The Burma Campaign UK has an extensive list of corporations supporting the brutal military dictatorship in Burma.

Here are some of the more familiar names to those of us who live here in the US.

Chevron
Daewoo International Corporation
Fodor's/Random House
Lonely Planet
Siemens
Suzuki

There was an excellent article on TomPaine.com, connecting the dots between the Bush regime, Halliburton, Chevron, and the Burmese regime.

Dennis Kucinich's courageous decision to introduce articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney creates additional pressure on the faux VP, who already is widely unpopular due to a variety of reasons, including:

• the Iraq War and the fraud committed to get us into that war


• his fanatical support of torture


• his reclusive and secretive behavior


• the conviction in the “Scooter” Libby trial


• his efforts to intimidate those who disagree with him


• his hateful personality


• the fact that he was never elected to the office

Cheney has had four heart attacks and been through other heart surgery. There has been tremendous press coverage of his problems with clotting blood in his leg.

Cheney is 66 years old. This is past the theoretical American retirement age of 65, and he would personally and professionally be better off if he did retire for health reasons.

GOP political operatives must have realized by now that their jobs would be much easier if Cheney was hanging out with the bin Laden's, rather than decreasing Bush's poll numbers further than even Bush is capable of doing.

There has been some speculation on a couple of other blogs about this in the past:

Was McCain Offered Cheney's Job?

Changes in the White House

Cheney is one of the most power-mad people in world history, but even he may see the benefits of doing so. Maybe, some Republican high-rollers will be smart enough to convince him.

Much well-deserved attention has been given to the role of political corruption in starting the war in Iraq. The role of big oil, Halliburton, Bechtel, and a host of contractors and arms dealers in getting us in Iraq and keeping us there gets plenty of discussion online, if not in the corporate media.

However, the religious roots of this war often are ignored. The pretext of the war, as absurd as it was, involved the farcical notion that Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Baath Party were in collusion, even though they were mortal enemies. The 911 attacks certainly never have been a valid reason for the Iraq conflict, but they created an enormous amount of anger in the US that could easily be exploited.

Yet, the most significant religious origins for US war fever have had more to do with Christian extremism than anything else. The attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a plane flying over rural Pennsylvania caused a reaction that tapped into long felt fundamentalist Christian desires to subjugate, torture, and kill Muslims. A war that has lasted longer than WWII has yet to satisfy these hungers.

From the bizarely named “American Jihad” blog:

KILL!

KILL!!

KILL THE MUSLIMS!!!

View the works of these MURDEROUS MUSLIM BASTARS at: http://terrorwebs.blogspot.com/ then surf on over to http://michaelsavage.com/ and watch a few BEHEADING VIDEOS!

* MUSLIMS ARE PRIMITIVE SAVAGES
* MUSLIMS ARE PERVERTS AND QUEERS
* MUSLIMS ARE CRAWLING WITH VD AND AIDS
* MUSLIMS ARE DUMB AND IGNORANT
* MUSLIMS ARE DRUG DEALERS AND WHORES
* MUSLIMS ARE THIEVES AND KILLERS
* MUSLIMS ARE CHILD MOLDESTERS AND RAPISTS
* MUSLIMS ARE SATANIC SATYRS!
* MUSLIMS ARE EVIL TERRORISTS!!!

It would be easy to dismiss this as the rantings of a lone extremist, but it would be inaccurate. If you follow uncensored and anonymous Internet forums, you will find far too many postings expressing the same point of view. It also is interesting to note the homophobia of the poster, which is identical to that of militant Islamists.

The underlying problem here is that religion poisons politics and policy discussions, though not always by such extreme degrees. People who depend on absolutist religious ideologies always will be threatened by people who do not share those beliefs and by those who live their lives in ways that fail to conform to those absolutist religious beliefs.

Thomas Jefferson's Wall of Separation between church and state makes more sense with each passing day. If we cannot stop people from believing in religious ideologies, we can create cultural and legal boundaries that protect society as a whole from many of the consequences of such thinking.

• Churches that engage in political activity should have their tax-exempt statuses removed. The IRS needs to start following the law in this area.


• Courts need to do a much better job in enforcing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, rather than crafting dishonest exemptions in it to appease religious majorities.


• A cultural taboo needs to be put in place about bringing religion into politics.

The efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to prolong the Iraq War at least until September 2008 are a terrible betrayal of the movement against the war in Iraq and our troops. Her efforts to use Karl Rove style spin to portray this as an effort to stop the war show how far she will go to mislead Democrats and her overwhelmingly anti-war constituents.

Pelosi has all the power needed to block a vote on the supplemental appropriations bills the Bush regime is using to fund this illegal and unAmerican war. She refuses to use that power because she would rather side with Big Oil, Halliburton, and other corporations making money off of the war.

I remember living in the Bay Area when she was first elected. She was recruited by the Waxman-Berman political machine which was desperate to keep an openly gay man from being elected to Congress from San Francisco. Pelosi even resorted to gay baiting Britt during the campaign, attacking Britt as "gay socialist."

