"There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity." *
The mighty US Department of Homeland Security is protected, as one would expect, by armed guards. What kind? Ultrafit, armed to the teeth, hunky US marines? No..... not exactly.
FBI, then? Sorry, no.
DEA? Nope.
Super secret stealth ninjas? Nuh-uh.
Well, then, quis custodiet ipsos custodes, for fuck's sake?The agency given this mighty task, protecting the American nation from nebulous A-rab threats, acts of nature and nuclear turrrism is protected by -Wackenhut rent-a-cops.
See your elite rentacops in action! At the nation's nuclear power stations:
And at the airports:The Patriot-News reports that the State of Pennsylvania,"prompted by reports of sleeping or inattentive employees at Three Mile Island," will conduct surprise inspections at least twice a month at Pennsylvania's five nuclear power plants, including the Wackenhut-guarded Three Mile Island, Limerick, and Peach Bottom facilities. Each of these three plants is owned by Exelon Corporation.
In January the The Patriot-News reported on a memo in which John Young, head of Wackenhut security at TMI chastised security supervisors for failing to note that veteran officers were telling new hires safe places to sleep undetected while on duty.
The memo, sent to security supervisors at the nuclear power plant on Oct. 17, also maintained that new hires were being told of shortcuts for tasks and warned of the "horrors" of working for Wackenhut.
[...]The Patriot-News also reported that the NRC was additionally concerned about reports that security officers were being allowed to work excessive hours. The newspaper has documented one person who worked more than 150 hours during a 14-day period, and averaged more than 54 hours a week for more than 10 months.
Thursday, November 17, 2005 1:29 PM Wackenhut ordered to provide training on conduct of workers
KAHULUI – State transportation officials said Wednesday that they are requiring Wackenhut Corp. to provide training to its employees relative to their scope of work and conduct at the state airports.
The announcement issued by the office of Transportation Director Rodney Haraga said the department also has told Wackenhut that a security guard videotaped making threatening comments to an employee of Pacific Wings airlines no longer will be allowed to work at state facilities.
[...]
The incident Wednesday was the most recent in a series of situations in which Pacific Wings personnel charge that they have been subjected to discriminatory practices and threats by airport security guards.
On Sunday, Kahlstorf said, his general operations manager, Gabe Kimbrell, was involved in a dispute with a Wackenhut security guard, who was videotaped threatening to kill Kimbrell.
The guard, Eric Brown, 49, was arrested and charged with second-degree terroristic threatening. In the statement issued Wednesday, Deputy Director of Airports Brian Sekiguchi said the actions shown on the videotape are “completely unacceptable and uncalled for.”
And in the prisons:
David Prater was beaten nearly to death in a privatized jail -- and the courts say there's nothing he can do about it.
Beaten by Wackenhut BY JORDAN SMITH July 5, 2002 Austin Chronicle:
Dallas record producer David Prater, 46, says he had never been in trouble with the law before March 1997. While he was visiting Austin that month for the South by Southwest music festival, Prater was popped for a minor drug possession charge. In 1998, for a first-time offense of possession of cocaine, Prater was sentenced to a 250-day stint in the Travis County Community Justice Center on FM 969 in far East Austin. The center is a state jail, then administered by Travis County, and under a subcontract from the county it was being managed by the private prison giant, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation.
On Dec. 17, 1998, Prater had been incarcerated just 10 days when, he says, he made a simple yet naive request: He asked the gang members on his cell block if they could keep the noise down so he could sleep. "There is this weird thing that gangs do -- they scream as loud as they can. I won't do it for you, but I promise, it hurts -- and I mix rock concerts," he said. "It's painful. [One time I was] woken up at three, four in the morning and there was this kid yelling a foot away from my ear, as loud as he possibly could. So finally, I just went up to one of the guys and said, 'Could you ask some of these guys, please, because some of us have to sleep.'"
Instead of peace and quiet, Prater received a severe beating. According to Prater, 11 gang members attacked him, kicking him in the head and face and breaking his jaw in seven places, until the bones broke through the skin -- all while two guards stood by and watched. "I was in and out [of consciousness]," Prater recalls. "And when I woke up, that's when the nightmare started. I woke up in the middle of what they call the multipurpose room. No guards responded. Guards were there, but they didn't respond." (Wackenhut does not dispute that the beating took place, but Wackenhut attorney Gary Fuller says jail records reflect that Prater was the instigator and that he told the inmates who refused his request for quiet, "Well, fuck you then, see you in the multipurpose room.")
And that's without mentioning the late Gitmo-lite in Queens, NY. Aren't you glad the security of the nation is in such safe hands?
Now those very same rentacops are complaining that security is lax. at Homeland Security.
Oy. What else can be said?
Tags: Homeland Security Wackenhut
[Policemen puppets available here] * Quote, Douglas MacArthur
Posted 6:32 AM by Republic of Palau
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"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."
-- U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, 21 July 2003
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