Bushites Re-institute slavery!

In Iraq.

KBR Suit Alleges 'Forced Labor' and 'Slavery'

By Zachary Roth - August 28, 2008, 11:59AM

We've now looked through the lawsuit against KBR that we told you about this morning. The complaint (pdf) alleges that the company -- the biggest U.S. contractor in Iraq during the period at issue -- engaged in a human trafficking scheme whereby 12 Nepali men were brought to Iraq to work and were prevented from leaving. The men were then kidnapped by insurgents, and all but one were executed.

In sum: "Defendants' actions as set forth above constitute the torts of trafficking in persons, involuntary servitude, forced labor, and slavery."

What jumps out is that, though KBR's Jordanian sub-contractor, Daoud and Partners (which is named as a co-defendant) was more directly involved in the details of the alleged trafficking, this doesn't appear to be a case of KBR being held liable for acts committed by a sub-contractor that it may or may not have known about.

For instance, the suit alleges that after the kidnapping, the one survivor "was very scared for his safety and wanted to leave to return to Nepal. His employers (both Defendants Daoud and the KBR Defendants) told him that he could not leave until his work in Iraq was complete."

And:

Employees and managers of the KBR Defendants in Iraq were told by the laborers there that they had been taken to Iraq against their will. For example, another Nepali laborer, Sarad Sapkota, was recruited to work outside of Nepal as a cook in Oman in 2003, but was instead taken to Iraq against his will and forced to work for KBR on a military base. He and the other TCNs [Third Country Nationals] working with him repeatedly told their KBR managers that they did not want to come to Iraq and were not informed that they would be sent to Iraq, but were repeatedly told by KBR that they had no choice and would be forced to work in Iraq until their contract was completed.

This is hardly the first time that KBR has been in hot water, of course. As we noted back in June, the company "was criticized in March for making troops sick by failing to provide clean water. And top military officials have given false statements to Congress to quell controversy over the company." In addition, at least two female former KBR employees in Iraq have alleged that they were raped or sexually assaulted by co-workers, and that KBR was less than aggressive in investigating their claims.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

U.N. global Estimate of Slaves: $27.000.000.000

While it can hardly compare to the enslavement of one human being by another, it would be unwise not to pay attention to another type of enslavement that is rampant; the the money of ordinary Americans being tied up in pension schemes, which may or may not be being managed in an efficient manner, let alone within the law) like 401Ks and the like. How much control over how and with whom your money is being invested to achieve the "investors long term goals with the use of savings and growth financial devices?

Many people receive money from "Trusts Under Will." (These, usually, are not very large trusts and are usually used by the beneficiary as part of their retiremenmt or in case of an emergency) The beneficiary or beneficiaries have no say in how the money is invested. These types of trusts are usually small trusts, less that 3 to 5,000,000.000. The trust is put and left on automatic pilot unless there is a quake on Wall Street.

Don't invest in any way shape or form? Every year you overpay the IRS. The IRS invests that money in a very safe, interest-bearing account. You will never see the interest your money earned while invested with that of others (hundreds of millions of other people). The vast majority of Americans never even see the payroll income taxes they pay, as it is taken from their check and sent to the government every quarter. The only way around that is too work under the table (off the books), not a great career choice or one could claim dogs, cats and backyard squirrells as dependents in addition to the three kids. S-L-A-V-E M-O-N-E-Y

Since the early 80s, and perhaps before the Reagan era, while I wasn't paying much attention to such things, these financial schemes have been and are being put in place, offered by companies as part of the employees pay package, etc.

The only thing that in any way controls what Bank and Trust companies can and cannot do with your or my money are state codes which are usually slightly different in every state in the union.

Several years ago, I heard about a man who had been a pilot for Delta, retired, moved to Florida, bought his dream boat. That was their only luxary. They live in a four room, one bath "shack" near the beach and the Marina. He drives the same Sedan he's had had for 12 years and she has a "new-old" pickup truck. She loves gardening and needed the truck to haul large plants. They were two years into their "golden years" when he received a letter telling him that he would no longer be getting a pension check. The pension is belly up, he was told; trying to keep the company viable, blah, blah, blah.

Later, he learned that the man brought on-board to do the cost-cutting and firing, made $20,000,000.00 in cash, stock options and god knows what else...maybe the rest of the corporate officer's first born male children.

Everything he worked for, his dream...all gone....within the twinkling of an eye; the twinkle in the eye of a sociopathic executioner; a man or woman paid to ruin the lives of others, perhaps permanantly, with the cold calculating mind of a Charles Manson or a Ted Bundy.

