Banner Advertise

Sunday, July 13, 2008

[vinnomot] What makes the difference between a Dakat and Soldier?

What makes the difference between a Dakat and Soldier?
The teachers at our universities should know that their professional responsibility includes that the graduates from these universities do not become dakat, rather they becomes responsible professionals. Ethics should be included in each and every curriculum taught in the universities and colleges. They themselves should act as a role model for their students so that the graduates from their institutions do not go out in the soceity to find ways to cheat the citizens, rather to serve them.
 
 
There was a time when people would need physical strenghth to take away the wealth of others, to rob. The stories of different infamous pirates are there in the history who would do such things - take away other's money and property by using force.
 
Just like any other time, there were also a different type of people who would protect general people from those pirates. These people were also trained to use physical force to protect people from the pirates, albeit with a different purpose.
 
How do you differentiate these two groups? Off course, this is not an easy task. You have to go back and find out the 'ostads' or gurus of these people. Tactically these two groups of people might be in the same level, but based on who teaches them, they would become either pirates or soldiers.
 
Fast forward to current times - a time when you no longer need physical strenghth to take away the wealth of others, to rob. You only need to be a person with office - either your power comes from the knowledge you know or your power comes from the office you hold. Using the knowledge or using the power of office, a professional can act either as robber or as a soldier as far as general citizens of the country is concerned. Similar to the previous times, when you go to a office for getting a service, you have no way to know whether its a robber or a soldier whom you are facing. You would only know after you have been served!
 
Wait, can't you apply the same rule as was applicable in the old times, i.e. can't you go back and find out the 'ostads' or gurus of these professionals to find out how these people might behave (either a robber or a professional)?  Say for example, if you go to RAJUK and find a engineer who graduated from BUET, can you make a guess whether this engineer will be a robber or a professional with ethical behaviour? Or may be if you go to a doctors office and you find out that this person is a graduate from DMC, can you make a guess wehther this doctor will be a robber or a professional with ethical behaviour?
 
In ideal world, you should be able to make an educated guess by looking at the curriculum of the institutions along with other relevant track records including those of the teachers of those institutions. If you look at the teaching methodologies, topics related to professional ethics that is present in the curriculum, those will give you an idea about what to expect. Off course, professionals are human beings, not robots. So there will be exception when your guess might not be correct. However, in case of a good institution, you should be able to confidently say with certain level of probabilistic certainty that an alumni of institution X should be a good professional. That is probably true in most of the institutions of the world, specifically in those countries who are developed.
 
But not the same in Bangladesh. In here, if you look at the curriculums of most of the programs, there is no talk about professional ethics. Nor the teachers are peoples who can be called a role-model. So, what do you get?
 
You will have to just step into any offices - be it in government or in private institutions. There is nothing like professional behavior. They act at the will of their bosses. Or boss's boss. Or boss's wife. Or boss's son.
 
Off course, some act against the will of their bosses. In this category, you will find people of both categories, those who to act professionally and those who act as robber.
 
These professionals are just like "boti" or knife in the kitchen. They can be used to prepare your meal or you could use them to kill, too!
 
We really hope that the teachers of different instituations will start a process of soul searching - to find out what they have been doing wrong in Dhaka University, BUET, Dhaka Medical College and off course in their peer organizations, so they can't tell what their graduates will become when out in the workforce. Things should be done both at the personal level and at the institutional level, that can reverse the trend for betterment of the nation. The sooner they start it, the better.
 
Like all the good turnarounds, this should start with saying sorry to the nation. Tell the nation that you have failed the millions of people who pay for your salary so that you can provide subsidized education to your students (most of whom are becoming robbers, instead of professionals).
 
In this sad story, each segment of the society has a pie in the failure cake. The biggest pie of the failure, off course, belong to the politicians of the country. They are paying for their mistakes now - to some extent. However, the nation haven't heard any sorry from them, yet.
 
