A load of crap from an idle brain

Everything about the United State’s war in Afghanistan and Iraq is well documented.  What is little known is the details that goes into the well oiled war machine of the US Army.  A company by name Halliburton, which in the general sense is known to people as a company that is into oil discovery and marketing is very much entrenched in the way the US government goes into war.

Years ago Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney laid the foundations of outsourcing the critical logistics of the American military machienary.  Dick Cheney as the head of Halliburton and Donald Rumsfeld as the person who created the policies necessary for the same.

Today Halliburton-KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root) which was later on split into two different companies, Halliburton and KBR are the main ones who run the logistics of the American military.  In the process they have totally corrupted the procedures and have billed the American public billions of dollars of fake expenses.

Pratap Chatterjee goes into great detail as to how the Halliburon-KBR combine came about, how it managed to entrench itself into all the contracts of the military logistics, its transgressions, fake billing, over billing, wastage of food, resources, blatant human rights abuses, rapes of its female employees, usage of foreign nationals in war zones with no safety equipment, their exploitation etc.  Its a disturbing read of how in this age of free and available information, all these details have been hid from the public in general.

The book is in the markets for a few years and the fact that it hasnt been challenged or sued is a sure indication that the author has got his facts right and that he has evidence to prove all accusations he presents in the book.  Even though Halliburton-KBR might reject the author’s claims, it does recognise the rot that infests the organisation.

Chatterjee (Iraq Inc.) delves into the nebulous world of the Houston-based Halliburton corporation, tracing the company to its roots, when a fortuitous meeting with a young Lyndon Baines Johnson propelled the Brown and Root Company (which later merged with Halliburton) into Washington power politics. The author details the military contracting that largely funded the company through WWII and into the present-day war in Iraq, intertwining the company’s history with the biographies of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other officials in the Bush administration. Chatterjee provides a laundry list of abuses for which the company has been investigated, including inflated billing of the Pentagon, providing unsafe living conditions for U.S. soldiers, labor exploitation and coverups to avoid congressional inquiry. He concludes with a look at the whistleblowers that brought these scandals into the public eye and the repercussions of the eventual congressional investigation. Chatterjee keeps the pace of the narrative at a quick clip and nimbly marshals his extensive evidence to reveal—without sanctimony or stridency—Halliburton’s record of corruption, political manipulation and human rights abuses.

“Halliburton’s Army” begins citing how $5,000/day oil-well fire-fighters were brought in, despite the Kuwaiti’s offering to do the job for free out of gratitude for Gulf War I and concern for their own environment. The situation rapidly deteriorated – potential whistle-blowers demoted or other wise threatened, overheads running 43-55%, overcharges for fuel – $2.64/gallon, vs. a local Iraqi source at .96/gallon (or even an internal Defense Dept. source at $1.32/gallon), splitting contracts to avoid bidding requirements associated with large dollar amounts, billing for hours not worked, ordering multiple items when just one was needed (cost-plus!), serving overpriced and sometimes outdated food to non-existent troops, failure to treat water with chlorine, using very-high-priced suppliers, electrocuting troops via improper electrical work, failing to pay required disability benefits to those injured on the job, etc.

Source: Halliburton’s Army Amazon page

Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War
Author – Pratap Chatterjee
Pages – 304
Publisher – Nation Books

Bill Bonner of the Daily Reckoning has for long had a bone to pick with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. It all first started with legendary short seller James Chanos calling China “Dubai times 1,000 – or worse.” To which Thomas Friedman wrote that James Chanos should be careful about trying to “short a country that has $2 trillion in cash” in this article titled “Is China the next Enron?”

Thomas Friedman & Bill Bonner

In his article, The Long and Short of China, Bonner goes hammer and tongs at Thomas Friedman saying…

Oh happy days are here again. Obama is going to get our money back from the banks. Jeffrey Sachs is telling Haiti how it can get its economy back in order (with other people’s money, naturally). And Thomas Friedman is offering investment advice.

This should be fun. We’re all on the bus…and it’s driven by the blind, the deaf and the very dumb. Oh, sorry, we meant the visually impaired…the hearing impaired…and the mentally deficient.

Friedman is, as we all know, full of advice on just about everything. He advises finance ministers on how to soup-up their economies. He advises the Arab world on how to update its religious institutions. He advises whole nations on how to improve the future before it happens.

And here he is now counseling Mr. James Chanos, noted short seller, on how to make money

Big egos are at play here.  But its not to discount the value of the words being spoken here.  Bill Bonner, Thomas Friedman and James Chanos are all good at what they do.  They have built up a career full of backing their claims with the work they have done.

Last word on whether China is a bubble or not is yet to be spoken.  Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman finds another supporter in Keith Fitz-Gerald of Money Morning.

Above pictures courtesy: Theteemingbrain, Cityfile & Stockopedia

+++

The good news is that scientific research papers being filed from India are on the upswing.  The bad news is that countries like China, Korea etc have left India long behind in this race.  In fact, China has more than doubled its research output since 2004.  Read more on these reports at this Thomson Reuters website.

Often referred to as a “sleeping giant” in scientific literature, India seems to be waking out of its slumber, says a recent global research report on “Research and Collaboration in the new Geography of Science” by Thomson Reuters.

