Download 2007 Alternative Annual Report
Houston, May 15, 2007: CorpWatch and its partners today released an alternative annual report on Halliburton titled: "Goodbye Houston" The new report was prepared in association with Halliburton Watch and the Oil & Gas Accountability Project.
The new 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 and energy operations around the world as well as its political connections. It includes a series of recommendations for the company and its shareholders as well as for the United States policymakers.
Halliburton is one of the 10 largest contractors to the U.S. military. It has earned over $20 billion from the U.S.military in war-related contracts in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. This cash bonanza may well be over because of the cancelation of its two most lucrative contracts: oil infrastructure reconstruction and 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, and whether it will allow the company to further elude accountability,” said Charlie Cray, co-director of Halliburton Watch and 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 and Triple Canopy; the Triple Canopy guards have been alleged to have shot at unarmed Iraqis for sport
* 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 and 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 and gas industry abroad.
* Halliburton has finally admitted that its executives may have been involved in bribery and 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, and is under investigation for no-bid contracts in Algeria Download 2007 Alternative Annual Report 2006 Alternative Annual Report Press Release Download 2006 Alternative Annual Report 2005 Alternative Annual Report Press Release Download 2005 Alternative Annual Report 2004 Alternative Annual Report Press Release Download 2004 Alternative Annual ReportThe following video is an excellent treatment of the facts in evidence with regard to the mass killing perpetrated upon the people at Bhopal. A must see. The Exxon-Valdez:From the Insider with Russell Crowe and Al Pacino:
The Corporation, Part One. Additional ResourcesDiscoveries
The Existentialist Cowboy
Corporate Responsibility
Indict Bush
Fascism
Corporatism
Iraq
Spread the word:
              
 Wal-Mart makes a killing putting people out of work, depressing local economies, and lowering wages but it is globalization --an unholy alliance with GOP "trickle down" policies --that spawned Wal-Mart and sounded a death knell for the futures of American workers. Most recently, Wal-Mart's Chinese imports have displaced nearly 200,000 US jobs China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was supposed to improve the US trade deficit with China and create good jobs in the United States. But those promises have gone unfulfilled: the total US trade deficit with China reached $235 billion in 2006. Between 2001 and 2006, this growing deficit eliminated 1.8 million US jobs (Scott 2007). The world’s biggest retailer, US-based Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion in US imports from China in 2006 and 11% of the growth of the total US trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2006. Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 US jobs in this period.
Robert E. Scott, The Wal-Mart effect The Wal-Mart effect on US workers and manufacturing is typified by the effects seen in clothing --low-cost goods with a hidden higher price: lower wages, lost jobs. Underlying every sector, however, are unsupportable US trade deficits which benefit American consumers but only so long as they have jobs themselves. As has been the trend at least since the regime of Ronald Reagan, manufacturing suffers most as Wal-Mart grows more intrusive, exploiting the trade deficit with its own undervalued currency. In effect, American consumers have financed China's economic boom.  Of some 133,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the US, sixty-eight percent were the direct result of Wal-Mart's "partnership" with China. The effect is devastating to US workers and the US economy overall. Manufacturing jobs, after all, have generally paid higher wages and provided better benefits. The US-China trade deficits amount to more than $1 trillion in US Treasury bills and growing. It is fair to say that China has done this deliberately to rehabilitate its own economy on US backs. It has had the effect of lowering the cost of its exports to the United States and other countries. The relationship between the dollar and the yen has been affected primarily by the adverse trade balance that we have with Japan. At the last summit meeting in London, for instance, we discussed the very high positive trade balance that Japan enjoyed then. The goal established by your own leaders was that this trade balance would be reduced. Instead, it's continued to go up.
