The Ronco Riff

October 25, 2012

Voluntary Today, Involuntary Tomorrow

Another Successful Flush by Wackenhut G4S

Will the last Ronco Consulting Corporation Employee out please close the lid ?

Will the Exclusive Remedy continue to condone murder or will G4S/ArmorGroup finally be held responsible for the murders of Paul McGuigan and Darren Hoare?????

WARNINGS ABOUT KILLER OF SCOT WENT UNHEEDED  October 1, 2012

ArmorGroup put the gun in his hand knowing that he was troubled

CONTROVERSIAL security firm G4S ignored warnings not to employ an armed guard in Iraq who went on to murder two of his colleagues, it has been claimed.

Danny Fitzsimons was sentenced to at least 20 years in an Iraqi prison last year for killing Scot Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare in Baghdad in 2009.The parents of Paul McGuigan, 37, have now called for G4S ArmorGroup to face criminal charges for failing to heed the warnings and sending Fitzsimons to Iraq.Now a new BBC Scotland documentary has revealed that G4S was warned not to employ Fitzsimons, who was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and had been fired by a previous security contractor for punching a client.It emerged that a whistleblower sent two e-mails to the London-based company, which operates as Armorgroup in Iraq, expressing concerns that Fitzsimons’ unstable behaviour made him unsuitable to be handling weapons in a war zone.

The first e-mail, revealed in tonight’s BBC Scotland Investigates: Britain’s Private War programme, reads: “I am alarmed that he will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public. I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.”And in a second e-mail, sent as 32-year-old Fitzsimons was about to start work in Baghdad, the whistleblower adds:“Having made you aware of the issues regarding the violent criminal Danny Fitzsimons, it has been noted that you have not taken my advice and still choose to employ him in a position of trust.

“I have told you that he remains a threat and you have done nothing.”Paul McGuigan’s mother, Corinne Boyd-Russell, from Innerleithen, in Peebleshire, said: “Fitzsimons fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup.“I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.”The parents of Fitzsimons were also shocked to hear about the existence of the e-mails.Mother Liz Fitzsimons, from Manchester, said: “The people who we feel are responsible, who we hold responsible for putting that gun in Danny’s hand, are without a shadow of a doubt G4S.”The news comes just months after the UK Government was forced to call in 1,200 troops to police the Olympic Games venues after G4S failed to provide enough staff.

The firm recently won a £20million contract to manage the electronic tagging of Scottish offenders.

A spokesman for G4S said: “Although there was evidence that Mr Fitzsimons falsified and apparently withheld material information during the recruitment process, his screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.

“Our screening processes should have been better implemented in this situation, but it is a matter of speculation what, if any, role this may have played in the incident.”

Ronco Consulting Corporation named in Lawsuit for EEOC Violations

Ronco Consulting was named in the Defense Base Act Class Action Lawsuit against Defense Base Act Insurance Companies and some Overseas Civilian Contractor Companies.

The EEOC granted a former Ronco Consulting Employee and American Injured War Zone Contractor the Right to Sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act after investigating the complaint.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities.

Even those who were disabled due to the negligence of the company in question.

Rufford “Hobby Hobson”, EOD Contractor, remains likely found

Hobby’s Obituary

Update:  The remains have been positively identified and a funeral set for January 29 in Pikesville Kentucky.  The investigation continues.  Will update with further details.

Hobby Hobson went missing under suspicious circumstances not long after his employment was terminated by Ronco Consulting.  More details soon.

Men find bones in Hickory Creek

Debbie Bass was cleaning out a closet Monday morning when she came across an old answering machine. She plugged it in and heard the voice of her father, Rufford Hobson, leaving a cheerful message for her in 2006.

It brought back the love she felt for him and the sadness she felt because he has been missing since April 2007.

“Since my mom died in 2008, I’ve been begging and praying that she would send me a sign of him,” Bass said Monday from her home in Florida. “Not two minutes after I heard his voice on that telephone message, I got the phone call: They think they found his bones.”

Hobson was last seen walking away from a woman’s house in Hickory Creek where he had been living. The woman waited three weeks to report him missing, and police did not consider him a missing person even then. Bass said detectives told her that he had the right to leave without telling anyone and there was no sign that anything had happened to him.

She contacted the Denton County Sheriff’s Office, and her 75-year-old father was listed as a missing person and an investigation begun. Hickory Creek police eventually began investigating but soon closed the case.

Hickory Creek police Sgt. Bobby Starnes confirmed Monday that two men found some bones at about 5 p.m. Sunday in a heavily wooded area off Point Vista Road in Hickory Creek Park. Starnes said that out of respect for the family, he would not discuss whether the bones might be Hobson’s or whether any other evidence was found with the bones. He would not discuss the distance between the house where the 45-year-old woman last saw Hobson and the place where the bones were found.

“We don’t want to make any assumptions, but we’re looking into it,” Starnes said.

