Halliburton's New Low in Treachery

[Cassandra]

This is a really disgusting and sad story!
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1017-25.htm

"According to the Tribune, American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor into Iraq. Most of those falling for the fraudulent job offers are impoverished Asians who, the newspaper said, "often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way with little protection."

The Tribune got on the story after 12 young civilians from Nepal were kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq and a few days later publicly slaughtered. The newspaper sent a reporter and photographer to Nepal, where they interviewed families and friends and soon discovered that thousands of men are routinely recruited for "good" Mideast jobs, but wind up in the most treacherous stretches of Iraq territory working in private jobs for the U.S. military.

A brother of one of the kidnapped men told Cam Simpson, the Trib reporter, that the last time he heard from his brother was when he called from his supposed job in Jordan. He was being sent against his will to Iraq, the brother said, and then blurted out, "I am done for." The phone then went dead. The next time the young Nepalese was seen was on a TV screen two weeks later, his hands tied behind his back and a gun pointed at his head. "

We are funding indentured servitude with taxpayer money. Is it this criminal administration's intention to have everyone on the planet hate us? Sorry I asked......

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Exploiting the poor and the desperate.

There is no end to human misery, when Republicans get untethered freedom to exercise their free market principles.

[Joe Chi Minh]

24. Enslaving is a bit more than exploiting, TBC.

Sorry to be pedantic, but it's important to make the distinction. This is right off the scale.

The Nazis only subjected those they perceived as their enemies to slavery, if only because they'd occupied their country, or found them to be useful racial scapegoats.

Here you have them enslaving people from a country completely extraneous and irrelevant to their imperial shenanigans. Honorary New Orleans poor, you might say. Detritus.

[marylanddem]

2. This is sickening

the evil of this Iraq disaster is beyond words. We have to do everything we can to end it.

[Greyhound]

12. Ditto

[ClintonTyree]

17. Is it any wonder.........

why the bush administration will not sign treaties that would hold Americans accountable in a world court? :eyes: This entire war and those that wanted it are pure evil. They're as evil as Saddam in my opinion, we've merely changed "evil doers" to ones is sheep's clothing. At least with Saddam you KNEW what you were getting! :mad:

[tabasco]

3. Standard practice for war profiteering robber barons.

They have no concern for workers or soldiers.

Their only goal is more $$$$$$MONEY$$$$$ !!!

Our soldiers are dying for Halliburton profits, and so are innocent workers duped into the war zone.

[CrispyQ]

15. Their greed is mind boggling!

At what point do they have enough? I can't begin to fathom this level of greed.

[bloom]

4. A couple of links:

Blood, Sweat & Tears:
Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq

by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch
October 3rd, 2005

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675



And this from a year ago:

Migrants trade poverty for danger
Wages are simply too good to pass up

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/05/MNGSI82VEK1.DTL




Also - Cost of Living in Iraq

Laborers get $5.50 - $7.00/day

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/post_saddam_iraq/html/6.stm

[bloom]

5. And one more:

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

[400Years]

6. If people aren't poor and desperate how can you exploit them?

This is why, as Christian Parenti pionts out, poverty is necessary, at least in the eyes of those at the top.

[schrodingers_cat]

21. I fear that your sentiment applies to America as well, 400Years

and a Great Big DU Welcome!!!!!!
:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

[JAbuchan08]

7. This is common practice, but absoloutley the most eggregious example

I have ever heard of. :grr:

They're like Mexican laborers who cross the border and wind up basically slaves.
Only these poor people wind up in the middle of a war zone, and the administration's *complete* and *total* absence of any sort of accounting process for the money spent in Iraq is tacit acceptance if not outright endorsement of this policy as far as I'm concerned. :banghead:

[haydukelives]

8. I keep thinking

what next?
How bad can it get?

[Disturbed]

9. The RW and Haliburton are the New World Order.

The RW goal is to turn Amerika and the world into a Serfdom. Globalization is the path.