I think, as the economic market leaders have recognized, the high export of Japanese goods and the relatively low imports into Japan of other goods, the yen has strengthened in comparison to other currencies, including, of course, the American dollar. - President Jimmy Carter, Interview with Western European and Japanese Reporters, July 11th, 1978 My good friend, Matthew Stevenson, contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, wrote both an explanation and a history of our "indebted prosperity" in his review of a new book [ The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar] for the Texas Observer. As few have, Stevenson makes the connection between Alexander Hamilton's vision for America and our current Asian debt. At almost every level, what is sustaining the US economic miracle is Hamilton’s beloved debt. The federal government balances its books with paper laid off to Asian bondholders under the Faustian bargain that they buy our securities and
we buy their exports. Domestically, the lender of last resort is not the Fed, but the US consumer, sadly as innocent about speculators as Abraham Lincoln. -- Matthew Stevenson, The Best Government Money Can Buy, The Texas Observer As I have often pointed out, the origins of current economic woes --exploding budget deficits amid the declining dollar --may be traced to what is called the "parlous economic stewardship of Ronald Reagan". Reagan cut the marginal tax rate for the very wealthy from 70% to 38% amid raised expectations that wealth would "trickle down". It didn't. The many presentations by Dr. Daniel Weinberger at the Census Bureau make the convincing case that the reverse occurred. Wealth did not trickle down. It flowed up! Reagan's own Budget Director, David Stockman, later recanted. [See: Atlantic Monthly, The Education of David Stockman] Certainly, “supply side economics” produced the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression. Stockman saved his most ascerbic comments for a "noisy faction" of Republicans who had promised an "orgy of investments" that would propel the US economy to new heights. I have no idea what Reagan, the GOP and Stockman had been smoking. Only prices and unemployment got high. Wages and living standards remained firmly tethered to terra firma if not the hole that had been dug for them. Many joined the growing ranks of the newly poor. A pernicious trend continues to this day. That is, the rich get exceedingly rich and the poor get even poorer. That has been the case since 1982 but for a brief interlude in Bill Clinton's second term. Bush, hoping to bask in Reagan's fading stardom and Hollywood mystique, pushed through Congress a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts. Like Ronald Reagan, Bush has waged a "war on terrorism" during which acts of terrorism increased. The final numbers have not yet been tallied for Bush --but, again, like Reagan, the results are pedestrian but tragic, a war of mass distraction in Afghanistan, a quagmire in Iraq, and the budget deficit that ate America. The phrase "debtors death spiral" is used to denote what happens when consumers borrow to cover only the interest on previous loans. New debt compounds old ones and bankruptcy may be around the corner. Many writers speculate that the US --under Bush --has already entered such a spiral. What keeps us afloat? A "Carvellian" quick response is simply: the rest of the world which cannot afford an American black hole. The US is kept afloat not because our economy is strong but because it is not. The US may be thought of as an empire but only because the rest of the world cannot afford not to keep us afloat. Between 1989 and 2003, the ever-increasing US trade deficit with China has led to about 1.5 million jobs that either moved overseas or never were created in this country as production shifted to China, according to a report released Jan. 11, 2005, by the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressionally appointed panel. The pace of job losses has picked up since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, with about one-third of the total, or 500,000, occurring in the past three years. Lower Wages for US WorkersBy supporting foreign-made goods on such a massive scale, the company that trumpets its All-American image is creating incentives for corporations to destroy good jobs in the United States.By purchasing such a large amount of goods produced in China, Wal-Mart indirectly supports continued workers’ rights abuses by Chinese authorities. --Wal-Mart's Imports Lead to US Jobs Exports Meanwhile, don't miss a Washington Post report that shows how Wal-Mart pits suppliers against one another and squeezes them for the lowest price. The result is that factories respond with longer hours and/or lower pay. Wealth, as we have learned the hard way, trickles UP --not down. The robber baron will always make up his losses out of your ass. In China, the workers have no choice: China forbids independent trade unions. That is a policy not unlike that of the US GOP and Ronald Reagan, specifically, who is not fondly remembered for his effective War on Labor and his ineffective war on terrorism and drugs. [See also: The Peace Tree]
Frontline: Is Wal-Mart Good For America
Do you get that? Through the Port of Long Beach alone, China exports some 36 billion dollars worth of manufactured goods for the American consumer market. But surely, the US now sells exports to the world's biggest market of some 1.3 billion folk, a promise held out when Bill Clinton signed the China trade agreement of 2000. Sadly, it just didn't happen. US exports through the port of Long Beach about 3 billion dollars worth of raw materials -- not US "high tech". Largely because of China's undervalued Yuan, the "consuming world", the US primarily, is reduced to Third World status and losing ground. The US has no leverage on foreign money markets. Under Bush, we could not fight back if we wanted to. The dollar is vulnerable as long as Bush runs up the highest American budget deficits in history. The Iraq war alone might have bankrupted the US if China and Japan had not propped us up for the sole purpose of dumping cheap crap on our shores. Wal-Mart is the primary gateway into an economic black hole from which there may be no escape --lower prices, chasing lower wages, chasing still lower prices. Everyone but the GOP's ever shrinking elite are impoverished. There must be a word for this skullduggery, this betrayal of the working men and women of the US who want merely to have a good job and educate the rug rats. Until Michael Moore decides to take on Wal-Mart, we have Robert Greenwald who does a great job exposing Wal-Mart on this video. And Jon Stewart has his take. Additional ResourcesDiscoveriesThe Existentialist CowboyConservative LiesGlobalizationWhy Conservatives Hate AmericaWal-MartBushSpread the word:
 by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Bush had hoped to pull off a quick victory cheap. But nothing worked out as hoped or planned. The American people are stuck with the tab, paying for the war with high hidden taxes, higher prices and American lives. The cost of Bush's war crime has tripled since Bush declared the end of major combat operations. The American people are not safer for having sacrificed the lives of loved ones. The war on terrorism is either a criminal fraud or a miserable failure and I challenge my critics at the Heritage Foundation to debate me on that issue.
