One of the most astonishing remarks that George W. Bush made in his
Army War College speech laying out a five-step plan to re-engineer
the occupation is his declaration that "America will fund the
construction of a modern maximum security prison. When that prison is
completed detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then with the
approval of the Iraqi government we will demolish the Abu Ghraib
prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning" ("Transcript of
Bush Speech on US Strategy in Iraq," Financial Times, May 25 2004).
Then again, it is quite fitting that an empire built by a prison
state -- "a nation that incarcerates 2.2 million people --
one-quarter of all the world's prisoners" (Alan Elsner, "If US Plays
Global Prison Ratings Game, It Ought to Play by Its Own Rules,"
Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2004) -- will be a prison empire
. . .. . .As Washington globalizes its prison-industrial complex, privatizing as many prisons as it can, what corporation might it employ to manage "a modern maximum security prison" in Iraq? A likely candidate, I think, is Wackenhut -- renamed the GEO Group in December 2003 . . .
The full posting at <http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/bringing-maximum-security-to-iraq.html>. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