Certainly the enslavement of a human being is not even in the same room with fraud, theft by deception or any of the rest the of the deadly sins our Banking institutions dance around daily, but while we are outraged by the postmodern enslavement of so many people, it is worth some consideration that what little money many of us do have is enslaved, and we don't even see the horrid danger in this, because it is so esoteric....so normal and natural, seemingly.

Buy locally, invest locally, vacation locally; when you can, patronize local businesses instead of chains.

The Challenge Of Modern Slavery

By Loretta Napoleoni

07/05/08 "ICH" -- - Slavery is in our refrigerators. From fruit to beef, from sugar to coffee, slave labor brings food to our tables. “Miguel,” a Mexican slave freed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a US human-rights organization, may have harvested the apples we eat at breakfast. Miguel picked fruit under guard in the United States. He had traveled to el norte to earn the money to pay for treatment for his six-year-old son who has cancer; instead, his employer enslaved him.

The cocoa we drink while reading the newspaper or watching the morning news shows may come from the Ivory Coast, which supplies half the world market. Children and adolescents from even poorer neighboring countries, such as Mali, trek all the way to the cocoa plantations to earn a subsistence salary. Often, they end up working as slaves in remote farms. “Nineteen-year-old Drissa was one such young man. When he was freed in 2000, he had just gone through a ‘breaking-in’ period as his master accustomed him to enslavement. His back was laced with scars and wounds from being whipped.”

Almost every product we consume has a hidden dark history, from slave labor to piracy, from counterfeit to fraud, from theft to money laundering. We know very little about these economic secrets because modern consumers live inside the market matrix.

The first thought that comes to mind when we discover that our hot chocolate comes directly from slave labor suggests that we boycott Ivory Coast cocoa. But this decision would not help free thousands of young slaves like Drissa. On the contrary, it could make their lives much worse and harm honest farmers as well. “Africa is like a body infested with parasites. One has to be careful not to kill the body to get rid of the parasites,” summarized Rico Carish. Millions of people depend for their sustenance on this parasitic rogue economy. The alternative could impoverish them further, if it does not put them at risk of death.

Often, western intervention, even when willing and well intentioned, achieves very little. In the case of many African commodities, Western companies have no direct contact with farmers. Trade occurs through local intermediaries, middlemen, and shippers. The profits of slavery are collected at the farm gate, a practice that effectively incorporates them in the price of the product. Often the intermediaries do not even know or care that slave labor is involved in the production of the goods they trade. This explains why halting imports from the Ivory Coast will not end slavery but force thousands of honest farmers and their families into poverty. To eradicate the problem, one must attack the root causes, a task that only local governments can accomplish. But good governance also proves a rare commodity on the African continent.

Even more shocking is the discovery that in the twenty-first century, slavery is booming on a global scale. According to the United Nations, slavery is growing at an unprecedented rate. Figures put global slavery at 27 million persons, a generation of modern slaves that, according to the International Labor Organization, produces yearly profits of around $31 billion. Population explosion and great migrations coupled with globalization have boosted the slave trade. “The increase in slavery is linked to globalization,” concurs Kevin Bales, author of Ending Slavery: How We Will Free Today’s Slaves. “But this is not about sweat-shop workers existing on misery wages. Slaves are under the complete, violent control of another person; they are economically exploited and get only enough food and shelter to stay alive. For millions of victims, their experience differs little in hardship from that of slaves hundreds of years ago.”

Slavery’s resurgence exerts a direct effect on its cost, which has now fallen for decades. Bates calculated that, while over the past 3,000 years the average price of a slave has ranged from $20,000 to $80,000 (adjusted to current dollar value) now people can be bought and sold for a tenth of these prices. After World War II, we witnessed a sudden surge in the supply of slave labor, pushing prices down. Ironically, this phenomenon began as a consequence of decolonization, which shifted slave ownership from colonizers to countrymen. Today’s slaves are predominantly enslaved by their national peers and not by foreign powers. Like other commodity markets, slavery operates by the law of supply and demand, and today supply proves plentiful among the millions living on a dollar to two dollars a day.

Consumers remain blissfully ignorant of these facts. The market matrix, a complex maze of smoke and mirrors, hides the exploitative nature of trade and commerce. The shelves of Western supermarkets are stacked with items produced by people in developing countries who earn a miniscule fraction of their value. Consumers, if they ever chose to think about it, might be shocked to learn who pockets most of the profits of their daily grocery shopping.

Loretta Napoleoni: An expert on financing of terrorism, Loretta advises several governments on counter-terrorism. She is senior partner of G Risk, a London based risk agency. - She is a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics..

