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All was remarkably staid as shareholders celebrated Halliburton's $4 billion in operating profits in 2008 at the company's recent AGM in Houston, a striking 22 percent return at a time when many companies are announcing record losses. At the same time, Sen. Byron Dorgan's Senate Democratic Policy Committee was holding a hearing on Capitol Hill focused on abuses by former subsidiary KBR.

Interview with CorpWatch managing editor Pratap Chatterjee, on his forthcoming book, "Halliburton's Army," published by Nation Books and available in books stores on February 2, 2009.

Now come the second thoughts on globalization, as never before have world markets been so integrated. The current financial crisis could mark the start of an effort to overhaul the global financial system conceived at the 1944 summit in Bretton Woods, N.H., which set the rules of international commerce for industrial countries.

A Senate Democratic committee heard testimony Monday alleging fraud and waste by the Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq, Kellogg Brown and Root, or KBR. KBR denied all the allegations. It used to be a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Pushing beyond the corporate corrupting frontiers blazed by the Clinton administration, the Bush team is making clear that it intends to deliver on its campaign promises to strengthen Big Business's grip over government policy-making.

President Gloria Arroyo has ordered an investigation into reports that Filipino workers were forced to go to Iraq to work on the U.S. embassy there despite a ban on them traveling there. A report from the watchdog organization CorpWatch said that "other South Asians" were indeed working for First Kuwait Trading and Contracting in Iraq.

The U.S. Congress and the mainstream media are picking up on some of the issues that CorpWatch has been digging into over the last couple of years. Namely, trafficking of workers to Iraq; coal power plants on Diné land; and Iraq reconstruction.

The tobacco industry exerted pressure in Switzerland throughout recent decades to prevent the approval of stricter measures against smoking, says a study sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO).