This was inevitable (via Reuters): Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) is contemplating participation in an oil and gas tender of six blocks in northern Afghanistan, a company spokesman said on Monday. Access to the world’s oil reserves for companies like Exxon has gotten tougher in recent years as governments assert tighter control of their resources. Opportunity…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
How private prison operators game the system and demand longer sentences
The apocalyptic future is here (via Justice Policy Institute): Over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent, while private prison populations have increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistics. Meanwhile, in 2010 alone, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)…
ABCTV News 24’s The Drum on refugees and media troubles
I appeared last night on ABC TV’s The Drum (video here) alongside former Howard government minister Peter Reith and 2UE host John Stanley. The main issues were asylum seekers – I argued that neither major side of politics in Australia has any desire to alleviate suffering and seemingly prefer ways to privatise the system and…
Our privatised world grows with barely any media or political protest
One (via the Guardian): Private companies will be running large parts of the UK’s… police… service within five years, according to the world’s biggest security firm. David Taylor-Smith, the head of… G4S… for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the… West Midlands…
Remember #Kony2012? US massively expands private contractors in Africa to find him
The Washington Post recently published this fascinating report on Washington’s huge reliance on private contractors in Africa for a range of unaccountable tasks. 21st century war: Four small, white passenger planes sit outside a hangar here under a blazing sun, with no exterior markings save for U.S. registration numbers painted on the tails. A few…
Canberra not exactly building a Blackwater army (is it?)
This is an interesting story in Melbourne’s Herald Sun but is the Australian government really hiring foreign mercenaries, men who operate beyond the law? Australia is boosting its ranks with foreign soldiers by offering cash bonuses of up to $200,000 and fast-tracked citizenship. Veterans have hit out at hiring “mercenaries” from countries such as America,…
Blood on British hands; sending Tamils back to be tortured
These serious allegations are horrific. A government’s duty of care is paramount and yet in this case it seems that the desire for Britain (and indeed, Australia, who says very little about war crimes in Sri Lanka) to have a good relationship with Colombo is central. Also note the use of a private, chartered plane,…
Sending Tamils back to Sri Lanka’s police state
How dare we lecture the developing world about human rights when this happens (via the Independent)?: Dozens of Tamil asylum-seekers will be forcibly removed from Britain on a secretive deportation flight today despite credible evidence that they face arrest and retribution on their return. A chartered plane, PTV030, is due to take off at 15.30…
This isn’t democracy, no matter what IMF/EU/”sensible” capitalists tell you
Slavoj Žižek in the London Review of Books highlights issues that are covered in Left Turn, namely that so-called austerity is a disaster and vulture capitalism must be resisted: Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in…