“Prison officials don’t need a gun; they already have full control over you,” said a former Michigan prisoner who was raped by a correctional officer. She shared her experience with Just Detention International (JDI), an organization working to end the sexual abuse of detainees in prisons and jails around the globe.

The horror of prison rape has been well-documented by Human Rights Watch (hat tip, Te-Ping Chen at change.org). But in American popular culture, the issue of prison rape (when it’s not being ignored), is somehow considered funny, the subject of late-night, drop-the-soap humor. Humor can bring relief to conversations of uncomfortable facts, but it can also dehumanize and trivialize.

Just Detention International (note the name’s double entendre) seeks to change that dynamic with a moving new campaign. JDI prepared three sets of images.

The first set challenges the view that prison rape is somehow not really rape:

The second highlights the health of rape victims:

The third targets the alleged humor of people being raped:

Prison rape has reached epidemic proportions in US jails and prisons. Some 60,500 (4.5%) of the 1.3 million people in federal and state prisons were sexually abused in 2006, according to a 2007 Department of Justice study. By one account, one in five male prisoners is sexually abused at some point during his incarceration. Meanwhile, HIV is four times more prevalent, and Hepatitis C is eight to 20 times more prevalent, in US prisons than in society overall.

Among juveniles in U.S. youth prisons, according to a just-released Department of Justice study, one in eight reported being sexually victimized in the past 12 months (or if they were incarcerated for fewer than 12 months, since they were admitted). Eighty percent of these victims were abused by prison staff.

Kudos to Just Detention International for humanizing people in prison by depicting them in something other than prison garb. Rape is awful whether it happens to women or men, free or imprisoned. “No matter what crime someone has committed,” says JDI, “sexual violence must never be part of the penalty.”

Here is the latest biting comic from our good friend Jason Laning. For those that can’t read it, Bush is saying to Obama: “You know, you almost had us worried, for a minute there.” Again to get the full experience, check out the original on his site. There will be more on the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and resistance to it here soon.

Launched on the eve of Veteran’s Day last week, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” the latest in “first-person shooter” video games, raked in an unbelievable $310 million in its first day on the market.

The game – already the subject of controversy over a scene where the player indiscriminately mows down innocent civilians in an airport that looks like LAX in Los Angeles – is supposed to be one of the most realistic war games yet. As Peter W. Singer describes it:

As part of a US special operations team, the player roams everywhere from Afghanistan to the Caucasus, winning hearts and minds with a mix of machine pistols and Predator drone strikes. The players also fight out in range of potential new conflict zones, from the rough urban favelas of Brazil to a simulated Russian invasion of Washington, D.C., and the Virginia suburbs (This is actually a major flaw in the game; any invasion force would clearly get stuck in traffic at the Interstate 95 Mixing Bowl).

On The Daily Show last week, there was a funny, but ultimately dismissive and wrong-headed segment on the logic and effectiveness of boycotts.

In his comedic way, Wyatt Cenac made the case that liberals shouldn’t stop shopping at Whole Foods simply because, as he describes it,  “the CEO of a company had the audacity to express his personal opinion about health care in writing.”

Why not? If the head of any company is doing something that you think is morally wrong or advocating for a policy that you think is going to hurt a lot people, why not publicly refuse to give him any more of your money by shopping somewhere else? It makes perfect sense.

Cenac did make a valid point, however, by arguing that it’s nearly impossible to buy anything in our capitalist system and hold on to your morals, because of how interconnected everything has become.

For example, he pointed out that Toyota, the maker of the Prius – the hybrid car that is so popular with those concerned with the environment – also recently sponsored a reggae concert that included an artist with homophobic songs that encourage killing gays.

I think of how the metal coltan, which is at the heart of the brutal civil war in the Congo that has left more than 5 million dead over the last decade, is also in virtually all of our electronics, including our cell phones and laptops. We are truly all complicit.

Nevertheless, while many boycotts go nowhere, others clearly have helped build a more just world. In a recent article on Counterpunch, John Macaray discussed a few examples of effective boycotts:

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I had the good fortune of being able to catch Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno’s new film, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” when it aired on HBO a couple months ago, and thought it was fantastic.

If you weren’t able to catch it then, however, and you live in New York City, you’re in luck.  The film opened at the Film Forum last week and is currently scheduled to run for two weeks. Over the next month or two, it is set to open in other cities across the country as well. Check out the film’s site to see if it’s coming to a theater near you. (And if it does really well now – if my limited understanding of these things is correct – it has the potential to make it on to many more screens.)

