Via The Navy Times: The Pentagon has retained its top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan for $60 million over the next year even as the company remains under criminal investigation by the military’s inspector general and its co-owner has been suspended from receiving military contracts. The military has maintained its ties to Leonie because the company…
Showing all posts tagged United States
ABC Radio National on free online culture
I appeared on ABC’s Radio National’s Common Knowledge program this week talking about the concept of free music and online culture: …There’s been an online debate burbling way… in the music scene, unleashed by 20 year-old Emily White who recently completed an internship at the American radio network, National Public Radio. She’d been working on the…
Wikileaks reveals; US PR firm tells Assad regime how to improve image
Via Foreign Policy: The lobbying firm that brought you a… Vogue… story featuring the Syrian first lady was still trying to help the Syrian… regime improve its image abroad two months after the notoriously ill-timed article was published and then scrubbed, as the country descended into violence, according to a document revealed by Wikileaks. The international firm Brown…
What does “development” really mean for Haiti?
Tragically, often the true definition of disaster capitalism, such as this industrial park which is already causing controversy, and rightly so. The New York Times have produced a stunning report and short film about the project. This isn’t progress:
State Department admits it’s hypocritical over Palestine
Wonderful find via Mondoweiss. Speaks for itself: … VICTORIA NULAND, spokesperson for State Department: Listen, before we leave Syria, I just want to take the opportunity, if you didn’t see it, to draw your attention to the Human Rights Watch report that was released today that identifies some 27 detention centers that Human Rights Watch says…
Watch the mining vultures start to circle Afghanistan
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…
Who believes a word Israel says about Iran?
Seriously, who takes these clowns seriously? If the world listened to Israel, Tehran had a nuclear weapon years ago. The latest comical routine (via The Cable): Israeli Defense Minister… Ehud Barak… said June 30 that Iran will successfully develop a nuclear weapon in “several years” if the international community doesn’t stop it. “In my judgment … … if…
The clueless American war in Afghanistan
An extract from a new book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, author of the … startling book about the disastrous Iraq invasion, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: When Richard Holbrooke became the Obama administration’s Afghanistan point man in January 2009, Summer Coish was keen to join his civilian…
Assange interviews Imran Khan, Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky
The great The World Tomorrow series continues (past episodes here). A few weeks ago it was Pakistani politician Imran Khan and then this week Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky. Find me another mainstream TV talk show that actually believes in seriously examining ideas, political philosophy and democracy: