antipopper

I’m stuck in a whacky occupation of Worley Corporation, a war profiteering company that has an $800 million contract with the US Army to “reconstruct” oil infrastructure in Iraq. About thirty of us arrived at their office and started supergluing little toy soldiers to various surfaces, sticking up posters and generally making a polite nuisance of ourselves. Unfortunately we’re now in a negotiation deadlock with the company about confronting them with questions about their role in Iraq.

There are different positions amongst the occupiers as to how and why we should go about this: some want to get answers about how Worley’s contract is a reward for the presence of Australian troops; others think the quest for official word from these guys is somewhat irrelevant. I’m sympathetic to both kinds of position, but I also reckon that it’s pretty naive to think that a “valid” free-market contract, rather than one directly linked to Australia’s war involvement, would be much less scandalous. As with most of my opinions on the “scandals” surrounding the war, such things are horribly indicative of how things are working, but that our opposition shouldn’t hinge on corporations behaving or misbehaving according to various ideas of capitalist respectability.

We’re going around in circles with their minions. Tired now.