Halliburton

There are people in this world, I’m sure, who take issue with the way Chomsky and me paint a picture of good and evil, a black and white world where we all have a choice to make. We’re considered naïve by the vast majority of our population because we purport to be able to navigate the gray areas of the world which make it so complex and interesting.

But you and me and every rational person can agree that Halliburton is horrible. Everyone knows that they make their money best by making the world worse. While other corporations might just feed into the system that starts wars, Halliburton leads the pack in as many slimy ways as possible. Just check wikipedia.

This is a company who built with much gusto the fantastic Guantanamo Bay prison facility. This is a company who served expired food rations to soldiers in Iraq, then overcharged the Army for the contract. This is a company who will not rest until we have guzzled up all the oil on Earth.

So, knowing this, you can imagine how shocked I was when I saw a lil placard on campus saying that Halliburton itself was going to be recruiting at UT. I thought for sure a company like this wouldn’t just waltz into one of the more liberal institutions of the country and find more stooges to stock its cubicles. I thought for sure there’d at least be a few alt-looking types who would protest outside and get a nice lil article in the Daily Texan followed by a few fiery letters to the editor. And I definitely hoped there are very few if any UT students who want to work for Halliburton.

I guess I got caught up in some stuff I read for class. In a civil rights history class the previous week, I read about a time Dow Chemical, the company who manufactured Napalm for the Vietnam War, tried to recruit at San Jose State University in 1967. A riot of 2,000 students broke out on campus, and the police had to use tear gas. The recruiter, who had encountered demonstrations pretty much everywhere, said the students at San Jose State were like wild animals, screaming “murderer” and “fascist.” Look at me with a straight face and tell me you wouldn’t have liked to be there.

Now, I really wasn’t expecting all that from us in this day and age, but I had to go to the meeting posing as a bright-eyed b-schooler to at least see the minor uproar caused by Halliburton coming to UT. Wearing slacks for the first time since my last day at work this summer, I took a deep breath and walked right into the hostile environment.

There were no protests at all, of course, and there are several students who would love to make the world a worse place. They seemed really friendly, too. These sweet-looking Indian girls gave me as much Dominos pizza as I could eat and a huge cup of Sierra Mist. They were part of a group of engineering students interested in business, and they had purposely invited reps from Halliburton to come and speak to them.

These two reps, who were named Evonne and Carlos, were pretty young themselves. Evonne, who had hair as black as her business suit, gave a terrific talk about her boring job as an auditor at Halliburton. She had gone to UT and had worked two years for Arthur Anderson, but, she said, “You know how that turned out.” Carlos’s snappy speech showed pictures of him in countries all over the world. He literally said, “This is me in Rome. This is me in Egypt. And this is me in Iraq.” He also recalled a time when he was in Algeria for the company, but he couldn’t leave the hotel beach resort because it was too dangerous.

Their power point presentation boasted of how employment at Halliburton could give you “understanding of vast cultures” because Halliburton has operations in more than 100 countries. A slide showing an employee speaking to a classroom full of innocent children prompted Evonne to remark, “If civic involvement is your interest, we’re great for you.”

I looked around the room at this point to see if there were any fellow cynics around who picked up on that crude joke. There was not even a shred of enthusiasm in the room, let alone the capacity to pick up on a play on words like that. They may want to work at Halliburton, but at least they’re not passionate about it.

I guess it’s because Halliburton is a pretty damn comfortable place to work. Evonne said she only works forty-five or fifty hour-weeks at the office, where she had 100-hour weeks at Arthur Anderson. Carlos told the perspective interns that last years’ interns traveled to Australia, Paris, and Brazil.

It was obvious that nobody in the room really cared about Iraq or really any effect their actions would have on the world. Apparently an $18 billion contract in Iraq is the same as an $18 billion contract anywhere. I guess Evonne and Carlos and anyone who wants to work for a company like this simply wants to look down at the work on his desk and live as cushy a life as possible. I guess that’s their decision. But how can you blame me or you for making the opposite one?