Live from Austin!

DEAR GEORGE

WE’VE GOT YOUR OIL. IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN, SEND $12 BILLION IN UNMARKED $100 BILLS. CASH ONLY AND DON’T TRY ANY FUNNY STUFF.

YOURS, HALLIBURTON AND FRIENDS

Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Bush played the guitar while New Orleans drowned. And now this:

The good news is—and it’s hard for some to see it now—that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house—he’s lost his entire house— there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.

—George W. Bush, 2005-09-02

I wonder what proportion of the newly homeless poor black population of New Orleans had comprehensive home insurance? The astonishing thing isn’t that Bush would say something so tactless and insensitive; it’s that his PR minders would allow it through into an official White House news release.

There’s more good news for Bush and his buddies though. Guess who the government’s hired for the storm cleanup? Could it be Halliburton? Of course it could.

Oh, and how about using Katrina as an excuse to test some experimental sonic weapons on unruly crowds? Sorted!

In a surprising turn of events, however, even FOX News don’t seem to think they can spin this one as positive for Bush.

Here’s a brief run-down of the lowlights from the “REAL ID Act” passed by the House yesterday.

• Overstaying a visa becomes grounds to deny a driver’s license. There are many, many people who are now legal immigrants who have at some stage overstayed a visa period. Overstayed a student visa by a few days back when you were a student? No license for you!

  Plus, do you want all those illegal immigrants driving around with no license, no insurance, and without having passed a driving test? The government thinks you do and that it will improve your personal security…

• The act reduces the allowed list of reasons to be granted asylum, so the petitioner now has to prove that their claim arises from persecution due to race, nationality, religion, or political group membership. Merely having your life at risk will no longer be sufficient. There will also need to be corroborating evidence; even if the state knows full well that the petitioner was tortured, they’ll be able to demand proof.

• The act amends the law to allow the US to deport victims of terrorism. For example, Colombian refugees who were forced to make “protection money” payments to FARC death squads would now be liable for deportation for financial ties to a terrorist organization, without the government actually needing to present any evidence that the payments supported terrorism. The mere fact of monetary ties to FARC, whatever the circumstances, would be enough—and it’s believed that the majority of Colombian refugees have had money extorted from them by FARC.

  Also, the government can refuse entry if they think you might be likely to engage in terrorist activity in the future. They don’t need actual evidence that you’ve ever committed any crime.

• If a person is barred under the act, their spouse and children are also barred, even if they had nothing to do with the alleged activities.

• Homeland Security can override any law short of the Constitution if it’s to enable them to build barriers or roads. If it’s cost-efficient to build a new road across your back yard, using toxic waste carried there by 12 year old kids working 18 hour days, the government can now contract Halliburton to build it that way. Oh, and there’s no judicial oversight allowed; “no court shall have jurisdiction”.

• Oh, and everyone who’s an official of the PLO is now banned from the USA, including the UN building in New York. That’ll help the peace process.

With Ashcroft’s departure, George W. Bush has a chance to make a symbolic gesture towards uniting the nation. Instead, he has chosen Alberto Gonzales as the new Attorney General.

That’s the Alberto Gonzales who wrote the memo urging that the president declare the US exempt from the Geneva Convention, because otherwise US behavior could lead to war crimes prosecutions. If you had any doubt that a vote for the Bush administration would be rewarding those who supported torture, that doubt should now be dispelled.

It was also Gonzales who ignored a subpoena to turn over documents relating to Enron. Not exactly surprising, since he was one of Enron’s corporate lawyers when he worked for Vinson & Elkins.

Gonzales was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Bush in 1999, where he took cash from Halliburton while overhearing a case against them. Surprise, surprise, the case was denied. He also defended the Texas practice of not bothering to alert consulates when foreign nationals were arrested in Texas, stating that international law did not apply to Texas.

Finally, Alberto Gonzales was the guy Bush relied on to summarize the death penalty cases in Texas for him, so he could decide whether to grant clemency or just have ‘em executed. We all know how that turned out.

So, let the healing commence!

A few days ago I was being all cynical and saying that we’d fail to build Iraq, just like we’ve failed to rebuild Afghanistan.

I was wrong, though. They’ve already sorted out the contract to rebuild any destroyed Iraqi oil fields. The winning company is Kellogg Brown Root. By an amazing coincidence, they’re owned by Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old company.

Time for another boring little news summary, culled from diverse mainstream media outlets, with links to sources…

Dick Cheney is being sued for possible involvement in accounting fraud while running Halliburton. The company is also being investigated by the SEC. Meanwhile, Halliburton has just won the contract to provide the support services for the US military in Afghanistan.

Halliburton took part in Energy Task Force discussions about building an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Dabhol in India, to allow the tapping of the Central Asian oil reserves. The pipeline construction was to be handled by a company called UNOCAL, also a member of the Energy Task Force. A third company in the task force was Enron, who just happened to have a power plant in Dabhol. [PDF]

UNOCAL began negotiating the pipeline construction. Pakistan was no problem, but Afghanistan wouldn’t play ball. When the Taliban made the mistake of supporting Osama bin Laden’s attack on the WTC, it became clear that there was a much easier way of getting the pipeline built: bomb Afghanistan, and install some friendly warlords as the new government. It seems to have worked—the new regime wants UNOCAL to start building the pipeline this year. Naturally it’s pure coincidence that Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan is Zalmay Khalilzad, who was special advisor to UNOCAL in 1997 and carried out the risk assessments for the Afghanistan pipeline project—along with colleague Hamid Karzai, who is now interim president of Afghanistan.

We still don’t know exactly what Enron, UNOCAL and Halliburton discussed with Dick Cheney. Initially Cheney refused to hand over the meeting notes. After a subpoena, it was agreed to release some documents—but only if guarantees were given that their contents would not be made public. Why is it so important to protect the confidentiality of advice given by a bankrupt company that no longer exists? We might have found out from Enron Vice Chairman and whistleblower J. Clifford Baxter—but sadly, he was found in his car, dead from a gunshot wound. A suicide note was found near his body. Also, he’d made sure to still have his defunct Enron corporate ID in his wallet, even though he’d resigned five months previously, perhaps in case the people finding him might fail to realize who he was. Police have concluded that he went out for a drive to shoot himself. It’s a little curious that a suicidal man had talked about needing a bodyguard just two days earlier, but no doubt he was feeling confused. An autopsy uncovered chemical traces on Baxter’s left hand consistent with his having fired the gun, and concluded that he died from the bullet wound to his right temple. Toxicology results revealed residual traces of a cocktail of sedatives, antidepressants and and painkillers in his body. So, nothing suspicious there.

A second oil executive committed suicide last month. Charles Dana Rice was senior vice president at El Paso Corp. El Paso has worked with UNOCAL on pipeline projects. Probably just another coincidence.