Republicans cover for Halliburton - Time to turn them out of Office!
Donald L Ferrt
Halliburton Accused of Wasting Tax Money
February 13, 2004 03:23 PM EST
WASHINGTON - Frustrated that they couldn't convince Republicans to
conduct hearings on Vice President Dick Cheney's former company,
Democrats convened a panel of their own Friday to hear a former
Halliburton employee testify that the company wastes taxpayers' money.
Halliburton, which supplies military support services in Iraq and
elsewhere, routinely purchased items at higher prices from preferred
suppliers, said Henry Bunting, who worked for the company in Kuwait
last year.
"There were frequent instructions by procurement supervisors and
management to keep ... requisitions under the $2,500 threshold to
avoid competitive bidding," Bunting, of Houston, told the Senate
Democratic Policy Committee.
"Remember, this is a 'cost plus contract' so Halliburton would get
reimbursed for its costs plus a percentage," he said.
The chairman of the panel, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the hearing
was needed because of allegations that Halliburton overcharged for
delivery of gasoline to Iraq; that company employees took kickbacks
and that the firm charged too much for meals served to troops in Iraq.
"It seems to me that these incidents may well reflect a broad
mind-set: one that was born on the day that these contracts were
awarded without competition, and that was nurtured through a lack of
oversight by this current administration and majority-controlled
Congress," Dorgan said.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said he has been requesting for nine
months that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, led by
Republicans, conduct the hearing.
Bunting, who quit after working 15 weeks for Halliburton in Kuwait,
handed Dorgan an embroidered towel with the logo of a Halliburton
subsidiary, saying a company manager insisted on ordering the towels
for between $4.50 and $5.50 instead of $1.60 for cheaper towels.
On Thursday, two House members wrote Pentagon auditors about
allegations of waste by Bunting and a second, unidentified former
Halliburton worker. The letter was sent by Reps. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., and John Dingell, D-Mich.
Halliburton, run by Cheney before his 2000 vice presidential campaign,
has consistently denied overcharges.
Bunting was a field buyer who filled requisitions from Halliburton
employees by locating vendors. The second ex-employee was a
procurement supervisor who did similar work.
According to Waxman and Dingell, Bunting and the unidentified
whistleblower contend:
-Top Halliburton officials frequently told employees that high prices
charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government
would reimburse the costs and then pay the company an additional fee.
-Higher than necessary prices were paid for ordinary vehicles, leased
for $7,500 a month, and for furniture and cellular telephone service.
-Halliburton tried to keep as many purchase orders as possible below
$2,500 so its buyers could avoid the requirement to solicit quotes
from more than one vendor.
-Supervisers provided buyers with a list of preferred Kuwaiti vendors,
including companies that charged excessive prices. Buyers were not
encouraged to identify alternative vendors.
Congressional Democrats and the party's presidential candidates have
made Halliburton's extensive government contracts a major election
issue, contending the business showed favoritism toward Cheney's
former company.
The vice president has repeatedly said he had no involvement with the
company once he left Halliburton before the 2000 campaign.
The letter was sent to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which found
in a preliminary audit that Halliburton may have overcharged taxpayers
$61 million in delivery of oil to Iraq.
---
On the Net:
Halliburton www.halliburton.com
Rep. Henry Waxman: http://www.house.gov/waxman/
Rep. John Dingell: http://www.house.gov/dingell/
.com Bushies
people support a corrupted leader? I don't understand.
Many elderly people lost their 401k savings due to his corruption. Why?
they interlinked together. Many people got robbed by this indirectly
through their 401k mutual funds.
It is the people who don't know about investment that argued against this
case.
"Donald L Ferrt" <wolfb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:b9eb3efe.04021...@posting.google.com...
Mark T. Evert
This is all political BS. I've worked with buyers on government
contracts. They are required to know the Federal Acquistion Regulations
(FAR) and they are responsible for adhering to them. They have the
capability and in fact the responsibility to notify (anonomously) the
non-partisan and independent Inspector Generals office if they feel they are
being directed to do something that is wasteful or illegal...and in fact
it's their asses on the line if they don't..The IG offices maintain hotlines
just for that purpose. These people testifying were obviously not doing
thier job.
>
> According to Waxman and Dingell, Bunting and the unidentified
> whistleblower contend:
>
> -Top Halliburton officials frequently told employees that high prices
> charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government
> would reimburse the costs and then pay the company an additional fee.
Unreasonably high prices are a problem as the gasoline fiasco indicates.
Government auditors and the IG auditor both review the submitted costs and
Halliburton is required to justify anything that appears to be unreasonable
when compared to market rates. If they can't justify it it may be
disallowed and they have to eat it. The additional fee is awarded based
on the contractors performance including overall cost performance.
>
> -Halliburton tried to keep as many purchase orders as possible below
> $2,500 so its buyers could avoid the requirement to solicit quotes
> from more than one vendor.
This isn't all that unusual, but it is blatently illegal to intentionally
split a single purchase between 2 or more purchase orders to avoid
competitive bidding. The desire to do this has nothing to do with
defeating the competive bid process though.....the reality is that
competitively bid procurements take considerably longer as vendors have to
be identified, RFQ's sent out and a reasonable amount of time has to be
given for the vendors to respond......I don't know how many times my
government customer has been pissed because he was having to wait for an
item or service only because we were following the customers own procurement
regulations. Furthermore the government likes it if you use generic
specifications for competitive bids. What this means for example is that
you may have a Cisco based network, but the winning bid for a piece of
network gear is from a non-Cisco vendor.....Now you have a support
issue......to avoid this you may have to justify why the additional
training/support costs should disqualify the non-Cisco vendor.....a hassle
to say the least.
>
> -Supervisers provided buyers with a list of preferred Kuwaiti vendors,
> including companies that charged excessive prices. Buyers were not
> encouraged to identify alternative vendors.
Preferred vendors is not all that unusual. If the over $2500 procurements
were competitively bid the companies that charged excessive prices should
have gotten weeded out pretty quickly ......unless they were coluding with
each other.
>
> The letter was sent to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which found
> in a preliminary audit that Halliburton may have overcharged taxpayers
> $61 million in delivery of oil to Iraq.
This issue has been resolved.....turns out the government directed
Halliburton to buy from that source and Halliburton was absolved of any
wrongdoing.
Brian Quincy Hutchings
you going to wait, to call for his resignation?
wolfb...@mindspring.com (Donald L Ferrt) wrote in message news:<b9eb3efe.04021...@posting.google.com>...
> "There were frequent instructions by procurement supervisors and
> management to keep ... requisitions under the $2,500 threshold to
> avoid competitive bidding," Bunting, of Houston, told the Senate
> Democratic Policy Committee.
>
> "Remember, this is a 'cost plus contract' so Halliburton would get
> reimbursed for its costs plus a percentage," he said.
> Halliburton www.halliburton.com
>
> Rep. Henry Waxman: http://www.house.gov/waxman/
>
> Rep. John Dingell: http://www.house.gov/dingell/
thus quoth:
A COORDINATED WALL ST. ASSAULT
Who Killed U.S. Nuclear Power? by Marsha Freeman
From the Spring 2001 issue of 21st Century Science & Technology (full text).
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/spring01/nuclear_power.html
http://larouchepub.com/lar/2004/3106tariffs_trade.html
http://larouchepub.com/other/2004/3107whr_they_std_6.html
http://larouchepub.com/other/2004/3106usdebt_pt2.html
--
zero-dimensional holograms.
utterly compressed information.
DemConK2 cloning malfunction:
(Citizen John-mick) Kane/Bore/Gush/Nadir;
LaRouche et al versus Fowler et al, '96 --
Supreme Decision, March 27, 2000. but, hey;
the Voting Rights Act is "up"
for republication in '07!
of course, a lot of this is moot, if we allow Cheeny
to grind us into Tony's McCrusade (Usama's MacJihad). see my sig.
