[Vision2020] What a GREAT Government We Have!!!!

[Wayne Price]

NOTICE Where the Idaho Senators came out on this one!

Rape case to force US defence firms into the open

Senate passes measure prompted by case of woman prevented from suing  
over alleged rape by Halliburton/KBR colleagues
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 October 2009 16.04 BST


Jamie Leigh Jones

Jamie Leigh Jones testifying in Washington in 2007. Photograph: Greg  
Nash/AP

US defence firms are to be barred from lucrative government contracts  
if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts, after a woman  
working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq was prevented from taking  
legal action over an alleged gang rape by fellow workers.
Al Franken, the Senate's newest member, has won an amendment to the  
defence appropriations bill prompted by the case of Jamie Leigh Jones.  
She alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American  
contractors in Baghdad in 2005.
Jones, who was employed by KBR, which was fighting oil fires, says  
that a pattern of subsequent behaviour by the firm, including  
allegedly locking her in a container under armed guard and losing  
forensic evidence, amounts to a cover-up.
Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be  
settled by arbitration to block legal action – a policy which, her  
lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.
Franken described it as a denial of justice. "Contractors are using  
fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court,"  
he said in a Senate debate.
In legal papers Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a  
knockout drug while drinking with KBR firefighters.
"When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found  
her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina  
and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and  
her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive  
surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the  
papers say.
Jones was treated by a US army doctor who gave forensic evidence to  
company officials. She says the firm placed her under guard in a  
shipping container and she was released only after her father asked  
the US embassy to intervene. When the forensic evidence was handed to  
investigators two years later, crucial photographs and notes were  
missing.

Jones says she identified one of the men who attacked her after he  
confessed, but that Halliburton/KBR prevented her from taking legal  
action against him or the company by pointing to a clause in her  
contract requiring disputes to go to arbitration.
She told a Senate committee: "I had no idea that the clause was part  
of the contract, what the clause actually meant, or that I would  
eventually end up in this horrible situation."
Her lawyer, Todd Kerry, said that by forcing earlier assault cases to  
arbitration, Halliburton and other defence firms had created a climate  
in which some workers came to believe they could get away with sexual  
assaults and other crimes.
"I've received upwards of 40 calls to my office [about assault cases]  
in the past two years. A good number had been disposed of under  
arbitration," he said."Had there been public scrutiny to prevent such  
things happening and these cases taken to court, they might not have  
been repeated. Instead one of the men who raped Jamie was so confident  
that nothing would happen that he was lying in bed next to her the  
morning after."
Halliburton and KBR divided into separate companies in April 2007.  
Halliburton declined to comment on the case.
KBR has sought to discredit Jones's account by saying she was seen  
drinking and flirting with a firefighter before leaving the gathering  
with him, and that the man claims to have had consensual sex with her.  
The firm denies that Jones was held prisoner, but not that her  
injuries indicated serious sexual assault.
But KBR defended arbitration as a "fair process", saying: "Most large  
companies have a dispute resolution programme which is mandatory and  
is designed to address employee complaints quickly and efficiently.  
Under KBR's dispute resolution programme 95% of all employee  
complaints are resolved quickly to the employees' satisfaction without  
a mediation or an arbitration."
Franken and Kerry challenge the claim that arbitration is usually  
settled to the satisfaction of complainants. Other women have come  
forward to accuse the firms of not taking assault allegations seriously.
Mary Beth Kineston, who drove lorries in Iraq and survived a bloody  
ambush, has alleged that she was sacked after complaining of sexual  
assaults by several fellow workers.
"At least if you got in trouble on a convoy, you could radio the army  
and they would come and help you out. But when I complained to KBR,  
they didn't do anything. I still have nightmares. They changed my life  
forever, and they got away with it," she told the New York Times last  
year.
Linda Lindsey, who worked for KBR in Iraq for three years, has said  
that male supervisors regularly offered promotions and other benefits  
in exchange for sex. Lindsey said she filed complaints but they that  
were never acted on.Last month Jones won a court ruling against  
Halliburton and KBR that the arbitration clause in her contract did  
not prevent them from being sued. But the legal battle to get the case  
even heard is far from over. "Four years to fight to get in court is  
not a day in court," she said.
The legislation to end the bar on legal action passed the Senate with  
a clear majority but 30 Republican members voted against it, including  
the former presidential candidate John McCain. Among the objections  
were claims that the government had no business interfering in a  
private contract between a company and its workers.


The Dirty Thirty and the Silence of the Media Lambs


When the U.S. Senate finally stopped Joseph McCarthy’s violent,  
devastating attacks on American values, 22 Senators SUPPORTED  
McCarthy. They were all Republicans.



When a 19-year-old woman was reportedly gang-raped by co-workers in  
Iraq, 30 Senators* supported the rapists’ company, effectively  
protecting the RAPISTS along with the company. All Republicans, these  
Senators self-righteously voted AGAINST an amendment holding  
government subcontractors responsible for the actions of their  
employees. “Free enterprise” beat out accountability for a gang-rape.
What kind of human being, much less Senator, champions private profit  
over justice in the face of rape? I can only wonder -- would it have  
been different if a man had been gang-raped?
When The Daily Show with Jon Stewart reported this week on the debate,  
then vote on the Senate Floor -- including simply unbelievable  
speeches from a number of these 30 Republican Senators -- we went  
looking to other news sources to learn more, quite reasonably turning  
first to The New York Times. Zero, zip, zilch.
Alternative media,such as Alternet and the Huffington Post had the  
story, as did the member-supported MinnPost.com in the hometown of the  
Senator who had introduced the proposed amendment, Senator Al Franken.  
A press release was reprinted by HometownSource.com. Coverage was also  
provided by numerous bloggers and special interest groups. Except for  
Haliburton’s hometown Houston Chronicle, in the mass/traditional  
media, we had to go to the U.K.’s Guardian** for more information.  
Lest one argue that the story “isn’t news”, as of 7 PM Mountain time  
on Saturday, the story ranked #4 on the Guardian website’s most viewed  
list. We’re still waiting for the screaming-Fox-News-headline:  
Republican Senators Support Gang-Rape by Three to One Margin.
Minnesota Senator Franken served decency well by introducing this  
piece of proposed legislation. Anyone working for the United States  
government, even mercenaries working for subcontractors, has the right  
to expect their fundamental human rights will not be blindly violated,  
left with no where to turn for justice.
More, Sen. Franken has served a greater good in letting these  
Senators’ actions speak for themselves. It is they -- not he -- who  
are keeping front and center the reality of Republican ideological and  
dogmatic maliciousness in the service of their corporate masters.
These 30 Republican Senators may refuse to hold accountable government  
contractors and those to whom they subcontract. For me, the larger  
question is -- will voters in the states nominally represented by this  
Dirty Thirty hold THEM accountable?
Arbitration for gang-rape? Surely the Republican Party has earned the  
right to die.

*– These are the Republican senators, all male, who voted against the  
amendment and for the right of corporations to do pretty much what  
they d**n well please without suffering any consequences:
The Dirty Thirty WALL of SHAME:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

These are the Republican senators who voted for the amendment:***

Robert F. Bennett - R-UT
Susan Collins - R-ME
Chuck Grassley- R-IA
Orin Hatch-R-UT
Kay Bailey Hutchison - R-TX
George S. LeMieuz - R-FL
Richard Lugar - R-IN
Lisa Murkowski - R-AK
Olympia Snowe - R-ME
George Voinovich - R-OH

Four of the 10 are women, bless them all.

***- two Democratic senators, West Virginia’s Byrd and Pennsylvania’s  
Specter, did not vote.
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