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Today's
Stories
Jan.
31 / Feb 1, 2004
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
January
30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
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Corrie
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The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Weekend
Edition
January 31 / February 1, 2004
Enron's Beady-Eyed
Sharks
Still
Preying on the Third World
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
The great humorist PG Wodehouse had a theory that
if you approached any rich individuals from behind, tapped them
on the shoulder, and murmured 'I know your guilty secret' they
would probably faint. Not from guilt, you understand, but from
the knowledge that somebody had Found Them Out. There is a bit
of post-Enron fainting being done at the moment, but not as much
as there should be, because many evil rich people are still walking
the streets (well, laughing their heads off behind ten foot walls
surrounding their luxurious country estates), with mega-millions
stashed away in tax-havens, while the people they swindled are
looking at their pensions, such as they are, and wondering if
they can afford to pay the next grocery bill.
Two evil people who will shortly be going
to spend more time with their guilty secrets are Andrew and Lea
Fastow, although Mrs Fastow won't be spending too long in her
cell, as hubby is doing a deal that will reduce her well-deserved
sentence. He's good at doing deals, of course, because he was
chief accountant for the corruption-riddled, morally-challenged
Enron company, and this is probably one of the first legal arrangements
he's made in many a year, although it's pretty shoddy and shabby
at that. The problem with Enron's shenanigans is that they were
not only illegal but extremely complicated. As the Christian
Science Monitor had it : "With 180 adversary proceedings,
six dozen civil lawsuits, and almost 30 people charged with crimes,
the case against Enron is enormous -- and enormously difficult."
So anything that helps the proceedings along a bit -- like Fastow
singing like a bird and fingering the rest of the as-yet-unindicted
alleged crooks -- is welcome, even if it means wifie doing only
a few weeks for tax evasion rather than years for fiddling the
books. This is what happens when you're a big fish. Mind you,
if you or I had done anything on the scale of the Fastows we
would have been in the slammer in a Wall Street heartbeat, with
no chance of release, never mind making a sweetheart deal with
the Feds.
What brought me to think about the whole
sordid Enron affair was not so much the Fastow fandangos, or
even the fact that the former chief accountant, Richard Causey,
has just been arraigned for engaging "in a wide-ranging
scheme, through a variety of devices, to deceive the investing
public about the true performance and profitability of Enron's
businesses by manipulating Enron's publicly reported financial
results and making false and misleading public representations
about Enron's financial results and the performance of its various
business units." Rather it was the news that a pair of righteous
corporations, upholders of all that is great and good in deregulation
and globalisation, have refused to submit to jurisdiction of
a foreign court, in spite of being heavily involved financially
in the country concerned.
The country is India, and the enterprise
that General Electric and Bechtel are involved in is a power
station in a place called Dabhol in the State of Maharashtra.
They were partners with the sleazy Enron company whose former
CEOs, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, remain uncharged for
any of their activities, which may, of course, have been perfectly
legal. (Lay's pension is $900,000 a year - that's the amount
we know about ; Skilling made $66 million from a nicely-timed
sale of stock before his company went belly-up. Even if, eventually,
he does twenty years in the big house it works out at over sixty
thousand dollars a week in compensation. In a letter to the Houston
Chronicle a former Enron employee, Kathleen Salerno, wrote "On
November 30 [2001], we were given the right to move Enron's matching
funds for our retirement savings plans from Enron stock to another
fund. My account amounted to $46.01. [A] friend with almost twenty
years service had $102.")
Before we look at the Dabhol debacle,
here is an anecdote about Skilling, who at the height of his
power in Enron was an arrogant bully whose claim to membership
of the human race is tenuous. When he was at Harvard Business
School a professor (later a Republican Congressman) asked his
class what the CEO of an organisation should do if he realised
his company was producing something that might be dangerous to
consumers. Skilling's answer was "I'd keep making and selling
the product. My job as a businessman is to be a profit center
and to maximize return to the shareholders. It's the government's
job to step in if a product is dangerous." This sums up
his personal morality and that of Enron, and a lot of other corporations,
too. With fetid jungle mentalities like that in control there
is little wonder the commercial world is a filthy, rotten place
in which the grossly amoral prosper at the expense of their dupes,
puppets and pawns.
And prosperity was what Enron intended
for itself at Dabhol, which was all set to be the neatest rip-off
perpetrated by globalisation on a developing country. It began
in 1992 when the Indian government, after much encouragement
from the International Monetary Fund, decided to deregulate and
privatise as much as it could manage without upsetting too many
people. In fact this didn't amount to all that much in terms
of India's GDP, but it was significant in that it signalled a
final wrenching-away from the old socialised, centralised, almost
Sovietised, style of business management that had obtained for
decades. But the whole Dabhol deal stank to high heaven, right
from the word Go.
If the scheme had been completed according
to Enron's plan it would have been "the largest independent
natural gas-based private power project in the world". It
would also have been an obscenely large earner for Lay, Skilling,
Fastow and the rest of the scum at the top of Enron's stinking
cauldron.
The wheeze was this : Enron and General
Electric and Bechtel (why do I get a cold shiver up and down
my spine when I see or write 'Bechtel'?) between them would invest
3 billion dollars in Dabhol and get their money back in less
than three years. The government of Maharashtra was involved,
poor patsies, seemingly as co-investors, having bought Enron
shares, but mainly as payers. Because even if there was no need
for the electricity generated by the Dabhol plant, or consumers
could not pay the absurd price demanded for the product, the
government would have to pay for it. It was a flat rate, and
in dollars, of course, so no matter the fluctuations in international
exchange rates, Enron (80 percent), GE (10) and Bechtel (10)
would get theirs in Green Big Ones. The real attraction was that
after three years everything would be pure profit (except for
India, natch), and over the next decade from 1995, when the plant
was supposed to become operational, the takings would be over
20 billion dollars for the Lays, Skillings and Fastows of corporate
enterprise.
One fascinating aspect of the scam was
that Enron insisted on contract confidentiality on the grounds
that India was "as yet unused to the phenomenon of privatisation",
making it vital to maintain secrecy because competitors might
be able to see what terms were on offer. The problem with this
reasoning is that there were no competitors. It was a one-horse
race. Enron's bosses didn't want anyone to see what was going
on because they were taking an entire country for a ride.
The World bank smelled a rat, and refused
to make loans, but the US government was right behind Enron and
its Dabhol venture, with every bit of diplomatic clout it could
wield. Frank Wisner was US ambassador in India 1994-1997 and
pushed the Dabhol project hard. Kenneth Lay visited him in Delhi,
and Wisner joined the board of Enron three months after he left
India. His successor was Richard Celeste who in 2001 told an
audience of Indian businessmen in Bombay (now Mumbai, the capital
of Maharashtra, and the business centre of India) that the Enron
project was "tottering on the brink of turning into a major
disappointment" which "regrettably feeds the concern
among American businessmen that India remains a less-than-desirable
destination for their investment dollars". You have to laugh,
really, knowing that Celeste is now "a senior adviser to
a number of international businesses". One wonders if he
knew that Enron had only a few months to go before its loathsome
and deceitful business practices would destroy the lives of countless
employees and investors. Not his, of course.
Celeste's successor as ambassador was
the man who has done more to foster distrust between India and
Pakistan than any other diplomat in recent history. Not only
that, he was loathed by his entire embassy and was subject of
an official State Department investigation into his capacity
to manage personal relations. Naturally, he was a supporter of
Enron. Stand forward the abrasive bully, Robert D Blackwill,
he who was never reluctant during his time as ambassador in Delhi
to try to drive a wedge between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India
whenever it seemed that relations might be improving. But so
far as Enron was concerned, Blackwill never drove anything that
wasn't intended to benefit that great corporation. Entirely to
the contrary. Here is Blackwill on 21 November 2001 in answer
to a question at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Delhi about
Enron's crooked deals : "The problem Enron has had in India
will continue to cast a very dark shadow on foreign investments
in India." Well, now, that was certainly true. Because the
government of Maharashtra had realised it was being conned and
ripped-off and had suspended the grossly unfair arrangement and
sent the matter to the courts. These same courts, you will recollect,
whose national jurisdiction the global corporations General Electric
and Bechtel now refuse to acknowledge.
Blackwill referred to the necessity for
India abiding by the "sanctity of contract", which
is about the sickest phrase expressed by any Washington mouthpiece
in the context of Enron's criminal activities. Then he replied
to another question by saying "I will confine myself to
quoting my dear friend Condoleezza Rice . . ."
Here was a country being conned out of
20 billion dollars and it was being ordered by the American ambassador
to adhere to the letter of the law concerning a contract entered
into with a company run by very strange people. It isn't surprising,
really, because Blackwill (supposedly a career diplomat with
no political bias -- who donated to the Bush campaign) told the
Council on Foreign Relations on 31 July 2000 that : "Governor
(now president) Bush and the Republican Party are devoted to
free trade while the Democratic Party has substantial elements
which are deeply protectionist." Just the person, wouldn't
you think, to represent the entire American people abroad? What
a pathetic, grovelling creep.
And now the failed diplomat Blackwill,
who left India last year to the relief of his entire embassy
and not a few others in Delhi, has been given a post in the National
Security Council in Washington, courtesy of its chief. Who is
that? Oh, didn't you know? It's "my dear friend Condoleeza
Rice". Condoleezza Rice was a Director of Chevron Oil from
1991 until January 15, 2001, during which time she had an oil
tanker named after her. Her name was removed from the bow and
stern of the ship at about the same time Enron was going down
the drain and Blackwill was going up it, like a slimy, flea-ridden
rat after rotten cheese. (It was the Texas company, Dynegy, part-owned
by Chevron, that tried to buy Enron when its share price got
down in single figures. The deal fell through and Enron finally
collapsed.)