Give the World a Trickier Dick Cheeny -- out of office after GIGA years.
http://www.benfranklinbooks.com/
http://larouchepub.com/other/2004/book_reviews/3105suskind_oneill.html
http://larouchepub.com/other/2004/3105cheny_trgtted.html
http://larouchepub.com/other/2003/3046chnygte_plmbrs.html
http://larouchepub.com/other/2003/3048iraq_58_const.html
http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/rr.12.00/
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac
http://www.wlym.com/PDF-68-76/CAM7606.pdf
http://larouchepub.com/other/2004/3104elect_voting.html
http://larouchepub.com/other/2003/3045dems_dive_soros.html
Donald L Ferrt
History show otherwise:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0206-05.htm
http://www.independent-media.tv/gtheme.cfm?ftheme_id=35
> >
> > According to Waxman and Dingell, Bunting and the unidentified
> > whistleblower contend:
> >
> > -Top Halliburton officials frequently told employees that high prices
> > charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government
> > would reimburse the costs and then pay the company an additional fee.
>
> Unreasonably high prices are a problem as the gasoline fiasco indicates.
> Government auditors and the IG auditor both review the submitted costs and
> Halliburton is required to justify anything that appears to be unreasonable
> when compared to market rates. If they can't justify it it may be
> disallowed and they have to eat it. The additional fee is awarded based
> on the contractors performance including overall cost performance.
it gets deeper:
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news_analysis/story.jsp?story=488933
A booty for the barons of Baghdad
The streets may be troubled, write Adrian Gatton and Clayton Hirst,
but Western dollars are about to rain down on an elite group of
secretive Iraqi families. Meanwhile, as business booms for a British
intelligence firm, financial speculators are licking their wounds
08 February 2004
The television images portray a bombed-out country with its
inhabitants living in crumbling houses close to the poverty line. But
away from the allied forces' patrols and the buildings riddled with
bullet holes, a small but powerful group of families is thriving in
Iraq. With business contacts throughout the Gulf and the Middle East
and extending into Europe, Iraq has developed its own powerful set of
oligarchs. The Al-Bunnias, Al- Khudairys and Kubbas have become the
region's own Rockefellers, Gettys and Fords.
Like their American counterparts, these Iraqi dynasties are built on
property, construction, technology and manufacturing and are over a
century old. But the fortunes of this wealthy elite could be
transformed with the billions of dollars that are set to flood into
Iraq to patch up the war-torn country.
Western firms such as Halliburton, Bechtel and Amec lodged bids on
Thursday for the $14bn (£7.6bn) worth of contracts being handed out
though the Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Office. The companies
have been privately told that the successful bidders will be the ones
that can complete the works quickly - "to win the hearts of the
Iraqis". To do this, the firms will have to call on the powerful Iraqi
business dynasties, which have the contacts and know the intricacies
of the country's sometimes-erratic business practices.
Western firms will be reaching for a copy of a tome by academic Hanna
Batuta called The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of
Iraq, published in America in 1978. According to one Iraqi lawyer, who
asked to remain anonymous, if today you are wealthy in Iraq but can't
be found in the index of this book, then you must have got rich
because of Saddam Hussein and his Baath party.
Identifying a family not tainted by the former dictator's regime is
not easy. Some Iraqis believe that, come June, when power transfers to
Iraq, some of the families who collaborated with the regime could have
their assets seized. The incoming government is expected to enact
existing anti-corruption legislation and empower investigators to
probe the sources of the wealth of the big families. Others predict
that it will be difficult for the government to gather hard evidence
of collaboration. The key is to separate economic from political
power, but so far, that has not happened in Iraq. "We're focusing on
economic de-Baathification," says Zaab Sethna a senior adviser to the
Iraqi National Congress.
According to a report by the Center for International Private
Enterprise in the US, Iraq has 12 powerful family groups. Some are
secretive and little is known of their interests. Others have
sprawling empires that spill into the West.
The Al-Bunnia family is one of the oldest and arguably one of the most
powerful in Iraq. The Bunnia industrial group is headed by Abdul Wahab
Mahmoud al-Bunnia who is grooming his son, Khalil, to take over.
Founded in 1910, the business now has 4,000 staff and over 40
subsidiaries involved in construction, food, banking, insurance,
textiles and hotels. Like most successful Iraqi families, it is
developing links with Western companies. It owns a Pepsi bottling
factory, a BMW dealership and also claims to have agreements with IBM,
Hyundai and Epson.
Some members of the Al-Bunnia family are known to lavish their riches
on luxury goods. Khalil recently boasted he had a collection of "the
most expensive cars in the world".
Isam al-Khafaji, a former member of the Iraqi reconstruction council,
says the family worked beside the Saddam regime but didn't run the
dictator's front companies.
Rivalling Al-Bunnia is the Al-Khudairy dynasty. Run by Adnan
al-Khudairy, the family controls one of the largest construction
companies in the region and also owns the country's largest drugs
firm, Dhofar. Employing 5,000, its tentacles extend to the West,
notably a joint venture with UK oil company Wood Group and US
construction firm Shaw Group. The family has been critical of the
Coalition. At last year's World Economic Forum, Faisal al-Khudairy,
Dhofar's chairman, accused it of "rehiring tainted government
officials".
The powerful Iraqi business elite is desperate to avoid any whiff of
controversy that may come from the previous regime. The Kubba family
has gained respectability though charity; its Kubba Foundation aims to
"promote the education, health and general welfare of Iraqis". It
holds social events, including one last year in Surrey. But away from
charity the family is made up of hard-nosed business people making
money out of IT, marketing, telecoms, engineering and construction. It
also owns a soft drinks firm, Kufa Cola, run by Raed Najah Kubba,
which is thought to have discussed a joint venture with America's
Coca-Cola.
The Kubba website makes no secret of the desire to cash in on the
confusion after the fall of the Baath regime: The company is
"well-positioned to help international businesses navigate through the
myriad of commercial and political complexities facing the Iraqi
market today".
The Munir Sukhtian family is not technically Iraqi but over the past
few years it has emerged as a force in the region. The family business
dates back to 1933 when it set up as a pharmacy in Palestine. Today,
the company is run by the three sons of the eponymous founder and much
of its business is in Jordan, spanning telecoms, chemicals,
pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. It is said to be becoming a
powerful player in the reconstruction of Iraq.
The other Iraqi families, such as Shanshal, Al-Dulaimi, and
Al-Kharbeet, have eschewed publicity and less is known about their
dealings. However, their names are likely to be looked up by the
gaggle of Western companies hoping for a slice of the reconstruction
programme.
US companies, mainly Halliburton and Bechtel, have won the lion's
share of the work so far. UK companies, including Vodafone, De La Rue,
Standard Chartered and Serco, have been relegated to the secondary
contracts. This has led to claims that the US, which is in charge of
the reconstruction, has favoured its own companies. Brian Wilson, Tony
Blair's special envoy on reconstruction, says: "It is an un-level
playing field. The Americans have taken the view that if it is US tax
dollars paying for the work then American companies should go to the
front of the queue. There is no point in arguing with that, but there
is substantial scope this time around for British companies to get
some of the work."
Amec, in a joint venture with Fluor of the US, has bid for contracts
worth $5bn. And Mowlem, working with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg
Brown & Root, has placed bids for $1.5bn worth of contracts.
Mr Wilson says: "There is no doubt the Iraqis want British companies
to be more involved because they are not American. The Iraqis are more
comfortable working with the British because they have more of a
cultural, historic and educational affinity."
If he's right then the likes of Amec had better dig out a copy of The
Old Social Classes.
The spy who brings firms in from the cold
Nick Day's life is something of a boy's own fantasy. Spurred on by the
Falklands War and dire A-Level results, he joined the Marines at the
age of 18 before becoming an officer in the Special Boat Service, the
maritime equivalent of the SAS. Following time in Iraq, Northern
Ireland and Bosnia (where he gathered intelligence and "chatted up
Norwegian nurses"), he became as spy, joining MI5 and specialising in
Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And all that before he hit his
mid-30s.
Four years ago, however, Mr Day quit to set up intelligence and
security firm Diligence with ex-CIA agent Mike Baker. The firm now has
around 200 employees, offices in London, America, Geneva and the
Middle East, and a turnover of £5m a year.