War is a racket fought by the masses for privileged elites, big corporations, and venal politicians like Bush. Bush's quagmire is fought for the benefit of no-bid contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater and financed by America's working poor and middle classes who pay for the war —with their lives abroad and with their jobs, their retirement prospects, and their access to health care at home. Bush's base —the nation's elite, his corporate sponsors, and the so-called defense industry —have paid nothing, risked nothing! Rather —they feed at the trough. The upper one percent of the population has gotten several tax cuts while the big oil companies report record profits rising concurrently with higher prices at the pump.
Just two days after 9/11, I learned from Congressional staffers that Republicans on Capitol Hill were already exploiting the atrocity, trying to use it to push through tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. ... We now know that from the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited. The story of the latest terror plot makes the administration’s fecklessness and cynicism on terrorism clearer than ever.
—Hoping for Fear, by Paul Krugman, Using Fear Commentary, NY Times
There are big profits in the death business. Go to Texas and ask the CEO at DynCorp.
The war in Iraq has boosted DynCorp's revenues, responsible for about $400 million of the company's nearly $2 billion in sales. And while the company didn't specify how much the effort has added to profits, there has certainly been an upside, Lagana said, although he added that profit margins are lower than in other private industry -- often below 10 percent.
For government contractors and other US-based businesses that are doing work in Iraq, the war there has continued to provide opportunity and benefits, although experts and companies alike say they are difficult to quantify. To be sure, security businesses, oil producers and defense contractors are among the biggest winners. Those who manufacture key products, from bulletproof vests to bullets themselves, and, more recently, those involved in reconstruction, have reaped the benefits, too.
--Businesses find benefits, costs in war work
Over the longer term, however, the effects of Bush's war against the people of Iraq war are only temporary, benefiting the entire economy only for a short period of time, the period of time in which the pump is primed. On the whole, the effect is minimal. Average Americans have not benefited from mass murder, torture, and other atrocities perpetrated by the "state". As Economic Policy Institute economist Jared Bernstein noted, whatever economic stimulus war might have provided becomes increasingly less significant over time. Defense spending had a big effect on job growth in 2004, but its effect since that time is relatively small. Wealth, however ill-gotten does not trickle down.
The number of US troops in Iraq, put at 145,000, does not include more than 126,000 private contractors. Author Jeremy Schahill calls it “the world’s most powerful mercenary army.” But that is polite. They are, in fact, hired hit men financed, enabled and paid by the people of the United States whether they want to or not. Under Bush, the US taxpayer no longer has a say in how his/her money is spent.
Scahill and filmmaker Robert Greenwald have told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee that these so-called "contract workers", these hired killers murder with impunity and undermine the better efforts of US command and control.
...contract workers have been involved in — but not punished for — numerous scandals during the Iraq war, the pair claimed. These contractors were among the interrogators and translators who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, Greenwald said.
In one short period, senior military personnel documented 12 instances in which contract workers shot at Iraqi civilians, killing six, Scahill said, but no contractors were charged with crimes.
Contract employees were granted immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law by Paul Bremmer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority that ruled Iraq in 2003 and 2004, Scahill said. And they were not subject to US military law.
Truck drivers working for Halliburton routinely drove empty trucks across Iraq because the company is paid by the number of trips, not by the amount of cargo a truck carries, Greenwald said.
