SIGNIFICANT FOOTNOTES / DETAILS

2. Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
(Top 25 of 2007)

Source: Global Research.ca, August 5, 2005, Title: “Halliburton Secretly Doing Business With Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team,” Author: Jason Leopold

Faculty Evaluator: Catherine Nelson
Student Researchers: Kristine Medeiros and Pla Herr

According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former Cheney company Halliburton allege that, as recently as January of 2005, Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian oil development company. Leopold says his Halliburton sources have intimate knowledge of the business dealings of both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies.

Additionally, throughout 2004 and 2005, Halliburton worked closely with Cyrus Nasseri, the vice chairman of the board of directors of Iran-based Oriental Oil Kish, to develop oil projects in Iran. Nasseri is also a key member of Iran’s nuclear development team. Nasseri was interrogated by Iranian authorities in late July 2005 for allegedly providing Halliburton with Iran’s nuclear secrets. Iranian government officials charged Nasseri with accepting as much as $1 million in bribes from Halliburton for this information.

Oriental Oil Kish dealings with Halliburton first became public knowledge in January 2005 when the company announced that it had subcontracted parts of the South Pars gas-drilling project to Halliburton Products and Services, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Halliburton that is registered to the Cayman Islands. Following the announcement, Halliburton claimed that the South Pars gas field project in Tehran would be its last project in Iran. According to a BBC report, Halliburton, which took thirty to forty million dollars from its Iranian operations in 2003, “was winding down its work due to a poor business environment.”

However, Halliburton has a long history of doing business in Iran, starting as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the company. Leopold quotes a February 2001 report published in the Wall Street Journal, “Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., works behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. A brochure declares that the company was registered in 1975 in the Cayman Islands, is based in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is “non-American.” But like the sign over the receptionist’s head, the brochure bears the company’s name and red emblem, and offers services from Halliburton units around the world.” Moreover mail sent to the company’s offices in Tehran and the Cayman Islands is forwarded directly to its Dallas headquarters.

In an attempt to curtail Halliburton and other U.S. companies from engaging in business dealings with rogue nations such as Libya, Iran, and Syria, an amendment was approved in the Senate on July 26, 2005. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Susan Collins R-Maine, would penalize companies that continue to skirt U.S. law by setting up offshore subsidiaries as a way to legally conduct and avoid U.S. sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

A letter, drafted by trade groups representing corporate executives, vehemently objected to the amendment, saying it would lead to further hatred and perhaps incite terrorist attacks on the U.S. and “greatly strain relations with the United States primary trading partners.” The letter warned that, “Foreign governments view U.S. efforts to dictate their foreign and commercial policy as violations of sovereignty often leading them to adopt retaliatory measures more at odds with U.S. goals.”

Collins supports the legislation, stating, “It prevents U.S. corporations from creating a shell company somewhere else in order to do business with rogue, terror-sponsoring nations such as Syria and Iran. The bottom line is that if a U.S. company is evading sanctions to do business with one of these countries, they are helping to prop up countries that support terrorism—most often aimed against America.
UPDATE BY JASON LEOPOLD

During a trip to the Middle East in March 1996, Vice President Dick Cheney told a group of mostly U.S. businessmen that Congress should ease sanctions in Iran and Libya to foster better relationships, a statement that, in hindsight, is completely hypocritical considering the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

“Let me make a generalized statement about a trend I see in the U.S. Congress that I find disturbing, that applies not only with respect to the Iranian situation but a number of others as well,” Cheney said. “I think we Americans sometimes make mistakes . . . There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what’s best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like.”

Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton Corporation at the time he uttered those words. It was Cheney who directed Halliburton toward aggressive business dealings with Iran—in violation of U.S. law—in the mid-1990s, which continued through 2005 and is the reason Iran has the capability to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

It was Halliburton’s secret sale of centrifuges to Iran that helped get the uranium enrichment program off the ground, according to a three-year investigation that includes interviews conducted with more than a dozen current and former Halliburton employees.

If the U.S. ends up engaged in a war with Iran in the future, Cheney and Halliburton will bear the brunt of the blame.
But this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who has been following Halliburton’s business activities over the past decade. The company has a long, documented history of violating U.S. sanctions and conducting business with so-called rogue nations.

No, what’s disturbing about these facts is how little attention it has received from the mainstream media. But the public record speaks for itself, as do the thousands of pages of documents obtained by various federal agencies that show how Halliburton’s business dealings in Iran helped fund terrorist activities there—including the country’s nuclear enrichment program.

