With Corporations in near-total control over the US government, the traditional and legal barriers between the public sector and the private sector are being dismantled. In Springfield, Florida now, police cars will be bought by a corporation and bear multiple `commercials' -- corporate sponsors' logotypes -- as advertisements. The name of the company organizing this? Quite appropriately, it's `Government Acquisitions, Inc.'. The name of the police chief? Sam Slay. This is both bad business and bad government, and these names are surely bad omens.

Perhaps the impersonal, de-humanized, non-responsible, un-suable, offshore-financed corporate elite will acquire your local municipal government next. Soon, we may be arrested or summarily slain by Coca-Cola or Exxon/Mobil logo-adorned police officers if we do anything that threatens their masters' profiteering, like point up the problems inherent in caffeine or petroleum consumption.

Think of the humble women -- massed in defiance -- taking over the oil rigs in Nigeria in protest recently, offering all they had as political action -- their bodies -- by virtue of removing their clothing. This was also a `shock tactic' of early Quakers. Or think of the people slaughtered by government soldiers in Aceh, Indonesia -- by Indonesian army forces that had been outright rented by Exxon/Mobil. Soldiers become rent-a-cops -- is this the wave of the future?

This could be the real reason the USA is doing everything it can to undermine the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court. Not the red-herring issue that a couple dozen US peacekeepers contributed to the UN peacekeeping forces every year might risk some malicious nuisance prosecution. Rather it's the fear that a US-based corporation's profiteering and/or the US-based multinational corporations' efforts to control indigenous populations in the labor-camp client states it controls will be `interfered with' by the global community of nations. Not to mention the outrageous actions of some US client states -- atrocities like using US armaments to drop a one-ton bomb on a Gaza city rooftop at night -- killing many children and other innocents -- that are already being questioned as `war crime' material.

Legal estoppal via arrests and trials for war crimes instigators and participants -- this is the thin veneer of protection we -- a plurality of nations that are trying to become more civilized -- have just established via the United Nations against such war crimes as genocides. The United States of America stands in the way.

Perhaps the United States of America is rapidly become the next global enemy. Perhaps this is more than just free enterprise run amok -- perhaps it is a conspiracy to control all the globe's principal strategic prizes and assets -- and not only that -- the means to sustaining life itself. When that happens -- when one entity controls all -- who will it decide may have the high privilege of survival? Those who generate the most profits? Or those who *GAIN* the most profits? Is this the triumph of social Darwinism as public policy?

The corporate-controlled Bush regime has apparently concluded it is necessary that the United States of America and its corporate sponsors, alone among the nations and principal powers of the globe, must be `above the law'. Not only that, they must "own" the law, and define what is acceptable as justice.

Well, it is not the provenance of any one nation or entity among human beings to say what justice is. To define is to limit. True justice is like an immaculate fountain that is generated only when a *community* -- of people or of nations -- gathers together expecting its beneficent intervention in our affairs. Justice only works when people *believe* it can work, and everyone knows that retribution -- even *retaliation* -- never works as justice.

Justice won't work any better because it has the Coca-Cola brand name affixed to its worldly instruments. Neither will government work any better when it has been bought and paid for by Exxon/Mobil and/or Chevron/Texaco. In fact, it works a whole lot worse! Why? It is no longer "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- something the US Civil War was fought for well over a century ago.

-- John Wilmerding

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http://www.boston.com/news/daily/26/odds_cars.htm

Fla. police cars to sport corporate logos
by the Associated Press, 8/26/02

Springfield, Florida -- This Florida Panhandle town is getting new police cars for only $1 each, but there's a catch. The cars will be festooned with corporate sponsorship logos similar to those on race cars.

City commissioners voted 4-0 Thursday to accept the deal with Charlotte, N.C.-based Government Acquisitions. The company hopes to provide a new squad car for each of Springfield's 15 officers within the next three years.

Government Acquisitions partner Ken Allison said advertising on cruisers destined for the Panama City suburb would be toned down.

Police Chief Sam Slay said the city could save about $500,000 over the three-year span.

"You are talking about $500,000 that can be spent other places in the city, and that's what this program is for," said Mayor Robert Walker.

Slay wants the savings used to hire two more officers, but Commissioner Carl Curti said other departments may need the money. Slay said his department should get to keep use the money instead of being punished for saving it.

Curti also was apprehensive about using the police car budget for other purposes.

"These free cars may not always be free cars," Curti said.

==================================
wilmerding@earthlink.net           cerj@igc.org
-------------------------------------------
John Wilmerding, Convener and List Manager
Coalition for Equity-Restorative Justice (CERJ)
1 Chestnut Hill, Brattleboro, VT, ZIP: 05301-6073
Phone: 1-802-254-2826 | 1-802-380-0664 (cellular)
CERJ was founded in New York in May, 1997.
-------------------------------------------
"Work together to reinvent justice using methods
that are fair; that conserve, restore, and even
create harmony, equity and good will in society."
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To join (or leave) the CERJ email list, kindly send
me an email message at wilmerding@earthlink.net
or at cerj@igc.org.  I'll need your first & last name,
your email address, and your state, province or
country of residence.  Thank you!  -- John W.
==================================

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