Catch-22

You're damned if you do

and you're damned if you don't

you have to be crazy

to live in an insane world

PlayPumps

The PlayPump Water System uses the energy of children at play to operate a water pump.

There are more than 1000 PlayPump systems in sub-Saharan Africa, providing clean drinking water to more than one million impoverished people.

The PlayPump water system is a like a playground merry-go-round attached to a water pump. The spinning motion pumps underground water into a 789,500-liter tank raised seven meters above ground.

Roundabout Outdoor is a company that manufactures, installs, and maintains PlayPump water systems throughout sub-Saharan Africa. PlayPumps International is a nonprofit that raises the funds to donate PlayPump water systems to African communities and schools.

Sibling Rivalry

The color of my blood is red

the color of your blood is red

blood does not lie

it tells us that we are all

members of the same family

the Family of Man

Should this be a (for-profit) business?

America's Private Gulag

By Ken Silverstein, Prison Legal News, June 1st 2000

What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry.

Consider the growth of the Corrections Corporation of America, the industry leader whose stock price has climbed from $8 a share in 1992 to about $30 today and whose revenue rose by 81 per cent in 1995 alone. Investors in Wackenhut Corrections Corp. have enjoyed an average return of 18 per cent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top 200 small businesses in the country. At Esmor, another big private prison contractor, revenues have soared from $4.6 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 1995.

Ten years ago there were just five privately-run prisons in the country, housing a population of 2,000. Today nearly a score of private firms run more than 100 prisons with about 62,000 beds. That's still less than five per cent of the total market but the industry is expanding fast, with the number of private prison beds expected to grow to 360,000 during the next decade.

The exhilaration among leaders and observers of the private prison sector was cheerfully summed up by a headline in USA Today: "Everybody's doin' the jailhouse stock". An equally upbeat mood imbued a conference on private prisons held last December at the Four Seasons Resort in Dallas. The brochure for the conference, organized by the World Research Group, a New York-based investment firm, called the corporate takeover of correctional facilities the "newest trend in the area of privatizing previously government-run programs... While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made -- profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!"

A hundred years ago private prisons were a familiar feature of American life, with disastrous consequences. Prisoners were farmed out as slave labor. They were routinely beaten and abused, fed slop and kept in horribly overcrowded cells. Conditions were so wretched that by the end of the nineteenth century private prisons were outlawed in most states.
During the past decade, private prisons have made a comeback. Already 28 states have passed legislation making it legal for private contractors to run correctional facilities and many more states are expected to follow suit.

The reasons for the rapid expansion include the 1990's free-market ideological fervor, large budget deficits for the federal and state governments and the discovery and creation of vast new reserves of "raw materials" -- prisoners. The rate for most serious crimes has been dropping or stagnant for the past 15 years, but during the same period severe repeat offender provisions and a racist "get-tough" policy on drugs have helped push the US prison population up from 300,000 to around 1.5 million during the same period. This has produced a corresponding boom in prison construction and costs, with the federal government's annual expenditures in the area, now $17 billion. In California, passage of the infamous "three strikes" bill will result in the construction of an additional 20 prisons during the next few years.

The private prison business is most entrenched at the state level but is expanding into the federal prison system as well. Last year Attorney General Janet Reno announced that five of seven new federal prisons being built will be run by the private sector. Almost all of the prisons run by private firms are low or medium security, but the companies are trying to break into the high-security field. They have also begun taking charge of management at INS detention centers, boot camps for juvenile offenders and substance abuse programs.

(Read more)

Bad Dream

It all seems like a bad dream

but real torture

still exists all over the world

if it happens to anyone

it could happen to you

Gandhi: The Movie

A must see

Watchmen

Who watches

the Watchmen?

The Kinsey Reports

by Alfred C. Kinsey

Religulous

The Birth of Venus

Sandro Botticelli 1482–1486

Martin

Injustice anywhere.....

is a threat to justice everywhere.

.....Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.....

Pope Sidious

Love.....is a four letter word

"Waterfall"

......Georgia O'Keefe......

Los Fusilamientos del 3 de Mayo

.....Francisco de Goya.....

The Tsunami of Greed

Recently, Mr Pat Cox, former Irish President of The European Parliament, scholar and politician, diagnosed the root cause of the economic recession here in Ireland as being the tsunami of greed that had enveloped the mythical and legendary green isle. The land of mythical leprecauns had become the land of the mythical Celtic Tiger. Most Irish people swallowed whole this myth of inevitable progess and increasing wealth. With greed and selfishness the core values, there seemed to be no hindering the onward flight of the legendary Tiger. However, some few perspicacious souls like Eddie Hobbs (financial adviser) and David McWilliams (economist and journalist)saw through the myth and saw that the Celtic Tiger was but an inflated toy made of rather brittle plastic. Now the economic bubble has burst and the Tiger is a deflated, sad and lifeless mess.

Our national economic boom was a myth based upon a vastly over-priced housing market. The basic economic law of supply and demand brought the whole rotten mess collapsing down. Now we have an oversupply of houses and apartments and what has come to be termed "ghost housing estates" in many rural areas around the country. Bankers lent too much money to builders who in turn cannot sell the houses at vastly over-inflated prices. Added to this, we have been dealt the second blow of the international economic crisis.

However, this short post will not attempt too much analysis of the economic situation as its writer is poorly equipped to do so. However, it would seem to all and sundry that what has caused both our national crisis and indeed the international one has been nothing short of naked greed and selfishness. The world needs leaders at this moment in time. Barak Obama, the US President, is one such towering leader with principles and ideals. He is standing up to all those who have been sucked into headless and heartless capitalism. He is to be praised for capping the earnings of CEOs at $250,000. We need to follow his leadership here in Ireland. We need such leaders in the world today. Mr Obama can walk the walk as well as talking the talk.

Big Brother

Big Brother...

...is watching you

Dr. Johnson

Patriotism

is the last refuge

of a scoundrel

........Samuel Johnson........

The Ruby Slippers

I am here to erase all doubt between

the consequential and the inconsequential

...here's a hint...

it only matters to you.

Romans 12

Remember Romans 12:19-21........where we are admonished not to seek vengeance........retribution is beyond the purview of Man.

19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

God made Man in His image.......but then.......Man made God in his image.

Boy Soldiers

In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts.