesses of the evolutionary hypothesis on a scientific base and for once this is not a scientific point. BUT if creation were true, the logic is at least consistent.
Think about it.
LINKS: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/08/54394
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=2741

Logic no atheist can combat.

I quote Jay Adkins: "Thomas Edison, said, “We do not know a millionth of one percent about anything.” Let me repeat: Let’s say that you have an incredible one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. Would it be possible, in the ninety-nine percent of the knowledge that you haven’t yet come across, that there might be ample evidence to prove the existence of God?"
Try getting out of that logically - Phew!
[Smacks of updated Thomas Aquinas to me!]

Picture: Thomas Aquinas.

Downright dishonesty - hiding crime.

Figures released this week minimise crime figures by purporting to show that 7,951 offenders committed a total of 16,415 crimes between April 2006 and March 2007, whilst being supervised by the Probation Service and other agencies.
Firstly the figures for KNOWN repeat offending are laughably minute. With maybe 100,000 released from prison in any given year, it is detection levels which then become the issue.
Let us factor in that at least 95% of crime goes either undetected or unreported.
Make it half a million and I would still struggle to believe this piece of calculated dishonesty.

What the figures manifestly fail to do of course, is to record all those who were undersentenced and had no connection with the Probation Service as well as those who were put under their supervision for just 6 months, a period which then expired within the year described.

Murder by any other name....

So minister Dawn Primarolo thinks that abortion at 24 weeks is just dandy. This butchers a child which may well be able to survive outside the womb.
Is she in favour of killing very young babies outside the womb? If not why not? Perhaps she could explain the difference?
However you look at it, this miserable example of BSE in action supports murder of the innocents with her liberal, Herodian beliefs.

No Christian should EVER cast a vote for such evil as this. Are there Christians in this harridan's constituency, I wonder?

Barnett Formula

Have you ever heard of the Barnett Formula? Whatever the reasons for its creation at the end of the 1970s it has now outlived its intended shelf-life of just 20 years.
Joel Barnett the former minister who created it has stated that it really should have been long abandoned.
So, what is it? What does it do? Why is it so unfair?
Well, it allows disproportionate amounts of taxpayers money to be sent to Scotland and Wales meaning, inter al, that Scots no longer face prescription charges and university fees.
Combine this with the lack of balance in the numbers of Scottish MPs, The West Lothian Question and the lack of an English Parliament and English voters and taxpayers get a truly raw deal giving special subsidies to Scotland and Wales as well as our milch cow funding of the ever corrupt EU.

LINKS: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp98/rp98-008.pdf

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=392231&in_page_id=1770

http://www.tomgriffin.org/the_green_ribbon/2007/10/brassneck-on-th.html

Child judges.

Just when you think that the liberal left cannot get any more stupid, they prove to you that there are even greater depths of idiocy to which they can descend.
In Preston, groups consisting of teenagers and assorted kiddies as young as ten, are being arranged into four 'man' panels who will judge their peers who have committed serious offences!
For once I am not even going to bother explaining the lunacy of this. If you are intelligent and sufficiently informed to read this Blog, you do not need me to spell it out for you.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=489358&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=256&in_check=N

Con trick? Why would you think that?

It is more than 60 years since the stalinist Altiero Spinelli, wrote that the aim of the EU should be "stealthily to assemble the components of a supranational government and only to declare its true purpose at the end of the process by unveiling a constitution".
It is more than 50 years since another founder, Paul-Henri Spaak, advised Jean Monnet, later grandiosely titled "the Father of Europe", that the only way to achieve their goal – a politically integrated Europe – was to PRETEND that it was only a "Common Market".

Check out the the true story; the vile histories of this trio of treacherous idealogues in "The Great Deception" by Chris Booker & Richard North.

"By their fruits ye shall know them!"

LINK: http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/index.live?article=104

Photo: Spinelli.

Without honour.

I have often meditated on the return of Jesus to Nazareth whilst His ministry was at its height.

He spoke with authority in the synagogue and was immediately criticised on the basis of "Who does this upstart think he is? We know his family. We remember him as a kid."

The local-boy-made-good will always have envious responses such as this.

