Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalThe Black Hole of Government Contracting
Weekend Edition August 1-3, 2014
The Crimes of KBR
The Black Hole of Government Contracting
by DANIELLE MARIE MACKEY
In January 2008, a 24-year-old Green Beret from Pennsylvania, Ryan Maseth, was electrocuted and killed while showering at Radwaniyah US base in Iraq. The cause, his family alleges in a negligence suit filed in district court in Tennessee, was improper electrical wiring by Kellog, Brown and Root (KBR), the contracting company in charge of the base. He is one of at least eighteen U.S. soldiers who have been electrocuted in similar situations at U.S. bases in Iraq.
Then, in 2012, KBR was found responsible in an Oregon court of knowingly exposing twelve Oregon National Guard soldiers to a toxic chemical, sodium dichromate, at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in Iraq. Information from depositions with KBR employees reveals that they were fully aware of the true nature of the yellow dust—which is, according to the chairman of the Department of Environmental Science at NYU Medical School, Dr. Max Costa, “one of the most potent carcinogens known to man” and that can “enter every cell … and potentially produce widespread injury to every major organ.” Two of the soldiers already died from cancer that their doctors attribute to sodium dichromate exposure.
In 2013, KBR was ordered to stand trial yet again, accused of human trafficking in the case of twelve Nepali men, eleven of whom were murdered. The men’s families say that in 2004 they were promised safe jobs in Jordan, but instead were smuggled to Iraq, destined for a KBR-run U.S. Air Force base. They were intercepted by insurgents en route, and their passports confiscated. Eleven were beheaded; the twelfth survived, and is among the plaintiffs in this case, filed in a district court in Texas.
This is a partial list of the allegations of negligence, corruption, and human trafficking that KBR has, or is still, facing from its operations in Iraq.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/01/the-black-hole-of-government-contracting/
Probe Of Ex-Rep. David Rivera Hinges On Friend
Source: Associated Press
Probe Of Ex-Rep. David Rivera Hinges On Friend
AP | By CURT ANDERSON
Posted: 08/01/2014 1:12 pm EDT Updated: 41 minutes ago
MIAMI (AP) — After four years of unrelenting investigations, former U.S. Rep. David Rivera's fate in a criminal campaign finance probe could rest squarely on the shoulders of a woman who was his close friend and longtime Republican political consultant with deep roots in South Florida's Cuban exile community.
Ana Alliegro, 44, is in a Broward County jail awaiting an Aug. 25 trial on four felony campaign finance charges that each carry maximum five-year prison sentences. She has pleaded not guilty and was denied bail by two separate judges because, in the midst of the FBI investigation, she twice fled to Nicaragua rather than meet with prosecutors and agents.
Alliegro is charged with funneling about $80,000 to an unknown Democratic congressional candidate, Justin Lamar Sternad, who was running in the 2012 primary for the chance to challenge GOP incumbent Rivera in Florida's 26th congressional district. Prosecutors say Sternad, a low-paid Miami Beach hotel clerk with no political experience, was a ringer candidate intended to smear Democrat Joe Garcia, who is much better known and ultimately toppled Rivera in the general election.
Sternad pleaded guilty, has cooperated with the investigation and on July 10 was sentenced to seven months in federal prison. Although prosecutors have not identified Rivera by name, they refer to Alliegro as working with "co-conspirator A." Sternad directly implicated Rivera in testimony, and defense lawyers say Rivera is the person prosecutors are referring to.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/01/david-rivera-probe_n_5642019.html
Argentina in Default as 'Vulture Funds' Demand 'Predatory Payment'
Published on Thursday, July 31, 2014
by Common Dreams
Argentina in Default as 'Vulture Funds' Demand 'Predatory Payment'
US court's ruling on debt payback could have 'a significant negative impact on the functioning of international financial markets, as the International Monetary Fund has repeatedly warned,' a group of economists writes
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
[font size=1]
Two vulture funds are "seeking exorbitant profits" for the Argentine debt it bought up at bargain prices. (Photo: Jubilee Debt Campaign)[/font]
Argentina fell in default on Wednesday following the collapse of negotiations between the country and "vulture funds" that are demanding full payment for the $1.3 billion in debt the funds bought up at bargain rates.