When I asked Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, a couple of years ago if Halliburton would stop doing business with Iran because of concerns that the company helped fund terrorism she said, “No.” “We believe that decisions as to the nature of such governments and their actions are better made by governmental authorities and international entities such as the United Nations as opposed to individual persons or companies,” Hall said. “Putting politics aside, we and our affiliates operate in countries to the extent it is legally permissible, where our customers are active as they expect us to provide oilfield services support to their international operations. “We do not always agree with policies or actions of governments in every place that we do business and make no excuses for their behaviors. Due to the long-term nature of our business and the inevitability of political and social change, it is neither prudent nor appropriate for our company to establish our own country-by-country foreign policy.”

Halliburton first started doing business in Iran as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the company and in possible violation of U.S. sanctions.

An executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in March 1995 prohibits “new investments (in Iran) by U.S. persons, including commitment of funds or other assets.” It also bars U.S. companies from performing services “that would benefit the Iranian oil industry” and provide Iran with the financial means to engage in terrorist activity.

When Bush and Cheney came into office in 2001, their administration decided it would not punish foreign oil and gas companies that invest in those countries. The sanctions imposed on countries like Iran and Libya before Bush became president were blasted by Cheney, who gave frequent speeches on the need for U.S. companies to compete with their foreign competitors, despite claims that those countries may have ties to terrorism.

“I think we’d be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions (on Iran), didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on companies . . . trying to do business over there . . . and instead started to rebuild those relationships,” Cheney said during a 1998 business trip to Sydney, Australia, according to Australia’s Illawarra Mercury newspaper.

SOURCE

9. Government Sponsored Technologies for Weather Modification
Top 25 of 2012

Rising global temperatures, increasing population and degradation of water supplies have created broad support for the growing field of weather modification. The US government has conducted weather modification experiments for over half a century, and the military-industrial complex stands poised to capitalize on these discoveries.

One of the latest programs is HAARP, the High Frequency Active Aural Research Program. This technology can potentially trigger floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. The scientific idea behind HAARP is to “excite” a specific area of the ionosphere and observe the physical processes in that excited area with intention of modifying ecological conditions. HAARP can also be used as a weapon system, capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.

Another Environmental Modification (EnMod) program is that of atmospheric geoengineering, or cloud seeding, which has found new life since the global warming scare. Cloud seeding involves creating cirrus clouds from airplane contrails. Unlike regular contrails, which dissolve in minutes, these artificial contrails can last from several hoursto days. Once the artificial clouds have been created, they are used to reflect solar or manmade radiation.

At a recent international symposium, scientists asserted that “manipulation of climate through modification of cirrus clouds is neither a hoax nor a conspiracy theory.” The only conspiracy surrounding geoengineering is that most governments and industry refuse to publicly admit what anyone can see in the sky or discover in peer-reviewed research. The Belfort Group has been working to raise public awareness about toxic aerial spraying, popularly referred to as chemtrails. However, scientists preferred the term ‘persistent contrails’ to describe the phenomenon, in an attempt to move the inquiry away from amateur conspiracy theories.

Dr. Vermeeren, Delft University of Technology, presented a 300-page scientific report entitled, “CASE ORANGE: Contrail Science, Its Impact on Climate and Weather Manipulation Programs Conducted by the United States and Its Allies.” He stated clearly, “Weather manipulation through contrail formation… is in place and fully operational.” Vermeeren mentioned a 1991 patent now held by Raytheon, a private defense contractor, with “18 claims to reduce global warming through stratospheric seeding with aluminum oxide… thorium oxide … and refractory Welsbach material.” Authors of the study expressed concern that Raytheon, a private corporation, makes daily flights spraying these materials in our skies with apparently minimal government oversight. Raytheon is the same company that holds the HAARP contract with the US.

Other countries are also experimenting. The Chinese government announced in April, 2007 the creation of the first-ever artificial snowfall over the city of Nagqu in Tibet. China now conducts more cloud-seeding projects than any other nation.

Sources:
“Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails,” Rady Ananda, Global Research, July 30, 2010. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20369

Dr. Coen Vermeeren, Video of Chemtrail Symposium speech, May 29, 2010 (beginning at 35 mins.). http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7299427

”Global Warming: An Effect of Weather Manipulation” The European Union Times online, January 3, 2010. http://www.eutimes.net/2010/01/global-warming-an-effect-of-weather-manipulation

“Man-Made Climate Change in the Skies,” March 28, 2011, Commonwealth Club National Podcast. http://commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/man-made-climate-change-skies-32811

“Persistent Jet Contrails & Man-made Clouds Change our Climate, Harming Agriculture & Our Natural Resources,” Rosalind Peterson, Agriculture Defense Coalition, July 12, 2009. http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/articles/NWV_Persistent_Contrails_and_Man_Made_Clouds_July_12_2009_by_Rosalind_Peterson.pdf

Student Researcher: Noe Otero, San Francisco State University
Faculty Evaluator: Kenn Burrows, San Francisco State University

Food Crisis- commodities manipulation

In February, the UN’s food price index rose for the eighth consecutive month, to the highest level since at least 1990. As a result, since 2010 began, roughly another 44 million people have quietly crossed the threshold into malnutrition, joining 925 million already suffering from lack of food. If prices continue to rise, this food crisis will push the ranks of the hungry toward a billion people, with another two billion suffering from “hidden malnutrition” from inadequate diets, nearly all in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. That deprivation will shorten lives and stunt young minds, hitting the most vulnerable populations, such as the urban poor of food importing countries, in cities like Cairo, Tunis and Dhaka.

