One website I frequent the most is Jim Hightower's website http://www.jimhightower.com . He is one of the few Texans that I hold in high regard. This isn't to say that all most Texans are bad people but after having lived in Texas for 17 long years, suffice it to say Texas doesn't attract a lot of enlightened thinkers. Anyway, Jim Hightower is a true man of the people with a common sense approach to life that I find refreshing and undeniable. I found his latest post so important I decided to post it here for those of you who come to this website to see and possibly turn you into a Jim Hightower fan as well. Enjoy.
Is any low too low for Halliburton?
This giant government contractor with tentacles running straight into the White House has previously been caught overcharging U.S. taxpayers and shortchanging U.S. troops for its work in Iraq. But now we learn that Halliburton has been profiting in Iraq by mistreating foreign workers.
By "foreign," I don't mean Iraqis, even though thousands of folks there are desperate for jobs. Instead, I mean impoverished Asian laborers brought by the thousands into Iraq from southern India, Thailand, and the Philippines to work for Halliburton on U.S. bases as cooks, electricians, launderers, custodians, etc. They are mostly 20-somethings, powerless and exploited.
When recruited, most had no idea they were headed for a war zone. Once there, they are branded as TCNs – Third Country Nationals – which is both a derogatory term and an assurance of third class treatment, at best. They are paid a fraction of what other Halliburton workers get, and their meager paychecks are often several months behind, keeping them in debt and in place. They work 12-hour days and are allowed only one day a month off – without pay.
The TCNs are housed in cramped trailers jammed end-to-end with bunk beds. They're not allowed to eat with the Americans, nor do they even get to eat the same food – theirs is shipped in from elsewhere and often is cold and tasteless. They cannot use the internet, the phone center, or the recreation facility. Even though their bases regularly come under attack, TCNs are issued no body armor or helmets.It's bad enough that Halliburton is doing this at all, but it's far worse that it's doing it under our flag, in our name. What must Iraqis and Asians think as they watch how one of our country's most favored corporations treats workers who are non-white and poor?
This is Jim Hightower saying... To learn more, go to the globalization watchdog group, corpwatch: www.corpwatch.org.
Sources: "Iraq isn't land opportunity," Austin American-Statesman,
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