Whiskey Annex

A serious policy against terrorism

I'd like to take this site away from tin foil hat territory, if you don't mind...
Let's also avoid Bush, swiftvets, negative campaigning and the SLCM and actually focus on policy issues...

I wrote back in May the following posts (when I had time to care about substantive issues...) which I bring again to your attention to start the discussion. Their titles are quite explicit:

A policy against terrorism
"It would be a great thing to see Al-Qaeda taking over Saudi Arabia or Pakistan"
The French experience with terrorism

So, how should Kerry wage the fight against terrorism? Do we agree here that it is essentially police action and diplomatic cooperation? So, and maybe more importantly, how should he package it for the public to make it palatable?

Getting a Grip

I notice that the peak oil event is starting to get a mention in the more daring print media. This would be good news, if it weren't for the relentlessly Pollyannistic, physically clueless responses being printed alongside to defuse any sense of alarm or urgency. Unfortunately the American reading public (and I suspect most of the wealthy industrialised world) is energy-illiterate enough to believe the soothing noises -- "green cars," "hydrogen economy," "clean nukes," "ethanol fuels," "solar panels," and the like. Some of these soothing noises are ridiculous per se -- there is no such thing as a "green" car -- and others are merely oversold, but all of them come down to one basic promise: that Americans (and by extension America-wannabes like the Commonwealth, N Europe, Japan, etc.) can somehow have their cake and eat it too, that is, go on living just the way they (we) do now, except miraculously made clean and green and sustainable.

My personal belief is that this is a big, fat, self-serving, dangerous lie -- a Rapture cult for consumerism. Some may disagree, but this is (for the moment) my thread and I wish to do a bit of (mercifully brief I promise) anecdote, then post a couple of important URLs, then (hopefully) discuss . . .

Here's one anecdote. Wearing my Illichian, carfree advocate hat, I have a website which drew the attention of a local community TV producer type. He invited me to appear on a panel discussion which he said would be about "alternative transportation and the future of transport" in our town and nationally. After asking him some wary questions I agreed, and showed up prepared to advocate for a carfree and/or car-lite lifestyle. Well, the show turned out to be not quite as advertised and I found myself the only non-politician on a panel of battling local politicians all arguing for their favourite porkbarrel projects, none of which in my view qualified as "alternative" (all being massive energy hogs and boondoggles).

One of the panelists was a county rep of some kind, who was there to give her canny, politically astute spiel for a $500M highway widening project. Never mind that the budget numbers for the project are hopelessly optimistic, never mind the 30-year TTT study that shows the very poor cost-benefit performance of this type of project -- she was there to sell it. At some point during the discussion I was asked by the moderator (the only one who would let me get a word in edgewise, bless his heart!) whether I thought the highway project a good use of public funds. As politely as possible I said No, I thought that in the 10-15 years it would take to complete, the cost of oil is likely to rise sufficiently high that private auto transport will become an option for fewer and fewer people, and we will have spent a lot of money on a bandaid for yesterday's problem as two-hour private-auto commutes become unaffordable.

The pro-highway-widening woman reacted with bright, perky denial. "Oh no," she enthused, "I can't imagine a future without cars. I'm sure my grandchildren will be driving their cars just like we do today -- I mean, we Americans are practically born with car keys in our pockets, aren't we? [ladylike chuckle] And I have faith in Good Old American Know-How. I'm sure we'll be driving our cars 10, 20, 50 years from now -- even if they're powered on, oh, peanut butter or something."

This is the point where my jaw dropped and I had a hard time staying civil. If you know the energy density of refined gasoline vs the energy density of one-season plant material -- even the richest products like rapeseed or soya oil, beet sugar, etc. -- you know that it isn't even in the ballpark. I did the math once, for fun, with some other online geeky friends, and we figured that if we converted every acre of US cropland to corn/beet production for ethanol, or soy production for soyadiesel, the current US vehicle fleet could not be powered with the resulting fuel. Not to mention all the other energy drains in the society, or the displacement of food crops in favour of fuel crops. So the blithering idiocy of this "peanut butter" remark floored me.

