The world’s largest security company, privately run for profit, wants to run even more of our lives. Open Democracy… explains: A violent burglary. The scenes of crime officer who visits your house is employed by G4S. Fibre samples are found, swabs taken and despatched to G4S Forensics. A suspect is held in police cells run by…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
Understanding PNG and how the resource curse infects everything
During my recent visit to the country, not a day passed when a land-owner or NGO didn’t complain about the negative effects of Western corporations on daily lives; exploitation supported by a corrupt political elite. Some recently released documents via Wikileaks provides a grim picture. Both are written by Australian journalist Philip Dorling. The most…
#Occupy deserves drone monitoring?
Welcome to 21st century America, a reality that helps private companies reap the financial rewards while acting in the “national interest”. Stephen Salisbury in TomDispatch on the latest example of disaster capitalism on crack: All told, the federal government… has appropriated… about $635 billion, accounting for inflation, for homeland security-related activities and equipment since the 9/11 attacks.…
Why can’t we just stay in Afghanistan forever?
The last decade has seen an explosion in private security and intelligence companies making a killing in the “war on terror”. And now, with growing anger towards both mercenaries and the Western occupying forces that use them, this suggestion seems both delusional and symptomatic of the rot that imperial thinking guarantees: The chairman of the…
The #Occupy threat; US Homeland Security wants to know why capitalism so loathed
Yet another insight from this week’s Wikileaks information dump (via Rolling Stone): As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street,” dated October of last year,…
What Wikileaks tells us about corporate and government power (you can’t trust them)
So finally we learn, via the Sydney Morning Herald, that the Obama administration wants to crush Julian Assange and Wikileaks for the “crime” of revealing a litany of wrongs committed by Washington. And here’s the irony; after demanding answers from governments in America, Britain, Australia and elsewhere about the legal status of Assange, it takes…
Wikileaks unloads with the Global Intelligence Files
The role of private companies in spying, monitoring and controlling public (and private) policy and debate sorely needs investigation. It’s not just about Western firms assisting repressive states censor the internet. Today Wikileaks launches the Global Intelligence Files: Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails…
Disaster strikes in Haiti and vultures swoon
While politics in Haiti remains volatile, the reality for millions of its citizens is dire. After the 2010 earthquake, countless foreign companies swooped in the hope of making money from misery. This is the clear definition of disaster capitalism. Two recently reports highlighted the immorality of this situation. Truthout: As Americans were gearing up for…
Please, Washington, keep those conflicts bubbling along for our bottom line
The “war on terror” has been a lovely earner for many Western corporations. For them, wars winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan could be bad for business. Here’s Walter Pincus in the Washington Post: The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command on Feb.… 1 approved a $330… million five-month extension on a five-year contract. That contract now…
The selling off of our prized possessions
The record of private security company G4S is deeply troubling… (including in Papua New Guinea, from where I recently returned). So this news is both worrying and a sign of things to come globally. For some privatisation propagandists, everything should sold to private interests: Private security company G4S is about to sign a deal which would…