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Blood money: PNAC, the Carlyle Group
and war on Iraq
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Congresswomen challenge
Bush on women’s health
go to article
Tensions remain high
between US, North Korea
go to article
Israeli army reoccupies Gaza,
Palestinian deaths caught on TV
go to article
UK government to outlaw begging
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WORLD BRIEFS
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Indigent Argentines recycle
economic mayhem
By Phoebe Molotov
Mar. 10 (AGR)— After the sun goes down in the city of Buenos Aires
the streets begin to fill with the cartoneros. In response to the
economic crisis in Argentina, where unemployment has risen to 25 percent
and in some areas up to 70 percent, many people take up the arduous task
of collecting garbage they separate by hand in the street, in search of
recyclable items to sell to companies for a small refund. They have been
named “cartoneros” in reference to the cartons they recycle.
Graciela, a 49-year-old cartonera, says, “I have separated trash
in the street for six years. Before, I worked for a state owned electricity
company. When [former president Carlos] Menem was elected the company
was privatized. They laid off a lot of workers, including me. Separating
trash to recycle was my last resort. I have four kids and my ex-husband
has AIDS. Collecting cardboard is how I support my family. I usually collect
around 100 kilos [220 pounds] of paper, plastic, and aluminum per night
and make about 30 pesos, which is barely enough to buy bread.”
Cartoneros have always existed in Argentina, and since the economy collapsed,
the number has multiplied. Before December last year, the number of cartoneros
was estimated at 15,000. Today the number has grown to over 40,000.
The phenomenon of the cartoneros is a mirror of failed economic policies
traced back to excessively rapid trade and finance liberalization implemented
in the early 90’s by President Menem and Economy Minister Domingo
Cavalo, with the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
World Bank, and the US Treasury Department.
Many cartoneros in Buenos Aires are laid- off workers from the city or
displaced farmers from the provinces who fled the countryside because
their products were no longer competitive on the international market
after the peso was pegged to the dollar in 1991. Like other developing
countries, Argentina is very urbanized. 64 percent of the population live
in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Sante Fe. Also, 82 percent
of industrial production and 92 percent of total agricultural output are
centralized in these three provinces.
By circumstance, the cartoneros have an important socio-economic role
as a source of import substitution.The economic crisis has rapidly advanced
informal systems of recycling. After the peso was devalued by 70 percent
one year ago, the number of imports has dropped drastically and recycling
has sky rocketed. It is much cheaper for Argentine industries to
recycle in their own plants than to import materials and people are desperate
enough for income that they are willing to scavenge for recyclables.
Currently in Buenos Aires, which amasses over 18 million tons of waste
annually, formal and informal garbage collection systems are competing
against each other. Four private garbage firms have legal property rights
to all of the city’s garbage. These firms are paid by the government
for garbage collection by weight. The more garbage these firms collect,
the more money they make.
In a desperate effort to stave off starvation, cartoneros collect, recycle
and reuse five percent of the 5,000 tons of the daily garbage. Their
work saves taxpayers money and is indisputably good for the environment,
yet still they are persecuted by the authorities.
The majority of cartoneros live in villas, occupied land on the outskirts
of the city, in haphazard houses made out of salvaged materials such as
metal sheets, tarps, and wood. Very few people in villas have running
water and those that have electricity have appropriated it from electricity
poles on the highway that run parallel to the villa. Every evening they
travel into the city either by train, truck, or bus to their own established
zone, which consists of approximately 15 blocks. Even though the activity
of collecting trash is illegal, police generally charge a fee for the
use of each zone.
Intermediaries in the informal system are particularly exploitative to
independent cartoneros. They include truck and cart rental businesses
used by cartoneros to fill up with recyclables, and the deposits where
recyclables are taken before sold to industries are also the work of intermediaries.
In an informal style, the cartoneros have taken the power away from privatized
companies and have created a job out of recycling. Cartoneros are part
of a grass roots initiative to construct viable alternatives to what the
government has been unable to do: provide a solution to a deepening crisis.
Argentines need jobs and the current economic model is not offering employment
to a large sector of the population.
