Throughout the Libya war, there has been quite a bit of skepticism about who the rebels being armed were exactly and whether they could govern Libya after Gaddafi was defeated. A political body to represent the rebels, the National Transitional Council (NTC), began to solidify early in the conflict. Its leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, has been chairman of the NTC since February. Jalil was Libya’s justice minister, who was sent to deal with the uprising in Benghazi when it began. Jalil “quit in protest” after witnessing the “excessive use of violence against unarmed protesters.”

Florida is embarking upon the largest prison privatization plan in history. No state has ever undertaken such an ambitious expansion of their private prison system, and for good reason; private prisons consistently fail to live up to contractual obligations, don’t save money, and provide less efficient services than government-run prisons.

Buried in with today’s news was this story about one of our secret wars, this time in Somalia. It appears that now we’re using African proxies to fight Al Shabab there.

Two interesting pieces here regarding the influence the private prison industry wield in its political affiliations and activities. Most of the reason the industry has been so successful in securing contracts despite decades of failing to perform is the cozy relationship it has cultivated with state and federal officials who control the disbursement of public funds and criminal justice sentencing. They cultivate these relationships through donating to individual politicians and various campaigns they embark upon, but also through hiring professional lobbyists to promote their will while the legislature is in session.

This is almost too easy. The GEO Group, a huge, multi-billion dollar corporation, also has a political action committee so that they can essentially donate twice in every political campaign they want to be a part of (it’s called GEOPAC). But apparently, all those billions of dollars couldn’t buy them lawyers that could understand the difference between state and federal laws.

Well that didn’t take long at all. Ohio, with its anti-union, pro-corporate governor John Kasich, is planning on selling 5 state prisons to private companies who won’t perform to the same standards as the state or save money. But the administration was convinced they offered some sort of cost-savings (despite a plethora of research to the contrary), and initially said the state would earn $200 million from the sale of the prisons. But it turns out they now only expect to earn about $50 million, 1/4 of what the originally thought they’d get.

European finance ministers agreed to extend more money to Greece yesterday, after the Greeks fulfilled their end of the bargain by passing a severe austerity and privatization package amid mass protests. The finance ministers extended the 8.7 billion euro ($12.6 billion) loan, which added to the 3.3 billion euro loan from the IMF will get Greece through borrowing and debt service for the rest of the summer. This money essentially passes through Greece on the way to European banks, who are the main creditors.

A recent report by the Arizona Republic, which reviewed audits, correspondence, and interviews from the Department of Corrections reveals that many of the security lapses that led to the escape of 3 murderers from the MTC facility in Kingman last year have not been resolved.

One of the more revealing elements of the Greek bailout discussions is not that the IMF and European finance ministers want another round of austerity from Greece before providing funding, and not even that banks are being urged to take haircuts or engage in restructuring to accommodate the Greeks. It’s that other element – privatization of state assets – that is the tell here. This is the real extraction from the Greeks, the real shock doctrine scheme at work here. Greece essentially must sell the family silver – their ports, their state-run water supply systems, their utility company, their telephone company – to get out of the mess created largely by the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

While we have been frantically playing defense against relentless assaults on multiple fronts, from anti-union legislation to draconian anti-choice laws to the attempted privatization of Medicare, the selling off of public assets to the private sector has received little attention.