I pressed the issue, but all I got was "faith in American ingenuity and technological leadership" (never mind that the US is actually behind many other countries in energy conservation research). In other words, flag-waving, profound ignorance, and blank denial. In later ravings to online friends I wrote

It was at this point that I realised no one on this panel -- not the so-called "liberal" councilmember with the PRT fixation, not the polite and charming but clueless host, and certainly not the freeway freaks or even the guy from the bus company -- had the slightest belief or conviction that tomorrow will be any different from yesterday. The idea of a genuine energy shortage was just not real to them -- not real at all, inconceivable, laughable, zany. Every solution they were dreaming of to their "traffic problem" presumed an endless supply of cheap energy to make it happen -- even Mr Bus Company was happily rhapsodizing over fuel cells and bigger buses.

. . .

It was totally, absolutely, frustrating and scary. Sitting in that overlit, overwarm TV studio participating in the bizarre ritual of the "TV panel discussion" (which was no discussion at all but these professional pols reciting their rehearsed sales pitches while going smiley-smiley at each other), I realised with a sinking heart that the Americans will very likely kill every last Muslim in Greater Arabia if that's what it takes to keep the fantasy of cheap energy alive a few more years. It was a Hannah Arendt moment if I ever had one. Those people terrified me.

. . .

Peanut butter... Ohmigawd.

One more anecdote and then I'm through. I was talking about climate change and carbon release with an old (and good) friend w/whom I was vacationing by train. We were talking about the intractability of US consumer culture and carbon emissions, and I mentioned Mayer Hillman's proposal for "carbon rationing." Under his (sketchy) scheme, individuals would be entitled to release a certain amount of carbon (say, by fossil fuel consumption) each year; we could choose whether to use our ration for air travel, luxury air conditioning, consumer goods delivery, etc.

It seemed a saner scheme to me than (a) simply throwing up our hands and watching the climate deteriorate to the point where it threatens our agricultural base, or (b) "free market" rationing de facto by wealth and privilege (only the rich can afford to travel or have any air conditioning at all). To my surprise, my (American) friend responded with mulish resentment and denial. "You can't be saying you want to ration air travel," she said firmly. "People wouldn't stand for it, and it wouldn't be fair, and how would people get to visit their families, and what if someone had a sick relative that they needed to go see, and what about business travel, and..." (and, and, and -- it was a long list of excuses).

The bottom line was that my rational, fairly-well-read, quite sensible friend was evidently not willing to forgo even one or two of the several air trips she takes every year. "You can't give the government that kind of power over people's personal choices," she said agitatedly. "Next thing you know they'll be able to force church attendance or ban abortions or who knows what." Now, my friend was perfectly happy to comply with water rationing measures a couple of summers back when we had a drought, and she's a staunch advocate of gun control. So my conclusion was that I had hit on a nerve here: that my friend was more similar to "Joe Average Amurkan" than I had realised, in that she considered unlimited air travel to be a right, an entitlement, not a privilege or a luxury that might have to be set aside for the greater good.

"You can't just tell people not to travel," she said angrily. "You have to offer them a better alternative to airplanes -- like a high speed rail network, with affordable tickets." I tried to point out that it would take 20 years or more to build a national high-speed rail network, with the best will in the world, unlimited budget, and competent/honest project management (any bets?) -- and that would be 20 years of increased fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions, particularly if everyone goes on travelling by air while they wait for Big Brother to offer them a different lollipop that tastes just as good. But nothing made a dent. My friend was bound and determined that no one could or should tell her how many air miles she could travel in a year -- let the planet burn, she was going to go on flying.

My friend was an environmental studies major, and weeps when she hears about forests being clearcut. I say this not to mock her, but to point out how deeply in the American subconscious is wired the sense of entitlement to squanderous use of energy, and how deep the resistance is to any change. My friend loathes the Bush clan entire, and yet in her own way she was telling me exactly what Bush Senior said at Kyoto: "The American lifestyle is not negotiable."

Now for my own perspective: for at least ten years, probably longer -- I have felt a gut-level certainty that the way of life which prevails in the wealthy countries (G7) is inherently unsustainable and has a very short future, and that we're all going to have to make significant adjustments one way or another. The "one way or another" being (a) by some kind of planning, voluntarily or by community coordination, to attempt a "soft landing" before the fossil fuel runs out, or (b) by continuing full-speed ahead into the brick wall. Two limiting factors face us. One is the finite reserves of fossil fuel; the other is the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon. If we had infinite fossil fuel reserves we still could not afford to burn them due to the various toxic and "greenhouse" effects; and if we had an atmosphere miraculously able to absorb three Earthsworth of carbon (which is what it would have to do if the rest of the world population "industrialises" even to half the luxury-level of the First World), we don't have the fossil fuel to do it, or to keep it up for more than the blink of an eye, historically speaking.