Collecting trash in the street is not a long term alternative to unemployment.
For most it is a humiliating, dangerous job without dignity. “The
majority of people separating trash in the street have been pricked by
syringes,” says Daniel, a 42-year-old cartonero. “The work is
dangerous but we simply have no other alternatives.”
The government has not responded to the grave health concerns faced by
the cartoneros. Instead, local neighborhood assemblies have organized
vaccinations for cartoneros, which is one example of collaborative efforts
between different groups within the social movement.
The cartonero cooperatives, of which there are six, wish to formalize
the occupation of recycling to make the work safer, organized, and environmentally
sound. Cartoneros are attempting to push recycling into the agenda of
the future of Argentina but are up against a system which values wealth
accumulation at all costs, regardless of the consequences of environmental
destruction, increased poverty, and the possibility of a health crisis.
Since the popular rebellion of last December which ousted President Fernando
de la Rua and Economy Minister Cavalo, changes in formal politics have
not occurred and the government is unresponsive to the urgency of the
crisis. The current president, Eduardo Duhalde is still trying to secure
a new loan with the IMF which is still pushing for contractionary fiscal
policy: more slashed government spending, raised interest rates, more
privatization and further trade liberalization.
Argentines are surely not holding their breath for a loan package with
policies attached which many believe led them into the crisis in the first
place and can only exacerbate the situation.
What is more promising than formal politics is the human agency in the
grassroots organizing that has flourished since the popular rebellion
of last December. Cartoneros are part of a broad social movement in Argentina
that is constructing new social orders, through organizing, bringing the
power back to the people to directly represent themselves. Citizens have
organized community assemblies in more than 200 neighborhoods, over 100
factories have been taken over by the workers, and thousands of unemployed
workers have organized into four large unemployed workers movements, known
as piquetero’s. Many cartoneros are also part of unemployed worker
movements.
“Here in Argentina the politicians rob their own people, and whoever
comes next will do it all over again. There is no candidate that can be
trusted to represent the people’s interests,” says one piquetero
who is also a cartonero. “The unemployed workers movement is demanding
direct political representation and an economic system with the capacity
to serve all 36 million inhabitants of Argentina. We want jobs, reasonable
living conditions, health care, and education. Argentina is a country
rich in natural resources with a capable work force. If the state in league
with the IMF, World Bank, and the United States is standing in the way
of us utilizing our resources for the good of the people, then QUE SE
VAYAN TODOS! [Out with them all!] We will create a new Argentina without
them and hopefully keep recycling too.”
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Congresswomen challenge
Bush on women’s health
By Alison Raphael
Washington, DC, Mar. 7— Two US congresswomen introduced legislation
Thursday that would provide $134 million in funding for the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) over the next two years, directly challenging
measures taken by the Bush administration that, according to women’s
rights and health advocates, are adversely affecting women’s health
around the world.
President George W. Bush is “rolling back women’s rights through
regulation, policy changes, and executive orders,” charged Democratic
congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York, who co-sponsored the bill along
with Democrat Barbara Lee of California. In fiscal year 2002, the Bush
administration cancelled $34 million allocated to UNFPA.
Speaking at a press conference organized by Population Action International,
a Washington DC-based advocacy group, Maloney listed moves made by the
Bush administration that have limited women’s access to reproductive
health care, beginning with Bush’s first day in office, when he re-imposed
the “Global Gag Rule.” The policy restricted international health
groups funded by the United States from providing abortion counseling
under any circumstances, even if they use separate funds for the work.
Last month, the administration again riled women’s rights and health
organizations by suggesting that the Gag Rule be extended to groups providing
information on HIV/AIDS. The US has recently committed $15 billion to
combat the virus.
More than 100 women’s organizations signed a February 26 letter protesting
the plan, which they claim would further reduce already scarce sources
of information and services for women in the poorest countries where rates
of HIV infection among women are already soaring far higher than men’s.
Dr. Solomon Orero, a Kenyan obstetrician and gynecologist speaking at
Thursday’s press event, asked how it would be possible to separate
counseling for HIV prevention and counseling for family planning, since
both involve sexual relations and condom distribution.
