"Contracting business in Iraq is very lucrative"

While I haven't been working, I've been watching a consortium of Iraq War documentaries in an effort to be a proper citizen and weave past the pundits, the talking heads, the dumbass slogans and bumper stickers and the politics surrounding what I believe to be the most significant event this country is currently facing. So enough with the blathering and lets get this war justified (or not). doing a bag of laundry, running orientations at beachside 5-star hotels

Next up is Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, released in 2006 with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Right off the bat we get a price tag on engineering, construction, police training, reconstruction, troop support, private security, etc. paid to private contractors. The rest of the movie goes on to tell us how we're getting screwed.

A substantial amount of interrogators at Abu Ghraib were private contractors. What that boils down to is that the more information these private contractors can get out of a detainee, the more they would stand to gain. They're a business after all. On top of that, these contractors work under minimal supervision and without legal allegiance or accountability. Hmm. What does that spell? Torture.

Next up are the private security guards. Now when a US soldier hurts or kills an Iraqi and it becomes known, he/she goes through the court martial process. For Iraq, this puts a message out there that these crimes will be punished. When a contractor hurts or kills an Iraqi and it becomes known, he/she will be sent home (probably without dinner) and can wait a week or two before being hired by a different contractor. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

The people who run these contractor companies are senior military officers and capital hill staffers with connections needed to generate business contracts that range between a few million dollars to a few billion dollars. Some of these contracts dealing with logistics, repair, etc. take away jobs belonging to actual military personnel who work at a fraction of the cost.

Halliburton/KBR are the worst of the offenders, given either no-bid contracts or faced with no competition at all. One such contract gave Halliburton the responsibility of providing clean water to soldiers; in the end, the water was contaminated and soldiers were exposed to serious health risks. 63/67 facilities were shit.

A good chunk of these contracts are cost-plus contracts. Cost-plus is a type of contract where contractors will get a percentage of the money they spend on providing services. So the more money they can bill, the more they stand to make. That's why we have items that include $45 for a 6-pack of Coke packaged within the region and $100 for with full service, a fleet of Ford SUVs or pickups, H2s, or Cadillac Escalades complete with chrome rims and leather interior for staff that never leave the premises, wrong equipment which they burn in fire pits and claim it as a loss, running empty trucks on convoy at great risk to the drivers. Pentagon audits estimate that the total costs hovers around $1.4 billion and Halliburton's stock has quadrupled since the war began.



And that's the movie.

A few other articles I've run across just today deal with Cheney's stock in Halliburton and the government buying defective military helmets from a company fined for producing defective military helmets.

And just today, on top of it all, Bush has said that the war is actually helping the economy and definitely not a cause of a recession.

Yes we can.

vs

"Like a dream"

While I haven't been working, I've been watching a consortium of Iraq War documentaries in an effort to be a proper citizen and weave past the pundits, the talking heads, the dumbass slogans and bumper stickers and the politics surrounding what I believe to be the most significant event this country is currently facing. So enough with the blathering and lets get this war justified (or not).

First up is "The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair" released in 2006 with an 86% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes.

Yunis Abbas, an English speaking Iraqi journalist, recounts his experience being captured and imprisoned for plotting to kill Tony Blair. As a former and tortured captive of Saddam Hussein, he wasn't exactly a fan of the previous regime. His problem in this move though, is that he laughed when he was first told why he was captured. But why did he laugh? Because it was ridiculous.

Yunis spent most of his time at Camp Ganci, a mid/low level security area in Abu Ghraib that contained 4000 detainees classified as having no intelligence value. Also known for unsanitary living conditions, overcrowding, spoiled food, and inadequate access to health care. But the good news is that they weren't dying. Like many others sharing his campsite, Yunis and his brothers were taken from his home in the middle of the night. "Wrong place at the wrong time" type deal, where an Iraqi male should never be home, like ever. Especially at night.

During his stay, Yunis served as a translator to help preserve peace in the camps. He ended up helping the soldiers who made a conscious effort to help the prisoners. One of the soldiers found it weird that despite Yunis being charged with attempting to kill one of the world's predominant leaders, he wasn't grouped with the same people who actually plotted to kill the guy.

