Thursday, January 8, 2009

Oedipus Shell



'Art Not Oil' action at national theatre's (U.K.) Shell sponsored production of Oedipus

Video 5 minute film in mp4 format - video/mp4 6.1M
Video 5 minute film in wmv format - video/x-ms-wmv 6.8M

More on 'Art Not Oil' the Oedipus project and a gallery of images from actions against Shell's program of cultural sponsorship
http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/ShellAction/

Shell Iraq

Pentagon Hands Iraq Oil Deal to Shell
By Nick Turse, AlterNet
Posted on October 2, 2008, Printed on January 8, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/101012/

In June of this year, Andrew Kramer, writing in the New York Times broke the story that the world's oil giants, "Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP ... along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies" were "in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields." Subsequently, the Times went on to report that "A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies ... " The Times asserted that the "disclosure" was "the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq's oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism."

In reality, there had long been ample evidence of deep involvement between the Bush administration, foreign firms and Iraq's Oil Ministry. The Times and other major media outlets also failed to expose the major financial ties between the military occupation in Iraq and the same oil giants. In fact, each of the oil giants named in the original New York Times piece -- Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron -- regularly shows up on the Pentagon's payroll. In fact, last year, the five firms took home more than $4.1 billion from the Pentagon -- with Shell leading the way with $2.1 billion.

In September, the "criticism" the Times predicted apparently finally scuttled the no-bid deals. In a piece by Kramer and Campbell Robertson, it was reported that the "plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, ha[d] been withdrawn." The companies would, however, be eligible to bid for contracts and, just days later, it was announced that the Pentagon's favorite of the oil majors, Shell, would become the first oil giant to sign an energy deal with the Iraqi government in 35 years.

On September 22nd, the government of Iraq and Royal Dutch Shell officially signed a $4 billion deal "to establish a joint venture with [Iraq's] South Gas Company in the Basra district of southern Iraq to process and market natural gas." A day later, the Times reported that Shell had "established an office in Baghdad." From a "news conference in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone," the Times quoted Linda Cook, the executive director of the Shell's gas and power unit, as saying, "We are ready to establish a presence."

While the Times didn't report it, Cook went on to say, "I am delighted that the Iraqi Government including the Ministry of Oil have supported Shell as the partner for joint venture with the South Gas Company. We look forward to moving jointly to implement the JV and begin investing in the energy infrastructure in Iraq." What the Times (and other major media outlets) also failed to mention was that guarantor of that "Green Zone" from which Cook spoke, just days before, had the inked its own huge energy deal with Shell. On September 17th, Shell was awarded a $338 million contract for aviation fuel by the Pentagon. In fact, even before this contract, Shell had already awarded over $1 billion from the Pentagon during this fiscal year. If history is any guide, it will receive billions more before fiscal 2009 starts.

The Pentagon's Shell deal came during one DoD's periodic petroleum benders -- massive multi-day spending sprees where hundreds of millions or billions of taxpayer dollars are paid out to oil companies. This one, on September 17th and 18th, netted Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and seven other oil companies a grand total of over $1.5 billion.

The fact that the U.S. government secretly facilitated dealings between Shell and the Iraqi Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts; that the U.S. military -- the primary occupation force in Iraq -- regularly pays Shell billions of dollars each year; that on the heals of a contract worth hundred of millions of dollars with the U.S. military, Shell just inked a deal with the with occupied Iraq and set up an office in the U.S. military's secure "Green Zone" should raise myriad questions about the tangled relationship between the major players in Iraq. These complex issues go ignored because they are viewed as so routine as not to be worth mentioning, but in any other context the confluence of guns, oil and billions of dollars would certainly raise eyebrows.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008



Crosscurrents: American and European Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
March 4 - December 31, 2008
Sponsor: Siemens

From the exhibition "sponsor statement" by Siemens
"...Exhibited alongside each other are works by many of the most accomplished and recognizable painters in the history of art, including Gilbert Stuart, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jacques-Louis David, and Francisco de Goya. Other renowned works are by John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, artists who themselves transcend the Atlantic divide, much as Siemens has for 160 years.

At Siemens, we share with these masters the spirit of independence and the ability to look at things with a fresh perspective. We create, and we innovate. Every day, our colleagues in 190 countries across the globe strive to devise new technologies to improve business and society. One bold vision deserves another, and we salute these artists for theirs..."

About Siemens

THEN
"Preceding World War II Siemens was involved in the secret rearmament of Germany. During the Second World War, Siemens supported the Hitler regime, contributed to the war effort and participated in the "Nazification" of the economy. Siemens had many factories in and around notorious extermination camps such as Auschwitz and used slave labor from concentration camps to build electric switches for military uses. In one example, almost 100,000 men and women from Auschwitz worked in a Siemens factory inside the camp, supplying the electricity to the camp.[6]. The Crematorium ovens at Buchenwald still bear the Siemens name."
from - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_AG

NOW
Siemens provides technologies vital to militaries around the world, including the United States. In recent years, Siemens has been investigated and charged with bribing military and other government officials in several countries in attempts to win no bid contracts. In 2007, Norway's military blacklisted the German based Siemens AG group from future defense assignments after the company knowingly overcharged it millions of kroner between 2000 and 2005.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008



Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
May 25 - September 7, 2008
Sponsor: National Construction & Logistics and CEO Hamed R. Wardak.

Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Art, May 25–September 7, 2008; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, October 24, 2008–January 25, 2009; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 22–May 17, 2009; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 23–September 20, 2009

The following article is reprinted from Policy Options Magazine - 11/11/2007

Cashing in on Karzai & Co. By Arthur Kent

The Canadian Forces in Afghanistan have been left exposed at a critical point of their mission, but not due to a lack of public support – it’s the Harper government that’s absent without leave. While the Forces can point to significant, if painful, gains in flashpoints such as Panjwai and Zhari districts, as well as Kandahar City, the prime minister and his team can boast of not a single clear policy gain, especially not where diplomatic intervention is needed most: pressuring the Taliban leadership in their safe havens in Pakistan, and rehabilitating the Karzai regime in Kabul.

The Harper government continues to acquiesce to the Bush administration’s results-barren command of an aid and security mission that is international in name only. Washington’s blunders have compromised a force whose success is crucial to Canada’s hopes for an eventual end to its combat obligations: the Afghan National Army, or ANA.

At issue is a web of political influence, backed by enormous sums of US military and humanitarian aid dollars, extending from the White House through an array of government officials, neo-conservative outriders and avaricious Afghan-American businessmen. Afghans and foreign observers who’ve witnessed the web’s growth describe it as a network of aggressive political adventurers, hungry for influence and lucrative development contracts.

“These people have hijacked a weak system,” says a senior member of President Hamid Karzai’s staff, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “People here initially welcomed diaspora Afghans with open arms and looked to them for guidance. But that’s changed. It’s clear that too many Afghan-Americans paraded their patriotism only to promote their careers, or to advance ethnic agendas, or just to fill their pockets. On top of that, their scheming has distorted policy in Washington, a lot like Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress at the start of the Iraq war.

“It doesn’t matter who Karzai appoints as Interior Minister or Attorney General,” the source says. “That’s just the visible surface. What really matters is who’s making deals behind the scenes, at the US Embassy or over a cosy meal at the Presidential Palace.” Member of Parliament Ramazan Bashar Dost says: “The United States and other western countries are not following their own laws. It is obvious to everyone that the contracts go to a minister's son or brother. You cannot get a contract unless you have connections.”

Across town from parliament stands an institution that attests to that charge: the Karzai regime’s Ministry of Defence. Ask to meet the minister, Rahim Wardak, and you’ll be referred to a public affairs desk at the American Embassy. Ask to meet the beneficiaries of the Afghan army building boom, and you’ll be invited to leave. But regime insiders will happily recite the names - with Minister Wardak’s son, Hamed, at the top of the list.
* * *
For Canada and Canadians, the raising of a capable Afghan army is not only vital to stability in southwest Asia. Until the ANA can stand its own ground, Canada and its NATO partners will be forced to maintain combat forces to hold off the Taliban. Yet successive Canadian governments have done little to address the failings of the US-financed army project. Incompetence, conflict of interest, nepotism and corruption has led to chronic shortfalls in troop training targets. Instead of tackling the problem, US and NATO officials have concealed it by padding statistics.