And, that homophobia carries through to today. Despite “representing” one of the most heavily queer districts in the country, Pelosi has done nothing on lgbt issues since the November elections. Instead, she avoids the subject all together.

And, one should not forget the racist comments she made about Hugo Chavez when he merely mocked the unelected tyrant currently occupying the White House. This shows how desperate Pelosi can be to cater to Bush. Then again, what should one expect from someone who refused to do anything about the thefts of the 2000 and 2004 elections.

She continued the pandering to Bush in her capacity as Speaker with her infamous proclamation that impeachment of Bush and Cheney is “off the table,” even though a majority of San Francisco voters expressed their support for impeachment in a 2006 ballot initiative.

Now, Pelosi has something terrible in common with Bush and Cheney. They don't just have the blood of our troops on their hands; they are bathing in it.

Halliburton is famous as a military contractor tied to former CEO, Dick Cheney. Many folks may not know that they also have their own Political Action Committee.

The FEC Disclosure Report Search Results provide interesting information on who Halliburton Company PAC wants in the House and Senate.

HALLIBURTON COMPANY PAC's Friends

Candidate	Party	State	Office	Net Contributions 2005-2006*
George Allen	Rep.	VA	Senate	$2000*
Joe L. Barton	Rep.	TX	House	$3000
Brian P. Bilbray	Rep.	CA	House	$1000
Earl Blumenauer	Dem.	OR	House	$0*
Roy Blunt	Rep.	MO	House	$1000
Denise Bode	Rep.	OK	House	$2000
John A. Boehner	Rep.	OH	House	$1000
Charles W. Boustany, Jr.	Rep.	LA	House	$1000
Conrad Burns	Rep.	MT	Senate	$2000
Ken Calvert	Rep.	CA	House	$2500
Lincoln D. Chafee	Rep.	RI	Senate	$1000
Tom Cole	Rep.	OK	House	$2000
Michael K. Conaway	Rep.	TX	House	$2000
Barbara L. Cubin	Rep.	WY	House	$1000
Henry R. Cuellar	Dem.	TX	House	$2000
John Culberson	Rep.	TX	House	$4500
Geoffrey C. Davis	Rep.	KY	House	$1000
Thomas M. Davis III	Rep.	VA	House	$3000
Richard Michael DeWine	Rep.	OH	Senate	$2000
John Eric Ensign	Rep.	NV	Senate	$2000
Raymond E. “Gene” Green	Dem.	TX	House	$2000
Charles T. Hagel	Rep.	NE	Senate	$1500
Samuel Robert Johnson	Rep.	TX	House	$2000
John Heddens Kingston	Rep.	GA	House	$1000
Jon L. Kyl	Rep.	AZ	Senate	$1000
Trent Lott	Rep.	MI	Senate	$2000
James Otis McCrery III	Rep.	LA	House	$2000
Charlie Melancon Jr.	Dem.	LA	House	$1000
E. Benjamin Nelson	Dem.	NE	Senate	$1000
Solomon P. Ortiz	Dem.	TX	House	$1000
Ted Poe	Rep.	TX	House	$1000
Richard Pombo	Rep.	CA	House	$4000
Silvestre Reyes	Dem.	TX	House	$0*
Richard J. Santorum	Rep.	PA	Senate	$2500
Olympia J. Snowe	Rep.	ME	Senate	$1000
John Sullivan	Rep.	OK	House	$2000
James Matthew Talent	Rep.	OK	House	$2000
Craig Thomas	Rep.	WY	Senate	$2000
William Thomas	Rep.	CA	House	$2000
David Vitter	Rep.	LA	Senate	$2500
John William Warner	Rep.	VA	Senate	$1000
Roger F. Wicker	Rep.	MI	House	$1000
Heather A. Wilson	Rep.	NM	House	$1000

*When negative contributions were listed, the money was subtracted out to get net contributions for the time period in question.

As you can see, Halliburton Company PAC has a particular fondness for Republicans and Texas Democrats.

During the same time period, the National Republican Congressional Committee received $6500 from Halliburton Co PAC. The National Republican Senatorial Committee received $2500.

The Bush regime's latest talking point, that leaving Iraq would turn the country over to “enemies,” reveals more than what they would like.

The main Shi'ite parties are anti-American parties tied to the Shia regime in Iran. Chalabi, the Bush regime's main point man in Iraq, is a well-known Iranian spy. The Shias are letting US troops do battlefield combat with their Sunni enemies while their police forces are disappearing Sunni civilians in much the way that Latin American dictatorships supported by the Reagan Administration did.

The Bush regime has already handed Iraq over to enemies of the US. In fact, they have converted the entire country into enemies of the US. The Bush people are tyring to set conditions where we never can leave Iraq, because there aren't any US-friendly Iraqis left to turn over the country to.

So, what is Bush's cabal really worried about? If they pull our troops out of Iraq, Halliburton and other GOP cronies will lose their gravy train. The last thing the Bush regime wants is for Iraqis getting jobs rebuilding their country. They would rather see their cronies bill the US government endlessly while producing little or nothing of any value for the Iraqi people.