Private armies are out and looking for business

Private mercenaries have never have it so good. Business is booming as governments increasingly rely on them to do the dirty work they no longer want to do: Insurers have drawn up plans for the world’s first private navy to try to turn the tide against Somali pirates who continue to plague the global shipping…

Shell and Iran kissing in a tree

The sheer futility of trying to boycott Iran is revealed once again: Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, paid the state-owned Iranian oil company at least $1.5bn (…£0.94bn) for crude oil this summer, increasing its business with Tehran as the international community implemented some of the toughest sanctions yet aimed at constricting the Islamic republic’s economy…

Let our Diggers kill at will beause we say they’re noble

So Australian troops in Afghanistan kill civilians and are now facing charges. It’s called accountability, something sorely lacking in Western societies at war for decades. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, a top quality Murdoch quality that regularly writes about refugees stealing our jobs, women and sand, thinks it’s bloody outrageous in an editorial today: In the early…

Privatisation for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Are there limits to privatisation or should we just consider asking multinationals to sell babies to the highest bidder? A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system. Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired…

The real cost of outsourcing asylum seeker care is more pain

How unsurprising. Shocking cases of mistreatment in Britain’s detention system, most of which are run by private companies, such as Serco. But let’s not have a robust debate about whether multinationals should be managing people coming from torture and trauma: Millions of pounds in compensation is being paid to migrants who have been traumatised after…

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