Troy Taylor, chief investigator for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Denton office, said Monday that his office is investigating the death as a homicide until it determines that it is not. He said the bones were in tattered clothing that matches the description of clothing Hobson wore the last time he was seen.

Taylor said one of the leg bones contains a metal pin, which matches information about Hobson. The skull was missing, he said, but a denture plate was found nearby.

“We already have DNA from his daughter, so we hope to be able to get a match and positive identification in five to seven business days,” Taylor said.

Chris Meegan, 26, and a friend were hiking in the park Sunday when they saw the bones. His mother lives nearby, Meegan said, and he has hiked in the park often.

“My friend picked up a bone and said he found a cow leg,” Meegan said. “I said, ‘Dude, that is not a cow leg.’ And he said, ‘yes it is.’ I said, ‘Cows don’t have pins in their legs.’ He was wearing dark pants and boots, there was a backpack and a camo coat or jacket over him. He had a single-shot shotgun with him.”

Meegan said they called 911 and waited for police to arrive. Meanwhile, they called a friend who began to research missing persons websites and found Hobson on a national missing persons list.

They read newspaper stories about Bass’ frustration with Hickory Creek officers’ refusal to investigate the case because they saw no indication that anything was wrong.

“We looked it up on the Internet, and it isn’t even 200 yards from that house,” Meegan said. “It’s got to be him. I hope this gives her some kind of closure.”

Hobson was a career military man who specialized in bomb disposal, his daughter said.

He traveled extensively, and they communicated mostly by e-mail. He had not been getting much work because of his age, Bass said, and he and the woman he was living with were having some difficulties. He had only one kidney and told her the other one was giving him trouble. She thought he was depressed.

He called her April 20, asking for her address, she said. She asked him what he was doing, and he said he was working on a project. The woman he was living with called Bass about an hour later.

“She said she saw him walking away from the house with a backpack an hour earlier and she wanted to know had I heard from him,” Bass said. “I hadn’t, and no one else has since then.”

The woman waited about three weeks, thinking Hobson would come back, before reporting him missing to Hickory Creek police. Officers told her that he did not qualify to be put into the national law enforcement database of missing persons.

A few days after he disappeared, a package arrived in the mail, Bass said. It contained all her father’s military medals and some family pictures. His military pension and a disability check continued to be automatically deposited to his account. The woman he was living with had a debit card and was withdrawing money, Bass said.

Bass could not get the checks stopped because her father was not legally dead, and she could not get him declared legally dead because police would not declare him missing. It was a frustrating time, she said.

Bass said she is confident that the bones are her father’s and she is grateful to everyone who helped.

“This will close it,” she said. “I’ve prayed and prayed.  I’m sad, but I’m happy at the same time.”

Please see the original article here

In Memory of Tim Eysselinck

Casualty not Counted

April 23, 2004

We lost Tim

husband, father, brother, son

to PTSD six years ago today

May your family find peace someday soon

Texas District Court Rules Iraq War Not Life Threatening

TEXAS DISTRICT COURT RULES IRAQ WAR NOT LIFE THREATENING

US district judge Melinda Harmon finally issued a decision in the Eysselinck case on 12 November ruling that “there was insufficient proof to the symptoms of PTSD because

1) the decedent had not been exposed personally to life-threatening events and

2) had not been diagnosed with PTSD prior to his suicide.

See also Casualties not Counted

There is more absurdity where that came from:

‘For example, the Magistrate Judge reviewed the ALJ’s supporting evidence for the lack of proof of PTSD such as

1) the lack of life-threatening events experienced by decedent and

2) the fact decedent did not receive any psychiatric examination before his suicide.’

There is really no point in arguing with anyone so far removed from reality as to make a judicial finding that seven months of exposure to a war zone is not life threatening.

It’s almost comical coming from people who live such a sheltered and privileged life.

But what is genuinely frightening is the fact that Harmon is the fourth civilian judge who endorsed this lunacy over the past five years and that she is a district court judge, not a mere administrative judge or magistrate dealing with misdemeanors.

This willfully obtuse ruling is the latest outrage in a concerted campaign to deny civilian contractors their rights under the Defense Base Act and pass off the costs and burden of war to injured civilians and their survivors.  The ramifications are many more needless deaths, violence and suffering for as many as 600,000 contractors returning from the war zones with mental and neurological injuries.

Is this a miscarriage of justice or rather a fair reflection of what society has come to believe, that going to war is much like playing a video game, coupled with the dismissive attitude of  ‘since I won’t ever have to go anyhow, who gives a damn?’

Judge Harmon hauled out a 1935 Supreme Court ruling (Del Vecchio v. Bowers) to further scale down the presumption in the Act [(d) that the injury was not occasioned by the willful intention of the injured employee to injure or kill himself or another].
The concepts of wrongful death, duty of care and criminal negligence have now been abandoned and death has become a clear legal advantage for the insurance industry since dead men can’t talk.  Have any misgivings yet?
The voluminous nonsense from Dr Carroll Brodsky (age 83), who had always testified against claimants and who repeatedly assured the ALJ that the onset of PTSD symptoms are immediately after the trauma does not constitute “competent evidence”.

