From the very first installation of full body scanners at the nation’s airports there have been questions about their legality as well as their effectiveness. An unclassified report, which can be found on the US government’s website, now concedes that the scanners probably don’t work.

Exactly how bad the body scanners are is not being divulged publicly, but the Inspector General report made eight separate recommendations on how to improve screening.

It was not immediately known when the TSA published its unclassified summary, TSA Penetration Testing of Advanced Imaging Technology. It comes with a “November 2011″ date and can be found on the DHS Office of Inspector General website under the heading “OIG Reports: Fiscal Year 2012.”

It’s not the first time the body scanners, produced by Rapiscan and L-3 Communications, have come under attack. In a three-part series last year, Wired reported that, indeed, there were suspected security flaws with them. Even the Government Accountability Office — Congress’ investigative arm — said the devices might be ineffective. And the Journal of Transportation Security suggested terrorists might fool the Rapiscan machines by taping explosive devices to their stomachs.

Many other organizations and websites have concurred since the beginning that the full body scanners are faulty, untested, and unreliable. During its entire run, the full body scanners have failed to catch a single terrorist. Nearly everything it has found (weapons and drugs) has been through the x-ray conveyor belt or via the metal detectors. Early on, Germany decided not to use full body scanners, displaying on TV just how useless they are.

Meanwhile, an unclassified version of the Inspector General report, unearthed Friday by the Electronic Information Privacy Center, may give credence to a recent YouTube video allegedly showing a 27-year-old Florida man sneaking a metallic object through two different Transportation Security Administration body scanners at American airports.

The unclassified summary said the government has spent $87 million on the scanners, which includes $10 million for “installation and maintenance.” To quiet privacy concerns, the authorities are also spending $7 million to “remove the human factor from the image review process” and replace the passenger’s image with an avatar.

No matter how much the government changes the human body on the machines to look less human, it will never allay the privacy concerns related to the full body scanners, nor will it make them more effective. Passengers who refuse to go through the machines will still be sexually assaulted by TSA pat downs.

The money spent on these useless machines will continue to go to former DHS Chief Michael Chertoff, his consulting firm, and other Washington insiders. The government defends the use of the scanners while it continues to put its citizens’ privacy and health at risk. The TSA’s representative, Blogger Bob, and TSA Chief, John Pistole, continue to defend its employees’ actions despite the fact that the TSA employees have proven time and again that they are untrustworthy, incompetent, and criminal.

The sooner DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, Pistole, and the entire TSA is scrapped, the sooner more reasonable and respectable airport security can be implemented. A first step is admitting the scanners don’t work. The next step is to remove the scanners and return to pre-9/11 security. Then, the government can start to seriously look at what actually works at the nation’s airports. Until Napolitano and Pistole are fired, however, nothing will ever change and passengers will continue to suffer at the hands of one of the most inept agencies ever created in the United States.

Image by Ed Murray, Star Ledger.

If you cannot make this occupation, do get a hold of Asher to set up one in your own in your locale.  We need to let these vassals know that we not only do not honor them, we seek to see them perp walked.

Readers might know that the Capo di tutti capi , Sandy Weill, boss of bosses of criminal syndicate, Citigroup fame is also being honored with an “honorary degree” at Sonoma State University by his valet and personal butler, President Ruben Arminana (http://dailycensored.com/2012/05/03/scoundrel-billionaire-to-receive-honorary-doctorate-at-sonoma-state-university/).

It is clear that those who labor for the one percent or in the case of Weill, are the one percent get their degrees free and with honors.  Meanwhile students get one trillion dollars in student loan debt, privatized education, destroyed lives, unemployment and the bums rush into a corporate Gulag of disposability.

It is also time to begin to Occupy the for-profit colleges, like the hideous ‘outfit’ Kaplan University, in geographical areas throughout the country.

Find a for-profit dungeon near you and then organize an occuaption.  In this way we can not only educate perspective victims, but we can work to drive the company stocks down so that Wall Street gets the message that education is not for sale!

Contact: Asher Platts

E-mail: punkpatriot411@gmail.com

This Saturday, May 12th, members of Occupy USM will stage a

demonstration at the University of Southern Maine’s 132nd

commencement ceremony. Occupy USM is firmly against the

university’s honoring of Senator Olympia Snowe with a “Doctor of

Humane Letters” as she continues to profit inhumanely off of our

fellow students and veterans across the nation.

As has recently been covered by the media, Senator Snowe’s

husband John McKernan serves as the chairman of the Educational

Management Corporation’s [EDMC] board of directors, and has served

previously as their CEO. EDMC is the second-largest for-profit college

chain in the United States; it owns and operates over 100 schools

through its subsidiary branches. EDMC faces an $11 billion suit

alleging they illegally obtained federally supported funds—most

notably in the forms of Stafford loans and GI Bill money.