We hope, as the bibek of the naion, you should start the process of reversing the trend. Say a sorry to the nation - from each of the teachers' association of each institution - if you feel that your graduates have failed in delivering their duties. Take the responsibilites of your graduates' failures - that will not lower your status - but raise your moral status with the nation. Someone start the process, please. If you, the teachers take the moral high ground and lead, we are sure that other segments of the society will also follow-on.
 
If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time, please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the columnists in regular traditional media, please forward it to them. If you have an ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media, discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and give due diligence. 
 
Thanks for your time,
Innovation Line
 
=======================================================
Note: This is a freelance column, published mainly in different internet based forums. This column is open for contribution by the members of new generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 71. If you identify yourself as someone from that age-group and want to contribute to this column, please feel free to contact. Thanks to the group moderator for publishing the article as Creative Commons contents. 
 
Also send to your favourtie TV channel:
The more of you forward it to them, the less will be the need to go back to street agitation. Use ICT to practice democracy.
======================================================

__._,_.___
MARKETPLACE
You rock! Blockbuster wants to give you a complimentary trial of Blockbuster Total Access.
Recent Activity
Visit Your Group
Yahoo! News

Odd News

You won't believe

it, but it's true

Yahoo! Finance

It's Now Personal

Guides, news,

advice & more.

Yahoo! Groups

Find balance

between nutrition,

activity & well-being.

.

__,_._,___

[vinnomot] Article 9 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete? Yes. declares a rationalist philosopher...

Article 9 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete?

 

 Yes. declares a rationalist philosopher...

Once upon a time there were a number of strong pseudo-scientific arguments for the existence of an Allah or God. One of the oldest and most prevalent is the argument from design. Most people look at the complexity of the world and cannot conceive of how it could have come about except by the action of a being or force of great power and intelligence.
The design argument received perhaps its most brilliant exposition in the work of the Anglican archdeacon William Paley. In his «
Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature », first published in 1802, Paley wrote about finding both a stone and a watch while crossing a heath. Though the stone would be regarded as a simple part of nature, no one would question that the watch is an artifact, an instrument built by human intelligence, designed for the purpose of telling time. Paley then proposed that objects of nature, such as the human eye, give every indication of being similar contrivances. Although this is also a worthwhile question as to how such an Allah / God could have designed such complicated and details structure ; and who designed such an intelligence designer!
 

When Charles Darwin entered Cambridge in 1827 he was assigned to the same rooms in Christ's College occupied by William Paley seventy years earlier. By that time the syllabus included the study of Paley's works, and Darwin was deeply impressed. He remarked that Paley's work "gave me as much delight as did Euclid."

Yet Darwin ultimately discovered the answer to Paley and showed how complex systems can evolve naturally from simpler ones without design or plan. The mechanism he proposed in 1859 in «
The Origin of Species » (inferred independently by Alfred Russel Wallace) was natural selection, by which organisms accumulate changes that enable them to survive and have progeny that maintain those features.

But, as Darwin recognised, a serious objection to evolution existed based on the known physics of his time. Calculations by the great physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) estimated ages for the sun that were far too short for natural selection to operate. However, at the time, nuclear energy was unknown. When this new form of energy was discovered early in the twentieth century, physicists estimated that the manner in which energy was released by nuclear reactions correctly explain that the sun and other stars would last billions of years as stable energy sources and that the ages for this activity of the sun that were appropriate for natural selection to operate.

Prior to the twentieth century, the simple fact that the universe contains matter also provided strong evidence for a creation. At the time it was believed that matter was conserved, and so the matter of the universe had to come from somewhere. However, in 1905 Einstein showed that matter could be created from energy.


In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble reported that the galaxies were moving away from one another at speeds approximately proportional to their distance, indicating that the universe was expanding. This provided the earliest evidence for the Big Bang. An expanding universe could have started with low entropy and still have formed localised order.

Extrapolating what we know from modern cosmology back to the earliest definable moment, we find that the universe began in a state of maximum disorder. It contained the maximum entropy for the tiny region of space. Once the universe exploded out of chaos, we no longer have total disorder; but regularity dominates the universe. Most of the matter of the universe moves around regularly.


