Today’s Reads
1. ICC? Sure. But the UN must call Chavez out.
“We watched Wall Street on HD last night. Pretty awesome,” movie director Oliver “Ollie South” Stone and Chavez start the revolution, man.
International Revolutionary/Citgo CEO/Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has crossed the line. Not only has he sent tanks and troops to the Colombian border over a dispute that his country wasn’t involved in (after Colombia’s army violated Ecuador’s sovereignty last weekend), Chavez is now threatening to nationalize Colombian interests in Venezuela.
All this at a time when evidence has surfaced that Chavez provided $300 million in financing to the FARC, a Marxist guerilla group who’ve waged war in Colombia for 40 years and are complicit in drug running, forced conscription, kidnapping, murder, and assisting in displacing 2 million civilians. Chavez is acting up as a distraction. Venezuela’s economy is crumbling; the revolution is failing. Crime is up. The state owned oil company is broken, despite oil being at $104 a barrel.
Colombia has suggested the International Criminal Court charge Chavez with “assisting genocide” for his financing of the FARC. It’s a good idea, but the ICC’s universal jurisdiction mechanism is still in its infancy. Chavez will ignore the charges.
I’m not a UN expert. But it seems Chavez—supporting terrorism, threatening to nationalize foreign businesses, sending tanks to a neighbor’s borders—fits the profile of UN sanctions. If the UN seriously threatened Chavez economically, he would be forced to back down. He risks losing popular support if the economy further weakens.
2. Your Tax Money Pays For Iraq Contractors Who Don’t Pay Taxes or Prosecute Rape
The Boston Globe’s Farah Stockman reported yesterday that Halliburton’s KBR unit is using a tax haven to avoid paying federal taxes on the no-bid contracts they received in Iraq. Actually, Halliburton sold off KBR, but here’s the Globe’s fierce lead editorial today:
KBR, the largest private contractor for the Pentagon in Iraq, has two shell companies in the Caymans, that, for bookkeeping purposes, employ about 10,500 Americans in Iraq. Because the companies are offshore, neither KBR nor the workers must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, allowing the company and its workers to avoid paying about $100 million a year, according to Globe reporter Farah Stockman.
The principal losers in KBR’s tax dodge are US taxpayers. Even though KBR and the workers do not pay Medicare taxes, the employees still will be eligible for benefits eventually, hastening the predicted depletion of the Medicare fund. The workers themselves stand to lose out if they are laid off. Through its shell companies, KBR also avoids unemployment taxes in Texas, where it is registered, and its employees get no unemployment benefits.
When KBR set up the second of its two shells in the Caymans, it was still owned by Halliburton. Halliburton’s chief executive then was Cheney. His office referred inquiries into the matter to Cheney’s personal lawyer, who has not replied to inquiries from the Globe.
KBR is so cool. Not only are they anti-tax, they pro-rape! ABC broke this story in December:
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
She was asking for it—just look at her! Ms. Jones in court.
As of yet no charges have been brought, the AP reported on Tuesday:
Several members of Congress have criticized the Justice, State and Defense departments for the way the case was handled. Congress has pressured the Bush administration to force U.S. contractors in Iraq to offer better their employees better protection from crimes.
Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Wednesday that his agency is investigating Jones’ case but declined to comment further.
I feel sick, but unfortunately all Americans contribute money to KBR and ignoring tax-dodging rape cover-uppers is not an option.
TAGS: Boston, Congress, economy, HBO, Iraq, Movie, surf, Texas, war
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March 7th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
this is the kind of disgusting shit that makes me want to live in a cave.