Occupy USM rejects the university’s complicit support of the

predatory lending practices of EDMC, who regularly prey on veterans

because their GI bill money doesn’t violate the Department of

Education’s rule that no school can get more than 90% of its funding

from federal sources. With 68% of veterans dropping out of

EDMC-owned schools, Occupy USM asks how these for-profit

institutions can claim to care about anything more than exploiting

veterans‘ GI Bill funds? It does not seem so, particularly as EDMC

owned colleges face allegations that they neglected to inform

students about federal loan limits, or that their credits are

non-transferable.

EDMC has even allegedly lied to students—many of

whom are veterans—about their financial aid offerings, enrollment

numbers, job placement numbers, and graduation rates. This

rampant fleecing of veterans and other students has become so clear

that the Student Veterans of America have recently revoked the

charters of 14 chapters located on EDMC-owned campuses.[i]

Occupy USM will not honor any politician that profits off the debt of

the 99%, particularly not in this case where student debt finances

Snowe’s campaign. Goldman-Sachs, which owns 41% of EDMC, has

contributed at least $13,000 to Snowe’s campaign according to the

Centre for Responsive Politics.[ii] Last Tuesday, when she was faced

with S. 2343 (“Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of

2012″), Senator Snowe had the opportunity to stand with students

and to stop interest rates on their loans from doubling from 3.4

percent to 6.8 percent. Despite the fact that student debt is now

over $1 trillion, Snowe neglected to vote “yea” on the bill and

instead abstained by voting “present” specifically because of her ties

to EDMC.[iii]

This is precisely the type of unchecked corporate

influence on our educational system that Occupy USM is against.

Given Senator Snowe’s unwillingness to help most students and her

enthusiasm in ripping off others the students of Occupy USM

condemn their university’s egregious decision to honor Senator

Snowe at our 132nd commencement. She has demonstrated that she

is not for-veterans; she is not for-students; she is only for profit.

####

If you’d like more information on this topic, or to schedule or to

schedule an interview please call 207-776-5448.

[i]

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8885-goldman-sachs-political-contribu

tions-tainted-by-money-from-swindled-veterans-and-other-misdeeds

[ii]http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2012&ty

pe=I&cid=N00000480&newMem=N&recs=20

[iii]

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/04/news/midcoast/u-s-senators

-from-maine-called-upon-to-keep-student-loan-interest-rate-lower/

Sex offenders in the United States are slowly losing their rights. First, they were banned from Facebook, now, in New York State, they’ve been banned from online gaming because there might be children playing those same games.

Many games contain an audio or text component that allows players to communicate with one another.

Mr. Schneiderman warned that those methods of communication could allow sexual predators “to establish contacts with children they would never be able to establish” in parks or playgrounds.

Before you think this is a great idea, think of all the people online. How many of them have bizarre usernames or sexually suggestive usernames? Use the name, “ilikeballs” and you’re now losing your account and could end up being arrested because you’re a sexual predator. After you’ve completed your jail time, your life will forever be restricted until the point that we will have towns made up of just people like you that we need to keep away from the rest of society.

Among the companies that agreed to close accounts linked to sex offenders were Microsoft, which runs the Xbox Live gaming network, and Sony, which runs the PlayStation Network. Other companies that closed accounts included Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers, Disney Interactive Media Group, Blizzard Entertainment and Apple, Mr. Schneiderman said.

Given the fact that nearly all video games now have an online component and a user cannot even player in single player mode without connecting to these companies’ servers, New York State is, essentially, telling sex offenders that they can’t play video games. Many of these companies are also pushing to eliminate physical media. If you want to play a game, you access a server and play. You don’t actually own a game or have access to play it offline.

The agreement was the latest effort by law enforcement authorities to prohibit sex offenders from gaining access to chat rooms or social media sites. Aides to Mr. Schneiderman said New York’s was the first such ban on using online video games.

Why doesn’t law enforcement just cut to the chase, ban sex offenders from the internet and force them to live in communities made up of only other sex offenders? They struggle to get jobs. Many cannot enter college to make something of themselves. They can’t live in certain neighborhoods. Their personal information is publically available on the internet and people are free to harass them while the police look the other way. Now, if they can manage to find a place to live and keep a job, they can’t even play video games to relax.

If the judicial system has released them, they have paid for their crimes and have been deemed to not be a harm or threat to the community. Punishing someone past their original sentence is a violation of human rights. Law enforcement, however, has decided to not follow what the courts have decided and are slowly eroding any rights a sex offender has remaining.

The law, as it stands, falls on anyone on the sexual offender list. This includes drunken people who just had to pee out in public. The law, and the article, does not make it clear if the 3500 sex offenders are a mixed bag of “had sex with my underage girlfriend,” “peed in the woods and got caught,” and “likes to have sex with little children,” or if those 3500 are truly just pedophiles.