If he is to have any control over events so that some ultimate plan is realised, God or Allah has to poke his finger into the works amidst all this regularity. Yet there is no evidence that God pokes his finger in anyplace. The universe and life flows naturally. And humanity, although only occupying a tiny speck of dust in a vast cosmos, looks like a special gift of biological evolution, intelligent enough to observe, understand, invent and built, in fields of science as well as of society without permitting any fictional Allah/God any role of interference.

The universe visible to us contains a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars. But by far the greatest portion of the universe that expanded exponentially from the original chaos lies far beyond our horizon. Yet we are supposed to think that a supreme being exists who follows the path of every particle, while listening to every human thought and guiding his favourite football teams to victory. Science has not only made belief in God obsolete. It has made it incoherent.

----------------------------------

In the greater interest of civilisation, all articles in this series may be reproduced or published in any language.


 
Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete
? Article 1:Necessarily, it does - says a physicist

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/114>

Articlw 2: Yes, of course - speaks a psychologist
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/115> Article 3 :
No, and yes - speaks a Christian Priest… ! <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/116>   Article 4 : Absolutely - says an eminent scientist <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/117>

Article 5 : Of course –responds a philosopher <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/118>

Article 6 : Not Really - says a biologist http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/120

Article 7 : Not but il should, argues an Atheis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/122

Article 8 : ? No, claims a priest…..  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/123

 



 --  http://www.fastmail.fm - Access your email from home and the web 

__._,_.___
Recent Activity
Visit Your Group
Yahoo! News

Get it all here

Breaking news to

entertainment news

Yahoo! Finance

It's Now Personal

Guides, news,

advice & more.

Y! Messenger

PC-to-PC calls

Call your friends

worldwide - free!

.

__,_._,___

[vinnomot] Article 9 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete? Yes. declares a philosopher...

Article 9 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete?

 

 

 Yes. declares a rationalist philosopher...

Once upon a time there were a number of strong pseudo-scientific arguments for the existence of an Allah or God. One of the oldest and most prevalent is the argument from design. Most people look at the complexity of the world and cannot conceive of how it could have come about except by the action of a being or force of great power and intelligence.
The design argument received perhaps its most brilliant exposition in the work of the Anglican archdeacon William Paley. In his « 
Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature », first published in 1802, Paley wrote about finding both a stone and a watch while crossing a heath. Though the stone would be regarded as a simple part of nature, no one would question that the watch is an artifact, an instrument built by human intelligence, designed for the purpose of telling time. Paley then proposed that objects of nature, such as the human eye, give every indication of being similar contrivances. Although this is also a worthwhile question as to how such an Allah / God could have designed such complicated and details structure ; and who designed such an intelligence designer!
 

When Charles Darwin entered Cambridge in 1827 he was assigned to the same rooms in Christ's College occupied by William Paley seventy years earlier. By that time the syllabus included the study of Paley's works, and Darwin was deeply impressed. He remarked that Paley's work "gave me as much delight as did Euclid."

Yet Darwin ultimately discovered the answer to Paley and showed how complex systems can evolve naturally from simpler ones without design or plan. The mechanism he proposed in 1859 in « 
The Origin of Species » (inferred independently by Alfred Russel Wallace) was natural selection, by which organisms accumulate changes that enable them to survive and have progeny that maintain those features.

But, as Darwin recognised, a serious objection to evolution existed based on the known physics of his time. Calculations by the great physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) estimated ages for the sun that were far too short for natural selection to operate. However, at the time, nuclear energy was unknown. When this new form of energy was discovered early in the twentieth century, physicists estimated that the manner in which energy was released by nuclear reactions correctly explain that the sun and other stars would last billions of years as stable energy sources and that the ages for this activity of the sun that were appropriate for natural selection to operate.

Prior to the twentieth century, the simple fact that the universe contains matter also provided strong evidence for a creation. At the time it was believed that matter was conserved, and so the matter of the universe had to come from somewhere. However, in 1905 Einstein showed that matter could be created from energy.


In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble reported that the galaxies were moving away from one another at speeds approximately proportional to their distance, indicating that the universe was expanding. This provided the earliest evidence for the Big Bang. An expanding universe could have started with low entropy and still have formed localised order.

