Keyword Kuwait. Kuwait is a small oil socialist empire. Small, so the nazis and neocons are not fundamentally opposed to it as socialism, since small eclipses strategic anathema with strategic advantage, as in this case, where Kuwait supports the US military occupation of Iraq.
And to support the US occupation of Iraq, all Kuwaitis have to do is do what they do in Kuwait. Every Kuwaiti has a guaranteed income from the government, with which they hire servants imported from Asia-Pacific nations. Now they contract at prices high enough to interest Kuwaitis to bring some of their servants to Iraq. And this solves the mystery of what Kuwaitis are good for. They can work, see, they are working in Iraq. -Bob --- In cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com, RoadsEnd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <../../../../post?postID=jtevrzpyk25gz1aCdq-PN3ASjOcaTF7XfLmRAe7PJNUyn30\ Gp1YMBi7NwN6OlywwJ7yzNfY> Date: July 26, 2007 10:22:47 PM PDTTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <../../../../post?postID=TwjN5rguKi7luKqa3DLd7TDD3Km_Q00m9QIRrzRu7AWjYSX\ ERRgqW_IbdkoQnGN-SJ2I7rzW> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <../../../../post?postID=SHrAz5S7bOZi__wORVb7CQWSqwYuJjLAULF7AWuSz4Z1WFw\ dE8HQpYGO8Pvpf2Ft0xatNg> , [EMAIL PROTECTED] <../../../../post?postID=k2nbY4GaIozV3Y6P6M8GOpMbN0yAfUM5xuTkXoiG2L8sfeh\ SCO3mhPbOP6cTQoRaY_E8IbOzP13xQA> , [EMAIL PROTECTED] <../../../../post?postID=PeAL6J9QQzDsSoPN_RRcDCTrxtkhhy8o9gMt7Cgj-r3F7GZ\ KTFPJ4wJ8MeXinyiRRs4H> Subject: Great-Beast-Bush Building "Babylon the Great" with Slave Labor Foreign Workers Abused at Embassy, Panel Told By William Branigin Washington Post, July 27, 2007; A15 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/26/AR200707\ 2601792_pf.html <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/26/AR20070\ 72601792_pf.html> Two American civilian contractors who worked on a massive U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Baghdad?tid=informline> told Congress yesterday that foreign laborers were deceptively recruited and trafficked to Iraq <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iraq.html?nav=el> to toil at the site, where they experienced physical abuse and substandard working conditions. State Department <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Department+of+Stat\ e?tid=informline> officials disputed the charges, telling a House committee that inspections had not substantiated the worst reported abuses. The accounts were delivered at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+House+Committee+on\ +Oversight+and+Government+Reform?tid=informline> on allegations of waste, fraud and abuse in the construction of a huge new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad at a cost of nearly $600 million. The embassy, slated to be the largest diplomatic mission in the world, is being built by a Kuwaiti firm, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., which was awarded the contract after no U.S. company would meet the <unreasonable> terms, the committee was told. First Kuwaiti's labor practices are under investigation by the Justice Department <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Department+of+Just\ ice?tid=informline> , which is looking into allegations that foreign employees were brought into Iraq under false pretenses and were unable to leave because the company had confiscated their passports. First Kuwaiti has termed those allegations "ludicrous." The company declined the committee's invitation to testify or provide officials for interviews, said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Henry+Waxman?tid=inform\ line> , chairman of the oversight committee. Testifying before the committee yesterday, John Owens, an American who worked for First Kuwaiti at the embassy site as a construction foreman from November 2005 to June 2006, said he found living and working conditions for the foreign laborers there "deplorable." Because of difficulty hiring Iraqis for work inside the heavily fortified Green Zone <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Baghdad+Green+Zone?tid=\ informline> , most of the laborers were from such countries as India <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/india.html?nav=el> , Pakistan <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/pakistan.html?nav=\ el> , Nepal <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Nepal?tid=informline> , Sri Lanka <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Sri+Lanka?tid=informlin\ e> , the Philippines <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Philippines?tid=informl\ ine> and Sierra Leone <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Sierra+Leone?tid=inform\ line> , the committee was told. Foreign workers lived in tightly packed trailers and had "insufficient equipment and basic needs -- stuff like shoes and gloves," Owens said. They worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and made as little as $240 a month, he said. They were "verbally and physically abused" and had their salaries docked for petty infractions, he added. Rory J. Mayberry, an emergency medical technician who worked briefly at the embassy site under a subcontract, testified that he was asked by First Kuwaiti managers to escort 51 Filipinos through the Kuwait <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Kuwait?tid=informline> airport and onto a flight to Baghdad. However, "all of our tickets said we were going to Dubai <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Dubai?tid=informline> ," he said, adding that a First Kuwaiti manager instructed him not to tell any of the Filipinos that they were going to Baghdad. He said the men were basically "kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy." Their passports had been confiscated, and they were driven away on buses after landing in Baghdad, then were "smuggled into the Green Zone," he said. Howard J. Krongard, the State Department inspector general, strongly disputed the allegations in a subsequent session of the hearing. He testified that a "limited review" he conducted and inquiries by the inspector general of the U.S.-led military force in Iraq did not substantiate the abuse claims. "Nothing came to our attention that caused us to believe that human-trafficking violations" or other serious abuses "occurred at the construction workers' camp at the new embassy compound," Krongard said.