If you have served your time and the justice system has let you go, then you are entitled to all the rights of a citizen. This includes free association with your peers. The only thing this law does is create a criminal underclass that should never exist in the first place and further ostracize an entire class of people. Apparently, it was easier to ban people than to just disable voice and chat features.

Photo Source.

This is from Larry Miller’s blog and is by Amanda Terkel!

Amanda Terkel

Scott Walker Quietly Repeals Wisconsin Equal Pay Law

Posted: 04/ 6/2012 / Updated: 04/ 6/2012

WASHINGTON — A Wisconsin law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court was repealed on Thursday, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill.

The 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating against certain groups by giving workers more avenues via which to press charges.  Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.

In November, the state Senate approved SB 202, which rolled back this provision. On February, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes in Republican-controlled chambers.

SB 202 was sent to Walker on March 29. He had, according to the state constitution, six days to act on the bill. The deadline was 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. The governor quietly signed the bill into law on Thursday, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau, and it is now called Act 219.

Walker’s office did not return repeated requests for comment.

State Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the authors of the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, criticized Walker on Thursday for not informing the public of his actions on SB 202.

“We are finally starting to see progress here in Wisconsin, yet like their counterparts across the country, Legislative Republicans want to turn back the clock on women’s rights in the workplace,” said Hansen.

Women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. In Wisconsin, it’s 75 cents, according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health (WAWH), which also estimates that families in the state “lose more than $4,000 per year due to unequal pay.”

Business associations lobbied in support of SB 202, according to the state’s Government Accountability Board. Groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association all backed a repeal.

Sara Finger, executive director of WAWH, said that the repeal was a “demoralizing attack on women’s rights, health, and wellbeing.”

“Economic security is a women’s health issue,” she said. “The salary women are paid directly affects the type and frequency of health care services they are able to access. At a time when women’s health services are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain, financial stability is essential to maintain steady access.”

Walker is facing a recall election in June. The two frontrunners on the Democratic side who are competing to unseat him, former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, sharply criticized the governor for allowing the repeal bill to become law.

Falk said Walker has “turned back the clock for women across Wisconsin.”

“As a woman and as a mother who worked full-time while raising my son, I know first-hand how important pay equity and health care are to women across Wisconsin,” she said in a statement to The Huffington Post.

A spokesman for Barrett’s campaign said that Walker’s “ideological civil war includes a war on women, and repeal today of this protection against pay discrimination is a major step backwards for Wisconsin values and basic fairness.”

“Tom Barrett knows equal pay for equal work is essential, and failing to stand up for Wisconsin women in the workplace is yet another reason he [Walker] must be defeated this summer,” he said.

UPDATE: 2:17 p.m. — The Plum Line reports that President Barack Obama’s campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith responded to Walker’s repeal, calling on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, to take a position on the issue.

“As he campaigned across Wisconsin, Mitt Romney repeatedly praised Governor Scott Walker’s leadership, calling him a ‘hero’ and ‘a man of courage,’” she said. “But with his signing yesterday of a bill make it harder for women to enforce in court their right to equal pay, Walker showed how far Republicans are willing to go to undermine not only women’s health care, but also their economic security. Does Romney think women should have ability to take their bosses to court to get the same pay as their male coworkers? Or does he stand with Governor Walker against this?”

It seems that Calafato was willing to work as a recruiter for the Ohio proprietary college — hocking and hustling expensive educational sub-prime products and programs to people who might not be able to service their student loans with the ‘degrees’ they obtain.  Sound familiar?  Calafato himself had student loans from his time at Bowling Green State University he needed to pay off.  This is what debt does to people; it often drives them into the arms of the same group of predators that fleeced them in the first place.

According to an article by Goldie Blumenstyk in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

“Now in a new one-man play called For Profit that Mr. Calafato wrote and performs, the character of “Aaron,” an admissions counselor at For Profit University, wrestles with some of those same moral questions. They include one that Mr. Calafato finds so central to American society right now: “How far will you go for your own economic security?”

An actor by training, Mr. Calafato, 28, says the 75-minute production—which has already been staged in venues in New York City and in the Cleveland area, with future stagings in the works for Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. — is his attempt to translate his yearlong experience through the medium he knows best.”

According to Blumenstyk’s article, Calafato asks a central question about how this whole dysfunctional system works.  In the play the actor portrays multiple characters:

“including the president of the college; the boss, who supervises the admissions counselors; the regional director,” who trains them, a character right out of the boiler room of Glengarry Glen Ross; and students named Javier and T.J.” (ibid).

