Why the surge in Afghanistan? Part 2

Everything is not as it Seems: (It’s about oil!)

Historical statistics: U.S. Oil Imports in 2001

The U.S. with 4.5% of the world's population, in 2001 used 26% of the world's oil.

In 2001, the U.S imported 54% of the oil it required, importing 11-12 million barrels a day and producing about 8-9 million a day. The US was consuming about 20 million barrels of oil daily.

Of those imports, 48% came from the Western Hemisphere and 30% came from the Persian Gulf region, with the rest came from Africa and Europe.

[Source: Energy Information Administration - 5/02]

Although the U.S. imports only 11.4 % of its oil from the Persian Gulf region, that area contains 590 billion barrels of known reserves. Add Iran, Libya and Algeria and you have another 130 billion barrels. The enormous pool of oil stretching form Algeria to Iran is estimated at 720 billion barrels. The reserves expected from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia will be added to this total in a few years those reserves are estimated to be another 44 billion barrels of oil reserves and possibly more.

[Source - American Petroleum Institute, 2003] there is even less in oil reserves today! It has been known for decades that the world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production.

The Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves, much of them located in the Caspian Sea basin itself. Proven natural gas reserves within Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region’s total oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil —Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day (44 million tons per year [Mt/y]).

The Afghanistan war is about securing the territory through which the oil and gas pipelines will have to pass through in order to ensure Russia, China and Iran are out-maneuvered in the last great wars for the last of the global oil supplies on planet Earth.

Unocal a company now owned by Chevron enters the picture and begins negotiations with the Taliban to construct an oil pipeline:

In 1995, the US-based oil company Unocal signed a tentative agreement with the Turkmenistan government to research the possibilities of constructing an oil pipeline to Pakistan by way of Afghanistan. As the project developed, Unocal began to seek an agreement with the Taliban, who had recently risen to power, to construct a pipeline across their country. On two separate occasions, in February and December 1997, Taliban officials were flown to the US to meet with, and be wined and dined by, Unocal executives. One of those executives was claimed to have been Hamid Karzai (Currently the US Installed President of Afghanistan) Although Karzai denies his involvement with Unocal, there is strong evidence to support his connections.

Background on Karzai, Bush and UNOCAL

This information is quoted from an article by the Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, January 23, 2002 (Reprinted here with fair use permission)

According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George HW Bush, and the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA.

According to Middle East and South Asian sources Karzai serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal.

When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset.

Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table.

Note: According to European intelligence sources; Meetings between the Taliban and the US Government over the pipe line are said to have continued even after the September 11, attack and the beginning of the war.

Karzai's who allegedly had strong ties with both UNOCAL and the Bush administration was the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq.

When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan, his position was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down, captured, and executed them. Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack the Taliban but its actions were too little and too late.

Some observers in Pakistan claim the CIA tipped off the ISI about Haq's journey and the Pakistanis, in turn, informed the Taliban. McFarlane, who runs a K Street oil consulting firm, did not comment on further questions about the circumstances leading to the death of Haq.

It has been suggested that the CIA allowed Hag’s assassination, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate.

While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's Plan for South Asia, Karzai was. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, (who now owns Unocal) itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their super-tankers the SS Condoleezza Rice.

Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.

Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which subsequently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, served as the Secretary of the Army.

A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumours in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court.

Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban's unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States.

Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, later on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favoured Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration.

While Clinton's State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons. After Bush's accession to the presidency, various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council.

The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban. The CIA agent who helped set up the Afghan mujaheddin, Milt Bearden, continued to defend the interests of the Taliban. He bemoaned the fact that the United States never really bothered to understand the Taliban when he told the Washington Post, "We never heard what they were trying to say... We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.'

"There were even reports that the CIA met with their old mujaheddin operative bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, "Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998."

Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime’s responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels.

Note: according to an article of August 21, 1998 appearing now at CNN.com we were at war with Bin Laden in 1998 at the time of the Unocal negotiations:

“cruise missiles pounded sites in Afghanistan and Sudan Thursday in retaliation for the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7.

U.S. officials say the six sites attacked in Afghanistan were part of a network of terrorist compounds near the Pakistani border that housed supporters of millionaire Osama bin Laden.

In the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory -- which U.S. officials say also has ties to bin Laden and produces chemicals that can be used to make deadly VX nerve gas -- was heavily damaged.

Note: In Sudan, the missiles destroyed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, where 50% of Sudan's medications for both people and animals were manufactured. The Clinton Administration claimed that there was ample evidence to prove that the plant produced chemical weapons, but a thorough investigation after the missile strikes revealed that the intelligence was unreliable.

A few months after the attacks and subsequent American missile strikes in Afghanistan, the American energy company Unocal withdrew its plans for a gas pipeline through Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from US ships in the Persian Gulf into Afghanistan, which missed Bin Laden by a few hours. The Clinton administration also devised a plan with Pakistan's ISI to send a team of assassins into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. But Pakistan's government was overthrown by General Musharraf, who was viewed as particularly close to the Taliban. The CIA cancelled its plans, fearing Musharraf's ISI would tip off the Taliban and Bin Laden.

General Mahmud Ahmed former head of the ISI was in Washington, DC on the morning of September 11 meeting with CIA and State Department officials as the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Later, both the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington, Haron Amin, and Indian intelligence, in an apparent leak to The Times of India, confirmed that General Ahmed ordered a Pakistani-born British citizen and known terrorist named Ahmed Umar Sheik to wire $100,000 from Pakistan to the U.S. bank account of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.

No move has been made to question General Ahmed or those U.S. government officials, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who met with him in that September. Clearly, General Ahmed was a major player in terrorist activities across South Asia, yet still had very close ties to the U.S. government.

The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad.

In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favour with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan's pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at Langley, Virginia the CIA Headquarters.

According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused. Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America's Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed "Kandahar Rose" by her colleagues, aired favourable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Mullah Omar.

The Bush administration's dalliances with the Taliban may have even continued after the start of the bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment, they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international coalition.

The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, worried the Republicans. Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman was in the ironic position of being the senator who chaired the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky oil politics of the Bush administration.

UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after Saudi terrorists crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: "The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban."

Subsequently overwhelming evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL's pipeline and not about fighting terrorism began to be developed by foreign intelligence.

Let's remember Unocal's Maresca's statement to the US Congress in 1998. "From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company." Within a week of the commencement of war with the Taliban, the Bush administration discussed the shape of a post-war Afghan government. The focus on Afghanistan compels our notice. After all, the Middle East is full of people and governments that have no love for the US. The WTC hijackers hailed predominately from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Afghan citizens were not included. But Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban got the scapegoat's tail. Is this based on real hard evidence? Or is it simply because Bin Laden opened the way for the full military might of the US armed forces to make the Caspian and Central Asian region safe for the US led oil and gas pipelines? What is the current status of the Afghanistan pipe line?

Why the surge in Afghanistan?

Part 1

It’s about oil!

On February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca, then vice president, international relations for the UNOCAL oil company; testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations.

During his testimony, Maresca provided information to Congress on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and how they might shape US foreign policy. The main part of this discussion, centered around, the oil reserves in the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea holds as much as 44 billion barrels of oil in its reserves, with the southern waters near Iran holding at least half of that.

The Caspian Sea shelf is considered one of the largest sources of petroleum outside the Persian Gulf and Russia.

The oil reserves are in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Routes for a pipeline were proposed that would transport oil on a 42-inch pipe southward thru Afghanistan for 1040 miles to the Pakistan coast. Such a pipeline would cost about $2.5 billion (at the time) and carry about 1 million barrels of oil per day. The region's largest producers were and remain Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Afghanistan was under the control of multiple war lords, because of this lack of a single governing body Maresca told Congress then that: "It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That's the simple answer." The key to foreign investment in these two Caspian nations was obtaining secure export routes. The lack of a secure means of transporting Caspian Sea oil and gas to world markets has been an impediment to foreign investment. Until foreign investors could rely on access to markets, investment in the Caspian region's huge petroleum potential would remain small.

