Welcome to our legacy in the Middle East: A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
The UK is entering a period of extremes and mad capitalism is to blame
Britain has embraced rampant capitalism and the effects, writes The Independent’s Johann Hari, will be severe: Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital bed in Belgravia but her political children have just pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than she ever dreamed of. When was the last time Britain’s public spending…
Invade, beg, pay
Is the British rule that massive aid to poor countries can mostly come after a disastrous Western invasion and occupation? Britain is to double to …£3.8bn the amount of aid money spent on war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, raising fears among charities that national security priorities will determine development spending. As David Cameron warned that…
The slow curse of disaster capitalism covers the world
I recently wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald about the ever-increasing arrival of the Shock Doctrine in Australia and Asia-Pacific. Privatisation running riot. George Monbiot writes about the same problems facing Britain: We’ve been staring at the wrong list. In an effort to guess what will hit us tomorrow, we’ve been trying to understand the…
Musharraf and the Zionists, sitting in a London tree
Oh my. A former, US-backed dictator looking to make a comeback and some Israeli hacks wanting to get in on the action: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is stated to have shared a lunch with a couple of members of Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, at a Chinese restaurant in Kensington area of central London a…
Serco and friends line up for dirty and profitable work
How many more people can we exploit for profit? Far too many, it seems: Jimmy Mubenga died during deportation from the UK, and the first fingers of blame will undoubtedly be pointed at the Home Office-contracted private security firm, G4S. But we need to look at ourselves and ask how we became a society that…
Using bio-fuel and chocolate to cure the world
I met this lovely British guy, former journalist Andy Pag, in Ubud, Bali last week and he’s on quite a journey:
Serco and friends take refugees and show them the door
Exporting misery is a nice little earner: The scale of Britain’s largely privatised deportation industry has mushroomed as the Home Office responds to political pressure for the faster removal of failed asylum-seekers and people overstaying their visas. There are 11 immigration removal centres across the country with space for around 3,000 detainees. Most are operated…