Calafato is apparently financing the play through a crowd-sourcing site and he’s looking for grants. He’s hoping to keep the play running for 18 months.  You can see his promotional YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLE9dihT0A&feature=related

As more and more illegal and unscrupulous practices by the for-profit drive-by colleges are revealed to the public, it is refreshing to see the sordid practices of the for-profits addressed by culture.  Heightening public awareness about the ruinous and pernicious practices of these predatory institutions through cultural venues such as plays, comedy or music has the potential to introduce a large audience to issues the mainstream press fails to report.

03/28/2012

If banning books by right-wing reactionaries is not enough, then how about asking text book companies to censor certain words from textbooks?  LeakSource, an online service, reported that the NY Department of Education has asked text book companies to censor certain words the department finds offensive.  One hardly has to agree with Fox News to see the idiocy behind banning words from texts.  The fact that it is so-called liberals who are at the forefront of this stupidity that allow Fox News to point their finger to the ‘state’ or ‘government’ and argue that public education is bad for kids.  From the reactionaries to the so-called liberals, banning speech, books and words you do not agree with is somehow supposed to make us free.  The whole thing is non-sensical and points to a society in deep despair.

It is unquestionable that such move by a public school is fated to backfire.  Rather than promote critical thinking the NY Department of Education would rather sweep inequality, racism and religion under the rug because it might be ‘offensive’.  Education is a contact sport; issues of controversy belong in the classroom.  But of course this is only true if one is interested in critical thinking about issues that affect our everyday lives.  If day care, containment, and school to prison are the real goal then banning the English language makes sense.

Below you will find a report on this from LeakSource.  You can go to the YouTube site and see the video of Megyn Kelly and Monica Crowley rant on about this and make up your own mind.  They are certainly not two of my favorite propagandists but on this one they are correct.

What are your children learning, or rather not learning, in the classroom? The New York City Department of Education is looking out for the feelings of its students by banning words they deem offensive. No, this isn’t the list of “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” Companies that make standardized testing have been instructed to ban some of the following words and topics: dinosaurs, Halloween, birthday, dancing (except ballet), and computers (unless mentioned in reference to schools and libraries).

Megyn Kelly asked Monica Crowley on America Live if this is satirical news straight from The Onion. Crowley replied that this is “absurd” but the official mandate includes all public schools citywide because “certain children might be offended because they can’t afford a computer in the home, therefore seeing that word in that context on a test might insult them.”

One of the words on the list is slavery, to which Megyn pointed out that they’re “literally eliminating historical facts because they’re worried that it’s going to upset someone.” Crowley agreed to her point adding, “Real historical events that our students should be learning about in context, understanding why it happened, why either the dinosaurs or slavery no longer exists.”

She also recalled being a kid in New Jersey and going on school field trips to the Museum of Natural History, “Full of guess what? Dinosaurs!” Megyn pointed out beyond political correctness, “They’re seriously creating knowledge gaps for the children.”

The school’s intention is to protect kids from the harsh realities of life, but Crowley says you can only do that for so long and “It is getting dangerous because it’s getting to the point where the state, through the citywide school districts, are making this as a mandate.”

Another topic on the list that teachers are cautioned from mentioning is terrorism. As Megyn realistically pointed out, “In New York City … I mean some of these kids lost parents on 9/11 and you’re not supposed to educate them in any way or mention on a test the word terrorism?”

Tell us where you stand! Is the Department of Education correct for banning such topics, or are they going overboard?

LeakSource.wordpress.com

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state’s Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.

Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year. While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview, according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann.

Maryland’s Department of Corrections policy first came to light last year, when corrections officer Robert Collins complained to the ACLU that he was forced to surrender his Facebook user name and password during an interview. The state agency suspended the policy for 45 days, and eventually settled on the “shoulder-surfing” substitute.

“This is an invasion of privacy. People have so much personal information on their pages now. A person can treat it almost like a diary,” said Goemann, the Maryland ACLU legislative director. “And (interviewers and schools) are also invading other people’s privacy. They get access to that individual’s posts and all their friends. There is a lot of private information there.”

The blog Tecca.com last year showed what it said was an image of an application for a clerical job with a North Carolina police department that included the following question:

“Do you have any web page accounts such as Facebook, Myspace, etc.?  If so, list your username and password.”

While employers see these actions as an easy way into the personality of a potential employee, it is truly and invasion of privacy, not only for the potential employee, but anyone he/she knows. Employers are simply taking the easy way out by using social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as a background check without following the law.

Normally, an employer must follow federal regulations and laws in performing background checks. With social media, there are no protections when a potential employee is coerced into giving up their login information to be “looked at” by an interviewer.

What potential employees do not understand is that giving over their login details is against Facebook policies, which is why many employers now ask you to log on and click around while they watch.

Frederic Wolens, a Facebook spokesman, wouldn’t comment on the Maryland legislative proposals, but he said many of these school and employer policies appear to violate the site’s terms.

