World Social Struggles Newswire Archive

BRITISH authorities moved in to evict the Occupy London tent city outside St Paul's Cathedral over Monday night.

There were reports of people being arrested and dragged off by riot police, shouting: "Long live #occupy !"

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), owner of the largest private prison system in the United States, recently sent a letter to 48 states offering up to $250 million to manage government-owned detention centers. The letter lists the criteria of eligible purchases, which include an assurance that state corrections agencies “have sufficient inmate population to maintain a minimum 90 percent occupancy over the term of the contract.”

This guarantee isn’t difficult to rationalize when considering it from CCA’s point of view. They are paid by the government for each prisoner they house, so they want to house as many prisoners as possible in order to maximize their revenue.

But what if there aren’t enough prisoners to fill CCA’s quota? Private prisons have faced this dilemma before, and they’ve responded by buying prisoners through legislation, government infiltration and old-fashioned bribery. And in the not too distant future, these conditions may mean that the mass arrests of Occupy protesters could become a windfall for investors.

Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK was recently deported from Bahrain. She travelled there with Witness bahrain, an international solidarity movement that was set up to monitor and report on human rights abuses, collective punishment and suppression of Arab Spring democracy activists in the Kingdom, as the struggle approached its first anniversary.

In this interview she discusses the 'samud' (steadfastness) of the women she met, the arming of the Kingdom by Western Imperialists, and the need to take action against the companies who sponsor and promote the F1 Grand Prix which is set to take place in Bahrain in April. Also worthy of note is her account of how policing is undertaken by foreigners, who are loyal to the king and not the people.