Apart from a few small stories (here and here), we have to rely on a Chinese government service to tell us what’s happening in our own country. Have media companies been asked not to report details about the exercise and agreed? Does the general public have a right to know what the US is planning…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
Targeting the contracting leeches in the “war on terror”
Since 9/11 countless corporations are making a killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the US and beyond. It’s a privatised dream, as the US war machine now couldn’t survive without outsourcing help (including, according to a new report, Pentagon contractors writing their own contracts). Hackers and trouble-makers Anonymous have attacked Booz Allen Hamilton (a company with quite…
Serco damages worker’s lives but government wants more privatised staff
Two stories today that highlight the pernicious effect of British multinational Serco in Australia. One from today’s Australian (to its credit, the only serious newspaper tackling this question regularly): The company running Australia’s immigration detention centres has acknowledged the work is traumatic for staff following the death of a young guard troubled by the hanging…
Amnesty UK calls for end to privatised removals from Britain
As Western countries increasingly outsource many aspects of life to unaccountable corporations desperate to make money from misery, resistance is both necessary and moral. Bravo Amnesty UK: The UK Government must conduct a complete and radical overhaul of the current system of enforced removals from the UK, according to a new briefing and campaign launched…
How privatised care destroys souls (but makes nice amounts of cash)
British journalist Clare Sambrook on just another day in Britain: “You’re a big boy now so I have to search you,” said the immigration officer to the five-year-old, donning latex gloves and patting him down at a Heathrow Airport detention facility run by outsourcing giant G4S. The child had been booked into Terminal 4’s “short…
Serco begins PR push to win even more privatised business
Not that most governments seemingly need more convincing to make services more “efficient” (which is code for a lack of accountability): Serco, the multinational company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year running outsourced government services, will today launch an advertising campaign aimed at boosting its public image in WA as it prepares…
Obama’s war in Afghanistan simply becoming more privatised
It’s occupation by another name. Pratap Chatterjee explains: The number of contractors in Afghanistan is likely to increase significantly in the next year as the Obama administration pulls back some of the extra 68,000 troops that it has dispatched there since January 2009. Typically, the U.S. pays one contractor to support every soldier that has…
How privatised war only brings profit before people
What the “war on terror” has become; countless companies making a killing. And what do they want? More war in more places: Najlaa International Catering Services won a $3 million five-year contract in February 2010 to prepare food for the U.S. Agency for International Development compound in Iraq. The deal was approved despite the fact…
Is there any space where Serco won’t go?
Clearly not (and the Australian government is so desperate to “manage” asylum seekers, any multinational will do): Australia’s newest immigration detention centre could open near Brisbane within months as the Federal Government negotiates to take over the Borallon jail. The Courier-Mail understands the Federal Government plans to convert the high-security jail, 50km west of Brisbane,…