dictation's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the big stinky found this in a thesis about globalization tonight: Faced with an explosion in detainee numbers, [U.S.] prisons managed by private companies expanded by 500% between 1985 and 1995, making theirs one of the most lucrative of businesses. Once guaranteed a state subsidy, the companies managing prisons can concentrate upon cutting costs and maximising profits. Here are some cases taken from the PEN - L Internet discussion list: Companies may be outsourcing blue and white collar labour to the third world, but the prisons of the US are also contractors for outsourcing companies looking to save a buck. I didn't realize how big a business the prison industry had become. In February 2004 only 21,000 jobs were created in the whole of the US (job creation is usually in the hundreds of thousands but it's been dwindling alarmingly). But how many cons were working for minimum wage or less? None of those jobs would ever get reported in the monthly labour force survey!!! Next time you call TWA to book a flight you'll be negotiating with a convict who has access to all the personal information you provide including your credit card. Michael Moore interviewed one of these dudes... a felon when he went in, a murderer when he came out. Christian nutbars are running the Whitehouse while corporations lobby for tax breaks (corporate welfare) and slyly practice economic terrorism. It's a sad sad day when you hear the Chairman of Nike say it doesn't bother him that he's paying 14 year-old females 40 cents an hour in Indonesia, a country where over 200,000 civilians were massacred by a dictator far more ruthless than Hussein. This ugly bastard - you have to SEE this guy to believe how far he's morphed into the corporate hedgehog - has never visited even one of his own sweatshops. He'll never mass produce running shoes in North America because "Americans don't want those jobs." Many are desperate for any job. The truth is, he doesn't want to pay the American minimum wage. It decreases his profit margin. He's worth billions. So rich he's "not in it for the money anymore. When I go to the big shoe store in the sky, I want to die knowing I made Nike the best company it could be." Can anyone tell me what that MEANS? And there isn't one cheesy outfit that isn't exploiting prison labour now, exporting jobs and turning North America into a minimum wage shithole. It makes it hard to get up to go to work to write reports for assholes who participate (most passively) in screwing people over left right and center. I'm afraid of becoming too sensitized to the reality. I sit in rooms with people who've sold out for an executive job, who've adopted a false language and whose job it is to persuade others to go along with a rotten ideology. It's like "let's all find something not smelly in the decayed fish on the boardroom table." I worry about my soul when I sit in rooms with these spinmeisters. Like others, I resist expressing my disbelief and disgust...because I depend on having a job. It's getting harder to sit there and not say anything. I'm sure I'm not alone though. 12:57 a.m. - 2004-04-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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