‘Best of Phinney’ Archives
Marching Back to the Future: The Department of Peace
Max Boot parades his bright ideas about the use of civilians in wartime environments in The Los Angeles Times: How Bush can ensure no more Iraqs The U.S. is only a few bright ideas away from being the nation builder it needs to be. In the opening graph, Boot claims that one of the "most intriguing elements" of President Bush's State of the Union [...]
Energy Independence in 10 Years
Imagine President Bush announcing a national plan to achieve US energy independence by 2011 the day after the 9-11 attack in 2001. We may have already been half way there in reaching the goal. Bush could have muscled all of his political capital and the collective national will to support the development of energy efficient products and [...]
Babylon Rising in the Jet Age
Things began looking more sketchier than ever to John Owens as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back to Iraq in March 2005 following some R&R in Kuwait city. Working as a general construction foreman for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, the lead builder for the new $592-million US embassy in Baghdad, Owen remembers being [...]
Asian Workers Smuggled to Build World’s Largest Embassy
Oct. 17, 2006. CorpWatch, Alternet, Inter Press Service, Asia Times, Counterpunch and others (October 2006). Recipient of Project Censored award and Online News Association fiinalist for investigative journalism. Helped trigger investigations by US Justice [...]
All that Jazz about “Viva la Nueva Orleans”
New Orleans will end up looking like Los Angeles soon, thanks to the flood of illegal workers flooding in from south of the border to do the rebuilding along the Gulf Coast. That's the prediction of a Los Angeles Times commentary. Why will this be? The Department of Homeland Security temporarily suspended sanctions against employers hiring workers [...]
Adding Insult to Injury
Injured Halliburton contractors return home to fight battle for medical and disability coverage: CorpWatch (May 2005). This story has legs. It identified early on the unforeseen challenges faced by injured contractors coming home from Iraq. As a result, many producers [...]
‘Contract Meals Disaster’ for Abu Ghraib Prisoners
Is this how the situation began deteriorating at Abu Ghraib? CorpWatch Dec. 9, 2004 'Contract Meals Disaster' for Iraqi Prisoners by David Phinney Rotten food crawling with bugs, traces of rats and dirt. Rancid meats and spoiled food resulting in diarrhea and food poisoning. This is what detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad [...]
