Many of us who opposed the continuing Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, it has been difficult to imagine how politicians and others in Washington could continue to sacrifice lives and hundreds of billions in these conflicts. Now there is a report giving an insight into just how profitable these wars are for key companies. For just Iraq alone, some $138 billion went to private companies with an army of lobbyists eager to keep the pipeline of cash flowing. What is rarely striking however is that some ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds and one company received $39.5 billion. That company is Houston-based KBR, Inc., which is an extension of its parent, Halliburton Co. in 2007. That of course is Dick Cheney’s firm.
Many of those contracts going to KBR lacked any competitive bidding process.
This includes the $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers — a contract that the Justice Department now says is rife with corruption and kickbacks.
For $40 billion, a single company may be willing to do a lot to keep a war alive. In the very least, it may not be eager to see it end.
Source: ZNet
george orwell was a great prophet and once told of the pigs changing the laws to suit their own greed.
make love not oil, you may reap what you sow.
Bron,
“Dredd:
gbk knows a good deal about rocks though, a testament to the fact that we all have some redeeming quality.”
So what is your redeeming quality, Bron?
1) One-trick pony observations where the political and economic definitions of socialism/communism/fascism are all the same.
2) Anecdotal experiences that confirm (1).
3) Scribing your own definition of words so that (1) is confirmed.
Let me know.
Dredd,
“You are an ad hominem troll whose mind is malfunctioning and should not spend much time on a blog of this character.
Get on over to Sarah Palin’s or Michelle Bacman’s place and sing troll songs to the ignorant.
And gbk (gibberish ben kookie), when you get over to MOMCOM’s place, tell her I am talking about her private parts in public (MOMCOM: The Private Parts – 5). Thanks.”
—————————————————
You’re a hoot, Dredd.
You have the fortitude of conviction that all plagiarizers posses — crying foul when your tomes are exposed as unoriginal.
And then there is that accusation of me being an, “ad hominem troll,” though you are the one utilizing this tactic, as this thread shows.
Sorry I don’t view your self-promotion as significant — I suggest you just get over it and possibly realize my position is not unfounded given your many links to your blog over the years.
Elaine, “I believe some people misconstrued what Melissa Harris Perry was saying.”
**** Only because they wanted to for political reasons.
Bron, “Sometimes people like her get too comfortable and let their guard down.”
**** LOL, Yea, they sure do and here’s the perfect example, just perfect. I suspect that since he and his can’t blame the victims dismissing them is the fallback position. Then again, all the talk about ‘if only the victims (or their caregivers) were also armed it wouldn’t have happened or the damage could have been mitigated’ is in fact victim blaming.
“James Inhofe: Gun Debate Has Nothing To Do With Families Of Newtown Victims”
“WASHINGTON — Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that the gun control debate doesn’t have anything to do with the families of the Newtown, Conn., shooting victims, and that the only reason those families think it does is because President Barack Obama told them it did.
Eleven family members of Newtown victims were in Washington on Tuesday, meeting privately with senators to urge them to support a forthcoming gun package that would impose tighter background checks, crack down on gun trafficking and enhance school safety measures. Speaking to a handful of reporters, Inhofe said he feels bad for those families because they’re being used as pawns in a political fight.
“See, I think it’s so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn’t,” Inhofe said. ….”
Bron 1, April 10, 2013 at 11:26 am
Elaine:
I dont know how that can be spun. She said children are a collective responsibility. Give them up at birth and the state will raise them.
*****
That’s your interpretation–that she suggested parents give up their children at birth and let the state raise them?
Bron 1, April 10, 2013 at 11:26 am
Elaine:
I dont know how that can be spun. She said children are a collective responsibility. Give them up at birth and the state will raise them.
Sometimes people like her get too comfortable and let their guard down.
==============================================
The right misinterpreted her meaning, and she did not articulate it as well as she should have.
It is no more than the old saying “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Which is another way of saying our culture is our primary teacher whether we are aware of it or not.
Our culture, being made up of various subcultures by design and by our constitution, is not homogeneous in the sense that all states and churches are the same in laws and doctrine.
It is homogeneous in the sense of the bill of rights and other constitutional concepts that PROTECT AND CELEBRATE the differences.
The tides have somehow turned so that our children now are learning to hate differences rather than rejoice in them.
Tolerance, a great virtue, is dying out in our culture.
Our children, without it, are in danger.