In the end, after a series of riots, attacks from the outside, Yunis and his brothers are released nine months later. The camp commander releasing him says "We don't know why you were here. There was a mistake. Sorry". Camp Ganci was closed sometime later and prisoners were moved to another site known as "Redemption." Huh, how about that.

Here's another take on the issue of false imprisonment, albeit the location in reference is different:


I sincerely hope that Yunis and other prisoners like him are more forgiving than I know myself to be. If an occupying force were to come into my/my family/my friend's house in the middle of the night, imprison me/my family/my friends on charges we would never get the chance to argue against, spit in our faces, torture our bodies, destroy our spirits, and insult our religion, I sure as hell know where I would stand when it comes to that whole "with us or against us" downstream flow of arrogant bullshit.

Pardon me, but my bias is showing.

Pure epic greatness in three parts

Act I: TheA Daily Show with John Stewart





Act II: The Colbert Report





Act III: Late Night with Conan O'Brian

Heroes with spray cans

I recently received Wall and Peace by Banksy, a subversive English graffiti artist, from a good friend (Thanks Trang!) and I do believe I've found my newest hero.

Here are some explanations of a few of his works:

-On a blank wall in a few different locations, he tags "By order; National Highways Agency; This wall is a designated graffiti area; Please take your litter home; EC REF. Urba 23/366."

-Calling the wall separating the occupied territories of Israel and Palestine "the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti artists," Banksy went on a spray painting spree on the Palestinian side with images of paradise behind imaginary windows and breaks in the wall.

-Cows, pigs, and sheep can also be walls.

-Jumping into zoo pens because those places also have walls that could use some decor.

-An Apache helicopter wearing a giant, girly bow at the rotor.

-Fake paintings smuggled into the Tate, Louvre, MoMA, and New York Met. Fake artifacts placed on the walls of various natural history museums.

-Planting shark dorsal fins in lakes to freak out the kids. Good times.

-"People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. People in glass cities shouldn't fire missiles."

-Replacing Paris Hilton's CD release with her face replaced by a chihuahua's head.

And the greatest thing about this guy is that he's anonymous. Effing anonymous! Not to avoid being arrested and being fined thing by authorities, I'm sure he wants it this way to avoid being arrested in another sense entirely. A revolutionary of a different kind whose philosophy fits perfectly with today's urban societies. A Deep Throat who tags awesome shit. A modern artist who doesn't have to explain his work and hide behind through god-awful pretentious interpretations. A true to life V. A Dennis the Menace whose Mr. Wilson is the man.

You have your heroes like Spiderman, Bruce Lee, and Al Gore, and then you have your heroes who change the world with spray cans wherever he damn well pleases. Man, sheer malevolent genius.

Oh, and on the back of the book, a quote by a Metropolitan Police Spokesperson: "There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover."

Indisputable proof that I graduated high school

Sweet!



Who needs an effing diploma. S-M-R-T.

In other news, I'm currently deciding what else to do with this blog until I take my next great adventure. Maybe I'll just bullshit until sparkly gems come out of my ass.

After all is said and done...

... I'm back to where I started, but definitely not in the metaphorical sense. Traveling alone was a great decision and I loved that I left without a plan.

Flying into London sitting cozy in first class was an incredible stroke of luck and kickass omen of the events that were to come. Going wherever I pleased unencumbered by, well, anything is definitely how I want to live. Admiring city history, style, architecture, and the womens... there's just so much soul, beauty, and class to experience in this world. Memorizing bus and metro lines gave my sense of direction a punch to the face, but I eventually got used to it. But then getting lost half the time was part of the experience. Staying at hostels was great. Staying with family was great. With the former, I met people from all over the world and touring cities with these strangers felt entirely natural. With the latter, I finally had the chance to be a proper nephew and cousin by actually existing. And now, reminiscing like this is something I'll be able to do whenever I like. Oh, and two weeks vacation a year is absolute bullshit.

Before I left, world traveling was always my ideal of how to live a great life. The six weeks I spent in Europe was an absolute reaffirmation. Needless to say, I'm addicted. Of course bouts of loneliness would hit me every now and then when I wasn't with family, but I also appreciated the times when it was just me and my camera. And here's the work I have to show for it. Enjoy and cheers to mortality.

London:


Brussels & Belgium:


Berlin & Munich:


Florence & Tuscany:


Rome:


Switzerland:


Paris, Annecy & Antony:


Barcelona: