econocrash updates: the audacity of austerity

audacity of 'austerity,' word of the year*
unhappy birthday for the federal reserve*
ultra-thin circuits in banknotes could give electronic security to paper currency*
as wikileaks prepares for bank exposure, federal regulators cringe*
overstock adds rico allegations to ongoing lawsuit vs goldman & merrill*
flashback: interview w/ overstock's ceo*
dutch consider outlawing call for bank run*
halliburton pays nigeria $250m to drop charges against cheney*
cia secretly agreed to pay $5m to shield mitchell & jessen, architects of waterboarding program*
27yr-old citigroup banker allegedly jumped to her death from trump palace in nyc*

biowars/envirohealth: drills, spills & bellyaches

preparedness gaps in training for oil spill:
terror drills preceded gulf oil disaster*
workers tell of explosions on night their oil rig exploded*
halliburton worked on rig 20hrs before explosion*
whistleblower: bp risks more massive catastrophes*
whistleblower claims bp was aware of cheating on blowout preventer tests*
rig workers made to sign statements after blast*
no real solution to stop oil spill?*
video: a simple way to clean up the oil spill?*
obama still granting bp environmental study waivers*
video: predictive programming? gulf oil rig explosion in 2009 film 'knowing'*
slick operator: the bp i've known too well*
obama aims to use deepwater disaster to win votes for US climate bill*
flashback: gulf oil updates: the poison is still spilling*

gulf oil updates: the poison is still spilling

spill hits freemason island as bp preps to lower giant funnel*
another meme from the strangely predictive simpsons movie*
video: swat team response to oil spill as govt takeover plot*
10 animals most threatened by spill*
interior dept gave deepwater horizon operators safety award in '09*
gulf oil spill: the halliburton connection*
surprise! obama was top recipient of bp donations*
chemicals used to contain oil spill could harm marine life*
why did leaking oil rig lack safety switch used in other countries?*
US exempted bp's gulf of mexico drilling from environmental impact study*
US not accepting foreign help on oil spill*
will the gulf of mexico oil spill be an economic disaster that the gulf coast will never recover from?*
video: about the big spill*
leaking oil well lacked safeguard device*
rumors of blackout over north korean torpedoing of gulf oil rig*
why do so many bad things keep happening to US?*
oil spill: here's the inside scoop*
was the gulf oil spill an act of war? you betcha*
halliburton may be culprit in oil rig explosion*
was rush right about a bp/horizon terror attack?*

oregon oddities: bankbombs, embezzlement & chemwars

video: federal charges considered in oregon bank bombing

from kgw: Court records obtained by KGW suggest the two Oregon men charged in connection with a deadly bank bombing in December often talked about robbing a bank and even practiced a dry-run in Woodburn in 1994. Bruce Turnidge and his son Joshua Turnidge are facing aggravated murder charges for the December 12th blast that killed a police officer, a state trooper and critically injured a police chief. According to a police affidavit, a family friend, Ronald Laughlin, stated that he heard Bruce, Joshua and another family member who has not been charged in the case “speak so often about robbing banks that it became like ‘white noise’. Often, Laughlin said, they’d “discuss methods of robbery including diversions.” Laughlin described the men as Constitutionalists and anti-government.

flashback: 2 oregon cops killed after bringing bomb inside bank

oregon soldier stole $700k cash from iraqi relief fund
from belfast telegraph: Wads of $100 bills mailed from Iraq to Oregon first made investigators suspect that a US Army captain, charged with stealing almost $700,000 (£0.5m) while serving in Iraq, was pilfering from a US government emergency fund. Captain Michael Dung Nguyen was put in charge of the money when he served as civil affairs officer for his battalion between April 2007 and June 2008. The $690,000 came from the Commander's Emergency Response Programme – money put aside so it could be immediately dispensed by US commanders to win Iraqi support by providing humanitarian relief and paying for small construction projects. Capt Nguyen, 28, allegedly made limited and ineffectual efforts to hide the fact he was siphoning off large amounts of money. He mailed bundles of $100 bills back to his home in Oregon and opened bank accounts there and in other areas. His deposits were each for under $10,000 to avoid detection, but often he would make several deposits on the same day. At one point, he had $300,000 in cash in a safe, a federal grand jury in Portland was told.