Extrapolating what we know from modern cosmology back to the earliest definable moment, we find that the universe began in a state of maximum disorder. It contained the maximum entropy for the tiny region of space. Once the universe exploded out of chaos, we no longer have total disorder; but regularity dominates the universe. Most of the matter of the universe moves around regularly.


If he is to have any control over events so that some ultimate plan is realised, God or Allah has to poke his finger into the works amidst all this regularity. Yet there is no evidence that God pokes his finger in anyplace. The universe and life flows naturally. And humanity, although only occupying a tiny speck of dust in a vast cosmos, looks like a special gift of biological evolution, intelligent enough to observe, understand, invent and built, in fields of science as well as of society without permitting any fictional Allah/God any role of interference.

The universe visible to us contains a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars. But by far the greatest portion of the universe that expanded exponentially from the original chaos lies far beyond our horizon. Yet we are supposed to think that a supreme being exists who follows the path of every particle, while listening to every human thought and guiding his favourite football teams to victory. Science has not only made belief in God obsolete. It has made it incoherent.

----------------------------------

In the greater interest of civilisation, all articles in this series may be reproduced or published in any language.


 
Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete 
?                                                                                                                                Article 1:Necessarily, it does - says a physicist

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/114>

Articlw 2: Yes, of course  - speaks a psychologist
 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/115>                                                                                                     Article 3 :  
No, and yes - speaks a Christian Priest… !                   <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/116>                                                                                                    Article 4 :   Absolutely - says an eminent scientist                                                     <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/117>

Article 5 : Of course –responds a philosopher                                                                                                 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/118>

Article 6 : Not Really - says a biologist                                                                              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/120

Article 7 :  Not but il should, argues an Atheist                                                                                            http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/122

Article 8 : ? No, claims a priest…..                                                                                                         http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanist_international/message/123

 



__._,_.___
MARKETPLACE

Blockbuster is giving away a FREE trial of - Blockbuster Total Access.
Recent Activity
Visit Your Group
Yahoo! News

Odd News

You won't believe

it, but it's true

Yahoo! Finance

It's Now Personal

Guides, news,

advice & more.

Everyday Wellness

on Yahoo! Groups

Find groups that will

help you stay fit.

.

__,_._,___

[vinnomot] Fw: [Progressive-Muslim] With Unexpected Iraqi Withdrawal Demand, Bush Has Lost the War



---------- Forwarded Message ----------



http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/91192/

 

With Unexpected Iraqi Withdrawal Demand, Bush Has Lost the War

By Gareth Porter, IPS News. Posted July 11, 2008.

 

New Iraqi resistance to U.S. demands reflects Iran's influence as well as Sadr's belief that he could succeed in driving U.S. forces out.

 

The official Iraqi demand for U.S. withdrawal confirms what was becoming increasingly clear in recent months -- that the Iraqi regime has decided to shed its military dependence on the United States.

The two strongly pro-Iranian Shiite factions supporting the regime in Baghdad, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and al-Maliki's own Dawa Party, were under strong pressure from both Iran and their own Shiite population and from Shiite clerics, including Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to demand U.S. withdrawal.

The statement by al-Rubaei came immediately after he had met with Sistani, thus confirming earlier reports that Sistani was opposed to any continuing U.S. military presence.

The Bush administration has had doubts in the past about the loyalties of those two Shiite groups and of the SIIC's Badr Corps paramilitary organization, and it maneuvered in 2005 and early 2006 to try to weaken their grip on the interior ministry and the police.

By 2007, however, the administration hoped that it had forged a new level of cooperation with al-Maliki aimed at weakening their common enemy, Moqtada al-Sadr's anti-occupation Mahdi Army. SIIC leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim was invited to the White House in December 2006 and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in November 2007.

The degree of cooperation with the al-Maliki regime against the Sadrists was so close that the Bush administration even accepted for a brief period in late 2007 the al-Maliki regime's argument that Iran was restraining the Mahdi Army by pressing Sadr to issue his August 2007 ceasefire order.