And this is the point at which everyone starts babbling hopefully about hydrogen, ethanol, nuke plants, solar panels . . . and peanut butter. And, having done a fair amount of reading and some of the math, over the last ten years, I say Balderdash -- there is only one way to a soft landing, and that is to reduce our energy consumption by an enormous factor, so that we can direct the remaining energy reserves to a crash programme in more efficient, lighter, less stupid technologies, agricultural reform, etc. This of course places me (and others who think like this) on a direct collision course with "growth" economists, corporate agribusiness, and the whole (imho insane) ideology and social/economic model they have promoted for the last couple of hundred years. OTOH, it places us on the right side of the laws of thermodynamics -- and if push comes to fall, I will back the laws of thermodynamics against the economists every time.

In support of my grim assessment of the strategic situation -- as a supplement to Jerome's astute analysis of the tactical situation -- I offer Stan Goff's latest (bear with him in the somewhat rambling earlier part of the essay, the physics is in the second half):

Kerry's "Energy Plan"

and to Richard Manning's informed and haunting essay from Harper's,

The Oil We Eat

I could pile on more and more URLs, web sites, books, articles, etc, 'cos I read and think about this stuff all the time. But I think I'll leave it here (this is more than enough reading for one evening) and say merely this: there is only one real currency in the world and that is energy. At present N American agriculture burns 90 calories to produce one calorie of corporate/industrial food. How long can we keep this up? How long can we keep this up and call it "cheap"? And (aside from slaughtering 90 percent of the other people on earth to steal their resources) what are we gonna do about it?

Vichy Left -- or Left in Exile?

I observe some of the same phenomena to which Jerome draws our attention in the "Vichy Left" topic; however I place a slightly different interpretation on (at least some of) the infighting we see in (what remains of) the US Left. This is a modified repost of a rantlet I put up at MoA some weeks back, and I guess the moral is that I am not sure the US Left is wholly responsible for the sorry state of the US Left. A lot of its sad condition goes back, imho, to the post-war years and Joe McCarthy's clever con game . . .

Something that has always amazed me is how damned effective the McCarthyist putsch of the 50's was in destroying the US Left -- not only by suicide, expatriation, demoralisation, intimidation and the like, not merely by a propaganda campaign the like of which the modern West had never seen before (read Red Scared for a reminder), but by turning the culture of the Left into a broken, paranoid, revanchist cult of survivors, with all the weirdness that entails.

I am thinking of the connection with what someone (x?) said at some time in blog-history, about refugee expat cultures being more "patriotic," more nationalistic or fundie in a very unrealistic, desperate way than those who stayed home and lived through the various crises, etc. -- x (or whoever) was referring to US Zionist Jews vs Israeli Jews iirc, and how the hardline Likudism and intolerance for dissent in the US community is not really mirrored in Israel where there is more variety of public discourse and room for dissent, protest, and seeking some kind of different future.

In some ways it seems to me that the US Left (the die hards) have never progressed emotionally, intellectually, or historically beyond the twin disasters of the 50's -- the revelation of Stalinist abuses in the USSR, which shook the CP to its foundations, and the McCarthyite persecutions. They/we got "stuck", like Miami Cubans, US Zionists, and many other refugee communities (the White Russians in London and Paris after the Revolution). Some tossed away their national/ethnic identity in bitterness and resolved to assimilate at any cost, others clung grimly to an ironbound fantasy of a lost homeland, and responded with irrational rage to any attempt to update or compromise that vision. By analogy what we ended up with was a lot of people with broken hearts, totally disillusioned by the failure of the USSR (and then the revelations of Red Guard excesses and abuses under Mao which pretty much cast the Maoists into despair); and a lot of raving fundies (ANSWER and their ilk) who considered it all merely a test of ideological faith and purity, and are still worshiping Trotsky. I'm oversimplifying of course. But I think the parallel is there and it explains something about the US today.