Activist Hillary Mulenga Fyfe of Zambia’s Family Life Movement, a
faith-based group opposed to abortion assisting women in poor urban slums,
said that US Embassy and USAID personnel told her that they were unclear
how they would decide which groups would be denied funding, as no guidelines
have yet been developed. “In the meantime,” said Fyfe, “people
are dying.”
Pregnancy is often a “death sentence” for African women due
to poor health conditions and reduced access to healthcare, and more than
30,000 African women die each year from complications caused by abortions,
many of which are self-induced or performed by unqualified people, often
in unhygienic settings, according to Orero.
Abortion rates are high, Orero explained, because in many countries women
lack the information needed to prevent pregnancy, and once they become
pregnant, decisions about their future are often made by others, such
as parents or husbands, underlining the vital need for clinics and other
facilities where women can obtain family planning information.
The re-imposition of the Gag Rule has “set us back 100 years,”
Fyfe charged, because fear of losing funding for important facets of their
work has “crippled” groups that also provide reproductive health
counseling for women. Extending the restriction to HIV/AIDS would be “devastating.”
UNFPA is one of the main sources of support for organizations in developing
countries that provide women with information on reproductive health.
Barbara Lee called on Bush to “decide what is more important to him:
saving the lives of the millions of people who are infected with HIV worldwide,
or satisfying the demands of a small conservative minority within his
own party.”
The funding bill stands little chance of coming to a vote in the House,
an aide acknowledged, due to opposition from the Republican House leadership
and Congress’ preoccupation with Bush’s plans for war on Iraq.
Source: OneWorld.net
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Israeli army reoccupies Gaza,
Palestinian deaths caught on TV
Compiled by Seán Marquis
Mar. 12 (AGR)— The Israeli army reoccupied a swath of the northern
Gaza Strip on Mar. 7, sending tanks in to secure the area and setting
up military posts on the rooftops of houses. Israeli army radio referred
to the reoccupied area as a “security zone,” the name Israel
gave to the area of south Lebanon it occupied for 22 years until its final
retreat in 2000.
The army said it had taken over the area to stop Palestinian militants
from firing rockets from it at the Israeli town of Sderot.
The force rolled to the edge of Jabaliya refugee camp and the town of
Beit Hanoun, establishing an armored triangle of observation posts and
roadblocks that put some 10,000 Palestinians under Israeli guns.
Colonel Yoel Strick, the officer in charge of the reoccupation said: “We
will remain for as long as is necessary. If we decide to hold on to this
territory for a long time, we will.”
The reoccupation follows weeks of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip in which
scores of Palestinians have been killed including many unarmed civilians
and at least one Hamas official.
An estimated 70,000 Palestinians marched in the funeral of Hamas co-founder
Ibrahim al-Maqadma. Maqadma was assassinated on Mar. 7 when Israeli helicopters
fired several rockets into his car, scattering wreckage and body parts
across a Gaza City street and killing his three body guards as well.
Hamas has vowed to, in turn, assassinate Israeli leaders as reprisal.
Crowds at the funeral chanted: “The Qassam brigades will cut off
100 heads in return for the death of our martyr,” referring to Hamas’s
military wing, known as the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades.
Palestinian firefighter killed, crowd fired upon
On Mar. 6 Israeli forces stormed the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, hours
after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 15 people aboard a bus in the
northern Israeli city of Haifa. 40 others were wounded.
The Haifa attack was the first lethal suicide bombing against Israelis
in two months. The dead included at least eight middle school and high
school students.
The bomber picked a bus in a quiet, prosperous neighborhood and struck
just as schools were letting out. Hamas claimed responsibility for the
attack.
About 6am, the Israelis began to withdraw from Jabaliya, passing through
a square at the intersection of Jerusalem and Return Streets.
Eid Saleh, 33, said Israeli fire had started a store burning and brought
emergency vehicles and scores of onlookers to the scene.