In association with Kuwaiti partner the Al-Mal Investment Company, the
firm works for blue chips, media agencies and non-governmental
organisations either already in Iraq or about to move in. Services
include vetting local employees and partners, due diligence on
potential investments, daily intelligence briefs, protecting compounds
and payrolls, and providing bodyguards. Fees are based on the level of
risk involved.
At the moment, security threats come from insurgents and old-fashioned
banditry. Mr Day believes terrorism will fade, leaving the bandits to
hone their skills in the same way sophisticated organised crime
emerged in developing markets such as Russia.
In the meantime, there are two ways to protect businesses. "You either
drive round in heavily armoured vehicles and have lots of weapons or
you become discreet, using Iraqis to guard you and local vehicles,"
says Mr Day. The ones who become targets are those who drive
ostentatious "big white Jeeps" but without armoured capability or
enough weapons.
In common with many Western operations in Iraq, Diligence has links to
the US. The heavyweight Republican lobbying firm Barbour Griffith &
Rogers (BGR) has invested in the business, though Mr Day insists it
was a "relatively small amount".
Diligence also works in association with New Bridge Strategies, a US
firm with links to BGR that was set up to help companies secure Iraqi
contracts.
Clients are understood to include the American governmental agency
USAid and a number of companies associated with Halliburton,
Vice-President Dick Cheney's former firm, which recently fired two
employees for taking $6m in kickbacks over Iraqi contracts.
Mr Day, however, remains unfazed. "There definitely has been
corruption in Iraq, but because the spotlight on Iraqi contracts has
been so intense, you wouldn't believe the lengths you have to go to."
And while sceptical about the claims of weapons of mass destruction,
he believes war was a means to a viable end. "The people are glad to
be rid of Saddam Hussein and believe this offers the best chance of a
future. They are happy things have changed."
Furthermore, demand from the corporate world for Diligence's services
is not going away. "We want to take on the world," Mr Day says. "We
will go where there's a market for our services. People just feel
uncomfortable in emerging markets."
Abigail Townsend
Debt traders find profit is a mirage
There's an estimated $120bn of it, no one knows how much it is worth
and not a penny has been repaid for 15 years. Yet there is a lot of
interest in Iraqi debt.
"The number of enquiries we have had and the number of people who want
to know what is going on have substantially increased. There has been
an uptick in activity," says Peter Bartlett, the managing director of
specialist illiquid debt trader Exotix. "It's gone from one trade
every two to three weeks to one trade every week."
Speculators became quite excited about Iraqi debt as Coalition forces
prepared to invade last year. The country's external borrowings have
been frozen for over 12 years as a result of the sanctions imposed
during and after the first Gulf War. But Iraq had not paid back
anything on its borrowings since 1988.
The hope that a new US-backed administration might start making
repayments on the billions of sovereign debt, trade finance and
company loans sent prices rising from about eight cents in the dollar
to 30¢ by the time Baghdad fell. Interest from specialist distressed
debt investors was boosted by others who realised that this was the
only practical way to speculate on the recovery in Iraq's fortunes.
Since then, reality has set in.
For a start, lots of the debt may not be recoverable because the
documentation has been lost or the borrower no longer exists. Much of
it is guaranteed by the Iraqi state bank, Rafidain, which is in
essence bankrupt. The UK branch was placed in provisional liquidation
last year, though this might be a boon as it clarifies the legal
status of its bank guarantees.
Then there is the question of debt forgiveness. The Paris Club of
creditor countries, owed an estimated $21bn plus interest, has been
discussing how much of it might be written off. A decision should set
a precedent for how much commercial debtors would accept - though this
has not worked with a similar situation to do with Serbia. There, the
Paris Club deal was seen as too generous to the Balkan state and the
commercial banks are still wrangling.
A third factor is the creation of a government supported by the Iraqi
people, which can make decisions about whether it will use much, if
any, of the country's potentially massive oil revenues to pay off this
ancient debt.
Experts in the sector counsel caution. "We could be years away from
gaining a clear picture," says Kay Haigh, the head of emerging markets
trading at Deutsche Bank.
Jason Nissé
> >
> > -Halliburton tried to keep as many purchase orders as possible below
> > $2,500 so its buyers could avoid the requirement to solicit quotes
> > from more than one vendor.
>
> This isn't all that unusual, but it is blatently illegal to intentionally
> split a single purchase between 2 or more purchase orders to avoid
> competitive bidding. The desire to do this has nothing to do with
> defeating the competive bid process though.....the reality is that
> competitively bid procurements take considerably longer as vendors have to
> be identified,
Yea = Running the Military-Industrial complex might be hazzardous to
your clients if you wait!
RFQ's sent out and a reasonable amount of time has to be
> given for the vendors to respond......I don't know how many times my
> government customer has been pissed because he was having to wait for an
> item or service only because we were following the customers own procurement
> regulations. Furthermore the government likes it if you use generic
> specifications for competitive bids. What this means for example is that
> you may have a Cisco based network, but the winning bid for a piece of
> network gear is from a non-Cisco vendor.....Now you have a support
> issue......to avoid this you may have to justify why the additional
> training/support costs should disqualify the non-Cisco vendor.....a hassle
> to say the least.
All saying you want a Military-Industrial complex vendor, the retiring
Generals and other Governmental agencies can retire to!
> >
> > -Supervisers provided buyers with a list of preferred Kuwaiti vendors,
> > including companies that charged excessive prices. Buyers were not
> > encouraged to identify alternative vendors.
>
> Preferred vendors is not all that unusual. If the over $2500 procurements
> were competitively bid the companies that charged excessive prices should
> have gotten weeded out pretty quickly ......unless they were coluding with
> each other.
Military-Industrial complex
> >
> > The letter was sent to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which found
> > in a preliminary audit that Halliburton may have overcharged taxpayers
> > $61 million in delivery of oil to Iraq.
>
> This issue has been resolved.....turns out the government directed
> Halliburton to buy from that source and Halliburton was absolved of any
> wrongdoing.
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_4982.shtml
The Future of America under the American-led Empire: A Realistic
"Sense of it."
By Craig B. Hulet?
Feb 5, 2004, 19:40
I was asked recently to make a short, or not so short, statement of
what I thought realistically may come about over the next, say, five
plus years here on my native soil, America. Actually I am asked this
all the time by a specific group of people, call them my circle of
interested parties. I have always restricted such comments to very
private segments of society as the mass of people, the masses if you
will, simply are not ever ready for "reality," in any form.
My take, for over thirty years, on where my country is headed consists
of a two-fold approach: the first approach is to put forward
sufficient data, factual information, empirical evidence all in a
specific format whereby an individual will understand what may happen,
has already happened though they may be unaware, and what ultimately
they might do in the face of it; call this my optimistic approach. Or
call it my public approach because the public, whenever they hear
something never before heard, it sends the herd stampeding if one
tells them too much "like it is." Call it, if you must, not telling
all-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-God!
(Or feeding them pap, for those not ready for meat) It is something
always practiced by most when speaking (or writing) to the petrified
herd.
The other approach is more metaphysical I suppose, conjectural or
suppositional. When asked to write about where my personal sense of it
truly resides and "tell it like it is," it is another question
altogether. Nobody wants to hear this, believe it's true and most
cannot stomach it. Publicly it just isn't done. Written? it is
literary suicide; spoken? It is verbalcidal. The Question? What is
this Empire we speak off? What will America and Americans face under
its rule? What will it be, this imperial project? This is what I hope
to address here.
"There is Tranquility in Ignorance, but Servitude is its Partner."
The reasons why few will say what they know, are obvious to those who
have been involved in the major corporate atmosphere, the U.S.
military, intelligence and security fields and even some specialized
academia. To speak of what you really know about this regime over the
past fifty-five years is to risk your career, your job, your
reputation, marriage, family and friends; in its severest reaction to
something you might reveal about this newest form of Empire is to be
smeared, slandered, banned, your client base asked to cease supporting
your work, advertisers are harangued to drop their ads, and yes, even
worse: you might actually end up dead. The public will not care that
some or all of these things happen to you or anyone else. The
progressive-Left will not care unless it is one of their own (and
there are only some one million Leftists total in America); the
radical-Right will not care unless it is, as well, one of their own
(there are some three to five million of these on American soil, and
they are largely harmless). The general public will never care what
happens to anyone because they're way too busy having fun, from dawn's
light to setting sun. Indeed, the "public" will not even know you
existed. Why?
