A reader sent me this incisive post: Last Wednesday, a group of prominent Bush-era Republicans, including former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former White House adviser Frances Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, flew to Paris to speak in support of a Marxist Iranian exile group there – one…
Those who want more conflict are making a little dollar out of it
The nexus between big business and government is an ever-tightening one. It’s an area I’ll be covering in a forthcoming book (due in a while). Just this week has seen a litany of media stories that highlight the inherent problems. More wars and detention to maximise profits? You better believe it. Sydney Morning Herald today:…
Why states are happy to pass security jobs to private armies
Privatised mercenaries are largely beyond international law and that’s the way they like it. The UN has set up a working group to find ways to regulate a massively increasing industry. Jose L. Gomez del Prado spoke in Geneva in November and articulated the challenges of controlling a world that many governments love: In the…
Here’s an idea; let’s get mercenaries from Iraq and send them to another war
Just what the world needs; another privatised war with unaccountable players: Somalia’s transitional government is using private security firms and Arab governments to train and fund a paramilitary force to battle pirates in the region that have threatened international shipping. A lawyer representing Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) said on Tuesday that a security contractor,…
Government and media are different?
For many corporate “journalists”, pleasing power is all in a day’s work. Glenn Greenwald is spot-on: It’s not news that establishment journalists identify with, are merged into, serve as spokespeople for, the political class:… that’s what makes them establishment journalists.… But even knowing that, it’s just amazing, to me at least, how so many of…
Yes, Murdoch paper makes up stories
What a shock: The Sun has owned up to what I guess we in the journalism trade realised the moment we saw it – its splash about the pre-Christmas live episode Coronation Street being targeted by al-Qaeda was false.
Damascus had hand in Prophet Mohammed outrage
Causing trouble: The government of Syria was active in organizing the 2006 riots that erupted across the Arab world following the publication of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Oslo daily Aftenposten reported Monday, quoting US diplomatic cables released by website WikiLeaks. The cartoons were originally published in neighboring Denmark in 2005. Their publication resulted…
How much racism can a “democracy” take?
One: Palestinian detainees are systematically denied the right to meet a lawyer during interrogations by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, according to a report published today by an Israeli and a Palestinian rights group. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club say detainees from the occupied West…
History repeats itself over Wikileaks
A fine historical reminder in the UK Guardian: There is a precedent for Julian Assange’s predicament. Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett in the late 60s was banned from Australia for reporting the Vietnam war from the North, and for allegedly asking prisoners taken during the Korean conflict to confess to Chinese interrogators. Authorities attempted to turn…