KBR/Halliburton Accused of human trafficking. Kitchen slaves. All the way from Nepal.
http://news.yahoo.com/story//
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
So I guess the American farmland isn't the only place where illegal foreign workers are an issue. It seems those damned illegals are at it again. This time however, they are taking high paying jobs in the private sector, and doing so in a very insidious way.
Just recently 12 to 14 (the need to finish putting the bodies back together) illegal migrant workers decided to stow away in KBR vehicles heading over the border from Jordan into Iraq. They carefully surrendered their passports to KBR employee's after they arrived in Jordan with the promise of taking American jobs in the civilian contractor food service industry. THEN they stowed away in KBR cars going to Iraq to a military base were they would take jobs from the Americans there. Assholes!
OK, enough of that. These men were promised jobs cooking in Jordan, had their passports and identities seized, and where then shipped by KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton) to Iraq to work for only the promise of eventually going home in areas deemed "to dangerous to risk American cooks". The plan was discovered when the convoy was attacked by Iraqi's and most of the Nepalese slaves were killed along with their captors.
Is it just me, or does this seem like a lot of trouble to go to for free kitchen labor?
Seriously. Men from Nepal abducted in Jordan and sent to Iraq to work in kitchens for Halliburton contractors? It just does not make a lot of sense. The facts are there, these men were Nepalese, they did have their passports confiscated, and they were being taken to Halliburton facilities in Iraq. Maybe a really amazingly long road trip back home to Nepal?
What the fuck?
Either way, with all the money our government keeps borrowing in our name from foreign powers to pay for The War in Iraq, you would think we don't need to abduct a bakers dozen plus one of Nepalese men for slave labor.
The Adventures of Steve Fossett Across the 8th Dimension
http://www.economist.com/
http://www.aviation.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
http://knudsennews.blogspot.
http://www.hemuz.org/People/
Steve Fossett's dead. Undead, undead, undead. Well, legally dead. But probably not dead.
You see, Steve was a test pilot, adventurer, millionaire, world record setter (116, 60 of which still stand, in 5 sports no less), and all around death-defying sort of guy. He lived large, and ate life with shining teeth as the vikings would say.
So on September 3rd, 2007 he takes off from the ranch of Barron Hilton (Paris Hiltons cranky grandfather) and goes flying out in the Nevada desert in a small two seater airplane, and is never seen again. To date no plane wreckage or corpse have been found in the search. No transponder signal from the plane, no nothing. Not even Google (via Google Earth), the Government, or the connections of Billionaire Playboy Richard Branson have found anything. Well , they found eight other airplane crash sites in the desert, but not Fossett.
Did he fake his death? Not likely. None of his accounts or assets have been accessed since his "death". His wife had him declared legally dead so she could access his half of the fortune. Several investigators remained alert to the possibility, but he had no outstanding debts or creditors hounding him. Is he dead then? Maybe, but unlikely.
What is a little weird about this is the claims he made before his death, as well as certain facts leading up to the disappearance.
In the days before his "fateful flight" he claimed to his wife and a few friends that he found some sort of passageway into another dimension in the dessert. Steve claimed it was white, and circular, and visible from the air but could move. Inside it he observed blue colored humanoids who told him strange things. He landed his plane near the opening and spoke to the blue men at length about time, space, and showed him all sorts of things that only make sense after a heavy dose of LSD and a balloon full of nitrous oxide.
So Steve goes home at 2am, tells his wife and a friend or two about this experience, they figure he's working too hard (adventurer or not, he was 63), and try to hope it doesn't happen again. A few days later he saddles up to the Hilton Ranch and has the hanger flunkies do the pre-flight on Barron's little plane that he had never flown. Which is odd, since he was paranoid and very safety conscious. He never let anyone else monkey with a plane before he flew, he also didn't bother to wear an emergency transponder watch he had. Also, he left at about 8:30 in the AM for an unspecified location in the Nevada desert, with his only explanation for going as "reconnaissance".
Steve Fossett was declared legally dead on February 15th, 2008. No body, no wreckage, no hint of what happened despite the most extensive and expensive search-and-rescue operation in history.
USDA bars beef companies from testing for Mad Cow disease, claims its unfair to other meat companies... more headlines from Bizzaro World.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/
http://www.creekstonefarms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/
http://www.awitness.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.organicconsumers.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/
http://www.mad-cow.org/
http://www.sciam.com/article.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/
http://www.cdc.gov/Ncidod/EID/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
Creekstone Farms wants to give the government money, but Uncle Sam is having none of it. Creekstone Farms also wants to protect its customers from the horror that is Mad Cow disease, but Uncle Sam is having none of that either.
The USDA is preventing, in court, Creekstone Farms from buying (from the USDA) laboratory kits that test for Mad Cow and its human counter part Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The USDA is the only legal supplier of these tests, and they will not let Creekstone have them for fear that it will affect the price of beef.
Essentially the meat processing/packing/farming lobby (aka Big Meat) and the USDA are afraid that consumers will start flocking to Creekstone products (premium, specialty, and organic beef) due to their scientifically verified assurance of being Mad Cow free. So then they , Big Meat, also will have to start testing every cow for the disease, the expense of which will be passed on to the consumer. Which might result in less beef being sold.
So the logical choice of course is to bar anyone from testing any American beef's until they are foaming at the mouth with crazy and biting people.
The USDA and Big Meat don't want the US to experience the panic that hit Great Briton a few years ago when they discovered that damn near all their cows had the disease. Most of Western Europe smelled like east Texas while England dealt with its little fuck up. The lost revenue if cows were infected here on that scale would be staggering. Since losing money is not the American way, it gets swept under the rug, and hopefully all those cases that pop up in a few years will just be mistaken for early onset Alzheimer's disease, organic brain dementia, epilepsy, or some other disease thats not transmitted by USDA certified meat.
Cows infected with BSE have already been found in the US. Several hunters have contracted CJD from eating deer they killed. The USDA admits that CJD/BSE/CWD and other variants have been found in sheep, deer, and elk in the US, but not cows. Which is good, since the government and big business would never lie about something like this. Why would they?
Hungry?
* * *
Only 3 topics this time. What do you want from me? I am a busy man dammit.
Enjoy, and of course feel free to comment.
/End Transmission.
2 comments:
In regards to the KBR "slaves" I'd like to know the whole story here. I am sure that there is more to this than meets the eye. Like you so astutely stated: what reason would Haliburton have to risk themselves just to smuggle four or five people in? Like so many other things dug from the media, only half the story is available. There is another half out there somewhere, and in between those two halves lies the truth of what happened.
Oh, and I have seen Rich eat beef cooked on an electric grill, so if a terminator can be considered an android, then the answer to your question is most definitely yes, they do eat electric beef.
Cheers,
-J-
Indeed! Why would KBR risk it all for 13 or so slaves? A few grossly shortsighted middle managers? A larger interest the forced free labor market? Brown people needed for a black op that didn't involve them living long enough to tell anyone they were cooks from Nepal? A far flung Nepalese Al-Queda cell making the mother of all terror road trips?
Any way you slice it, weird.
-R
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