Bottled Water as Black Ops Swindle
February 7th, 2007Spooks lining their pockets with blood money?! Imagine my shock. This case represents just one tiny deal. What about the other $12 billion that went missing in Iraq?
Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
CIA officers operating in northern Iraq bought drinking water from a bottling plant there for years prior to the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
That changed soon afterward. A CIA officer handling logistics for the Middle East and other regions recommended that an American company provide water and other supplies, according to former government officials.
The U.S. contractor that benefited from the multimillion-dollar deal wasn’t just anyone. The company had personal ties to the officer, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, who would soon leave his logistics post in Frankfurt, Germany, and move to Washington to become the CIA’s third-ranking official.
In at least one written communication, a Baghdad CIA officer complained about the no-bid contract. According to one official, the officer believed the deal was simply unnecessary because safe water was available commercially but he was ignored.
The water contract, while small on the scale of the billions that flowed into Iraq, raises questions about why U.S. taxpayer dollars went to well-connected businessmen rather than Iraqis who could have benefited from a share of postwar reconstruction business. And the case provides a window into the murky world of covert government business arrangements.
Foggo retired from the CIA last year. He is now at the center of a federal investigation, nearing completion, into whether he improperly steered contracts to companies controlled by his best friend, San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes.
Federal prosecutors in San Diego are preparing to seek indictments against Foggo and Wilkes on charges of honest services fraud and conspiracy, two government officials familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press last week.
Bottled Water as Ecocidal Folly
February 7th, 2007Via: Triple Pundit:
Well, I doubt that Fiji has a booming plastics industry so they probably get the bottles from China. I would suspect that they get the bottles in the form of “Blanks” which are then expanded to their final size and shaped by a process called “stretch blow molding.” The total mass of the empty 1 liter bottle is probably around 0.125kg (125g) and it is probably made from PETE or HDPE (Sorry, I’m not running out to the store to check). Plastics of this type typically use around 6kg of oil per kg, 200kg of water per kg, and result in around 3kg of greenhouse gas emissions per kg.
It goes on and on. Of course, the thing most people use routinely, and never even think about, is one of the most insane wastes of resources possible. This doesn’t mention the mountains of garbage…
Steve Jobs Taps the Mat on DRM
February 7th, 2007They lost on this one, and They know it.
Via: Apple:
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.
Cryptogon Reader Contributes $35
February 7th, 2007Pookie, Queen of Cryptogon contributions, continues her glorious reign. Thank you.
In Case You Don’t Know: Pookie
U.S. Sent $4 Billion in Cash to Baghdad Before Handover
February 7th, 2007Oh sure. And in other news, Lieberman wants a war on terror tax. Tell me another one.
Via: Reuters:
The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday.
The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.
Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that’s exactly what our government did,” the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.
Poor Among Plenty
February 6th, 2007Via: MSNBC:
Once prized as a leafy haven from the social ills of urban life, the suburbs are now grappling with a new outbreak of an old problem: poverty. Currently, 38 million Americans live below the poverty line, which the federal government defines as an annual income of $20,000 or less for a family of four. But for the first time in history, more of America’s poor are living in the suburbs than the cities—1.2 million more, according to a 2005 survey.
Related: The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair:
During the past two years of work on the book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, I kept encountering this deadly despair. Driving down a highway lined with gas stations, fast food restaurants and dollar stores I often got vertigo, forgetting for a moment if I was in Detroit or Kansas City or Cleveland. There are parts of the United States, including whole sections of former manufacturing centers such as Ohio, that resemble the developing world, with boarded up storefronts, dilapidated houses, pot-hole streets and crumbling schools. The end of the world is no longer an abstraction to many Americans.
U.S. Immigration Cavity Search Results in Medical Emergency
February 6th, 2007Welcome to the United States. Dr. Mengele will see you now.
Via: Register:
US immigration officials insisted the sufferer of an anal infection remove a small piece of medical thread which was being used by doctors to treat the condition. The man required treatment under general anaesthetic as a result.
The man had an anal fistula, which is a painful channel that can develop deep into the anus, caused by infection or digestive conditions such as Crohn’s disease. More details, if absolutely necessary, from NHS Direct here.
Arriving on holiday in New York in August last year, the unnamed 48-year-old was interrogated and searched by immigration officers, according to a letter appearing in medical journal The Lancet. The rectal examination discovered a device called a seton, which doctors in the UK had inserted into the fistula to help control long-term infection.
The seton was made of a blue braided medical suture material knotted and passed into the hole where the fistula surfaced. After one baffled immigration officer pulled “very hard” on the seton, the patient was given the choice by the baffled immigration officers of either getting on the next plane home, or submitting himself to a procedure to have it removed.
Happily, as The Lancet’s correspondent notes, the curious immigration officer yanking the seton did not damage “the anal sphincter muscles encircled by it”.
The seton was duly removed by an airport doctor, who claimed to have no idea what it was. The man now requires treatment under general anaesthetic to have a replacement inserted.
The letter writer concludes by advising seton patients to carry a letter from their doctor when travelling “to the USA or any other country where they are likely to be searched in this manner”.
