The Homeland

What do you think about the word "Homeland"? I was watching some news show or other and the talking head referred to the United States as "the Homeland" and I felt the wince I always feel when somebody talks about "the Homeland". Why are we using this term?? We never used homeland to talk about ourselves until the current administration started using it in its war on terrorism.

Its connotation is so very nationalistic, so fascist sounding....don't you think? Or is it just me? Doesn't it make you think of Germany during the second world war?

I've been perusing job listings lately....especially after conversations with my two expensive daughters.... As much as I enjoy my present job, at my part-time pace it doesn't keep up, financially speaking, with them.

I got this one job listing from Homeland Security. It described a job as a case manager for immigrants - legal ones, I think. The idea was that the Immigrantion office wanted case managers to help legal immigrants through the various hoops of staying legal - keeping track of them, reminding them about their paperwork...that kind of thing. Job description seemed to say, as I remember it now, that one would work for ICE, under the Department of Homeland Security. A potentially intriguing change from working with the mentally ill, it seemed to me. I told a co-worker about it and she wanted me to forward the posting to her.

So I go to my mail this morning and click on the posting and Lo! and Behold!, the job had "expired" and I wasn't allowed to go the posting any longer (we're talking 48 hours here). I, of course, became curious. I could see on the listing that the company who placed the post was called G4S Justice Services, Inc., so I went to their web site.

G4S is a big, global corporation that provides "security services" of all kinds to anybody that can afford them, including in this case, Homeland Security. They have little graphs of their stock prices.

I clicked around....you can choose your country, for example...and when you choose the United States, guess where you go....Wackenhut!! Long time readers will recall my previous remarks, perhaps, about Wackenhut - it's the company that builds private prisons and psyc hospitals here...

So. The immigration case manager job is part of that extensive web of services provided privately to "our government" (i.e. us - you and me - the taxpayers) by this huge for profit corporation...and a bunch of stockholders are cleaning up....but our national budget deficit keeps getting bigger and bigger...and is held by China.....but that works for a global security company because they can just contract with China if it decides to call in the debt.....

And meanwhile does anybody out there think our state of "homeland security" is better than it ever was?

Haven't we just created a new industry - one that is mostly smoke and mirrors - to provide another path to profit for investors? Wealth through the combination of privatization and fear?

Perhaps if the homeland was, indeed, "more secure", and if the private corporation had actually saved us money I'd feel differently.

Hey! I shouldn't work for them, I should buy stock! I wish I could take the money I pay in Federal Taxes and use it to buy stock in Wackenhut....now THAT would be a retirement plan!

Come to think of it, that's what Bush's idea for privatization of social security comes down to, isn't it?

Ok! That's it! I'm buying stock in G4S - or Wackenhut- or Halliburton!! Retirement here I come! I've discovered the real "social security" - it's buying stock in "Homeland Security"!!