"All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"

[katty]

"All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"

more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19518.htm

By Ron Jacobs

12/03/08 "Counterpunch" -- -- -Recently, the Boston Globe reported that the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) had set up an offshore company to hire close to half of the men and women working for KBR in Iraq as contractors. According to the report, this enables KBR to avoid paying social security, unemployment insurance and other taxes. When workers complained, they were essentially told that they had already signed a contract with the offshore company and therefore had no recourse. On the other hand, at another time KBR argued that some of its workers that sued the company after being exposed to dangerous chemicals in Iraq were KBR employees and, because of laws granting contractors doing military work overseas, the company was not legally responsible. Like the lawyer for the nine men suing KBR said, "When it benefits them, KBR takes the position that these men really are employees. You don't get to take both positions."

Of course, this is exactly what KBR wants to do. After all, this corporation and most other companies involved in what is euphemistically called contracting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “homeland security” are much more interested in making money than they are in being fair or even patriotic. The bounty provided by what London and DC term the “war on terror” has moved the money grubbing of these corporations to an even higher level of greed. The executives of these companies are not interested in seeing this war end. If it did, then they would lose the gravy train it has become.

This is what Solomon Hughes makes quite clear in his new book War on Terror, Inc. Corporate Profiteering From the Politics of Fear just released by Verso. Hughes is an investigative reporter that does that title proud. His work has appeared in British newspapers and the journal Private Eye. What he does in this book is nothing less than rip the mask of false patriotism and concern for the world's well-being from the faces of the corporations that constitute a major part of the today's war industry. In the process, he exposes the shallow greed and willing corruption of the politicians and government bureaucrats who hand over their nation's coffers to those companies, despite their public ineptitude and chicanery—not to mention the lies the whole shell game is based on. Meanwhile, people die for no reason.

[Yurovsky]

1. Good read, thnx for the link... n/t

nm

[kirby]

2. The IRS could nail these guys...

But of course they wont... What KBR is doing is illegal (especially treating independent contractors as employees).