Iraq

Chevron, once part of the Standard Oil empire, has grown over the past quarter century into the world’s fourth largest petroleum company, thanks to a series of ambitious acquisitions: Gulf Oil in 1984, Texaco in 2001 and Unocal in 2005. The purchase of Texaco brought with it a massive environmental lawsuit that has dragged on for more than a decade. This is only one of a host of controversies surrounding Chevron’s environmental and human rights record around the world.

by Qasim Lutfi

The American Arab Chamber of Commerce (AACC) recently hosted an event to discuss “investment opportunities” with the Iraqi government. That is, the sectarian, illegitimate, puppet Iraqi government that was installed in the wake of the illegal US invasion of Iraq.

Pratap Chatterjee

On June 21 Jerry Torres, whose company provides translators and armed security guards in Iraq, was invited to testify before the Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC). The bi-partisan body was created by the U.S. Congress in early 2008 to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in military contracting services in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All five participants in the blockade action. From left to right are Iraq Veterans Bobby Whittenberg-James and Crystal Colon, Jeff Grant, Military Spouse Cynthia Thomas and Afghanistan Veteran Matthis Chiroux.

Aug. 23, 2010 (KILLEEN, TX) - Five peace activists successfully blockaded six buses carrying Fort Hood Soldiers deploying to Iraq outside Fort Hood’s Clarke gate this morning at around 4 a.m. While the activists took the width of Clarke Rd.

BP (formerly British Petroleum) has become one of the world’s most controversial giant corporations because of its involvement in a series of major environmental disasters and industrial accidents. The company has been the target of intense criticism for its role in the April 2010 explosion at a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and unleashed a vast underwater oil leak that flowed largely unchecked for weeks.

Citigroup, operating as Citi, is a major financial services company based in New York City. Formed by the 1998 merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group, the company employs 332,000 people around the world and holds over 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries.

The United States this year will have spent $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report to be released Tuesday.

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of priv

According to information from iraqupdates.com, the security and defence committee of the Iraqi parliament recommended a return to conscription as it called on the Defence Ministry to amend a previous draft law submitted to the cabinet and the Iraqi legislative council.

According to the Iraqi constitution, national service will be stipulated by law (article 9 paragraph 2). 

Hadi al-Ameri, chairman of parliament’s defence and security committee, said reinstating the draft was necessary given the country’s current co

Supplement to Peace News, February 2008

Resist Military Globalisation!

Five years after the Iraq war started: an international action weekend at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Europe serves as a staging ground for military interventions worldwide. The framework can differ: NATO, EU, US coalition of the willing, UN. The target as well: Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, .... But the departure points not: military bases, airports and harbours in Europe. Europe hosts a large military intervention machinery.

Economic globalisation also has its military correlary.

Hands Off Iraqi Oil held a demonstration outside the Middle East Energy 2008 conference at Chatham House in London on Tuesday 5 February.

Iraqi oil minister Dr Hussain Al-Shahristani and UK minister Malcolm Wicks spoke at the conference, which was financed by the British companies BP and Shell, as well as ExxonMobil and StatoilHydro.

Demonstrators were warning that Iraq would lose billions of pounds in oil income under a proposed new law which the British and US governments are pressing the Baghdad administration

The Center for Public Integrity is releasing their latest investigative report. Following up the Center's highly acclaimed 2003 Windfalls of War, which profiled U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, their staff have worked to expose further information about what's behind those contracts:

KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S.