One of countless examples: The former chief of party in Baghdad for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Robert Nathan Boorda, pleaded guilty to an information unsealed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for conspiring to enrich himself by having USIP award a security contract at a fraudulently inflated…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
ABCTV News24’s The Drum on Israel/Palestine and uranium sales to UAE
I appeared last night on ABCTV’s The Drum (video here) alongside the Sydney Morning Herald’s Judith Whelan and… … former NSW Liberal leader Kerri Chikarovski. Aside from arguing against Australia selling uranium to UAE – seriously, do we need to provide a brutal dictatorship with a toxic and deadly resource? – and challenging the corporate media to…
Why profit-making prisons distort justice
The outrage of vulture capitalism in practice (via the American Constitution Society): The failed “war on drugs” certainly helped the proliferation of for-profit prisons, but the federal government’s increasing reliance on many of the same companies to detain undocumented immigrants and others awaiting court resolutions is not only furthering private prison profits but the need…
Sing along to the G4S theme song
Vulture capitalists get a theme song. Despite some still claiming privatisation is a wonderful thing for society, common sense and evidence proves that outsourcing massively reduces accountability. Not to worry, G4S has a theme song to get you fired up (via New Statesman): You love your job and the people too Making a difference is…
Time is now to fight vulture capitalism
I’m currently working on a film and book about disaster capitalism. Britain is currently experiencing a text-book example of the phenomenon. Here’s Seumas Milne in the Guardian with a necessary call to arms: If nothing else, the spectacular failure of G4S, the world’s largest security firm, to get even close to meeting its Olympics contract…
Baseball in the time of (Haitian) cholera
A powerful film about a nation that has been abused by nature, multinationals and the UN:
Vulture capitalists fails and yet its masters will thrive
One (via the Guardian): The depth of the crisis over… G4S‘s… Olympic security… preparations became increasingly clear on Thursday as recruits revealed details of a “totally chaotic” selection process and… police… joined the… military… in bracing themselves to fill the void left by the private security contractor. Guards told how, with 14 days to go until the Olympics opening ceremony, they had…
Yet another company profits from Australia’s privatised detention system
Shameful (via Paige Taylor in The Australian): It will cost about $29 million over the next 20 months for independent observers to watch over young, unaccompanied asylum-seekers in Australia’s immigration detention camps. The figure is the nominal amount of a new contract between the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the US-linked Maximus Solutions to…
My name is the US-led Afghan war and I am a farce
Via The Navy Times: The Pentagon has retained its top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan for $60 million over the next year even as the company remains under criminal investigation by the military’s inspector general and its co-owner has been suspended from receiving military contracts. The military has maintained its ties to Leonie because the company…
What does “development” really mean for Haiti?
Tragically, often the true definition of disaster capitalism, such as this industrial park which is already causing controversy, and rightly so. The New York Times have produced a stunning report and short film about the project. This isn’t progress: