Tag: Lockheed Martin

As I write this, on Jan. 8, Congolese are on edge, fearing fraudulent presidential election results and state violence to suppress mass protest. In nearby Gabon, U.S. combat troops are poised to cross borders and invade to protect U.S. citizens and interests as needed. Are they there to make sure that Joseph Kabila, the president they installed and kept in power for 18 years, cedes power to former Exxon-Mobil executive Martin Fayula, their new horse to ride? That’s just my best guess.

During a recent campaign event, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said: “That story of Rwanda is very instructive to us because when a place gets so tribal that the two tribes won’t have anything to do with each other, and that jealousy turns into hate – we saw what happened to the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda, it turned into a genocide. A million people hacked to death within a few months. And we have got to watch what’s happening here.”

The email excerpted within included an ungrammatical apostrophe in “mofo’s” which I corrected to “mofos.” The mofos that Stratfor’s Bayless Parsley refers to are members of Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s government, military and intelligence services, not ordinary Rwandan citizens suffering under his dictatorship. For those unfamiliar with the events he recounts, I’ve included explanation and elaboration in italics.

Dear friends and neighbors in Hunters Point: I’ve been reading the questions you’re asking about safety and health in your neighborhood and thought I might be able to point you toward some answers. I was born and lived in San Francisco for many years and know your neighborhood well. I remember when it was a vital part of our city and a good place to live. So, it’s been sad to see how poorly the years and the 1 percent have treated you. You deserve better.

The Texas Board of Criminal Justice, which oversees Texas Correctional Industries, the prison industry division within the state’s Department of Criminal Justice, has authority over how much compensation inmates working for the state receive for their labor. Currently, inmates working for TCI are not paid for the work done while serving their time; the only inmates who are paid anything are the small fraction who are employed by TCI’s private sector prison industries program.

Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy, “is not a functional democracy.” Instead, it’s a “repressive and corrupt” oligarchy propped up by a “blank check” from Washington. Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion appropriated in security aid through the Mérida Initiative. Clinton’s State Department overlooked human rights abuses and corruption while keeping a lucrative flow of contracts moving to U.S. security firms working in Mexico.

IRP Solutions was a small, Black-owned software development company with 15-19 employees that competed against big businesses for lucrative, multi-million-dollar government contracts. Looking back on the raid of IRP Solutions’ business, conducted in 2005 by 21 FBI agents, it is apparent that IRP’s direct competitors were not going to let a small, Black-owned company win a substantial and lucrative contract that had been theirs for years.

In March 2008, the Jewish Community Federation arranged San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's all-expense paid junket to Israel, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.