“Under our terms, only the holder of the email address and password is considered the Facebook account owner. We also prohibit anyone from soliciting the login information or accessing an account belonging to someone else,” he said in a statement to msnbc.com. Wolens said Facebook has yet to take a position on collegiate social media monitoring.

One of the biggest concerns, says employers are in hiring prison guards. Naturally, no one wants to hire gang members or people that might be coerced into helping prisoners, but, if the prisons were not hiring such people before social media, surely they could still do it now. If, suddenly, prisons cannot hire guards without the assistance of social media, then they should seriously reconsider their hiring practices.

It is also not just employers that want a peek at your Facebook account. Colleges and universities also want access to athletes’ social media accounts surreptitiously.

Student-athletes in colleges around the country also are finding out they can no longer maintain privacy in Facebook communications because schools are requiring them to “friend” a coach or compliance officer, giving that person access to their “friends-only” posts. Schools are also turning to social media monitoring companies with names like UDilligence and Varsity Monitor for software packages that automate the task. The programs offer a “reputation scoreboard” to coaches and send “threat level” warnings about individual athletes to compliance officers.

A recent revision in the handbook at the University of North Carolina is typical:

“Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings,” it reads. “The athletics department also reserves the right to have other staff members monitor athletes’ posts.”

For student athletes, though, the access isn’t voluntary. No access, no sports.

“They’re saying to students if you want to play, you have to friend a coach. That’s very troubling,” said Shear, the D.C. lawyer.  ”A good analogy for this, in the offline world, would it be acceptable for schools to require athletes to bug their off-campus apartments? Does a school have a right to know who all your friends are?”

If you are an adult at age 18, then you should not be required to have your coach hold your hand. You are an adult and should be able to make adult decisions. If you cannot make these types of responsible decisions, it will be evident in your daily life. Again, these types of problems were handled well before the advent of social media or the internet. These policies only make for sloppy monitoring of a student athlete.

By allowing programs, such as UDilligence and Varsity Monitor to automate the surveillance of a student, you remove the human factor and increase the chances of false positives. If the true purpose was to monitor student athletes to guide them through their college years, then why rely on a computer program for that task?

There is also no guarantee that, once such a program is required of student athletes, it won’t spread to the general student population. Students have already come forward to report that they have been asked if they have a Facebook or Twitter account during interviews and the interviewer often asks for their login information.

While asking for detailed information from social media accounts is clearly and invasion of privacy and a violation of the first amendment, both schools and employers will continue to push the boundaries of what they can do until a court steps in and says otherwise.

“We need a federal law dealing with this,” he said. “After 9/11, we have a culture where some people think it’s OK for the government to be this involved in our lives, that it’s OK to turn everything over to the government. But it’s not. We still have privacy rights in this country, and we still have a Constitution.”

Unfortunately, 9/11 and the technological book occurred at, relatively, the same time. There is now a generation of Americans that know no other existence other than a world of government surveillance and ubiquitous technology in all aspects of their lives. They have grown up in a society not knowing or understanding what true privacy is. Their lives play out on Facebook, from petty squabbles to minor interactions with law enforcement. What once would be private and not held against you is now kept, in perpetuity, on the internet where anyone could potentially access it.

If you go out drinking with a friend and that friend posts a photo on Facebook, you now risk your college education and future employment. None of your social media information should ever be accessible to a potential university or employers without a warrant. The best advice would be to never have a social media account at all. If you must have one, lock it down and protect it as much as you can. Then, fight for your right to keep that information private, while being mindful that what you do online could, one day, come back to haunt you.

Image Source.

The prison population in Greece has seen a steady rise within the last dozen years.  Below are some of the numbers.

Prisoners in Greece

Year   Capacity Population

1998 4,332        6,150

2005 5,584        8,72

2008 7,543        11,243

2009 9,103        11,736

2011 9,223        12,586

http://www.athensnews.gr/issue/13477/52110 

Now, with the country under the grip of financial terrorism from the EU, especially Germany, the country will be releasing some of their prison population — about half.  Those who will be eligible for early release are those sentenced to 10 years or less. Here are some examples: 

• Those sentenced to three years or less in prison can be released after serving just one-tenth of this sentence
• Those sentenced to 3-5 years can be released after serving one-fifth of their sentence
• Those sentenced to 5-10 years can be released after serving one-third of their sentence (ibid).

For those released early under the new system, if they are convicted of a crime during the three years following their release, they will be convicted and sentenced to serve the full term in prison. Those convicted of a misdemeanor will be allowed to use money to buy their way out.  People convicted of tax evasion, money laundering, terrorism, rape, robbery, human trafficking and child sex offences will not be eligible for early parole under the new law. 

The prison release comes as a result of stark overcrowding and a recent prison guard strike.