In America we are dealing with a level of illiteracy downright
frightening. Political literacy, on foreign affairs, war and peace
issues, we are absolutely a stupefied muddle of illiterate dopes. The
entire world holds Americans in, well, shock & awe, if you will:
shocked by our stupidity -- awed by our own disbelief in that fact.
Americans arrogantly believe they are the smartest, best and most
moral people on earth. They are arrogant "because" they are ignorant;
the greater the ignorance the more stupid the more stupid the more
arrogant. That is why they are arrogant don't you see. The first
implies the other. Don't believe me, listen to shock-radio, hot-talk,
hate-talk, Pacifica Radio Network and Fox-blarney for but a week, and
you too "ought" to be in awe (if you're not we know why don't we?)!
Sad to admit, we are a hateful bigoted nation, still. A nation of
money-grubbing, manna worshipping, personality cult voyeuristic
overweight slobs. Bill Clinton represented the general masses more
than any president to date. To put it all in context. The eighty to
100 million which claim to attend church every Sunday, are the same
that stare numbly at pornography daily (whether hard-core Internet
[still the Internet's No.#1 viewed $ item] or the highly
professionally produced, written, edited Hollywood fanfare called
R-rated movies and television programming). They are, as well, the
very same ones getting others, or having their own, abortions in the
largest (Christian) numbers (do the math for heaven's sake, it ain't
Lesbian Thespians having abortions!).
That is not the worst part. It is these Volk that will believe
everything, anything, no matter how absurdly untrue, George Bush the
Smaller says. Many if not most on the Christian right think what we
are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan have biblical overtones. Some, let
us guess about half that figure, even believe "this is the END TIMES"
and they will come out of all this secular war-making sitting to the
right, that would be the very far-right, hand of God. The most
hypocritical of these choose to believe they will remain here on the
present planet justified in righteousness, with all their stuff,
homes, cars and toys, in what they call "Stewardship" of the earth
(meaning their stuff).
Given I am no prude, no fundamentalist church-going dispensationalist
Christian, and in fact a bit of an anarchist about most things
cultural and social, I‘ll not be tolerated long by that crowd. (Put
another way: I don't give a damn what you do on your own time, in your
own home, it is none of my business, period.) Politically I am quite
neutral about everything except what "is." Not what ought to be, as I
do have my personal philosophical notions; ideas which I keep to
myself. About what may just have happened politically, I understand
the why of it, and the whom it happened to, and all that too was
always predictable given sufficient data. Thus regarding what will
happen, I do have a sense of it all, but you likely won't like it one
bit. It isn't pessimistic though it seems so. It is realistic, if you
are without dogma: set-in-stone Left-leaning or Right-reeling; both
really reeling from listening to their own intoxicated blather. And
the two extremes do so love to hear themselves go on. And then, of
course, I may simply be dead wrong, making a fool of myself, something
I do quite naturally.
My sense of it, this Empire: The Strategy of Interdependence
Right then, that out of the way, I will spell out what I get from my
55-some years of adult participation in the great American political
delusion. While it is all a shame, and I am ashamed often to admit
being an American these days, I know America's light must not go out:
so goes America, as the foundation of liberty, so shall go the world.
If democracy (not the lunatic-Left's version) disappears here, it is
lost to the world in a matter of time; if the idea of freedom which
founded America (not the rabid-Right's version) disappears here, it
shall be lost for at least a full generation, if not two; if the hope
for world peace in some section of the world, like the Middle East
(not the radical-Rabbinical version in Israel) is lost on the world,
it shall not return until the newest high-tech dark-ages have run its
course.
And this I fear is my sense of it. I only speak to my fellow
country-men, Americans and those which have chosen to emigrate to this
soil and try to live free for maybe the first time. That is how almost
every single one of us, or our forefathers, came to abide on this
section of global landscape. In the hope of finding freedom; the hope
of ensnaring that intangible, justifiable joke called justice; the
hope for a future.
Instead we are, nearly every man, woman and child, throwing it all
away. Affluence, money, both in-and-of-itself and the incessant dream
of more of it, has obliterated the soul of nearly each and every one
of us. Including the children. Since 9/11, our leader has lied to
everyone regularly; not to mistaken him for a "truly" elected
president, (not the nonsense that the Republicans stole the last
Presidential election, that is just stupid) instead meaning that, by
and large, absolutely nobody even voted, with the exception of those
dogmatic Republicans and Democrats voting for their long-held jobs in
federal, state and local government (do the math). This funny little
fantastic Fuhrer has pursued policies, passed executive orders and
Kowtowed both Houses of Congress into obscene obedience; he has, in
short, set course for a level of tyranny not seen since our last four
"leaders," Clinton, Carter, Reagan and Bush the Larger (not one so
pernicious as this present presence in our midst) when each obediently
served the very same masters!
Empire isn't built in a day, they, each in their own way, their own
rhetoric, their own methods built upon each other's site. From
foundation, mortar, frame and roof, they all built this global regime.
Using blueprints laid forth in the immediate aftermath of World War
II, refined and redrawn as technology evolved, they used a strategic
foil, the strategy of "interdependence." That is what it was called
for many decades: a global regime of economic interdependence: a
strategy of interdependence. The blueprints drawn-up in the
smoke-filled rooms of the secretive citadels of non-governmental
organizations (NGO) where future leaders are trained-up, tuned-up and
their thoughts molded and shaped to serve the interests of this
emerging regime: Empire.
But not a Roman Empire, as the Roman people shared in its booty; its
triumphs were their triumphs. This newest regime, is global, this
newest regime is authoritarian, but this newest regime is not
American. Thus, it will only serve its masters as all Empire's do, but
Americans will see no benefits and neither share in its triumphs nor
its vision, its wealth nor its prosperity. You will share, many of you
worse than others, minorities, the poor, the weak, only in this
regime's cruelty and wrath. This newest metamorphosis and evolution to
Empire and imperial vision is a corporate regime, American-led, but
really Western-led; elite ruled and Western/Northern in its corporate
reach. The global regime is Corporazioni. Corporatism is its ideology.
Materialism its power and wealth; money its God: The "U.S. Dollar,"
but in its coming conversion to raw electronic funds transfer at the
point of sale (EFT/POS) in real time. As former CEO of CitiBank,
Walter Wriston once wrote a decade ago, "under this new financial
regime, there is no place to hide."
When I say it is a corporate regime I mean just that: i.e.,
corporations, multinational and conglomerate, monopoly and cartelized
in an ever-shrinking merger of one after another multinational firm
into a centralized monolithic structure which will dominate every
aspect of everyone's lives. And there is nothing more totalitarian
than a monopoly corporation. It is these masters of industries, who
have grown from mere Captains to Rulers of kingdoms, the size of which
old Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan did not even dream of. Of the 100
largest economies in the world 51 are corporations. Did I call these
corporate cretins "masters?" I must be an obscure right-wing
conspiracy theorist to have suggested this. Well, only to the
disingenuous faux progressive-Leftists whose operations are regularly
financed by these very same masters' trusts and foundations.
Yes, there are masters. There is an elite. Since the dawn of time
there has always been an elite for Christ's sake, where have you been?
Stuck over there with your itching ears plugged into Pacifica Radio's
rabid racists on the Left? The phony academics that tell you to ignore
the persons that personify their office of power and instead,
supposedly wisely, "understand the ‘problematic' of the ‘institutional
dynamics' which evolve within the vast ‘methodological substratum' of
‘empirical research.'" (And why have a method when you can have a
methodology?) All this supposedly understandable only within this
great noesphere of professorial wisdom. And of course only this wise
and chaste vanguard can supply you with "The Truth," -- i.e.,
Chomskyism's select. (Sounds like a Safeway brand of big fat
sausages.)
Or have you rushed to judgment of those such as myself, following
along with Rush Limbaugh's mimicked Hannityism, in your joyful
judgmental bias against everyone not a cigar-smoking Republican
gerbil? Or are you so desperately foolish to factor O'Reilly in?