"We're not going to sign an agreement that jeopardizes the future of all Argentines," Argentina's Economy Minister Axel Kicillof declared following the meeting in New York City. "Argentines can remain calm because tomorrow will just be another day and the world will keep on spinning."
McClatchy reported that U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa, the judge in the case,
triggered the possibility of a default when he ruled that Argentina had to pay the holdout creditors in full, then blocked the country’s plan to make a payment June 30 to other creditors who’d agreed to accept a 70 percent discount on the debt they held. Griesa said Argentina had to pay all the creditors at the same time. When Argentina missed the June 30 payment, that started the clock running on a 30-day grace period that ended at midnight Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, no agreement was reached and the Republic of Argentina will imminently be in default," court-appointed mediator Daniel Pollack said Wednesday.
President Cristina Kirchner's cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, told press in Buenos Aires, "If there's a judge who's an agent of these speculative funds, if the mediator is their agent, what is this justice you're talking about? There's a responsibility of the state here, of the United States, to create the conditions for the unconditional respect of other countries' sovereignty."
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/07/31/argentina-default-vulture-funds-demand-predatory-payment
Bolivia Makes Child Labor Legal, In An Attempt To Make It Safer
Bolivia Makes Child Labor Legal, In An Attempt To Make It Safer
by NPR Staff
July 30, 2014 4:59 AM ET
A new law in Bolivia allows children as young as 10 to work legally, and has led to sharp criticism from many international human rights groups who note that it goes against a United Nations convention setting a minimum age of 14.
But supporters of the legislation say that the law guarantees legal protections and fair wages for children, who have been working regardless of laws against it.
A 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Labor reported that more than 20 percent of Bolivians between the ages of 7 and 14 worked, while a U.N. agency reported a figure nearly three times that high in 2008, according to The Associated Press. Both reports note that Bolivian children work in some of the country's most dangerous working conditions.
Reporter Sara Shahriari spoke with NPR's Renee Montagne about the complicated situation that led to this controversial law, and the reactions in Bolivia and around the world.
More:
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/30/336361778/bolivia-makes-child-labor-legal-in-an-attempt-to-make-it-safer?ft=1&f=1030
Here's How The U.S. Sparked A Refugee Crisis On The Border, In 8 Simple Steps
Here's How The U.S. Sparked A Refugee Crisis On The Border, In 8 Simple Steps
Posted: 07/18/2014 10:46 am EDT Updated: 07/18/2014 2:59 pm EDT
The 57,000 children from Central America who have streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border this year were driven in large part by the United States itself. While Democrats and Republicans have been pointing fingers at each other, in reality the current wave of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has its roots in six decades of U.S. policies carried out by members of both parties.
Since the 1950s, the U.S. has sown violence and instability in Central America. Decades of Cold War gamesmanship, together with the relentless global war on drugs, have left a legacy of chaos and brutality in these countries. In many parts of the region, civil society has given way to lawlessness. It's these conditions the children are escaping.
1
1954: US Overthrows Arbenz
[font size=1]
A couple walks by a graffiti mural commemorating Jacobo Arbenz in downtown Guatemala City, June 16, 2004. (AP)[/font]
The story of the U.S.-led destabilization of Central America began in 1954, with the overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government of President Jacobo Arbenz. A populist leader inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Arbenz had plans for an ambitious land redistribution program that aimed to help a nation composed largely of landless farmers.
