Australian clothing brand Saxony recently invited American photographer… Teru Kuwayama to Australia. He’s spent much of the last decade documenting life and war in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir: I spent time with Kuwayama in Sydney and he is a humane man who has seen the reality of catastrophic Western policies in countries that need more than…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
Challenging spin over PNG LNG vital in age of resource curse
A key theme of my disaster capitalism book (out 2013) is the role of Western multinationals in exploiting resources and people in poor nations. A focus is Papua New Guinea. A report released today by NGO Jubilee Australia called Pipe Dreams… challenges the many myths about the supposed benefits of the soon to begin LNG operation.…
Serco and G4S making a killing by British outsourcing craze
(Via The Independent): More than half of the Government’s contract spending on detention services went to just two firms, G4S and Serco, a report reveals today. G4S was this month stripped of a key prison contract in the wake of its shambolic handling of Olympic security but the report reveals it won contracts for a…
The democratic challenge faced by vulture capitalism: Naomi Klein shows why
The brilliant Naomi Klein (another recent talk of hers here) talking about capitalism, climate change, the challenge for democracy and vulture capitalism (all the subjects of my forthcoming book and film): See here for a fascinating new campaign, with Klein involved, called Do the Maths about holding energy polluters to account through boycotts, divestment and…
2SER radio interview on Haiti and disaster capitalism
I was recently interviewed on Sydney’s 2SER radio program, The Third Degree: Haiti was hit with a devastating earthquake in January 2010, and reconstruction efforts have been painstakingly slow – hampered by other storms such as hurricane Isaac in August, and the recent hurricane Sandy, resulting in much loss of life and pushing the already…
How Obama loves funding autocratic states to benefit corporations and Washington
Nick Turse in TomDispatch: The Pentagon awarded $667.2 million in contracts in 2012, and more than $1 billion during Barack Obama’s first term in office for construction projects in largely autocratic Middle Eastern nations, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Middle East District (USACE-MED).…
Making money from natural disasters
Naomi Klein writes in The Nation about disaster capitalists salivating over Hurricane Sandy: Less than three days after Sandy made landfall on the East Coast of the United States, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute blamed New Yorkers’ resistance to big-box stores for the misery they were about to endure.… Writing on Forbes.com… [1]… he explained that…