“Once they [firefighters] started putting out the fire, another shell
came on top of them,” he said, asserting that he had seen an Israeli
tank shoot.
Naji Abu Jalili, a Palestinian firefighter, was killed – struck by
multiple shards of shrapnel.
A Reuters TV camera operator and photographer were also injured as shrapnel
from the shell blasts sprayed into the crowd.
The international journalists’ organization Reporters Sans Frontières
demanded an Israeli investigation into the wounding of the two Reuters
journalists.
The Israelis claimed the tank fired at a Palestinian militant aiming a
rocket-propelled grenade at it.
Eleven Palestinians died in the incursion, eight when the shrapnel flew
across Jerusalem Street and in the moments after, as repeated bursts of
machine-gun fire were fired at the crowds. More than a hundred people
were wounded, some critically.
Most witnesses told the same story: that the first burst of shrapnel that
cut down the fireman came from an Israeli tank. They said it fired a shell
packed with flechettes, arrow-shaped pieces of metal designed to inflict
mass casualties, straight at the fireman, and that the flechettes and
shrapnel ripped through a crowd watching from an alley opposite. And that
the tank fired its machine-gun on crowds of people trying to rescue the
wounded.
Television cameras captured part of the incident.
As gunfire sounded in the background, two firefighters pointed gushing
hoses at the blaze. A bright flash appeared to strike the street near
the two men, and one of the firefighters was thrown to the ground as the
crowd fled, some carrying or dragging the wounded.
Then the machine-gun fire began. The gun opened up again and again. When
it had been silent for awhile and the civilians crept towards the fire,
it opened up again, sending them running in panic.
Mark Sofer, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, said Israel “believed”
all the dead were militants and told the BBC that “the raid in Jabaliya
was carried out well after midnight when the only people roaming the streets
are Palestinian killers.” That was clearly not the case: the eight
killings at the fire scene occurred after 6am—when it is common for
people to be out on the street, the fireman’s death was on film and
the recording also showed a crowd of civilians under fire, many of them
badly injured. Hamad Jadallah, a wounded Reuters cameraman, was seen being
carried from the scene he had been trying to film, screaming in agony,
his trouser legs wet with blood.
But Palestinian claims that there were no militants at the scene were
equally untrue. Several were clearly visible in the film, their faces
masked, weapons in hand. But none of those on the film were firing their
weapons, or even aiming them.
The army acknowledges using heavy weapons in tightly packed neighborhoods,
but says it must do so to safeguard its troops while attacking terrorists
embedded in the civilian population.
Number of Palestinian poor triples
The number of poor Palestinians has tripled in the past two and half years
as their economy continued to free fall at the hands of a harsh Israeli
military crackdown and closures of villages and towns, the World Bank
said last week. In a report released simultaneously in Washington and
Jerusalem, the Bank said that the number of poor people jumped from 637,000,
or 21 percent of the population, in September 2000 just prior to the intifadah
to nearly two million, or almost one-half of the population today.
Overall, unemployment stands at 53 percent of the Palestinian work force,
the report estimated.
The incidence of severe malnutrition has reached levels found in some
of the poorest sub-Saharan countries — an intensity that often sounds
famine alarms, said the Bank. The level in Zimbabwe is 13 percent, in
Congo 13.9 percent and in Gaza 13.3 percent. In the face of such hardships,
the Palestinians have shown a high level of resilience that has kept them
from total economic collapse, the report concludes. “The West Bank
and Gaza have absorbed levels of unemployment that would have torn the
social fabric in many other societies,” it says.
Because lending and sharing are widespread and families for the most part
remain running, outright destitution is still contained. “Those who
have income generally share it with those who do not,” observes the
report.
Bush takes yet another rightward step
In a major address on Feb. 26, US president George W. Bush aligned US
policy even more closely with the right-wing Likud Party of Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon by, for the first time, conditioning an end to Jewish
settlement activity in the occupied territories on progress in a new peace
process.
“This is a complete alignment of the president along the lines of
Likud principles,” according to Rashid Khalidi, a historian and Middle
East specialist at the University of Chicago. “It’s the most
important shift in US policy since the 1967 [Arab-Israeli war].”