In November, Bush and al-Maliki agreed on a set of principles as the basis for negotiating agreements on stationing of U.S. forces and bilateral cooperation, including a U.S. guarantee of Iraq's security and territorial integrity. In February 2008, U.S. and Iraqi military planners were already preparing for a U.S.-British-Iraqi military operation later in the summer to squeeze the Sadrists out of Basra.

But after the U.S. draft agreement of Mar. 7 was given to the Iraqi government, the attitude of the al-Maliki government toward the U.S. military presence began to shift dramatically, just as Iran was playing a more overt role in brokering ceasefire agreements between the two warring Shiite factions.

The first indication was al-Maliki's refusal to go along with the Basra plan and his sudden decision to take over Basra immediately without U.S. troops. Petraeus later said a company of U.S. army troops was attached to some units as advisers "just really because we were having a problem figuring where was the front line."

That al-Maliki decision was followed by an Iranian political mediation of the intra-Shiite fighting in Basra, at the request of a delegation from the two pro-government parties. The result was that Sadr's forces gave up control of the city, even though they were far from having been defeated.

U.S. military officials were privately disgruntled at that development, which effectively canceled the plan for a much bigger operation against the Sadrists during the summer. Weeks later, a U.S. "defense official" would tell the New York Times, "We may have wasted an opportunity in Basra to kill those that needed to be killed."

In another sign of the shifting Iraqi position away from Washington, in early May, al-Maliki refused to cooperate with a Cheney-Petraeus scheme to embarrass Iran by having the Iraqi government publicly accuse it of arming anti-government Shiites in the South. The prime minister angered U.S. officials by naming a committee to investigate U.S. charges.

Even worse for the Bush administration, a delegation of Shiite officials to Tehran that was supposed to confront Iran over the arms issue instead returned with a new Iranian strategy for dealing with Sadr, according to Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times: reach a negotiated settlement with him.

The al-Maliki regime began to apply the new Iranian strategy immediately. On May 10, al-Maliki and Sadr reached an accord on Sadr City, where pitched battles were being fought between U.S. troops and the Sadrists.

The new accord prevented a major U.S. escalation of violence against the Mahdi Army stronghold and ended heavy U.S. bombing there. Seven U.S. battalions had been poised to assault Sadr City with tanks and armored cars in a battle expected to last several weeks.

Under the new pact, Sadr allowed Iraqi troops to patrol in his stronghold, in return for the government's agreement not to arrest any Sadrist troops unless they were found with "medium and heavy weaponry".

The new determination to keep U.S. forces out of the intra-Shiite conflict was accompanied by a new tough line in the negotiations with the Bush administration on status of forces and cooperation agreements. In a May 21 briefing for Senate staff, Bush administration officials said Iraq was now demanding "significant changes to the form of the agreements".

The al-Maliki regime was rejecting the U.S. demand for access to bases with no time limit as well as for complete freedom to use them without consultation with the Iraqi government, as well as its demand for immunity for its troops and contractors. The Iraqis were asserting that these demands violated Iraqi sovereignty. By early June, Iraqi officials were openly questioning for the first time whether Iraq needs a U.S. military presence at all.

The unexpected Iraqi resistance to the U.S. demands reflected the underlying influence of Iran on the al-Maliki government as well as Sadr's recognition that he could achieve his goal of liberating Iraq from U.S. occupation through political-diplomatic means rather than through military pressures.

Iran put very strong pressure on Iraq to reject the agreement, as soon as it saw the initial U.S. draft. It could cite the fact that the draft would allow the United States to use Iraqi bases to attack Iran, which was known to be a red line in Iran-Iraq relations.

The Iranians could argue that an Iraqi Shiite regime could not depend on the United States, which was committed to a strategy of alliance with Sunni regimes in the region against the Shiite regimes.

Iran was able to exploit a deep vein of Iraqi Shiite suspicion that the U.S. might still try to overthrow the Shiite regime, using former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and some figures in the Iraqi Army. When the U.S. draft dropped an earlier U.S. commitment to defend Iraq against external aggression and pledged only to "consult" in the event of an external threat, Iran certainly exploited the opening to push al-Maliki to reject the agreement.

