It seems as though Halliburton has been supplying US troops in Iraq with contaminated water, and have known about the problem and just kept quiet for months. Although I originally found this on Fark, the article I have linked to is, in my opinion, a more detailed account. Still, I liked Fark’s caption:
Stealing billions from US Taxpayers and doing business with Iran in direct violation of US Sanctions was obviously not enough. Halliburton is now giving polluted water to US Troops. Cheney seen mumbling “excellent.”
I wish it were possible to just put this company out of business once and for all. Bastards.
On a totally unrelated and happier note, I’ve begun watching Firefly, which really is an amazing show. It has some very subtle points in it, which obviously took a lot of thought from the creators: the ships only make noise when they’re in a planet’s atmosphere (they’re silent in space), everyone is bilingual in English and Chinese, and they slip Chinese expressions into their dialogue, etc. Not to mention that the characters are fascinating and the plot is quite fun. If you haven’t seen this, you might find a copy and watch at least the first couple episodes.
Wheee~
FireFly! OUr apartment was addicted for awhile – got through all the eps. and the movie. Our school is showing the movie in a few weeks. Quite psyched. It was really well done, I thought; a nice blend of genres. The movie is a bit over the top, but so it goes. It was fun – some of the characters just hit that point where they became charicatures of themselves.
Enjoy it!
I might have mentioned it before, but I think it’s important to note that Halliburton is actually two companies within one name; the part that gets all the contracts and supplies things to troops is called KBR, or Kellogg, Brown, and Root, and the Halliburton side of the company that performs the oil field service can only be hired by private companies to provide logging equipment, consulting, etc. So, hating Halliburton because it is an oil company in the broad sense doesn’t make much sense when only the half of the company that has nothing to do with oil is the one benefitting from the war. That’s why I have only a few moral qualms about having worked for Halliburton, instead of desiring that the whole company be shut down for doing business.
Also, Firefly is amazing. I just watched them all again after coming back to school. So I defended Halliburton, and yet I like Firefly…I wonder what you think of me now.
That last comments was from me, sorry.
Also, I know you don’t call Halliburton bastards because of anything to do with oil…I initially thought that was a tag you included in your post, but realized my mistake after posting. So, my point still stands, it’s just not entirely applicable to your post. I do hate the upper management of KBR with a burning passion. It burns, burns, burns, that ring of fire.
It sounds like we agree
I don’t usually mind oil companies; I rather enjoy all the things made from oil, from the gasoline in our cars to the plastic in our hospitals. Oil is a pretty integral and necessary part of our lives, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Although many people think that drilling for oil is irreparably damaging our world, I fear our lives would be much worse if we didn’t do it.
However, I have major issues with large, morally repugnant companies who willingly jeopadize our troops’ health for their own profits. I don’t like corruption, greed, scandal, or conspiracy. I don’t like government kickbacks and non-competitive contracts. and I really don’t like companies who do these things repeatedly, fully knowing their practices are unethical, and then try to cover it up instead of being honest about it.
Perhaps I should be seething at KBR rather than Halliburton; thanks for setting me straight there. It appears as though our stances on KBR/Halliburton are similar. Since you have had first-hand experience with them, I’d like to hear more. What did you do for them? When and where was this? What did you think of them? It’s always neat to find someone who’s actually been a part of the goings-on in the world (even a small, tangential part).
Yep, Joss Whedon is amazing. I bought the DVDs a few days ago though I have not had a chance to watch them yet.
I’ve been hearing a lot about the series, and while space cowboys is not usually my genre I think I’m going to pull the episodes off the network and check them out. If so many people like it, it can’t be that bad, and the wee girl in the movie was kickass XD
That whole Chinese thing bothers me to no end (and renders an otherwise enjoyable show unbearable). It’s so contrived, the expressions are poorly picked, and the pronunciation is horribly butchered beyond recognition. Done right, it *might* have turned out okay, but right now, it’s so artificial that literally makes me cringe. They threw it in probably because this kind of stuff is somehow “cool” these days. *groan*
Interesting link about the Halliburton thing. Makes me shake my head at the administration, but nothing will ever really change until people start caring more about government and being more open to bona fide debate about things. Right now, we’re starting to look more like an “electocracy” (note below) than a democracy.
nb: From The Economist, “… even free elections, on their own, do not constitute a democratic system. “As a rule, ‘electocracy’ should not be confused with democracy,” rightly avers Richard Haass, head of policy planning in the State Department in 2001-03 …”
Not that I want to start a flamewar, but I’m also not convinced that Chinese is the language of the future; there may be more speakers in raw numbers, but they are far fewer in reach and it suffers the same information inefficiencies (transmission, parsing, inventing new words) of all other icon-based languages.
Who is this? I don’t believe I know anyone in North Carolina or Virginia who would read this (the Internet seems to think you live thereabouts, perhaps in Durham).
As for the Chinese thing, I can totally see this happening. I don’t know Chinese, so I could have some imagination/poetic liscence with what they were saying. However, I can see where the creators of the show are coming from: when moving people off-planet, there would have been lots of Chinese people. Not only that, but they had these exotic phrases that seemed perfect for certain situations. All the anime nerds and people like that would start trying to be “cool” by using these phrases, though poorly, with butchered pronounciation, and sometimes out of context (more evidence that the dialect came from these people is their constant use of the word “shiny,” which kinda got to me). I suspect that they made the show like that on purpose; I can’t easily imagine a world where people learn actual Chinese and actual pronounciation simply to insert a couple phrases into their speech every once in a while. Sorry if it grated on your ears, but I think they did that on purpose. The subpar English grated on mine a bit.
That’s an excellent viewpoint from the Economist; I’d like to read the article, if you have a link or issue number or something…