As per the report, Chemistry and Pharmacology are fast becoming the most “published” disciplines in India; USA remains its largest research partner even as South Korea is racing ahead of China to partner with India. And Japan’s University of Tokyo collaborates most frequently with Indian researchers.

If the current trajectory continues, the study estimates, India’s productivity would well be on par with that of most G-8 nations within eight years and could even overtake them between 2015-2020.

In a testament to its strength in information technology, computer science accounted for the highest increase in world publications from India between 1999-2003 and 2004-2008, increasing by more than 100%. When it comes to research, India’s strength lies in Chemistry and emerging sectors like pharmacology, microbiology and traditional agricultural sciences.

Between 1993-2003 and 2004-08:

• In Chemistry, India’s research output increased from 21,206 world publications to 33,504

• From a 2.8 per cent share of the world output in pharmacology and toxicology, India’s share is up to 4.25 per cent

• Output in engineering rose from 2.69 per cent to 3.57 per cent

• Microbiology saw publication output rise from 1.62 per cent to 2.79 per cent

Agricultural engineering, Tropical Medicine, Organic Chemistry and Dairy & Animal Science are areas of research where India is picking up well besides Crystallography and Textiles.

Read the full news here

Above picture source: 30yearchallenge

+++

The seventh dossier was passed to Pakistan a few days ago.  Am sure it went into the dustbin as usual.  In spite of all evidence passed, Pakistan refuses to admit its complicity in the attacks.  Even if it does, there is nothing much to do about it.

The Pakistani army and its rogue intelligence agency, ISI have the official policy of using terrorism as an instrument of strategy against its neighbours. Too bad, it has finally spiralled out of control and Pak itself is under constant bombardments from the monster it created.

Not to mention, the Afghan – Pak border has become such a hotspot for the terrorists that the Americans are regularly using drones to bomb the hell out of the place.   To take out one terrorist, the US drones kill 100.  Pathetic ratio, no doubt.   It only makes it easy for the jehadis to indoctrinate the suffering people.   More terrorists are born, the cycle continues.

Till the US comes to its senses and crushes the evil nexus of the Pak army, ISI and the jehadi factory, they are in for a long haul in Afghanistan and there is not going to be any peace in the neighbourhood.

Previous entries on the Bombay attack – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Above picture source: IBNLive

The father of the Indian nuclear programme celebrates his birth centenary today – October 30.

He laid the foundation of India’s huge atomic energy establishment almost singlehandedly, nurturing and expanding it with his dynamic vision. Thanks in no small measure to Homi J. Bhabha’s dream, India’s atomic energy programme has acquired global stature today, capable of designing and testing nuclear weapons and aspiring to meet its growing demands for nuclear energy.

Born to Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha and Meherbai on Oct 30, 1909, in Bombay (now Mumbai), the young Bhabha led a sheltered and emotionally secure childhood. The very first glimmerings of a keen and inquisitive mind became apparent when a specialist told his very worried parents why he slept little — a hyperactive brain that kept him awake at nights.

Excellent family ties with the Tatas and their association with national leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru and also with the British imbued the sensitive boy with a sense of nationalism and perspective.

In 1924, Homi Bhabha passed the Senior Cambridge exam at the age of 15. But by then he had grasped the complexities of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as well as the intricacies of classical painting.

His arrival in Cambridge, a fount of nuclear physics, three years later in 1927, permitted his native genius to bloom for the next 12 years, where he obtained his PhD in physics with specialisation in cosmic rays, in 1934. He was just 25 then.

Bhabha met many of the greatest physicists of the time, namely Niels Bohr, James Franck, and Enrico Fermi, who played key roles in the Anglo-American atomic weapon programmes.

In March 1944, even before the world acquired a nodding acquaintance with the mighty potential of nuclear energy, Bhabha, then a professor, wrote to Sir Dorab J. Tata, who headed the Tata Trust, proposing an institute for nuclear physics in India.

“When nuclear energy has been successfully applied to power production in, say, a couple of decades from now,” Bhabha wrote with remarkable prescience, “India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand.”

Thus the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) came into being on Dec 19, 1945, just four months after Hiroshima and three years before Indian independence.

Bhabha served as its first director, which placed him at the commanding heights of the country’s nuclear future, until his premature death in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps on Jan 24, 1966.

Bhabha was very particular about maintaining excellence. Addressing the then National Institute of Sciences, Bhabha said: “This is a field in which a large number of mediocre or second rate workers cannot make up for a few outstanding ones, and the few outstanding ones always take at least 10-15 years to grow.”

As the new nation’s prime minister, Nehru entrusted Bhabha with complete authority over all nuclear-related affairs and programmes. Both of them shared a close rapport. In April 1948 at Bhabha’s bidding, Nehru agreed to legislate the Atomic Energy Act in the Constituent Assembly, creating the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

On Jan 3, 1954, the IAEC decided to set up a new facility, the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET). In August the same year, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) came into being with Bhabha as its secretary. Till date, it remains answerable only to the prime minister. Prime minister Indira Gandhi renamed AEET the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

Full article here

+++