To review further articles and listen to podcasts by Loretta Napoleoni, you are invited to visit her website: http://www.lorettanapoleoni.org

and a modest 4 room beach shack for him and his wife of 30 years (I don't mean that in a bad way. That is what they call it: Their "sea shack". It is the simplicity that they love) for which he had saved for diligently for thirty years, including the time-period while he was in the Navy

A little over two years into a rather well-planed retirement, her received a letter telling him that the Delta pension fund had gone belly up, sorry about that. Just the way the old cookie crumbles, eh?

The Challenge Of Modern Slavery

By Loretta Napoleoni

Slavery is in our refrigerators. From fruit to beef, from sugar to coffee, slave labor brings food to our tables. “Miguel,” a Mexican slave freed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a US human-rights organization, may have harvested the apples we eat at breakfast. Miguel picked fruit under guard in the United States. He had traveled to el norte to earn the money to pay for treatment for his six-year-old son who has cancer; instead, his employer enslaved him.

The cocoa we drink while reading the newspaper or watching the morning news shows may come from the Ivory Coast, which supplies half the world market. Children and adolescents from even poorer neighboring countries, such as Mali, trek all the way to the cocoa plantations to earn a subsistence salary. Often, they end up working as slaves in remote farms. “Nineteen-year-old Drissa was one such young man. When he was freed in 2000, he had just gone through a ‘breaking-in’ period as his master accustomed him to enslavement. His back was laced with scars and wounds from being whipped.”

Almost every product we consume has a hidden dark history, from slave labor to piracy, from counterfeit to fraud, from theft to money laundering. We know very little about these economic secrets because modern consumers live inside the market matrix.

The first thought that comes to mind when we discover that our hot chocolate comes directly from slave labor suggests that we boycott Ivory Coast cocoa. But this decision would not help free thousands of young slaves like Drissa. On the contrary, it could make their lives much worse and harm honest farmers as well. “Africa is like a body infested with parasites. One has to be careful not to kill the body to get rid of the parasites,” summarized Rico Carish. Millions of people depend for their sustenance on this parasitic rogue economy. The alternative could impoverish them further, if it does not put them at risk of death.

Often, western intervention, even when willing and well intentioned, achieves very little. In the case of many African commodities, Western companies have no direct contact with farmers. Trade occurs through local intermediaries, middlemen, and shippers. The profits of slavery are collected at the farm gate, a practice that effectively incorporates them in the price of the product. Often the intermediaries do not even know or care that slave labor is involved in the production of the goods they trade. This explains why halting imports from the Ivory Coast will not end slavery but force thousands of honest farmers and their families into poverty. To eradicate the problem, one must attack the root causes, a task that only local governments can accomplish. But good governance also proves a rare commodity on the African continent.

Even more shocking is the discovery that in the twenty-first century, slavery is booming on a global scale. According to the United Nations, slavery is growing at an unprecedented rate. Figures put global slavery at 27 million persons, a generation of modern slaves that, according to the International Labor Organization, produces yearly profits of around $31 billion. Population explosion and great migrations coupled with globalization have boosted the slave trade. “The increase in slavery is linked to globalization,” concurs Kevin Bales, author of Ending Slavery: How We Will Free Today’s Slaves. “But this is not about sweat-shop workers existing on misery wages. Slaves are under the complete, violent control of another person; they are economically exploited and get only enough food and shelter to stay alive. For millions of victims, their experience differs little in hardship from that of slaves hundreds of years ago.”

Slavery’s resurgence exerts a direct effect on its cost, which has now fallen for decades. Bates calculated that, while over the past 3,000 years the average price of a slave has ranged from $20,000 to $80,000 (adjusted to current dollar value) now people can be bought and sold for a tenth of these prices. After World War II, we witnessed a sudden surge in the supply of slave labor, pushing prices down. Ironically, this phenomenon began as a consequence of decolonization, which shifted slave ownership from colonizers to countrymen. Today’s slaves are predominantly enslaved by their national peers and not by foreign powers. Like other commodity markets, slavery operates by the law of supply and demand, and today supply proves plentiful among the millions living on a dollar to two dollars a day.

Consumers remain blissfully ignorant of these facts. The market matrix, a complex maze of smoke and mirrors, hides the exploitative nature of trade and commerce. The shelves of Western supermarkets are stacked with items produced by people in developing countries who earn a miniscule fraction of their value. Consumers, if they ever chose to think about it, might be shocked to learn whose pockets most of the profits of their daily grocery shopping.

Loretta Napoleoni: An expert on financing of terrorism, Loretta advises several governments on counter-terrorism. She is senior partner of G Risk, a London based risk agency. - She is a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics..

To review further articles and listen to podcasts by Loretta Napoleoni, you are invited to visit her website: http://www.lorettanapoleoni.org

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.