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Now that KBR has prevailed in Jamie Leigh Jones' civil case against them, they want her to pay their fees, which total in the millions. And, legally speaking, they are probably just doing it to be assholes. More »
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A Houston jury rejected all of Jamie Leigh Jones' claims today, including that she was raped by Charles Boartz and that she was defrauded by KBR. More »
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Any day now, jurors will issue a verdict in Jamie Leigh Jones' civil suit against mega-contractor KBR and a firefighter she says raped her, and Mother Jones is saying she's probably going to lose. More »
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Remember that whole thing where a KBR employee was drugged and gang-raped by coworkers and then locked in a shipping container by her bosses? And then the company essentially said she was asking for it? And then Al Franken worked to close the loophole that allowed them wriggle out of being sued? Oh, and those pesky allegations of human trafficking and sexual harassment and bullying of Iraqi employees. More »
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Jamie Leigh Jones worked for KBR when she was brutally gang raped and imprisoned by co-workers and later rescued by her Texas-based Congressman. Today, KBR dropped its fight to deny her justice. But it's not all good news. More »
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Mega defense contractor Kellogg, Brown, and Root is preparing to fight former employee Jamie Leigh Jones over her right to settle her suit with the company, all the way to the Supreme Court. Its strategy? Destroying Jones' credibility. More »
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• Last Friday afternoon, a woman taking an adult education class at the Met lost her balance and fell onto a Picasso painting. "The Actor," a painting from Picasso's Roe Period, suffered a six-inch tear in its lower right-hand corner. More »
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The GOP is complaining that Al Franken isn't doing enough to combat leftists from "tap[ping] into the natural sympathy that we have for [victims of rape]" and it's making them look bad. Here's a thought: stop defending rapists! [Politico] More »
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Former military construction contractor Tracy Barker was raped in Iraq in 2005 while on the job. Barker went through arbitration and won a settlement, but her former employer, Kellogg Brown & Root, is still trying to screw her over. More »
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Democratic Senator Dan Inouye may remove Al Franken's anti-rape amendment from the defense appropriations bill, because defense contractors are complaining it would leave them overly vulnerable. The vulnerability of actual rape victims: apparently not a concern.[Huffington Post] More »
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Last night on the Rachel Maddow Show, Jamie Leigh Jones and her attorney, Todd Kelly, spoke out directly about the Defense Appropriations Bill Amendment, showing their support for the measure and expressing their disappointment with those who voted against it. More »
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Sen. Al Franken's amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill passed yesterday; the amendment penalizes companies that restricts claims of sexual assualt and discrimination to arbitration. The opposition claims that this is "a political attack" aimed at Halliburton/KBR. [ThinkProgress] More »
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Finally, there's some news about Jamie Leigh Jones, the former Halliburton/KBR employee who was gang-raped by co-workers and then held in a shipping container so she couldn't report it, that won't make any reasonable person weep. More »
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God, where to begin today. Maybe with the fact that while your mortgage payment was tripling, Goldman Sachs's earnings fell a whole entire 11% ?? Or like, while the Justice Department was systematically sacking any and all prosecutors whose decisions on things like habeas corpus and torture and crap fell anywhere to the rational side of "automated Bush surrogate," the Pentagon was firing an official for the grave offense of noticing a billion dollar overage on a KBR invoice? Or how even as the net income necessary to join the Top 400 plutocrats, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since the beginning of the Clinton Administration, the McCain campaign is dissing on Obama's economic policy proposals for their inadequate FAITH IN THE MARKETS??? (Wait, was that a question? I don't even know anymore.) Megan and I babble about who should get taxed more and how — and she nominates Hitchens — after the jump. More »
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Another day, another accusation of sexual abuse against KBR in Iraq. This time, KBR contractors at the British Embassy are accused of using jobs at the embassy as their own personal forced dating/escort service, and dismissing Iraqis who refused or complained. When one finally complained to the British Foreign Office, they interviewed her and her two witnesses and then turned the investigation over to KBR. We all know what happened next, right? They fired the witnesses, didn't interview anyone and declared themselves innocent of all charges. The British government isn't re-opening the investigation or changing its practices, of course, and reports are that the bad behavior of the KBR contractors continues apace at the embassy. Oh, and a commenter on the Times UK site said she's not to be believed because she's probably old and ugly, because sexual abuse and assault are about the attractiveness of the woman and not the fucked-up nature of the dude. [Times UK] More »
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• The good news: there's a female marathon runner in Philly who helped the homeless by starting a running club with them. She seems nice. They also have a job training program. [CNN]

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Jamie Leigh Jones, the 22-year-old who was gang-raped while working for KBR in Iraq, isn't the only female contractor to suffer under a culture of sexual harassment and subsequent intimidation. Today, the New York Times talks to three other women who were sexually abused in the Mideast by male colleagues while working for KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary. Mary Beth Kineston, above left, who worked as a driver in Iraq for KBR, was sexually assaulted in 2004 by a male driver, and after she reported it to superiors...nothing happened. Then she was assaulted again, this time by a different KBR employee, and, after reporting it to superiors, she was fired. "I felt safer on the convoys with the army than I ever did working for KBR," says Kineston. "At least if you got in trouble on a convoy, you could radio the army, and they would come and help you out. But when I complained to KBR, they didn't do anything. I still have nightmares. They changed my life forever, and they got away with it." More »
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Jamie Leigh Jones, the administrative assistant for former Halliburton subsidiary KBR who says she was brutally gang raped and then locked in a small trailer by her KBR co-workers while working in Iraq, will not be getting any support from the Department of Defense regarding her attempt to sue KBR in civil court. Yesterday, the office of DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter has released the following statement to Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who is working on behalf of Jones: "[T]he U.S. Justice Department has issued a statement that they are investigating the allegations. No further investigation by this agency into the allegations made by [Jones] is warranted." Nelson's office, as well as Jones's lawyers, are predictably unsatisfied with this. Kicklighter's office did, however, say the were willing to investigate certain aspects of Jones's case, like the "whether and why" of an Army doctor giving Jamie's rape kit back to her bosses at KBR instead of holding the evidence. More »
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