It seems to me in my half-assed autodidactic pseudo-scholarship, that this cataclysmic break in the history of the US Left crippled the whole country in some way -- intellectually, morally -- for dealing honestly with issues of class, wealth, and power. The Left in the US was never allowed to progress to being a Social Democratic party in a proportional system, acting as the people's tribune, preventing the excesses of the Right. I fear it is this lack of a necessary counterbalance that has left us vulnerable to the long rightward drift (now more like a skid) and rule by the Bush Mafia (or the Boston Brahmin Mafia, whatever, but they're all millionaires).

In the US we are not allowed to talk about class. Even to talk about it is to be accused of "class warfare" by the victorious class warriors of the wealthy Right or their paid propagandists -- somewhat similar in atmosphere to the days when any woman raising a feminist issue was immediately accused of being a lesbian man-hater (now that should shut her right up!)... bizarrely it appears that over the last few decades the kneejerk homophobia and misogyny and racism of American mainstream culture has been softened a bit, I won't say reformed, but mitigated; but the tabu on discussing class and wealth and inequality remains as strong as ever.

Forget the FCC and their issues with nasty language on the air -- the real forbidden obscenity in US public discourse is the word "class", or any suggestion that the unlimited accumulation of wealth by the few at the expense of the polity is not such a good thing. If we can't get past that self-censorship and censorship from on high, then we're never going to be able to figure out such basic, Democracy 1A things as a living wage, childcare, affordable housing, public transit and the like -- amenities that people in the other wealthy nations take for granted.

And there is this phenomenon, well-documented, in marginalised or oppressed groups -- people excluded from the power and "reality stream" of their culture, people whose point of view is never represented in public fora, whose existence is quietly or loudly denied, who never get their say or their turn at bat. It's called "horizontal hostility" (it has other names) and it basically means taking it out on each other -- the rage, the frustration, the resentment -- taking potshots at each other because The Man is too far away and high and mighty to reach.

The neverending insult and frustration of being silenced ("having one's reality denied" as we used to say years ago) and ignored by a whole culture produces a pent-up anger and impatience; anyone "on our side" who actually gets some air time cannot possibly say or do all the things, articulate all the positions, that the submerged rest of us are dying to say or to hear said. So no matter what that rare token/spokesbod manages to achieve or say, it will not be enough, it cannot assuage the accumulated rage and resentment of the rest of the team. And that person, the nail that sticks up, is an easier target than the Masters of the Universe. So it's easy and tempting to throw rocks at him or her, denounce the impurity of his/her ideology, express our bitter disappointment at his/her deficiencies etc. That one visible person -- that token presence permitted by the stifling Ueberkultur -- has to bear the weight of millions of people's repressed hopes, fears, bright ideas, etc. It's an impossible task.

F'rexample... say it's 60 years ago and you get to the the One Black Actor that Hollywood permits on the screen -- is everyone back home going to be just delighted with your performance? You gotta be kidding :-) The expectations are so high, failure is guaranteed, recriminations are inevitable. Any little slip you make, any flaw of character, and you'll be seen as having let the whole racial community down. Similarly for lefties/progressives marginalised to the point of invisibility in US media culture. Everyone feels that they could have done a better job if given the same opportunity, that they would represent "our side's" position more brilliantly and with less humiliating compromises, blah blah.

Anyway, aside from the natural human vices of pride, envy, and arrogance :-) I think that the 50's putsch against US leftists and intellectuals not only wrecked the US film industry for a good 20 years or more, leaving it in a state of arrested development -- it also wrecked the US Left, emotionally, socially, politically. Systematic abuse or repression doesn't usually make people nicer or more reasonable. Tends to make them crazier.

Whether Mikey qualifies as a Leftist is a whole other question and I'm not sure I want to go there. I'd call him a Populist. But then I tend to fall in with Bruce Anderson (recently in Counterpunch): "For the record, and although as a kid I kept regular company with commies of all kinds, I am, philosophically considered, an anarcho-syndicalist, the only political theories that have ever resonated with me, although reading Marx in my formative years has been kinda like eating forbidden fruit in that ever after absorbing the old boy's explanation of the way the world works I've seen it his way as the truest explanation there is. I always liked Eugene Debs, a democratic socialist, and I've admired everything I've ever read about the old IWW, but I'm no Leninist. Never have been."