-- US House Panel Puts Iraq Contractor Abuse Claims ‘On the Record’
One of the more insidious falsehoods about Iraq has turned out to have been Bushco estimates of its cost. In 2002, George W. Bush himself predicted the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion —tops! To be expected —Bush was dead wrong. A report by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee now estimates that Bush's war of aggression in Iraq could cost the US $646 billion by 2015 —depending on the scope and duration of operations. Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University, estimates the cost of the war from one trillion to two trillion dollars!
Ongoing operations in Iraq were estimated at $5.6 billion per month in 2005. And costs have surely risen since then as the intensity of fighing increases accompanied by significant losses of materiel and maintenance.
The Bill So Far: Congress has already approved four spending bills for Iraq with funds totaling $204.4 billion and is in the process of approving a “bridge fund” for $45.3 billion to cover operations until another supplemental spending package can be passed, most likely slated for Spring 2006. Broken down per person in the United States, the cost so far is $727, making the Iraq War the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years.
Long-term Impact on US Economy: In August 2005, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at current levels would nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next ten years. According to current estimates, during that time the cost of the Iraq War could exceed $700 billion.
Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 210,000 of the National Guard’s 330,000 soldiers have been called up, with an average mobilization of 460 days. Government studies show that about half of all reservists and Guard members report a loss of income when they go on active duty—typically more than $4,000 a year. About 30,000 small business owners alone have been called to service and are especially likely to fall victim to the adverse economic effects of military deployment.
—The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops, Institute for Policy Studies
The Bush administration has been able to keep the precise cost of the war a matter of guess work and estimates. But however much is wasted killing civilians in Iraq that is money that is not being spent educating Americans, providing for health care, fixing Social Security, rebuilding a deteriorating infrastructure, or addressing real threats to our environment.
However much has blown up in Iraq, it is lost forever to the victims of Bush's incompetence in the face of Katrina. It is lost forever to those millions losing retirements to corporate mismanagement and greed. It is lost forever to those unable to pay the high costs of health care, education, transportation, housing, and getting enough to eat each day.
US Budget and Social Programs: The Administration’s FY 2006 budget, which does not include any funding for the Iraq War, takes a hard line with domestic spending— slashing or eliminating more than 150 federal programs. The $204.4 billion appropriated thus far for the war in Iraq could have purchased any of the following desperately needed services in our country: 46,458,805 uninsured people receiving health care or 3,545,016 elementary school teachers or 27,093,473 Head Start places for children or 1,841,833 affordable housing units or 24,072 new elementary schools or 39,665,748 scholarships for university students or 3,204,265 port container inspectors.
Social Costs to the Military/Troop Morale: As of May 2005, stop-loss orders are affecting 14,082 soldiers—almost 10 percent of the entire forces serving in Iraq with no end date set for the use of these orders. Long deployments and high levels of soldier’s stress extend to family life. In 2004, 3,325 Army officer’s marriages ended in divorce—up 78 percent from 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion and more than 3.5 times the number in 2000.
Costs to Veteran Health Care: The Veterans Affairs department projected that 23,553 veterans would return from Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005 and seek medical care. But in June 2005, the VA Secretary, Jim Nicholson, revised this number to 103,000. The miscalculation has led to a shortfall of $273 million in the VA budget for 2005 and may result in a loss of $2.6 billion in 2006.
Mental Health Costs: In July 2005 the Army’s surgeon general reported that 30 percent of US troops have developed stress-related mental health problems three to four months after coming home from the Iraq War. Because about 1 million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.
—The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops, Institute for Policy Studies
Many delusions were promoted in order to commit this nation to aggressive war. In the short months after 9/11, Bush erected a strawman upon which to direct American frustration, anger, and vengeance —an “axis of evil” consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. His intentions were made clear at the time. This "Axis of Evil" was responsible for world terrorism in general and our nation would wage war against it. Bush's speech was most notable, however, for what he did not say. Bush did not tell the American people that he had no intention of paying for the war. He would leave the deficit to future administrations and generations. Rather than expect his privileged base to pony up, he would reward their loyalty with several tax cuts. Nor are sons of daughters of that base required to serve their nation militarily. Bush's base gets a free ride as the rest of the nation bears the cost of war —in both lives and dollars.
If wars are not paid for upfront, they are paid for in the form of higher interest rates, prices, and lives. Wealth does not trickle down. But the effects of a falling dollar is felt by everyone. The exponential rise of wage and income inequality began with a vengeance in the Reagan 80's, most closely associated with the Reagan tax cut of 1982. Only the top 20 percent of the population benefited. Wage/income disparities have increased since then with only a short respite during Clinton's second term. The current trend began before a great wave of technical change and a computer revolution —none of which has benefited working Americans. Indeed, if you work for a living you have paid and continue to pay for Bush's war of aggression while Bush's base gets preferential treatment!