The problem, Unocal needed control over the region, and a single government leader with whom it would deal. Unocal sought to build a relationship with the Taliban!

Beginning in 1998 UNOCAL was chastised, particularly by women's rights groups, for discussions with the Taliban, and headed in retreat as a worldwide effort mounted to come to the defense of the Afghani women. This forced UNOCAL to withdraw from its talks with the Taliban and dissolve its multinational partnership in that region.

In 1999 Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections newsletter said: "UNOCAL company officials said late last year (1998) they were abandoning the project because of the need to cut costs in the Caspian region and because of the repeated failure of efforts to resolve the long civil conflict in Afghanistan." [Volume 4, issue #20 - Monday, November 22, 1999]

Political pressure against the Taliban was maintained through the channels of the US Government.

UNOCAL at the time was not the only party positioning themselves to tap into oil and gas reserves in central Asia. UNOCAL was primary member of a multinational consortium called CentGas (Central Asia Gas) along with Delta Oil Company Limited (Saudi Arabia), the Government of Turkmenistan, Indonesia Petroleum, LTD. (INPEX) (Japan), ITOCHU Oil Exploration Co., Ltd. (Japan), Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. (Korea), the Crescent Group (Pakistan) and RAO Gazprom (Russia).

So, in 1998 Osama bin Laden was identified as the villain behind the Taliban, and the Afghanistani women the victims of an oppressive Taliban regime. The stage was set for a future destabilization effort (i.e. a war). The US media began to attack the Taliban in a propaganda move to set that stage.

Women's rights were introduced into Congressional record testimony by Congressman Rohrbacher as the wedge for UNOCAL to build its pipeline through Afghanistan. Three years later CNN would be airing its acclaimed TV documentary "Under The Veil," which displayed the oppressive conditions that women endure in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban (a propaganda film for the oil pipeline).

Part 2 next

Norway Spiral

Project Blue Beam?

A strange spiral appeared in the sky above northern Norway leaves Residents stunned after the light show, which appeared and looked to be computer-generated.

Rumors that Russia tested a rocket over Norway which gave off a spiraling lighted affect appear to be more than just rumors.

Leaving the unanswered question: was it a rocket with the potential to carry multiple nuclear warheads, as proffered by Russia or a test of Russia’s equivalent to America’s Project Blue Beam?

The Blue Beam project is alleged by many to be a NASA Project which has four different steps in order to implement “a new age religion with the antichrist at its head” The basis of this project is the ability, which is real and exists, to project images into the sky, which then appear to be speaking from heaven. This technology has been tested and does really exist. Its true purpose and planned use though is still unknown.

So we offer the following suggestion, if you see and hear someone talking to earth from the sky, be leery and doubtful that it is real.

General Electric Bailing Out of NBC

GE in financial trouble is bailing out of NBC, when it should simply dissolve. GE just announced that it was selling its troubled asset NBC to Comcast.

NBC has been a headache for GE from the onset, including NBC Universal. The unit includes Universal Pictures movie studios, the NBC network, the Universal Studios chain of theme parks, and such cable channels as USA, Bravo and Syfy. The unit has suffered from the recession, with a drop in broadcast advertising, and some flops at the box office, such as "Land of the Lost."

The NBC network ranks fourth in ratings and is cutting down on scripted shows to save money. Its operating profit fell 27 percent in the first three quarters of 2009.

The financial crisis has been difficult for GE. In an effort to eliminate debt, GE has sold some businesses, is shopping others, and is chasing nearly $200 billion in stimulus money from worldwide governments in an effort to stabilize the company.

GE slashed its dividend by 68 percent and lost its top bond rating, its stock fell 90 percent below the peak it had in 2000, and GE is still attempting to work through its Hugh losses at its GE Capital lending unit, once the source of half of GE’s profits, in areas like commercial real estate and credit cards.

To make the Comcast deal work GE was required to buy out the 20 percent stake in NBC Universal that is held by French media company Vivendi SA. GE and Comcast are then expected to turn NBC Universal into a joint venture, with Comcast holding a 51 percent. GE would leave the partnership in a few years.

The Comcast deal is expected to bring in needed cash. GE anticipates it will be able to clear away about 17 Billion in debt, a net to GE of $5 to $7 billion from Comcast by forming the partnership, and GE would also be able to transfer to the Joint Venture about $8 to $10 billion in debt.

GE has been beset with litigation over the past decade, on August 4, 2009 the SEC fined General Electric $50 million for breaking accounting rules in two separate cases, misleading investors into believing GE would meet or beat earnings expectations.

GE has faced criminal action regarding its defense related operations. GE was convicted in 1990 of defrauding the U.S. Department of Defense, and again in 1992 on charges of corrupt practices in the sale of jet engines to Israel .

Defense Contracting Fraud
On July 23, 1992, GE pled guilty in federal court to civil and criminal charges of defrauding the Pentagon and agreed to pay $69 million to the U.S. government in fines, one of the largest defense contracting fines ever. The company said in a statement that it took responsibility for the actions of a former marketing employee who, along with an Israeli Air Force General, diverted Pentagon funds to their own bank accounts and to fund Israeli military programs not authorized by the United States. Under the settlement with the Justice Department over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, GE paid $59.5 million in civil fraud claims and $9.5 million in criminal fines.

GE’s civil and criminal problems stemming from the Israeli military program are by no means isolated. GE is a repeat offender when it comes to Defense Department fraud. The company has repeatedly violated the False Claims Act — a measure originally proposed by Lincoln to protect federal coffers.

When the Project on Government Oversight surveyed defense contractors, it found that General Electric was responsible for 15 instances of fraudulent activity in just a four year period (1990-1994) — more than any other defense contractor.

On August 10, 1995 the U.S. Department of Justice announced (# 95-438) that GE would pay $7.1 million to settle a contract fraud suit initiated by Ian Johnson, an engineer at GE's Aircraft Engines plant in Evendale, Ohio in 1993. Johnson had alleged that GE "sold several thousand jet engines to the military that did not comply with military electrical bonding and electromagnetic interference testing requirements," according to DOJ. (Subsequently, the Air Force tested the engines and found them to be safe.) Johnson filed the suit on behalf of the United States under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act.

On January 10, 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice announced (# 97-012) that GE would pay $950,000 to settle allegations that it fraudulently misrepresented that it had conducted certain test procedures on circuit boards for hundreds of aircraft engine controls when in fact the tests were not conducted.

GE paid $5.87 million (along with Martin Marietta) to settle a qui tam suit associated with improper sales of radar systems to Egypt.

GE paid fines between 1990 and 1994 ranging from a $20,000 criminal fine to a $24.6 million civil fine for a variety of defense contracting frauds, including: misrepresentation, money laundering, defective pricing (2 incidents), cost mischarging (3 incidents), false claims, product substitution, conspiracy/conversion of classified documents, procurement fraud and mail fraud.

On July 22, 1992, GE “(pled) guilty to diverting some $26.5 million from the U.S. foreign military aid program used to finance General Electric's sale of F-16 jet engines and support equipment to Israel." (United States v General Electric, Docket #90-CV-792, US DC SD OH, Cincinnati) See Defense Contracting:

Contractor Claims for Legal Costs Associated Stockholder Lawsuits, GAO/NSIAD-95-66
(July 1995)
GE was convicted on February 3, 1990 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia of defrauding the government out of $10 million for a battlefield computer system. GE pled guilty on May 19, 1985 to charges of fraud and falsifying 108 claims on a missile contract. GE was convicted of defrauding the Air Force out of $800,000 on the Minuteman Missile Project. GE was convicted of bribing the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority.

Violations of Securities Laws
On September 24, 2004, the SEC announced (# 2004-135) that it had settled charges against GE for failing to fully disclose in proxy statements issued between 1997-2002 all of the retirement benefits granted to former CEO Jack Welch.

Tax issues:
For examples of facility-specific GE tax-abatements up to 2001 see “GE Tax Abatement Ripoffs” published by Multinational Monitor.