"Man, This is War a Go-Go..."

(channelling Country Joe there)

$1.9 Billion Of Iraq's Money Goes To U.S. Contractors

Halliburton Co. and other U.S. contractors are being paid at least $1.9 billion from Iraqi funds under an arrangement set by the U.S.-led occupation authority, according to a review of documents and interviews with government agencies, companies and auditors.

Most of the money is for two controversial deals that originally had been financed with money approved by the U.S. Congress, but later shifted to Iraqi funds that were governed by fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight.

For the first 14 months of the occupation, officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority provided little detailed information about the Iraqi money, from oil sales and other sources, that it spent on reconstruction contracts. They have said that it was used for the benefit of the Iraqi people and that most of the contracts paid from Iraqi money went to Iraqi companies. But the CPA never released information about specific contracts and the identities of companies that won them, citing security concerns, so it has been impossible to know whether these promises were kept.

The CPA has said it has awarded about 2,000 contracts with Iraqi money. Its inspector general compiled records for the major contracts, which it defined as those worth $5 million or more each. Analysis of those and other records shows that 19 of 37 major contracts funded by Iraqi money went to U.S. companies and at least 85 percent of the total $2.26 billion was obligated to U.S. companies. The contracts that went to U.S. firms may be worth several hundred million more once the work is completed.

That analysis and several audit reports released in recent weeks shed new light on how the occupation authority handled the Iraqi money it controlled. They show that the CPA at times violated its own rules, authorizing Iraqi money when it didn't have a quorum or proper Iraqi representation at meetings, and kept such sloppy records that the paperwork for several major contracts could not be found. During the first half of the occupation, the CPA depended heavily on no-bid contracts that were questioned by auditors. And the occupation's shifting of projects that were publicly announced to be financed by U.S. money to Iraqi money prompted the Iraqi finance minister to complain that the "ad hoc" process put the CPA in danger of losing the trust of the people.

Early on, the Administration claimed that the CPA couldn't be audited because it wasn't a government agency. Right - all it did was commit funds appropriated by Congress!

Here's the latest from the always valuable Col David Hackworth's "Soldiers for the Truth":

One of the Biggest Heists in History

In Iraq, $8.8 billion is MIA. Serious dough even for the big spenders in Washington, D.C.

A pal in Iraq slipped me a draft Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Inspector General (IG) report dated July 12, 2004, that blisters the CPA for giving the missing billions to Iraqi ministries without appropriate controls.

The IG report concludes: “The CPA did not provide adequate stewardship of over $8.8 billion in DFI (Development Fund for Iraq) funds provided to Iraqi Ministries through the national budget process. Specifically, the CPA did not establish and implement adequate managerial, financial, and contractual controls over the funds to ensure they were used in a transparent manner.”

Offshore bankers must be burning the midnight oil these days with all the new secret accounts pouring out of Baghdad!

And small wonder that L. Paul Bremer went to ground in June after he turned the running of Iraq over to the Iraqis, closed down the CPA and flew home for an attaboy lunch with President Bush at the White House.

From an archived article (no link):

Washington Post, February 10, 2004

Iraqi Contractors Frustrated

By Jackie Spinner, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Iraq Governing Council's top representative in Washington yesterday criticized the U.S.-led occupation authority for passing over Iraqi firms in awarding billions of dollars worth of reconstruction contracts.

Rend Rahim Francke, the U.S. appointed council's ambassador-designate to the United States, said the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is not making good on its pledge to employ Iraqis, which is seen as a key to stabilizing the country.

"Ultimately, American companies can come and build bridges and power plants. But these companies will be gone," she said during speech at a conference in Washington on reconstruction in Iraq. "We need to build capacity" for Iraqi firms, she said. "Jobs for Iraq will create stability and peace . . . and curb terrorism."

...the CPA and U.S. agencies awarding contracts do not make it easy for Iraqi firms to compete. For example, the bid packages are only printed in English and not published in print so Iraqi firms without Internet access can review them.

"The challenges you face with the CPA is they don't get out of the Green Zone," he said, referring to the fortified compound where the authority is headquartered. "They don't get out in Iraqi businesses. It seems to me an initiative needs to be taken by the U.S. government to publish the bids where they can be read in a language [in which] they can be [understood]."