It is no coincidence that as prices increase, so, too, the national deficit. American credit abroad is dodgy. As the dollar continues to slide on world exchanges, not only gasoline prices increase but also prices of imported goods. Bush had said that he favors a strong dollar but, in fact, his administration has let the dollar slide, a cynical ploy designed to finance the Iraq folly upon the backs of working Americans. That it provides a moderate relief to US exporters is a bad trade off. What —other than death, torture and destruction —do we export these days?
Like Bush's mythical "Axis of Evil" the idea that a nation can wage a free war is an evil GOP fairy tale. Wars are always paid for, if not now, later, and in ways you won't like.
An update:
A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.
None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.
"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).
The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.
"I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.
British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.
Then an instrument landing system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed for the second time in a week, delaying flights.
Those incidents followed reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence world's electronic eavesdropping arm, is consuming so much electricity at its headquarters outside Washington that it is in danger of exceeding its power supply.
"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."
The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate." ...
--Chuck McCutcheon, Newhouse News Service, Experts warn US is coming apart at the seams; becoming third world
Bush Plans Dictatorship
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush
Bush uttered those very unfunny words on December 18, 2000. On that day the president-elect went to capitol hill to meet with Congressional leaders and emerged from the meeting flipping them and the American people this rhetorical bird.
The president is making good on those words and there hasn't been a peep out of Congress or the press. In a document released on May 9, 2007 entitled "National Continuity Policy," Bush makes good on his sick fantasy. In case of “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function” Bush will control the entire US government, not just the federal branch.
It isn't really surprising. Bush decides who is an enemy combatant, a person without legal rights, and who should be spied upon.
If ever there was a moment for conspiracy theories, this is it. Will there be a phony terror attack, or a declaration of war against Iran? We don't know what the trigger will be but it is time to be afraid.
Actually it is time for impeachment. Bush's unpopularity makes him particularly dangerous. So does the acquiescence of the media and the silence of the Democrats. State legislatures have the right to begin the impeachment process but they have been smacked down by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
We are screwed. The phrase may be inelegant, but it says it all. Maybe we will all end up in Guantanamo. Who knows? The National Continuity Policy contains "classified continuity annexes." WTF!? As I said, we are screwed.
Indeed, Bush has arrogated unto himself the power to interpret the Constitution. I suppose he can now just dismiss the Supreme Court. Already he claims the authority to re-write laws passed by Congress and denies Congress the authority to subpoena witnesses
It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”
Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency
And this just in from Bluebloggin'.
Posted by nytexan on July 27th, 2007
How many investigations can one administration have? I suppose if you’re Bush and Cheney and you completely ignore laws, you could technically be investigated every month. Well this time it’s the US Department of Interior going after them for the Endangered Species Act.
Mother Jones
- Two government entities are investigating the Bush administration over the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Christian Science Monitor reports the US Interior Department is reviewing the scientific integrity of decisions made by a political appointee, Julie MacDonald, who recently resigned under fire. Fish and Wildlife Service employees complained that MacDonald bullied, insulted, and harassed the professional staff to alter their biological reporting. The inspector noted that although she has no formal educational background in biology, she nevertheless labored long and hard editing, commenting on, and reshaping the endangered species program’s scientific reports from the field. Last week Fish and Wildlife announced that eight decisions MacDonald made under the ESA would be examined for scientific and legal discrepancies.
Legal discrepancies seem to be the standard operating procedure for the Bush administration.
Bush has a habit of putting incompetent people to oversee and bully scientist. This is exactly what Bush did with the national weather scientist so global warming would be watered down.
- Meanwhile Congress is investigating evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney interfered with decisions involving water in California and Oregon resulting in a mass kill of Klamath River salmon, including threatened species. As the CSM reports, both episodes illustrate the Bush administration’s resistance to the law. Earlier, the Washington Post ran the story of Cheney’s personal interference in the water decision that killed the salmon in 2002:
- In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake. Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in. First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.
An update on Bush's transparent attempts to undermine US obligations with regard to the Geneva Convention.
To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.
The Geneva Conventions provide important protections to our own military forces when we send them into harm's way. Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness. Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved -- potentially up to and including the president of the United States -- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.