Additionally if this weren’t enough to make your hair stand on end, GE also has a less than sterling labor record abroad. In 1988 the International Metalworkers' Federation held a convention of delegates from GE factories in 23 countries. Reports delivered at the gathering showed that the company was depressing wages and weakening unions just about everywhere. Some of the strongest anti union postures were taken by GE in Brazil and Colombia.

GE’s business model can be considered a global system of management by stress, with the company viewing stress and the fear of job loss as the magic formula for productivity and efficiency.

Retirees claim the company has used accounting gimmicks and other means to reduce their pensions.

According to Multinational Monitor magazine, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited GE for at least 858 violations of OSHA rules from 1990 through March 2001. From 1994 to 1999, OSHA cited GE for at least 98 “serious” violations. OSHA issues “serious” citations to companies for conditions posing “a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result.”

Employment Discrimination
A black worker at GE’s Burkville, Alabama plant filed a suit claiming that General Electric officials fostered a racially hostile environment. GE reached settlements with two ex-GE employees employed at the plant. The workers claimed they were subjected to Ku Klux Klan symbols, swastikas and a hangman’s noose at the plant.

In 1991 GE was assessed over $ 590,000 in association with a disability claim for its refusal to reasonably accommodate a machinist with a back injury. A jury awarded $1.2 million in damages, which the district court reduced to $300,000 in accordance with the statutory cap on ADA damages. The machinist was also awarded $141,110 in front pay and $150,837 in attorney’s fees, according to the ADA newsletter.

Environment and product safety
Persistent concerns about PCB Contamination of the Hudson River from two GE manufacturing plants in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward have caused EPA to study the issue on a continuous basis since the site was listed on the nation’s Superfund priority site list in the early 1980s. Finally, on December 6, 2000, after 16 years of studies, proposals and more studies, EPA announced a 5-year plan to dredge 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment along a 40-mile stretch of the river. The cost of EPA’s proposal to GE: $460 million. The high cost of the cleanup has led company officials to mount one of the biggest public relations campaigns ever waged around a toxic waste site. Although EPA and the company signed a Record of Decision agreement in 2002 and numerous cleanup agreements after that, remediation is scheduled to begin during 2009. (For more information also see Clean Up GE)

Until reaching an agreement with EPA, GE denied the problem, sometimes with outright distortions of the truth. At an April 22, 1998 shareholder meeting, GE CEO Jack Welch claimed: “PCBs do not pose adverse health risks.” Testifying in Albany on July 9, 1998, EPA Administrator Carol Browner stated: “GE tells us this contamination is not a problem. GE would have people of the Hudson River believe, and I quote: ‘living in a PCB-laden area is not dangerous.’ But the science tells us the opposite is true ... And concern about PCBs goes beyond cancer ... The science has spoken: PCBs are a serious threat...”

PCBs from GE have also contaminated the Housatonic River in Connecticut, as well as in or near the Coosa River Basin in Georgia (traced to GE's Rome, Georgia plant).

On May 30, 2003 US EPA announced that GE would pay a $ 94,380 penalty to settle a TSCA enforcement action related to the improper storage of PCBs at its Pittsfield, MA facility.

Other Pollution Issues
On March 26, 1998, General Electric agreed to pay a $92,000 fine for previous violations of environmental reporting requirements for toxic releases at its silicone manufacturing plant in Waterford, New York, according to EPA’s regional office. In addition, GE agreed to spend about $112,000 to upgrade local emergency response capabilities in surrounding communities. Between 1991 and 1996, EPA cited GE for 23 violations when toxic releases were un- or underreported. Chemicals involved include dimethyl sulfate, chlorine, 1, 1, 1, -trichloroethane, ammonia, and toluene.

On March 13, 1992, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a $20,000 fine against General Electric for violations of regulations at the fuel fabrication plant in Wilmington, North Carolina. On May 29, 1991, GE personnel accidentally moved about 320 pounds of uranium to a waste treatment tank. The danger of the mistake was that the size and shape of the waste container caused unsafe concentrations of uranium, which could have led to a nuclear accident. The NRC dispatched a special incident investigation team the same day and an inspection began two days later. The NRC found that the mistake was the result of lax safety controls.

According to documents obtained by Public Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act, GE-designed nuclear reactors around the world have a design flaw that make it virtually certain (90 percent) that in the event of a meltdown, radiation would be released directly into the environment and into surrounding communities, leaving the public without any protection. The NRC acknowledges that the reactor containment structure in GE-built nuclear power plants does not work, but they licensed the reactors anyway. (Also, a dozen or more GE-designed boiling water reactors in the United States and abroad have evidence of cracking in the reactor core shroud — a metal cylinder surrounding the reactor’s radioactive fuel rods.)

On October 18, 2004, the California Department of Pesticide Registration announced that it would seek $202,959 in penalties for violations by GE's Betz Water business of the State of California’s pesticide registration requirements. The matter was ultimately settled in 2005 for $120,916, GE later explained in a letter to the Project on Government Oversight.

In August, 1996 the Florida Department of Environmental Protection informed Greenwich Air Services that it was seeking penalties of $278,555 for violations of the state's hazardous waste law at its Miami facility (the facility was subsequently acquired as a portion of GE's purchase of Greenwich which was consummated in September 1997). According to GE (10-K filed in March 1998), the matter was tentatively settled for $36,270 plus a pledge to perform a supplemental wastewater treatment project.

Human rights
In 1995, a Presidential Advisory Commission revealed details of GE’s human experiments with nuclear radiation. GE ran the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington as part of the U.S. weapons program. Beginning in 1949, General Electric deliberately released radioactive material to see how far downwind it would travel. One cloud drifted 400 miles, all the way down to the California-Oregon border, carrying perhaps thousands of times more radiation than that emitted at Three Mile Island.

In 1986, Representative Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, held hearings in which it was disclosed that the United States and General Electric had conducted experiments on hundreds of United States citizens who became “nuclear calibration devices for experimenters run amok.” According to Markey: “Too many of these experiments used human subjects that were captive audiences or populations ... considered ‘expendable’ ... the elderly, prisoners and hospital patients who might not have retained their full faculties for informed consent.” One of GE’s most gruesome experiments — disclosed in the Markey hearings — was performed on inmates at a prison in Walla Walla, Washington, near Hanford.

Starting in 1963, 64 prisoners had their scrotums and testes irradiated to determine the effects of radiation on human reproductive organs. Although the inmates were warned about the possibility of sterility and radiation burns, the forms said nothing about the risk of testicular cancer. Markey’s committee heard allegations that, at the time of the experiments, General Electric violated both civil and criminal laws.

Anti-competitive and consumer protection
GE was among four companies that ended up paying New York City over $4 million in 1982 to settle a lawsuit charging that wiring and cables in 754 subway cars were defective.

In 1992 GE agreed to pay $165,000 to settle a suit brought by 11 state attorneys general alleging the company deceptively advertised its light bulbs. According to the state AGs, the ads promised consumers the same amount of light for less energy, but in fact the light bulbs simply delivered less wattage.

GE Capital was ordered to pay $100 million for unfair debt collection practices as part of a 1999 class-action lawsuit settlement. The suit alleged that GE solicited agreements from bankrupt creditors to pay their credit card agreements without notifying bankruptcy courts of the agreements.

GE recalled 3.1 million dishwashers beginning in 1999, stating that a side switch could melt and ignite, presenting a fire hazard. In 2002, the CPSC announced that GE would pay a $1 million fine to settle allegations that the company knowingly failed to report the defects to the CPSC.

Unlawful Debt Collection Practices
On August 7, 1998, 50 States announced a $97 million settlement agreement with General Electric Credit Corporation (GECC) for unlawful debt collection practices from consumers who declared bankruptcy, in association with private label credit cards issued together with Montgomery Ward Credit Corporation. Under the settlement, GECC and Montgomery Ward Credit together paid an estimated $70 million to approximately 70,000 consumers nationwide from whom the companies collected invalid debts. In addition, the companies paid the states attorneys general $24.5 million. GECC also paid $3 million into a consumer education trust fund.

In April 2001, New York State AG Eliot Spitzer won a ruling in state court that, in connection with the dishwasher recall, GE falsely told consumers the problem could not be repaired, prodding customers with partial rebates to buy new GE dishwashers.

