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In July of 2010, two dozen members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus led by Michele Bachmann co-sponsored a resolution announcing support for Israel "to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force." So, Tea Partiers must have been shocked - shocked! - to learn that Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers underwriting their "movement," were also in business with Iran. As it turns out, the Kochs are merely following Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney among the Republican luminaries caught up in dirty deals with Tehran.

Twenty four years after Ronald Reagan sent a Bible, a cake and U.S. weapons to the mullahs in Tehran, Bloomberg News reported that, in the words of a former employee, the Koch brothers in likely violation of the American sanctions used "every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else."

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism...

Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show.

The company's products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran's state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.

In response to the allegations, Koch spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia said, "During the relevant time frame covered in your article, U.S. law allowed foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies to engage in trade involving countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions, including Iran, under certain conditions," adding that Koch has since stopped all of its units from trading with Iran.

If this story sounds familiar, it should. Just change the company to Halliburton and the CEO's name to Dick Cheney.

As the New York Times explained in March 2010, even as the Obama administration was seeking tougher UN sanctions to press Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, "of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave."

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington's efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

Among the U.S. contractors also profiting from Iran was Halliburton, which pocketed $27.1 billion from American taxpayers between 2000 and 2009:

Halliburton, former Vice President Cheney's old company, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through foreign subsidies. After a political furor erupted over the work, the company announced it would do no new business in Iran, and it exited the country altogether in 2007. While still operating in Iran, Halliburton won huge contacts from the federal government, including a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil sector, as did its subsidiary at the time, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As Perrspectives detailed four years ago, Halliburton had side-stepped the U.S. sanctions regime in place against Iran since the 1990's by using a Cayman Islands subsidiary. And what should come as a surprise to no one, CEO Dick Cheney opposed those very sanctions until, of course, he became George W. Bush's Vice President.

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Treason: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]."

Keep that definition in mind when you read Brian Beutler's report of the US Chamber of Commerce sending a message to Iran saying they oppose all US economic sanctions against them.

Head of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Mines Mohammad Nahavandian underlined on Wednesday that the US and European companies and economic institutions are completely opposed to imposing sanctions against Iran.

"The economic atmosphere of the US and Europe is opposed to sanctions against Iran," Nahavandian told FNA.

Stressing that the American people are not interested in imposing sanctions against Tehran, he said that the US Chamber of Commerce along with seven other institutions recently sent a statement to Iran and underlined the US private sector's opposition to such embargoes.

But wait, there's more:

A Chamber spokesperson was not immediately available to confirm the report, but it's compatible with the group's other, recent efforts. Early last year, the Chamber, along with eight other business-friendly groups, wrote to then-National Economic Council director Larry Summers and then-National Security Advisor Jim Jones opposing Iran sanctions legislation. "The undersigned business organizations are profoundly concerned that current legislative proposals to expand U.S. sanctions on Iran...would significantly undermine the U.S. national interest," the groups wrote. "While we agree that preventing Iran from developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons is an urgent U.S. national security objective, the unilateral, extraterritorial, and overly broad approach of these bills would undercut rather than advance this critical objective."

Looking at these actions in light of the definition of treason I cited earlier, it certainly appears as though certain corporate "citizens" (since they have had personhood bestowed upon them), are subverting the Obama administration's efforts to a) slow or prevent nuclear proliferation, since nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran are a clear threat to our national security; and b) in so doing, are helping a foreign government to seriously injure the parent nation.

The Chamber has argued in public and in communication to its membership that the lobbying it undertook to weaken Iran sanctions was absolutely necessary to keep corporate "persons" from doing business with other companies in the Middle East. All fine and well, but it still does not excuse them writing to the Iranian government in direct opposition to current administration policies.

These Chamber actions, when looked at from a distance and in concert with disclosures in the WikiLeaks cables about their activities in foreign countries, suggest an organization loyal to wealth-building without regard to this nation's priorities, policies, or laws. Sanctions are one of the few ways of putting pressure on an opposing government without violence or aggression. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the idea of Iran as a nuclear power is something anyone in this country or the Middle East -- Israel or otherwise -- wants. It would be the equivalent of handing the launch mechanism in this country to Sarah Palin.

In President Obama's speech to the Chamber today, he said this:

But I want to be clear: even as we make America the best place on earth to do business, businesses also have a responsibility to America.

I somehow have the sense that Tom Donohue was smirking behind his coffee when he said that. The rest of the speech was subtle pressure for these companies to quit sitting on their $2 trillion in cash and start investing in jobs not only to stimulate the economy but because it's patriotic.

Yes, we'll have disagreements; yes we will see things differently at times. But we are all Americans. And that spirit of patriotism, that sense of mutual regard and common obligation has carried us through times far harder than these.

Clearly the president was not advised that when corporations are persons in this country, patriotism is not part of their charter for existing here. Tom Donohue has seen to that.

Postscript: The fabulous Jon Perr reminds that Dick Cheney and 2012-hopeful Mitt Romney have significant interests in companies involved in Iranian investment deals. Cheney's Halliburton ties are the gift that just keeps giving.

