prole

Halliburton From The Brisbane Courier Mail: Bonanza for Bush allies Washington 12sep05 COMPANIES with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of the Federal Emergency Agency are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of FEMA, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast. One is Shaw Group and the other is Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice-President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton. Bechtel National, a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp, has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. President Bush has named Bechtel's CEO on his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq. Halliburton alone has earned more than $US9 billion ($A11.7 billion). Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $US1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $US422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq. But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. "The Government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. Mr Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February. On Friday, Kellogg Brown & Root received $US29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Mr Cheney, who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000, when he joined the Republican ticket for the White House. According to tax filings released in April, Mr Cheney's income included $US194,852 in deferred pay from the company, which has also won billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.

You really are cute! Like a retarded pit-bull. Seriously though, I'm not really interested in your little identity game, as there is really no way to play it to satisfying conclusion. BTW, I think free education is a great idea.

Uhh...whatever. A. Your comment on the "intention" of minimum wage is ridiculous. It doesn't merit a response. B. If you can back up any of the comments directed at me(?) with any evidence whatsoever, I'll give you $5. Good Luck. P.S. Your "attack only when attacked" strategy that you seem to take so much pride in just went up in smoke (again).

"Hey Mike, the cleaning crew is here! Could you let them in?"

While I agree with your point that unemployment is inevitable and even desirable in capitalist economies, it seems to me that the point of raising mininmum wage in Seattle has less to do with full, un, or underemployment than the realities of urban geography in the context of a highly stratified labor market. A large number of people that can't afford to live in the places they work.

Yeah man, fuck the minimum wage! The people who WORK in Seattle don't necessarily have to LIVE in Seattle! Hell, we can just truck the janitors, food-service workers, greenskeepers, etc. into our air-conditioned domed campuses (where the real wealth of society is created!) on steerage containers from E. Washington! Better yet, they can just live in the mobile containers and be trucked from place to place to work as the market demands! Yeah, cuz they don't like have any marketable skills anyway so FUCK THEM!

Hey Fairweather, It always does a body good to actually read the article before responding, maybe even the headline might have tipped you off! Here's a choice bit from above so you don't have to strain yourself: And as far as race-baiting is concerned, apart from the sensational headline that I added, the article is entirely attributable to the WSJ. Granted, it is part of the liberal media establishment.

Alright! Now here's some folks that know how to take some personal responsibility! Old-line families plot the future Thursday, September 08, 2005 By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home. The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Wednesday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order. The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline. Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires. More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St. Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful business circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in 2002. A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors. He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city. The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters. The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out." Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view. Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in Congress, points out that the evacuees from New Orleans already have been spread out across many states far from their old home and won't be able to afford to return. "This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says. Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr. O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year temporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says. Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New Orleans," he says. A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected with the support of the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reached Wednesday. Mr. Reiss says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and will likely attend when he goes there to visit his evacuated family Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in 2002. Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves, dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education, while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of them have the means to do so.

Hi everyone...My avatar is prole. I like stirring the pot but would prefer not to use my real name and I don’t have to.

"a growing element with a secular, intolerant view." Could you please elaborate?

Is this off-hand dismissal on the part of American liberals, progressives, and secular conservatives part of the reason why this movement has been able to gain so much power within the American state and cultural landscape? Perhaps this is a bad idea?

Way to go. That's one half of one of my questions.

Yeah, like shooting fish in a barrel. Sure, except these are the terms that define much of the political and cultural discourse in this country. Most disturbingly, they are the terms used frequently and loudly by the political leadership that people on this message board often defend. While the "commentary" in question is more a finger-painting than anything else, many of the hallmarks of popular conservatism are there, and I don't think anyone following conservative pundits in the post-Katrina news would be unfamiliar with this writers' comments. I guess I'm just engaging with the "real world" for a change. I'll go back to the ivory tower now. Fairweather, what is your point about the etymological (sp.?) roots of my chosen avatar? Do you work? Are you contemptuous of people that do? Are "working class" and "unemployed" bad words for you? Are you completely insane?

