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Recent
Stories
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
July
17, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the
United States Has to Stand Naked
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance
Martin
Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation
Watchdogs
Heidi
Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced
Drugging and the Supreme Court
Norman
Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance
Conference
Pankaj
Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the
Boy Who Cried Wolf
Hammond
Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited
Website
of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism
July
16, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype
Dubious Uranium Claims
William
Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down
Elaine
Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom
Must Not Be Obeyed
Jason
Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?
Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?
Raymond
Barrett
From Detroit to Basra
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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July
22, 2003
Corporate Slush Funds
for Baghdad
Plugging Iraq
into Globalization
By STEVE KRETZMANN
and JIM VALLETTE
In early April, during the initial assault on
Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp
Exxon until Pentagon PR realized that didn't look very good and
ordered them renamed. Those soldiers knew the score. Several
months and dozens of lives later, Bechtel, Halliburton, and a
host of oil companies are ensuring that the fledgling "free
market" in Iraq will be particularly free for US corporations.
The ultimate prize in Iraq, of course,
is oil, and the Bush/Cheney gang has uncoiled a vastly underreported
legal and financial cord that plugs U.S corporate control into
these resources at least through the year 2007. The basic wiring
has two prongs and is already complete. The first part, created
by the UN under US pressure is the Development Fund for Iraq
which is to be controlled by the US and advised by the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unsurprisingly,
this is looking more and more like a slush fund for corporate
welfare. The second is a recent Bush executive order that provides
absolute legal protection for U.S. interests in Iraqi oil.
And a third and final prong is being crafted to ground the whole
system and get as much profit as possible out of it.
The Corporate Slush
Fund for Iraq
By promising the United Nations a threadbare
role in the reconstruction of Iraq, and giving the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund accounting oversight, the U.S.
managed to buy the world's largest multilateral institutions
into an incredible deal for private U.S. interests.
On May 22, the UN Security Council unanimously
adopted Resolution 1483, which ended sanctions and endorsed the
creation of Development Fund for Iraq, to be overseen by a board
of accountants, including UN, World Bank, and IMF representatives.
It endorsed the transfer of over $1 billion (of Iraqi oil money)
from the Oil-for-Food program into the Development Fund. All
proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil and natural gas are also
to be placed into the fund.
The fund, controlled by U.S. viceroy
Paul Bremer, has swelled to $7 billion, thanks to a $3.1 billion
contribution from the U.S. Congress, and billions of dollars
more in seized assets of the Iraqi government.
And to who have the occupying powers
pledged these riches? The UN resolution states that the fund
"shall be used in a transparent manner to meet the humanitarian
needs of the Iraqi people." John Negroponte, the U.S. representative
at the United Nations, told reporters after the vote, "the
intent is to use Iraq's resources and to dispose and dispense
Iraq's resources to the benefit of the people of Iraq."
That paternalism towards Iraq's people is mighty white of Ambassador
Negroponte.
This is the sound of the other shoe dropping
in Iraq. As soon as the Pentagon, acting as the armed wing of
the Washington consensus, clears the way, the international financial
institutions come running into the power vacuum. In the creation
and expected implementation of the Development Fund for Iraq,
one finds the extension of global economic restructuring as first
envisioned by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, and implemented
en masse through the 1990s. World Bank and IMF programs, backed
by the rigged rules of the World Trade Organization, have imposed
dramatic financial restructuring upon much of the world. Developing
countries have amassed huge debts in exchange for selling out
their natural resources to powerful Northern corporations. This
paradigm cloaks corporate welfare and neocolonialism in terms
of "poverty alleviation" and now in Iraq, "humanitarian
assistance".
The World Bank needs these cloaks to
work, because the dirty little secret here is that oil extraction
rarely alleviates poverty and inequities in developing countries.
In countries whose economies are heavily dependent on oil exports
like Iraq - drilling for development leads much more commonly
to increased poverty, civil war, and totalitarian rule. Oil
does generate a lot of cash but it rarely makes it beyond
greedy oil companies, crushing payments on debts to the international
financial institutions, and corrupt government officials.
New debt will accrue through the very
program that Ambassador Negroponte said would "benefit the
people of Iraq." The Development Fund, derived from actual
and expected Iraqi oil and gas sales, apparently will be used
to leverage U.S. government-backed loans, credit, and direct
financing for U.S. corporate forays into Iraq. Some of the funds
will finance reconstruction projects approved by viceroy Bremer.
But other funds will also be used as collateral for projects
approved by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (ExIm), whose mission
is not development or poverty alleviation, but rather the creation
of US jobs and the promotion of American business abroad.