The point of the story however, is rather different. Nazareth becomes the only place where Jesus sees His powers to do miracles limited. In view of the wonders He performed in so many other places, this is quite remarkable. A lack of faith will restrict God.

In so many Churches today we are always a little puzzled when there is a miraculous outcome to prayer and clusters of miracles tend to be rare.

Can we be surprised when we consider the faith levels to be found today? The early Church it ain't!

Having had a couple of 'touches' from God in the last few weeks, including the healing of my longstanding tennis elbow after being anointed and prayed for, it struck me that Christians are seemingly happy to miss out on the abundance which God has to offer.

Generosity.

"Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security." --William F. Buckley.

EU unfairness.

The European Union's insistence on humiliating this nation in countless ways moves on apace.

For the next European elections in less than two years, we shall only be allowed 73 MEPs - a tiny 8% of the total. However, our population is equivalent to 12.25 per cent of the total population of the EU, which means we should really have 92 MEPs.
This means our ability to influence decision-making, already something of a dead letter, is significantly reduced.

Antarctic.

Antarctic ice is steadily growing and thickening.This is conveniently ignored or airily explained away in the climate change 'feeding frenzy'.





LINKS: http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/cold-science/2002-01-18-wais-thicker.htm

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/antarctic_020822.html

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/05/27/antarctic-ice-a-global-warming-snow-job/

http://www.globalwarming.org/node/160

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020130074839.htm

Madeleine McCann.

I would never be so presumptuous as to make comments about the fate of Madeleine McCann as so many do, because I am not in possession of sufficient information to be able to do so.
I would however have been considerably happier had both parents been subjected to polygraph testing from the outset. Although this has little value for court proceedings, it would at least have guaranteed that the Portuguese police were not wasting their time hunting Maddy in wrong directions.
It was stated about a month ago that the parents were willing to take a lie detector test.
Why has this not happened? Is it simply unreported?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=482811&in_page_id=1770

Human rights or con trick?

This act was initially a British creation designed to give a framework for basic human rights in the freed countries of post war Europe.
As a magistrate I had the opportunity to compare the original and the current some seven years ago and the two were largely unrecognisable as the one coming from the other.
The Act had been manipulated to give it a leftwing, liberal slant.
As a consequence today, gypsies may freely squat on other people's property; jailbirds have established free 'rights' to have pornography and in the case of addicts, drugs.
In addition there are extended rights for plane hijackers and those such as the killer of Head Teacher Philip Lawrence. These examples are just a tiny selection from amongst countless injustices.
Rights trump responsibilities and are granted to the individual against their government with no thoughts as to the consequences for society in general.
It may not be directly a part of the EU but is one more abomination foisted onto the longsuffering British voters by that deadly duo, our quisling politicians and the eurocrats.
This appalling Act, ill-developed over half a century, undermines our legal system which has evolved to meet our needs since the time of Henry the Second and even before.
It must be excised. [Perhaps 'exorcised' would have been a better choice of word!]

LINKS: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2006/05/11/ublview11.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/05/20/do2002.xml

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article48194.ece

Pudsey in redundancy shock!

So the BBC is to make 10% cuts in its workforce. Naturally enough, its workers are up in arms and strangely it seems that BBC News may take the biggest hammering.
Let us pause and take stock.
This is an organisation which has just spent £1.2million on a 'rebranding exercise', one which pays £6 million pounds a year to the useless Jonathan Ross and has paid astronomical figures to Terry Wogan for his remarkable skill of managing to appear genial.
It is only right of course that people who can read should receive high 6 figure salaries as is the case with their TV newscasters.
This is an organisation where blacks, Asians, women and homosexuals are all now over represented and yet the Beeb still pours money into its 'Equal Opportunities' section. One wonders whether this spends its time simply doing nothing or whether it is attempting to reduce the percentages of these 4 named groups.
As a government and EU sponsored organisation, naturally enough it is riddled with penpushers and bureaucrats.
I am only scratching the surface here. Give me six months and I could slash the cost of a TV licence, create better programmes and make the Beeb more like its once proud self.
The BBC's solution is to sack people at the sharp end and play more repeats. I despair!
Congratulations to local radio which has gradually become the BBC's flagship when operating with only a tiny fraction of their budget.