Since 2001, the Bush administration has committed $12 billion to Afghanistan’s security forces. A 70,000-man army was called for, but only 25,000 soldiers can be proven to exist today. Of these, perhaps 18,000 are combat-ready. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has admitted to Congress that its investigators are probing criminal misconduct related to $6 billion worth of equipment and service contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan. Keeping track of dollars and troops can’t have been easy, given the proclivity of Washington’s generals to massage the numbers.

By the end of 2003, only 9,000 army recruits had gone through basic training. Half of these promptly deserted. At the time, US Gen. Peter Pace brushed criticism aside, claiming that the ANA would have 12,500 men in arms by the summer of 2004. That seemed laughable by the Berlin Conference in April, 2004, where the record revealed only 5,721 trained men, with 3,056 recruits in the system. Yet only four months later, Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the ANA was up to 13,000 troops. In January of 2005, US officials claimed 17,800 Afghan soldiers trained, with 3,400 more in the works. By January of 2007, Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin declared: “Currently 36,000 strong, the ANA is on its way to an end state of 70,000 combat and combat support soldiers skilled in counterinsurgency operations.”

Which was plainly nonsensical: in February, 2007, it was widely agreed that the Afghan National Army numbered at most 22,000 men. Six years on, Hamid Karzai has less than a third of the force he and his allies regard as minimally capable of defending his regime. An Afghan official familiar with problems at the MoD, says: “It remains a token army. It doesn’t reflect the ethnic reality of the country, or even all regions. Finances go to battalions said to be 600 men strong, but in reality there’s not a single full-strength battalion in all of Afghanistan. Unfortunately it is still the case that the best Afghan militias are private ones.”
Some 2,000 private militias still exist, totalling 120,000 gunmen, according to the joint UN-Afghan disarmament agency. At least 500 of the groups are controlled by regime insiders – ministers, MPs and commanders. Many militias enforce goods smuggling, land grabs and drug trafficking. None battle the Taliban and al Qaeda. That job goes to “the internationals,” who have been left by the Bush administration with only one way out of Afghanistan: build up the ANA’s combat forces to replace their own.

* * *
According to eyewitnesses, one piece of diplomatic theatre from 2005 typifies how global diplomacy has been conducted in Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban regime. Though the event focused on governance, not the army, the same unilateralist strong-arming that ensued has undermined the program to build up the ANA.

The setting was the residence of Jean Arnaud, the U.N.’s special representative. Arnaud had invited the heavyweights of Kabul’s foreign diplomatic corps to debate voting systems for Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections. Among European and Asian embassies, there was unease about the option advocated by the biggest foreign aid donor on the scene, the Bush administration. The single non-transferable vote, or SNTV, would render political parties irrelevant. Because President Karzai had failed to forge his own party, American officials wanted to prevent the emergence of a parliamentary group that might challenge him. But SNTV had a downside: the stifling of parties might well compress the powder-keg of Afghan politics to critical mass.

The discussion was interrupted by a late arrival: Zalmay Khalilzad, the American Ambassador. “I’ve just spoken with President Bush,” Khalilzad announced. “He said that SNTV is the choice. SNTV is going to happen.” Then he turned and walked out.

This was not the first time Khalilzad (known as “King Zal” or “The Viceroy”) had cold-shouldered foreign policy professionals espousing views different from his own. According to an Afghan legal aide who has worked closely with Karzai: “Frequently the European ambassadors would be angry with Khalilzad. They knew it didn’t matter what agreements were made at their meetings with ministers. The key decisions were made over private dinners at the palace, with Khalilzad and his Afghan-American circle from the US Embassy dictating policy. The Europeans said ‘why should we contribute to a policy if we have no say in the decision making process?”

This discord belies the multi-lateral intent of the Afghan project: some 70 nations and organizations back the current aid protocol, the Afghanistan Compact. Militarily, 37 nations contribute to the NATO-run International Security and Assistance Force. But one government - the Bush administration – has provided as much financial aid as all others combined. And as people like Zalmay Khalilzad are quick to point out, money not only talks, it shouts out loud for ultimate control.

For an activist-envoy who has left gorilla-sized footprints all over Asia for more than two decades, Khalilzad might be assumed to be have earned his way by making the right calls at the right times. Instead, his career path reveals two constants: a genius for advancing himself by way of influential connections; and a penchant for policies that sooner or later reveal their author’s knack for blowback.

When Khalilzad served the Reagan administration in the 1980’s, he backed anti-Soviet Afghan resistance figures of his own Pashtun ethnicity – despite their extremist views. He favoured fundamentalists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and allied himself to Pakistan’s campaign against the Afghan nationalist leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, an ethnic Tajik. Today, Hekmatyar is among America’s most-wanted Afghan terrorists. Massoud is revered as a hero who prevented the Taliban seizing all of Afghanistan, but whose warnings about al Qaeda went unheeded by the U.S.

By the time the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, Khalilzad’s geopolitical aim had not improved. As a director of the RAND Corporation, he lobbied the Clinton administration to recognize the Taliban regime. At the time, he was a paid consultant for the proposed UNOCAL trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline. In the March 30, 1999 edition of the Washington Post, Khalilzad was quoted as saying: “In the rural areas, what the Taliban is seeking to impose is not very different than what the norm has been.”

Today, Khalilzad’s “norm” is almost as evident as the Taliban’s, as befits a hard-charging neo-conservative loyalist. A one-time protégé of Paul Wolfowitz, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000. Later, he was a counsellor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Then came a chance to shape post-Taliban Afghanistan, first as President Bush’s special representative, and later as Ambassador to Kabul. Says a source close to the Presidential Palace: “He encouraged Karzai to rid his government of Tajiks, and except for a few positions, he has succeeded. Ethnic fascism is not too strong a label for Zal and his friends.”

Khalilzad’s plan was to weaken the Taliban by co-opting the Pashtun tribes that the movement feeds on for recruits and support. Stack Karzai’s ruling elite with Pashtuns, the reasoning went, and the Taliban movement would fade away. “But in many cases, Zal’s Pashtuns were the wrong Pashtuns,” says a member of Europe’s diplomatic corps in Kabul. “Advancing ministers on the basis of ethnicity was a mistake.” Figures like Information Minister Khorram and Attorney General Sabet bear that out. Both are unabashed fundamentalists, and long-time aides to fugitive warlord Hekmatyar. While they were empowered, respected Tajiks, notably former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, were pushed aside.

This strategy has borne bitter fruit: the Taliban have stepped up their insurgency, not eased it, and the regime’s ineptitude and corruption have run rampant. “The role of Khalilzad in Afghanistan is like a poison that has no treatment,” says MP Ramazan Bashar Dost. “As US Ambassador, he was supposed to act according to the good will of Americans. But even though he is an American citizen and has studied in America, his way of thinking about Afghanistan is according to old Afghan standards. It’s more about a tribal system than democracy.”

If Khalilzad’s concepts of tribalism reveal one Western tendency, it is a passion for promoting Afghan-Americans friendly to the Bush White House. In the 1990’s, a new generation of displaced Afghans, the sons and daughters of diplomats, businessmen - and former guerrilla commanders - took root in their parents’ adopted homeland. It was within this diaspora that Hamed Wardak came of age.

A somewhat chubby, intensely studious young man, Hamed was destined to emulate, if not exceed, Zalmay Khalilzad’s gifts for political networking and hyper-drive careerism. Hamed’s father, Rahim Wardak, brought his family to the U.S. from Pakistan. There, in the 1980’s, he had garnered a reputation as one of the least accomplished commanders of the American-backed Mujahideen resistance to Soviet occupation forces. By the time of the 1990’s civil war, Rahim Wardak had vanished from the Afghan scene.

Bizarrely, his young son, Hamed, would help ignite Rahim Wardak’s unlikely comeback. At Georgetown University, Hamed wrote his senior thesis under the mentorship of Jeane Kirkpatrick, formerly Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the UN, and the godmother of the neo-conservative movement. Graduating in 1997, Hamed won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. During this period, he flirted with pro-Taliban sympathies, due both to his ethnic Pashtun fervour and peer pressure from young DC-area extremists.

