Military tactics against demonstrations
to continue
By Liz Allen
Asheville, North Carolina, June 23 (AGR) The military
tactics used at the demonstrations against the G8 in Georgia are providing
a template for government to be used in upcoming events like the Republican
National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Police from
New York, Boston, and Jacksonville were present in Georgia to observe.
Savannahs deployments were very similar to what were
planning on doing. I was very impressed with what I saw, Massachusetts
State Police Capt. Daniel Grabowski told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian called the
heavy military presence at the G8 part of an increasing trend
toward sending the message that exercising dissent is a criminal act.
She said the Guild is currently putting together a report about how
the recent tactics used toward demonstrators police on horses
and motorcycles running into protesters, display of police training
weeks before the event, no protest zones, administrative searches
of organizing sites, preemptive arrests and requiring liability insurance
for permits are reflective of the chiseling away of the
constitution and looming implementation of martial law.
However, she said New York will be different than the situation in
Georgia because millions of people are expected.
In Brunswick, Georgia there are still six people remaining in jail;
some were arrested when marching toward Sea Island during the last day
of the G8 summit on June 10, others in a jail solidarity rally at the
courthouse on the following day. They are refusing to give their names
and four of them are on hunger strike. The hunger strike is planned
to continue until their charges are dropped, they are released or they
are tried.
A statement from the group reads: We remain nameless as do the
billions of people across the world who continually suffer as a result
of the neoliberal and imperialistic policies of the G8
.[T]hese
countries are only able to continue their standard of living by keeping
the majority of the worlds population either malnourished, illiterate
and impoverished, or entertained and distracted.
Boghosian said she doubts the recent Supreme Court decision that requires
a person to identify oneself to police will apply to the Brunswick arrestees.
Halliburtons multibillion dollar
war scams
By Pratap Chatterjee
June 20 New testimony from former Halliburton workers
and congressional auditors released in Washington, DC this week has
revealed millions of dollars worth of wasteful practices, major over-billing,
and virtually no oversight of the companys work to support the
US invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003.
Under an agreement for logistical support for Operation Iraqi Freedom,
Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, has received
$4.5 billion for activities in Iraq and Kuwait since the invasion, including
more than $3 billion to import fuel and repair oil fields. The full
contract may eventually be worth as much as $18 billion.
We saw very little concern for cost considerations, David
Walker, head of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm
of Congress, told members of Congress who attended a hearing at the
Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives. There
are serious problems, they still exist, and they are exacerbated in
a wartime climate.
Critics say that Halliburtons contract with the military has been
especially problematic because the company has what is called a cost-plus
contract, which means the company is repaid for all expenditures, plus
a percentage fee and possible bonus on top of that.
While the Bush administration failed to adequately plan for the
safety of our troops as proven by its failure to provide sufficient
body armor it made certain that Halliburton would make a killing
long before the war began, said Jim Donahue, coordinator for Halliburton
Watch, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.
Congressman Tom Davis, chairman of the government reform committee,
refused to allow testimony from five former Halliburton employees who
had additional evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, Henry Waxman,
the highest-ranked Democrat on the committee, released their statements
to the public.
One statement came from David Wilson, a Halliburton employee charged
with delivering supplies from Camp Cedar II in southern Iraq to Camp
Anaconda just north of Baghdad between November 2003 and March 2004.
He explained that his supervisors didnt care what was being transported,
as long as the trucks drove as many times as possible from one end of
the country to the other.
The paperwork I carried had no details about the contents of our
cargo basically all they were looking for was the number of trucks
with freight on them [but] a related problem was that KBR would run
trucks empty quite often, Wilson said. One time we ran 28
trucks and only one had anything on it. There were several times when
we had empty trucks both on the way to Anaconda and then on the way
back to Cedar II. I dont understand why KBR would have placed
our lives in danger that way for no reason.
He also described what appeared to be a complete lack of cost controls
and systems to maintain equipment properly. When I arrived at
Camp Arifjan in Kuwait last November, I noticed 50 to 100 brand new
trucks sitting there unused, Wilson remembered. Five months
later, when I came home, a large number of trucks were still there,
not being used. These are $85,000 (or more) Mercedes and Volvo trucks.
As every other trucker working on those convoys will tell you,
KBR had virtually no facilities in place to do maintenance on these
trucks... I begged for [oil and fuel] filters but never got any. I was
told that oil changes were out of the question
When one of our
trucks got a flat tire on the highway, we just had to leave it there
for the Iraqis to loot, which is just crazy. I remember saying to myself
when it happened, You just lost yourself an $85,000 truck because
of a spare tire. We lost a truck because we didnt have [a] $25
hydraulic line to assist the clutch.
Mike West, who was hired as a labor foreman at a salary of $130,000,
explained he was paid despite the fact that he had no work. I
only worked one day out of six in Kuwait, he explained. That
day, a supervisor told me to operate a forklift. I explained that I
didnt have a license to operate a forklift or any experience The
response was: Its easy and no one will know.
