The three most powerful nations all operate prison systems that are places of sadism, sickness, and madness unfit for human habitation, much less human reformation.
They also lead the world with astonishing rates of imprisonment far higher than in other industrialized nations. "The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people is the (world's) highest, followed by 611 in Russia," Reuters reports. Compare the above rates with the following nations: Spain, 149; Canada, 114; Australia, 103; The Netherlands, 82; Germany, 80; Norway, 71; Denmark, 68; Sweden, 67; Finland, 60; and Japan, 54.
America has 2.3 million souls behind bars; China ranks second with 1.5 million, and Russia places third with 870,000---a figure Deputy Justice Minister Yury Kalinin says actually is closer to 2 million. Whatever, all three inflict gruesome tortures on their prisoners.
To begin with, one permanent misery that equals torture is overcrowding. California is fighting a U.S. Supreme Court order to slash a prison population 46% over capacity: 119,000 human beings stuffed into 33 prisons. It's a story repeated over and again nationally---in Alabama, Illinois, ad nauseum.
Comment: The only logical conclusion is that someone outside Syria is funding the 'rebels' to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for a terrorist campaign that is now three years old.