A November 1998 Time magazine profile of GE concluded that “there is no starker example of the phenomenon of corporate welfare and vanishing jobs than General Electric Co.”

On July 14, 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice announced (# 98-327) a settlement with GE over anti competitive practices involving restrictions GE had imposed in software licenses with more than 500 hospitals throughout the country. The restrictions prevented the hospitals from competing with GE to service medical equipment at other hospitals and at clinics.

With all this adverse activity, it would be in the public interest to dissolve GE and start another company, apparently the history of this company is one in which we the consumers should be very aware and very cautious!

Bernanke Lacks Sufficient Knowledge to Lead the FED

In Remarks before Congress Bernanke has shown his ignorance of the important issues facing America , and exemplified his lack of ability to lead the FED.

Chairman Bernanke. “If somebody has their wealth in dollars and they are going to buy consumer goods in dollars who is a typical American, then the decline in the dollar, the only effect it has on their buying power is it makes imported goods more expensive”. November 8, 2007

The Facts: Inflation robs those responsible citizens who have their money in Bank CD’s or other savings accounts, as the dollar becomes worth less by inflation (more of it in circulation) it will purchase less. The very definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. The price of the commodity will adjust upward to absorb the excess money. For Example in 1900 the Dollar purchased around $26.00 in goods and services, yet today it can purchase only about $0.25

Chairman Bernanke. “The mandate that Congress gave us is to look at employment and inflation as measured by domestic price growth, …, and I think you would agree we do see risks to inflation and we are taking those into account and want to make sure that prices remain as stable as possible in the United States ”. November 8, 2007

The Facts: (i) Under the Fed we have experienced inflation from which prices have doubled every 20 years, and are accelerating even faster now. Since 1913 we have seen 1929% inflation, and (ii) our Job market has decreased substantially since the 1980’s, with high paying jobs moving to other countries, and unemployment is at a real 20%.

Mr. BERNANKE. “Well, first, our national savings includes corporate savings as well as household savings. If you put those together, you get a positive number, so there is some net savings going on in the United States ”. July 18, 2007

The Facts: A Negative “Consumer” Saving Rate should be very Worrisome!

The U.S. personal saving rate’s negative turn which began to show in 2005 suggested that Americans would curtail their spending and accept a lower standard of living as they pay off rising debts. Or otherwise have no spend-able income available.

Personal saving has been negative since the second quarter of 2005. For 2005 as a whole, current data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) show a personal saving rate of -0.4 percent—a figure that dropped to -1.1 percent in 2006. These readings are well below the 1999-2004 average of 2.2 percent, a good deal below the 1993-98 average of 4.6 percent, and considerably below the 1950-92 norms of 8.6 percent.

Negative saving would seem to point to growing indebtedness and, ultimately, a decline in living standards, which we have evidenced. Low levels of household, private, and especially national saving will as we have seen take a toll over the long run. Economists generally agree that consumer spending decisions are largely explained by the life cycle–permanent income model. According to the model, households estimate the constant-dollar, or real, resources likely to be available to them over a long planning horizon, including in these resources anticipated after-tax income current wealth, and expected movements in asset prices. Given the estimated stream of resources, households plan on maintaining steady growth in real spending over their lifetimes.

The typical summary of this model is that real consumer spending is a constant fraction of “permanent income.” Permanent income is a smoothly growing measure whose present value is equal to the present value of the real resources available to consumers. The fraction of permanent income that is spent may depend on a host of factors, such as demographics, but ones that could be of particular interest are uncertainty and the ability to borrow. It is likely that the more uncertain future income is seen to be, and the more difficult it is to borrow in an emergency, the lower spending will be relative to permanent income.

So to the point, Personal Savings are very important, much more so than Corporate Savings.

Bernanke, obviously is reality impaired, as was his predecessor, or there is a plan unfolding in which this deception is an integral part.

Business as Usual?

The man on the Street has had enough of wars and plunder, unemployment and bank rescue, they are mad as hell and may not take much more.

The latest Afghanistan build up approach by Mr. Obama is just doing business as usual, spending money for the Military Industrial Complex, and the Bankers behind it, and the hell with the men and women who are killed and wounded, they are expendable. In short NO change necessary, except for the face of Obama. Everything else is business as usual.

Comments such as:

“I really wanted to be able to trust Obama... but the truth is that our invasion of Afghanistan under W had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing at all--pure theater. For Obama to cite 9/11 as prime rationale for staying and escalating operations there is truly, to put it mildly, disingenuous. I thought the man was smarter than this and had more respect for us all. Yes we can? How about: no we should not. 'Cmon man what do you take us for?”

“Anyone in the media ( right or left), or anyone holding office who continues to suppress or censure rational/science based discussion addressing the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was a "false flag" event, is complicit in the deaths of our troops and hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens!! The probability of the government's theory that 19 men with box cutters directed by a guy in a cave CONSPIRED to attack the U.S., is sick and absurd to almost everyone who takes the time to become informed through diligent research starting with www.ae911truth.org . “

“Apparently there is some kind of 40-year long echo in this country - we've heard all this before - well, I'm glad nobody threw away those early Vietnam military buildup political speeches - most of those phrases will be perfect for America's near future if we just substitute "Afghanistan" for "Vietnam" - no other changes will be needed - luckily, we already have all the material we'll need to cover years of debate and political speeches justifying the escalation Obama's choosing today .”

“What I found most disturbing about O's speech last night was the larger rationale he put forward, beyond the 9/11 justification - that of the "American mission" of providing imperial "leadership" for the rest of the world, intertwined with a concern for "credibility". The US military as a force for "nation building" stability in that part of the world? Does anyone truly believe that? At least the man has kept one of his campaign promises-- to escalate the Afghan war. And he's come through on that particular pledge just prior to his trip to Sweden to receive the Nobel Peace Prize! “

These comments and others like them are springing up all over the net. This is a small sampling of the anger and frustration that permeates America. We were duped into electing another George Bush, we were promised change, and we got it, a new face but the same game plan.

The Breakdown of American Morality Part ll

Corrupt Prosecutors:

The Justice Department, and perhaps all the way to the White House have damaged the image of justice in America . The dedication of conservative power houses such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Monica Goodling, and Alberto Gonzales asserting their will and influence upon the judicial system has become extremely disturbing when taken into consideration the ways in which those tasks have been implemented and their end result, the undoing of the Constitution.

But what is even more disturbing it the rapidity in which corruption has spread throughout the entire spectrum of the Justice System at both the State and Federal levels. Prosecutorial corruption is so prevalent that we are advised that more than 20 percent of those convicted of crimes are actually innocent.

No state is immune from political and prosecutorial corruption and some are more prone than others, as George Magazine voted Nevada number one in political corruption, the State is followed closely by Texas , Alabama , and Florida.

Why is this becoming an alarming concern to Americans?

The answer is basic, because we are a nation of Laws, not of kings that rule by arbitrary decisions, yet when a prosecutor abandons the rule of law for reasons of protecting their status, or to hide their inequity, as for an example the fabrication of a Criminal prosecution, concealing evidence of NO crime, presenting to a Grand Jury, (a system that does not work because it is not adversarial) one side of the case and concealing evidence that No crime had been committed, or attempting to destroy the reputation of an individual that was doing the job the prosecutor was supposed to do, but failed, this should concern all Americans.

It has long been recognized that a prosecutor’s duty is to seek justice. In Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78 (1935) our Supreme Court declared this mandate recognizing that prosecutors should “prosecute with eagerness and vigor” but may not use “improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction.” But this is exactly what they do, falsify documents, induce witnesses to commit perjury and intimidate those witnesses who defend the accused.

In other words, the rules of law have been bent, as long as the reviewing court determines, based upon their own post-conviction subjective interpretation, that the evidence notwithstanding the alleged misconduct is sufficient to support the conviction, a prosecutor’s deliberate misconduct, e.g. witness intimidation, fabrication of documents, deceptive and false testimony, is judicially tolerated.