It constitutes a felony, namely perjury and obstruction of justice not only tolerated by this judge, but also touted as “expert testimony”.  PTSD was only officially recognized in the DSM III in 1980.

She also ruled that neither the benefit review board nor the district court can reweigh or reappraise the evidence, in other words the ALJ (administrative law judge) is always 100% right, like some infallible deity.

All the ALJ needs is the deposition of one or two former deputy coworkers (eager to be promoted) that there was NO security threat in Iraq (Aug 2003 – Feb 2004), only bandits but not insurgents, to trump the overwhelming objective evidence to the contrary.

This includes work reports, media reports, company directives and the military’s own threat assessments, much of which is readily available on the public record.

Universally acknowledged truths and plain common sense are suddenly dead wrong.  The earth is flat again and seven months in the war zone is no longer life threatening, even when you have a price on you head.  Despite irrefutable proof in the record that Iraqi section leaders resigned because there was a price on their head, drawing the logical conclusion that the head of their American task leader would earn an even bigger price is too difficult for the robes to grasp.

Perhaps a trip to Dover air force base would convince them, but then again don’t count on it.

Not exposed to life threatening events?

Is this a sadistic sick joke just for the fun of dragging a devastated family through five years of vicious court battles?

Everyone knows that Mike Hartling (who replaced Tim Eysselinck) and Brandt Marshall  told a pack of transparent lies about Tim’s activities and threat exposure to the court, easily disproved if anyone had bothered to ask us or his Iraqi trainees or soldiers stationed at Taji or in the Green Zone.

We all know that he was out at the work sites almost daily; that he participated in clearance operations of live munitions and demolitions of mega-bombs and took the pictures.

Mike Hartling who falsely claimed clearance operations only started in March 2004) also kept quiet about events on the road trip from Baghdad to Amman in mid-December 2003.

Brandt Marshall concealed the truth about the deadly UN headquarters explosion in August 2003 during a demining press conference.  Their self-serving lies have seriously undermined every case of civilian contractors seeking treatment because the burden of proof re threat exposure has now become almost impossible to meet with this inane legal precedent.

Note to contractors:  Do NOT obey your non-disclosure statements, tell your family and get proof of injuries and traumatic events before they bribe your coworkers to deny what happened or change the paperwork, there are many such cases in the court files.

We have long ago come to understand that the government and judiciary view civilian contractors as disposable war mules but kindly spare us this pretense of justice and due process in the future.

We can really do without all the insults added to injury with blatant falsehoods endorsed as fact.

It seems the higher up the chain of justice one goes the more bizarre, biased and irrational the rulings become, misstating evidence in the record, disregarding favorable findings of fact (airplane incident; impulsive act, irrational decision etc.) disregarding the law (special zone of danger doctrine; section 20 presumptions) and just ignoring most important legal and factual points raised as “de minimis” – not worthy of the court’s time.

If the government doesn’t want to pay measly death benefits to the survivors of warriors any longer then at least have the decency to say so in plain language from the start; no need to breach our contracts and go waste everyone’s time, energy and money on these legal charades.

But most of all spare us your mind-boggling lies: war is inherently life threatening no matter what spin you try put on it. It’s self-evident that handling or just being in close proximity to unexploded ordinance in a war zone is especially life threatening, even when done occasionally.

While the government bails out the corporations who fight our claims with billions of dollars and grants them obscene profit margins (up to 500%) on our labor, the orphans of those who made the ultimate sacrifice get nothing at all. Let them eat cake; and foist your blame onto them to boot.

War after all is a cakewalk, at least according to these modern-day Marie Antoinettes.

The courts may be too busy to do justice and deem the preventable deaths of civilian contractors unworthy of their precious time but let the facts speak for themselves. These are just some of the exhibits the courts refuse to consider, just ask if you need more to make up our mind.
The jury is out, and those who actually spent time in a war zone decide if Tim Eysselinck was exposed to life-threatening events in Iraq or not. You decide if the corporations and insurance companies should be rewarded for failing to diagnose and treat their workers for the signature wounds of the war (PTSD, depression and TBI) that caused this tragedy in the first place.

Lets put a stop to the dishonoring of his memory, his sacrifice and life-long service to his country right here and now.

We are at the mercy of judges who have forsaken the sacred trust of fairness and objectivity, who cover up the truth and openly mock us, disparage our work with barely concealed contempt. Never again should this kind of travesty be allowed to happen with our silent complicity.

Let’s publish and be damned.

The Eysslinck case in it’s entirety with corresponding documents will be published here in it’s own forum over the next few days.

The original case can be found at the DBA X Files