A refugee activist from Western Australia writes to me: An Iraqi asylum seeker I visit at a detention centre just got a rejection letter from DIAC [Department of Immigration and Citizenship]. His brother is an Aussie citizen whom I have met while he has been visiting the Iraqi. After waiting 14 months, the government says…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Thousands gather in Sydney to back Wikileaks
Last night’s large event in Sydney to support the right of Wikileaks to publish material was a huge success. Thousands turned up to hear speakers chastise the Australian government for shamefully bowing down to America’s wishes over Julian Assange. Wikileaks enjoys majority community support: A high-profile human rights lawyer claims Julian Assange’s only crime is…
West so keen to still be a colonial power in Arab world
Patrick Cockburn on the Western love affair with picking compliant leaders in places we should simply step aside: There is something frivolous and absurd about France’s sudden recognition of the Libyan rebel leadership in Benghazi as a sort of quasi-government. Presumably it’s intended to give the impression Nicolas Sarkozy has a grip on events, it…
CACI is perfect representation of modern era
Private contractor CACI has done very well in the post 9/11 world (including providing the guards who tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq). Writer Andrew Cockburn highlights a company that represents the modern world of creating something out of nothing (unless you include maintaining and protecting the bogus “war on terror” as important): The…
West has no moral case for military actions in Arab world
Roger Cohen in the New York Times is spot-on but mark my words; most journalists, think-tankers, commentators and politicians have deliberately short memories. In time they’ll simply say: “Our complicity in Arab horrors? Oh but it’s so complicated…”: Hearings should be held in the U.S. Congress and throughout Western legislatures on these questions: How did…
Murder civilians and continue getting mercenary work
The future of warfare: The number of private security personnel working for the US military in Afghanistan rose to 18,919 at the end of last year, the highest level used in any conflict by the United States, a congressional report said. The Congressional Research Service report said that the number of private security contractor personnel…
Westerners who enjoy largesse from our thugs or theirs
The depravity of bought intellectuals, not unlike many journalists who get wined and dined by US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan or in the halls of Washington, Canberra or London. Power can be appealing but it also corrupts: A trip to Libya in 2006 by Anthony Giddens, the former London School of Economics director and…
Hypocrisy trumps policy in Western alliance with Libya
My following article appears today on ABC’s The Drum: The latest BBC interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, situated in a fancy restaurant on the Mediterranean, was painful to watch. Clearly delusional and blaming drug-addled youth and al-Qaeda for the ongoing revolution in his country (which he claimed he didn’t lead, the “masses” were in…
Days in the life of a massive private contractor in Iraq
The truth: The federal government sued KBR Inc., the largest contractor in Iraq, on Thursday over what prosecutors say were improper charges to the Army for private security services. Houston-based KBR Inc. is a former subsidiary of Halliburton Co. It recently won a new contract potentially worth more than $2 billion for support work in…
America knowlingly wastes billions on futile conflicts
And none of it makes the US or its allies any safer; in fact the opposite is true: Tens of billions of dollars are being lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan because of a toothless U.S. contracting system so reliant on a handful of major contractors that it rarely suspends or desbars…