How well are our selfless contractors doing?

Contract Figures Show Halliburton's Startling Growth

Halliburton, the giant services firm formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, saw a sixfold increase in earnings from contracts with the Defense Department last year, making the Houston-based company the nation's seventh largest defense contractor.

Halliburton received Pentagon contracts worth $491 million in 2002; that figure shot up to $3.1 billion in 2003.

Data on the top 200 federal contractors was compiled for Government Executive by Eagle Eye Publishers Inc. of Fairfax, Va., from information collected by the General Services Administration. A full list of top contractors will be published in the magazine's Aug. 15 issue.

The bulk of Halliburton's 2003 federal revenues derived from two sole-source contracts let by the Army to Halliburton's engineering and construction division, Kellogg, Brown and Root, before the invasion of Iraq. Under one contract, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, which ultimately could be worth up to $5.6 billion, the company provides logistical support to troops, such as cooking, laundry, housing and other services. The other agreement, known as the RIO contract, worth $2.5 billion, was to fight oil-field fires that U.S. commanders anticipated before the start of the war and to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure during reconstruction.

Both contracts have been controversial. David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, told the House Government Reform Committee in June that a GAO audit showed that the LOGCAP contract was poorly managed.

In particular, Walker criticized a $1.9 million task order issued under the auspices of the contract by the Army Field Support Command in November 2002. The task order directed KBR to develop a plan to repair and restore Iraq's oil infrastructure should Iraqi forces damage or destroy it. GAO determined that the task order fell outside the scope of the LOGCAP contract and should not have been issued. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded Kellogg, Brown and Root the RIO contract four months later on the basis of work performed under the questionable task order.

(also note the article linked from the above article "GOP blocks war-profiteering amendment")

In fiscal year 2002, Halliburton was only #37. And the six contractors above them on the new list all make things for DOD - Halliburton just does things. According to Bloomberg.com last February:

• Lockheed Martin Corp. $21.9 B
• Boeing $17.3 B
• Northrop Grumman Corp. $11.1 B
• General Dynamics Corp. $8.2 B
• Raytheon Co. $7.9 B
• United Technologies Corp. $4.5 B

Whoops - did I describe Halliburton as "selfless"?

New York Times, January 30, 2004

The Halliburton Shuffle

By Bob Herbert

Can you spell Halliburton? R-i-p- o-f-f.

War-torn Iraq has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another treasure trove of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no peer in the fine art of extracting riches from the government.

But if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have, you'll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the government that has been so good to it.

Annual reports filed with the S.E.C. since the mid-90's — when Dick Cheney took over as chief executive and wrote the game plan for garnering government goodies — showed Halliburton subsidiaries incorporated in such places as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu.

Vanuatu? Who knew?

Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and subsistence farming. "Additional revenues," according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, "derive from a growing tourist industry and the development of Vila [the capital] as a corporate tax shelter."

Halliburton, in an S.E.C. filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu) Ltd.

The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it's indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton's tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, "After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability."

That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a ride.

In the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private profit-making companies. Brown & Root came up with myriad ideas in a classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to implement its own plan.

Mr. Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, and the defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.

Halliburton is bound so intimately to the defense establishment it might as well be an adjunct to the military. (Mr. Cheney still receives deferred compensation from Halliburton but insists he has no role in the awarding of contracts.)

Halliburton is an organization that has the reach of a multinational and the eyes of a Willie Sutton. Through its subsidiaries, it has done work with countries the U.S. has accused of supporting terror. It was accused of overcharging the U.S. government for work done in the 1990's, and in 2002 it agreed to pay a $2 million settlement in response to accusations that it had defrauded the government.

So, Halliburton was given incredibly lucrative contracts for which they drafted the specs? Does this remind anyone of how a certain Vice President got his current job?

Overall, I'd say the Administration is serving the Iraqis' interests in much the same way the FCC and media giants are serving (as mandated) the public's interest - by lining the pockets of the already well-connected. That is to say, damn little.

Further reading:

What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?