Cryptogon Reader Signs Up for Hosting with Blue Host
February 5th, 2007Many thanks to the Cryptogon reader who decided to host his site with Blue Host. Cryptogon receives $65!
(Waiting until the site is ready for me to post a link…)
Related: Hosting with Blue Host via Cryptogon
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
February 5th, 2007Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton:
“Pelton reveals how the U.S. military-industrial complex has created its own dark version of the nonstate warrior [and] asks if companies like Blackwater and Executive Outcomes could become the new Hessians for both multinational corporations and overstretched armies.†—Jonathan Taplin, professor, USC Annenberg School for Communication, and producer of Under Fire, The Last Waltz, and Mean Streets
“‘The dark side of the war on terror’ may sound redundant, but how else can you describe the world of contractors, mercs, and wackos who are paid big money to keep the key players alive and the war machinery humming? It’s a cynical, funny, and very scary place, stretching from Arkansas to Fallujah, and no one gets it, or tells it, better than Robert Young Pelton.†—John Rasmus, editor in chief, National Geographic Adventure
Licensed to Kill spans four continents and three years, taking us inside the CIA’s dirty wars; the brutal contractor murders in Fallujah and the Alamo-like sieges in Najaf and Al Kut; the Deep South contractor training camps where ex–Special Operations soldiers and even small town cops learn the ropes; the contractor conventions where macho attendees swap bullet-punctuated tales and discuss upcoming gigs; and the grim Central African prison where contractors turned failed mercenaries pay a steep price.
The United States has encouraged the use of the private sector in all facets of the War on Terror, placing contractors outside the bounds of functional legal constraints. With the shocking clarity that can come only from firsthand observation, Licensed to Kill painstakingly deconstructs the most controversial events and introduces the pivotal players. Most disturbingly, it shows that there are indeed thousands of contractors—with hundreds more being produced every month—who’ve been given a license to kill, their services available to the highest bidder.
U.S. Contractors Becoming a Fourth Branch of Government
February 5th, 2007The shop has already been looted; this is the final sweep to pull the fixtures off the walls before the criminals torch the place.
Via: International Herald Tribune:
In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the government’s reflexive answer to almost every problem.
They hired another contractor.
It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government’s management agency.
Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.
Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).
The contracting explosion raises questions about propriety, cost and accountability that have long troubled watchdog groups and are coming under scrutiny from the Democratic majority in Congress. While flagrant cases of fraud and waste make headlines, concerns go beyond outright wrongdoing. Among them:
Competition, intended to produce savings, appears to have sharply eroded. An analysis by The New York Times shows that fewer than half of all “contract actions” — new contracts and payments against existing contracts — are now subject to full and open competition. Just 48 percent were competitive in 2005, down from 79 percent in 2001.
The most secret and politically delicate government jobs, like intelligence collection and budget preparation, are increasingly contracted out, despite regulations forbidding the outsourcing of “inherently governmental” work. Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said allowing CACI workers to review other contractors captured in microcosm “a government that’s run by corporations.”
Agencies are crippled in their ability to seek low prices, supervise contractors and intervene when work goes off course because the number of government workers overseeing contracts has remained level as spending has shot up. One federal contractor explained candidly in a conference call with industry analysts last May that “one of the side benefits of the contracting officers being so overwhelmed” was that existing contracts were extended rather than put up for new competitive bidding.
[DID YOU GET THAT? “One of the side benefits of the contracting officers being so overwhelmed” was that existing contracts were extended rather than put up for new competitive bidding.” —Kevin]
The most successful contractors are not necessarily those doing the best work, but those who have mastered the special skill of selling to Uncle Sam. The top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns. “We’ve created huge behemoths that are doing 90 or 95 percent of their business with the government,” said Peter W. Singer, who wrote a book on military outsourcing. “They’re not really companies, they’re quasi agencies.” Indeed, the biggest federal contractor, Lockheed Martin, which has spent $53 million on lobbying and $6 million on donations since 2000, gets more federal money each year than the Departments of Justice or Energy.
Contracting almost always leads to less public scrutiny, as government programs are hidden behind closed corporate doors. Companies, unlike agencies, are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Members of Congress have sought unsuccessfully for two years to get the Army to explain the contracts for Blackwater USA security officers in Iraq, which involved several costly layers of subcontractors.
…
There is no target richer than the Homeland Security Department, whose Web site, in a section called “Open for Business,” displays hundreds of open contracts, including “working with selected cities to develop and exercise their catastrophic plans” ($500,000 to $1 million) and “Conduct studies and analyses, systems engineering, or provide laboratory services to various organizations to support the DHS mission” ($20 to $50 million).
One crisp morning in an office building with a spectacular view of the Capitol, Alfonso Martinez-Fonts Jr., the agency’s assistant secretary for the private sector, addressed a breakfast seminar on “The Business of Homeland Security.” The session drew a standing-room crowd.
Mr. Martinez-Fonts, a banker before joining the government, said he could not personally hand out contracts but could offer “tips, hints and directions” to companies on the hunt.
Joe Haddock, a Sikorsky Helicopters executive, summed up the tone of the session. “To us contractors,” Mr. Haddock said, “money is always a good thing.”
