What the Hell is Wrong with Americans?!

In today’s Guardian, there was a story about a 20-year-old man in Florida that was sentenced to an additional 60 days in jail for masturbating in his jail cell. There was a court case, lawyers, jury and everything. The jury found that because it’s funded by the government, a jail cell is a “limited-access public space”, and since it’s illegal to masturbate in public, it’s, by extension, illegal to masturbate in one’s jail cell.

First of all, who cares? The guy was in jail. Where else is he going to masturbate? It’s not like he go home and masturbate like everyone else. He’s kinda stuck there for a while. I don’t care if guys in jail masturbate all day long. What else do they have to do?

Secondly, why are we wasting our money on prosecuting guys that masturbate in jail? If he had been out on a park bench, I could understand the consternation, but this guy was alone in a jail cell. If society is so concerned with the fragile sensibilities of jail guards, a) maybe we should find jail guards that aren’t quite so sensitive, or b) maybe they should put doors on the jail cells instead of enclosing them in glass. Regardless of the course of action they choose, I don’t think they should be wasting tax payer money prosecuting crimes that weren’t really crimes in the first place. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I could’ve sworn that there were still real crimes being committed that we haven’t quite stopped yet. This is just an idea, but maybe we should start using resources to fight real crime instead of worrying about a guy just trying to get to know himself a little better.

South Africa to the Rescue

The Guardian reported this morning that faced with worsening hyperinflation, Zimbabwe may be turning to big brother South Africa yet again for support. The central bank of South Africa may include Zimbabwe in the Rand monetary union, which already includes South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. By pegging the Zimbabwe Dollar to the South African Rand and thus relinquishing Zimbabwe’s monetary authority to the central bank of South Africa, there are hopes of bringing some stability to the country’s ever-weakening currency. In return for this, President Mugabe would have to agree to certain “political concessions” at the behest of South African President Mbeki. There was no word of what these concessions would be.

On the one hand, this sounds like good news for the citizens of Zimbabwe. With currency controls in place, ordinary citizens could save money without fear of it becoming essentially worthless the moment after they cash their paychecks. On the other hand, maybe the spiraling inflation would have proven to be the catalyst needed to incite the people to overthrow the oppressive Mugabe regime. Many African scholars were predicting a significant political shake-up in Zimbabwe in the near term as a result of the worsening hyper-inflation. If South Africa bails Mugabe out, yet again, there may be no real change in the country for some time to come. Mugabe’s already in his early 80s, but from what I understand, he’s in excellent health. Despite his age, he isn’t expected to be going anywhere anytime soon.

However, I can see where Mbeki is coming from. Stability along South Africa’s borders may be his most strategically important goal in this regard. An abrupt breakdown of the Mugabe administration could lead to great civil unrest in the country that could cause violence and refugees to spill over the border into South Africa. South Africa’s got enough problems to deal with. They don’t need to import new ones from Zimbabwe. In this world of global institutionalism, Realism is far from dead. The integrity and security of the state is still of paramount importance. It’s easy to advocate revolution remotely from the secure position of the US, but it’s quite a different story when that revolution may be taking place right next door.