--------------------------------

Gradually, however, Hamed came under the influence of Kirkpatrick’s philosophical soul mates, notably Marin Strmecki, a Republican essayist and political facilitator with the Smith Richardson Foundation. Strmecki worked at the Pentagon under Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, along with Lewis “Scooter” Libby – and Zalmay Khalilzad. It was during Hamed Wardak’s reappraisal of the world, via these American political heavyweights, that he came into contact with a group of upwardly-mobile players on Washington’s Afghan-American scene: the Karzais; specifically, two of the six Karzai boys – Qayum and Mahmood. Unlike their younger brother Hamid, who had spent much of his life in Pakistan, Mahmood and Qayum were accomplished US-based businessmen.

The brothers recognized a bright prospect in the young Rhodes Scholar. In turn, Wardak saw the benefits of aligning himself with the Karzais’ dazzling circle of friends. This paid enormous dividends. By the time war drums sounded in the aftermath of the Sept. 11th terror attacks, Hamed Wardak had toned down his pro-Taliban sympathies and was on his way to becoming vice-president of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, founded by Mahmood Karzai. He also nabbed an advisor’s post with Karzai’s first Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani. But his real breakthrough was joining a Virginia-based contracting firm, Technologists Inc., founded by Aziz Azimi, a close friend of Qayum Karzai.

Hamed Wardak’s new alliances proved extraordinarily advantageous as George W. Bush launched his “war on terror,” particularly with Khalilzad and Strmecki enjoying direct access to vice-president Dick Cheney’s office. The melding of the Wardaks’ business and political connections had catapulted them into the front ranks of an advancing legion of state-building, doctrine-spouting capitalists. Along with the leading lights of the Afghan-American business community, they returned to their ancestral homeland, which had become a cradle of treasure and influence few Afghans could have dreamed of after the displacement and loss of the Soviet and Taliban eras.

On the policy front, members of Khalilzad’s coterie, notably Marin Strmecki and Martin Hoffman, a former college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld, stepped up their efforts to Pashtunize the Karzai regime. Strmecki had already taken the campaign to the op-ed pages of American newspapers, alleging that the Tajik-led Northern Alliance was plotting against both the Karzai government and former King Zahir Shah. By the time Khalilzad took up his ambassadorship to Kabul in Dec. 2004, Strmecki had been appointed Rumsfeld’s “Afghanistan Policy Co-ordinator.” That same month, Karzai removed his Minister of Defence, the Northern Alliance’s Mohammed Fahim, a Tajik. Faim’s replacement: Rahim Wardak.

Meanwhile, Khalilzad assembled a team of Afghan-American consultants, technocrats and publicists within the bunker-like precincts of the US Embassy, some on salaries of $200,000 or more. This group had direct links with Washington, where they enjoyed an additional back-channel fixer and communicator, the Karzai regime’s Afghan-American Ambassador, Said Jawad. Within Khalilzad’s makeshift provisional authority in Kabul, he championed a creation called the Afghanistan Reconstruction Group. ARG achieved two cherished goals for the administration: putting a select group of loyal American and Afghan-American business hawks in charge of U.S.-funded development projects; and doing so while completely by-passing the State Department. In the minds of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Khalilzad, State was a haven of resistance to the neo-conservative cause.

ARG reported directly to the Department of Defense, specifically to Rumsfeld’s office. State Department officials bristled at being cut out of decision-making on ARG’s high-cost projects, but could do little other than watch this feverish new phase of the gold rush in Afghan aid. Marin Strmecki joined ARG’s board, while Louis Hughes, a former president of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, took the helm. According to officials close to Karzai’s office, Khalilzad pressed USAID, the government’s main overseas aid agency, to grant contracts to the administration’s approved list of Afghan-Americans. Several USAID officers who resisted Khalilzad were replaced.

The ARG brain trust proudly boasted its intent to: “apply its private-sector experience and expertise” in rebuilding Afghanistan, “given current US advocacy of market economy, citizen self-determination, and democracy…”

In practice, the group was more about self-service than self-determination, according to one former USAID official, who requested transfer from Kabul after several bruising encounters with Khalilzad and his ARG clients. “We had all these people shuttling in from D.C., lecturing everyone about their Afghan-American credentials. They used all the buzz words – democracy, helping the Afghan people. But it was more about them monopolizing the flow of information from Kabul to Washington, and landing contracts.”

According to another US official who fought in vain to prevent the shift: “The justification was streamlining, because so many construction projects were for the Afghan military, and they were ultimately the Pentagon’s babies. But there was an immediate loss of transparency and accountability. That’s just how the Department of Defense does business.”

During this period, Hamed Wardak’s Washington DC-based firm, Technologists Inc. (Ti), benefited from several large contracts, some arranged directly with the US Defense Department, others via the Afghan Ministry of Defence. Ti’s website boasts that it was the first Afghan-American firm to be awarded a prime contract by the US government. Its portfolio has been fattened by a cornucopia of construction projects, including border crossing stations and the ANA’s Logistics and Command Headquarters, a counter-narcotics “campus” where the US Drug Enforcement Agency and its Afghan counterparts will be based, cell block renovations to Kabul’s huge Pul-i-Charkhi prison, and three industrial parks.

Ti’s president, Aziz Azimi, allows that the projects have brought at least $100 million in contracts to his firm. He admits to meeting Khalilzad twice in Kabul, but says that his projects were not obtained through ARG. As for Hamed Wardak, he left the company in 2006. Currently, Azizi says, “I don’t have any kind of dealings with him.” Regarding past deals: “I have not gained any of my contracts from Mr. Wardak’s father, because he was not the minister when I got there (Afghanistan).

“You’re welcome to take any company out there, and put their numbers against mine,” Azimi says. “In terms of value and return, I have a very clear conscience. I welcome anyone to come in and look at my books. I have nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of.”

Hamed Wardak could not be located for his response to this story.
Azimi says he does not know the whereabouts of his former “Managing Director of International Operations,” and Wardak’s name has been removed from Ti’s website. Wardak reportedly has set up his own company, NCL, in Kabul, along with a foundation called “Sacrificers For Peace,” described as a “multi-ethnic movement” seeking “governmental reform.”

The name prompts a wry smile from the source in President Karzai’s office. “The Afghan people know who has made genuine sacrifices – their own families, their villages, their country. Afghans know the meaning of the word sacrifice. And they know too well about those who only pretend to be concerned, while getting rich on foreign aid.”


* * *
As Afghanistan slumps towards the 30th anniversary of the Communist coup that triggered the war, Rahim Wardak, a relic of the early years of the conflict, hangs on as Minister of Defence. He does so despite clashes with both Karzai and US Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the former commander of American and coalition forces. Gen. Eikenberry, according to an official who witnessed one of his confrontations with Wardak in Karzai’s presence, lost patience with the Defence minister’s failure to meet recruiting targets.

“Wardak’s connections saved him,” the source says. “In the end, it came down to a test of which man had closer ties with Rumsfeld’s office, Wardak or Eikenberry. Rahim Wardak won out, because of his connections through Khalilzad.”

As for Khalilzad, his star continues to rise. From his office at the UN, he’s well positioned to become Secretary of State, should Republicans win the 2008 election. Khalilzad has never stopped pulling strings in Kabul. When his move to Baghdad in 2005 enabled his successor as Afghan ambassador, Ronald Neumann, to dismantle ARG, returning contract controls to the State Department, Khalilzad retaliated. He persuaded Rumsfeld to dispatch Strmecki to conduct a “political audit” of the US Embassy in Kabul. The result stunned Karzai’s staff, who understood that Neumann had been seeking an extension to his posting. Instead, the White House announced Neumann was to be replaced by its former ambassador to Columbia, William Wood – described as “Zal-friendly” by sources in Kabul.

According to a former White House adviser on Afghanistan: “There is no doubt that Khalilzad’s approach has been very disruptive. Especially by way of his appointments strategy, he has compromised Karzai’s entire administration.”