The Empire: State within a State: Imperium in Imperio
Although I shall never give-up the good fight, I was born to it, and
shall continue to spew forth my richly textured empirical analysis in
some forum far or near, I must give up the truth if asked. America
must go the way of all regimes, all governments, specifically all
democracies, all empires and all imperial projects. We too shall pass
into darkness and hell. Our shabby democracy has not been put through
a shredder by enemies of liberty, so much as we did it to ourselves.
Whether you are the one-issue orientated voter that never sees the
bigger picture, or the apathetic, non-issue, could give a damn about
anything but yourself, non-voter, or the "I always vote" Republican,
Green or Democrat, no matter who is running and how foul their stench
(often literally), ... we all have lost the race. The elite, who may
pose as this or that, R) or D) after the state from which they hail,
masked and veiled as liberals or conservatives, it is they who have
won. And now known to all what I have argued for over twenty years,
"they are the very same men that rotate in and out of government and
return to the real power, the multinational monopoly corporate system.
Bush Senior has been our best example, who returned to real power for
these past ten years. But so too were the Clintons masked and veiled,
vile to the core; and now comes a White House Cabinet of elitists so
vicious and dangerous as to defy the very foundation of liberty. The
key to understanding these new and ruthless demigods is one word:
monopoly.
Monopoly, for the dogmatic howlers on the Left, repudiates free
enterprise right along with you Leftists!... Corporatists, and its
ideology Corporatism, for the self-righteous on the right, repudiates
both full socialism and true free enterprise, while you still,
amazingly, think GE is for free enterprise and Bush the Smaller is an
American patriot! With this much blind stupidity of "activists,"
insufferable insanity of the masses, democracy had no chance. Never
mind that nobody votes at all any more.
Look out at what we have: A corporate state that will send every job
worth having, blue-collar and white, overseas as the corporate leaders
successfully formulate their personal financial objectives through
their government policy making appointed positions. They are, in
nearly every administration now, the same guys by name. Left-fascists
"used" to call you a right-wing conspiracy theorist for stating this
baldly some 15 years ago; they are quite silent on the point now
because of the clear truth of the matter, that is to say, its
obviousness. This goes on whether R)s or D)s are holding office. This
will go on whether it be Lady Hillary of WalMart or Little King
George, Lord Kerry or Sir Gore. How desperate have the Democrats
become? They would place an American Four Star General on this throne
just to remove any Republican! Amazingly, the Democrats are even
blinder now than before Clinton! Never mind that nobody votes at all
any more.
Look at where we presently are: Patriot Act I & II, Homeland Security
under the newly positioned cabinet level office, stamped almost 100%
approved by both Houses of Congress. DARPA, and the global
surveillance system already operational with both the CIA and NSA
operating domestically: Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 historiography.
The U.S. Department of Defense merely Empire's foreign legions for
foreign occupation of select foreigner's lands for commercial
acquisitions. And every Empire is commercial! Never mind that nobody
votes at all any more.
Look at who we are: In every corner of America nearly everyone is on
some drug, something to make them happy,...no happier, just to get by.
They think they are heroes because they suffer a little stress. The
film industry shoves their peculiar dishonest and defiled culture down
everyone's throat then wonders in stupefaction that they are both held
in worshipful esteem (by those who share their malignant narcissism)
as little Princesses and simultaneously hated (by those who disagree
with it, but they too still stare numbly at the damn tube). Never mind
that nobody gets to vote on this "programming" of the masses.
You cannot have Empire without nihilism
As it happens, unfortunate wanderers often put to the test the halls
of safety, bringing to light by their mere presence the values that
have been cultivated in these, and revealing whether those who are
prosperous have learned that the outcasts' misfortune commands their
care. For he who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth should be
the first to know its value... --Homer
You ask what we can do about it? Part and parcel of Empire is that the
masses must be ignorant, naive and or stupid. It is a given by the
elite that "we the people" are a combination of all three. "Liberty
can not be preserved without general knowledge among people." -- John
Adams (August 1765)
Try to understand this newest form of Empire. Take a map of the world,
lay it out flat on the table. Circle each major city, each major port,
each major airport, all in red. Now circle each region where strategic
raw materials rest: oil, natural gas, chromium, phosphate, coal, iron
ore, magnesium and the major bodies of water, each in blue. Now
overlay this map with a clear acetate film. Mark in black every major
monopoly corporation's significant operations except retail:
manufacturing, mining, oil and gas exploration, and major overseas
expansions like in China. Now in purple (the color of Royalty) mark
the flow of foreign direct investment globally from the richest
western nation's headquarters of the monopoly merchant bankers: the
now (for the first time) China's entrance into the new world at the
top of foreign direct investment will reveal itself. But understand
this, America as America has no part in any of this. America as
America is merely one political tool of this regime, a commercial
banking and industrial regime which needs America only as government
to build the new order in its legal apparatuses. The new global
regimes of power and governance are the World Trade Organization,
NAFTA and GATT; The World Bank; The Bank for International
Settlements; the UN, NATO, Group of Eight, International Monetary
Fund, and on and on ad nauseam. It is these regimes of power and
governance that, so it is intended, will govern all that matters in
the world of finance, manufacturing and production. These organs are
made-up of the same corporate elite that negotiate and orchestrate the
rules that shall govern all that matters.
Remember the map you set out on your table. If you look closely,
squint your eyes a bit, you will see that the names of nations
disappear. Only the names of cities, areas of resources, waterways and
the regimes of governance named above remain. It is these that are set
to become but city-states in a borderless world. There is no America,
China, Great Britain or France; there is no Iraq or Afghanistan, but
regions where the people must be brought to heal. Just as the Los
Angeles Police Department has its headquarters and decentralized
precincts, whereby they send in their troops to quell a riot in a
disgruntled part of its fiefdom, so too shall Empire settle matters in
its regions where Empire needs peace. Peace, so as to exploit the
resources of the region in its behalf. Not in America's American's
behalf (as Rome did for Roman's). But to quell a region and control
its people and things (resources, rivers and waterways, airports,
roads and financial institutions). I have called this process
worldwide Global Triage (Triage: from the French term for choosing who
in emergency room treatment gets treated and who is allowed to die);
it applies quite well: this regime will decide who lives and dies
globally in every region that matters. And for precisely the reasons
outlined:
There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our
lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around
the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural
and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive.
The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world
safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends,
we will do a fair amount of killing. (Source: From "Parameters"
"http://carlisle-www.army.mil" , Summer 1997, pp. 4-14: US Army War
College)
Each and every area of life, of commerce, modified and synthesized,
organized according to western GAAP (General Accepted Accounting
Procedures) methods by the WTO, IMF, the World Bank, ExIm Bank and the
host of hosts, Empire's foreign legions, the Pentagon. Just as the
LAPD, supported by the U.S. Marines, silenced dissent during the L.A.
Riots, so too does Empire police these small cities of unruly ruffians
in Baghdad and Kabul. Soon enough, Damascus and Jerusalem. But you get
the point, wherever Empire needs to exert itself for control of
resources, waterways, whether there be diamonds or iron ore, rice and
beans, trees or bamboo...if it matters to Empire, all will succumb:
triage.
Americans, do dare to understand this, America doesn't matter anymore
to Empire. America is a mere cog in the wheel whose subject's living
standards must come down. Jobs Americans thought were theirs will be
theirs only if they speak Farsi, Hindi, etc.; accept living in India,
Pakistan or Malaysia. Soon, very soon indeed, companies like Boeing
will not just move their headquarters to Chicago from Seattle and
Everett, Washington State, previously known as one of the fifty states
of America, but to Beijing, in what was famously known in the past as
the Peoples Republic of China. These feudalistic monopoly
corporations will, one and all, go where the wages are very low and
the local Junta will enforce a non-union labor force receiving little
or no benefits.
