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Recent
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May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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May
10, 2003
Halliburton Continues
to Flout the Law
Cheney's
Old Company Still Profits from Terror
by JASON LEOPOLD
Halliburton Corp., the second largest oil services
company in world, is the poster child for corporate greed and
terror. And it seems that nothing will stop Vice President Dick
Cheney's old company from repeatedly breaking the law to save
and earn mountains of cash.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission
filing this week, Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton unit
that won a controversial no-bid contract to extinguish Iraqi
oil well fires, disclosed that it paid $2.4 million in bribes
to a Nigerian tax official to obtain favorable tax treatment
in the country where it's building a natural gas plant and an
offshore oil and gas facility.
The bribes were paid between 2001 and
2002 to "an entity owned by a Nigerian national who held
himself out as a tax consultant, when in fact he was an employee
of a local tax authority," the company said in the SEC filing,
which was discovered during an internal audit.
That was also the time frame which some
of Nigeria's worst human rights abuses took place. KBR has been
scrutinized by human rights organizations for doing business
in countries like Nigeria, where human rights are routinely violated.
In 1997, while Cheney was chief executive
of Halliburton, KBR was alleged by Environmental Rights Action
to have collaborated with Nigeria's Mobile Police unit who shot
and killed a protestor, playing a similar role to Shell and Chevron
in the mobilization of this 'kill and go" unit to protect
company property, Wayne Madsen reported in The Progressive in
2000.
When it comes to corruption, Nigeria
routinely scores near the bottom on surveys of world business
leaders.
In last year's Corruption Perceptions
Index, published by Berlin-based Transparency International,
Nigeria ranked 101 out of 102, beating out only Bangladesh.
In March, Halliburton launched an investigation
it has started a probe involving U.S. and Nigerian government
officials over theft of a radioactive device used at its Nigerian
operations that officials feared could be used to make a "dirty
bomb," an explosive device designed to scatter radioactivity
in a densely populated area. The theft occurred between the Nigerian
towns of Wari and Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta, in the heart
of the West African country's oil producing region.
According to one expert, if the device's
radioactive material were combined with a pound of TNT and exploded,
an area covering 60 city blocks would be contaminated with a
radiation dose in excess of safety guidelines of the Environmental
Protection Agency.
The tax scheme is just the latest development
in a long list of laws the company broke over the past decade_including
skirting U.S. sanctions imposed on countries such as Syria, Libya,
Iran and Iraq_in an effort to boost its stock price and enrich
the company's shareholders.
A Halliburton spokeswoman said the tax
scheme did not involve any of the company's senior officials,
but several employees of the company involved in the scam were
fired after the discovery.
Halliburton officials said KBR may have
to pay as much as $5 million in additional taxes to Nigeria,
according to the SEC filing.
This week, Congressman Henry Waxman,
D-California, disclosed in a letter sent to him by the Army Corps
of Engineers, that KBR has gone from fixing Iraq's oil wells
to running them, turning the no-bid contract to extinguish oil
well fires into a multimillion deal to supply Iraq's emergency
energy needs.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday
disclosed the wider role for KBR in response to an inquiry from
Waxman, who accused the company of conducting business in countries
that sponsored terrorism.
News of KBR's expanded role in Iraq prompted
criticism from some congressional critics who were under the
impression that the company's job would be limited to putting
out fires and repairing damage to Iraq's rich petroleum fields.
The Army Corps of Engineers said KBR
actually had been authorized under the original contract to operate
and distribute oil produced in Iraq, but the Corps of Engineers
played down that aspect of the deal in its initial communications
with Congress and the media.
For pumping oil from Iraq's oil fields
and importing gasoline and propane from Turkey and other countries,
Halliburton will receive $24 million, raising to $76.8 million
the amount it will have received since being awarded the contract
in March, said Scott Saunders, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers.
Saunders said the Halliburton subsidiary
now is pumping 125,000 barrels of oil a day, far short of the
demand that is ! expected to reach 400,000 barrels.
Meanwhile, while KBR is skirting U.S.
laws and profiting off rebuilding Iraq's oil fields, the SEC
is still investigating the company for alleged accounting fraud.
The SEC is examining how Halliburton booked and disclosed cost
overruns on construction contracts beginning in 1998, when Cheney
was chief executive officer. The SEC, according to a lawyer familiar
with the matter, has not contacted Cheney. Cheney's office confirmed
he hasn't been questioned, Reuters reported.
The company said Thursday it turned over
about 300,000 documents to the SEC, a process that "is essentially
complete," according to a regulatory filing. The company
said it is continuing to make people available to testify under
subpoenas.
Jason Leopold
can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
Yesterday's
Features
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
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