Here's a piece from "The Conservative Voice". Hmmm. Interesting title. Now we see where Fairweather and friends get their hard hitting analysis. Would anyone of you nasty little conservative shits dare to defend this steaming pile of horseshit?! Come on, these are your ideological brethren! Defend it! "Mr. Mayor Of New Orleans, you are no Mayor Giuliani" September 04, 2005 12:12 AM EST By Marie Jon' Every human being that has a heart is seeing what has taken place in New Orleans. What we are seeing is truly unbelievable! When looking at this disaster and the horrors that have taken place we are all shaken with sadness. Our eyes and ears can hardly believe what we are seeing and hearing. After three days, thousands of people are still wondering when they will be rescued. It seems that man has no way to pull themselves together to save and protect dying people. Bush Says "Relief results not acceptable" We all can see that government is almost totally helpless to take care of things. This is the lesson we all need to learn as we watch people perishing as big government stumbles all over it's incapable feet! However the local government failed it's people! Where was their plan of escape? Our president is working to take care of the total breakdown of communications and the lawlessness that now seems to reign. We have seen America's breakdown as God has been shoved aside as if he were a monster. Thanks to the ACLU and their ilk, any form of godliness is unacceptable. The very liberal and progressive one-world government envisioned by the ACLU and the United Nation seems also to be embraced by the far left in America. Thus we now see in these dire desperate days the results of their miserable works in New Orleans. Mayhem rapes the United States of her dignity at the hands of lawless thugs. The Democrat's (DNC) form of socialism robs people from taking stock of their responsibility for their own lives. The lack of some people's personal responsibility was very much at fault in New Orleans. How can one person by the name of G. W. Bush be expected to give back in three days what has been stolen for many decades of spiritual neglect and willful robbing a nation of it's moral compass! Open your eyes and see that lawlessness and neglect comes from a nation that has pushed the almighty aside and told it's people that the Ten Commandments are really a relic and a man made myth! The thugs and monsters of society are now the face seen all over the world as America's new face. Everyone knew this horrifying event was going to take place, yet people rolled the dice and played the odds! More than ever we need God in our lives. A Master's plan was correct from the very beginning. We hide our faces from it. Without God being foremost in our lives, improper thinking to look after a city that was doomed for a disaster, has finally come to fruition. The bigger the government, the slower the response. Mayors come and mayors go. Mr. Mayor Of New Orleans, you are no Mayor Giuliani. Fact: Crime is very very intense in New Orleans. New Orleans has a murder rate that is eight times that of New York City. After five days the National Guard came in to save a people. We cannot think that big government can take care of all Americans. The Lord has a better time and a better place. Lets take ourselves there this day in prayer.

I’ve been internet-less for a week, I’m almost sorry to resurrect this one. Jay B your post and responses are characteristic of so much of the Right’s attack strategy: lots of caustic bluster and posturing based on shaky or non-existent foundations to bludgeon some and strike fear in others, then follow it up with dangerously simplistic "black and white" "us vs. them" notions to close off any potential for real progress. When I wrote about Western feminism’s opposition to the commodification of women’s bodies, you took that as an opportunity to describe atrocities against women perpetrated by fundamentalists, horrors we are all familiar with! What is missing is how the Left supports their continuation (your main argument). How exactly do you make the leap between the desire to push forward women’s freedom from gender oppression domestically and the desire to maintain it abroad? One way this could be done is for you to believe that American aggression abroad is being waged on Muslim women’s behalf. Utter nonsense. Women’s groups in the West, and more importantly Afghani and Iraqi women’s groups inside and outside those countries, have complained bitterly of their marginalization by the US from decision-making processes associated with state-building. UN initiatives to further women’s rights globally have been undermined at every turn by the US for decades. Why are the same people touting the military victory over women’s oppression abroad working so hard to undermine women’s rights domestically as well as push a “family values” culture that keeps women subjugated? The other way you justify your statements is to create phantom leftists and strawmen. You allude to “certain elements” and then condemn general “progressives” and women in Berkeley. Who are these elements? I’m sure there are folks out there that preach moral equivalence and postmodern relativism, but are they representative of the left as a whole? Can we even consider them part of the Left political and philosophical tradition? Check out Aijaz Ahmad’s excellent critiques of postmodernist thought from a leftist perspective. Maybe if you told us who you were talking about instead of the Hitchens-esque diatribe? You use a similar logic to handle the question of capitalist globalization. A vote against the predatory activities of multinational corporations and “free-trade” is a vote for “illiteracy, poverty, subjugation, and starvation”. Straight from the pages of the Economist and Department of Commerce press releases: Economic development is sure to follow the arrival of Western corporations! Again, no logical or historical link between the leftist critique of capitalist globalization and support for continued oppression. Perhaps you can tell us at exactly which point the manna is to fall from heaven on those who’ve lost their land to agri-business, those who live with the health and environmental problems of living on top of oil, gas, or metal deposits, those left unemployed by privatization schemes. These folks are already blessed with all the Western penetration they can stomach. Do you really need me to provide you a laundry-list of left-leaning organizations, scholars and individuals working on alternative development projects that place socially and environmentally sustainable practices at their core, rather than throwing lives and land to the whims of the capitalist market, multinationals, and politicians? Jay B, you’ve presented us with the classic conservative Hobson’s choice based on false propositions and assumptions: Choose between barbarism or throw our lot in with a state and system that has proven incapable of providing a sensible, stable, compassionate, non-alienating way of life. For all your rhetorical flourish, your argument really only boils down to what we’ve been hearing all along: “You’re either with us or against us, good vs. evil, freedom or totalitarianism.” As if one cannot recognize and resist hypocrisy and oppression in multiple forms at the same time in different places. It's only when one believes completely in the American Crusade (a fundamentalist discourse we are becoming all too familiar with) that alternative positions of resistance become impossible. If you don’t want people to think you get your ideas from the TeeVee, then try to raise your argument above the level of Fox News punditry. Ta yourself

