A government that truly believes in transparency would behave in the opposite way, reducing the increasingly secretive nature of officialdom. Obama fail: By executive order, President Obama will instruct federal agencies today to better safeguard their classified secrets, to set up internal audit systems, and to make sure that reluctance to share critical intelligence in…
Showing all posts tagged United States
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…
Of course Western IT firms want to test repressive web techniques
Sigh: The new president of the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), Moez Chakchouk, told participants at the Arab Bloggers Meeting [in Tunisia] today that western companies offered significant discounts on use of censorship software to the Tunisian government in exchange for testing and bug-tracking. He said confidentiality contracts preclude him from naming the companies, but said…
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:
This is what American “reconstruction” looked like in Iraq
Former Foreign Service Officer at the US State Department, Peter Van Buren, has written a book about the disastrous Iraq invasion, of which he was a part. It’s an (almost) comical account of the gross ineptitude of the occupation and the massive amount of money wasted. Tax-payer money: Very few people outside the agricultural world…
What legitimate civil disobedience against a war criminal looks like
Bravo: On Monday 26 September, three members of Veterans For Peace and a member of Code Pink confronted Donald Rumsfeld at a Boston stop of his book tour. I attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Police hustled all four of us out, while a hostile rightwing crowd shouted and jeered. To get in, we had…