The GR Reporter, out of Greece, reported that:

“In early 2012 forty-four prisoners who were serving sentences in the prison in Ioannina filed a complaint against the conditions in which they must serve their sentences. They challenge the capacity of the Greek prison and claim that it has the capacity to “accommodate” 80 people, not 220 as it is doing in reality. In their complaint to the European Court the detainees described the extremely difficult conditions in which they are forced to live. For more than 18 hours a day they are held in a small enclosed space without ventilation, in which they have available less than two square metres per person. Prisoners are placed to sleep in the hallways because the cells are full.  Even the prison officials acknowledge that if they had to take more people they would have to accommodate them to sleep in the toilets” (http://www.grreporter.info/en/greek_prison_guards_have_started_termless_strike/6250).

The European Commission released a Green Paper in June.  It painted an “alarming picture” of prison overcrowding in Europe and a growing prison population. Greece is one of the 13 EU countries with the highest overcrowding rate according to the commission (130 percent). The EU average is 107 percent (ibid).  This is all good news to the emerging private security and prison industry.  You can see a list of Greek prisons at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prisons_in_Greece.

Even though many Greek prisoners will be checking out of Greek prisons due to awful conditions, the economic crisis is good news for private prison companies seeking to build, manage and maintain for-profit prisons.  With new prisoners checking into the barred hotels each and every day due to political arrest and the on-going deliquescence of Greek society, this could be the best business in the country in the years to come.  The Greek crisis just might spell opportunity for the necrophilia private prison industry.

The Corrections Corporation of America

The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is always on the lookout for new business opportunities.  Corrections Corporation of America is the leading private sector provider of detention and corrections services to federal, state and local governments. CCA merged with Prison Realty Trust (PZN) – a real estate investment trust (REIT) that happens to be one of the world’s largest private-sector owner and developer of prisons and jails.

That is why international business is always of interest to the burgeoning corporation.  Just one day ago, CCA released more industry documents arguing that the for-profit prison industry is a “unique investment opportunity” (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-private-prison-business-2012-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterstock+%28ClusterStock%29#-1). 

You can go view the slides and decide for yourself.  One thing is for sure, the whole industry presentation is creepier than a horror film and it is not limited to the US.

Serco Group, plc, Reliance Security and G4s, GEO to name but a few

CCA is not alone in running private prisons.  The Serco Group, plc also runs private prisons internationally and is best known for immigration prisons, forcible deportations and failings in their duty of care to vulnerable populations.  Among its operations are public and private transport and traffic control, aviation, military and nuclear weapons contracts, detention centers and prisons, and schools (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serco_Group). 

Years ago, the Guardian newspaper out of England called Serco” probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of” (‘Happy, Touchy Feely and Driven by God’, Jane Martinson, The Guardian, 24/02/06). 

Serco is involved with prisons in New Zealand.  In early March, the New Zealand government announced a new 960-bed prison will be opening in Wiri, South Auckland, in 2015.  The private facility has been called “a prison with a difference: the flagship for the new public-private-partnership mode of building, funding and running state institutions” (http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/201278/private-prison-flagship-put-plain-sailing-terms). 

Pegged as a prison that will provide new age lock-down, the corporate rhetoric floated for the new age dungeon includes “innovation”, “expertise”, “modern”, “facility”, “safe”, “secure”, “rehabilitate” leading anybody to think New Zealand was constructing and selling a holiday time-share.  That’s capitalism; marketing is everything.  The prison will be run by Serco, which also operates the Mt Eden Corrections Facility in New Zealand. It will be maintained by, yes that’s right, the Orwellian named, Spotless Facility Services (ibid).

OurKingdom.com, an online zine out of England, reports that Serco, along with Reliance Security and G4S will also be in the running to fulfill a government contract to manage housing for asylum seekers in Britain, making private prison guards the asylum seekers’ legal landlord.  G4S is the world’s largest private security army – they are for instance responsible for ‘security’ at Baghdad airport, and for guarding diplomats at Kabul airport and throughout Afghanistan (http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/john-grayson/asylum-seeker-housing-managed-by-for-profit-prison-guards-why-not).

The market in deprivation, despair and human caging includes food corporations, security firms, facility maintenance firms and the like

Capitalism is an outlaw system of economics.  As the global toll booth economy sprints forward with dazzling speed, the margins of society are now fair-pickings’’ for the parasitic culture and the corporate profit makers.  Nowhere more evident can this be seen than in the for-profit prison system and the companies who participate can be found under the rubric of many “services” and are not necessarily limited to ‘correctional’ services.

“Facility services” is a growing business concern worldwide and is often just another euphemism for running schools and prisons for-profit.  The private ‘food industry’ is yet another place to find corporate profits for managing prison facilities for-profit.  The following are merely some companies of interest with their fingers in the carceral society:

Sodexho Alliance – Owned by the Marriott Corporation the world’s largest contract food service provider with operations in more than 65 countries.  Its clients include corporations, colleges, hospitals, and public institutions. While food service makes up more than 90 percent of revenues, Sodexho also provides facilities management, service vouchers, remote site management (including offshore rigs), and river pleasure cruises.  The company works hand in glove with Correction Corporation of America in securing facility contracts.

