Halliburton’s bad gas

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Here’s a question that didn’t make it into last night’s vice-presidential debates: Mr. Cheney, how do you feel about your former employers benefitting from forced labor and other human rights abuses in Burma?

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According to a new report from EARTHRIGHTS INTERNATIONAL, Halliburton, the oil company that boasted Cheney as CEO until he jumped on George W.’s presidential bandwagon, received a little help from the Burmese military while building a gas pipeline in the 1990s. To make sure everything went smoothly, the Burmese soldiers allegedly forced a few thousand villagers to work in support of the project, and raped, tortured and killed a few who found this arrangement unsatisfactory.

“Halliburton’s participation in these projects shows a callous disregard for the consequences of their business behavior,” says the report.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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