I recently heard an argument that India was sending its surplus
population to America and they were filling American high-tech jobs at
three times less pay. The wrong thinking here is this: There are no
more Americans nor Indians, so there is no surplus Indian population
doing anything. In a borderless world we are, every single one of us,
global workers; therefore the Indians that follow ITT from America
today on to Malaysia next, going where the jobs are going, are
fulfilling their destiny under Empire. If Americans will not learn the
language of foreign lands and take the jobs offered therein, they will
remain here in what was once called America and live in a steadily
declining job market, a steadily declining standard of living. I
guarantee Bush the Smaller (or Lady Hillary of WalMart) will not stop
steadily spending your earnings! I did not state above "citizens"
either; citizens of Empire are either serfs or subjects, subject to
Empire's dictate, that is why they are called subjects. Serfs are the
ones that cannot or will not adjust to Empire's new demands. Their
kingdom destined to be serfdom. A hi-tech feudalism is implied in
global Empire; it is especially applicable when Empire's masters, our
rulers, are of Corporazioni's ilk.
This is the future. Borders already do not matter, you just have not
felt the weight of what this means. When borders no longer matter,
then being American doesn't either, as what was known as America
simply no longer exists. Put plainly -- when borders no longer matter
neither do you.
It is certainly not just myself, deluding myself, that what we have
here is Empire in its rawest form, its religious form, as all Empire‘s
tend towards a sense of the divine. Joshua Micah Marshall, a
Washington Monthly contributing writer, recently wrote an intriguing
piece titled "Practice to Deceive: Chaos in the Middle East is not the
Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan." He argues that the
neo-conservatives have a vision for what they want to do in the Middle
East and deception has always been part of their ideological make-up.
In one telling paragraph he captures the argument when he wrote that
the current crop of neo-conservative hawks have a vision for the
world, a vision not "unlike," but "exactly like" a religious epiphany.
Regarding the present plan for the entire Middle East, not just Iraq,
he stated it this way:
The hawks' [other] response is that if the effort to push these
countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military
might to secure our interests. ‘We need to be more assertive,' argues
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, ‘and
stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us
around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in
Saudi Arabia.' Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be
enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the
United States ‘occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them
as a trust for the people of the region.'...What Boot is calling for,
in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the
Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that
given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as
well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course,
that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial
ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English
didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a
legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely
responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics. (emphasis
added, The Washington Monthly, 2003.)
Understand this as well. It doesn't matter that all Empires fall,
every imperial vision comes to an end. This will be cold comfort when
it is pressed forward at your expense, your children's expense, if not
their lives, your future. It never matters that the Empire will fail,
it is always that "it will try." Bush the Smaller, a Four Star
General, or Lady Hillary of WalMart, will, each of them in their own
way, their own speed of endeavor, their own stratagems will continue
to try. Try as you might, face nothing else, but face this fundamental
fact. It is in their trying that your future holds such bleakness.
Therefore, what can we do about America evolving, and now evolving
very rapidly indeed, into Empire? Well, exactly nothing. Nobody can do
anything about this; nothing, nada, nyet. One can join the elite
(though the doors are mostly closed now), work for them (though they
need fewer and fewer every year), or try as you might to "become" one
of their minions, monopoly corporate dupes, lobbyists, or elected D)s
or R)s. Or you will either learn to live with it, or die; live within
it, and survive (and only those which truly understand all this will
have any chance at all for that). And survive meaning just that and no
more, scratching out a living as your standard of living slides ever
closer to the rawest form of poverty. Or live on Empire's fringe,
outside of affluence, in a moderate poverty, outside of the system,
outside of its laws... "outlaws," that is to say. That is what
Homeland Security is really for. To protect the homeland, the Empire's
roots, its body politic from the likes of you.
What must happen
Look at what will have to happen, eventually, for the Empire to
succeed. This future is clear to some. Empire and the imperial
ambitions that go along with it mean specific things: Greater
governmental spending, higher taxes, lowered standard of living for
the masses, greater burdens on the working man and woman. Universal
service and sacrifice of all the subjects of Empire. Everyone must
pull their weight, tote that barge...the youth will see imperial
service selectively; drafted...if not a year or so after the next
election is won by Sir George the Smaller then certainly soon enough
thereafter. It would go down easier with a Democrat in the White House
of course, and should that miraculously take place (which the odds are
something like winning the lotto) the designated white Democrat in the
White House will act even more swiftly to enact this selective service
for the country. It would go down so much easier with Lady Hillary of
WalMart signing-off on it. Why? Because liberals and D)s cannot find
the courage it takes to take on one of their, supposedly, own. What if
this decision were taken by a Four Star General? You know the
Democrats could not then bring themselves to even a furrowed brow, a
frown.
One thing that always amazes me is how pragmatic Democrats can be;
they will endorse anything, anyone, that might defeat a Republican in
the White House. For decades the Democrats have led the anti-war
movements (often late in the game); they have been the leaders in
denouncing the military. Now, because their line-up to take on Mr.
Bush is so weak and the nation's masses have war-fever, they are
considering a man whose sole credentials are his four stars and his
vast array of contacts with defense firms. Defense contractors, the
bugbear of every liberal for decades. Now that the regime has Homeland
Security, Patriot Acts I & II, the CIA and NSA can operate
domestically and all this vast centralization is under direct control
of the White House with its new cabinet post...give it over to a Four
Star General...there's some bright thinking.
It's inescapable. One way or another you are going to support this
Empire. Whether through capitulation and submission, or through raw
cowardice; the latter revealing itself more each day in more and more
subjects as Lord Bush passes imperial decree after executive decree
and our leaders fall silent in a cowardly spectacle. Watch Bush the
Smaller as he ratchets-up the fear-mongering so effectively with the
silly colored terrorist alerts: yellow, red, etc.; what blarney,
bullocks, what hubris this child of an elitist carries in his breast!
Muslims persecuted by the thousands, mild-mannered peace activists
barred from flying on the airlines, individuals arrested at airports
for joking they have "a bomb in their wallet," as others, even the
elderly, are strip-searched while in a wheelchair, still others
declared "illegal combatants" (a term not even found in American
jurisprudence, another indication America is no more). Because they
once upon a time traveled to a far off land? America has become a
nation of cowards. But we have seen all this before:
"Finally, the German nationalists, the right-wing conservatives, who
venerated "honor" and "heroism" as the central characteristics of
their program. Oh God, what infinitely dishonorable and cowardly
spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward!
One might at least have expected that, once their claim in January
proved illusory--that they had "tamed" the Nazis and "rendered them
harmless"-- they would act as a "brake" and "prevent the worst." Not a
bit of it. They went along with everything: the terror, the
persecution of Jews, the persecution of Christians. They were not even
bothered when their own party was prohibited, and their own members
were arrested." (Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, FSG, p.131)
We cannot see what Mr. Bush and his most vile crop of
neo-conservatives plan and execute before our befuddled eyes. Lord
Bush the Smaller is already thinking what Bill Clinton had already
proposed during early 2003: running for a third (and fourth?) term in
office after his second term begins to wind-down. He can simply claim
national emergency (it has precedent). Only after the election is won
will Bush contemplate the already proposed universal draft of the
youth for reasons never spoken. We will be told we have to "go it
alone," the great nation that we are, to bring justice and democracy
to Iraq, to set the course for liberty in the Middle East, to end the
death of American soldiers beleaguered in war zones afar. This is why
Lord Bush is brow-beating an unwieldy United Nations to throw their
troops in the fray. He knows full well Germany, France, China and
Russia (and a hundred others) opposed the war resolution at the same
UN, oppose it still. Why would they (then) bail out an arrogant U.S.
president who has lied all along, along with Tony Blair, to get "US"
in the war in the first place? They will not, and Bush knows this. But
with their refusal he can later berate them one and all to the
American people as "the reason" we must go it alone. And we love it so
to hate the French and Germans. And along with his cohort of media
whores at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox "factors this in" he can convince
American mothers to send their children to die. And this can be so
easily accomplished, all so easily, legally. We have seen all this
before:
"Constitutional lawyers define it as a change of constitution by means
not foreseen therein. By this definition the Nazi revolution of March
1933 was not a revolution. Everything went strictly "by the book,"
using means that were permitted by the constitution. At first there
were "emergency decrees" by the president of the Reich, and later a
bill was passed by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag giving the
government unlimited legislative powers, perfectly in accordance with
the rules for changing the constitution." (Haffner, Ibid., p. 124)
Americans have made their politics their religion
The truly ignorant or naive American may be forgiven if they think,
along with their historical counterparts of Germany, circa, 1933,
that, "All this was still something one only read about in the press.