Update: The US Chamber has denied any letter sent to Iran, saying they only sent a letter to the White House.

The Chamber of Commerce is denying a report by the Fars News Agency in Iran suggesting that they, along with several other business groups, sent a statement to the head the head of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Mines underlining their oppositions to U.S. sanctions.

"We did not send a letter to Iran, we sent a letter to the White House," said J.P. Fielder, spokesman for the U.S. Chamber.

Fielder didn't deny that the Chamber has contact with its counterpart in Iran, but that the Chamber sent no communication matching this description to Mohammad Nahavandian, who heads that group. "Not whatsoever," Fielder said.

Even for the SEC, which is known for mere wrist-slapping when Wall Street's Masters of the Universe are concerned (but please, remember how bravely they made an example of Martha Stewart), this is a joke. I'm very pleased that the judge is calling them to task on it:

A federal judge refused on Monday to accept a $75 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup, marking the second time this year that a judge has questioned whether the agency had exacted the proper sanction from a major bank.

During a hearing on the settlement, Judge Ellen S. Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia raised questions about the SEC's investigation into Citigroup, and how it decided on the size of the penalty and on the individual executives who also face sanctions, according to lawyers who were present. She asked why company shareholders must ultimately bear the price of the sanction, and why the agency charged only two executives with wrongdoing when more senior executives were involved.

Huvelle demanded additional information from the SEC and Citigroup, ordering the parties to file briefs and scheduling a hearing for late September. Through spokesmen, the SEC and Citigroup said they would provide the judge with all the requested information.

[...] An SEC lawyer told the judge on Monday that the agency did an expansive investigation into Citigroup and could only find evidence of wrongdoing by those two executives. The lawyer told the judge that the agency did an economic analysis of the bank's alleged wrongdoing, trying to determine what gain the company enjoyed as a result of the faulty disclosures, and came up with what it considered a reasonable penalty.

Matthew Miller, a lawyer at Cuneo, Gilbert and Laduca who is representing a shareholder who has sued Citigroup executives over losses incurred by the firm, praised the judge's action.

"There's very little explanation as to why these two individuals who are named in a related administrative complaint are the only two people responsible for the conduct at issue, and why there are no more senior executives involved in this proceeding," he said.

Via ProPublica. Despite a steady stream of stories indicating that BP officials were, at the very least, criminally negligent, I just don't believe this administration has the cojones to really punish these bastards. As always, happy to be proven wrong!

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.

Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company's executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.

That strategy may no longer work.

Days ago, in an unannounced move, the EPA suspended negotiations with the petroleum giant over whether it would be barred from federal contracts because of the environmental crimes it committed before the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials said they are putting the talks on hold until they learn more about the British company's responsibility for the plume of oil that is spreading across the Gulf.

The EPA said in a statement that, according to its regulations, it can consider banning BP from future contracts after weighing "the frequency and pattern of the incidents, corporate attitude both before and after the incidents, changes in policies, procedures, and practices."

Several former senior EPA debarment attorneys and people close to the BP investigation told ProPublica that means the agency will re-evaluate BP and examine whether the latest incident in the Gulf is evidence of an institutional problem inside BP, a precursor to the action called debarment.

Federal law allows agencies to suspend or bar from government contracts companies that engage in fraudulent, reckless or criminal conduct. The sanctions can be applied to a single facility or an entire corporation. Government agencies have the power to forbid a company to collect any benefit from the federal government in the forms of contracts, land leases, drilling rights, or loans.

The most serious, sweeping kind of suspension is called "discretionary debarment" and it is applied to an entire company. If this were imposed on BP, it would cancel not only the company's contracts to sell fuel to the military but prohibit BP from leasing or renewing drilling leases on federal land. In the worst cast, it could also lead to the cancellation of BP's existing federal leases, worth billions of dollars.

Present and former officials said the crucial question in deciding whether to impose such a sanction is assessing the offending company's culture and approach: Do its executives display an attitude of non-compliance? The law is not intended to punish actions by rogue employees and is focused on making contractor relationships work to the benefit of the government. In its negotiations with EPA officials before the Gulf spill, BP had been insisting that it had made far-reaching changes in its approach to safety and maintenance, and that environmental officials could trust its promises that it would commit no further violations of the law.

And we all see how well that worked out, right?

Three weeks ago, CBS 60 Minutes revealed Iran's continued success in acquiring sensitive, weapons-related U.S. technologies despite the American regime of sanctions. Now, the New York Times has documented a long list of multinational American companies receiving billions in federal contracts while they were doing business with Tehran.

If that seems like an ironic turn of events for right-wingers taking a hard line towards Iran, it should. After all, Mitt Romney's brief divestment crusade backfired when it turned out his old company was doing deals with the mullahs. And Halliburton CEO turned Vice President Dick Cheney was opposed to the Iran sanctions before he was for them.

Even as the Obama administration is seeking tougher UN sanctions to press Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, "of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave."

