Under-trained. Under-staffed. Traumatised. And that’s just the employees of disaster capitalist companies, loved by governments, to add “efficiency” to a straining refugee system. Paige Taylor reports in today’s Australian: An English backpacker on a tourist visa, Australians straight from high school and overseas students are among hundreds of casual workers earning up to $450 a…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
As Chevron has destroyed the Amazon, now firm gets access in Australia
The development and exploitation of natural resources by corporates is on the march globally. Take the proposed gas hub in the Kimberely in Western Australia. Governments are usually far too keen to please corporations, with locals and environmental concerns largely ignored. Chevron recently announced a massive LNG project off the Western Australian coast. Such moves…
Lest we forget PNG’s pain and call for true independence
Mining and exploitation remain live issues in and around Papua New Guinea; it is disaster capitalism on a grand scale. These two clips, made in the 1990s for ABC TV and Channel 9 TV, show that the issues of today have been around for decades, as long as a poor nation has a resource curse:
Naomi Klein unleashes at #OccupyWallStreet
A beautiful articulation of this moment: I love you. And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder. Yesterday, one of the…
Just how many private security forces will remain in Iraq?
Feral Jundi explains: What is interesting about this is that DoS has been getting some pressure from folks in Congress as to how many security contractors will be on the ground in Iraq in the near future. So this number is coming directly from DoS as a projection for 2012. That number is 5,000 security…
Two, vastly different ways to report on asylum seekers
Today’s Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Sydney leads with this “exclusive”, deliberately designed to make readers angry towards these supposedly greedy refugees: Buying cigarettes and tobacco for immigration detainees is costing taxpayers more than $1.4 million a year. While the federal government spends millions on anti-smoking campaigns, the cost of keeping up detainees’ habits costs about…
The official Blackwater video game launch
Feeling the need to kill for fun in war zones where privatised thugs are order the day? This game is for you. Funnily enough, the players will be tasked with protecting UN principals:
Welcome to lack of US transparency over wasted billions on disaster capitalism
Yes: The internal records of a congressionally mandated panel that reported staggering estimates of wasteful U.S. wartime spending will remain sealed to the public until 2031, officials confirmed, as the panel closed its doors on Friday. The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan was established by Congress in 2008 and spent three years…
Australia is world leader in terrorising refugees with Serco
This feature in the New York Times yesterday is devastating; a thorough examination of the realities in Australia, America and Britain of using unaccountably thuggish firms, such as Serco, to imprison asylum seekers while governments get “tough” for a public allegedly baying for blood and secure borders. It’s all a sham, of course, with no…
Memo to shock doctrine freaks; create a crisis and privatise
Privatisation is the opium of the masses (well, a few men in suits who love the smell of burning unions in the morning). Democracy Now! reports on moves to privatise the American postal service under the guise of improving efficiency but is this yet another move by corporate crack fiends to allegedly reduce costs and…