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Showing posts with the label Guantanamo Bay

The Guantanamo Bay Prison Library

I came across this photo of a section of the Guantanamo Bay Prison library this morning and found it interesting: The copy of Aron Ralston's 127 Hours was specified by the photographer as being specifically dog-eared, but personally the Nora Roberts novel to the right appears to have been more thoroughly examined. Is trashy romance a Jihadi thing? What really got my attention, though, was the *multiple* copies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract (that appear to be untouched).   Prison censors even in domestic US prisons tend to omit any works of political philosophy from the library - when you do see prisoners reading this stuff they typically have to make special arrangements to get it by purchasing it directly from the publisher or through an inter-library loan as part of an in-prison education program. A colleague of mine recently published a series of damning articles on the prison health system in the state of Florida; wardens of prisons who were implicated