[Cassandra]

14. What will the working classes here do...

when the only jobs paying decent wages are those killing and exploiting overseas?

[dretceterini]

25. Yes!!!

One must kill, kill, kill for the glory of Herr Kommander Chimppy Von Poopypants "God" (also known as oil).

[lpbk2713]

10. Not surprising at all.

One arm of the BFEE acts like all the others. And the orders come from the top.

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. How can my oh so noble nation allow this to happen? Why are the

self-righteous repubs not crying out for justice? I mean, we're the good guys, right?

[H2O]

13. Nobility

Almost all pretense of nobility have been stripped away. They are like whitewashed tombs. This is most likely a sign of things to come.

[Patchuli]

16. This will stop only when we the American

citizens make them stop! This is disgusting and shows what liars they are yet again, because they have told us that the U.S. will leave Iraq when the Iraqis can fend for themselves. Obviously, it is true they intend to stay.

We must make this stop!

[Gronk Groks]

18. Slavery isn't slavery if it happens to non-American citizens...

...I suppose is the rational. :sarcasm:

Unbridled corporate greed has no morals. It is neither good or evil, it simply exists to maximize profits and will do whatever it needs to do in order to do so.

One of the best examples is the robber barons of the 19th century in America. They exploited cheap immigrant & child labor, provided incredibly dangerous work conditions and created company towns to create wage slaves.

The end result was the labor unions to offset the incredible power of the robber barons. Thus this is nothing new, just the same concept on an international stage.

So much for America being a beacon of hope to the downtrodden masses...

[Divernan]

19. US now creates "the wretched refuse" instead of saving it.

The Statue of Liberty bows her head in shame.

"Send me your tired, your poor
Your homeless masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teaming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I used to love singing those words and I truly believed them and was proud to be an American.

Now I join the Statue of Liberty in bowing my head in shame for what these Republican monsters have turned my country into.
The Nepalese did not even sign up for jobs in Iraq. They were sent to another middle Eastern country first and then forced to go to Iraq. Call it press-ganging, call it kidnapping: slavery by any other name will smell as rotten.

[Kailassa]

23. Divernan, it's much worse than that.

The fact is, American History has always been a heavily censored propaganda course to trick Americans into unquestioning adulation of their own country. Text books that were not sufficiently censored were thrown out and never used. Americans have always been lied to about what their government has done overseas, so even if Americans realized some harm had been done they would be already sold on the idea that far more good was done. And there was always self interest, the knowledge, deep down, that anything done overseas was enriching America, and it would therefore be unpatriotic to question it.

I expect you already know about the late 19th century invasion of the Philippines, taught to American kids as the Philippine Insurrection. Even then people resisting U.S. occupation were libeled as insurrectionists. Nothing has changed, U.S. fortunes have always been based on war, slavery and drugs.

This is not said to criticize anyone in particular. People are the same the world over, and I suspect it can all be worked out mathematically that certain conditions inevitably lead to certain events. Or, to put it another way, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[lostnfound]

20. This type of deception was reported on Pacifica KPFT about 8-10 months ago

Not sure which program -- probably Flashpoints or FSRN news.

Programs discussing the terrible working conditions of the recruits from India etc., and how some of them were duped into jobs in 'Kuwait' but were actually put on buses into Iraq, with no way to get out. How they also were treated as virtual slaves, kitchen help and launderers, derided by the other better-paid contractors from America etc.

[connecticut yankee]

22. Bastards!

And they call themselves "good Christians."

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Just for interest's sake, imagine Halliburton

kept financial accounts. Under what heading do you think they would post "Slave-trading"? Oops, "Indentured labour" sounds so much better, doesn't it? Would it be "Contracting", do you think?

Oh, somebody's just told me Halliburton do keep financial accounts, and it's a non-negotiable requirement under US law. They're just a little incomplete.