The number of lawsuits filed by multinationals against governments is growing globally. It truly shows who controls this world. It’s time for a serious fight-back. Evidence for the prosecution (via the Guardian): Lloyds Banking Group… has become embroiled in a row over its investment in a company accused of involvement in the… rendition… of terror suspects on behalf…
Showing all posts tagged United States
When if ever will South African Jews not embrace victimhood?
Tragically, many Australian Jews take comfort from this same delusion, almost enjoying imagining it’s 1933. All the time. This piece from a South African newspaper highlights the dilemma and hopes for a much better future: Of all the studies conducted on the position of the Jewish establishment during apartheid, perhaps the most authoritative has been…
This is our insanely monitored world in 2012
Glenn Greenwald, Salon: …Issuing subpoenas to journalists to force them to reveal their sources is now obsolete — unnecessary — because the U.S. Government’s Surveillance State is so vast, so comprehensive, that it already knows who is talking to whom. It now… subpoenas and harasses reporters… simply to force them to confirm in court what they have…
Our charming Western legacy in Afghanistan
Over a decade occupying the place, hundreds of billions spent and this is the result (via the Washington Post): After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for…
Are only multinationals with bad records able to continually secure contracts?
The global onslaught of vulture capitalists continues space: Giant US military-industrial company Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) is in the running to win a slice of a controversial …£1.5 billion (US$2.43 billion) contract to transform the West Midlands and Surrey police forces in Britain, The (London) Times reported.… Hailed as the largest police privatization scheme…
What Obama’s deal with Afghanistan really allows
Away from the slop offered by mainstream propagandists, Washington’s occupation of Afghanistan will continue for years to come, as Gareth Porter explains: The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasise transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war. But the…
Knowing it’s apartheid in Palestine but being too afraid to say it
In a positive review of Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism in Rolling Stone, this telling quote: Another anonymous source is a “senior State Department official,” who recently traveled with Secretary Clinton from Jerusalem to Ramallah in the West Bank: “There was a kind of silence and people were careful, but it was like,…
The amazing struggles of Chen Guangcheng
A truly remarkable story that reads like a thriller but reveals a dark side of Chinese repression that we should never forget. The New York Times reports: Injuries suffered in the course of a daring nighttime escape. A covert appeal from underground activists to top State Department officials for humanitarian protection. A car chase through…
The militarisation of aid in “war on terror”
This is a growing issue since 9/11, where the US military and others are perfectly happy to corrupt the NGO process by delivering so-called aid and development themselves, therefore trying to convince people under occupation that the military will “save” them. The vitally important separation between the military and aid has largely disappeared. This story…