This is generally called the “harmless error” rule, if the reviewing court determines that the person is “probably” guilty anyway. Then the “error” of a deliberate prosecutorial misconduct is deemed “harmless.” See, e.g. Cargle v. Mullin, 317 F. 3d 1196 (10th Cir. 2003) (“A prosecutor’s misconduct will require reversal of a conviction only where the misconduct sufficiently infected the trial so as to make it fundamentally unfair.”); Mason v. Mitchell, 320 F. 3d 604 (6th Cir. 2003) (“The misconduct must be so pronounced and persistent that it permeates the entire atmosphere of the trial”).

The problem with this logic is that the true harm is not in the result of the deliberate misconduct, but in the misconduct itself. For example where evidence of a crime has been wrongfully seized, it may be suppressed, what then is the distinction?

Our constitutional democracy works because we have become a nation of laws that evolve as necessary to protect the rights of all citizens. If we create a system that effectively absolves deliberate prosecutorial misconduct based upon subjective interpretation of actual harm, and not the act of misconduct itself, do we not invite and even encourage prosecution misconduct? The answer is yes!

As a civilized society we embrace the liberty interests of law and order. Without laws there can be no “order” as one cannot exist without the other. Now imagine a world where every individual is subject to accountability, except those empowered by the government to enforce those laws, this is America ! We must obey all laws while those who are to enforce them have no such obligation, and no accountability.

In today’s criminal justice system, with an epidemic of wrongful convictions increasingly undermining its confidence, prosecutorial misconduct has become the leading cause of these miscarriages of justice and MUST be addressed. The problem is immense, so much so that the US Supreme Court found it necessary to immunize prosecutors against civil liability based on corrupt practices, which include inter alia, acts of, concealment of evidence and lies and deception in the prosecution of criminal cases, even when they prosecute someone they know never committed any crime. The corrupt prosecutor will often use the Media to create the illusion of guilt. Trying the case in the public arena, where the accused is made to look guilty before any trial on the merits. A search for the truth, the very essence of litigation has been replaced with a struggle to pronounce guilt even where there is none.

Even with this epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct victimizing innocent men and women with wrongful incarceration and even condemning them to death, prosecutors enjoy “absolute immunity” from judicial accountability. In Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976) the Supreme Court concluded that prosecutors, even when they deliberately fabricate evidence, present false evidence, and knowingly use perjured testimony, even when they deliberately prosecute someone they know is innocent, are entitled to “absolute immunity” and cannot be held judicially accountable. The Supreme Court concluded, “The ultimate fairness of the system could be weakened” if prosecutors were held accountable in court for even deliberate misconduct.

This mundane thinking is archaic, used solely to shield intentional wrong doing of the politically connected. Everyone whether in government or outside must be held accountable for their actions when they cause deliberate harm. The operable word here is deliberate.

Add to that the political consequences that make admitting error, the equivalent of career suicide, and a culture that promotes those who will win at any cost; where the most “successful” prosecutors are those who practice the philosophy that “the ends justify the means” and you have a system that invites injustice, and becomes by its very nature inherently corrupt from within.

How can we deny that the absence of accountability is itself an invitation to injustice? If our system can identify the overall numbers of specific prosecutors who have reportedly engaged in deliberate misconduct then is there not a moral responsibility to at the very least ensure that these corrupt individuals never practice law again?

If we identify a doctor that has deliberately engaged in malpractice causing injury to his or her patient, do we not take action to strip them of their license to practice? Why would we demand anything less of a person entrusted to represent “We, the people” in a court of law? Is not the deliberate violation or that most sacred trust at least as equally contemptible, and intolerable, as a physician deliberately engaging in acts of malpractice that victimizes his patients?

The hypocrisy that presently exists is perpetuated by the system itself. Florida being a good case in point, the Florida Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished prosecutors for deliberate misconduct in capital cases, promising that disciplinary actions would follow if that behavior continues, yet not once has the Court actually taken action. This judicial rhetoric is found in case law e.g. In Ruiz v. State, 743 So. 2d 1 ( Fla. 1999) the Florida Supreme Court stated that,“ we warned of the dire consequences of such ‘inexcusable prosecutorial overkill.’” citing, Hill v. State, 477 So. 2d 553 (Fla. 1985) “… yet in spite of our admonishment in Hill and despite subsequent warnings that prosecutorial misconduct will be subject to disciplinary proceedings by the Florida Bar, we never-the-less continue to encounter this problem with unacceptable frequency.” Both Ruiz and Hill were capital cases in which the defendants were sentenced to death; but they’re certainly not the only capital (death sentence) cases in which the Court admonished prosecutors for acts of deliberate misconduct. See, e.g. Garcia v. State, 622 So. 2d 1325 ( Fla. 1993) (“Once again, we are compelled to reiterate the need for propriety, particularly where the death penalty is involved.”); Nowitzke v. State, 572 So. 2d 1346 ( Fla. 1990) (“We are distressed over the lack of propriety and restraint exhibited in the overzealous prosecution of capital cases.”); Garron v. State, 528 So. 2d 353 ( Fla. 1988) (“Such violations of the prosecutor’s duty to seek justice and not merely ‘win’ a death case cannot be condoned by this Court.”); and, Bertolotti v. State, 476 So. 2d 130 (Fla.1985) (“we have recently addressed incidents of prosecutorial misconduct, in the face of repeated admonitions against such overreaching to be grounds for appropriate disciplinary proceedings.”)

All of these cases in which the Florida Supreme Court explicitly recognized acts of prosecutorial misconduct share several things in common, in each of these cases the defendant was sentenced to death (several of these defendants have since been executed) and in each of these cases no actual disciplinary action was taken against the prosecutor found to have engaged in such misconduct.

Two distinct forms of prosecutorial misconduct have accounted for the majority of cases in Florida in which a wrongfully convicted and condemned person was subsequently exonerated by the Courts and released from death row. The first form is an act of prosecutorial misconduct in which a prosecutor is subsequently found to have knowingly withheld material evidence of an exculpatory nature from the defense. In many cases evidence that would have proven the person innocent. The second form are acts of overzealous prosecution in which a prosecutor has a wholly circumstantial case of specious nature, yet proceeds to prosecute by simply manipulating the jury into believing the evidence proves guilt beyond reasonable doubt even though the evidence is legally insufficient to support guilt.

The most recent exoneration released from Florida ’s death row after almost six years of incarceration is John Ballard. After being convicted and condemned to death without any eyewitnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, and no confession; the Florida Supreme Court concluded that the erroneous conviction was the product of overzealous prosecution; that the prosecutor (Deputy Assistant State Attorney Randall McGruther) improperly stacked circumstantial inference upon inference to convince the jury of Ballard’s guilt even though no credible evidence actually supported guilt. See, Ballard v. State, 923 So 2d 475 ( Fla. 2006)

Prosecutorial misconduct is a corruption that acts as a cancer upon the very integrity of our judicial system. This corruption exists only because the judicial system and the State Bar’s allow it to exist. When a group of prosecutors engage in repeated acts of deliberate misconduct resulting in convicting and condemning innocent men and women to death, then those individual prosecutors become the responsibility of society to insist that these prosecutors who have engaged in deliberate misconduct never practice law again. If we are not willing to hold them accountable, then we invite the injustice that inevitably results.

The use of the media, to prosecute a case through the resort of public opinion, where the accused, though innocent, will lose his good name and reputation must be stopped. Sadly the Majority of Americans lack the intelligence to see through the mist, that fog professed by media hype with the prosecutor’s aid.

They buy into media attacks and accusations without seeking the truth behind the campaign. Without ever wondering what really happened, their mind having been molded by the rants of a decisively controlled media, facts then become irrelevant. It is for that reason alone, that people decline to step forward to help. It is this ignorance that allows the Government to keep its citizens in the dark, and allows them to take from us without challenge.

This list of corrupt prosecutors is as endless as there are offices to fill and there are thousands that could be included.

The most extreme injustice conceivable is that of an innocent man or woman being wrongfully convicted and condemned to death, and yet we are executing the innocent.

