WARTIME CONTRACTS FAVOR BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S CORPORATE CRON

[Anonymous]

Greens see extensive war profiteering by firms with White House and Pentagon connections, while Bush urges Americans -- especially troops and veterans -- to sacrifice.


WASHINGTON, DC -- Funding for the war on Iraq, while requiring massive cuts in social spending for health, education, services, and welfare and reduction of veterans benefits, is becoming a huge windfall for favored corporations, say members of the Green Party of the United States.

"This $100-billion war is proving a cash cow for corporations, especially those with connections to the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon, while U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and soldiers face death and injury," said Tom Bolema, Town Councilperson (Green) of Juniper Hills, California.  "European governments are furious that the administration plans to award the major contracts, worth somewhere between $20 billion and $100 billion, to U.S. corporations, without any competitive bidding process."

"The Bush Administration has already awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a Pentagon contract to rebuild Iraqi oil fields," said Jake Schneider, treasurer of the Green Party of the United States.  "USAID awarded a $4.8 million contract to Stevedoring Services of America to manage the Umm Qasr port.  Companies like the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corporation, Parsons Group and defense contractors Carlyle Group and Global Crossing are expected to make millions off the war.  Humanitarian relief, including assistance in Iraq's water shortage, is proving a distant second in priority behind military deals and control over Iraqi oil."

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics documents that Halliburton (for which Vice President Cheney served as CEO from 1995 to 2000), Bechtel, Fluor, and Parsons contributed a combined $2.64 million to political campaigns between 1999 and 2002, with 68 percent of those dollars given to Republicans.  

"Bechtel is asserting the right, granted through the IMF and World Bank, to take private control over municipal public water supplies in Bolivia, most controversially in Cochabamba," said Mark Dunlea, chair of the Green Party of New York State.  "Will Bechtel use its current connections and postwar influence to take over Iraqi resources?"

Other recent revelations:

*** According to the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and the Institute for Policy Studies, current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then Secretary of State George Shultz, acting on behalf of Bechtel, began negotiating a deal with Saddam in 1983 to open up the Aqaba pipeline through Iraq.  Saddam's rejection resulted in the first rift in U.S.-Iraq relations.

*** An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that nine members of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board have ties to major defense contractors.  (The exposure of Richard Perle's conflicts of interest connections with Global Crossing led to Perle's resignation as board chair last week, but Perle will retain a seat on the board.)

*** Massive new powers for Vice President Cheney to classify U.S. documents will ensure less oversight and accountability, shielding contractors and government officials with conflicts of interest from public scrutiny.

"These deals reveal that the major motivation for the invasion has less to do with concern for liberation, an already dubious promise under prolonged U.S. occupation, than with giving the U.S. corporate and political control over Iraq and its resources," said Ben Manski, Wisconsin and national party co-chair.  "It's a situation comparable to Enron's looting of Croatia when the Clinton Administration awarded it a contract to help rebuild that nation after the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.  What we're seeing now is Enron politics at its worst."

[JDavid]

Yeah it really gets under my skin when I hear someone on TV talking about these deals.  They say stuff like "America has paid in blood" or similar phrases.  Whoever they're interviewing never responds with something like "Because the people who fought in the war are not Haliburton, Stevedoring Services, Bechtel Group, Fluor Corporation, Parsons Group".  They also never say "Because these are not Iraq or Arab companies".

People say sending 3 to 10 billion per year to Israel is a good deal because Israel turns around and spends it on US weapons.  I think the phrase is "the money comes right back to America anyway".  Yeah, money sent in by tax payers then laundered back to the weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.

If we could kill all the rich people, there would be no more poverty.  I bet there would be no more abortion crisis also.

David

[Antigen]

Yeah, more and more, I'm all for putting the major players in a ring and let the rest of us just stand back and watch.

It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.

--Joseph Goebbels

[JDavid]

A few anarchists and I have recently talked about trying to start a huge campaign called "Ignore the Government".  It would have stages.  The first stage would just be fun.  Switching off the TV whenever a political statement is being made and refusing to vote.  After that, stages such as widespread tax evasion, then refusing to pay mortgages and rent.

I haven't finished designing it yet, but I want to put the reasons for doing this are for "world peace, no more poverty and abortion, no more ruling class scams" and so on.

There's a lot more to it.  Self-government and direct democracy is no easy concept to learn.

I loose faith in the idea every time I talk to some Fox News viewing pussycat who's ready to roll over for our oh-so-noble government though.

The deeper I get into the idea the more it feels like I'm helping to ring in the apocalypse, if there is such a thing.