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington's efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

Among the U.S. contractors also profiting from Iran was Halliburton, which pocketed $27.1 billion from American taxpayers between 2000 and 2009:

Halliburton, former Vice President Cheney's old company, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through foreign subsidies. After a political furor erupted over the work, the company announced it would do no new business in Iran, and it exited the country altogether in 2007. While still operating in Iran, Halliburton won huge contacts from the federal government, including a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil sector, as did its subsidiary at the time, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As Perrspectives detailed three years ago, Halliburton had side-stepped the U.S. sanctions regime in place against Iran since the 1990's by using a Cayman Islands subsidiary. And what should come as a surprise to no one, CEO Dick Cheney opposed those very sanctions until, of course, he became George W. Bush's Vice President.

Continue reading »

Connecting.the.Dots: What is as close as we're going to get to a calling-to-account for the former Decider, and his puppet Tony Blair, for thousands of deaths in Iraq is unfolding, largely out of American media sight, before a panel of British nobles.

Informed Comment: IAEA condemnation of Iran: An omen of new sanctions or a symbolic slap on the wrist?

Seeing the Forest: Name it "The Bush Death Tax"

TheCunning Realist: Fear Factor

Ed Cone: Corn hole

James Wolcott: America Burps and Goes Shopping

Naomi Klein in Bil'in, June 26, 2009

I have a feeling that this will not be covered in the mainstream media at all.

The Faster Times:

(Naomi) Klein is the author of the highly acclaimed, best-selling books No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, both staples of many Western liberal/leftist book collections. She was invited to speak by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC) because Klein is one of a growing number of high profile Western authors, artists and cultural figures who have signed on to a 2005 Palestinian civil society call to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel until it complies with international law.

Over three hundred people crammed the small venue which was followed by a lively question and answer session. Although technically in the region on a book tour for the Hebrew release of Shock Doctrine, Klein focused her remarks on critiques of boycotting Israel as a tactic, and the motivation of Western states to torpedo the recently held Durban Review Conference held in Geneva this past April. She ended by making an emotional appeal to those “who are on the fence [about the call for boycott] to please join,” acknowledging that her delayed endorsement of the boycott campaign in 2008, three years after the call was initially made, “was nothing but cowardice.”

It's not without controversy, but I do applaud Klein for speaking out. I don't think Klein is anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic at all--although if this gets covered in the US at all, it will be on Fox and that's exactly how they'll characterize her. However, in order for there to be any true negotiation for peace in the region, there MUST be a little more honesty and a little less knee-jerking on the subject. Klein explains where she's coming from:

I wanted to start by letting you in on a little secret. There is a debate among Jews. I used to say “the Jewish community” but then I got excommunicated. So there is a debate among Jews - I’m a Jew by the way - about whether the lesson of the Holocaust should be “never again to anyone”, or “never again to us.” That’s what it pretty much boils down to. And there are a lot of people who believe that the lessons of the Holocaust was “never again to us, never again to the Jews.” Because we suffered this tremendous crime against humanity, we have the right to do whatever it takes to keep ourselves safe. In fact we even think we get a kind of get one genocide free card out of this. [...]

There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that says that the lessons of the Holocaust is “never again to anyone”, and that it is precisely because of what we experienced as Jews that we must denounce racism, denounce systems of segregation wherever they crop up, even and especially when they crop up amongst our own. I am proud to put myself - and I thank my parents for this - in that second tradition. That’s why I’m proud to join in here tonight.

Because we don't have anything else to worry about, right?

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles on Thursday, further stoking tension in the region that was already high due to Pyongyang's nuclear test and threats to boost its nuclear arsenal in response to U.N. sanctions.

North Korea fired two surface-to-ship missiles off its east coast that flew about 100 km (60 miles) and splashed into the sea, a South Korean defense official said.

A South Korean daily said that the secretive North may also test fire mid-range missiles in a matter of days.

Washington said this week it had tightened its crackdown on firms linked to the North's lucrative proliferation of missiles, a major source of cash for the destitute state, and has sent the U.S. point man for sanctions to Asia for discussions.

GOPnot4me: McCainocrats? Surely, not!

Threat Level: McCain - I'd secretly spy on Americans, too.

The Public Record: When Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the 1990s, he spoke out against the sanctions against Iran - the same Iran he's now rattling the saber toward for their terrorist ties.

Attytood: An Iraqi in America wonders whose war is it, anyway?

HOLY CRAP: US apologizes for proselytizing by Marine in Iraq, but they're really not sorry...You can leave the UCC - but the UCC may not leave you...The Antichrist is gay, "partially Jewish, as was Hitler"...Conservative lawyer Douglas Kmiec denied communion because of Obama endorsement...Blacks, Jews & Obama...Bobby Jindal: Exorcist Vice-President?...More anti-Semitism from the religious right.

"Bush administration officials, for all their bellicose rhetoric, still hope that diplomatic pressure -- backed by ever-tighter economic sanctions -- will persuade Iran to compromise." -- David Ignatius, Oct. 28, 2007

"In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own." -- David Ignatius, April 27, 2004

Media Bloodhound has the rebuttal.