The Breakdown of American Morality

The breakdown of American morality began very quietly, merely at first a plan to transition America from a producer of goods, in a free market economy, to a service based economy, and it took more than a generation of planning and insight to complete the transition.

But, consider, why would any nation desire to transition is productivity, the real economic backbone of an industrialized country, and thereby reduce the standard of living of its own citizens?

When you have finished reading this essay you will come to understand the darkness of our present society and the real reason, a war based economy and the need for perpetual manpower in that arena.

It began when the United States became the largest modern economy to become a producer of wars as a means to employ its population. It began during a period of relative prosperity, with its focus predominately under the Reagan/Bush Administration.

It was both during the cold war and at the beginning of its end, when policies changed to a global presence, beginning during the Second World War, but gaining its momentum and focus around 1950 with Korea, then Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to the planned invasion of Iran, and Syria.

Eventually, the Neoconservatives would find an ear, and before the turn of the century such war mongers as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Weekly Standard (Rupert Murdock) began to stage the US foreign Policy, many of these insiders were drawn into the George W. Bush administration, where their appetite could be appeased, and our need to be involved in wars of choice, had a ready ear, primarily, incidentally in the oil and drug rich Middle East, in contrast to the 1970’s oil and drug rich Golden Triangle which included Vietnam.

The Golden Triangle is one of Asia ’s two main illicit Opium producing areas. It is an area of around 350,000 square kilometers that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia; Myanmar ( Burma ), Vietnam , Laos , and Thailand , (Other interpretations of the Golden Triangle also include a section of Yunnan Province , ( China .) Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent and Pakistan , it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1950s.

The New Direction

George H. W. Bush as President from1989 to 1993 took America into 18 separate conflicts, and another 21 under Reagan 1981-1989. Expanding the military industrial complex, (MIC) even against the advice of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, in his farewell address in January 1961, warned that “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the ‘military industrial complex’. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

The Transition which began almost 60 years ago was fully implemented by September 11, 2001, by coincidence or design it was in time for the “terrorist” attack on the World Trade Center . Although history demonstrates, but with cooked intelligence, that the US was unprepared and lacked sufficient knowledge to prevent the attack, the facts present an alarming discrepancy. The administration knew of the planned attack, and “allowed” it to take place, of this there is NO question. A CIA asset Michael Riconisuito advised the Administration through Colin Powell, and John Ashcroft, who refused to act. There are also (9) different admitted communications that warned the Bush Administration of the pending attack.

Indeed, in September 2000, when the Pentagon issued its famous strategy document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the belief was expressed that the kind of military transformation the planners were considering required "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor,” to make it possible to sell the plan to the American public. They were either prescient or lucky because one year later, they had the "New Pearl Harbor" they had been hoping for.

This New Pearl Harbor idea was the Concept referred to in the PNAC paper developed in the late1990’s, which gave a neoconservative logic for Mid East wars of choice by first strike initiative, and which included the planned invasion of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. In the Eastern Mediterranean Region, Syria is the only substantial oil producer.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a bonanza for the American military-industrial complex. This was an event, a "New Pearl Harbor," that some had openly been hoping for. The reason! These attacks gave the perfect pretext to keep military expenses, which had been expected to fall after the demise of the old Soviet Empire, at a high level. Instead, they provided the rationale for dramatically increasing them, by substituting a “War on Terror” and a "War against Islamists" as a replacement for the “War against Communism,” and the "Cold War against the Soviet Union ".

In this new perspective, the gates of military spending could be open and flowing again. The development of ever more sophisticated armaments could go forward and thousands of corporations and hundreds of political districts could continue to reap the benefits. The costs would be born by the taxpayers, by young men and women who die in combat and by remote populations who happen to lie under the rain of bombs about to fall on them.

At the time, no one understood the reasons behind the transition, that there was a purpose in reducing America ’s standard of living, i.e. fewer high paying jobs, and economic despair equals a higher level of enlistment in the armed services, and its supporting industries.

But what are these wars really about? Is it the Oil, Drugs, Territory, Empire Building or merely Economic?

The answer can be quite alarming, considering, the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is the largest part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) produced in the United States . But don’t underestimate the value of the Drug trade. The Military intelligence agencies all over the world value it greatly, as it is a large part of their black ops budget.

The MIC is generally defined as a "coalition consisting of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government." (War profiteering) Eisenhower related... that until World War II, the United States did not have an armaments industry. Even though "American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well," the United States could "no longer risk emergency improvisation" of the country's national defense.

The fact that the MIC, benefits from international conflicts explains why it has almost always reacted negatively to discussions of international cooperation and detente. Thus, for example, in the late 1940s and early1950s, the Korean War and the "communist threat" were used as a “pretext” by the proponents of military buildup to overrule those who called for limits on military spending.

Representatives of the military-industrial complex, disproportionately ensconced in the State Department, succeeded in having President Truman embark on his famous overhaul of the U.S. foreign policy, which drastically increased the Pentagon budget and expanded the military-industrial establishment.

At the time President Eisenhower warned about the influence that the military-industrial complex exerted upon the government, most Americans believed that a massive Cold War defense budget was necessary for national survival. Today it is no longer necessary to marshal this level of public support for government spending, because the process of ceding control of public activities, including the defense of the United States , to private business is much further advanced.

The United States has and will continue to sacrifice the quality of life for its domestic population at the expense of the military industrial complex. The United States has become a war machine and unless we stop feeding this war machine, we as a nation will never have peace. The United States , in its own way, embodies a fascistic regime, where constant war becomes synonymous with peace and constant propaganda becomes synonymous with truth.

It is because of this giant war complex that America has a need to produce generations of warriors, a generation made ready by the reality of dwindling employment opportunities, and frequent recessions. This evolving into an integral concept of a theme of nationalism, if this sounds familiar it should, “National Socialism”, the theory behind the NAZI regime of Adolph Hitler, which is very closely akin to US foreign and domestic policies.

Germany produced the war machine, the men, the armaments, the assets for the war. Each country Germany over ran produced the remaining goods and services for the German complex.
For Example: Germany lack natural supplies in several key raw materials needed for economic and military operations. Germany obtained its iron ore from Sweden , its manganese and Oil from Russia , and Rubber from the Dutch and British.

In America , the turning point was September 11, 2001 a day of unification and the height of American patriotism, but the stage was actually set in 1981. The incoming presidency of Ronald Reagan and his mentor George, HW Bush.

Wars, especially modern electronic wars, are very murderous, but they are also synonymous with big cost-plus contracts, big profits and big employment for those who produce the required military gear. Wars are the ultimate paradise of profiteers.

Wars are also a way for mediocre politicians to monopolize both the news and the media in their partisan favor by whipping up patriotic fervor and by pushing for narrow-minded nationalism. Indeed, to inflame patriotism and nationalism is an old demagogic trick used to dominate a nation. When that happens, there is a clear danger that democracy and freedom will be eroded, and even disappear, if that development leads to an exacerbated concentration of power and political corruption, which has become self evident in the United States.

The MIC needs wars, many and successive wars, to prosper, and that is the very purpose of their existence. Old military equipment has to be repaired and replaced each time there is a hot war. But to justify the enormous costs of developing ever more deadly weapons, there must be a constant climate of fear and vulnerability.

For example, there are many reports, originating from medical and international observers, that the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza during the summer of 2006, allowed for the use of “new American Made Weapons”. Such weapons are reported to include depleted uranium (DU) bombs, 'direct energy' weapons and new chemical and biological weapons.

These weapons not only make the act of homicide easier but they also contaminate the environment with radioactive DU particles for decades to come.

Evidence of these ‘directed-energy weapons’ (DEW) were found to have been used in Panama during the 1989 US Invasion, it is a type of weapon that emits energy in an aimed direction without the means of a projectile. It transfers energy to a target for a desired effect. These weapons are very real.

But, in order to build a compact strong enough to steer a democratic country on the path to a permanent war economy it takes an alliance of interests between militarists, industrialists, politicians, sycophants and propagandists. These are the five pillars of the military-industrial complex, as can be found in the United States , and they all have one thing in common, Banks, ownership and control!

