Suckling At The Glass Teat. Urge To Riot Fading...fading...

Interesting:

World's Greatest Baby-Sitter

The Associated Press reports from Jerusalem on a seemingly obvious innovation in incarceration:

Israeli army jailers at a tough facility for Palestinian security prisoners in the Negev desert have discovered a unique deterrent against disturbances: television.

In the year since the first TV set was installed in the Ketziot prison, there have been no serious disturbances that required tear gas for dispersal--up to then a common occurrence, said the soldiers' weekly "Bamahane" in its current issue.

The prison commander, identified only as Lt. Col. Avi by the magazine, said the security prisoners spend their time watching television instead of planning disturbances. "The culture of planning hostile activity here is withering away," he told the weekly.

Jailers control the channel selection, the magazine said, limiting viewing to the three main Israeli channels, CNN and a Jordanian TV station.

Now and then we hear about outrages in the U.S. court system in which crazy judges order prisons to provide cable TV to inmates. This suggests that the crazy judges just may be on to something.