Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney

Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them."

Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics.

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

Bush has never visited the state as president, though he has spent vacations at his family compound in nearby Maine.

Roughly 12,000 people live in Brattleboro, located on the Connecticut River in the state's southeastern corner. Nearby Marlboro has a population of roughly 1,000.

(Writing by Andy Sullivan, editing by David Wiessler)

Source : http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/03/05/us-usa-politics-vermont-idUSN0454699420080305

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BP was there from the 1953 CIA Overthrow of Democracy in Iran, to the Iraq War, to the Criminal Gulf Catastrophe and Deaths

If you were to draw an oily line from the first exploitation of oil in the Middle East by the British in 1901 (they were in the process of converting their then world dominating naval fleet from coal to oil and were in desperate need of it) to the overthrow of the secular democratic leader in Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, to the Iraq War, to the criminal environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, BP would have been there.

But the fourth largest company in the world wasn't always called BP. It used to be owned by the British Government (remember the navy armada in need of oil). It was named the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company when the CIA teamed up with the British because the Western style Iranian leader Mossadeq wanted to nationalize Britain's 100% owned and run giant oil concession in Iran, and the West would have none of that. So Eisenhower authorized "Operation Ajax," and the Shah of Iran was placed in power -- ruling with an iron fist and the dreaded SAVAK, all the time fully backed by the U.S. -- leading to the radical theocratic revolution that we still confront today. All the time BP, which formally adopted its current name in 1954, was there.

BP was there throughout the de facto colonization of the Middle East to provide oil to the West, the British and the U.S. remaining strong partners in keeping any recalcitrant nations in line. Which leads to the Iraq War and why many Americans and Brits were puzzled by Tony Blair's eagerness to go along with Cheney's secret oil committee plan to seize Iraq oil fields and Bush's belief that the war was Biblically justified. BP is the largest corporation in the UK and the third largest energy company. Do you have any more questions?

BP and its American counterparts are part of the corporate oligarchy that run governments when it comes to energy policy. They don't take orders from sovereign nations; they give them. They are unelected, but because of their hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and profit, they run the show when it comes to oil policy, and profit comes first: forget about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Oil is their gold; we are just consumers who can be replaced at any time by more consumers, vassals to the oil company Masters of the Universe. There is no brake on their malfeasance, greed and criminal behavior, nor their ability to get nations to go to war, overthrow democratically elected leaders, and to get away with pollution of proportions beyond the imagination.

For over a century, whenever American and British GIs have died for oil, whenever pollution and toxicity have been let loose to ravage our shores, whenever residents have died of cancer caused by the oil refining process and spills, whenever Congress and White Houses have loosened regulations to allow reckless and massively damaging behavior, BP was there, along with their American counterparts: companies so large that they are above the law and governmental control.

Most American presidencies and Congress -- and particularly the Bush/Cheney Presidency -- have regarded oil companies and the control of oil resources as essential to the survival of the American economy. As a result oil companies and the secondary businesses that support them -- such as Halliburton and Transocean -- are indeed able to call the shots and get the U.S. and the UK to do their bidding. In the UK, BP is the power behind 10 Downing Street when it comes to foreign policy, drilling, and all things oil; that is why Tony Blair could not refuse to join the Bush/Cheney (and Rumsfeld) attack on Iraq.

Which leads us to the catastrophe in the Gulf. Of course, BP was off drilling in waters too deep for them to have developed a plan in case the well blew. Of course, they had memos indicating that they valued profits over lives and the environment. Of course, they have lied about the size of the oil pollution and their ability to fix it from the moment that more then 10 men died as the well exploded. That is their job. It has been since 1901, when their predecessor company began exploration in Iran. During her "reign," the iron maiden, Margaret Thatcher, allowed BP to be privatized, and it quickly -- Pac Man style -- gobbled up several other oil companies, including AMOCO.

For more than a century, we -- citizens of a nation founded on democratic principles of citizens deciding their nation's destiny -- have been nothing but pawns in the war over access to oil, wherever it is or might be found.

And the forecast in any shift of power from oil governance to governance by the people is looking bleaker every day.

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Suit: Prostitute, strippers part of Blackwater fraud

Washington (CNN) -- Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide employees allege the company charged the government for a prostitute and strippers and kept incompetent personnel for financial reasons, part of what they call a systematic pattern to defraud authorities.

The accusations come in a lawsuit filed by Brad and Melan Davis -- who said the fraudulent activity, such as double billing and submitting false invoices, occurred while the security firm, now known as Xe, carried out its work in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.

Melan Davis, who was involved in record-keeping, said Blackwater billed the government for prostitution services in Afghanistan from a Filipino female, whose name was on Blackwater's payroll roster under a category called "Morale Welfare Recreation."

She said Blackwater billed the woman's plane tickets and monthly salary to the United States.

The lawsuit also said a vendor being paid for "cleaning services" in Louisiana was providing strippers.

Another accusation in the suit was that Melan Davis was wrongfully dismissed after raising the issue of "fraud and abuse."

Xe on Friday responded to the suit.

"The allegations are without merit and the company will vigorously defend against this lawsuit. It is noteworthy that the government has declined to intervene in this action," Xe said in a statement to CNN.

The married couple filed suit in December 2008 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia under the False Claims Act. It was unsealed this month.

Blackwater became the target of widespread Iraqi outrage after its contractors were involved in the September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square that left 17 civilians dead. That outrage was renewed in December when a U.S. judge dismissed manslaughter charges against five guards involved in the shootings on constitutional grounds.

In the fraud suit, Brad Davis, an ex-Marine who worked as a security guard for Blackwater, said he "personally observed" three instances where personnel "intentionally used excessive and unjustified deadly force" and the suit said Blackwater refused to fire such "unqualified people."

Blackwater would continue to retain "wholly incompetent" personnel so they could pay their tuition bills to the company's private training facility, the suit said.

In Louisiana, where Blackwater was contracted to supply security services after Katrina, employees there "submitted a variety of bogus receipts," the suit said.

"For example, Blackwater employees, when filling up Blackwater vehicles at commercial gas stations, would simply pick up the receipts that were left behind by other customers. They would then submit these receipts and be paid in cash by Blackwater."

At the same time, the suit said, Blackwater failed to provide the services set down under its contract with Louisiana and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It said Blackwater didn't monitor the "deadly weapons" it provided employees and "lost track of countless weapons."

The suit said Blackwater overbilled for travel expenses and "created phone invoices to obscure the fact that Blackwater had failed to keep any of the necessary contemporaneous documentation on travel."

The suit said Melan Davis attempted "to blow the whistle on the fraud and abuse occurring in New Orleans" and was told in 2006 she "needed to back off." The suit said she was fired in 2008 when "she was on leave battling cancer."

Blackwater had about 1,000 contractors working in Iraq at the height of its involvement, guarding diplomatic convoys and supply vehicles after the U.S. invasion in 2003. At least 10 of its employees were killed, including four whose burned and mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets of Falluja after an ambush in 2004.

Source : CNN

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