For those not familiar with the Yes Men, their M.O. is to finagle their way into business conferences or onto major media outlets posing as representatives of major corporations – such as Exxon Mobil and Halliburton – or U.S. government officials. They then give speeches that either take the free-market thinking to it’s logical extreme, revealing its absurdity in the process, or make altruistic announcements for government or business action that we would only see if they were moral entities. For example:

In the film’s opening scene, Bichlbaum, purporting to be a Dow Chemical representative, goes on the BBC to announce that after 20 years of denial, his company will finally clean up India’s toxic Bhopal plant and compensate all the victims of the industrial disaster that occurred there. As people connected to the issue celebrate the news, Dow’s stock plummets.

Pundits ask whether the duo perpetrated a cruel joke by giving Bhopal survivors false hope, so Bichlbaum and Bonanno travel to India to ask residents for their reactions. Some say they were disappointed to learn of the fraud, but others seem pleased that the prank called attention to the shameful neglect of big business and government.

I think the Yes Men’s actions hilarious and at times incredibly poignant indictments of a system that thrives on greed and is – in an absolutely literal way – destroying the earth.

While some will undoubtedly see their nonviolent tactics as deceitful and distasteful, I was moved by Bichlbaum’s explanation of their work to someone confronting him after one of their pranks. What they are doing, he said, is “truth-telling where there would normally be lies.” And the lies of the powerful few have profound repercussions on billions of lives at the bottom that they see as worthless, or at least not of enough value to do anything to help.

One exciting new direction that the Yes Men are heading in, which the movie only touches on briefly, are pulling off stunts that require the collaboration of thousands of people – such as the creation and release of nearly a million copies of a fake New York Post last month that focused on what needs to be done to avert the worst effects of climate change.  The more people can be drawn in to participate in these types of creative actions, the more hope we can all have for the future.

In a pretty funny segment from Thursday’s Daily Show, John Oliver attempts to help the G20 activists in Pittsburgh get the same “warm reception” Tea Party protesters have received from the government and media. So he talks to some Tea Partiers to seek their advice. Naturally, their suggestions are filled with irony: “They need to stay on message” and “They’re scaring everyone away”. While most of the joking is done at the expense of the Tea Partiers, the G20 activists aren’t exactly let off easy. They’re shown to have a bunch of crazies in their midst, as well as a disorganized conglomeration of competing interests. Plus, Oliver seems to paint them as somewhat weak and pathetic. But that may have more to do with the joke he seems to be making about the unnecesarily large police presence. Ultimately, I get the sense that the Daily Show sympathizes with the G20 activists, but, as is always the case when pop culture attempts to explain protests, stereotypes take over.

Last week protesters in London targeted the annual Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition, the world’s largest arms fair.

One anarchist group, called the Space Hijackers, claimed to have acquired a helicopter and threatened to somehow shut down the weapons bazaar “by swooping in from the sky,” according to Danger Room. While that sounds ridiculous, London police actually had a reason to take the group seriously.

At the DSEi in 2007, the Space Hijackers threatened to bring a tank and auction it outside the show. What ended up happening is really wonderful.

“The police intercepted a tank approaching the Excel exhibition site,” David Hambling reported at the time, “but this turned out to be a decoy and a second tank (pictured) got through.”

I would personally love to hear more about how in the hell they managed to pull off this stunt. Pretty hilarious.

Well this year it turns out they didn’t actually have a helicopter, but they still managed to cause a stir. “It was VERY funny watching the police panic everytime one flew near the DSEi arms fair and Delegates Dinner,” the group says on their website. “Not to mention the extra helicopters they had flying around looking for ours.”

A full report on their involvement this year will be coming soon, so check back on their site if you want to know the full story.

While there were apparently peaceful protests during the arms fair, some unfortunately decided to turn to property destruction and vandalism. According to DISARM DSEi, the protesters’ main website, windows were smashed and paint bombs were thrown at “some of the biggest backers of the arms trade, including Barclays, Legal and General and Axa. British Telecom, who have a £59 million share in the arms trade were also occupied.”

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• On Saturday, a dozen members from the satirical protest group Billionaires for Wealth Care pulled up in their stretch limo and joined the right wing protesters at a Town Hall Meeting hosted by Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-CA) in Spring Valley, California, thanking them for fighting for the profits of the health industry that enriched them.

• Argentine cattle auctions and grains markets were almost inactive Monday as farmers refused to sell products on the fourth day of a protest against government agricultural policy.

• Canadian filmmaker John Greyson has withdrawn his short film “Covered” – a doc about the 2008 Sarajevo Queer Festival, which was cancelled due to anti-gay violence – from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival in protest against the festival’s inaugural City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv.

• In Australia, more than half the students at Mullumbimby high school on the North Coast of New South Wales walked out over the death of a teenager in a playground fight.