Making Money on Terrorism

Rep Henry Waxman and The Committee on Government Reform

Gloomy nation - Emigrants

I am a member of gloomy “nation” of Emigrants. Trough out Cold war Western countries (and USA was leading one) represented “safe heaven” for so many political asylum seekers and rightly. It was all about freedom of speech and democracy and human rights.

If anybody would told me that I’ll live to witness great Americans seeking political asylum because they plainly have different political opinion then official one and are threatened with 10 years of imprisonment because of it, I certainly wouldn’t believe him. But strange times we live in managed to add another awfully strange experience.
As a matter of fact in times strange like these it’s becoming a possibility for quite a few Americans to come in Fischer’s shoes and ask for political asylum around the globe. Specially if we are to see “4 more years” of Bush and then another “4 more years” of his brother and then another “4 more years” of…If the world is still “orbiting” after that…And I’ll tell you Americans may not be very welcomed around the globe, either because of fear of others to “put a finger in Bushco eye” or just because they don’t like you any more.
I can remember how we Serbs were denied political asylum (except deserters from the Army and maybe some key opposition figures that were imprisoned at some point) during Milosevic’s grab of power and most of all during bombardment of Serbia (Serbs could rarely get even visitors visas just to avoid to be killed in bombardment). I wouldn’t know who’s decision this was but I had a feeling that it even was “unspoken” rule for any of Western countries. They felt they were “right” and we were “evil”…all of us.
So here I would like to know how do you feel about Fischer’s case (and alike) having in mind new prospective that you as Americans found your selves in.
Here is the text:
US CHESS MASTER SEEKS ASYLUM
3.8.2004. 09:36:27
Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has applied for political asylum in Japan in a bid to escape deportation to the United States..
More here: http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=90691®ion=4

Mothers and Spiders

I told the spiders they had to leave my house.
"But this is our house!" they said. "It is ours by law of the divine cycle."
Yes, I know about the divine cycle, but I'm sorry, I really am, you must go now.
"This is our house." they hissed, "there is no life here."
I'm here.
"For now, yes, but we are strong and this is our house by divine law."
There is life here, you cannot stay.

"We want this house, it is dead and the dead belongs to us by law of the..."
Yes, yes, I know all that, but there is life here and you must leave. I will take my broom and wipe down your daughter nests. I will be gentle and put them where you can retrieve them, but you must leave now. There is life here, this house is not yours. Go tell your children that no harm will come to them or their children as long as they leave now. If you stay, I will have to kill you. You cannot be here.
You have to leave. I cannot say it any more clearly.
"I want to stay. I want this house!"
I know you do, but if you stay I will be forced to kill you.
"You know I have the power to kill you if I wanted to?"
Yes, you do. And that would kill us all. So here is your only choice. You must leave now. This is not your house.
“What about the wasps? I’m afraid of the wasps.”
Of course you are, but you forget that I am the mother of the wasps and the scorpions. This is our house, this our land. You are not welcome here. You must leave now or the scorpions will wash my house with your blood. How can I make you understand. I cannot put my house in order if you are here. There is so much work to be done. You must leave now so I can begin.
“I have killed your wasps and scorpions! I will bring more spiders to control them. I want to be in this house. It will be ours by the law of the divine cycle.”
Foolish child, look around you. The wasps and scorpions have hidden their nests well. This is their house, and they will never let you stay. You must leave before the sand bleeds red with the blood of your children. You have killed my children. I cannot be merciful if you stay. You must leave now.
“The father has forgiven us for killing your children. The father has told us that this is our house.”
The father can forgive death, but I am the mother. I am responsible for life. I cannot forgive, I can only be merciful. Go now and you will live. Stay, and you will all die. Spider, you must leave, this is not your house.

America at its Finest

I wanted to take some time today to discuss something that has been brewing in my mind lately. Something that was amplified by the speech given by Teresa Heinz Kerry, and even better defined by the speech given by Barack Obama.

America. Just saying the name of our great country can summon images of the greatest hopes and dreams one can imagine. As someone born in America, with all of the freedoms and privileges it has granted me, my family, my friends, I tend to take for granted what this great country has to offer. I often forget that when I fall on hard times, I can make things better if I believe that I can. If I get out there and apply myself, I can make a difference. Too often I forget that there is opportunity for me to succeed, to become something great, to make a life for myself and my family that I can be proud of. More than once I have neglected to be in awe of the simple yet most fundamental freedoms I have. The right to free speech, the right to vote, and every other right that is given to me by virtue of being born here.