David



[ This Message was edited by: JDavid on 2003-04-06 23:08 ]

[Antigen]

Well, I don't think direct democracy is all that great an idea. At least not on a huge scale. Works OK for a small community where everyone at least sees, if they don't feel directly, the consequences of their choices. Otherwise, it's kind of like mob rule. No, it's exactly like mob rule!

Here are some of my odder thoughts on what has worked and what has failed. We lost the Civil War. And, before anyone goes jumping all over me and calling me dirty nasty names, the Civil War was not about Slavery. That was just the divisive, hot button issue used by alleged Republicans as an excuse to do a whole lot of damage to our Republic. The Civil War didn't end slavery, either, except on paper. You can find slaves right in the US in the prison population as well as illegals working the sugar cane fields and groves in Central Florida. Literally, they are stuck, they work or they get beaten and starved. If they try to run away, and they make it past 20 miles or so of bad swampland, the local law will snatch them up and gladly take the INS bounty to deport them back to Haiti or Honduras or whevever they originally fled from.

That's a long way of saying that I think a limited government for mutual defense and relatively peaceful redress of grievance was a good thing. Not a perfect thing, but it worked better than anything else we know of for as long as it lasted.

Last time, we attained a Republic by way of our local government leaders and business leaders. Most all of the founders and revolutionaries were men of means and officers of the Crown. They led the way to freedom from the Crown and, I think, that's about the only reasonably peaceful way a revolution has ever happened and the only way that a revolution or change of government has not resulted in despotism far worse than before.

So try and appeal to local government to quit going along. It's a whole lot easier than the idea of facing them down when they come to your door armed and ready to arrest you for not paying taxes.

Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
Anonymity Anonymous

[JDavid]

I never have been able to find a definition for what mob rule officially is.  I will take a few stabs at it though.  I have seen mob rule compared to direct democracy often.

The first element is that I think anything on a huge scale is unnecessary.  Big, centralized government is only three things anyway: 1. voting on issues 2. implementing the results through force and 3. centralizing the funding for the solutions through force.  The larger the area and population such a government covers, the more misrepresentation takes place, which leads to large scale conflict or war.  It is a form of forced unity, not real unity... United States.  My take on it is that Washington D.C. is mob rule.  One large mob with way too much power and their thugs spread across the entire planet.

The small scale is the only scale that is even necessary for polling, descision making, funding and solution implementation.  I can't think of a time when Oregon really needs help on anything from Florida or Tennessee, especially once disputes on the large scale are resolved by getting rid of big centralized, forced unity.

Dispute resolution on the small scale will probably have to be resolved with technology.  Polling systems in which everyone is the president (the one who initiates issues to debate and vote on), everyone is congress (everyone debates and votes on whichever issues they want to), everyone is the contributor to the solution.  

Conjuring up the funds for small scale solutions should not be hard.  I bet it wouldn't even require force.  Perhaps all of the "yay" voters could afford the cause on their own, since they would be the majority.

There's also the issue of mafia style "security" coming onto the market.  A polling system like the one above could be also used by the locals to run the local security company.  The polls would dictate which policies are enforced.  If the agency steps out of line, they run the risk of getting cut off immediately.  The people would certainly prefer to have them as the security group they contribute to opposed to complying with mob threats.

Self-defense is the first line of defense even in the current system.  Unfortunately, it is not currently common for everyone to learn self defense.  I don't think everyone would need to be self defense experts, by the way.  I just think that if such skills were extremely popular and scattered all over the population, those with a mob mentality would consider this a threat... never knowing who is capable of ripping them a new asshole if they attempted to muscle some security funds from a certain household or organization.  Even Washington D.C. has some fear of the current day people's self-defense abilities.

I like the anarchists' principle of "no land ownership" also.  If there is no price on land and no way to buy more land, there is no motivation (that I can think of) for a mob to manipulate or force people into funding their agenda.  Anarchists say that to build a structure on a piece of land requires local community approval.  Any time such a project is disapproved, there is plenty of land elsewhere to build the structure, so even this dispute is not likely to break out into a mob vs. the self-defending population battle.  The idea of a battle breaking out over one group wanting to occupy some other group's structure seems too petty.  Plus, to occupy some other group's structure through force dooms the occupying force to eternal retribution by the surrounding communities... much like Israel.

Finally, I cannot see any leverage a mob's leader would have in such a system.  I mean, what would be the motivator that the mob leader would use to rally the thugs to do their bidding if land is free and life is not expensive?

That's just where my imagination takes me on this set of details.  I do still try to find holes in the system, then work them out.  It's not often that I do find such holes.