Cheney, Blackwater, outsourcing… So many roads lead back to Cheney.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/10/the_way_of_the_knife_nyts
The Way of the Knife: NYT’s Mark Mazzetti on the CIA’s Post-9/11 Move from Spying to Assassinations
MARK MAZZETTI: And the targeted killings. And the proposal was certainly to, you know, go into countries that—where the United States was allied with, certainly. And what happened after that meeting was basically—it was early, and they hadn’t really fleshed out many details, but Vice President Cheney and his staff said, “OK, proceed with this program.” What happens then is they do some training, and they get into the war in Afghanistan, and that sort of diverts the CIA’s attention. They don’t, to my knowledge, actually carry out anything under this program. And then, in 2004, it becomes outsourced to Blackwater, the private security company, or at least a few senior officers of Blackwater, and including one of them who was in that meeting in late 2001 who had originally pitched it to the vice president. And so, it’s an interesting story about how the CIA was wrestling in these months after 9/11 to—they had these authorities they hadn’t had in decades, and they were trying to figure out—
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But was it—was that unprecedented, the use of private contractors like Blackwater? Had the CIA or the—had they done that before?
MARK MAZZETTI: It’s—there’s probably aspects in the CIA’s history where they’ve—I mean, we know certainly that they’ve hired private citizens, that they’ve hired various factions to carry out these types of missions in its history. It was certainly unprecedented, or it hadn’t been decades since they got back into this. And Blackwater does become a close partner with the CIA for a number of years. And this was sort of one aspect of it. So it was a—it was a sort of incredible moment for them to then take this program and say, “OK, well, we’re going to, for deniability reasons, for some—to some degree, send it to a private company.”
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break; when we come back, look at how President Obama not only continued the shadow wars of the Bush administration, but expanded them. And we’re going to hear some stories, like the beginning of the book, the story of Ray Davis. Mark Mazzetti is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with The New York Times. His new book, The Way of the Knife. Stay with us
Elaine:
I dont know how that can be spun. She said children are a collective responsibility. Give them up at birth and the state will raise them.
Sometimes people like her get too comfortable and let their guard down.
Bron,
I believe some people misconstrued what Melissa Harris Perry was saying.
*****
Sarah Palin: Melissa Harris-Perry’s ‘Lean Forward’ Ad Is ‘Unflippingbelievable’ (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post
By Rebecca Shapiro
Posted: 04/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/sarah-palin-melissa-harris-perry-lean-forward-ad_n_3038253.html?ir=Media
Excerpt:
It seems as though Melissa Harris-Perry has irked Sarah Palin and multiple members of the conservative media (see update below).
In her new “Lean Forward” ad, the MSNBC host argues that the U.S. should invest more in public education. “We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children … We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘these are our children,'” she says in the ad. “So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that ‘kids belong to their parents,’ or ‘kids belong to their families,’ and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
Last week, conservative media watchdog Newsbusters criticized Harris-Perry’s ad for its notion of collective responsibility. Newsbusters’ Ken Shepherd wrote that “the notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao.”
Elaine:
endless war is the way all statist societies survive. Look at North Korea, they are in a perpetual state [readiness] for war.
America has become a statist society. We are no longer the liberal society of our founding fathers. And now we see MSNBC talk show hosts saying children should belong to the state. Well shiver me timbers wasnt that part of Plato’s Republic a model for an authoritarian/statist government if ever there was one.
Big corporations and the politicians who support and are supported by them have destroyed our country.
Bron,
WHY WE FIGHT (Documentary)
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/whywefight.html
Excerpt:
Just why does America fight? Acclaimed filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) creates a sense of urgency and moves beyond the headlines to uncover the deeper answers behind the American war machine in WHY WE FIGHT – Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.
Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower’s legendary farewell speech, filmmaker Jarecki surveys the scorched landscape of a half-century’s military adventures, asking how, and revealing why he believes that the nation of, by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant war. Jarecki explores the gap between perception and reality, and is concerned not only with the viewpoint of Americans, but also with the perspective of those on the receiving end, the Iraqis.
On the film, Jarecki says, “Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called ‘Why We Fight’ that explored America’s reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it’s crucial to ask the questions: ‘Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?’”
Elaine:
“That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true…”
― Thomas Paine
Elaine:
no, I havent. I imagine it is a good read. Mercenary armies on our soil, even if citizens, is not a good idea. Most people are only loyal to their stomachs, very few are loyal to ideas no matter how good they [ideas] may be.
Bron,
You should read Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”–if you haven’t already.