• Three inmates were in a critical condition at Dar es Salaam’s Keko Remand Prison on Sunday after a five-day hunger strike.

• The pilot’s union Cockpit has called for a 16-hour strike to protest against a move to replace pilots working for LTU with those working for Air Berlin.

• In Dubai, thousands of workers for Al Habtoor Engineering did not report to work and protested they be paid overdue salaries on Monday.

• Climate camp activists staged a “clean-up” protest outside the Treasury in London yesterday. Wearing boiler suits and brandishing cleaning equipment they said they wanted to expose the Treasury’s “dirty practices”, including the use of taxpayers’ money to fund fossil fuel extraction despite the Government claiming to be a global leader in the fight against climate change.

• Five workers from the Indorama textiles factory in Shibeen El-Kom in Egypt launched a hunger strike on Friday after four were fired and one threatened verbally that his employment will be terminated.

• In West Virginia, two anti-mining activists were arrested Monday after they ended a week-long tree-sit. The action forced Massey Energy to temporarily halt work at a mountaintop removal site. Nick Stocks and Laura Steepleton have both been charged with trespass, obstruction and littering.

Nothing I’ve seen has captured the inane logic of most town hall protesters better than the satirical website angrytownhall.com, which claims to be organizing a day of nationwide protests against our “socialist fire departments.”

“The Mission Statement of Angry Town Hall is to guarantee fully privatized fire departments throughout the United States, while promoting a “zero tolerance policy” towards government funding/operation of fire safety through grants, loans, local taxes, state taxes, county taxes, and estate taxes.”

Our aim is that by 2011, all fire services will be provided and funded through private fire companies, including but not limited to: Blackwater (XE), Halliburton, Monsanto, Lockheed, and China.

The site also contains some rather hilarious photos and sayings, such as “The tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with water from PRIVATE fire departments” and “This truck is red for a reason.” But my favorite, which appears on their Facebook page is: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in asbestos and carrying a fire hose.”

Others have chimed in on the Facebook message boards with some rather ingenious comments, such as this imagined conversation between a person whose house is on fire and a private insurance company handling the 911 call:

Claim Representative: OK, Mr. Smith. I’m sorry, it appears that we have not received your last payment, and therefore under Article 32, Section U, paragraph 76, coverage is suspended until payment is received.

Caller: WHAT? I paid the bill. I even saw this morning that the check cleared! Oh my God! The roof is falling in! Holy S—!

Claim Representative: Sir, there is no need for profanity. If you can fax me a copy of the cancelled check, we can reinstate your policy within three business days of receipt of the fax.

Caller: MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE RIGHT NOW!

It will be interesting to see if the absurdity revealed by this satirical campaign will amount to more than just an online presence. It seems as though the organizers have hopes for more. They’ve set the day of action as September 9 at 4pm. Further details have yet to be announced.

In this hilarious video, John Hargrave of the humor website Zug.com pranks Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg by making him the victim of his own company’s poor privacy policies. In an article explaining the prank—which is just as funny as the video—Hargrave says he signed up for a “free cell phone records” site to see if he could find the unlisted numbers and home addresses of the big three telecom CEOs. Unfortunately, only Seidenberg had a unique enough name to produce a singular result. And so he became the patsy.

Hargrave’s prank invokes a good mixture of seriousness and humor. Speaking through a bullhorn he calls on Seidenberg to “Please do a better job protecting your customers’ cell phone records. Everyone has the right to privacy, including you Ivan. When we don’t have privacy then freaks with bullhorns start showing up.” He then repeatedly uses the Verizon catchphrase, “Can you hear me now?” Each time increasing the volume of his megaphone.

Ultimately, Hargrave is chased away by “a middle-aged man, walking quickly with his large dog.” But that man, unfortunately, was not Ivan, just an angry member of his private community.

I can’t help but wish, just a little bit, that Hargrave had the nerve to stick around and not leave saying, “Sorry about that!” Although I certainly understand how a vicious and fast approaching dog, as he explains it, can be quite frightening, Hargrave did have a companion filming the whole event. It would have been interesting to at least ask Seidenberg’s neighbor what he thought of Verizon’s inadequate security measures.

Fortunately, viral videos have a force behind them that can more than make up for such shortcomings. It doesn’t matter that Seidenberg never showed up or that Hargrave never elicited a substantial response from the neighbors. They look like fools because Hargrave has humor, truth and editing on his side.

In some sense, the real protest is taking place online. Sure, Hargrave committed a physical solitary action. But the full effect of it is only now beginning to be seen and felt, as others are able to virtually engage by watching and then spreading the word. Some 4,500 to be exact.

I’m guessing Ivan Seidenberg can hear John Hargrave now.