The Karzai brothers, meantime, have flourished under the Washington-backed regime. Qayum Karzai has secured election to parliament, while Mahmood has become a leading property owner in Kandahar. There, younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai heads both the regional council and the list of suspects being investigated by Afghan journalists for links to the heroin trade. Hamid remains president, but faces mounting criticism from both legislators and laymen – and, increasingly, from his foreign sponsors.

According to Ramazan Bashar Dost: “The Afghan government is completely corrupted. The internal and external mafia should be totally removed. The authorities should be replaced by those real Afghans who believe in national benefits, human rights and democracy not only as political philosophy but as a philosophy of life.” The firebrand MP’s views are echoed by the source at Karzai’s palace. “Afghans watch all of this foreign aid money being poured into Kabul, most in control of foreign governments and private contractors. There are complaints of bribery and fraud going on, but look at all the so-called experts - all those US and UN and EU agencies. We’ve got the world’s largest alphabet-soup of accounting and transparency in Kabul, yet the system’s completely out of control.”

MP Shukria Barakzai says: “Why are contracts given to warlords? Why are the provincial reconstruction teams doing their projects under cover of local commanders? Why are they hiding the war economy, instead of cleaning it up?”

One of Karzai’s former ministers says US domination of Afghanistan’s international sponsors has widened fractures within the regime, tilting the entire process of nation building into a decline from which it may not recover. “There is friction and disenchantment on all levels,” he says. “The international community has no shared vision, much less a common strategy. The Afghan government, in turn, is drifting from its international allies, and is paralyzed by individuals and factions within, making short term tactical deals and alliances.”

Where does Stephen Harper stand on the plight of the regime and its army? Neither he nor his people will say. Foreign Affairs, the Afghan Task Force, Canada’s embassy in Kabul: all declined comment for this article. (As did Zalmay Khalilzad, Marin Stmecki, and Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington.)

Canadians are left to sort out wildly conflicting claims. First, Harper’s statement, during a Quebec swing in August, that Afghanistan’s security forces are becoming more and more responsible for their country’s security. Next, Karzai in Kabul, telling embedded reporters airlifted in from Kandahar that “Afghanistan will fall back into anarchy” if Canadian troops are pulled from their combat role before the country can stand on its own, which he made clear would not be by February 2009. Far from clearing up the confusion that has afflicted the Afghan mission, the Harper government is blowing more smoke – and hiding behind the fog of war.

Arthur Kent’s film reports and articles are available online at www.skyreporter.com.
He has reported regularly from Afghanistan since 1980 for networks including the CBC, NBC News, BBC News, PBS and The History Channel, as well as for the Calgary Herald, Britain’s The Observer and Canada’s Maclean’s magazine. This is his second article for Policy Options, in our Mission Afghanistan series."

Tuesday, August 26, 2008



Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933

Whitney Museum of American Art
on view October 16, 2008 - February 15, 2009
Sponsor: CIT - Capital Redifined®

"Alexander Calder is one of the most beloved, important, and critically acclaimed -artists of the twentieth century. A highly focused historical show with the spirit of a young artist’s first retrospective, Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933 explores a time when, from the ages of 27 to 34, Calder created his first wire drawings in space, performed his Circus (made in Paris 1926–31 and part of the Whitney’s permanent collection), and invented his signature mobiles."
- Whitney Museum of American Art Website

"Our Corporate Finance team is a global leader in developing integrated financial solutions to meet the unique needs of the aerospace, defense, and homeland security value chains. And our Financial Institutions Group provides comprehensive commercial aircraft and aircraft engine financing, leasing, remarketing and advisory solutions specific to financial institutions around the world."
- CIT Website

Saturday, March 8, 2008



Prints by Robert Rauschenberg from the National Gallery of Art and Related Collection

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
October 28, 2007 - March 30, 2008
Sponsor: This exhibition is made possible by Lockheed Martin Corporation.

About Lockheed Martin

The world's #1 military contractor, responsible for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes, F-16, F/A-22 fighter jet, and Javelin missiles. They've also made millions through insider trading, falsifying accounts, and bribing officials.

CEO: Robert J. Stevens
Military contracts 2005: $19.4 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $2,212,836*

This Bethesda, Maryland-based company is the world's #1 military contractor as well as the world’s largest arms exporter. Lockheed Martin built the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Today they make F-16, F/A-22 jet fighter, Hellfire and Javelin missiles, as well as designing nuclear weapons. Its F-117 stealth attack fighters were used to “shock and awe” the population of Iraq at the start of the US invasion, while since the start of that war the Air Force has increased production of Lockheed’s PAC-3 Patriot missile – which cost $91 million per copy.

According to the Arms Trade Resource Center, Lockheed Martin gets $105 from each U.S. taxpayer and $228 from each U.S. household. In 2002 the company was effectively taxed at 7.7% compared to an average tax rate for individuals of 21-33%.

In late 2001 the company was awarded the world's largest weapons contract ever, a $200 billion deal to build the Joint Strike Fighter, a "next-generation" combat jet that eventually will replace aircraft used by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. In the last few years the SEC has investigated Lockheed for insider trading and falsifying their accounts.

Lockheed Martin did not win the contract on force of personality alone, or fighter plane design. During the calendar year 2000, Lockheed Martin spent more than $9.8 million lobbying members of Congress and the Clinton administration, more than double the $4.2 million the company spent during 1999. Among the company's newest lobbyists: Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. During the 1999-2000 election cycle, Lockheed Martin contributed just over $2.7 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal candidates and parties. More than two-thirds of that money went to Republicans. Lockheed Martin spends more on lobbying Congress than any of its competitors, spending a whopping $9.7 million in 2002. Only General Electric and Philip Morris reported more lobbying expenses. And in the 2004 election cycle, Lockheed contributed more than $1.9 million.

Lockheed has also been able to exercise its influence in a larger way – in support of the invasion of Iraq. The company’s former vice-president Bruce Jackson chaired the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, a bipartisan group formed to promote Bush’s plan for war in Iraq. Bruce Jackson was also involved in corralling the support for the war from Eastern European countries, going so far as helping to write their letter of endorsement for military intervention. Not surprisingly, Lockheed also has business relations with these countries. In 2003 Poland shelled out $3.5 billion for 48 F-16 fighter planes, which it was able to buy with a $3.8 billion loan from the US.

In 1976 Lockheed paid millions of dollars to Japanese government officials to smooth the way for the sale of Lockheed's airplanes to a Japanese airline corporation, All Nippon Airways. They paid Japanese gangster and yakuza chief Kodama Yoshio $2.1 million in payoffs to help them sell their new wide-bodied passenger airplane, the TriStar L1011, against stiff competition from Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. Kodama relied on familiar yakuza techniques to force the resignation of Tetsuo Oba, president of All Nippon Airways. At a stockholders' meeting, Kodama packed the room with "sokaiya" -- financial specialists -- who leaked information about an illegal $1 million loan which had been paid to Oba. In disgrace, ANA's president stepped down to be replaced by a candidate favorable to Kodama's interests.

The former prime minister, the former minister of transportation, and the former parliamentary vice-minister of transportation were arrested and prosecuted. The former prime minister was sentenced to four years imprisonment with forced labor but he died while the case was in the Supreme Court.

Sources
Center for Responsive Politics
Corpwatch.org

Wednesday, February 27, 2008



UTC, The Met and Jasper Johns: Gray
February 5, 2008–May 4, 2008
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor
This exhibition is made possible in New York by United Technologies Corp.

UTC helped unveil a new exhibition it is sponsoring at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. UTC made possible the exhibition, Jasper Johns: Gray, which examines the acclaimed American artist's use of the color gray in more than 120 of his painting, drawings, prints and sculptures. The exhibition runs through May 4 and is the first of its kind to focus on the artist's use of the color gray. Prior to coming to the Metropolitan, Jasper Johns: Gray was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://utc.com/press/highlights/2008-02-07_metropolitan.htm

About United Technologies

The name sounds like they make light bulbs, but UT, a.k.a. Sikorsky, sells Black Hawk and Comanche helicopters and various missile systems designed to inspire terror in civilians from Palestine to Colombia to Somalia and beyond.

