Loose cannons

The Lucky (for some) Country

"In just 15 years the average yearly income of some of Australia's most powerful chief executives has risen 564 per cent to $3.4 million, new research shows. Between 1990 and 2005 the average annual regular cash earnings of company chief executives, who were also members of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), went from $514,000 to $3.4 million. Their incomes now outweigh the average full-time wage earner by a ratio of 63 to 1." - Australian Financial Review, January 27.

Insurgent managers

"Ali Allawi, Iraq's finance minister, estimated that insurgents reap 40 to 50 percent of all oil-smuggling profits in the country ... he said that the insurgency had infiltrated senior management positions at the major northern refinery in Beiji ... This allows the insurgents and their confederates to tap the pipeline ... and sell the oil or gas themselves." - New York Times, February 5.

Anti-war merchants of death

"While many companies benefit from supplying vehicles and guns to US troops in Iraq, some defense firms and industry experts are concerned that money spent on Iraq is taking away from more lucrative, longer-term multibillion-dollar programs ... If high Iraq costs persist, large programs like the Army's Future Combat Systems modernization plan, led by Boeing Co., and Lockheed Martin Corp.'s state-of-the-art Joint Strike Fighter jet, are likely to be scaled back or stretched out, industry analysts said." - Reuters, February 6.

Bring the bucks home now!

"We can't afford all the [weapons] platforms we started. So two things have to happen: the Iraqi [US] troop level has to come down, and the US uniformed military is going to [have to] be reduced by about 100,000." - Frank Lanza, chief executive of defence contractor L-3 Communications Holdings, the Pentagon's ninth largest supply, quoted by Reuters, February 6.

From Green Left Weekly, February 15, 2006.

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From GLW issue 656