War Profits, and un-ethical behaviour., page 1

Corporations behave like psychopaths according to Joel Bakan "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power". So naturally they are unethical. The psychopath diagnose is the only psychiatric ailment where the patient does not suffer. Only his subjects do. Unethical behaviour is the very foundation of business. And that's the reason for Mr. Cheney's succes.

It's only about money. Any means to make them is OK.

According to Wall Street Journal a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services was opened in Tehran in 2001. The company called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd, HPS, operated
"behind an unmarked door on the nineth floor of a new north Tehran tower block."

Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1975 and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires offers services from Halliburton units world-wide through its Tehran office. Such behaviour, undertaken while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act.
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No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.

What else they've gotten away with might have been lost in time or sudden death. But beside the roumours and myths the traces left are there to be unearthened.

Halliburton has subsidiaries in 131 countries.
Here's a report about what they do in Russia, published by the well-reputed CPI.

Dated pre-war, it only goes to show how much better even they have fared since.

Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough

WASHINGTON, August 2, 2000 — Under the guidance of Richard Cheney, a get-the-government-out-of-my-face conservative, Halliburton Company over the past five years has emerged as a corporate welfare hog, benefiting from at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans.

One of these loans was approved in April by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. It guaranteed $489 million in credits to a Russian oil company whose roots are imbedded in a legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organized crime funds, according to Russian and U.S. sources and documents.

Halliburton, which lobbied for the Ex-Im loan after the State Department initially asserted that the deal would run counter to the "national interest," will receive $292 million of those funds to refurbish a massive Siberian oil field owned by the Russian company, the Tyumen Oil Co., which is controlled by a conglomerate called the Alfa Group.

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Some allegations of organized crime and drug activities involving Tyumen's parent company, the Alfa Group, had been made public in Russia last year.

The allegations were contained in a report delivered in 1997 by anonymous officials from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI) to the national security committee of the Duma, or lower house of parliament.

A Russian-American specialist on business practices in the former Soviet Union who has worked with the White House and Pentagon told The Public i that the allegations contained in the 1997 report have been the subject of an investigation by the FSB but that the probe, for unexplained reasons, had been "put away for a better day."
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That document and the FSB report claim that Alfa Bank, one of Russia's largest and most profitable, as well as Alfa Eko, a trading company, had been deeply involved in the early 1990s in laundering of Russian and Colombian drug money and in trafficking drugs from the Far East to Europe.

The former KGB major, who with the fall of communism in the late 1980s had himself been involved in the plan by the KGB and Communist Party to loot state enterprises, said that Alfa Bank was founded with party and KGB funds, and quickly attracted rogue agents who had served in anti-organized-crime units. "They (the rogue agents on the banks payroll) quickly determined that dealing in drugs would bring the highest profits with literally no risk in Russia," according to the former KGB officer.

He claimed that a "large channel of heroin transit was established from Burma through Laos, Vietnam, to the Far East [Siberia]." From there the drugs were camouflaged as flour and sugar shipments and forwarded on to Germany. The drug operation was controlled by a Chechen mob family, he said.

This story is attributed to the Halliburton company of "Brown & Root", from 2002 merged with Kellogg to form the infamous subsidiary "KBR".

"Brown & Root" was originally a construction firm specialized in dam building with a history as government contractor going back to WW II.

It was one of the first to build offshore platforms and is involved in any kind of construction today from pipelines to military camps.

During the Vietnam days activists called it "Burn & Loot" because of its heavy involvement in that war.

Finally a snippet, that more than suggests involvements in drug-trade.

www.fromthewilderness.com...
It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles.

Do yourself the favour to read it all.

I started a thread were I try to unravel the ties between WoT, its business opportunities and the drug-trade, War on Terror financed by drugs?

The same story can be found there but in a different link
"FROM MEDELLIN TO MOSCOW WITH BROWN & ROOT"

Maybe it's too hot to touch.