CEO: George David
Military contracts 2005: $5.0 billion
Defense-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $558,850*

United Technologies may be a Fortune 500 company, but it’s not a household name – and most people don’t realize that the maker of Otis elevators and Carrier air conditioners and heaters is a major military contractor. The Hartford, Connecticut-based company makes military helicopters, engines and missile systems. Its subsidiary Hamilton Sundstrand creates flight systems for both commercial and military aircrafts, while UT subsidiary Pratt & Whitney designs and manufactures engines, gas turbines and space propulsion system for military aircrafts. In 2003, United Technologies also acquired the British electronic security company Chubb Ltd.

UT’s helicopter division Sikorsky manufactures the enormously expensive and deadly Comanche and Black Hawk helicopters – the latter made famous from the US debacle in Somalia. In February 2004, Sikorsky got a surprise when the US army canceled its RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program, a joint partnership between the company and Boeing, valued at $14.6 billion. The Army had invested $6.9 billion into the Comanche helicopter project over 21 years and, had it continued, it would have cost more than $39 billion. However, Sikorsky won’t do too badly at the end of the day: the Pentagon is proposing to take the money allocated for the Comanches and use it to buy 796 Black Hawk and other helicopters, as well as upgrading the helicopters that the Army currently owns.

Sikorsky supplies weaponry to conflicts all over the world, not limited to the “war on terror” and occupation of Iraq. The company has profited handsomely from the US-backed war in Colombia, with the help of its boosters with the government. The 2000 US military aid package to the South American company included thirty UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters, at price tag of $390 million. The Black Hawk helicopters, according to critics, cost six times as much as Sikorsky competitor, Textron’s Huey II.

UT’s shareholders have recently called for the disclosure of the salaries received by company executives, the application of ethics in UT’s military sales, an independent board, and greater transparency in the company’s accounting practices. However, they shouldn’t expect change any time soon; CEO and Chairman George David, who received $70 million in 2003 in salary and stock options, told The Guardian of London, “I'll say something on public accounting: it is an art, not a science.”

United Technologies, from its origins in 1925 as Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, has consistently relied on the beneficence of those in power. Like other military contractors, UT has accrued private profits at public expense; so much so during WW2 that then-United Technologies president Eugene Wilson described the company’s fortunes as “unconscionable profits”. But lapses of guilt didn’t put an end to UT’s takings and the US government’s largesse and assistance. William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense under the Clinton Administration, pushed to allow United Technologies’ Sikorsky to sell military parts to China, in spite of the ban on defense sales following the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sikorsky had sold Black Hawk helicopters to China in 1984. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig has played a similar role in China for UT, working as an adviser for the company and helping set up a dozen joint ventures there.

In 2000 UT gave $737,470, with 48% going to the Democrats and 52% to the Republicans. Two years later the company gave $699,242 in campaign contributions. In that election cycle Republicans received substantially more, getting 62% compared to the Democrats’ 38%. In the 2004 election cycle UT gave 788,011, with 64% going to Republicans and 36% to Democrats.

Update: Feb 15, 2008 - United Technologies Corp. wins a $119.5 million contract from the Defense Logistics Agency to supply engines for the Navy and the Marines.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23190031/for/cnbc

*Source: http://www.opensecrets.org
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=14

Wednesday, February 13, 2008



The Color of Light: Red, White & Blue

Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light
February 16–May 10, 2008
Regenstein Hall and Galleries The Art Istitute of Chicago
Lead Corporate Sponsor: Harris Corp.

"Winslow Homer, who created some of the most breathtaking and influential images in the history of watercolor, was, famously, a man who received almost no formal artistic education. Acknowledged in his own day as America’s most original and independent watercolorist, he had an intuitive relationship with this challenging yet flexible medium..." Art Institute of Chicago

Read about "opportunities for your company to enhance its visibility in the community." in The Art Institute of Chicago's Corporate Partner Program brochure (PDF).

Harris Corporation - Fair and Balanced
Harris Corp., the giant government information technology and defense contractor caused a stir when In January 2004, the Melbourne Florida USA-based company took charge of the Iraqi Media Network, after being given a $96 million U.S. government contract to equip, rebuild, operate, program and manage the war-torn country's fledgling media network. The contract includes an upgrade to Saddam Hussein's old radio and TV networks, now called al-Iraqiya, and the national newspaper, previously headed by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday.

At the time, Haider Abadi, the Iraqi communications minister, said,"We very much welcome the help of others to reshape our media, but to relinquish our responsibilities and to give control to foreign media is politically and socially wrong," Abadi said, as quoted by the Financial Times.

Links
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11746
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB219/index.htm
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/1/14/u_s_journalist_quits_pentagon_iraqi
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=87

Saturday, December 1, 2007



United Technologies & the Culture Industry: Company Highlights

2007 - UTC presents sound installation, The Smallest of Wings, in London's Broadgate Arena
UTC commissions Stephen Vitiello to create a sound art installation in London’s Broadgate Arena from June 4 – 8, 2007. This is the third installment of UTC’s ongoing Public Art Project, launched in 2005 to celebrate the corporation’s 25 years of arts support. Read more...

2006 - Photography explores changing cities in UTC public arts project
UTC Commissions acclaimed artists Chuck Close, Mitch Epstein and Dayanita Singh to capture the changing urban environment in outdoor photography exhibitions titled Cities in Transition in New York City, Boston and Hartford through October. Installation sites are Madison Square Park in New York City, Downtown Crossing “T” Station in Boston and Bushnell Park in Hartford. Read More...

2005 - UTC-Commissions artists in billboard project
UTC commissions paintings from artists Alex Katz, Gary Hume and Lisa Sanditz, to be made into billboards, in New York City. Read more...

2005 - UTC-sponsored van Gogh show now at Metropolitan Museum
The first major exhibition in the United States to focus on Vincent van Gogh's drawings is exhibited at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, sponsored by UTC. The show attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. The sponsorship is a highlight of the UTC's celebration of its 25 years of arts support, which has involved $55 million in funding and the sponsorship of 54 visual arts exhibitions on four continents. Read more...

2005 - UTC wins Business in the Arts honor
For the second straight year, UTC is honored by the Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) and Forbes magazine for its exceptional support of the arts. Read more...

2004 - UTC honored with Business in the Arts Award
UTC is among six companies and one business leader to receive 2004 Business in the Arts Awards from the Business Committee for the Arts and Forbes magazine. Read more...

2003 - UTC sponsors British-French painting exhibit at Met Museum
UTC sponsors an exhibit of 19th century French and English artworks, "Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism," at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition features over 100 paintings and 50 works on paper by artists such as Constable, Turner, Bonington, Delacroix and Géricault. This is the sixth exhibit UTC has funded in its 20-year history of collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum. Read more...

2003 - UTC sponsors Marsden Hartley
UTC Sponsors the first retrospective show in more than 20 years of the works of American painter Marsden Hartley. Organized by and presented at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in downtown Hartford, CT. The show then travels to the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Read more...

2002 - Otis funds restoration of painting; original close to home
UTC's Otis unit funds the restoration of a valuable painting that hangs in a French village church near Otis' factory in Gien. Read more...

2002 - UTC Chairman and CEO Recognized for Leadership in the Arts
United Technologies Chairman and CEO George David win the Connecticut Opera’s Medici Award for Leadership in the Arts. This is only the second time the award -- named after one of France’s greatest patrons of the arts -- has been given by the Connecticut Opera. Read more...

2001 - UTC receives a "Bravo" for its opera support
United Technologies Corp. receives a 2001 Bravo Award for outstanding support to the opera community. The award is presented by OPERA America. Read more...

2000 - Art exhibits sponsored by UTC draw record crowds
HARTFORD, Conn. -- Exhibits sponsored by United Technologies Corporation pushes attendance at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum into record-breaking territory.94,000 people visited the museum during the 12-week run of "The Impressionists at Argenteuil" exhibit and 81,000 came during the "Salvador Dali's Optical Illusions" exhibit earlier that year. United Technologies proudly sponsored both blockbuster events.

UTC also sponsors the Argenteuil exhibit's appearance at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. That show drewing 272,000 visitors. Read more...

