[Peace-discuss] demo against SAIC, "brainpower" for Iraq, cybersaboteurs

[Paul Mueth]

All 
too bad there was no local coordination on 5 year demo
I propose a broad call for a vigil in front of SAIC in
the research park on S first st.
We have a major Iraq contractor on campus

This could be planned .perhaps on a gameday or other
event on south campus

Here's link to major article already a year old, I
think Mort posted it contemporaneously .. 

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel
supply the government with brawn. But the biggest,
most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs
44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells
brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind
the Iraq war.
by  Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele March 2007


below is article with allegation about cyber
industrial sabotage,  there isn't a lot of info on
this as it is hard to nail down ..  SAIC 5th parag


Of "Lungos" And "Senoritos" A Colombian View Of
Venezuela 

By Hector Mondragon Jan 01, 2003 
	At the petroleum refinery of Barrancabermeja the
workers who are consigned to hard manual labour are
called 'lungos'. There are a lot of them and they earn
very little. They are almost all temporary labourers
and they live in the poor neighbourhoods. When the
'lungos' go on strike, technology guarantees that
production doesn't totally stop-so even when the
majority of the workers are united in protest, if they
can't actually stop the plant from functioning, the
engineers, supervisors, and managers can keep the
refinery going under 'contingency plans'. 
	Right now the oil-workers union of Colombia, USO
(Union Sindical Obrera), is getting ready to go on
strike in response to the Uribe government's
offensive. That offensive is headed by Isaac Yanovich,
a businessman from the private banking sector who has
been named president of the state oil company. The
workers, who struggled and won the creation of a
national oil company (Ecopetrol), have resisted its
privatization for the past 25 years. They have paid a
terrible price for their resistance: 100 union leaders
and activists assassinated (4 during 2002, which saw
160 Colombian unionists killed), 2 disappeared, 10
kidnapped, 31 imprisoned (6 of whom are still in
prison), and 250 fired (11 of whom were fired just a
few days ago). 
	It is in such difficult conditions that the Colombian
oil-workers are preparing their strike for the
beginning of 2003. The victory of their movement will
depend on their ability to halt production. For this
reason the union and the government are both putting
forth massive efforts to win the engineers and
supervisors to their side. If the union is unable to
win these over, the workers will have no option but to
occupy the plant. This will mean that they will face
military repression like they did in 1971. In that
year, as workers in the union remember well, worker
Fermin Amaya was murdered as he was about to stop
production at the Barranca refinery. 
	Next door in Venezuela, the world is flipped entirely
upside down. There, the 'lungos' are working intensely
while the call to strike is followed with fervour and
without hesitation by the managers. On December 2 the
managerial body of Venezuela's state oil company, PDV
(Petroleros de Venezuela), blocked the entrance to the
refinery and used their vehicles to stop the workers,
the 'lungos'-who had showed up to work in massive
numbers-- from entering. The same managerial body was
joined by the executive of labour relations in its
attempts to bar the entry of workers. 
	But the real strength of the strike in Venezuela has
been in the computers that control the giant and
highly automated petroleum industry. Even though the
PDV is nominally state-owned and run, the computer
system is in the hands of the 'mixed' (public-private)
enterprise Intesa. The party with the technical skill
in the partnership is the Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC)-a transnational
computing company. Among its directors: ex-US
Secretaries of Defense William Perry and Melvin Laird;
ex-directors of the CIA John Deutsch, Robert Gates;
Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (ex-director of the National
Security Agency); other retired military staff
including Wayne Downing (former commander in chief of
US Special Forces) and Jasper Welch (ex-coordinator of
the National Security Council). 
	The hold-up of the oil-tankers was directed from
these computing centers. The hold-up was welcomed by
various captains, but the tankers were forced to shore
in any case: nothing moves without direction from the
computers, which also stopped key operations in the
refineries and the entry of vital gas for the iron and
steel industries of eastern Venezuela. 'Lungos' from
Guayana had to recover the gas. 
	The high salaries, privileges, and commissions of the
managers, labour relations chiefs, systems engineers,
and tanker captains has become a useful weapon of
political control for the transnational corporations
who seek to privatize Venezuela's (and Colombia's,
Ecuador's, and Brazil's) petrol industry. 
	This 'middle' class with its disposable income is the
political base of the right in Colombia and Venezuela
(and its heroes are Bush, Aznar, or Berlusconi). It is
the electoral force behind Colombia's president Alvaro
Uribe Velez and behind the coup in Venezuela.
Washington uses the mailed fist in Colombia and the
velvet glove in Venezuela, but in both cases its local
support is from these 'middle' classes who, like Bush
himself, are too deaf to hear of the assassinations of
unionists in Colombia but scream in rage if a hair on
the head of a manager or oil-tanker captain in
Venezuela is touched; who are quiet when 2 million
Colombians are displaced from their lands but enraged
by the Venezuelan Land Law when it threatens the
unproductive ranches of large Venezuelan landowners. 
	On September 16 2002, Colombian peasants were treated
cruelly for their protests on the highways. Their food
was burned. They were denied drinking water. They were
surrounded by the military and their leaders were
arrested. 3 were disappeared. International delegates
were deported. 7 of the protest leaders have since
been assassinated, one disappeared, and many others
harassed and threatened with murder. They stand
accused-of blocking the roads. In Venezuela on the
other hand, the 'middle' and upper classes blocked
roads with their Mercedes Benz and BMWs, and their
rights were respected. 
	In Cali, Colombia, the public service workers have
been protesting privatization. The young workers of
the apprentices' union have been protesting to
maintain state control over the apprenticeship
institution, SENA. Both sectors have been incessantly,
brutally attacked and the international media have
nothing to say. The media are silent as well on the
daily confrontations on the Caribbean coast of
Colombia when the privatized electricity company tries
to cut electricity to thousands of indebted, poor
people. Neither popular protest nor state repression
make the international news if they occur in Colombia
which, to the media, is a land strictly of terrorism
and drugs. 
	The 'middle' class ought to watch out
though-sometimes it can end up the victim of its own
heroes, whether they be politicians like Bush or the
mainstream media itself. That was what happened with
the 'corralito' in Argentina, when the whole
country-including the 'middle class'-mobilized against
the banks and were denounced for it in the media. 
	Until this happen the 'senoritos' in wealthy eastern
Caracas, in the Chico of Bogota and of Miami, will be
the darlings of the media. 
	Hector Mondragon is an economist and activist in
Colombia. [This article was translated from Spanish by
Justin Podur.]