August 28, 2007
The Great Iraq Swindle
How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury: Great attitudinal piece in Rolling Stone covering all the turf that's been covered before -- except for the last part about a previously unreported tip-of-the -iceberg, fly-by-night company known as Wolfpack.
A few new morsels include: Wolfpack employee Russell Skoug's battle to get insurance coverage for a severely wounded arm.
When Wolfpack owner Mark Atwood was asked to explain how he could watch one of his best employees (Skoug) get blown up and crippled for life, and then cut him loose with debts totaling well over half a million dollars, Atwood says
"Right now.... I just want some peace."
No doubt, Skoug would prefer to get his insurance coverage. What Rolling Stone does not report is that Wolfpack is believed NOT to have been carrying the insurance coverage at the time -- a violation of US law.
And then there's:
James Garrison, who worked at a KBR ice plant in Al Asad, recalls an incident when Indian employees threatened to go on strike: "They pulled a bus up, got them in there and said, 'We'll ship you outside the front gate if you want to go on strike.'" Not surprisingly, the workers changed their mind about a work stoppage.
Here's the story: The Great Iraq Swindle
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August 27, 2007
theroughcut.net
Moving to theroughcut.net
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August 24, 2007
Shrinking Violets Need Not Apply
It Takes American Courage to Stand Up:
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country's oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.
"If you do it, you will be destroyed," said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
Here's the AP story: Whistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties
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'Anybody around here need a job?'
Spicy Commentary: On the Defense Intelligence Agency announcement to shell out $1 billion for men and women in the private sector -- who would "not be under the direct control of the American government -- to do much of our most sensitive intelligence work."
See OUTSOURCING IS NOT THE ANSWER TO OUR FOREIGN POLICY WOES
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August 21, 2007
US Military Breaks Budget to Protect Civillian Workers
The U.S. military has paid $548 million over the past three years to two British security firms that protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction projects, more than $200 million over the original budget, according to previously undisclosed data that show how the cost of private security in Iraq has mushroomed.
Here's the story: Security costs soaring.
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Whose War are they Fighting?
Poor Latin American security guards are flocking to Iraq and Afghanistan to work for U.S. companies desperate for relatively cheap employees with the type of military know-how gleaned in a region once run by generals.
See the story: Iraq, Afghanistan lure poor Latin American guards
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Cracking India's Caste System
Simply because of birth, they are considered "untouchables."
Known as Dalits, they have been India's low-ranking outcasts for 3,000 years. It is a rigid caste system where the wealthier -- even the middle class -- are trained to believe they are smarter and more entitled to better lives than the 70 percent of Indians who are born with less.
But The Washington Post reports in a laudable story by Emily Wax that some do gooders are working hard to shatter that habitual social order that segregates the poorest of Indians from their country's improving economy.
While the caste system is outlawed by the constitution, low-caste Indians still experience severe discrimination. Dalits are regarded as so low that they are not even part of the system. To this day, they are not allowed to enter many Hindu temples or to drink water from sources used by higher castes.
Wax explores new efforts by companies to provide Dalits and other oppressed Indians with new employment opportunities, including Bharti Enterprises and Infosys. She also notes that many U.S. companies working in India "are not fully aware of the caste system and its complex legacy of discrimination."
An estimated 86 percent of technology workers at multinationals and large Indian outsourcing firms come from upper castes or wealthy middle castes, according to a study released in August 2006 by the government and activist groups.
US Congress has taken notice.
Last month passed a resolution calling for the United States to work with India to address the problem of untouchability by "encouraging U.S. businesses and other U.S. organizations working in India to take every possible measure to ensure Dalits are included and are not discriminated against in their programming."
Interestingly, the story also reports that the vast majority of Indians living in the United States and Britain come from upper castes, partly because they have better access to work and education visas and can afford expensive plane tickets. They also attend private schools where education is far superior to India's public education.
(In the United States, that means that weatlhy Indians who have benefited most from their homeland's caste system can benefit from US affirmative action programs, diversity goals and no-bid government contracts even if they are not American citizens.)
Here's the story: India's Lower Castes Seek Social Progress In Global Job Market
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August 02, 2007
One Hundred 'Illegal' Indian Workers at US Baghdad Embassy Project?
The Asian Age speculates that 100 Indian workers are working "illegally" at the $592-million US embassy project in Iraq.
That is a small portion of the 40,000 workers from India employed by American and Iraqi forces in Iraq, that the newspaper estimates to be in the war-town country, but most could be there only by circumventing visa requirements and labor bans on Indian workers.
The majority of them are illegal migrants and entered Iraq through other Gulf countries without proper visas. They are mainly engaged on work in military bunkers, supplying food to soldiers and other menial jobs. A hundred of them have been drafted to work on the embassy, which is estimated to cost $592 million. The state government’s NRI cell does not have any record of Andhra workers in Iraq since 90 per cent of those employed there are illegal. They are mainly picked up from Kuwait and United Arab Emirates.
Here's the story (via Middle East Online): Illegal Indians build new US embassy in Iraq
Why are they there? Largely because work in Iraq pays well:
Ramana Reddy from Malial mandal in Karimnagar returned after working at the US embassy site for some time."It is hard work since they are constructing a 21-building complex," he said. "Also, we never know what will happen the next moment in Baghdad. But we risk everything for the big pay."
Why do employers hire workers illegally? One imagines because they work for very little money compared to laborers from less impoverished nations.
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August 01, 2007
Philippines Investigates Claims of Workers in Iraq
The Philippine government launched a full-throttle investigation this week into claims of labor trafficking and smuggling made against the Kuwait contractor building the $592-million US embassy project in Baghdad. The move comes in despite of repeated statements by Bush administration officials and the contractor that the allegations are unfounded.