How do they make it work?

In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. defense budget was $298.9 billion. In 2006, that budget had increased to $447.4 billion, and this does not include the more than $100 billion spent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The 2009 budget is $515.4 Billion, and again does not reflect the current wars. It is estimated that American military expenditures represent, at a very minimum, close to if not more than half of total world military outlays (48 percent of the world total in 2005, according to official figures), while the U.S. accounts for less than 5 per cent of world population and about 25 per cent of world total output. As a percentage, the U.S. military expenses gobble up a minimum of 21 percent of the total American federal budget (2006=$2.5 trillion). Such a military budget is larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of some countries, such as Belgium or Sweden . It is sort of a government within a government.

The 2009 Federal Budget has an outlay of $3.1 Trillion, with a projected income of only $2.7 Trillion. Again the financial cost of the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan are not part of the defense budget; they are appropriations.

Employment statistics
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense employed 2,143,000 people, while it estimates that private defense contractors employ 3,600,000 workers, for a grand total of 5,743,000 defense-related American jobs, or 3.8 percent of the total labor force. In addition, there are close to 25 million veterans in the United States . Therefore, it is safe to say that more than 30 million Americans receive checks which originate directly or indirectly from the U. S. military budget. Assuming conservatively only two voting-age people per household, this translates into a block of some 60 million American voters who have a financial stake in the American military establishment.

The private defense contractors
The five largest American Defense contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. They are being followed by Honeywell, Halliburton, BAE Systems and thousands of smaller defense companies and subcontractors. Some, like Lockheed Martin in Bethesda ( Maryland ) and Raytheon in Waltham ( Massachusetts ) draw close to 100 percent of their business from defense contracts. Some others, like Honeywell in Morristown ( New Jersey ), have important consumer goods divisions. All, however, stand to profit when expenditures on weapons procurements increase. In fact, U.S. defense contractors have been enjoying big Pentagon budgets since March 2003, i.e. since the onset of the Iraq war. As a result, they have posted sizable increases in total shareholder returns, ranging from 68 percent (Northrop Grumman) to 164 percent (General Dynamics), from March '03 to September '06.

It should also be noted that private defense contractors play another social role: they are big employers of former generals and former admirals from the U.S. military establishment.

The political establishment
In the U.S., former President George W. Bush, an oilman, and former Vice President Dick Cheney, was a former chairman and CEO of the large oil service company Halliburton in Houston (Texas), epitomize the image of politicians devoted to the growth and development of the military-industrial complex. Their administration expanded the military establishment and they had adopted a militarist foreign policy on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War and even since the end of World War II. Indeed, under the Bush-Cheney administration, the arms industry became very profitable. Multibillion dollar contracts to sell planes and tanks to various countries in an increasingly lawless world gained full swagger. Close to two-thirds of all arms exports in the world originate from North America .

Congress, for its part, is indebted to defense corporations that operate military plants in each congressman's district or senator's state, besides owing some gratitude to the lobbies that provide funds and media support in election times.

The "think tanks" establishment
The brain-trust and the sycophants behind the war-oriented economy form an interlocking network of Washington-based so-called 'think tanks' that are financed by the rich tax-exempt foundations which have billions of dollars of assets, such as, for example, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation or the Coors Foundation, etc. Among the most influential and representative think tanks, whose mission is to orient American foreign policy, one finds the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heritage Foundation, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) Pand the Hudson Institute. Such think tanks serve a double purpose: they provide government officials with policy papers on various topics, usually on the very conservative side; and, they serve as incubators for government departments, supplying them with already trained personnel and providing employment for public officials who are out of office.

The same revolving door that exists between the military establishment and defense contractors is also observed to exist between the Washington-based think tanks and U.S. government departments.

The "propaganda" establishment
The pro-war economy propagandists are to be found in the fundamentally right-wing American media industry, which are directly under the control of the Federal Government, which is also controlled by the same force that controls the media outlets, the large stock holdings by the Banks. This is because the selling of war-oriented policies requires the expertise that only a well-oiled propaganda machine can provide. The most potent propaganda tool is television. And there, Rupert Murdoch’s FOX News Network is unbeatable. There is no American media outlet more openly devoted to the neocon ideology and more committed to supporting new American wars than Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC emulate it, but their professionalism prevents them from even coming close to Fox News in biased reporting toward war, and in unabashedly promoting U.S. Global domination.

Fox's propaganda efforts are closely coordinated with other Murdoch-owned print media, such as the Weekly Standard and the New York Post. The Washington Times, which is controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church , the neoconservative New York Sun, and other neocon publications such as the National Review, The New Republic, The American Spectator, the Wall Street Journal, complete the main pro-war propaganda infrastructure.

In conclusion, it is the conjunction of these five pro-war machines, i.e., the bloated military establishment, the large American arms industry, the Neocon pro-war administration with Congress being strongly under the influence of militarist lobbies, the pro-war think tanks network and the pro-war media propagandists that constitutes the framework of the military-industrial complex, of which President Dwight Eisenhower wisely feared the corrosive influence on American society, almost 60 years ago, in 1961.

"Over-grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." --George Washington (1732-1799), 1st US President.

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." --General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

Is it possible now to reverse this trend? It may be too late; Hank Paulson and his successor Timothy Geithner are part of the financial oligarchy, a part of the banking oligarchy, whose interests are not the same as the interests of the American people. Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner are part of a global banking cartel, the same group of bankers all over the world, who seek to keep interest rates as low as possible, to make it as easy for them to borrow as much as they need. The reason, because when they make a bad bet, their respective governments bail them out with tax payer money. It’s really a war, there’s a global war going on between investors and speculators. Anyone who’s trying to invest money for a decent return, or work for a decent wage is being squeezed out or pushed out by speculators who have access to cheap money through political connections.

It’s not a coincidence that the primary GDP-boosting activities of America are war, and the same individuals that service the war councils are on the board of directors of these banks and in Washington , and on each of the companies that reap the windfalls of domestic and military spending.

Wake UP!

How Many More Jobs Will America Lose?

Have you ever wondered why America has suffered such a remarkable decline, consider; more than 315 major American companies with literally millions of high paying jobs have moved off shore. The list follows!

But consider also that every major bank and manufacturing company has outsourced its employees and actually moved its business to an off shore P. O. Box to avoid taxes, leaving America as a service oriented economy. Jobs are only growing in the following market place e.g. waiters and waitresses; janitors and cleaners; food preparation; nursing aides, orderlies and attendants; cashiers; customer service representatives; retail salespersons; registered nurses; general and operational managers; and post-secondary teachers, only service oriented jobs remain in America.

For decades America practiced the “best” aspects of colonialism, while avoiding the burdens. Unlike other nations which strove to bring the exploited nation into the “system”, America simply exploited.

There was originally no attempt to conquer, colonize, settle, and create an “off shore” America ; it was cash and carry, that is until recently, until America began its current phase of Empire or imperialism.

This worked well in supplying American companies with raw materials and cheap labor so finished products could be sold at many times the cost of production. But as hours and wages began to rise and overtime pay was required, and with laws against pollution being enforced the venues used by American business became less viable. The mega corporations saw the “handwriting” on the wall, and before the final bell, moved to another venue. American business began to look elsewhere, but even as business began to look off shore it needed co-operation from the government.

When Japan became too “expensive” in the 1950s, Korea and Taiwan were utilized. As these countries achieved a level of sophistication, American businesses moved into Third World nations, creating “free zones”, where locals could be exploited and tax breaks obtained.

By the 1980’s Reagan and Bush provided the necessary help in the form of grants, which along with those provided through Mexico and south American nations allowed our manufacturing segment to relocate free of expense, in some cases manufacturing plants were funded by the foreign government.

But as more nations reached the stage America had been in the 1950s/60, competition arose.

By the late 1990s America did not seem aware that China , for example, had taken over the American factories and was producing ‘American’ products under other names and selling them far cheaper.

By the 2000s, many American companies went out of business and/or have been purchased by foreign holdings. Though the company may be registered in America , its factories, labor force, even its owners are located in another country.