The Dabhol deal was not only flawed morally
so far as ripping off India was concerned. It was immoral in
its entire approach, from bribing individuals in the first stages
of the scam to encouraging intimidation and beating of those
who protested against the environmental disaster that was about
to take place. But Enron sorted that out by paying the local
police force to beat up protestors. Here is Human Rights Watch
on the subject : "As a result of our research, HRW believes
that the Dabhol Power Corporation - and its parent companies
Enron, General Electric, and Bechtel - are complicit in human
rights violations by the Maharashtra state government. Human
Rights Watch does not take a position on the persistent and pervasive
allegations of corruption that surround Enron's establishment
in Maharashtra and its way of doing business there. But, as described
above, Enron's local entity, the Dabhol Power Corporation, benefited
directly from an official policy of suppressing dissent through
misuse of the law, harassment of anti-Enron protest leaders and
prominent environmental activists, and police practices ranging
from arbitrary to brutal."
During the 2000 Presidential campaign
the Center for Public Integrity identified Enron as the single
largest patron of George Bush's political career. He used Enron's
fleet of aircraft and was given $774,100 by Enron management
and the company, which had also supported his governorship of
Texas. There was no way Bush would ever raise a finger to investigate
human rights violations or any other violations of decency by
Enron, and in this he is aped by the 71 senators and 187 members
of the House of Representatives who received money from Enron
between 1989 and 2001. The creepy US Attorney General, John Ashcroft,
got $50k of Enron money for his unsuccessful Senate bid, and
the White House economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsay, was an Enron
consultant.
At least 15 Bush senior people had Enron
stock, including Rumsfeld, Rove, and Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick who also received $50k a year for being a consultant
to Enron's advisory board. Senate recipients of Enron largesse
who received the greatest amounts were Texas Republicans Hutchison
and Gramm with about $100k each, while Gramm's wife, in a neat
twist, in her last days as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission pushed through a key regulatory exemption
that benefited Enron. Five weeks later she took a seat on Enron's
board on which she served on the audit committee which oversaw
(or was supposed to oversee) the financial workings of the corporation.
For this she was paid "between $915,000 and $1.85 million
in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary,
and $176,000 in attendance fees", according to a report
by Public Citizen (<www.citizen.org>).
'Keep it in the family' seemed to be
the motto, and the family of Enron was enormous, spread wide,
and linked by ties closer than blood or even political allegiance
(for there were plenty of Democrats with their snouts in the
trough). The family was linked by greed, and support for the
Enron corporation was demanded and given on the basis of loyalty.
In the case of Dabhol, however, the Enron fixers overreached
themselves, and although there was plenty of family support throughout
Texas and especially in Washington they failed to complete the
Indian con job according to plan. India eventually showed it
wasn't going to be dictated to by a bunch of chancers like Enron,
but unfortunately it has no power when giant global corporations
simply refuse to accept Indian jurisdiction. The Business Standard
(Delhi) reported the Solicitor-general of India, Harish Salve,
observing that "[the]Dabhol Power Company has been incorporated
under the Companies Act, 1956, and its assets are in India. Why
should any case pertaining to it be heard in New York courts?"
One can draw one's own conclusions about that particular question,
but the tactics employed by GE and Bechtel should come as no
surprise. Risibly they "demanded $650 million each for restarting
the plant. Moreover, they had alleged before an international
arbitration forum that they were victims of malicious prosecution
in Indian courts and had demanded compensation."
The Alice in Wonderland aspects of the
case are marked in one of the latest developments in which an
"arbitration tribunal in Washington has ordered the Overseas
Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the US government agency,
to pay claims of $28.57 million each to Bechtel Power Corporation
and GE as political risk cover for the two parties' investments
in the Dabhol Power Company (DPC). The tribunal has also unanimously
ruled that "total expropriation has taken place in violation
of international law" by the Indian government. This arbitration
award cannot be challenged . . ." Well, now, there appears
to be little wonder why these companies prefer US jurisdiction
over their little problems, especially when any award made by
a US tribunal cannot be challenged by anyone in the world.
The message for developing countries
is clear : beware of seemingly lucrative deals offered by global
companies, because even if they don't collapse in a screaming
bankrupt heap you won't get anything like your fair share. Moreover,
don't expect commercial objectivity or morality from Washington.
Poland, for example, is falling into the honey-trap and is warmly
embracing 'investment' but it would be well-advised to read all
the small print and hire some hard-nosed international lawyers,
because the rip-off merchants didn't all go away when Enron went
under. There are plenty of them still out there, like beady-eyed
sharks waiting for an opportunity. When tempted to sign away
your rights for a seemingly quick profit, remember Dabhol.
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, the Nation (Pakistan),
the Daily Times of Pakistan and other international publications.
His writings are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
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Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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