Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (124031)	1/30/2004 12:44:45 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 281500

Anything to brighten your day FL. :0)

To: FaultLine who wrote (124031)	1/30/2004 12:47:40 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<every Democrat candidates is now supporting the terrorists instead of our troops> This comes from the core ethical belief, that anyone who is unwilling to kill, is either a coward or a traitor. The litmus test of patriotism and courage, is whether you are willing to cheer every proposal for Americans to kill non-Americans.

To: FaultLine who wrote (124031)	1/30/2004 1:23:42 PM
From: Rascal	Respond to of 281500

The Halliburton Shuffle By BOB HERBERT an you spell Halliburton? R-i-p- o-f-f. War-torn Iraq has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another treasure trove of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no peer in the fine art of extracting riches from the government. But if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have, you'll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the government that has been so good to it. Annual reports filed with the S.E.C. since the mid-90's — when Dick Cheney took over as chief executive and wrote the game plan for garnering government goodies — showed Halliburton subsidiaries incorporated in such places as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu. Vanuatu? Who knew? Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and subsistence farming. "Additional revenues," according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, "derive from a growing tourist industry and the development of Vila [the capital] as a corporate tax shelter." Halliburton, in an S.E.C. filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu) Ltd. The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it's indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton's tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, "After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability." That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a ride. In the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private profit-making companies. Brown & Root came up with myriad ideas in a classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to implement its own plan. Mr. Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, and the defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq. Halliburton is bound so intimately to the defense establishment it might as well be an adjunct to the military. (Mr. Cheney still receives deferred compensation from Halliburton but insists he has no role in the awarding of contracts.) Halliburton is an organization that has the reach of a multinational and the eyes of a Willie Sutton. Through its subsidiaries, it has done work with countries the U.S. has accused of supporting terror. It was accused of overcharging the U.S. government for work done in the 1990's, and in 2002 it agreed to pay a $2 million settlement in response to accusations that it had defrauded the government. The Pentagon is currently examining allegations that the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root overcharged the government by $61 million for gasoline imported into Iraq from Kuwait. Last week the company acknowledged that at least one employee had participated in a $6.3 million kickback deal with a Kuwaiti company. That money has reportedly been repaid to the government. What we have here is a private profit-making multinational company with no particular allegiance (other than contractual) to the U.S. government. Nevertheless, through its powerful allies in the government, Halliburton enjoys extraordinary influence over national defense policies and has its own key to the national treasury. If it's at all grateful, it hasn't shown it. The U.S. is at war. The government is running record deficits. Money is tight everywhere. But Halliburton won't even kick in its fair share. It continues to benefit from the nation's largesse, while scouring the world for places to shelter as much of its American riches as possible.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/opinion/30HERB.html?pagewanted=print&position= Rascal @DidTheyCallTheBBB?.com

To: FaultLine who wrote (124031)	3/12/2004 7:52:33 AM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Saddam Spy Suspect Worked for House and Senate Democrats newsmax.com Talk about a triathlon: The Maryland woman charged today with spying for Saddam Hussein's dictatorship has also worked for congressional Democrats and the media establishment. Susan Lindauer, scheduled to appear in court later today in Baltimore, launched her career as a political publicist. She worked, according to the Associated Press, for these Democrats: Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon in 1993. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon in 1994, when he was a U.S. congressman. Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois as press secretary in 1996. Braun is best known lately for her doomed-from-the-start presidential campaign. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California in early 2002. She also had been employed by Fortune, U.S. News & World Report and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, AP said. 'Shocked' Lofgren said in a statement she was "shocked" to learn of the arrest. "Ms. Lindauer served as press secretary in my Washington, D.C., office from March 11, 2002 until May 14, 2002. To my knowledge, this former employee had no access to sensitive information. Obviously, I had no reason to think that she was involved in this alleged activity. I have had no further contact with her since she left my employ. If there is any way I can assist with the investigation, I will happily do so," the statement said. How Awful: 'Downsized' by a Democrat Josh Kardon, chief of staff for Wyden, said: "Her position was eliminated in the downsizing following the 1994 elections. She worked for us a short period of time." Braun's mouthpiece Loretta Kane insisted that the former senator did not remember Lindauer. 'Liberal Views' and 'Fantasy World' "More than a half dozen FBI agents could be seen searching Lindauer's residence in Takoma Park, a city known for its liberal views," AP reported. One neighbor in the Washington suburb, Joao Luiz Vieire de Castro, described Lindauer as "a regular American who walks her dog in the mornings and the afternoon." "It's a big surprise. Who would think that it's [espionage] in your neighborhood?" said Dean Paris, 45, who sometimes greeted her on the street. But Malvina Lacey, who lives next door to Lindauer, said, "She lives in a fantasy world." Libyan Connection and 'Acid' in Her Car The Washington Post reported today that, according to the indictment, Lindauer also met last year "with an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a representative of the Libyan intelligence service and was seeking to support resistance groups fighting U.S. forces in post-war Iraq. It said Lindauer discussed with the agent 'the need for plans and foreign resources to support these groups operating within Iraq.'" While working for Rep. Wyden, she became embroiled in the debate over who carried out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. Under pressure from the Bush administration, Libya's dictatorship has finally admitted its guilt. The December 1998 issue of the online Middle East Intelligence Bulletin quoted Lindauer as claiming saying that that a former CIA agent had told her that the bombers were Syrian and that she had suffered because of her advocacy in the Lockerbie case. "Someone put acid on the steering wheel of my car on a day I was supposed to drive to [New York City] for a meeting at the Libya House," the report quoted Lindauer as saying. "I scrubbed my hands with a toilet brush, but my face was burned so badly that 3 weeks later friends worried I might be badly scarred. Also, my house was bugged with listening devices and cameras - little red laser lights in the shower vent. And I survived several assassination attempts." CNN Doesn't Want You to Know We checked out a tip sent by one reader and found that as of 1:50 p.m. EST, the story on CNN's Web site still failed to inform readers of Lindauer's ties to Democrats and Big Media. Fox News Channel's Web site, of course, had the updated news. At 3:45, CNN's site was still refusing to reveal Lindauer's Democrat background. 'Sadism' Hussein MSNBC's site had the update, attributed to AP, but included this curious paragraph: "She was accused of conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and of engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving the government of Iraq under President Sadism Hussein." That's odd. Our AP story called the toppled tyrant "Saddam" throughout.