Month: August 2008

Photo from 917press

Making a Killing: The Military-Industrial Complex and Impacts on the Third World

Aziz Choudry August 20, 2008 Aziz Choudry

In the late 1990s, well before Bush's 'war on terror', New Zealand TV screened a particularly awful US action drama called 'Soldier of Fortune Inc.', about an elite team (composed of former US Marines, Delta Force, CIA, British SAS personnel) who performed 'unofficial' covert missions for the US Government. They would get a briefcase full of money from a shadowy military liaison and head to the Middle East, Latin America, Haiti, or the Balkans, or smoke out foreign agents and assorted enemies within the USA, missions for which Washington could claim plausible deniability because none were active duty soldiers. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it to keep 'US democracy' safe, for a price. Sounds familiar?

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Apocalypse Now? Miami Model Applied to Republican National Convention in Minnesota

Cyril Mychalejko August 19, 2008 Cyril Mychalejko

Police Force in Miami, 2003
Five years ago this November, the Miami police department, with the assistance of Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal government agencies, unleashed a violent paramilitary occupation of Miami in order to curtail protests against the now defunct proposal to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas. This same anti-protest model will be applied at the September 1-4 Republication National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Georgia On My Mind: From West Point to the Caucasus

Conn Hallinan August 18, 2008 Conn Hallinan

Georgians Flee Russia
One of the major causes of the recent war in Georgia has nothing to do with the historic tensions that make the Caucasus such a flashpoint between east and west. Certainly the long-stranding ethnic enmity between Ossetians and Georgians played a role, as did the almost visceral dislike between Moscow and Tbilisi. But the origins of the short, brutal war go back six years to a June afternoon at West Point.

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Internet Access Fuels Development in War-Torn Uganda

Siena Anstis August 14, 2008 Siena Anstis

Teacher Charles Okumu in Lacor
Not far from the closely packed mud huts of Pabo camp for internally displaced persons in Northern Uganda, the Catholic parish office lights up like a beacon in the inky night of this war-torn area; the region has never had electricity. Last year, the Pabo diocese used a wireless internet connection provided by an NGO to apply for a $40,000 grant for solar panels. Now the health center has an internet phone they can use to call free anywhere in the world, and students at Pabo secondary school are sharing stories of abduction and war on personal blogs.