Halliburton Increase Deaths, Profits & Share Prices

On the eve of Halliburton's Annual General Meeting in Houston, Texas, Corporate Watch have released The Alternative Annual Report on Halliburton, which gives a little more insight into Halliburton's activies than the AGM might.

In all likelihood, tomorrow's AGM will see Halliburton CEO David Lesar waxing lyrical about the $7.1 billion revenue the company has made from recent work in Iraq, which doubles the profits Halliburton made in Iraq in 2003.

However, Halliburton's overall revenue for 2004 is $20 billion and the graph below from the Corporate Watch Alternative Annual Report on Halliburton shows a very interesting correlation between Halliburton's increasing stock price, increasing revenues generated in Iraq, and the increasing number of deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The Antagonist believes that this rather limited focus on the number of deaths of U.S. soldiers should be expanded to include the deaths of soldiers from all countries involved in the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq.

Furthermore, if we also include all civilians deaths in Iraq in this figure, we would see a much more interesting correlation between the volume of deaths that have occurred as a result of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the illegitimate revenues that Halliburton and their ilk have been allowed to generate from this illegal act.

By not including the sum total of all deaths resulting from the Iraq invasion and mapping these to the revenues generated by all organisations involved in Iraq, we are all giving tacit approval to the blatant, largley unspoken and entirely mistaken presupposition that the lives of U.S. solidiers and civilians are somehow more important than those of soldiers and civilians from any other part of the world.

This presupposition of American life being somehow more relevant than that of every other life on the planet, dear reader, means you and your life in whichever non-American land you happen to be as you read this.

If you are happy about this, and allowing this flawed presupposition to perpetuate and be used to justify illegal acts of war at a whim, solely in the interests of global control and profit, then carry on as you were.

If, however, you believe that your right to life is equal to that of any American, that that right to life is equally as valid as that of every other being, and that the profit and global control of the few, at the huge expense of the many is not the best way for the many to proceed into the future, then now is the time to start to making changes.