Halliburton’s recent financial disclosure has some interesting info

Its subsidiaries alone take up pages — the co. is in over 140 nations…almost as many as at the Earth Summit II! The report states that its finances have been hurt by the prolonged US “recession,” the 9/11 attacks which hurt its airline gas/oil business, the numerous legal suits against the company for its abstestos-related building and contracting (which it says is unfair and is lobbying congress to prevent), and its long-term investments in deep-water drilling (especially in West Africa and South America). Plusses have come from the military contracts in Kosovo and now war-on-terror business. Also, domestic oil/gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Texas have been delivering unexpected volume.

Also, L. Eagleburger is one of the Directors of the Board — something, concerning the military-mindedness of this transnational, that doesn’t shock me but did come as a surprise…move gov’t implosions into big-time corporate power. [BlogLeft: Critical Interventions]

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This just in - Bush says he may follow the law!

Yessiree, even though the Constitution says that only Congress has the right to declare war, Dubys says, golly, he may ask them.  May…

Bush May Request Congress’s Backing on Iraq, Aides Say

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Investor Tax Cut Is Just Election Year Posturing.

“The White House has made it clear to concerned conservative economists that its plan to push for tax cuts for investors is designed more to help Republicans in the fall elections than to pass Congress this year,” the Washington Post reports. White House economic advisor Larry Lindsey said President Bush is simply “giving GOP candidates an answer to Democrats who blame the president’s party for this summer’s dramatic stock slide.”… [Taegan Goddard's Political Wire]

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World Summit on Sustainable Development news

60,000 people are meeting at a UN in Jo’burg, South Africa now, trying to determine how to manage the resources of the the planet.  The nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) are at odds with corporate/governmental entities on the wisdom of letting the ‘invisible hand of capitalism’ gives us the finger, er no, provide a wondrous new world of prosperity through privatization of public entities and corporatization. 

Mbeki Slams North-South Wealth Divide
South African president Thabo Mbeki identified the growth of the wealth and prosperity gap between North and South was one of the key aspects that needed to be addressed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The WSSD, aimed at helping to solve the world’s poverty and ecological problems, was officially kicked off by Mbeki in Johannesburg this morning (26 August).

Mbeki said world powers had failed to implement resolutions of the Johannesburg summit’s predecessor, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit whose Agenda 21 set out to integrate social and economic development with enviromental protection. “The tragic result of this is the unavoidable increase in human misery and ecological degradation, including the growth of the gap beween North and South,” Mbeki told a packed auditorium at the start of Johannesburg’s first plenary session.

Summit agrees deal to save fish
First major breakthrough in Johannesburg involves plan to restore heavily depleted stocks by 2015  A plan to restore the world’s heavily depleted fish stocks by 2015 was agreed by 189 nations at the earth summit yesterday, the first major breakthrough in the negotiations.

With 60% of stocks “being fished to destruction” the rescue package involves creating a series of protected marine areas around the world by 2012 and restricting fishing until stocks recover in many other parts of the oceans. The protected areas would be used as nurseries for species of fish such as cod, herring and tuna.


One often gets the impression that the US doesn’t like playing with the other children.


Anti-globs vs. capitalists, a handy check list

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‘Ignorant and inept’ FBI failed to heed warning of terrorist attacks

Your tax dollars at work. 

The ignorance and ineptitude of FBI supervisors and lawyers in Washington obstructed agents all over America from pursuing evidence that could have provided them in advance with a “veritable blueprint” of the September 11 attacks, a Senate report has found.

The report by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is expected to be made public next month, is the result of an investigation that began shortly after the terrorist attacks.

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The War in the GOP

All summer long, the debate over U.S. intervention in Iraq has whirled into full force. If the answers aren’t yet clear, at least the questions increasingly are.

And so far, the debate is almost entirely between two camps of Bush Republicans, with Democrats on the sidelines. One camp, often known as ”neoconservatives,” includes the president, the vice president, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others in office.

The second camp, historically dubbed ”realists,” includes Baker and Scowcroft.

Should we wake the Democrats up and inquire if they would be so bold as to actually venture an opinion on the US going to war?  Of course we do realize this would entail them actually taking a forceful stand on an issue.

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Qatar also refuses to allow be used as staging area for Iraq War

This is huge news.  Qatar joins Saudi Arabia in refusing to allow the US to use their country to invade Iraq.  This leaves, I believe, Turkey as the only possible staging area. 

Qatar’s foreign minister ended a two-day visit to Baghdad on Tuesday during which he added his voice to a growing chorus of Arab opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, complicating the Bush administration’s ability to launch an attack from the region.

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Israel’s ‘corrupting’ war under fire - from chief rabbi

Britain’s chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has warned Israel that it is adopting a stance “incompatible” with the deepest ideals of Judaism, and that the current conflict with the Palestinians is “corrupting” Israeli culture.

In a move that will send shockwaves through Israel and the world Jewish community, Professor Sacks departed from his policy of offering only public endorsement of Israel by giving an explicit verdict on the effect that 35 years of military occupation and decades of conflict are having on Israel and the Jewish people.

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