Just one day, via the US Department of Defence website: Global Integrated Security (USA), Inc., Reston, Va., was awarded a $480,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the reconstruction security support services throughout Afghanistan in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Work will be performed in Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Who wants to make heaps of money in Afghanistan?
So what does this really mean? Private security firms, both local and foreign, will make increasingly high profits: A fully fledged Afghan national security force, including army and police, will cost about $5 billion a year after international combat forces pull out in 2014, the Afghanistan defence minister told reporters on Tuesday. The price tag…
War on Terror Inc; private companies loving endless conflict (and profits have nothing to do with it, of course)
One: The U.S. military has launched miniature kamikaze drones against Taliban targets and plans to deploy more next year for U.S. special operating forces, according to documents and an Army official. The tube-launched “Switchblade” drone, made by Monrovia, California-based Aerovironment Inc. (AVAV), was secretly sent to Afghanistan for the first time last year. “Under a…
A blinkered view of the war on terrorism
My following book review appeared in last weekend’s Sydney Sun Herald newspaper: The Triple Agent Joby Warrick (Scribe, $32.95) Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein The war in Afghanistan is the longest in modern American history. This year has been the most deadly for Afghan civilians. British MP Rory Stewart wrote in The New York Times that…
The Obama rationale for intervention in Libya
A fascinating investigation by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone – this is one journalist (and friend) with a fine record of uncovering secrets – on the internal American dialogue over military intervention in Libya. A key theme, repeated over and over again by various officials, is the desire by elements within the Obama administration to…
How to make money on the back of failure in the 21st century
Here’s how the war economy works. Get in the military. Learn about “terrorism”. Preach “counter-insurgency” tactics to a gullible establishment and media. Talk about understanding local cultures while at the same time backing kill/capture methods that routinely fail/murder innocents/kidnap the wrong person (hello Afghanistan, latest report here and here). A perfect example of this person…
CHOGM perfect place to hold Sri Lankan war criminals to account
My following piece appears in today’s ABC The Drum: In late September, the government of Sri Lanka released 1,800 former Tamil Tiger fighters. Colombo claimed they had been rehabilitated as President Mahinda Rajapaksa told them at a ceremony in the capital: “I hope you will work for peace and ethnic harmony in this nation of…
Afghan war failure opens door to predatory firms looking to make killing
Afghanistan Today writes: Exploding bombs and gunfights will harm the economy of any city, either by causing direct damage or through the wider impact on trade and services. But for security equipment companies working the market in Kabul, business is, for want of a better word, booming. That war means big business is a lamentable…
Assange speaks in London at ten year anniversary of Afghan war squalor
When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies, peddled to the British public and the American public and public all over Europe and other countries, then who are the war criminals? It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists, journalists are war criminals. And Assange, interviewed…
What legitimate civil disobedience against a war criminal looks like
Bravo: On Monday 26 September, three members of Veterans For Peace and a member of Code Pink confronted Donald Rumsfeld at a Boston stop of his book tour. I attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Police hustled all four of us out, while a hostile rightwing crowd shouted and jeered. To get in, we had…