When West got to Camp Anaconda in southern Iraq, he says that he didnt
have any work to do. Nor did most of the other 35 workers. The supervisors
told them to walk around and look busy. Then they went to a camp in
Al Asad, where they had only one day of work out of five days. They
were told to bill for 12 hours of labor every day. From there, his group
was sent to Fallujah for six weeks, where once again he had almost no
work to do except help with security and follow Iraqi workers around
to make sure they cleaned the toilets properly.
One day, I was ordering some equipment. I asked the camp manager
if it was okay to order a drill, West said. He said to order
four. I responded that we didnt need four. He said: Dont
worry about it. Its a cost-plus contract. I asked him, So
basically, this is a blank check? The camp manager laughed and
said, Yeah. He repeated this over and over again to the
employees.
In January and February 2004, a series of articles in the media, especially
in the Wall Street Journal, chronicled the overcharging and fraud in
Halliburtons operations. In response Halliburton hired what it
dubbed the Tiger Team to audit and correct problems. Marie
de Young, who worked for Halliburton in Kosovo and was hired in December
to help oversee Operation Iraqi Freedom contracts in Kuwait, worked
closely with the team and discovered not only that it did not correct
anything, but that the team continued questionable auditing and
administration practices.
When the Tiger Team examined a subcontract, they just checked
to make sure that all the forms were in the file, she said. They
didnt assess the reasonableness of the price or consult with site
managers. The teams sole purpose was to close as many subcontracts
as possible, under the mistaken assumption that everything that was
closed prior to the arrival of the government audit team would be exempt
from further scrutiny. For three months, this Tiger Team occupied waterfront
villas at the Hilton hotel and shuffled papers, but did nothing to effectively
clean up old subcontracts.
De Young says that Halliburton paid the Kuwaiti subcontractor La Nouvelle
$100 per bag for laundry services four times more than they were
paying elsewhere. That added up to more than $1 million per month. Another
time, the company ordered 37,200 cases of soda at $1.50 a case, but
was delivered only 37,200 cans, resulting in charges that were five
times the normal wholesale cost for the drinks.
Halliburton housed the Tiger Team at the five-star Kempinski Hotel for
$10,000 per employee per month. At the same time, soldiers were required
to live in tents at a cost of $1.39 a day. The military requested that
Halliburton employees move into the tents, but they refused, De Young
said.
The Halliburton corporate culture is one of intimidation and fear,
De Young said. I had been advised by subcontract administrators
who quit the company that employees get moved around when they get too
close to the truth. I personally observed and experienced this as a
routine company practice. Ironically, other previous managers who tolerated
bad practices were promoted to better paying jobs in Iraq or Houston
or Jordan.
Source: guerrillanews.com
Cheney in firing line over Nigerian bribery
claims
By Antony Barnett and Martin Bright
June 20 A British lawyer is emerging as a key witness
in a $180 million bribery investigation that could lead to the indictment
of US vice president Dick Cheney.
Last week, US oil corporation Halliburton cut all ties with a former
senior executive, Albert Stanley, after it emerged he had received as
much as $5 million in improper personal benefits as part
of a $4 billion gas project in Nigeria. Halliburton also sacked a second
consultant, William Chaudan, in connection with the bribery
allegations. At the time of these alleged payments, Cheney was chief
executive of the corporation.
French investigating magistrate Renaud van Ruymbeke is examining a stream
of payments surrounding the controversial project which was built during
the regime of the late dictator Sani Abacha. The judge has uncovered
a $180 million web of payments channeled through offshore companies
and bank accounts.
The Nigerian project to build a huge gas plant was signed with an international
consortium that included Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown &
Root. Cheney retired from the chief executive post in 2000.
The French judge is considering summoning Cheney to give evidence in
his probe to ascertain whether the US vice president knew about the
alleged commission payments.
Van Ruymbeke has been investigating why the consortium, which built
the gas plant, paid up to $180 million to a Gibraltan company set up
by British solicitor Jeffrey Tesler, a partner in the law firm Kaye
Tesler & Co., based in Tottenham, north London. Van Ruymbeke wants
to know whether the Gibraltar firm, TriStar Investments, was used to
distribute bribes to win the contracts. Tesler has declined to answer
media questions about his role in the project.
The Nigerian deal to build a $4 billion liquefied natural gas plant
is already subject to a formal investigation by both the US department
of justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Halliburtons decision to sever ties with Stanley and Chaudan recognizes
the firms difficulty with the corruption allegations. When the
claims initially arose in France the firm denied any improper activities.
A spokesman for Halliburton said the two executives were dismissed because
they had broken the firms code of business conduct.
A statement added: While we do not know all of the facts related
to the issue, we are taking these actions in response to the facts that
we do have, and to protect our investors, employees, customers, and
vendors as several investigations proceed.
The acknowledgement that Stanley was receiving payments as part of the
Nigeria deal brings the allegations uncomfortably close to Cheney. Stanley
was chairman of Kellogg Brown & Root one of Halliburtons
most important subsidiaries. The company denied that Stanley
who retired as chairman in December but remained a consultant
would have reported directly to Cheney.
Neither Stanley, Chaudan, or their lawyers have made any comments on
the allegations and the two US directors do not currently face any legal
action.
Source: Observer (UK)