On June 19, the U.S. ExIm announced that
it was open for business in Iraq and would begin considering
applications by subcontractors (that is, companies hired by Bechtel
and Halliburton) in Iraq for working capital guarantees. Corporations
have found it impossible to obtain private bank credit for work
in Iraq, due to the ongoing insecure environment. But ExIm has
stepped in to take a lead role in facilitating U.S. business
in Iraq.
"The primary source of repayment,"
explained an ExIm release, "is the Development Fund for
Iraq, or another entity established under the auspices of the
Coalition Provisional Authority with access to foreign exchange
and protection from claims of creditors of the former regime."
In other words, the US government is happy to provide credit
to any US business wishing to do business in Iraq especially
because the money comes from Iraq.
A corporate coalition, whose ranks include
Bechtel and Halliburton, welcomed the Bush/Cheney administration's
moves to use Iraqi oil to benefit its membership. Edmund Rice,
president of the Coalition for Employment Through Exports, told
Reuters on June 25 that "we have received strong
support from the administration" for his group's proposal
to leverage oil sales as collateral for bank loans.
Not surprisingly, Bo Ollison, an Exim
spokesman, called this "one proposal that a lot of people
are interested in and a main focus of the Bank." Controlled
by the Americans but funded by the Iraqis how chillingly
perfect.
Pushing oily immunity
Despite the promise of free public money,
Iraq has been a hard sell. Corporations have had two major concerns,
both of which the Bush administration has obligingly dealt with.
First, Iraq is quite obviously a very dangerous place right
now, and a lot can go wrong (witness the ongoing sabotage of
oil installations). Second, there's the small legal matter of
who actually owns the oil the Iraqi people, the countries
and corporations to whom Iraq owes billions of dollars (read:
Russia and France), or Bremer and his Development Fund. The
answer, of course, is shaping up to be Bremer.
Hours after the UN endorsed the Development
Fund for Iraq, Bush signed an executive order that was spun as
implementing Resolution 1483, but in reality, went much further
towards attracting investment and minimizing risk for US corporations
in Iraq.
In order to encourage the flow of oil
revenues into the Development Fund, the UN Security Council declared
that Iraqi oil and gas are immunized from legal proceedings until
Dec. 31, 2007. The intent was to immunize the oil and gas only
"until title passes to the initial purchaser" and further
does "not apply to any legal proceeding... necessary to
satisfy liability to damages assessed in connection with an ecological
accident."
Bush went way beyond this language in
Executive Order 13303. With a stroke of his pen, he decreed
that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution,
garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall
be deemed null and void", with respect to the Development
Fund for Iraq and "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products,
and interests therein."
True to form, the Bush order makes no
exemption for ecological accidents. Further, while the UN restricted
the immunity to the point of initial sale, Bush granted Iraqi
oil a lifetime exemption provided US companies are involved in
the oil's production, transport, or distribution. His order applies
to Iraqi oil products that are "in the United States, hereafter
come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come
within the possession or control of United States persons."
Under U.S. law, corporations are "persons."
In other words, if ExxonMobil or ChevronTexaco
touch Iraqi oil, anything they or anyone else does with it is
immune from legal proceedings in the US. Anything that has happened
before with oil companies around the world a massive tanker
accident; an explosion at an oil refinery; the employment of
slave labor to build a pipeline; murder of locals by corporate
security; the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere; or lawsuits by Iraq's current creditors or the
next true Iraqi government demanding compensation anything
at all, is immune from judicial accountability.
Bush unilaterally declared Iraqi oil
to be the unassailable province of U.S. oil corporations. In
the short term, through the Development Fund and the Export-Import
Bank programs, the Iraqi peoples' oil will finance U.S. corporate
entrees into Iraq. In the long term, Executive Order 13303 protects
anything U.S. corporations do to seize control of Iraq's oil,
from the point of production to the gas pump.
The third and final prong needed to plug
Iraq fully into the global economy is perhaps the most ironic
of all. While ensuring that the Development Fund will be used
to deepen Iraq's debt to the US, the Bush administration is demanding
that the Gulf States, Russia, France, and the international financial
institutions forgive Iraq's existing $60 billion-plus debt.
If it's done, we will surely hear the pundits praising the lifting
of this burden from the backs of innocent Iraqis.
The debt burden is indeed crushing to
ordinary Iraqis, and to the formation of the next Iraqi government.
The irony is that this is the same rationale used by groups
like Jubilee 2000 who, for years, have been mostly unsuccessfully
calling for the alleviation of debt throughout the developing
world. The consensus among the Washington elites was that prior
debts would have to be paid by people in post-apartheid South
Africa, and by the survivors of military regimes and dictatorships
in places like Argentina and the Philippines. The difference
is that in Iraq today, the debt is also a burden for the US government
and oil companies.
Steve Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette are analysts with the Sustainable
Energy & Economy Network of the Institute
for Policy Studies.
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
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