You did not see or hear anything that was any different from what had
gone before. There were brown SA uniforms on the streets...but
otherwise it was "business as usual." (Ibid., p. 109) They could not
see the brown shirts who were the "media representatives" of the 1933
Reich, then pamphleteering, stumping, soap-box rants; at once
browbeating, then slandering opponents, shouting them down, then
beating them for real if need be. We have our own regime enforcers as
"media representatives," of Amerika, "Media Brown Shirts,"...
pamphleteering, stumping, soap-box rants; at once browbeating, then
slandering opponents, shouting them down, then beating them for real
if need be. The beatings some critics have taken have utterly silenced
them, and we have seen many a critic banned, fired, ruined
financially. Is it less an act of violence to ban, silence and slander
than to whack ‘em over the head with a black-jack or night-stick?
Isn't it interesting that in Amerika the night-stick is called a
baton, as though wielded by a short-skirted adolescent in a parade?
Just as Mr. Bush Junior did at Yale as head cheerleader.
it did not begin with Empire acting in its divine capacity that Empire
took on religious overtones. Americans have long made their politics
religion rather than a secular act primed to escort our means of
governance. All sides have made politics their religion which is why
it has the flavor of carnival, a spectacle, just as it was in the
Germany Haffner witnessed. The feminist dominated Greens, the
corporate Democrats and certainly the symbiotic relationship of the
present crop of Republicans with fundamentalism's dispensationalists
bears witness once again that yet another democracy has lost its way.
And this one lost its way to evolve into an American-led corporate
empire. Not a spoken of, thousand-year Reich; not spoken of that is,
and that's all.
And if the term Empire still doesn't sit well with the present reader,
the reader needs to grow-up. And Americans hate to grow-up these days.
If the term Empire bothers some change the definition, fine, words and
their terms of usage change all the time as knowledge and reality
sinks in and the truth can only be understood by the new terms and
phrases of the day. But Empire, an American-led empire, a corporate
empire, "is" what the current administration is all about. Not only in
the Middle East do we make war, but the world over if necessary. As
the tenacious John Pilger recently wrote while sitting in on a meeting
of journalists and aid workers in Iraq,... "It was as though we were
disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious
power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its
foreign master. Iraq is the ‘test case', says the Bush regime, which
every day sails closer to Mussolini's definition of fascism: the
merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case
for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken
country, with Red Cross doctors describing ‘incredible' levels of
civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran,
is ‘debated' on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue."
(Independent.com, 2003)
The fact that a man with so little political sense, a total lack of
every intellectual attribute needed for secular political governance
was endorsed by the "gray men" for Governor of California on the sole
basis of "name recognition," and the bizarre truth is that
Californians, (being a bit odd themselves according to some) might
just vote for him to win, is a shame on us the U.S. We know "who" by
"name" will rule California even if Noam cannot bring himself to
"personalize the problematic." What, then is our future?
High Tech Corporate Feudalism
Of course, one can always argue differently. I shall make my own
point, as I said, "my sense of it." The major U.S. monopoly
multinationals with their ongoing mergers and acquisitions globally
will continue apace. Not even Arnold can stop the economic attrition
in California wearing out the workers, blue collar and white; jobs
sent overseas following entire operations already operating, moved to
markets more amenable to profit and fewer benefits. Not even Arnold
can address the sheer enormity of tax dollars slipped into the hands
of GE, Bechtel and Halliburton, Brown & Root. Not even the Terminator
can rid the planet of the high-tech feudalism this monopolistic
oligarchy brings to the land. Indeed, they own Arnold. Why else would
a Captain of industries (Bechtel, Boeing, etc.), Herr Schultz, endorse
this bad-actor for the position, the input, unless he can control the
output?
What democrat could alter the landscape, even if he or she would, when
each and every one is bought and paid for by precisely the same
Corporatism which presently owns both Houses of Congress, the White
House and white presidents? Lady Hillary of WalMart? Please!
Empire may mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Again, it may even
be difficult to define today (so I've been told) for some. But I may
have less of a problem with it than most and not because I am so darn
smart. Simply because I have little allegiance to anything except
liberty and I concern myself only about what "is."
Where we will be in a few years is just not that difficult to imagine,
not that hard to figure. The debt and deficits alone are staggering;
never has the trade deficit and the federal monetary deficit been as
high as a percentage of GDP, and nearly equal. Total obligations of
the enormous federal crime families is a robust 44 trillion dollars.
My calculator doesn't have that many zeros! Never has personal
individual debt been quite so enormous, nearly every working man,
woman and child is presently bankrupt by any rational mathematical
standard applied, which of course logically explains record personal
bankruptcies. Corporate debt is at record levels, which of course
logically explains record business bankruptcies. Unemployment figures
have never been so manipulated by a system of mathematical
make-believe to make us believe we have a recovery in progress without
the productive participation of some 30 to 40 million workers. Workers
not looking for work is why they are not counted. As though the fact
that they have given-up looking for that job, where there are 700
applicants for every meager-paying service job, makes them less
jobless! Workers working only part time and often only a few hours a
week are not unemployed by the reckoning of our masters, they are
simply "marginal."
GDP means Gross Domestic Product and it is indeed gross to claim we
have any worthwhile products produced domestically any longer. The
only thing America can be said to actually produce is more debt. That
is the future story one day writ large. Made in America my a
posteriori.
What of the stock market one naively asks, thinking "it" has some
relationship to the domestic economy being prosperous or in a recovery
for the many? The reality? An ever growing process of overseas
investment in unproductive acquisitions. The very same process that
little dark magician and his crew performed on the world stage for the
Clinton myth is in for a repeat performance, a slick kind of ... "come
on Alan, take a bow!" One more time we print the cash to pay the
diabolical debts and raise taxes to re-collect what was spent on
defense and foreign infrastructures where empire wants to expand. We
are to rebuild Iraq but we cannot fix the roads in America? We can
bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan as it slips away here in
America and America's children cannot find a decent education? And the
little dark magician keeps conjuring-up his mystical magical manna.
This is done to the glee of the raw speculator in stocks; stocks again
so overpriced as to defy even the little magician. Yet another day of
reckoning is in the future. Another round of false millionaires, each
as logically mathematically bankrupt as the former, each shall find
their dreams dashed in the coming market "correction." Don't you love
the language we are taught to use... a "correction." Sort of like a
typo -- just a little white-out in the old days, replaced now by
Microsoft "Works" program spell checker -- and what a hoot, it wasn't
that bad.
Except for those that cannot find a job after they have lost
everything, and at fifty-five years old find themselves working
non-union in the Garden Center at Lady Hillary's WalMart. But this may
not happen for a few more years, certainly interest rates will not
rise significantly "before" Bush the Smaller gets re-elected! Bush the
Senior will not have it. And again, Bush the Larger has been back in
power for ten years, not, like so many democrats wrongly hoped and
believed, sidelined like some aging running back for the Dallas
Cowboys. No, the "must happen" correction, must be held off until
after that little stage play the mad magician performs is in curtain
call. Nobody the wiser still.
And what will we hear in the very near term? "Nothing any different
from what has gone before." But what will in fact happen must happen.
More smaller business failures as the trickle-down from Corporatism's
domestic economic attrition in affect effects one and all; more
unemployment not less. The IRS has targeted small businesses as the
audit of choice. Of course they have, the smaller large companies and
the smaller small businessmen cannot afford the Big Eight to do battle
with this manna collecting monstrosity. An evil so great some few
Libertarians have called it the "eternal revenue system." That sucking
sound wasn't just jobs going overseas Ross, it is the whooshing sound
of the collective toilet flushing individual taxpayers into the
general system's septic-tank where the biggest curds float to the top,
the rest sink quietly out of site. "All this [was] still something one
only read about in the press. You did not see or hear anything that
was any different from what had gone before."