Best one I've heard is Washington's portrait on the back too.

"I read an underlying tone of jealousy." Is this because the totality of human experience, desire, and aspiration since the dawn of creation can be reduced to the accumulation of Rogaine, electronic pets, and custom car mufflers? I mean yeah, like, these guys just want a piece of the pie right? Nope, Bin Laden was loaded and fanatics are drawn from all social sectors. While poverty certainly plays a role (many "fundamentalist" organizations form social fabrics that meet the material needs of the, often poor, communities in which they operate), it may be better to look towards the broad frustration with the inability to carve out anything that looks like self-determination in light of almost 100 years of Western imperialism, the failures of Arab nationalism/socialism, and continuing erosion of their values/social system under the seemingly chaotic processes of capitalist economic penetation and military and diplomatic aggression. Religion is bound to play a key role when other oppositional points of reference are lacking. Ask yourself, why does religious fundamentalism form the primary means for expessing dissent NOW in India, the Middle East, SE Asia, and parts of Africa and the US, when at previous points in history it did not?

Sure JB, those in this country that question the quality of our political system, the current leadership's commitment to democracy at home and abroad, the increasing power of corporations to frame debates and set domestic policy, the commodification of women's bodies, etc, etc., the degradations of mind, body, and spirit, the environment wreaked by the globalization of capitalism are just simple-minded idealists, morons, or worse, terrorist sympathizers, enemies! They must be silenced! Or more likely, ridiculed on obscure message boards by dumb rednecks with half-baked analyses that watch to much TV. Hey, be sure to mention "The Road to Serfdom" again so we know you're serious!

Brass Monkey.

"By your logic we should all be happy when all companies are run like Walmart. Low wages, no health care, but decent profits. This is the pervailing job growth under the Bushies (though it goes back further - they've just perfected it.)" Not just the Bushies, this is the prevailing consensus among neoclassical economists as a whole!

One doesn't need to look towards oil revenue as a source of funding for various militant Islams. America's Cold War-era funding of fundamentalist schools, arms proliferation, support of Arab dictatorships, the suppression of secular alternatives, and networking of military bases in the Arab heartland have been amply documented as sources of the rise of Islamic fundamentalisms.

"Open your fucking eyes and point out one thing that has been accomplished at home or abroad." He did: 50,000+ dead in Iraq. Well actually two things. The other being a set of flawed, disaggregated statistics that is supposed to suggest that dogshit tastes good.

"Fairweather is only happy if we are sending billions of dollars to the Saudis or hilltop mining every peak in west virginia." Don't forget nuking China!

Sometimes it's helpful to step back from the barrage of daily media coverage of "current events" and the short-term news cycle and take a look at works that take a more historical, medium to long-term approach in their analyses. I think this article does a fair job of putting alot of the shit being discussed on this board into context. What do you think? http://mondediplo.com/2005/07/02usa

Oh, I forgot. There will be enlistment applications on the way out. Good day, Citizen.