Great letter in today’s Crikey about the ubiquitous Serco and its merry jobs. How many ways can this company make a buck from misfortune?
Michael R. James writes: To top off a frenetic 24 hour news cycle of the harassment of Julian Assange, nothing was quite as chilling as seeing him being ferried to a gaol cell by a security van sporting a big Serco decal. It is perfect when you think about it.
The huge companies that dominate the internet and its commercial transactions (Amazon, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard) doing the government’s bidding without so much as a D notice. Even Swiss Banks”‰—”‰well, yes that makes sense too when you realize Assange or WikiLeaks don’t have a lazy billion dollars to grease the sweaty avaricious palms of Swiss bankers. Now the world’s favourite policeman, well the private flunkies to whom governments like to outsource their dirty work.
Serco is the company that runs most of the UK’S prisons and also Australia’s refugee detention camps/gulags. I would be pretty sure Serco would be able to handle extraordinary rendition which, no doubt, is excessively profitable.
Unless a division of Halliburton or Blackwater has that market sewn up. Orwell would not be surprised at any of this.