As a naturalized American, I have lost sight at times of the value of hard work. Living in Arizona, I sometimes complain about immigration, and how it can be costly in healthcare, education and in the work force. I have taken my country for granted, in that I have expected to live the American dream without having to struggle, to work for it. Shamefully, I have been complacent and lazy, making one excuse after another for not following my dreams, my goals. Without trying to be deliberately provactive, I know from first hand experience that I am not the only one who has fallen into this self-destructive behavior and 'typical' way of thinking, demanding the fruits of my country without providing the labor behind it.

Last night, I had the honor of listening to two great speakers. As I sat there listening to these speakers, full of heart and emotion, the thought struck me that these people are true representatives of what is good about my country. They gave me faith and hope in a time when faith and hope are characterized as weakness and being 'too liberal'. Then I realized further that these two speakers who love, understand, and fully appreciate the greatness of America are immigrants or their parent(s) were immigrants to this country. In fact, they have shown a greater appreciation for this country that they adopted as their own, and what it can offer to all people around the world than I ever have simply because they (or their parents) weren't given these rights that I take for granted from birth. Their life stories are a testament to what America has to offer. Living breathing proof that I too can be great if I choose to believe, to dream, and to work for my dreams.

For the first time, I have been shown the greatness of what immigration has to offer my country in a way that I can understand and relate to, in a way that is fitting for my time which is now, not in a historical perspective or textbook. I have once again had my eyes opened in a way that has inspired me. If someone comes to America and works their ass off in a job that I would look down upon as too menial for me, then who is the better American? As a naturalized American, I now see that it is not only a privilege, but my duty as such to succeed in this great nation. It is my duty to love and appreciate America for the country that it has been, for what it is, and most importantly, for what it can be, not to just give it lip service, but to live that dream and to welcome others from around the globe who would live that dream with me.

For those who wish to be inspired, I urge you to read a transcript of Barack Obama's speech. This is America at its finest. I hope to see this man become president in my lifetime. I hope that Teresa Heinz Kerry becomes our new First Lady. For the first time in a long time...I hope.

I'd like to hear your opinions and reactions. Were you inspired?

Convention - Open Thread

Can Clinton give a speech, or what?? And he probably wrote most (if not all) of it. In your dreams, George.

US Citizens! Your Tax Dollars at Work, at Home and Abroad

While the conventioneers headed for Boston were getting all "convention-y" this week, the US House of Representatives put the exclamation point on their so-called outrage at the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib by passing renewed appropriation for the torture-teaching School of the Americas (SOA). They changed the name some time ago, but the game is the same.

From Doug Ireland at the LA Weekly: Teaching Torture:
Congress quietly keeps School of the Americas alive.

Excerpt:"A relic of the Cold War, the SOA was originally set up to train military, police and intelligence officers of U.S. allies south of the border in the fight against insurgencies Washington labeled “Communist.” In reality, the SOA’s graduates have been the shock troops of political repression, propping up a string of dictatorial and repressive regimes favored by the Pentagon.

The interrogation manuals long used at the SOA were made public in May by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, and posted on its Web site after they were declassified following Freedom of Information Act requests by, among others, the Baltimore Sun. In releasing the manuals, the NSA noted that they “describe ‘coercive techniques’ such as those used to mistreat the detainees at Abu Ghraib.”"

Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness went to federal prison just recently for her civil disobedience at the "school's" facility at Fort Benning, Georgia. School of the Americas Watch has been keeping the US government's torture school in the front of my mind for a few years now. Their Web site has important reading: SOAW

I can't think of a better or more timely subject to bring to the attention of your favorite congress critter. Abu Ghraib is something the movers and shakers (paid with US taxpayer dollars, those "public servants") want to go away. Period. I suggest we should not let that happen and entertain hearing if you think SOA, the torture school, is an efficacious use of your IRS Pound-'O-Flesh.

I think it was that "great humanitarian" Nietzche who said: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

Taxpayers! The abyss is looking back at us.

Son of Election Prevention Commission

I just ran across this explanation for the "election might be/won't be postponed" Punch and Judy show from Wayne Madsen, via BartCop. I think you'll find it interesting, and all too plausible.