United Technologies & the Defense Industry

The name sounds like they make light bulbs, but UT, a.k.a. Sikorsky, sells Black Hawk and Comanche helicopters and various missile systems designed to inspire terror in civilians from Palestine to Colombia to Somalia and beyond.

CEO: George David
Military contracts 2005: $5.0 billion
Defense-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $558,850*

United Technologies may be a Fortune 500 company, but it’s not a household name – and most people don’t realize that the maker of Otis elevators and Carrier air conditioners and heaters is a major military contractor. The Hartford, Connecticut-based company makes military helicopters, engines and missile systems.Its subsidiary Hamilton Sundstrand creates flight systems for both commercial and military aircrafts, while UT subsidiary Pratt & Whitney designs and manufactures engines, gas turbines and space propulsion system for military aircrafts. In 2003, United Technologies also acquired the British electronic security company Chubb Ltd.

UT’s helicopter division Sikorsky manufactures the enormously expensive and deadly Comanche and Black Hawk helicopters – the latter made famous from the US debacle in Somalia. In February 2004, Sikorsky got a surprise when the US army canceled its RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program, a joint partnership between the company and Boeing, valued at $14.6 billion. The Army had invested $6.9 billion into the Comanche helicopter project over 21 years and, had it continued, it would have cost more than $39 billion. However, Sikorsky won’t do too badly at the end of the day: the Pentagon is proposing to take the money allocated for the Comanches and use it to buy 796 Black Hawk and other helicopters, as well as upgrading the helicopters that the Army currently owns.

Sikorsky supplies weaponry to conflicts all over the world, not limited to the “war on terror” and occupation of Iraq. The company has profited handsomely from the US-backed war in Colombia, with the help of its boosters with the government. The 2000 US military aid package to the South American company included thirty UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters, at price tag of $390 million. The Black Hawk helicopters, according to critics, cost six times as much as Sikorsky competitor, Textron’s Huey II.

UT’s shareholders have recently called for the disclosure of the salaries received by company executives, the application of ethics in UT’s military sales, an independent board, and greater transparency in the company’s accounting practices. However, they shouldn’t expect change any time soon; CEO and Chairman George David, who received $70 million in 2003 in salary and stock options, told The Guardian of London, “I'll say something on public accounting: it is an art, not a science.”

United Technologies, from its origins in 1925 as Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, has consistently relied on the beneficence of those in power. Like other military contractors, UT has accrued private profits at public expense; so much so during WW2 that then-United Technologies president Eugene Wilson described the company’s fortunes as “unconscionable profits”. But lapses of guilt didn’t put an end to UT’s takings and the US government’s largesse and assistance. William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense under the Clinton Administration, pushed to allow United Technologies’ Sikorsky to sell military parts to China, in spite of the ban on defense sales following the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sikorsky had sold Black Hawk helicopters to China in 1984. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig has played a similar role in China for UT, working as an adviser for the company and helping set up a dozen joint ventures there.

In 2000 UT gave $737,470, with 48% going to the Democrats and 52% to the Republicans. Two years later the company gave $699,242 in campaign contributions. In that election cycle Republicans received substantially more, getting 62% compared to the Democrats’ 38%. In the 2004 election cycle UT gave 788,011, with 64% going to Rebublicans and 36% to Democrats. Read more...


http://www.opensecrets.org

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=14

Sunday, November 11, 2007



Boeing & the Culture Industry

The Boeing Company's relationship with Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) dates back at least to 2003 when Boeing helped sponsor major exhbitions of both Gerhard Richter and Andreas Gursky at the AIC and MCA (Boeing actually helping to facilitate the first significant cooperation between the two art institutions with these shows). ...More recently, Jeff Wall's retrospective exhibition at the AIC (June - September 2007) was sponsored, in part, by the Boeing Company.

http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/wall
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/q2/nr_020620a.html

Boeing & the Defense Industry

Aside from 747s, Boeing makes "smart" bombs, F-15 fighters, and Apache helicopters. Boeing has paid tens of millions in fines for selling flawed parts that led to thousands of unnecessary landings and at least one fatal crash and has been plagued by scandals connected to the company’s influence-peddling.

CEO: Jim McNerney
Military contracts 2005: $18.3 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $1,659,213*

America’s largest exporter, Boeing is also the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, eclipsed only by Lockheed Martin. Revenue from military goods now outstrips Boeing’s earnings from commercial sales by $5 billion a year.

The world's largest aerospace company has a role in all three of the Pentagon’s advanced fighter plane programs: the F-22 Raptor, the Joint Strike Fighter/F-35, and the F-18 and it makes both F-15 fighter and Apache helicopters. Caught knowingly selling flawed parts for the Apache that led to thousands of unnecessary landings and at least one fatal crash, Boeing has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines. Boeing also oversees many of the Pentagon’s missile defense programs, operates the Space Shuttle, makes the guidance systems for the Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles and builds precision munitions such as the Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER), Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM), Brimstone and Harpoon missiles, and JDAM "smart" bombs. Boeing’s JDAM (joint direct attack munitions) kit fits over a "dumb" missile and coverts it into a satellite-guided weapon using movable fins and a satellite positioning system to make a “smart” bomb. But there’s a downside: the precision JDAMs have repeatedly missed their targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, hitting both civilians and US soldiers.

The lobbying efforts of Boeing, and the revolving door between the US government and the Chicago-based giant, are legendary. But Boeing’s influence-peddling finally turned sour in December 2003 when Boeing CEO Philip M. Condit was forced to resign in the wake of revelations of that the company negotiated the hiring of top Air Force procurement official Darlene Druyun while Druyun was setting up a lucrative $27.6 billion leasing deal of Boeing’s 767 air-refueling aircrafts over a period of ten years. The deal, which went through despite controversy, will cost taxpayers up to $10 billion dollars more than if the Air Force has purchased the aircrafts outright.

But Boeing still has a lot of well-connected people looking out for its interests. John Shalikashvili, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the Boeing board. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Rudy de Leon heads up Boeing's Washington office. After September 11th Boeing beefed up its political connections by hiring former Senator Bennett Johnson (D-LA) and former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY). Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Boeing's senior vice president for international relations, uses his forty years of experience to generate business for Boeing with foreign governments and corporations. Richard Perle, former Chairman and current member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, is another important Boeing ally within the corridors of power. So it should come as no surprise that Boeing has provided Perle’s venturehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif capital firm, Trireme Partners, with $20 million. Two other Defense Policy Board members also work as consultants for Boeing: the Air Force’s General Ronald Fogelman and former Navy Admiral David Jeremiah.

Boeing ranks number sixty six in the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of the 100 biggest political donors since 1989. Over the nineties, Boeing handed out $7.6 million in Phttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifolitical Action Committee (PAC) and soft money contributions. During the 2002 election year, Boeing gave $909,134 in PAC contributions and $700,482 in soft money donations and its contributions added up to more than $1.5 million during the 2000 elections. Read more...

http://www.opensecrets.org/
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=10

Sunday, October 28, 2007



Boeing & the Culture Industry

On September 12, 2006, the much-anticipated literary anthology Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, was published by Random House. Since then, the project has spawned a documentary film and national book tour, among other events. Read more...

Poetry and the Pentagon: Unholy Alliance?
By Eleanor Wilner Poetry Magazine, October, 2004

On April 20 of this year Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, in tandem with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, announced Operation Homecoming: Writing the War Experience. The program is described as 'an NEA project to help soldiers write about their experiences in war,' and it plans to bring writers to military bases to conduct workshops for soldiers returning from combat. It will also publish an anthology which, according to their website, will be 'open to active US military personnel and their immediate families' and will be a 'nationally promoted anthology of wartime writing that will be sold in bookstores and will be distributed free by the Arts Endowment to military installations, schools, and libraries.'

The project is being carried out in cooperation with the Armed Forces and Defense Department and the Southern Arts Federation, and has been funded ($250,000 of its $300,000 cost) by the Boeing Company, one of the US's leading defense contractors, and therefore a major recipient of our tax dollars and a corporation that profits from war.