What are we to do with the aging demographic in America? Soon enough
those retired, or the older unemployed or, unemployable is the new
term, those on the many doles will simply out number the youth working
and being taxed to pay for the retired Volk. Given everything else
noted above, add even greater unemployment among minorities and young
people, add further domestic economic attrition through corporate
expansion overseas, what is a tyrant to do? Draft the little buggers
is but the only real world solution; none too few other analysts have
suggested this as one such future solution. When we see adults,
between twenty-three to thirty-five scooting about on mountain bikes,
decked-out in childish garb, out having fun like the nine year-olds
the bikes were originally meant for, how can an honest broker of
thought not endorse another military draft? We have a nation of grown
men acting as children, with no thought of the future with the sole
exception of "having more time off," having "more fun," and escaping
further into a neurotic festival of mutual exhibitionism. The worst?
the ones strutting about like John Wayne, sunglasses perched on their
proboscis, acting bad-to-the-bone...for attention, over the fact that
he has a new shiny truck with a still newer ATV in the back! Draft the
buggers does come to mind if there is to be any hope for this state of
affairs whose affairs are in a terrible state. While I cannot say I
approve of this solution, because I do not approve of just about
anything the American-led Empire is doing, it is a solution I can
state categorically "they" are looking at.
Alas, what I sense is not going to affect me too much with the
exception of my beleaguered compassionate-side; this darkness coming
over the land shall be the ruin of so many an innocent. Those
enlightened self-interested greedy little malevolent monkeys, the
nihilistic narcissists and dead-beat creatures that personally gain by
all this, the politicians, the monopoly corporate cretins, the mob
lined-up at the various troughs, bleeding one and all, every "other,"
well, I don't much care for them. But you could have guessed that
right off. The fact that this coming corporate feudalism will bear
little resemblance to tyrannies of the past is little comfort. That it
is high-tech, well lighted, air conditioned and instantly gratifying
in such a gratuitous fashion, will make it seem, to many, a benign
kind of tyranny. A kind of benevolent beast. These four horsemen will
seemingly come bearing new gifts for all, SUVs and home mortgages with
little or no interest rates "for sixteen months with no payments until
September." We've all heard the call. It is the stuff which imprisons
the soul.
The Things That Matter
The only way Empire, even American-led as it is, can and will mend its
profligate ways domestically? Taxes must be raised; therefore the
masses must be razed, put to work and taxed too. Oil and gas must be
raised, from mother earth; therefore the Middle East must be razed to
protect American interests. Whose interests? Not mine. Not most of
you. But we know whose interests are being looked after, explored and
protected. Don't we? Interest rates must be raised, to protect that
flimsy piece of medium we exchange for things; things whose cost
continues to rise effortlessly, ah, the almighty dollar, and inflation
is the most secretive of all the razing to come.
No, the charade must come to an end, the correction must happen, the
wars will not end, the expansion overseas and the global military
"footprint" will enlarge to encompass everything "that matters." And
everything that matters will come under an absolutist feudal corporate
control. Things that "don't matter," like what you watch on TV; your
desperate need for yet another new pair of shoes; the need to strut
before your crowd with your stuff exposed; the need to "get ahead" of
your neighbor, your sibling, yourself. That invisible treadmill so
many cannot bring themselves to get off because "it is all they are,"
all they have. Things that "don't matter," like who you have sex with
and for heaven's sake "why"... all will be allowed you, as these
things don't matter to Empire. Indeed, it is the "stuff of Empire"
which is meant to enslave! If you learn no other expression learn
these two: The "things that matter" (Empire will control absolutely)
"things that don't matter," (you know) are yours to keep. Even your
life is yours to fritter away as so many have in America before you.
What matters to Empire? You will work. You will pay. And pay until it
hurts, you will pay and you will obey. The future is clear to some.
Ignore it at your own risk. What can you do? You? You actually mean
"you?" I haven't got a clue. That is, well, up to you isn't it?
End 09/15/03
___________________________________________________
Mr. Craig B Hulet: Security, Military Affairs & International
Relations Expert (Author: The Hydra of Carnage: Bush's Imperial
War-making and the Rule of Law: An Analysis of the Objectives and
Delusions of Empire
Mark T. Evert
"Donald L Ferrt" <wolfb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:b9eb3efe.04021...@posting.google.com...
that the state department issues a special travel advisory on it? I'm
not saying this is true...as of now it is only an allegation, likely
politically motivated.....but there are countries around the world where
bribary is considered an essential part of doing business there. Read the
Nigeria President's words carefull...."We're very serious about corruption
now. The idea is to make bribe giving and bribe taking unprofitable, we want
to stamp this out"......admirable....but pretty much an admission it has
been rampant there for ages.....
> > >
> > > According to Waxman and Dingell, Bunting and the unidentified
> > > whistleblower contend:
> > >
> > > -Top Halliburton officials frequently told employees that high prices
> > > charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government
> > > would reimburse the costs and then pay the company an additional fee.
> >
> > Unreasonably high prices are a problem as the gasoline fiasco indicates.
> > Government auditors and the IG auditor both review the submitted costs
and
> > Halliburton is required to justify anything that appears to be
unreasonable
> > when compared to market rates. If they can't justify it it may be
> > disallowed and they have to eat it. The additional fee is awarded
based
> > on the contractors performance including overall cost performance.
>
> it gets deeper:
>
>
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news_analysis/story.jsp?story=488933
So what? This is all just speculation about things that might
happen......and even if some of them do happen it's not necessarily a bad
thing or illegal......
>
> > > -Halliburton tried to keep as many purchase orders as possible below
> > > $2,500 so its buyers could avoid the requirement to solicit quotes
> > > from more than one vendor.
> >
> > This isn't all that unusual, but it is blatently illegal to
intentionally
> > split a single purchase between 2 or more purchase orders to avoid
> > competitive bidding. The desire to do this has nothing to do with
> > defeating the competive bid process though.....the reality is that
> > competitively bid procurements take considerably longer as vendors have
to
> > be identified,
>
> Yea = Running the Military-Industrial complex might be hazzardous to
> your clients if you wait!
This process is nothing unique to the eeeeeeevil Military-Industrial
complex.....The same rules apply to all government agencies and the same
issues occur in all government agencies under both Republican and Democratic
administrations....
>
>
> RFQ's sent out and a reasonable amount of time has to be
> > given for the vendors to respond......I don't know how many times my
> > government customer has been pissed because he was having to wait for an
> > item or service only because we were following the customers own
procurement
> > regulations. Furthermore the government likes it if you use generic
> > specifications for competitive bids. What this means for example is
that
> > you may have a Cisco based network, but the winning bid for a piece of
> > network gear is from a non-Cisco vendor.....Now you have a support
> > issue......to avoid this you may have to justify why the additional
> > training/support costs should disqualify the non-Cisco vendor.....a
hassle
> > to say the least.
>
> All saying you want a Military-Industrial complex vendor, the retiring
> Generals and other Governmental agencies can retire to!
You are a little cynical....aren't you. Blame the government if you must
for allowing military persons and civil servants (in all agencies) to retire
early and have other careers.....or for paying government employees
significantly less than market rates for similar work...and my experience is
that most of these guys aren't hired because they have somehow bought thier
future employer.....but because like any employee....they have something to
offer their new employer......usually significant experience and knowledge
of the government agency they came from...
> > >
> > > -Supervisers provided buyers with a list of preferred Kuwaiti vendors,
> > > including companies that charged excessive prices. Buyers were not
> > > encouraged to identify alternative vendors.
> >
> > Preferred vendors is not all that unusual. If the over $2500
procurements
> > were competitively bid the companies that charged excessive prices
should
> > have gotten weeded out pretty quickly ......unless they were coluding
with
> > each other.
>
> Military-Industrial complex
>
>
> > >
> > > The letter was sent to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which found
> > > in a preliminary audit that Halliburton may have overcharged taxpayers
> > > $61 million in delivery of oil to Iraq.
> >
> > This issue has been resolved.....turns out the government directed
> > Halliburton to buy from that source and Halliburton was absolved of any
> > wrongdoing.
>
> http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_4982.shtml
Deleted pages of philosophical ramblings.....but if anyone cares to read it
they can go to the link above..
Cheers!
>
Donald L Ferrt
Yea, where else would you do the good business!