The bottom line is that there are fewer jobs for Americans, and less profit remains in America .

The Stock Market Bubble

An example of the mischief caused by this reverse colonialism, where the exploited nations turned around, and invested in American companies, until they literally or virtually, owned them, is that each nation, Korea, India, China, Brazil, etc use the balance of payments deficit to reinvest is American assets, “ownership” in American companies. It is this foreign corporate and national investment in America that is partially responsible for the buoyancy in the Stock Market, through what is called “sovereign wealth funds” (SWF).

SWF Foreign investment funds are funds owned by national governments and financed by the country's foreign currency reserves (dollar, euro, yen), often through their central banks or via direct investments.

The term sovereign wealth fund was introduced in 2005, but the first SEF was introduced in 1953 by the government of Kuwait (' Kuwait Investment Authority,' a commodity SWF). These funds are now major players in the world financial markets.

The combined assets of the major SWFs (owned by 20 governments) have reached over five trillion dollars, and are expected to reach over 10 trillion dollars by 2012. Although the current total amount makes up only some 4 percent of the world's traded securities, the SWFs already have tremendous concentrated financial power. Over half of the SWF assets are owned by oil and gas exporting nations, and about one third by Australia , China , and Singapore . SWFs are aggressive investors and have bought into firms as diverse as Morgan Stanley, General Electric, and Sony.

Although the great meltdown of the American economy seemed to have happened ‘overnight’ it was a long developing series of events, which can only be corrected by returning American manufacturing to America .

Simply put, Americans have no jobs, and no money, so they can not help in any effort to stabilize the economy.

In closing; I would remind the reader that a country cannot close nor balance its trade deficit if its economy is being moved offshore.

Offshore production hits the trade deficit from both ends: goods once produced domestically become imports, and as production moves offshore the ability to export declines. When a U.S. business moves a factory to China , that factory's products cease to be potential exports and become imports.

The following list of corporations that have moved off shore is current as of 2003, more have moved off shore since. This will give you some idea why America is in a state of decline and why the economy is in shambles.
A
Accenture; Adaptec; ADC; Adobe Systems; Advanced Energy Industries; Aetna; Affiliated Computer Services; A.G. Edwards; Agere Systems; Agilent Tech.; AIG; Alamo Rent A Car; Albertson's; Allen Systems Group; Alliance Semiconductor; Allstate; Alpha Thought Global; Amazon.com; AMD; American Express; American Household; American Management Systems; American Standard; Amphenol Corp.; Analog Devices; Andrew Corp.; Anheuser-Busch; AOL; Apple; Applied Materials; A.T. Cross Company; AT&T; AT&T Wireless; A.T. Kearney; Automatic Data Processing; Avanade; Avery Dennison
B
Bank of America; Bank of New York; Bank One; BearingPoint; Bear Stearns; Bechtel; BellSouth; Best Buy; Black & Decker; BMC Software; Boeing; Brocade; Bumble Bee
C
Cadence Design Systems; Capital One; Carrier; Cendant; Cerner Corporation; Charles Schwab; ChevronTexaco; CIBER; Ciena; Cigna; Circuit City, Inc.; Cisco Systems; Citigroup; CNA; Coca-Cola; Cognizant Technology Solutions; Columbia House; Comcast Holdings; Computer Associates; Computer Sciences Corporation; CompuServe; Continental Airlines; Convergys; Cooper Tire & Rubber; Cooper Tools; Countrywide Financial; COVAD Comm.; CSX; Cummins; Cypress Semiconductor
D
Dana Corporation; Delco Remy; Dell Computer; Delphi; Delta Air Lines; Direct TV; Discover; Document Sciences Corp.; Dow Chemical; Dun & Bradstreet; DuPont
E
Earthlink; Eastman Kodak; Eaton Corporation; EDS; Electroglas; Electronics for Imaging; Eli Lilly; EMC; Emerson Electric; En Pointe Technologies; Equifax; Ernst & Young; Ethan Allen; Evolving Systems; Expedia; ExxonMobil
F
Fair Isaac; Fedders Corporation; Federated Dept. Stores; Fidelity Investments; Financial Techologies International; First American Title Ins.; First Data; Fluor; Ford Motor; Franklin Mint; Franklin Templeton; Freeborders; Fruit of the Loom;
G
Gateway; GE Capital; General Electric; General Motors; GlobespanVirata; Goldman Sachs; Goodrich; Google; Greenpoint Mortgage; Guardian Life Insurance;
H
The Hartford Financial Services Group; HealthAxis; Helen of Troy Corp.; Hewitt Associates; Hewlett-Packard; The Holmes Group; Honeywell; HSN; Humana
I
IBM; iGate Corporation; IndyMac Bancorp; Infogain; Innodata Isogen; Innova Solutions; Intel; Intl. Paper; Intuit; Invacare; ITT Educational Services
J
Jabil Circuit; Jacobs Engineering; Jacuzzi; JDS Uniphase; Johnson Controls; Johnson & Johnson; JPMorgan Chase; Juniper Networks
K
KANA Software; Kaiser Permanente; Keane; KeyCorp; KLA-Tencor; Kraft Foods; Kulicke and Soffa Industries; Kwikset;
L
Lawson Software; Lehman Brothers; Levi Strauss; Lexmark International; Lifescan; Lillian Vernon; Linksys; Lionbridge Technologies; LiveBridge; Lockheed Martin; Lowe's; Lucent
M
Maritz; Marshall Fields; Mattel; Maytag; McDATA Corporation; McKinsey & CO; Medtronic; Mellon Bank; Merrill Corporation; Merrill Lynch; Metasolv; MetLife; Microsoft; Monsanto; Morgan Stanley; Motorola
N
Nabco; National City Corporation; National Life; National Semiconductor; NCR Corporation; neoIT; NETGEAR; Network Associates; Newell Rubbermaid; New York Life Insurance Co.; Northwest Airlines
O
Office Depot; Ohio Art; ON Semiconductor; Oracle; OshKosh B'Gosh; Otis Elevator Co.; Outsource Partners International; Owens Corning;
P
palmOne; Parker-Hannifin; Parsons E&C; Pearson Digital Learning; Pericom Semiconductor; Perot Systems; Pfizer; Pitney Bowes; Planar Systems; Portal Software; Pratt & Whitney; Primus Telecom; Procter & Gamble; ProQuest; Providian Financial; Prudential Insurance;
Q
Quark; Qwest Comm.
R
Rainbow Technologies; Radio Shack; Rawlings Sporting Goods; Raytheon Aircraft; RCG Information Technology; Regence Group; Rogers; Rohm & Haas; RR Donnelley & Sons; Russell Corporation
S
Sabre; SAIC; Sallie Mae; Sanmina-SCI; SBC Comm.; SEI Investments; Siebel Systems; Sikorsky; SMC Networks; Solectron; Sovereign Bancorp; Sprint; Sprint PCS; Stanley Furniture; Stanley Works; Starkist Seafood; State Farm Insurance; State Street; StorageTek; StrategicPoint Investment Advisors; Sun Microsystems; SunTrust Banks; Supra Telecom; SurePrep; The Sutherland Group; Sykes Enterprises; Symbol Technologies; Synygy
T
Target; Tecumseh; Telcordia; Teleflex; TeleTech; Tellabs; Teradyne; Texas Inst.; Textron; Thrivent Financial for Lutherans; Time Warner; Tower Automotive; Toys "R" Us; Trans Union; Travelocity; Triquint Semiconductor; Tropical Sportswear; TRW Automotive; Tyco Electronics; Tyco Intl.
U
Union Pacific Railroad; Unisys; UnitedHealth Group Inc.; United Online; United Tech.; USAA
V
Valence Technology; VA Software; Veritas; Verizon; VF Corporation; Vishay
W
Wachovia Bank; Washington Group Intl.; Washington Mutual; WellChoice; Werner Co.; West Corporation; Weyerhaeuser; Whirlpool; Wolverine World Wide;
WorldCom; Wyeth
X
Xpitax
Y
Yahoo!