Actually, from time to time, it does!!  This weeks issue, about use of death penalty in the USA.  Recently, T E covered specifically high incarceration rates in US population, even compared to UK, itself one of the highest in Europe.

The issues in the US are a) the 'war on drugs' and b) 'zero tolerance / three strikes and you're out' - leading to (as The Economist itself acknowledges) absurdities such as being jailed for 30 years for stealing a pizza, if this is your 3rd offence.

However the US jurisprudential system, even with its many faults, ranks just a little above N Korea's, with its practice of locking up entire families, 3 generations, if one member e.g. fails to properly dust the obligatory in-home family portrait of Kim.  (Three generations you're all out?)

Dr Hillary Shaw
Food and Supply Chain Management Department
Harper Adams University College
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8NB
www.fooddeserts.org
Those who neglect the gain of knowledge in order to maximise the gain of beauty will ultimately gain neither


-----Original Message-----
From: Mekonnen Tesfahuney <[log in to unmask]>
To: hillshaw <[log in to unmask]>; CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:55
Subject: Re: N Korean Gulag

North Korea, of course! 
Why can the Economist not write about the "Democratic Gulags" - Diego Garcia, Guantanamo, the prison-industrial complex in the USA (the largest Gulag in the world). Would the economist write about the Black Panthers who sat years in ISOLATION – years! in ISOLATION? Or would about the open Gulag that is Gaza?  (last I checked Palestine is not not on Google maps either)

Seems to me it is the usual "OUR ENEMY OF THE MONTH" cover story. 
After Libya and Syria, time now for North Korea to be the enemy of the month 
(for the umpteenth time; well there ain't that many enemies left to go around now, are there, eh?) …
 
I appreciate your intentions Dr Shaw. 
But the Economist – itself a Gulag of Neoliberal ideas – crying wolf or look NK has a Gulag over there? 
No, thanks.

__________________

Mekonnen Tesfahuney,
Docent (Associate Professor)
Karlstads universitet
Fakulteten för samhälls- och livsvetenskaper
Avd. för geografi och turism
651 88 Karlstad
 
Tel: 054-700 13 33
E-mail: [log in to unmask]



Från: Hillary Shaw <[log in to unmask]>
Svara till: <[log in to unmask]>
Datum: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:40:18 -0400
Till: <[log in to unmask]>
Ämne: N Korean Gulag

The Economist, 21 April 2012,pp 59-60, has a detailed and harrowing description of life in one of N Korea's gulags.  Also a Gogle earth photo - for those of us who have the luxury and safety of observing such a facility from our armchairs via a satellite too high for the N Korean guards to shoot at, the co-ordinates of the Economist photo (hard to read in the actual article ) are 39 35 09 N 126 04 36 E.  You'll nned the Econ article to make sense of the facilities - a coal mine, firing range, prisoner and guard housing, execution site,and a "hospice for dying prisoners" (how thoughtful, Kim).  The coalmine's on the west bank, the rest on the east bank - oddly, no bridge visible, except further downstream.

However its what's about 1 - 2 km further south, and south-west, and some more about 2-3 km north east, that looks even more sinister.  Vast developments of regimented housing that looks like even biggers camp, scattered across the neighbourhood.  Maybe its just typical Stalinist housing blocks.  Appears interspersed with older villages and farmland.  Apparently this unnamed Gulag is surrounded by electric wire - although the landscape looks forbidding enough to be pretty escape-proof anyway, just as the Siberian gulags were, by their very location.

Dr Hillary Shaw
Food and Supply Chain Management Department
Harper Adams University College
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8NB
www.fooddeserts.org
Those who neglect the gain of knowledge in order to maximise the gain of beauty will ultimately gain neither