A handsome red, white, and blue booklet-whose cover bears a moving photo of a helmet holding flag-stamped letters to a GI-contains the photos, bios, and book covers of thirteen well-published authors of fiction and poetry (some veterans of earlier wars, some from military families, many whose writing is principally about war) who will lead the workshops, and another smaller group of well-known writers who read excerpts from war-related texts or tips on writing on a promotional CD.

What we have here is a program that seems designed to be proof against all criticism, as if to raise any questions about it is to seem to target those deserving 2 soldiers and the writers who have signed on. But what if we look behind these unassailable shields? Are these returning troops once again being used as a shield against the scrutiny of the very policy which put them in harm's way in the first place? Will Operation Homecoming serve them? Will it serve poetry? Or is it designed to serve quite another purpose? 'The Defense Department,' said the Washington Post (April 20, 2004), 'believes the writing will reflect positively on military life. I don't have any concerns,' says Principle Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Charles S. Abell. We tend to remember those things which are good."

As a thirty-year veteran of the teaching of poetry, and an observer of the current chasm between public rhetoric and the language of experience, as well as the growing carnage, I read all this with incredulity and dismay. The sponsors, the context, the timing-how could it be more wrong? A military base? Soldiers still on active duty and under orders? Just returned from the violence and trauma of combat? Asked to write about those still raw experiences? Was this a context or a circumstance in which deep disclosure, or even reportage, could-or should-be invited? Are these writers qualified to pry open the doors to what may be scenes of inner desolation?

Bruce Weigl, a Bronze Star veteran of the Vietnam war, author of seven books of poetry, and former director of the MFA Program at Penn State, shares these concerns:

To expect young men and women who are just returned from a combat mission where they have seen and done and had done to them unspeakable things is to ask far too much of them. . . . As returning veterans, they are far too close to the war to trust their own immediate responses; they all need to come to terms with what they've been through and what they've seen, and then they'll be ready to tell the stories that no one wants to hear.


What is it like for a returning veteran to write under the aegis of the military, where language necessarily serves a far different purpose than it does for the poet? Jan Barry, also a poet and decorated Vietnam veteran, tells of his experience:

In 1964 I was appointed to West Point from the ranks after serving ten months in Vietnam. I was invited by upperclassmen at the military academy to write about my experiences for a student publication. I found it impossible to do. The whole mood at West Point was akin to a football team preparing for a big game against a rival team. I was stumped as to how to write, in that atmosphere, a serious reflection on life in a war zone of our own making. To find the space I needed to write more critically, I resigned from West Point and an intended military career. When I submitted my resignation, a kindly colonel called me into his office and told me a story about his brother, who had also wanted to be a writer and grew up in a military family. His father, a general, ordered the brother to stay in the military and write. 'You can stay in the Army and write official histories,' the colonel said enthusiastically. He could not conceive of the critical perspective I had acquired in Vietnam, in which official statements were often wildly unrelated to the facts in the field.


I have pulled from my shelf a slim volume of poems edited by Jan Barry, Larry Rottmann, and Basil T. Parquet in 1972, which was for me a touchstone in those war years, a way inside Vietnam's reality, as it was for many: Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. It was a grassroots veterans volume, put together on Barry's kitchen table, dedicated to the children of Indochina, and published by 1st Casualty Press, named from the famous quote by Aeschylus in the fifth century b.c.: 'In war, truth is the first casualty.'

'[O]ne wonders at the shape of this generation's returning war narratives,' says Kevin Bowen, also a poet and Vietnam veteran, and Director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, which has offered writing workshops to veterans since 1987. 'Will this war have its own Winning Hearts and Minds? Perhaps not, if Washington has its say.' In his protest against Operation Homecoming (which, by the way, borrows its name from the repatriation of American POWs at the end of the Vietnam war), he writes in the veterans online magazine Intervention: 'Beyond the language of self-help and therapeutic' aspects of writing, beyond the back- patting, it is not difficult to see in the project an effort to establish an official canon of writing from the century's first wars, neatly packaged, ready for mass distribution and classroom use.'

What's the rush here? Why doesn't the NEA help send discharged veterans to colleges and bona fide writing programs, investing public arts money to support their writing in educational settings, where, as Bowen says, 'it will be fostered over time and not immediately co- opted.' And give them the chance to develop some historical insight, and to contextualize experience in more than the blinding exigencies of the moment?

Indeed, this project appears to be an attempt to preempt the immediate (and even archival) record of this war by its combatants. It is well to remember here that the NEA is an arm of the government, its chairman and board political appointments by the administration. In the Guardian (April 20, 2004), Dana Gioia was quoted as saying: 'I have noticed a lot of similarities between the military world and the literary world. Both are highly specialized and highly professionalized. And when that happens, you tend not to see a lot outside your immediate world.' Perhaps Gioia was counting on this, thinking that other poets, less canny than he, and lost in a doze at the shuttered windows of their ivory towers, wouldn't notice the political ramifications of this project. And though he mentions in his eerily cheerful introduction every great epic of war from the 5 Iliad to War and Peace (works written long after the events), we might question whether it is literature that can be produced or even encouraged under such circumstances.

In that same glossy, glamorous booklet, each writer's page features a brief, enlarged, bold-face quotation from one of his or her books. It doesn't matter what the name of the author is since the following quote is lifted out of context and therefore from the frame of its meaning in the original narrative, and so can only be construed in its effect as a sound-bite in the context of Operation Homecoming. Here is the very first quotation:

He left a pause. He might have been considering telling her everything about himself. Then he said, 'Like most military people, I hate war. But there are tigers in the world, you know.'


The effect and purpose of these words in this context goes without saying. What does require pause is those tigers. When promoting a war, which means authorizing the killing of other human beings, it is necessary to use a language which robs them of their humanity. There are several ways this is done. One is by seeing them as members of another species-something bestial, primitive, predatory. Perhaps that is why most animals do not murder their own kind: they are not subject to this confusion. Another way, which is characteristic of military language, is to denature the enemy by the use of a detached, Latinate, and bloodless language, so that one 'neutralizes' opposing forces, or the burning, mutilation, and killing of civilians is masked as 'collateral damage.'

At the same time that the enemy's reality is demonized or neutralized (or both), the actions of one's own side, in military parlance, are redescribed in terms which reverse meaning, disowning the real harm that is being done: the US missions involving massive dropping of incendiary bombs over North Vietnam were called 'Sherwood Forest' and 'Pink Rose.' Poetry, which is above all 'learning to call things by the right name,' has, therefore, goals incommensurate with the use of language by the military in the conduct of war.

'I just want to remember / the dead piled high behind the curtain,' writes the contemporary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. It is the poet's task, I too believe, to make us feel the full weight of the bodies hidden behind the rhetoric and the falsifying parlance, to embody truth, to remember the dismembered human form. 'For my enemy is dead,' wrote Walt Whitman, 'a man as divine as myself is dead.' 'It is difficult,' William Carlos Williams famously wrote, 'to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.' And I am taking that miserable dying just now as a literal and collective fact.

Once again we are at war; in the words of Yeats, 'the nightmare / Rides upon sleep.' We stand at what has been called by Lionel Trilling 'the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet,' not by choice-but by circumstance. As poets, we do not choose our subjects; the imagination is a force which can be invited, but it cannot be commanded. In fact, in those moments when we are poets (and we live many more when we are not), we must live, like Cicero in a poem by Gibbons Ruark, 'in that singular province that was never Caesar's.'

Returning at last to the first great war epic of the Western tradition, the Iliad, I remind us all that it is written from both sides, that the eye of the poet moves back and forth between the Greek camp and the city of Troy. There is no enemy: simply the ambition of Agamemnon, the lust of Paris, the wrath of Achilles, the laughter of the gods, the tragedy of war in which are 'hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls / of heroes.' The city of Troy is put to the torch, its women and children enslaved, and the epic ends, as all wars end, with a funeral pyre and a handful of bones. It should be clear from what has been said that it is not the conjunction of poetry and soldiers which is problematic. On the contrary, sustained exposure to poetry might serve as one antidote to the violence and divisive language of war, and become the lifeline it has been for a number of Vietnam combat veterans who survived the postwar years, and whose words helped others to do the same. This project sadly mars this year's generous NEA literature grants, essential to so many small presses and writer's support groups. For this particular project arouses suspicion about its ultimate purpose-doubts fed by its feel-good rhetoric, its slick packaging, its inimical setting, its timing, its cozy insularity, the vested interests of its sponsors: the Pentagon and Boeing, and its disingenuous disclaimers that none of this will affect the selection of materials for the anthology which the NEA plans to widely disseminate.

