Showing posts with label Private Contractors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Private Contractors. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

How Contractors Raked in $385 Billion to Build and Support Bases Abroad Since 2001

How Contractors Raked in $385 Billion to Build and Support Bases Abroad Since 2001
"Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it’s easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples' lands. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune, and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride."

Thursday, August 23, 2012

How an American Disaster Paved the Way for Big Oil’s Rise -- and Possible Fall -- in Iraq | Common Dreams

How an American Disaster Paved the Way for Big Oil’s Rise -- and Possible Fall -- in Iraq | Common Dreams
"Here, as a start, is a little scorecard of what’s gone on in Iraq since Big Oil arrived two and a half years ago: corruption’s skyrocketed; two Western oil companies are being investigated for either giving or receiving bribes; the Iraqi government is paying oil companies a per-barrel fee according to wildly unrealistic production targets they’ve set, whether or not they deliver that number of barrels; contractors are heavily over-charging for drilling wells, which the companies don’t mind since the Iraqi government picks up the tab.
In Kurdistan in the north, the regional government awards contracts on land outside its jurisdiction, contracts which permit the government to transfer its stake in the oil projects -- up to 25% -- to private companies of its choice. Fuel is smuggled across the border to the tune of hundreds of tankers a day."
Meanwhile, to protect the oil giants from dissent and protest, trade union offices have beenraided, computers seized and equipment smashed, leaders arrested and prosecuted. And that’s just in the oil-rich southern part of the country. 

Friday, August 17, 2012

Baseless Deconstruction: How Your Dollars Became Ghost Towns in Iraq | Common Dreams

Baseless Deconstruction: How Your Dollars Became Ghost Towns in Iraq | Common Dreams
"A war and occupation thousands of miles away that lasted seven years and involved more than 1.5 million Americans, military and civilian, has passed into the history books and yet we still know remarkably little about so much of it.  Take American military bases in Iraq.  There were, of course, none in March 2003 when the Bush administration launched its regime-change invasion with dreams of garrisoning that particular stretch of the planet’s oil heartlands for generations to come."

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Notorious Firm Blackwater to Pay $7.5 Million Fine While Dodging Prosecution | Common Dreams

Notorious Firm Blackwater to Pay $7.5 Million Fine While Dodging Prosecution | Common Dreams
"The notorious private military contracting firm formerly known as Blackwater has agreed to pay a fine of $7.5 million that allows it to avoid prosecution for 17 charges including arms smuggling, marking the end of a five-year federal criminal investigation, according to documents released Tuesday in a U.S. District Court in North Carolina."