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from CorpWatch …..
CorpWatch & its partners today released an alternative annual report on Halliburton titled: "Goodbye Houston" The new report was prepared in association with Halliburton Watch & the Oil & Gas Accountability Project.
The report (the fourth in the series) is being issued on the eve of Halliburton 's annual general meeting in Woodlands, Texas, on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007. An in-depth, hard-hitting report, "Goodbye Houston," provides a detailed look at Halliburton's military & energy operations around the world as well as its political connections. It includes a series of recommendations for the company & its shareholders as well as for the United States policy-makers.
Halliburton is one of the 10 largest contractors to the U.S. military. It has earned over $20 billion from the US military in war-related contracts in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. This cash bonanza may well be over because of the cancellation of its two most lucrative contracts: oil infrastructure reconstruction & military base support.
"With the loss of its two biggest taxpayer-funded contracts in Iraq, Halliburton has decided that its future lies outside the United States. The company decision to move its headquarters to Dubai could spell a major financial loss to the U.S. Treasury," says Pratap Chatterjee, co-director of CorpWatch.
"Given the multiple ongoing investigations into Halliburton 's alleged wrongdoing, policymakers should closely scrutinize Halliburton 's latest move & whether it will allow the company to further elude accountability,” said Charlie Cray, co-director of Halliburton Watch & director of the Center for Corporate Policy. “Moreover, this underscores the need for Congress to bar companies that have broken the law, or avoided paying taxes, from receiving federal contracts.”
"Goodbye Houston" also documents:
* how Halliburton may have broken the law by employing private security guards like Blackwater & Triple Canopy; the Triple Canopy guards have been alleged to have shot at unarmed Iraqis for sport;
* how Halliburton truck drivers allege the company failed to adequately protect them in Iraq;
* new military audits which show deliberate concealment of high overheads;
* new lawsuits allege that company management in Iraq & Kuwait knowingly wasted millions of dollars of taxpayers dollars.
Today as the military slows its purchases of Halliburton services in Iraq, the company is diversifying into such profitable areas the provision of direct services to the oil & gas industry abroad.
* Halliburton has finally admitted that its executives may have been involved in bribery & political meddling Nigeria.
* Halliburton 's hydraulic fracturing operations in the United States have continued to have disastrous impacts on the environment, including community water supplies.
* Halliburton has been accused of substandard work on offshore operations in Brazil & is under investigation for no-bid contracts in Algeria.
Goodbye Houston: An Alternative Annual Report On Halliburton
- By John Richardson at 15 May 2007 - 10:42pm
- John Richardson's blog
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formidable Bushbashing
By Tracy Bowden for The 7.30 Report
It has been the deadliest month this year for US forces in Iraq but back in Washington, the President has been battling a powerful new political rival. The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is proving a formidable foe for President George W Bush in the battle over the continued funding for the war in Iraq.
Blaming others for our mistakes...
From the ABC and BBC and other ether
British think tank warns Iraq collapse imminentA British foreign policy think tank says Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation.
The Royal Institute for International Affairs report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country.
It warns there is not one war but many local civil wars, and urges a major change in US and British strategy, such as consulting Iraq's neighbours more.
The paper accuses Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey of having reasons for seeing the instability in Iraq continue and says each uses different methods to influence developments.
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Gus: the paper from the English think tank should also mention that a divided Iraq is in favour of the US as they can plunder with no scrutiny, while "having to be there" to maintain the peace... Thus the more Iraq is troubled, the more the US troops stay which is exactly what the US Bushit administration want.
Imagine for a second that, suddenly, the beef stops in Iraq, a Unity Government takes hold and decides that it has to control its assets in order for Iraq to survive... As a majority Shiite, they would be slightly hostile to the invaders, thus the whole Bushit policy bites the dust... because a) the US is not exclusively served with Iraqi oil and b) they would have to "negotiate" in earnest without a gun in hand: Anathema of the grandest order.
But then the US might demand "reparations" or impossible repayments of the "war effort"... But the Iraqi people could tell them that they did not ask for the US to come in anyway... The decision was made IN THE USA, nowhere else... In the end, it's no secret the US administration is planning at least another 25 years of "being there" to make sure the flow of oil is maintained — civil war or not, but preferably with some instability to justify their presence...
They must all drive SUVs or Hummers...
Senate Rejects Iraq Troop Withdrawal
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
Published: May 17, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 16 — Congressional Democratic leaders signaled on Wednesday that they were ready to give ground to end an impasse with President Bush over war spending after the Senate soundly rejected a Democratic plan to block money for major combat operations in Iraq beginning next spring.
The 67-to-29 vote against the proposal demonstrated that a significant majority of Senators remained unwilling to demand a withdrawal of forces despite their own misgivings and public unease over the war.
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Gus: giving an inch to the little despot is like giving a mile start to the tortoise in a half-a-mile race with a hare... When will the US senators realise the US are in someone else's land for selfish reasons, despite words to the contrary — eventually to be resented by 90 per cent of the Iraqi people, despite all the bribery in the world which the people can see through because of poor reconstruction, corrupt behavior, etc... — because of all the silly ways Americans usually misunderstand other people.
It takes about a minimum of three willing generations to adapt, for the process of adaptation to take place. That change represents about 60 years.
It usually takes never-ever for a resisting people, to an imposed change, to change. Look at Poland... Look at most former satellites of the USSR... Look at Nicaragua, etc... Change cannot be imposed by force, coercion or theft — including theft of spirit. Change is often unnecessary and dangerous to a nation if it involves a style of lobbied corruption and others such as decreed subsidies, or secret fiddles to fool the general populace... And despite what we try to con ourselves with, they worship a different god.
The good US senators still need their supplies of oil for their SUVs? They vote with their petrol tanks...