Sodexho Marriott Services – Offers outsourcing solutions to the corporate, health care and education markets: food services, housekeeping, grounds keeping and facilities management.

University Dining Services – The University of Vermont’s on campus dining service, which is operated by Sodexho Marriott Services.

Fine Host Corporation – A contract food service management company serving a wide variety of markets including stadiums, arenas, convention centers, universities, corporations, hospitals and health care facilities, correctional facilities, and schools from grades K-12.

ARAMARK – An international “Fortune 500” company specializing in food services for stadiums, arenas, campuses, businesses, and schools, and uniform services and school, child and healthcare support services.
Compass Group, North American Division – The world’s leading professional foodservice management company, comprised of divisions for focusing in vending services, catering and executive, correctional, school, college and university, or healthcare dining services. Including Chartwells (http://www.uvm.edu/sparc/nwom/sodexho/marriott.html).

Food services, facility services, dining services, recreational services, support services, and more corporations are all teaming to cash in on the new human misery and the rise of the new global corporate chain gang in the age of descending capitalism.

England and Wales leaders in human caging for profit and the European Corrections Corporation is steadily growing 

According to the European Federation of Public Service Employees, England and Wales has the dubious distinction of having the most privatized criminal justice system in Europe.  They go on to note that New Labor transformed its moral opposition to private prisons into such a love affair with big business that the private sector’s hold on prisoners in England and Wales has reached some 11 per cent.  By 2014 that percentage could reach 25 per cent (http://eurofedop.org/spip.php?article377).

The European Corrections Corporation, modeled after the Corrections Corporation of America, proudly repeats the CCA mantra, “Build and they will come” when it speaks of its business plans to run privatized prisons through the EU.  EUCC aims to build high capacity prisons in Europe and they are just getting started.  

EUCC joins Corrections Corporation of America advertising campaign announcing their plans to expand into Germany:

“We will help provincial governments in Germany to handle the increasing crime rates, which especially in the areas of violent crime and juvenile and child delinquency, will continue to rise in the future. Therefore, we have complete confidence in presenting your government our complete facility projects with quite affordable, long-term lease agreements and very special services.”
Excerpt from correspondence from the Corrections Corporation of America to the judicial administrations of the German provinces (http://www.eu-c-c.com/ccgk-english.htm).

EUCC aspires to enter into collaborations with corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Boeing, and textile companies to use prison labor for their business plans. 

Currently, EUCC is building the Karlau correctional facility in Austria.  The Austrian government will use the necessary legal framework to create the material conditions for the company’s profit accumulation.  For example, at a prison in the U.S. the Boeing subsidiary Microjet successfully produces supplies for airplane construction using prison labor. The prisoners are remunerated with less than one dollar an hour for their work.  EUCC is working with the government of Austria to pull off the same kind of ‘involvement’.

Prisoner labor is now seen in Europe, as it has been viewed in the US for some decades, as a source for new opportunities for capital maximization.  Speaking about their new facility in Austria, EUCC claims that:

“Private enterprises cleverly obtain enormous profits through prison work, in Great Britain alone, more than £ 50 million yearly. EUCC will pursue the following business strategy in Austria: Rather than expensive re-socialization concepts through which criminals are reintegrated into society, mandatory labor and the maximization of prisoner numbers will transform prisons into profit centers. This becomes a matter of course in an era in which top priority is given to budget consolidation” (ibid).

Sure why re-socialize when the profits are in ‘social death’?  According to EUCC, in order to maximize cost savings:

“The business philosophy of EUCC is to separate the rooms of the prison into small, cage-like cells. The time in which the prisoners are able to move outside of their cells, will be kept to a minimum thus saving personnel and also costs” (ibid).

The U.S. corporation Aramark demonstrates exactly how lucrative the business with for-profit prisons can be.  Aramark is a specialist in catering and cleaning prisons with a yearly turnover of $7.3 billion dollars. Over the past six years, the company has made over $1.6 billion dollars in profits.  EUCC even boasts that “as soon as Aramark takes over a prison canteen, prices go up and are sometimes even doubled.  Prisoners are forced to produce the prison ration package or to work in the prison cafeteria” (ibid).

Will private prisons come to Greece?

Of course EUCC makes no bones about their business plan.  Like all profit driven corporations they wish to expand their market share and this means looking for more prisoners to cage.  EUCC, like other companies supports the complete or partial privatization of prisons in Europe.  Also, Austria is meant to create the necessary conditions for rapid expansion throughout the continent by acting as a ‘model’ for new age lock-down. The French government has already given contracts for 1.4 billion Euros to build twenty-eight new prisons for 13,200 prisoners. Private companies will finance, plan, and build the penal facilities that will then be leased to the government for thirty years.  All of this the company says is good for the economy. 