--P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner, War Crimes and the White House
Tipped off by Fuzzflash, I post the following video experience. Just as it is impossible to make meaningful statements about a syntax from within a syntax, we may find it impossible to make statements about our own culture. Perhaps the Ancient Mayans have shown us a non-verbal truth from outside our paradigm. The "text" is by William Borroughs but the video was produced and added by one who uses the label, Karma, who writes" This is a tribute to both William Burroughs and Hiroshima. Its a video I have been wanting to put together for some time now and release on the day of concern.
61 Years ago to day Hiroshima felt the atom split in anger. Today lets remember both Hiroshima Nagasaki which followed on the 9th August 1945. Lets hope the lion never rages again.
Alternet has called The Simpsons "the most subversive TV show to ever achieve the status of pop culture institution." That's why I grew to love this series. The Simpsons had always slammed fox news but it was their 400th episode that attracted the attention of Alternet. Because of its nearly 20 years of popularity and more important, profitability, the show has been able to ridicule its network more than any other TV program would ever dare to. Last night was no exception. During its heavily promoted 400th episode, Homer, Lisa and Springfield anchorman Kent Brockman launched into a discussion about Fox News as a hilarious parody of the cable channel, featuring a Rush Limbaugh inspired caricature played on their TV set. Lisa wonders [about] a network infamous for tasteless programming (Temptation Island anyone?)--The Simpsons Slam Fox News Following is an excerpt from an enraged "Kent Brockman", the Simpsons' all-too-typical news anchor. Brockman is akin to Network's Howard Beales (Peter Finch) who is "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore". Brockman makes a similar appeal but does so ala Ed Murrow complete with a cigarette and curling smoke. Friends, the press and the government are in bed together in an embrace so intimate and wrong, they could spoon on a twin mattress and still have room for Ted Koppel. Journalists used to questions the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the 6:00 News. Demand more of your government. Demand more of your press.--The Simpsons v. the media, Think Progress The Simpsons is the best television since Ed Murrow, since "You Are there", since Playhouse 90, Star Trek, and Kenneth Clark's Civilization. That alone is enough to recommend the series. But that's not all, The Simpsons is on Fox, almost daring what is otherwise the worse network in TV history to do something about it. Matt Groening is modest. He claims that that they are just a tiny part of the vast Fox empire. Perhaps! But it is the thinking part, the part that pays attention, the part that agitates. Nevertheless, the evil empire did strike back. By Andrew Wallenstein
An Internet parody of "The Simpsons" has drawn the ire of 20th Century Fox.
The studio is pressuring online video hub Broadcaster.com to remove "The O.J. Simpsons," three animated clips that reimagine the Fox series starring the former football star. After receiving notices from Fox lawyers, Broadcaster Inc. is reviewing their demand but noted Friday that fair-use doctrine protects parodies.
"We respect the rights of content owners," Broadcaster CEO Martin Wade III said. "We are examining all the issues raised by the Fox request. Our goal is to be a respecter of content rights and at the same time find legal ways to bring our community members the content they enjoy."
Fox, which declined comment, has been aggressive about protecting perceived copyright infringements. In January, Fox had Google subpoenaed over uploaded episodes of "24" and "Simpsons" (HR 1/25). Google complied, disclosing the names of individuals who did the uploading.
The three "O.J. Simpsons" clips are titled "Black and White Christmas," "Warzone" and "If I Did It," which directly references Fox and its decision to withdraw publication of O.J. Simpson's proposed book about the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. ... Fox has also prohibited The Simpsons from satirizing Fox's annoying and gaudy data crawl. I caught on to the Simpson's fairly early in their evolution. I use the word evolution deliberately to piss off the state of Kansas. It was an episode about how Homer became a "Stonecutter" that really won me over. A brilliant satire of Freemasonry, the Stonecutter episode is classic, but more, importantly, a clue. Homer becomes a "Stonecutter", a secret society of mysterious rituals and great productions numbers. Canyanero excoriates America's less than brilliant obsession with a lumbering leviathan called the SUV. A witty look at a prudish society nevertheless obsessed with sex. Most recently, The Simpsons took on the Iraq war with their favorite aliens --Kang and Kodos. The allusions are always rich. This recalls Alred Hitchcocks's Rear Window with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. Additional resourcesDiscoveriesThe Existentialist CowboyConservative LiesIndict BushWhy Conservatives Hate AmericaGOP Crime SyndicateBushSpread the word:
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