US Government Sponsored Human Trafficking

As if allowing your employees to gang-rape women isn't enough, how about abducting people from their homes by promising them jobs in the United States, only to take them and force them to work for little pay in Iraq?

Buddhi Gurung, who calls himself a poor Nepali man, described how he was unable to get a job to support his wife and two sons during fighting by Maoist rebels and the army in 2004. When an agent promised him a job in America for $500 a month, he said he borrowed about $2,800 to pay him — but instead of going to the United States, he was taken to Jordan via New Delhi.

After a month in Jordan, he said he was put in a van with 11 others and driven to Baghdad. Twelve Nepali friends in the van that left just before his were abducted, paraded on television and eventually beheaded. Gurung said he wound up at the U.S. Al Asad Air Base where he was forced to work and paid less than the promised $500 a month.

"We would hear bomb blasts nearby and we knew our life was at risk," Gurung said. "I always wanted to go back to Nepal but neither my passport was with me, nor did I have any money or knew any other way to go back. ... Finally, after 15 months, I was permitted to go back to Nepal. ... This is how my life was saved."

Gurung and the families of the 12 Nepali men have filed a U.S. federal lawsuit accusing Houston-based defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, of human trafficking.

When I was reading this, I was like, how in the hell did he wind up being forced to work in Iraq? I know that there are criminal organizations that abduct people, but surely once he was found by our people, he would have been sent home. And then I read that KBR was responsible, and it suddenly made sense. Why recruit Americans, who you'll have to pay really well, and pay hazard pay for going some place so dangerous, when you can just abduct people from third world countries and force them to work? This shit just keeps getting deeper. And our congressmen are tangentially responsible for everything that these contractors have done, by failing to have oversight of the situation.

I did a search but, there doesn't seem to be much about this case in the news. Surprise, surprise.

Republicans: Party of the School Yard Bully

I have another right-wing rant in my inbox this evening. This one treating Arlen Specter like the popular kid who decided to be friends with the geeks. It's called ostracizing those with whom you don't agree. The Republicans have turned into the party of the school yard bully. "We're taking our ball and going home!" That and when someone doesn't do something the way you want them to, you have to turn on them and tell the whole school that they're really a whore who slept with everyone. It's so fucking immature. I feel like I'm back in high school when I read this shit.

As we learned today, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter has decided become a Democrat in the face of a seemingly insurmountable bid for re-election next year in Pennsylvania... Even before his announcement today, Senator Specter's political future was in grave danger, with recent polls showing him trailing former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey by more than 20 points.

After he crossed party lines to support President Obama's massive $787 billion "stimulus" package, Senator Specter conceded that his vote caused "an enormous political problem for me," yet argued it was a "matter of necessity." His purported willingness to put politics aside for the good of our country ring especially hollow in light of his decision today.

While we are disappointed that Senator Specter has put personal ambition ahead of principles, we are confident that the Keystone State will reject this posturing and elect a new Republican Senator who will stand by his word next year. The fact remains that Pennsylvanians are looking for principled leadership, not political opportunism.

Nevertheless, today's news raised the stakes for all Americans. President Obama and the Democratic Congress have spent more in the first 100 days than what was spent on the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War and Katrina combined. And you and I, along with our children and grandchildren, are going to pay this bill. Senator Specter has chosen to enable this runaway spending by joining the Democratic Party...

First of all, let me say I hold no idealist view of Specter's reasons for defecting to the Democrats. I'm sure that the reasons are probably self serving, but what politician isn't self serving? This is like the pot calling the kettle black. And Specter pointed out a very important thing today, and that was that the Republican party has moved further and further to the right. They have embraced the xenophobic, homophobic, religious fanatics, and that's pretty much what's left right now in their party. I want to point out that the Republicans are one hair shy of outright fascism, and the Democrats aren't even on the left, they're all moderate. They're pro-Corporate at the expense of the people. The only good thing about the Democrats is that they do want the government to stay out of our private lives, which is what the Republicans are *supposed* to be for, before they were hijacked by the Moral Majority... I suppose they're the Moral Minority now.

Secondly, who the fuck do these people think they are taking the Democrats to task for spending money on the economy and infrastructure while saying it's costing more than the two wars we're fighting and the clean up from Katrina. The stupid pricks didn't have to go along with the wars. I'm sure they'll try to blame that on Obama eventually too. We'd still have all that money and hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive, if we hadn't gone off to wage war in Iraq because Saddam flipped G.W.'s daddy off. The Republicans think it's okay to blow a huge wad of cash on killing people, but improving the lives of their constituents? Not on your life.

What Has the Government Ever Done for Us?

You know, besides the roads, the schools, the scholarships, the public grants to fund students, health care research, promote the arts (as any reasonable society should), the sanitation, the (horribly underfunded) public transportation. You know, what have they ever done for us?

And why are the right wing, racist fanatics the ones who are raving about this? Could it be because they feel disenfranchised because a black kid gets to go to college with public money? That must really be a kick in the balls to them. Stupid fuckers. That's the problem with this world. No matter what happens, what cruel lessons are played out and suffered by humanity, nothing changes. We don't learn a damned thing.

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on."--Winston Churchill

We have to pay taxes. It's part of being in an advanced and democratic civilization. Nothing would get done if we didn't. Indeed, we probably don't spend enough money funding the stuff that should be funded, like our crumbling infrastructures, and our schools that date from the turn of the century before last where students use books from before I was born.

And yes, a lot of money gets wasted, some of it on atrocity. But where the hell were these tax protesters when G. Dubya Bush was throwing billions of our money down a fox hole in Iraq? Where were they then? Oh, I know, we blow up brown people, and that's just fine and dandy. That doesn't fucking matter, because they ain't white and they ain't Christian, so why should we give a damn? Excuse the sarcasm. I've had just about enough stupidity for all my lifetimes, thank you.