Source

Monsanto Tries to Benefit from Haiti’s Earthquake
Top 25 of 2012

In May 2010, six months after an earthquake destroyed Haiti, the American multinational corporation Monsanto donated to the country 60 tons of corn and vegetable hybrid seed. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) took charge of the seed distribution.

A month later, on 4 June 2010, around 10,000 Haitian farmers demonstrated against Monsanto’s donation. “If Monsanto’s seed enters Haiti, farmers’ seed will disappear,” said Doudou Pierre Festil, member of Papaye Farmers Movement and coordinator of the National Haitian Network for Food Sovereignty and Security. Haitian farmers denounced the use of Monsanto’s seeds because they can’t be reused each year, which leads to the necessity of buying new seed from the multinational every new sowing season. Moreover, the Organization Farmer’s Route has warned that the use of Monsanto’s seeds could force the farmers to depend on the company. This dependence could also extend to the fertilizers and herbicides required by the American multinational, which also produces them.

“Haitian government is using the earthquake to sell the country to multinationals,” declared Chavannes Jean Baptiste, coordinator of Papaye Farmers Movement. Monsanto is the world’s biggest seed company: it controls 20% of the seed market and the 90% of agricultural biotechnological patents. The earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010 left 300,000 dead people and half a million wounded, and destroyed around a million homes.

Sources:
“Monsanto hace negocio en Haití tras el terremoto,” Julio Rojo, Diagonal, 28 July 2010. http://www.diagonalperiodico.net/Monsanto-hace-negocio-en-Haiti.html

Agencia Latina de Información: “Monsanto y el Proyecto Vencedor”, Thalles Gomes, Agencia Latina de Información, 19 May 2010. http://www.alainet.org/active/38266

Student Researchers: Joan Pedro, Luis Luján, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Faculty Evaluator: Dra. Ana I. Segovia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
(Spain)


Cuba was the first to come into Haiti with medical aid when the January 12, 2010, earthquake struck.
Among the many donor nations, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating Haiti’s earthquake victims. Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and to revamp hospitals immediately after the earthquake struck. Their pivotal work in the health sector has, however, received scant media coverage. “It is striking that there has been virtually no mention in the media of the fact that Cuba had several hundred health personnel on the ground before any other country,” said David Sanders, professor of public health from Western Cape University in South Africa.

Student Researcher:
* Sarah Maddox (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluators:
* José Manuel Pestano Rodríguez and José Manuel de Pablos Coello (University of La Laguna, Canary Islands)
* William Du Bois (Southwest Minnesota State University)

The Cuban team coordinator in Haiti, Dr. Carlos Alberto Garcia, said the Cuban doctors, nurses, and other health personnel worked nonstop, day and night, with operating rooms open eighteen hours a day. During a visit to La Paz Hospital in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is in charge of medical coordination between the Cuban doctors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and a host of health sector nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), described the aid provided by Cuban doctors as “excellent and marvelous.”

Haiti and Cuba signed a medical cooperation agreement in 1998. Before the earthquake struck, 344 Cuban health professionals were already present in Haiti, providing primary care and obstetrical services as well as operating to restore the sight of Haitians blinded by eye diseases. More doctors were flown in shortly after the earthquake as part of the rapid response. “In the case of Cuban doctors, they are rapid responders to disasters, because disaster management is an integral part of their training,” explains Maria Hamlin Zúniga, a public health specialist from Nicaragua. Cuban doctors have been organizing medical facilities in three revamped hospitals, five field hospitals, and five diagnostic centers, with a total of twenty-two different care posts aided by financial support from Venezuela. They are also operating nine rehabilitation centers staffed by nearly seventy Cuban physical therapists and rehabilitation specialists, in addition to Haitian medical personnel. The Cuban team has been assisted by one hundred specialists from Venezuela, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and Canada, as well as seventeen nuns.

However, in reporting on the international aid effort, Western media have generally not ranked Cuba high on the list of donor nations. One major international news agency’s list of donor nations credited Cuba with sending over thirty doctors to Haiti, whereas the real figure stands at more than 350, including 280 young Haitian doctors who graduated from Cuba. A combined total of 930 Cuban health professionals make Cuba’s the largest medical contingent on the ground in Haiti. Another batch of 200 Cuban-trained doctors from twenty-four countries in Africa and Latin American, and a dozen American doctors who graduated from medical schools in Havana, went to Haiti to provide reinforcement to existing Cuban medical teams. By comparison, the internationally renowned Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders) has approximately 269 health professionals working in Haiti. MSF is much better funded and has far more extensive medical supplies than the Cuban team.