'Most alarming to many of us,' writes Kevin Bowen, 'Operation Homecoming threatens to move the NEA into the business of supporting the generation of propaganda, a wartime exercise that is not part of its mission, and does writers, veterans, and the public a great disservice.' To which I say Amen.

ELEANOR WILNER (c) 2004 by The Poetry Foundationx

Boeing & the Defense Industry

Aside from 747s, Boeing makes "smart" bombs, F-15 fighters, and Apache helicopters. Boeing has paid tens of millions in fines for selling flawed parts that led to thousands of unnecessary landings and at least one fatal crash and has been plagued by scandals connected to the company’s influence-peddling.

CEO: Jim McNerney
Military contracts 2005: $18.3 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $1,659,213*


America’s largest exporter, Boeing is also the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, eclipsed only by Lockheed Martin. Revenue from military goods now outstrips Boeing’s earnings from commercial sales by $5 billion a year.

The world's largest aerospace company has a role in all three of the Pentagon’s advanced fighter plane programs: the F-22 Raptor, the Joint Strike Fighter/F-35, and the F-18 and it makes both F-15 fighter and Apache helicopters. Caught knowingly selling flawed parts for the Apache that led to thousands of unnecessary landings and at least one fatal crash, Boeing has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines. Boeing also oversees many of the Pentagon’s missile defense programs, operates the Space Shuttle, makes the guidance systems for the Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles and builds precision munitions such as the Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER), Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM), Brimstone and Harpoon missiles, and JDAM "smart" bombs. Boeing’s JDAM (joint direct attack munitions) kit fits over a "dumb" missile and coverts it into a satellite-guided weapon using movable fins and a satellite positioning system to make a “smart” bomb. But there’s a downside: the precision JDAMs have repeatedly missed their targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, hitting both civilians and US soldiers.

The lobbying efforts of Boeing, and the revolving door between the US government and the Chicago-based giant, are legendary. But Boeing’s influence-peddling finally turned sour in December 2003 when Boeing CEO Philip M. Condit was forced to resign in the wake of revelations of that the company negotiated the hiring of top Air Force procurement official Darlene Druyun while Druyun was setting up a lucrative $27.6 billion leasing deal of Boeing’s 767 air-refueling aircrafts over a period of ten years. The deal, which went through despite controversy, will cost taxpayers up to $10 billion dollars more than if the Air Force has purchased the aircrafts outright.

But Boeing still has a lot of well-connected people looking out for its interests. John Shalikashvili, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the Boeing board. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Rudy de Leon heads up Boeing's Washington office. After September 11th Boeing beefed up its political connections by hiring former Senator Bennett Johnson (D-LA) and former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY). Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Boeing's senior vice president for international relations, uses his forty years of experience to generate business for Boeing with foreign governments and corporations. Richard Perle, former Chairman and current member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, is another important Boeing ally within the corridors of power. So it should come as no surprise that Boeing has provided Perle’s venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, with $20 million. Two other Defense Policy Board members also work as consultants for Boeing: the Air Force’s General Ronald Fogelman and former Navy Admiral David Jeremiah.

Boeing ranks number sixty six in the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of the 100 biggest political donors since 1989. Over the nineties, Boeing handed out $7.6 million in Political Action Committee (PAC) and soft money contributions. During the 2002 election year, Boeing gave $909,134 in PAC contributions and $700,482 in soft money donations and its contributions added up to more than $1.5 million during the 2000 elections. Read more...

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=10
http://slate.com/id/2108158/
http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q4/061205b_nr.html
http://www.nea.gov/news/news04/OHAnnounce.html
http://www.arts.gov/national/homecoming/index.html

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Friday, October 19, 2007



Lockheed Martin recently pledged $250,000 toward the future Community Performing Arts Center that will be built on George Mason University’s Prince William County campus in Manassas, VA.

Under the terms of their pledge, Lockheed Martin will provide the university $250,000 in permanent endowment funds to support the Center over five years. Construction of the Center began this summer with an anticipated opening in the fall of 2009.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lockheed Martin as a founding partner of the Community Performing Arts Center,” said Bill Reeder, Dean, George Mason University College of Visual and Performing Arts. “Lockheed Martin’s leadership gift will make it possible for the Center to design exciting and innovative programs for schools and families to explore the connections between the arts and science."

About Lockheed Martin

The world's #1 military contractor, responsible for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes, F-16, F/A-22 fighter jet, and Javelin missiles. They've also made millions through insider trading, falsifying accounts, and bribing officials.

CEO: Robert J. Stevens
Military contracts 2005: $19.4 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $2,212,836*

This Bethesda, Maryland-based company is the world's #1 military contractor as well as the world’s largest arms exporter. Lockheed Martin built the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Today they make F-16, F/A-22 jet fighter, Hellfire and Javelin missiles, as well as designing nuclear weapons. Its F-117 stealth attack fighters were used to “shock and awe” the population of Iraq at the start of the US invasion, while since the start of that war the Air Force has increased production of Lockheed’s PAC-3 Patriot missile – which cost $91 million per copy.

According to the Arms Trade Resource Center, Lockheed Martin gets $105 from each U.S. taxpayer and $228 from each U.S. household. In 2002 the company was effectively taxed at 7.7% compared to an average tax rate for individuals of 21-33%.

In late 2001 the company was awarded the world's largest weapons contract ever, a $200 billion deal to build the Joint Strike Fighter, a "next-generation" combat jet that eventually will replace aircraft used by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. In the last few years the SEC has investigated Lockheed for insider trading and falsifying their accounts.

Lockheed Martin did not win the contract on force of personality alone, or fighter plane design. During the calendar year 2000, Lockheed Martin spent more than $9.8 million lobbying members of Congress and the Clinton administration, more than double the $4.2 million the company spent during 1999. Among the company's newest lobbyists: Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. During the 1999-2000 election cycle, Lockheed Martin contributed just over $2.7 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal candidates and parties. More than two-thirds of that money went to Republicans. Lockheed Martin spends more on lobbying Congress than any of its competitors, spending a whopping $9.7 million in 2002. Only General Electric and Philip Morris reported more lobbying expenses. And in the 2004 election cycle, Lockheed contributed more than $1.9 million.

Lockheed has also been able to exercise its influence in a larger way – in support of the invasion of Iraq. The company’s former vice-president Bruce Jackson chaired the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, a bipartisan group formed to promote Bush’s plan for war in Iraq. Bruce Jackson was also involved in corralling the support for the war from Eastern European countries, going so far as helping to write their letter of endorsement for military intervention. Not surprisingly, Lockheed also has business relations with these countries. In 2003 Poland shelled out $3.5 billion for 48 F-16 fighter planes, which it was able to buy with a $3.8 billion loan from the US.

In 1976 Lockheed paid millions of dollars to Japanese government officials to smooth the way for the sale of Lockheed's airplanes to a Japanese airline corporation, All Nippon Airways. They paid Japanese gangster and yakuza chief Kodama Yoshio $2.1 million in payoffs to help them sell their new wide-bodied passenger airplane, the TriStar L1011, against stiff competition from Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. Kodama relied on familiar yakuza techniques to force the resignation of Tetsuo Oba, president of All Nippon Airways. At a stockholders' meeting, Kodama packed the room with "sokaiya" -- financial specialists -- who leaked information about an illegal $1 million loan which had been paid to Oba. In disgrace, ANA's president stepped down to be replaced by a candidate favorable to Kodama's interests.

The former prime minister, the former minister of transportation, and the former parliamentary vice-minister of transportation were arrested and prosecuted. The former prime minister was sentenced to four years imprisonment with forced labor but he died while the case was in the Supreme Court.

Sources
Center for Responsive Politics
Corpwatch.org
Lockheed Martin 2007 Press release

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