Bush delivered the address before the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
and promised a “personal commitment to implement the road map and
to reach that goal,” a reference to the process by the so-called
Quartet — the European union, the United Nations, Russia, and the
United States — to secure an independent and viable Palestinian state
within three years.
The Bush administration had vetoed the publication of a draft road map
since December, precisely in order to boost Sharon’s chances of winning
the Jan. 28 elections. Now, Washington is saying that it opposes release
of the road map pending the end of the war in Iraq.
At the same time, Sharon felt sufficiently confident to put together what
veteran peace activist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery called “the
most right-wing, the most nationalistic, the most extreme, the most war-like
government Israel has ever had.”
Sources: BBC News, Boston Globe, Green Left
Weekly, Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, New York Times, Reuters
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Tensions remain high
between US, North Korea
Compiled by Shawn Gaynor
Mar. 3 (AGR)—Tensions between the United States and North Korea
remain high this week, as US B-52 bombers were deployed to the area, and
the Bush administration refused to rule out a military solution to the
standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Last week President Bush explicitly raised, for the first time, the possibility
of using military force against North Korea, calling it “our last
choice” if diplomatic moves fail to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons
program.
He also said he hoped to persuade China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan
“to join us in convincing North Korea that it is not in their nation’s
interest to be threatening the United States, or anybody else for that
matter, with a nuclear weapon.”
Asked how successful these efforts had been, Bush said: “It’s
in process. If they don’t work diplomatically, they’ll have
to work militarily. And military option is our last choice. Options are
on the table, but I believe we can deal with this diplomatically.”
North Korea responded unofficially by suggesting that a pre-emptive strike
by the United States against North Korea’s nuclear facility would
amount to a nuclear attack and threatened to bring the war to the American
mainland in that event.
“If American forces carry out a pre-emptive strike on the Yongbyon
facility, North Korea will immediately target, [and] carry the war to
the US mainland,” said Kim Myong-chol, an influential figure in North
Korean military policy, who added that New York, Washington, and Chicago
would be “aflame.”
North Korea has offered to hold face-to-face talks with Washington to
resolve the dispute.
KCNA, the state-run agency reiterated Pyongyang’s stance that the
nuclear dispute is a bilateral one that must be dealt with between the
North and the United States and that the solution lies in the signing
of a legally-binding nonaggression treaty between the two countries.
South and North Korea are still technically at war as the 1950-53 conflict
ended with an armistice agreement signed by China and North Korea on one
side and by the US-led United Nations command on the other. South Korea
is not a signatory to the armistice.
“If the United States has an intention to resolve the nuclear issue,
it has to enter into direct talks with the North as soon as possible by
retracting from its argument calling for multilateral talks, which disregard
reality,” the KCNA said.
South Korea has officially backed North Korea’s call for talks.
However, Washington rebuffed the North Korean offer saying the issue was
a regional one, and that talks must include other nations in the area.
Meanwhile, military preparations continued on both sides, with the United
States moving 24 B-52 and B-1 bombers to the American territory of Guam,
within striking distance of North Korea.
The North Koreans test fired a new surface to sea missile, firing into
the Sea of Japan what was described as an anti-ship cruise missile.
Sources: Associated Press, Inter Press Service,
Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald
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UK government to outlaw begging
By Andrew Grice
Mar. 7— Beggars will be handed criminal records, and fixed penalty
fines will be imposed on antisocial children as young as 10, under plans
to be announced next week.
A White Paper leaked to The Independent includes measures to crack down
on “nuisance neighbors, yobs, drunks, drug users, and beggars”
and to tackle problems from “dysfunctional” families.
The document, marked “draft, restricted policy,”will be followed
by an Anti-Social Behavior Bill, to be pushed through Parliament in its
current session.
The proposals are supported by Tony Blair and David Blunkett, the Home
Secretary. But they will alarm some Labor Ministers of Parliament and
fuel criticism that the government is adopting “illiberal” measures.