A bankrupt philosophy.

That socialism has failed is now beyond all question. Undoubtedly, some adherents to that bankrupt philosophy will claim that "it has never been properly tried" but the evidence from both within and without democracies is as conclusive as it can possibly be.
It is based upon a manifestly false premise - that Man is prepared to sponsor neighbours he cannot see. That Christians could ever believe in the 'basic goodness of man' is theologically disturbing. The Gospels work from an entirely opposite viewpoint - it is called realism.
The only evidence of any limited achievements in any vaguely socialist context comes from the Jewish Kibbutzim which are not really socialist in the first place as they are relatively small, voluntary communities and even they operate to a hierarchical system which would make most lefties' toes curl up.
Those who claim that it is a 'fairer system' forget that socialism ultimately must 'rob Peter to pay Paul'.
In the USSR, we had a classic example of how socialism utterly disincentivises a society; promotes endless bureaucracy; still produces a divisive 'them and us' and festers economically. Potentially the most resource rich region on earth had third world living conditions.
Of course there are those who dare to oppose such a 'paradise on earth'. The arguments now rage as to whether Stalin murdered 50 million of his fellow citizens or was it a mere 30 million?
Margaret Thatcher once said that the only essential difference between marxism and socialism was that the former was a deadly poison and the latter just a slower version of the same.
Capitalism understands the nature of man and that is why it works. It is not always fair or reasonable or pretty but it will tend to deliver prosperity as it believes in wealth creation. Perhaps the only real success that socialism has enjoyed has been in curbing the excesses of rampant capitalism something which did not need socialism as a vehicle.It is difficult to point to the Welfare State as a success because within two decades of its inception, it had become an end in itself.
A state run apparatus is incapable of wealth creation. If you ain't got it - you can't share it!
Figures in Le Figaro about 20 years ago suggested that in the 20th Century, up to that point, socialism/marxism had caused 164 million deaths.
Sorry to harp on about Mrs Thatcher who was not always the most popular of leaders but she also said that the only reason that The Good Samaritan was able to give financial help was because he had the wherewithal to do so.
I might also ask why there is an ingrained belief that state-centred enterprise must by nature be benevolent. All human failings are still encountered in socialist administrations.

IMPORTANT LINK: http://www.newswithviews.com/Rae/debra25.htm

Gorilla teeth.

Big news. The 'oldest gorilla teeth' have been discovered in Ethiopia.
They have been dated as '10 million years old". Strangely, it is admitted that they are "collectively indistinguishable from modern gorilla subspecies" yet they are given a new name "Chororapithecus abyssinicus" after the geological formation they were found in."
John Mackay, the eminent geologist and coal formation expert points out:-


"Giving them a different name simply because they are dated as being older than evolutionary belief about when gorillas evolved, is not evidence for evolution; it is applying already held evolutionary prejudice to the facts which actually are undeniable evidence that gorillas have reproduced after their kind."





The scam continues. Thanks John for challenging this nonsense!

Grannies. Eggsucking?

Professor Richard Tremblay of the University of Montreal has declared that curbing aggression in young children in their pre-school years is the key to them not growing up as violent adults.
More money should be spent on this institution of higher learning. I await more breakthroughs shortly.
I expect that it will be proved that water is wet, gravity pulls downwards and human beings cannot function without water and nutrients.
Just how far have we drifted as a species that the good Prof's devastating discoveries should be considered newsworthy?

Winston the Wise.

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.-Winston Churchill

"My faith is a very personal thing."

"My faith is a very personal thing." I wonder how many times readers of all opinions will have heard these words from alleged Christians.

It is a cop out - an excuse to do the exact opposite of what Jesus taught and to "hide your light under a bushel."

In Christianity there is no 'I'm-keeping-a low-profile option'.

In the 'Great commission', Christians are told that they must spread the 'Word' to everybody, everywhere.

Why so? -

The Gospel message - or Good News, if you prefer - is that all mankind will receive eternal punishment for their sins - of which we all have a great many - BUT by repenting those sins, accepting that God the Son took our punishment on Himself and committing ones life to the Saviour, we shall be saved.