The company likes to point to CCA and the private prison profits in the US.  In a recent statement the company, speaking about their Austrian facility, pondered:

“In the U.S., renowned banks such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch turn over two to three billion dollars a year in investment funds for the rebuilding of private penal institutions. The corporations American Express and General Electric are already million dollar investors in private prisons in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Telecommunication companies such as AT&T, Sprint, and MCI vie for exclusive contracts, since the monopoly position in penal institutions allows them to charge the prison inmates six times the normal rate for long distance calls. EUCC is already negotiating with numerous European investors to bring this successful model here, to this country” (ibid).

There is certainly no doubt that a company like EUCC is ginned up and saddled up to do business in Greece.  With the state in virtual collapse and political unrest on the rise, it is not improbable to visualize the take-over of the Greek penal system by the ‘troika’ and their corporate clients.  Privatizing public services is the ‘private-public partnership’ agenda and arrangement under austerity.  As the Greek crisis subsumes entire peoples and real estate companies like EUCC are rubbing their hands in anticipation, so are their corporate partners who see nothing but opportunity in human misery.

The suicide phone line, Line 1018 in Greece, now made famous due to the fact it is the only phone line to help those considering suicide has seen suicide rates driven up by 40 per cent between January and May of 2011, compared with the same period in 2010.   Greece has always had one of the lowest suicide rates in Europe but this is now changing due to the plunder of the country and the decimation of its residents.  In 2007, 328 Greeks took their own lives; in 2009 – the last year for which there is official data – the number climbed to 391.  This 20 per cent increase gave Greece the fastest growth in the absolute number of suicides anywhere in the European Union (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/9107647/Greece-sinks-to-its-knees.html).  It is safe to bet thenumbers have risen dramatically.

Lock-up, suicide, a rise in homicides, homelessness, joblessness, hunger, deprivation and financial ruin has brought the Greek people to their knees.  All of this is a result of global financial terrorism wielded by bankers such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.  Not ironically, these same banks will be the new leaders in replacing Greek democracy with feudalism and financing any private prison construction.  This is a class war and the ruling class takes no prisoners, unless it’s profitable.

The lesson Americans should take from this is that it not only can happen here, it will if we do not unite and assure it doesn’t.

 You can see the EUCC strategic partners at: http://www.eu-c-c.com/strategic_partners.htm and read the company gloat over the 10% increase in Austrian prisoners at: http://www.eu-c-c.com/ccgk-english.htm

The Fightback, out of Washington D.C. reported March 14^th, 2012 that Northwestern High School Principal Edgar Batenga gave five-day suspension to four students, and possibly shorter suspensions to others, for their alleged role in organizing an attempted walkout on March 1, which was billed as a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education.

In a flier entitled “The Students Are Angry!”, the high school students listed some of the concerns which led to their walkout: they concerns were unsanitary conditions and food; large class sizes, commonly with 40-plus students; poor teacher pay and treatment, especially regarding the deportation of Filipino teachers; underfunded programs such as band and ESOL; and an overall environment where “students have pretty much no say in educational policies” (http://mail.aol.com/35736-111/aol-6/en-us/Lite/MsgRead.aspx?folder=NewMail&uid=29265031&seq=0&searchIn=none&searchQuery=&start=0&sort=received&sortDir=descending).

The students codenamed their walkout “Project XBox,”.  According to various student accounts it was met by force as administrators. Police blocked doors and prevented students from leaving the school.

Principal Batenga vehemently argued that:

“At no time did any staff members block any doors” (ibid).

To explain what was admittedly a large police presence at the school the day of the walkout Batenga and Corporal Michael Rudinski, Northwestern’s School Resource Officer, said the large police presence at the school that day was a coincidence, nothing more. The police on campus, including the K-9 unit, were “scheduled for a firearms classroom training” (ibids).

“Shouldn’t you let the students know that there’s going to be classes like that?”

The student pointed out that far from having a calming effect, police could escalate things by scaring students (ibid).

A number of students questioned whether they were under some form of lockdown in the school. Is Northwestern “a learning center or is it a jail?” asked a student who transferred from Montgomery County, DC. “I feel as if I’m inmate 441733 with a 2.5 GPA,” said a freshman. “When they see me they don’t see a smile, they just see a GPA… Why is that?” (ibid).

The question wasn’t answered. Instead the mics were cut off and the administration walked off, fifteen minutes before the meeting was scheduled to end. Using Occupy Wall Street’s signature mic check, students continued to address their principal. “Mr. Batenga, listen to your community,” they said. Then they loudly chanted, “Remove the suspensions!”

Thank you to Betty Noel and The Fightback for making this article possible for readers.