The use of military bases in Iraq to project U.S. power into the region to carry out regime change in Iran and elsewhere had been an essential part of the neoconservative plan for invading Iraq from the beginning.

The Bush administration raised the objective of a long-term military presence in Iraq based on the "Korea model" last year at the height of the U.S. celebration of the pacification of the Sunni stronghold of Anbar province, which it viewed as sealing its victory in the war.

But the Iraqi demand for withdrawal makes it clear that the Bush administration was not really in control of events in Iraq, and that Shiite political opposition and Iranian diplomacy could trump U.S. military power.

 




____________________________________________________________
Sweepstakes!!!
Enter for your chance to WIN one of hundreds of daily prizes.

__._,_.___
MARKETPLACE
You rock! Blockbuster wants to give you a complimentary trial of Blockbuster Total Access.
Recent Activity
Visit Your Group
Yahoo! News

Get it all here

Breaking news to

entertainment news

Yahoo! Finance

It's Now Personal

Guides, news,

advice & more.

Find Balance

on Yahoo! Groups

manage nutrition,

activity & well-being.

.

__,_._,___

[vinnomot] Bush-Cheney crony got Iraq oil deal

Bush-Cheney crony got Iraq oil deal
13/07/2008 07:30:00 PM GMT              
Ray Hunt's personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s

The Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil deal with Iraq's Kurdistan regional gov't enjoys close political and business ties with Dick Cheney and the Bush family.

By Jason Leopold

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections – and Hunt's work for George W. Bush as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board – the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt signed the agreement last September.

At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil's deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.

"I know nothing about the deal," President Bush said. "To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I'm concerned."

However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.

Hunt also personally alerted Bush's PFIAB about his oil company's confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration's comments last year were "misleading."

"Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil's interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed," Waxman wrote.

Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Plus, there's the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world's second-largest oil reserves.

Administration officials – and much of the mainstream U.S. media – have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.

  • Oil deals

But many of the oil companies now stepping forward to benefit from Iraqi oil were instrumental in both supporting Bush's political career and giving advice to Cheney's secretive energy task force in 2001.

For instance, Ray Hunt's personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s as Hunt, the chief of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, helped build the Texas Republican Party as it served as a power base for the Bushes rise to national prominence.

The Hunt family donated more than $500,000 to Republican campaigns in Texas, while Hunt Oil employees and their spouses gave more than $1 million to Republican causes since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ray Hunt also had strong ties to Dick Cheney during his years at the helm of Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services giant. In 1998, Cheney tapped Hunt to serve on Halliburton's board of directors, where Hunt became a compensation committee member setting Cheney's salary and stock options.

In 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush turned to Hunt to help fund his presidential campaign efforts in Iowa, according to Robert Bryce's book, Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, And The Rise Of Texas, America's Superstate.

"By the summer of 1999, Bush had already raised $37 million but he wanted to conserve his campaign cash so he turned to a Texas crony, Ray Hunt, to help fund the Iowa effort," Bryce wrote. "In July of 1999, Hunt was among a handful of Bush supporters who each donated $10,000 to the Iowa Republican party."

In May 2000, Bush appointed Hunt finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hunt also donated $5,000 to the Florida recount battle and spent $100,000 on Bush's inaugural party.

  • Bush presidency

When Bush became President in 2001, Hunt emerged as an advisor to Cheney's energy task force, according to highly placed executives at Hunt Oil whom I have been in contact with over the past seven years.

Bush also appointed Hunt to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and to the PFIAB, giving him access to highly classified information.

Hunt's son, Hunter, a vice president at Hunt Oil, became another top energy advisor to the new administration, the company's Web site said.

One of the topics before Cheney's task force was the hoped-for opportunity for American oil companies to regain access to Iraq's underdeveloped oil fields as a way to meet increasing US energy demands.

That opportunity opened up after the US-led invasion and conquest of Iraq in March and April of 2003, although a stubborn insurgency and political disarray slowed efforts to modernize the Iraqi oil industry.

