By John Parker
Based on remarks given at “Free the Kononovich Brothers: International Campaign Meeting” on Aug. 25. Mikhail and Alexander Kononovich are leaders of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine. They were among hundreds of political opponents of the Ukrainian regime jailed this year, and thousands since the 2014 U.S.-backed coup.
The U.S. is supposed to be the greatest democracy, so its prison population must be the smallest – correct?
The fact is that the percentage of those in prison in the U.S. is five times the rate of that in China and twice the rate in Russia. It’s actually the highest number in the world, in both percentage of population and actual numbers – some 2.1 million in 2020.
Just as the budgets for Ukrainian security and military forces like the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have increased exponentially due to U.S. aid, in the last 40 years police budgets in the U.S. have tripled and they are also the recipients of military weaponry, including artillery, to be used against local communities.