But those plans butted against the interests of the United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation that owned much of Guatemala’s arable land, along with railroad infrastructure and a port. The CIA helped engineer the overthrow of the Arbenz government, laying the foundation for decades of government instability and, eventually, a civil war that would claim more than 200,000 lives by the 1980s. That war wasn't fully resolved until the 1990s.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18/refugee-crisis-border_n_5596125.html
Prehistoric dairy farming at the extremes
[ Back to EurekAlert! ]
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
29-Jul-2014
Contact: Hannah Johnson
hannah.johnson@bristol.ac.uk
University of Bristol
Prehistoric dairy farming at the extremes
Finland's love of milk has been traced back to 2500 BC thanks to high-tech techniques to analyse residues preserved in fragments of ancient pots.
The Finns are the world's biggest milk drinkers today but experts had previously been unable to establish whether prehistoric dairy farming was possible in the harsh environment that far north, where there is snow for up to four months a year.
Research by the Universities of Bristol and Helsinki, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B today (30 July), is the first of its kind to identify that dairying took place at this latitude – 60 degrees north of the equator.
This is equally as far north as Canada's Northwestern territories, Anchorage in Alaska, Southern Greenland and near Yakutsk in Siberia.
Researchers used a series of techniques, not just to analyse the ancient pots, but also to look at modern-day Finnish peoples' ability to digest milk into adulthood.
By comparing the residues found in the walls of cooking pots from two separate eras and cultures, dating to circa 3900 BC to 3300 BC and circa 2500 BC, it was evident that the more recent pottery fragments showed evidence of milk fats.
This coincided with the transition from a culture of hunting and fishing – relying mainly on marine foods - to the arrival of 'Corded Ware' settlements which we now know saw the introduction of animal domestication.
More:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uob-pdf072914.php
U.S. INTELLIGENCE LISTED COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT URIBE AMONG "IMPORTANT COLOMBIAN NARCO-TRAFFICKERS" IN
For Release, August 2, 2004
For more information contact
Michael Evans - 202/994-7000
mevans@gwu.edu
[center] U.S. INTELLIGENCE LISTED COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT URIBE AMONG
"IMPORTANT COLOMBIAN NARCO-TRAFFICKERS" IN 1991
Then-Senator "Dedicated to Collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at High Government Levels"
Confidential DIA Report Had Uribe Alongside Pablo Escobar, Narco-Assassins
Uribe "Worked for the Medellín Cartel" and was a "Close Personal Friend of Pablo Escobar" [/center]
Washington, D.C., 1 August 2004 - Then-Senator and now President Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia was a "close personal friend of Pablo Escobar" who was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín [drug] cartel at high government levels," according to a 1991 intelligence report from U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials in Colombia. The document was posted today on the website of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research group based at George Washington University.
Uribe's inclusion on the list raises new questions about allegations that surfaced during Colombia's 2002 presidential campaign. Candidate Uribe bristled and abruptly terminated an interview in March 2002 when asked by Newsweek reporter Joseph Contreras about his alleged ties to Escobar and his associations with others involved in the drug trade. Uribe accused Contreras of trying to smear his reputation, saying that, "as a politician, I have been honorable and accountable."
The newly-declassified report, dated 23 September 1991, is a numbered list of "the more important Colombian narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations." The document was released by DIA in May 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Archive in August 2000.
The source of the report was removed by DIA censors, but the detailed, investigative nature of the report -- the list corresponds with a numbered set of photographs that were apparently provided with the original -- suggests it was probably obtained from Colombian or U.S. counternarcotics personnel. The document notes that some of the information in the report was verified "via interfaces with other agencies."
President Uribe -- now a key U.S. partner in the drug war -- "was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the United States" and "has worked for the Medellín cartel," the narcotics trafficking organization led by Escobar until he was killed by Colombian government forces in 1993. The report adds that Uribe participated in Escobar's parliamentary campaign and that as senator he had "attacked all forms of the extradition treaty" with the U.S.
More:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/index.htm
[center]
Alvaro Uribe, George W Bush[/center]
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