[lbo-talk] Fluor, Iraq & South Africa

[Michael Pugliese]

<URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/ >
> ...One of the other corporate sponsors of the Iraq invasion is Fluor- 
> Daniel, the southern California-based company staffed by former Pentagon 
> and CIA officials. Fluor is a front-runner in the quest to get the $600 
> million contract to rebuild Iraq's roads and public buildings. It has a 
> financial stake in wide-spread looting.
Fluor bills itself as an environmental services company though its track 
record is more harrowing than Dow Chemical's. In the mid-90s, Fluor took 
over the management of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, 
arguably the most polluted site in North America. Aggressive cost-cutting 
measures and radioactive waste don't mix, as the people of the Pacific 
Northwest discovered to their horror when Fluor's mismanagement of the site 
nearly caused an explosion that would have spewed radioactive debris from 
Spokane to Portland. Fluor's flirtation with a real dirty bomb makes 
Saddam's nuclear program look like a high school chemistry lab.
But it gets worse. Fluor's tactics are as vicious as any American company 
since the days of Anaconda Copper. In a lawsuit filed last week, a lawyer 
for South African workers details how Fluor brutalized and exploited its 
black workers. "This company has a long history of human rights violations 
in South Africa," says John Ngcebetsha, a lawyer for the workers. "It cares 
nothing about the society's in which it works and its involvement in Iraq 
would be disastrous."
The lawsuit claims that Fluor hired former members of the South African 
secret police to work as security guards and then dressed them up in Ku 
Klux Klan robes to smash a strike by workers protesting meager wages and 
horrid working conditions. <SNIP>

-- 
Michael Pugliese

"Without knowing that we knew nothing, we went on talking without listening 
to each other. Sometimes we flattered and praised each other, understanding 
that we would be flattered and praised in return. Other times we abused and 
shouted at each other, as if we were in a madhouse."
-Tolstoy