This is one of the main things that holds me back from starting that whole "Ignore the Government" thing.  I feel like I would have to personally design and build all these polling systems before this can be done safely.  That's not gonna happen, so I'm just keeping an eye on voting technology surfacing from other places.  Maybe once such systems are widespread in city councils and police departments, things will start to take shape.

David

On 2003-04-07 10:56:00, Antigen wrote: "Well, I don't think direct democracy is all that great an idea. At least not on a huge scale. Works OK for a small community where everyone at least sees, if they don't feel directly, the consequences of their choices. Otherwise, it's kind of like mob rule. No, it's exactly like mob rule!

[ This Message was edited by: JDavid on 2003-04-07 15:12 ]

[Antigen]

We already have such a polling system. It's subtle, and pervasive and comprehensive. It's made up of newspapers, pubs, churches, concerts and fairs, play grounds and grocery stores, back yard fence posts and anywhere else that people come together for social company and maybe a little debate or brainstorming.

We're doing that right now. Who knows what will come of it?

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I would not hesitate for a moment to choose the latter." -TJ

He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.

--James Burgh 1774

[JDavid]

I don't have any confidence in the informal media for debating & polling when it comes to convincing the population and avoiding battle.  Informal routes are only preliminaries.  We would need some concrete representation of the debates and the results of the polls.  We would especially need such a thing in order to quickly get rid of the mistakes which were enacted by the majority once such a cause was found to be destructive.  Without such a way of doing so, our informal debates and polling runs the risk of escalating into public outcry, then riots, then battles, then maybe even war.



[ This Message was edited by: JDavid on 2003-04-08 20:29 ]

[Antigen]

No, there's a natural check to bad ideas. Bad ideas fail and people adopt better ones.

Here's an example. When I was a kid, ramp jumping was real big in our neighborhood. Kids were building ramps, getting on rat bikes and jumping over all kinds of things; other kids, small ditches, piles of sand... watever. I think it was probably inspired by Evil Kanevil.

So one day, this kid decides he's gonna jump the canal. He put a lot into it; practicing over grass, adjusting the ramp, spreading the word, etc. Finally, the big day came. Half the neighborhood was there to see the great jump. The kid made his run, mounted the ramp, crossed the canal but turned head firs in the air, landed on his head, broke his neck and died on the spot.

Word spread like wildfire. Ramp jumping for fun and fame passed into neighborhood lore overnight.

Compare that with the efficacy of helmet laws.

Any Irishman who doubts the reality of selective enforcement ought to take just a moment to comtemplate the etymology of the term "paddy waggon".
--Antigen

[JDavid]

Well that was an irrational conclusion for the people to come to.  The rational conclusion would have been to keep jumping ramps, but do not jump the canal.  A formal system would have likely steered the debate clear of the irrational conclusion.  This conclusion was based on the hasty reaction to the dramatic effect.

[Antigen]

I don't think it was all that irrational. In fact, I think it would have been odd and spooky if kids had gone on with the fun just asif they hadn't just watched their friend kill himself. This was a period of mourning and commemoration. It happened to the kids about 5 - 8 years older than I was at the time. I was little.

By the time a new mix of kids came into the local culture and wanted to jump ramps, the cautionary tale was told again, and this time there was some parental and older sibling supervision to it. They still jump ramps in Lyons Park. I've seen the evidence in recent years. And some of the kids I grew up with are raising their kids in the same streets. I doubt they'll let anyone's kids push the sport so far. Maybe the next generation will forget and have to suffer the same hard lesson, we hope not!

But compare this laissez faire approach of relying on community and common sense instead of having to appoint a committee to study, codify and then enforce new ideas.

It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.

--Joseph Goebbels

[JDavid]

I think I'd definitely not want a commitee of any kind.  Only administrators of the equipment, not the policies, with safeguards against fraud by something like multiple unrelated admins expected to always be able to show identical copies of the debates and polling.

I have envisioned this all the way from the present day to way into the future, and my personal outlook does tend to make what I am saying only necessary for however long it takes to out-poll big government into non-existence.  Once big government is gone, it may turn out that such a technological system might not be necessary once all descisions are really localized.

[Froderik]

http://www.whitehouse.org/

:rofl:

[JDavid]

whitehouse.org is funny as hell, especially the stuff about the First Lady... Lecturing America's parents on how to pack their kids for jail and keeping her hubby in line with the anonymous tips hotline.   :lol:



[ This Message was edited by: JDavid on 2003-04-12 01:00 ]

[Anonymous]

Check out the G. W. Bush coloring book.
http://www.gcpress.com