oregon veteran disabled by iraq's 'agent orange'
from oregonian: The soldiers worried about Saddam Hussein loyalists, not the dust. Dust coated the Oregon Army National Guardsmen's combat boots and caked their skin as they protected Halliburton KBR contractors restoring oil flow in Iraq in 2003. Dust poofed from the soldiers' uniforms as they crowded into vans at the end of the day and shared tents at night. When the dust blew onto Spc. Larry Roberta's ready-to-eat meal, he rinsed the chicken patty with his canteen water and ate it. Six months later, doctors discovered the flap into Roberta's stomach had disintegrated. Six years later, the Marine and former police officer can no longer walk to the mailbox or work. Another Oregon soldier, Sgt. Nicholas Thomas, died of complications of leukemia at age 21. Three others have reported lung problems to headquarters. Five more told The Oregonian they suffer chronic coughs, rashes and immune system disorders. The same Oregon Guard soldiers who went into Iraq without adequate body armor or up-armored Humvees face another dubious first: exposure to hexavalent chromium, which greatly increases their risk of cancer and other diseases. It was in the orange and yellow dust spread over half the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant by fleeing Saddam supporters. Scientists call the carcinogen a Trojan horse because the damage may not be immediately obvious. Over time, people can develop different cancers, breathing problems, stomach ulcers or damage to the digestive tract. "This is our Agent Orange," says Scott Ashby, who served in the Oregon Guard.

US troops in beaverton, oregon?

kbr subcontractor holding 1,000 workers in iraq warehouses

from danger room: KBR, the defense services giant, and its subcontractors have been repeatedly accused of using slave labor in Iraq. But despite the lawsuits, and despite the Congressional hearings, KBR and its business partners keep getting busted for treating its workers like little more than chattel. The latest: "About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work," McClatchy reports. "Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to [former Halliburton subsidiary] KBR... hired the men, who are from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh."

update: iraqi police surround ’slave labor’ camp
from raw replay: CNN’s Michael Ware reports that Iraqi police have surrounded a ’slave labor camp’ where over 1000 workers are being held in a warehouse. This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast Dec. 5, 2008.

related: suit claims halliburton & kbr sickened base
from air force times: A Georgia man has filed a lawsuit against contractor KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, saying the companies exposed everyone at Joint Base Balad in Iraq to unsafe water, food and hazardous fumes from the burn pit there. Joshua Eller, who worked as a civilian computer-aided drafting technician with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, said military personnel, contractors and third-country nationals may have been sickened by contamination at the largest U.S. installation in Iraq, home to more than 30,000 service members, Defense Department civilians and contractors.

halliburton sued for human trafficking

from raw story: Twelve men recruited in Nepal died after forced transfer to Iraq, lawfirm says... Thirteen Nepali men were recruited and held against their will for thirteen months in a human trafficking scheme engineered and perpetrated by Halliburton and its Jordanian contractor, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court.

The Nepali men, each between the ages of 18 and 27, were allegedly hired as kitchen staff by the then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners. Once they arrived in Jordan, however, their passports were seized and they were dispatched to Iraq.

"Tragically, as the men were being transported to Iraq, a car containing twelve of the men was stopped by members of the Ansar al-Sunna Army, an insurgent group," the Washington lawfirm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll writes. "The 12 men in the car were taken hostage and executed by the insurgents. The executions were filmed and posted on the Internet. The Inspector General for the United States Department of Defense investigated and confirmed the facts related to the fate of the 12 men, which led to increased enforcement of anti-trafficking measures by the United States."

Only one man survived.

flashback: dyncorp/halliburton sex slave scandal won't go away

torture, rape & videotape

‘highly likely’ bush saw torture tapes
from thinkprogress: Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and State Department counterterrorism official, told The Bill Press Show this morning that it was “highly likely” President Bush had viewed the videotapes of the 2002 interrogations that were later destroyed:

Bill Press: You said that you believe President Bush actually saw one of these videos?