But while representatives from MSF and the ICRC are frequently in front of television cameras discussing health priorities and medical needs, the Cuban medical teams are missing in the media coverage. Richard Gott, the Guardian’s former foreign editor and a Latin America specialist, explains, “Western media are programmed to be indifferent to aid that comes from unexpected places. In the Haitian case, the media have ignored not just the Cuban contribution, but also the efforts made by other Latin American countries.” Brazil is providing $70 million in funding for ten urgent care units, fifty mobile units for emergency care, a laboratory, and a hospital, among other health services. Venezuela has canceled all of Haiti’s debt and has promised to supply oil, free of charge, until the country has recovered from the disaster. Western NGOs employ media officers to ensure that the world knows what they are doing. According to Gott, the Western media has grown accustomed to dealing with such NGOs, enabling a relationship of mutual assistance to develop. Cuban medical teams, however, are outside this predominantly Western humanitarian-media loop and are therefore only likely to receive attention from Latin American media and Spanish language broadcasters and print media.

There have, however, been notable exceptions to this reporting syndrome. On January 19, a CNN reporter broke the silence on the Cuban role in Haiti with a report on Cuban doctors at La Paz Hospital. Cuban doctors received global praise for their humanitarian aid in Indonesia. When the US requested that their military planes be allowed to fly through Cuban airspace for the purpose of evacuating Haitians to hospitals in Florida, Cuba immediately agreed despite almost fifty years of animosity between the two countries.

Although Cuba is a poor, developing country, their wealth of human resources—doctors, engineers, and disaster management experts—has enabled this small Caribbean nation to play a global role in health care and humanitarian aid alongside the far-richer nations of the west. Cuban medical teams played a key role in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami and stayed the longest among international medical teams treating the victims of the 2006 Indonesian earthquake. They also provided the largest contingent of doctors after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. In the Pakistan relief operation, the US and Europe also dispatched medical teams. Each had a base camp with most doctors deployed for a month. The Cubans, however, deployed seven major base camps, operated thirty-two field hospitals, and stayed for six months.

A Montreal summit of twenty donor nations agreed to hold a major conference on Haiti’s future at the United Nations in March 2010. Some analysts see Haiti’s rehabilitation as a potential opportunity for the US and Cuba to bypass their ideological differences and combine their resources—the US has the logistics while Cuba has the human resources—to help Haiti. “Potential US-Cuban cooperation could go a long way toward meeting Haiti’s needs,” says Dr. Julie Feinsilver, author of Healing the Masses, a book about Cuban health diplomacy, who argues that maximum cooperation is urgently needed. Feinsilver is convinced that “Cuba should be given a seat at the table with all other nations and multilateral organizations and agencies in any and all meetings to discuss, plan and coordinate aid efforts for Haiti’s reconstruction.” In late January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thanked Cuba for its efforts in Haiti and welcomed further assistance and cooperation. In Haiti’s grand reconstruction plan, Feinsilver argues, “There can be no imposition of systems from any country, agency or institution. The Haitian people themselves, through what remains of their government and NGOs, must provide the policy direction, and Cuba has been and should continue to be a key player in the health sector in Haiti.”

Sources:
Ernesto Wong Maestre, “Haití y el Paradigma Cubano de Solidaridad” (Haiti and the Cuban Paradigm of Solidarity), Rebelión, January 24, 2010, http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=99233.

Tom Fawthrop, “Cuba’s Aid Ignored By The Media?” Al Jazeera English, February 16, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/01/201013195514870782.html.

Emilio González López, “La Otra Realidad de Haití y la Ayuda de 400 Médicos Cubanos” (Haiti’s Other Reality and the Aid from 400 Cuban Doctors), Público (Madrid), February 7, 2010, letter to the editor, http://rreloj.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/intensa-actividad-de-los-medicos-cubanos-en-haiti.

Radio Santa Cruz, “La Oficina Panamericana de la Salud Califica de ‘excelente’ la Ayuda Médica Cubana a Haití” (The Pan American Heath Organization Evaluates the Cuban Aid to Haiti as “Excellent”), January 25, 2010, http://www.radiosantacruz.icrt.cu/noticias/internacionales/califica-excelente-ops-ayuda-medica-cubana-haiti.htm.

Al Ritmo de los Tiempos, “EEUU Olvidó la Inmensa Ayuda de Médicos Cubanos a Haití,” (USA Forgets Cuban Doctors’ Massive Help to Haiti), January 18, 2010, http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/america_latina/issue_3106.html.