So if Christians do not tell people, we must accept a share of the responsibility for their ultimate fate.

If somebody's house is on fire, we tell them; if somebody is destined for hell we do not?

Just because the topic is a bit tricky, Christians are not granted an opt out!

Off license clean up.

I recently caught a news clip which informed us that many fewer under age children are now able to buy alcohol from retail outlets than was previously the case.

I shall go beyond my natural distaste for some of the methods employed in this campaign - children used as agents provocateurs - and shall simply comment on what was said by a government spokesman. He revealed that this success was due to incessant action against rogue retailers combined with much tougher penalties.

It struck me that if such methods bear fruit in this field, perhaps getting tough on crime in general might produce similar results.

Ah well. Just a thought.

Archives.

There will be no updates to the Blog until Sunday the 14th of October.
May I suggest, that for your delectation and information, a scoot through the archive links on the righthand side of this page might prove fruitful and will partially ease your needs for a daily scan of this site?
It dates right back to May of 2006.
May God bless you all whilst I am away.
Les.

Autumn

For once let us have a little cheer. Scunthorpe United are riding high in the Championship; it has been a mild and lovely autumn and I am going away to Spain for a few days.

Our government looks after us.

Only ten criminals from the EU have been refused entry to Britain since 2004 to protect the public.


Good to know that the EU contains virtually no criminals!

Richard Heller.

Sometimes a quotation really appeals:

"The right of the Prime Minister to call an election is a stolen relic of the Royal Prerogative and a blot on our political system. It has been rightly compared to a football match where the home team is allowed to blow the final whistle when it is 2-0 up".


Richard Heller in the Yorkshire Post.

Common Purpose.

Very, very few readers will be aware of the deeply sinister group called 'Common Purpose'. It receives no publicity but "....this systematic programming of our local government officers to follow the EU system and philosophy " has now also spread its toxic tentacles throughout the Civil Service and quangos in our nation. It is an engine for EU propaganda.

It is designed to promote a kind of Orwellian euro-think in all areas of our society.

It is no accident. It undermines democracy and works to a purely EU agenda even where that directly opposes the interests of the UK.

Its 'agents' are carefully placed into all key positions; they are given authority; power and influence.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBE_0-1v_34

Common Purpose exposed.
Is Common Purpose just a charity or is it a front for a more sinister government/EU organisation? Come and hear and see the evidence that Brian Garish has uncovered about this organisation – be prepared for the unbelievable.
Thursday 15 Nov 2007 commencing 7.00pm.
Macdonald Albrighton Hall Hotel, Ellesmere Road,
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY4 3AG. Tel. 01939 291000

Our next Home Secretary - PLEASE!

Oh, there's so much MORE to know about Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona!
Maricopa County which was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said okay.

The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them placed in dog shows.

The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million.
The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of his budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals.

I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand.

He has a pretty good sized pig farm, which provides meat, and fertilizer. It fertilizes the Christmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a living Christmas tree for $6 - $8 for the Holidays, and plant it later. He was re-elected last year with 83% of the vote!

Now he's in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural, that has a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn't doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border.

He's kind of a "Git-it Dun" sort of Sheriff!

He Cut Off Coffee Since It Has Zero Nutritional Value. When the inmates complained, he told them, "This Isn't The Ritz/Carlton - If You Don't Like It, Don't Come Back." He bought Newt Gingrich's lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a Democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place!
In the heat, about 2,000 Inmates living in a barbed-wire-urrounded tent encampment At The Maricopa County Jail Have Been Given Permission To Strip Down To Their Government-Issued Pink Boxer Shorts. "It Feels Like We Are In A Furnace," Said James Zanzot, An Inmate Who Has Lived In The TENTS for 1 year. "It's Inhumane." Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff is not one bit sympathetic
He said that he told all of the inmates: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living In tents too, and they have to wear full battle gear, but they didn't commit any crimes."
This is NOT cruelty. It is severe, yes, but it has been earned and it works. Few go back. It reminds me of military prisons in the UK. A series on TV some years ago revealed that the re-offending rate under their tough regime was a tiny 3%!