Larry Johnson: I think it’s highly likely.

Listen here:

Ron Suskind, author of the One Percent Doctrine, also recently stated that it is likely the torture and the destruction of the tapes were “being authorized from the White House.”

US covering up kbr rape case
from press tv: A former employee of the US' Halliburton/KBR construction firm has accused Washington of covering up her rape by colleagues in Iraq. Jamie Leigh Jones, 22, was gang raped by her co-workers two years ago at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, a heavily guarded area in central Baghdad, where US officials live and work, ABC reported.

flashback: 'the soundtrack of the boys shrieking'
from common dreams: Leading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has told the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that videotapes were made of young boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison. The Bush administration is holding videotapes of these acts, said Hersh... "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," Hersh told the group, adding that there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

gravel: why hillary scares me

from huffington post: During one of the debates I mentioned that my fellow Democratic candidates scare me. Hillary's speech last week to the Take Back America conference gives me yet another reason to be afraid.

In an indignant voice she decried the Bush administration's "stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok. . . It is everything our founders were afraid of, everything our Constitution was designed to prevent." Actually, our Constitution grants Congress the power to prevent these ills but Hillary and her colleagues weren't up to the task.

Our founders' legacy did not stop Hillary from voting for the Patriot Act and then supporting its renewal in 2006 despite revelations that the government was using it to infringe on the very liberties that our founders held sacred. Where was her commitment to our founders when she voted to gut our habeas corpus protections?

As for cronyism -- Hillary has repeatedly authorized billions that the Pentagon gave in no-bid contracts to Halliburton. Even though the Democrats have been in control of Congress for months, they still haven't summoned Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the other usual suspects to account for the missing millions in reconstruction funding.

henry rollins 'tees off' on halliburton-style privatization

from raw story: Punk singer-songwriter Henry Rollins took on Iraq War profiteers on his Independent Film Channel show this Saturday.

"The invasion and occupation of Iraq and the resulting nightmare we are enduring are for some a depressing, ongoing catastrophe with no end in sight," he said.

"Yet for another group, it is the best thing that could ever happen. ... The corporations that provide services to the military are making more money in this time than ever before. Troop withdrawal is not in their interest."

"Why not bring that overpriced roadshow here to America and treat the citizens to a little of that privatized efficiency?" Rollins went on.

"I'm sure KBR knows what to do with my freedom a lot better than I do. Might as well privatize that, too. Keep it up, Cheney. All you're doing is emboldening me."

The following video is from IFC's Henry Rollins Show, broadcast on June 15.

hired guns in iraq killing for amusement

from propaganda matrix/washington post: On the afternoon of July 8, 2006, four private security guards rolled out of Baghdad's Green Zone in an armored SUV. The team leader, Jacob C. Washbourne, rode in the front passenger seat. He seemed in a good mood. His vacation started the next day.

"I want to kill somebody today," Washbourne said, according to the three other men in the vehicle, who later recalled it as an offhand remark. Before the day was over, however, the guards had been involved in three shooting incidents. In one, Washbourne allegedly fired into the windshield of a taxi for amusement, according to interviews and statements from the three other guards.

Washbourne, a 29-year-old former Marine, denied the allegations. "They're all unfounded, unbased, and they simply did not happen," he said during an interview near his home in Broken Arrow, Okla.

news on the march

halliburton winds up iran work
from afp: US oil services giant Halliburton said Monday it had wrapped up its work commitments in Iran and was no longer conducting any projects in the Islamic republic...Halliburton announced last month that it was relocating to the United Arab Emirates to capitalize on the Gulf region's booming energy market.

bush almost blows himself up
from crooks & liars/detroit news: Not for nothing, President Bush and Dick Cheney have to despise alternative energy. They made (and continue to make) fortunes from oil and must see this as a direct threat to their livelihoods. And now that a hybrid almost killed the President, it must make it even worse.
UPDATE from reuters: Mulally is no longer laughing about his suggestion that he saved President Bush's life... White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, "The story wasn't accurate, and I'll just decline to comment further."