Further bolstering Hunt Oil's influence in the region in November 2003, Bush named James Oberwetter, a Hunt Oil vice president, to be US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Hunt Oil finally nailed down a major oil agreement with the semi-autonomous Kurdish region on Sept. 7, 2007. But the deal outraged many Iraqi officials because it was enacted before a national law could be adopted on the distribution of oil revenues. Bush administration officials also criticized the deal.

At the time, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, questioned whether Ray Hunt benefited from inside information from Bush, Cheney and/or other White House officials about Iraq's stalled national oil law.

"As I have said for five years, this war is about oil," Kucinich said. "The Bush administration desires private control of Iraqi oil, but we have no right to force Iraq to give up their oil. … The constitution of Iraq designates that the oil of Iraq is the property of all Iraqi people."

  • Amazon pipeline

The production-sharing agreement Hunt Oil signed with the Kurds is not the company's first controversial energy project. Nor is it the first time the company has received help from the Bush administration for its work overseas, as documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show.

In August 2003, the Bush administration threw its support behind the Camisea gas-pipeline project in the Amazon jungle in Peru that drew international criticism because it threatened to destroy a pristine stretch of rainforest and jeopardized the lives of indigenous people.

The London Independent reported that the beneficiaries of the project "would be two Texas energy companies with close ties to the White House, Hunt Oil and Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton." [Independent, Aug. 4, 2003]

When the pipeline deal went through, Hunt hired Halliburton to conduct the engineering work on the project as well as to build a $1 billion export terminal on the coast.

"Bush Pioneer Jose Fourquet played a pivotal role in the financing of a massive Peruvian natural gas project that benefited Hunt Oil Co., whose chairman, Ray L. Hunt, signed up to be a Pioneer and is a longtime ally of the president," the Washington Post reported on May 17, 2004.

"Fourquet, the Treasury Department's US representative to the Inter-American Development Bank, rebuffed the official written and oral recommendation from other US officials to vote 'no' on the project.

"Instead, he abstained on $135 million in financing for the project, allowing it to proceed. Opposition from the United States, a primary funder of the IDB bank, would have jeopardized the deal," the Washington Post reported.

  • Wink and nod

Now, the new evidence suggests that Hunt Oil at least benefited from the administration's wink and nod in striking the Kurdish oil deal.

In a July 12, 2007, letter to PFIAB, Hunt disclosed that Hunt Oil was "approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region."

Hunt described a visit of a Hunt Oil survey team and stated, "we were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week."

In a second letter to PFIAB, dated Aug. 30, 2007, Hunt revealed that he would travel to Kurdistan in early September for meetings with the Kurdistan regional government, including its president, prime minister and oil minister.

Those meetings led to the oil agreement between Hunt Oil and the Kurdish leaders -- and now have raised questions about Bush's denial that he had any advanced knowledge about the deal.

"State Department officials similarly disavowed involvement in the contract," Waxman said in the letter to Rice. "Department officials claimed that to the extent they were aware of any negotiations, they actively warned Hunt Oil not to enter into a contract because it was contrary to US national security interests.

"Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil's interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed."

Waxman asked Rice to cooperate with the committee's investigation. Hunt Oil declined to comment on Ray Hunt's relationship with Bush or his administration.

-- Jason Leopold is an investigative reporter and the author of News Junkie. His website is pubrecord.org.


ConsortiumNews

Source: Middle East


____________________________________________________________
Smart Girls Secret Weapon
Read Unbiased Beauty Product Reviews, Get Helpful Tips, Tricks and Sam

__._,_.___
MARKETPLACE

Attention, Yahoo! Groups users! Sign up now for a one-month free trial from Blockbuster. Limited time offer.
Recent Activity
Visit Your Group
Yahoo! News

Get it all here

Breaking news to

entertainment news

Yahoo! Finance

It's Now Personal

Guides, news,

advice & more.

John McEnroe

on Yahoo! Groups

Join him for the

10 Day Challenge.

.

__,_._,___