Stop Halliburton¹s War Profiteering in Iraq! Come to Houston May 19!

Stop Halliburton¹s War Profiteering in Iraq! Come to Houston May 19!

PROTEST AT THE HALLIBURTON SHAREHOLDERS MEETING

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 8 AM
OUTSIDE THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, 1300 LAMAR STREET
HOUSTON, TEXAS

Vice President Dick Cheney¹s former company Halliburton has been the number
one beneficiary of the invasion of Iraq, raking in some $9 billion in
contracts to rebuild Iraq¹s oil industry and service the U.S. troops.
Every
other week, news reports document a pattern of fraud, waste, and
corruption
by Halliburton ­ from alleged overcharges of $61 million for fuel and $24.7
million for meals to confirmed kickbacks worth $6.3 million. Meanwhile,
Halliburton has failed to rebuild key oil infrastructure, provided shoddy
services to U.S. troops in the field, and has taken jobs away from
qualified
Iraqi businesses and workers. Isn¹t it time for Halliburton¹s Iraq contracts
to be revoked?

Join us in Houston on May 19 for a lively protest against war profiteering
and corporate cronyism outside Halliburton¹s shareholder meeting in
Houston.
Halliburton needs to be held accountable, not made more profitable!

Sponsored by American Friends Service Committee-TAO, Campaign to Stop the
War Profiteers, CitizenWorks, CODEPINK, Common Cause, Global Exchange,
Halliburtonwatch.org, Houston Global Awareness, Maryknoll House,
Montgomery
County Greens,Texas Fair Trade Coalition, US Labor Against the War, and
others.

For more information, see http://www.houstonglobalawareness.org or
http://www.globalexchange.org/halliburton. Email andrea [at] globalexchange.org
or hgac [at] riseup.net or call (832) 725-6220.

**MORE INFORMATION**

WHY YOU SHOULD GO ALL THE WAY TO HOUSTON FOR A ONE-DAY PROTEST

The Halliburton shareholders meeting in Houston will be our best
opportunity
this year to send a message to the U.S. public about why we oppose the
corporate invasion of Iraq and the corporate cronyism that is rampant in
the
Bush administration. The more people who come out, the more chance we¹ll
have of getting media coverage, and the better time we¹ll have! So bring
yourself, your protest signs and an extra pig snout (or pig suit if you
can
sew yourself one) to Houston May 19. We¹ll see you there!

FACTS ABOUT HALLIBURTON, CORPORATE GREED AND WAR PROFITEERING

*With the corporate cronyism that is rampant in the Bush administration, no
one was shocked when Vice President Dick Cheney¹s former employer
Halliburton, the largest oil-and-gas services company in the world, won some
of the first no-bid contracts to do work in Iraq¹s oil fields. Even the fact
that Halliburton, under Cheney¹s watch, used phony overseas subsidiaries so
it could do business with Bush administration nemesis Saddam Hussein was no
barrier to the company - and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root - becoming
the number one contractor in the new Iraq.

*Not only did Halliburton do business with Saddam Hussein¹s regime but also
with the ruthless regime in Burma. The company continues to do business with
Iran, a member of the administration¹s own so-called ³axis of evil,² and
with Libya. In Nigeria, Halliburton is under investigation in a massive
bribery scandal.

*Halliburton¹s Iraq contracts are valued at an astounding $9 billion.
Meanwhile, Vice President Cheney continues to receive annual payments from
Halliburton in excess of $150,000. And Halliburton¹s campaign
contributions
between 1999 and 2002 ­ 95% of which went to Republicans ­ totaled more than
$700,000.

*Halliburton was supposed to rebuild Iraq¹s oil production infrastructure,
but here we are a year after a war in which there were very few oil well
fires, and Halliburton is delivering gas at fraudulent prices to a country
that has the second largest amount of oil in the world.

*Halliburton¹s pattern of fraud and corruption has been so pervasive that
the Defense Department recently asked the Justice Department to
investigate
Halliburton for possible criminal wrongdoing related to its Iraq
contracts.
Among other things, Halliburton has been accused of overcharging $61 million
for fuel transported to Iraq from Kuwait and has repaid the Pentagon $27.4
million in overcharges for food that was never served to U.S. troops. In
January, the company admitted that two employees involved in Iraq work
took
kickbacks worth $6.3 million from Kuwaiti contractors.

*Whistleblowers have come forward to expose the company¹s reckless waste of
taxpayer dollars as a result of ³cost-plus² contracts in Iraq, where the
more the company spends, the more it makes.

*Thanks to offshore tax haven scams, this multi-billion-dollar company pays
a scant $15 million a year in taxes.

*Halliburton and its subsidiaries operate as a non-union company in the U.S.
Of roughly 530 locations, only ten sites have workers under union
contract.
In Iraq, in an attempt to keep Iraqi workers from organizing, Halliburton
subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root contracted with a Kuwaiti company to
rebuild the Bargeseeya Oil Refinery in Southern Iraq. KBR then imported
70%
of the workers from abroad. Poor conditions exist at a number of
Halliburton/KBR oil reconstruction projects in Iraq.