Two Americans who worked at the embassy site in 2006 testified during a July 26 congressional hearing that they had boarded airplanes in Kuwait after they and other passengers were given boarding passes for Dubai before flying directly to Baghdad where they worked at the sprawling 104-acre embassy construction site in the US-controlled International Zone. The passengers were low-wage migrant workers from South Asia and Africa employed by the contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, witnesses said.
One of the planes carried 51 Filipino workers who believed in March 2006 that they were headed to Dubai for jobs in hotels, according Rory Mayberry, an emergency medical technician under contract to First Kuwaiti. Mayberry said the workers had no idea that they were being flown directly flown to Baghdad until after the plane left Kuwait.
Philippine Department of Foreign affairs spokesman Claro Cristobal said his government is taking the Mayberry testimony "very, very seriously as it cuts to the heart of what we do for our migrant workers," according to the INQUIRER.net in the Philippines.
"This particular issue is so serious because the very lives of our migrant workers -- not just their comfort or their living conditions -- but their very lives are at the core of what this issue is about," he said.Cristobal said the Philippine investigation would look into every aspect of the employment of Filipino workers in Iraq, where the Philippines has a standing deployment ban.
"The Philippines shall investigate fully the circumstances around the issue, verify each and every element in the situation for the purpose of making sure that our migrant workers don’t fall prey to what may amount to trafficking," he said.
The Philippines imposed a ban on its nationals from working in Iraq in 2004 after Iraqi militants took Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz hostage. Dela Cruz was released after the Philippine government agreed to pull its peacekeeping troops out of Iraq. Since 2005, Philippine passports have been stamped with the mark, "Not Valid for Travel to Iraq." India and Nepal have imposed similar travel restrictions to Iraq for its migrant workers.
First Kuwaiti human resource manager Adel Jabbour dismissed Mayberry's claim this week while meeting with a team of Philippine diplomats in Kuwait. Jabbour is reported to have shown the officials a First Kuwaiti deployment list for workers dated March 22, 2006, with Mayberry's name that includes 11 Filipinos, 24 Pakistanis and four Indians -- not the 51 Filipinos Mayberry claims to have traveled with. Jabbour also said the plane only carried 40 passengers, according to the Philippine news network ABS-CBN.
Ricardo Endaya, Philippine ambassador to Kuwait, told Jabbour that: "We want all those Filipinos who were forcibly taken to be allowed to go home think this is very important.""We want to know (about) their conditions," he added.
John Owens, an American labor foreman for the embassy project who boarded a different First Kuwaiti flight, related a story similar to Mayberry’s during his own testimony:
When flying from Kuwait to Baghdad, I saw a bunch of workers with tickets to Dubai. Mine was the only one that said Baghdad. When I asked the First Kuwaiti manager, he said -- “Shhh, don’t say anything. If Kuwaiti customs knows they’re going to Iraq, they won’t let them on the plane.” When we landed, these workers were taken away in busses. There was nobody manning the customs station at the airport in Baghdad -- I just walked through on my way back to the Green Zone.
Meanwhile, Philippine labor attache Leopoldo de Jesus ordered an investigation of all manpower recruitment agencies deploying workers to First Kuwaiti. He identified these agencies as Great Provider, GFI, MMS and Yanghwa. He said that these agencies have job orders from Middle East-based contractors. The workers are told that they will be assigned in Kuwait.
The Philippines also has issued a note verbale to the Kuwaiti embassy in Manila reminding it of the standing ban on the deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to Iraq, the INQUIRER.net reported.
Earlier this week in Manila, Sen. Manuel Roxas II said there are an estimated 10,000 Filipino workers in Iraq who should not be there because of the continuing ban on deployment of Filipinos to the war-torn country. He cited information that the workers were reportedly being forced to work in substandard conditions and an unsafe environment.
During the July 26 congressional hearing, the State Department's inspector general, Howard J. Krongard, said he visited the Baghdad embassy site last September after hearing allegations of worker abuse and possibly trafficking.
Krongard told US lawmakers that he gave the First Kuwaiti advance warning. During his September 15 visit, Krongard said he interviewed six workers selected by the contractor to gather information about the allegations but reported that :Nothing came to our attention" to substantiate the claims. He also said he spoke to 50 other workers while touring the embassy construction site where as many as 3,000 workers are employed.
Other former workers at the embassy site told IraqSlogger in May that if Krongard visited earlier than last September and unannounced, he may have witnessed something very different.
"Most of the allegations (from the Americans) were true before he arrived," claimed Juvencio Lopez, a high-level project manager under the US State Department over the course of 2 years. During a telephone interview.... he said the laborers "had their backs to the wall," and had been living 20 to a trailer. Protests over First Kuwaiti’s bad food, abusive treatment from managers and unsafe working conditions were routine among many of the 2,700 workers during much of 2005 and 2006.
"There were strikes and sit-downs every month," Lopez says. He left Iraq in November 2006 and is now home in San Antonio, Texas. "Sometimes there were almost riots."
Lopez vividly recalled a First Kuwaiti security guard unholstering his 9mm handgun and walking among the squatting protestors telling them to get back to work. Had the guard fallen or workers tackled him to the ground, the gun might have gone off. Lopez said he immediately reported the incident to First Kuwaiti. "Someone could gotten killed or injured."
On another occasion, a company manager roughed up a Filipino worker, sources say. All of the other Filipinos nearby began loudly protesting as bewildered workers from other countries watched. "The workers were from 36 different countries and they everyone spoke a different language," Lopez says.
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