drug-dispensing tooth controlled by cell phone
from local6/live leak: Researchers in Europe and Israel are working on a tooth that can dispense medicine into a person's mouth, according to a Local 6 report. The tiny device would be able to release a specific amount of medicine at certain intervals, ensuring that the patient gets the proper dosage at the right time. It's attached to your existing teeth and could one day be controlled by using your cell phone, the report said.



country songwriter comes out for 9/11 truth
from 9/11 blogger/patriots question 9/11: Dan Tyler's songs have become hits for LeAnn Rimes, Kenny Rogers, The Oak Ridge Boys, Eddie Arnold, B.J. Thomas, Eddie Rabbit, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band... "millions of patriotic Americans question the official explanation of the attacks. The questions and the number of citizens asking them will increase until a tipping point is reached and a new, aggressive investigation initiated..."

post-9/11 fears fuel boom in high-tech id business
from govtech: The U.S. government's growing appetite for biometrics-based ID systems to bolster security, detect terrorists, fight crime and control illegal immigration is generating billions of dollars in opportunities for an evolving industry that's coming of age in the post-Sept. 11 era. The growth of the identification industry also has spawned an aggressive push-back from privacy advocates against what they call an emerging "industrial surveillance complex."

secrets of the freemasons
from national geographic/google video: It is a secret society that has shaped world events for more than 1,000 years. Members have been found everywhere from the World Bank to the United Nations to the Pentagon to top ranks of major corporations. They have been accused of controlling the money supply through the Federal Reserve and throughout history they have been present everywhere from the Boston Tea Party to the French Revolution. They are the Freemasons. But who exactly are they?

halliburton's suspicious dubai move

from abc news: Halliburton Co., currently the largest military contractor in Iraq with billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, announced Sunday that it was planning to move its CEO and corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

The move could eventually save the firm a fortune in U.S. taxes, but it is raising serious questions about its priorities and prompting at least one possible congressional hearing.

Dave Lesar, Halliburton's chairman, president and chief executive officer, made the announcement at an energy conference in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Lesar said the goal of the move was to focus on Eastern Hemisphere "oil exploration and production opportunities, and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio."

Run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, Halliburton has a five-year, $16 billion contract with the U.S. Army and total revenues of $22.6 billion in 2006.

Energy analyst Roger Read says if the company formally incorporates itself in the U.A.E., the banking mecca of the Middle East, company profits will soar.

"You'd probably be looking at a tax savings of several hundred million [dollars]. It's a win for the shareholders," Read said.



Move Makes Democrats Suspicious
Outrage over that possibility had Halliburton scrambling Sunday to explain it had no plans to incorporate abroad. Still, Democrats are suspicious.

"For one of the largest contractors with the United States government to move its headquarters overseas? [It] just doesn't look good, doesn't sound good, doesn't smell good," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The move may raise serious national security questions too, as happened last year with the canceled port security contract with another U.A.E.-based company, Dubai Ports World. Congressional outrage scuttled that deal; Halliburton will now have some explaining to do to avoid similar scrutiny.

"Obviously a company that has its headquarters overseas should be given a little more scrutiny than an American company," Schumer said. "No question about it."

Halliburton is already being investigated by different government agencies for various allegations of improper business dealings, and it is in the cross hairs of Democrats in Congress for alleged overbilling.

At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., noted that a government audit had indicated that Halliburton was responsible for "$2.7 billion in suspect billings."

bush prepares to impose martial law

from the chattanoogan: The Republican re-writing of the Insurrection Act gives Bush the authority to declare martial law. For the first time since 1878, the president has the power to deploy troops within the United States. Bush and future presidents now have a power that, in other countries, is reserved to the dictator.

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this new law, there has been no outcry in the American media and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress.

The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) had historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), prohibited military involvement in domestic law enforcement.

Now, Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) allows the President to declare a "public emergency," station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor.

the following piece was written by father frank morales, an episcopal priest & longtime activist. listen to an interview with him here ...

from sf indymedia: In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law...

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006 . In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law." ...

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

american prison camps are on the way

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

from alternet: The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.