Dr.M is right,I just dont know what to say
We now have Halliburton and their ill gained profits investing here in Malaysia,Project Iskandar to be precise.We are not just talking about a couple of millions here,We are talking about rm200 million.Where are we going to put our pride?We are certainly not good in protecting our pride.Our very own pride.
Halliburton pretty much took all the oil in Iraq,Dont forget the thousands of iraqis that died becaise of that.Our country are of course against their actions but what thell are we doing letting them invest in our mega project?We are directly opposing them but indirectly supporting them.This is what i like to call it as confusing.
I wonder what we have to go say during the next OIC meeting.I dont know what the government is up to anymore.Why is Halliburton's money in our country?Are we that desperate for mega projects?If we were to develop our country,let us pretty please develop it properly.What are we doing now is really funny.Not the funny thing that makes you laugh,Its the funny kind of thing that makes you want to bang certain people's head that are involved at the wall and getting the satisfaction out from it.
Yes,frankly speaking it is not that funny afterall.
Here is an article by tehran times on the project Iskandar and Halliburton.
I was shocked by the rather cavalier attitude shown by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Iskandar Regional Authority, Datuk Ikmal Hijaz Hashim, when asked whether ethical issues were involved in Halliburton’s RM 200 million investment in Iskandar. According to The Star (1 May 2008), his response was, “Whose ethics are you referring to? Which value judgment are you using? If they bring in investment and create jobs, I don’t see any ethical questions on that. I am not too sure which yardstick you are using.”
The Iskandar CEO forgets that Halliburton is not just any company. It is the corporation that has gained most from the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. It is estimated that its revenues are about 20 billion U.S. dollars. Apart from its involvement in oil and gas services, Halliburton is engaged in a whole range of highly profitable reconstruction activities. Even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, “it had been awarded a contract to put out oil fires set by Saddam’s retreating armies. When those fires did not materialize, Halliburton’s contract was stretched to include a new function: providing fuel for the entire nation, a job so big that ‘it bought up every available tanker truck in Kuwait, and imported hundreds more.’”
Since Malaysia remains opposed to the occupation of Iraq and has stayed away from the so-called reconstruction of a nation destroyed by the invaders, it would not be right to invite as an investor a corporation which has profited immensely from that destruction. In fact, Halliburton is perhaps one of the most infamous examples of how a powerful corporation can reap such a huge harvest from what the Canadian writer Naomi Klein calls ‘disaster capitalism’.
In advancing its interests as a disaster capitalist, Halliburton, it is alleged, has been helped by its powerful political connections. After serving as secretary of defense under George Bush senior, Dick Cheney joined Halliburton. He was there for five years in the nineties, and when he left the corporation to become vice president under Bush junior, he was given some 1,260,000 Halliburton options. It has been suggested that when “he leaves office in 2009 and is able to cash in his Halliburton holdings, Cheney will have the opportunity to profit extravagantly from the stunning improvement in Halliburton’s fortunes. The company’s stock price rose from $10 before the war in Iraq to $41 three years later -- a 300 percent jump, thanks to a combination of soaring energy prices and Iraq contracts, both of which flow directly from Cheney’s steering the country into war with Iraq.”
When a corporation profits in such a blatant manner from a war that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and when that profiteering is facilitated by a leader in high office, how can one ignore the ethical implications?
It is because business, like politics, is often separated from ethical principles that greed and the lust for power gain legitimacy. In the long run, it is society that pays the price -- a monumental price for its own folly

