The 65-page report, “Winning Back Our Communities,” takes a
particularly hard line on beggars. It says the public feels intimidated
by people begging and states: “There is no need for anyone to beg
in this country.” It denies claims that there is a “no home,
no benefit, no job” cycle, saying the homeless are entitled to benefits.
The White Paper says begging will be made a recordable offence, so convictions
form part of a criminal record, and persistent offenders can be fingerprinted.
After three convictions, courts will be able to impose a “community
penalty” such as drug treatment or work in the community.
There is no mention of plans floated previously by Blair to cut child
benefit payments to the parents of truants or persistent offenders. They
are believed to have been dropped after a cabinet rebellion.
Instead, there will be a big extension of the fixed penalty fines currently
being piloted for people aged 18 and above, for offenses such as being
drunk and disorderly, throwing fireworks, and causing harassment, alarm,
or distress.
“Fixed penalty notices offer speedy and effective action that frees
police and court time. The offender receives an immediate punishment which,
if paid, will not result in a criminal record,” says the White Paper.
The spot fines will be extended to truancy, low-level offenses of criminal
damage, cycling on the pavement, and urinating in the street.
The fines will be extended to those aged 16 and 17 on a trial basis and
if offenders have no income, parents will have to pay the penalty. The
White Paper adds: “We are also considering extending the fixed penalty
scheme to 10 to 16-year-olds.”
At present, the fines can be imposed by police and community support officers.
Under the proposals, chief constables will be allowed to grant other “accredited
persons” the power to issue them but the report does not spell out
who.
Designated local education authority and school staff will be able to
issue fixed penalty fines to parents “who condone or ignore truancy.”
Schools will be able to ask parents to sign contracts if their child plays
truant or has been excluded. Refusal to sign would result in a fixed penalty
fine or prosecution (for truancy) or a court-imposed parenting order (when
children have been excluded).
Police will also be given powers to disperse groups of people who appear
“threatening, intimidating and frightening to other people.”
Restorative justice, under which offenders clean up their own graffiti
and vandalism, will be extended to all age groups at all stages of the
criminal justice process.
Source: Independent (UK)
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Blood money: PNAC, the Carlyle Group
and war on Iraq
Analysis by William Rivers Pitt
Feb. 27— George W. Bush gave a speech on Feb. 26 before the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative Washington think tank. In his
speech, Bush quantified his coming war with Iraq as part of a larger struggle
to bring pro-western governments into power in the Middle East. Couched
in hopeful language describing peace and freedom for all, the speech was
in fact the closest articulation of the actual plan for Iraq that has
yet been heard from the administration.
His statements were a reminder of the ideological connections between
an extremist right-wing Washington think tank and the foreign policy aspirations
of the Bush administration.
The Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, is a group founded in
1997 that has been agitating since its inception for a war with Iraq.
PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraqi
Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality over the ultimate
designs behind such a conflict. The names of every prominent PNAC member
were on a letter delivered to President Clinton in 1998 which castigated
him for not implementing the Act by driving troops into Baghdad.
PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Saddam Hussein opposition
group called the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and to Iraq’s heir-apparent,
Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia
by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud.
Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their cause
by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put them in power
in Iraq.
Most recently, PNAC created a new group called The Committee for the Liberation
of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee has set out to
“educate” Americans via cable news connections about the need
for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of this education.
PNAC seeks to establish what they call “Pax Americana” across
the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining
superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released
by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses” codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in
defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order
to establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush’s
new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on
defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway
for the fighting of the wars.
The men from PNAC are in a perfect position to see their foreign policy
schemes, hatched in 1997, brought into reality. They control the White
House, the Pentagon and Defense Department, by way of the armed forces
and intelligence communities, and have at their feet a Republican-dominated
Congress that will rubber-stamp virtually everything on their wish list.
The first step towards the establishment of this Pax Americana is, and
has always been, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of
an American protectorate in Iraq. The purpose of this is threefold: 1)
To acquire control of the oilheads so as to fund the entire enterprise;
2) To fire a warning shot across the bows of every leader in the Middle
East; 3) To establish in Iraq a military staging area for the eventual
invasion and overthrow of several Middle Eastern regimes, including some
that are allies of the United States.
Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz, quantified this aspect
of the grand plan in the September 2002 issue of his journal, Commentary.
In it, Podhoretz notes that the regimes, “that richly deserve to
be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three singled-out
members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria
and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like
the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the
Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen.”
At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is about “the long-overdue
internal reform and modernization of Islam.”
This casts Bush’s speech to AEI in a completely different light.
Weapons of mass destruction are a smokescreen. Paeans to the idea of Iraqi
liberation and democratization are cynical in their inception. At the
end of the day, this is not even about oil. The drive behind this war
is ideological in nature, a crusade to “reform” the religion
of Islam as it exists in both government and society within the Middle
East. Once this is accomplished, the road to empire will be open.
Oil provides the economic incentive for those outside the ideological
loop.
Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice President, served as chairman and chief
executive of the Dallas-based petroleum corporation Halliburton. During
his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations records,
Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton
were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein’s removal
from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of
Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in
line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning
oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service.
Another corporation that stands to do well by a war in Iraq is Brown &
Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Ostensibly, Brown & Root is in
the construction business, and thus has won a share of the $900 million
government contract for the rebuilding of post-war Iraqi bridges, roads
and other basic infrastructure. This is but the tip of the financial iceberg,
as the oil wells will also have to be repaired after parent-company Halliburton
puts out the fires.
More ominously is Brown & Root’s stock in trade: the building
of permanent American military bases. There are twelve permanent US bases
in Kosovo today, all built and maintained by Brown & Root for a multi-billion
dollar profit. If anyone should wonder why the administration has not
offered an exit strategy to the Iraq war plans, the presence of Brown
& Root should answer them succinctly. We do not plan on exiting. In
all likelihood, Brown & Root is in Iraq to build permanent bases there,
from which attacks upon other Middle Eastern nations can be staged and
managed.
The two companies have worked closely with governments in Algeria, Angola,
Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Somalia during the
worst chapters in those nation’s histories. Many environmental and
human rights groups claim that Cheney, Halliburton and Brown & Root
were, in fact, centrally involved in these fiascos. More recently, Brown
& Root was contracted by the Defense Department to build cells for
detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill for that one project came
to $300 million.
Cheney became involved with PNAC officially in 1997, while still profiting
from deals between Halliburton and Hussein. One year later, Cheney and
PNAC began actively and publicly agitating for war on Iraq. They have
not stopped to this very day.
Another company with a vested interest in both war on Iraq and massively
increased defense spending is the Carlyle Group. Carlyle, a private global
investment firm with more than $12.5 billion in capital under management,
was formed in 1987. Its interests are spread across 164 companies, including
telecommunications firms and defense contractors. It is staffed at the
highest levels by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations.
Former President George H. W. Bush is himself employed by Carlyle as a
senior advisor, as is long-time Bush family advisor and former Secretary
of State James Baker III.
One company acquired by Carlyle is United Defense, a weapons manufacturer
based in Arlington, VA. United Defense provides the Defense Department
with combat vehicle systems, fire support, combat support vehicle systems,
weapons delivery systems, amphibious assault vehicles, combat support
services and naval armaments. In other words, everything a growing Defense
Department, a war in Iraq, and a burgeoning American military empire needs.
There are a number of depths to be plumbed in all of this. The Bush administration
has claimed all along that this war with Iraq is about Saddam Hussein’s
connections to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, though through
it all they have roundly failed to establish any basis for either accusation.
In his AEI speech, Bush went further to claim that the war is about liberating
the Iraqi people and bringing democracy to the Middle East. This ignores
cultural realities on the ground in Iraq and throughout the region that,
salted with decades of deep mistrust for American motives, make such a
democracy movement brought at the point of the sword utterly impossible
to achieve.
This movement, cloaked in democracy, is in fact a PNAC-inspired push for
an American global empire. It behooves Americans to understand that there
is a great difference between being the citizen of a constitutional democracy
and being a citizen of an empire. The establishment of an empire requires
some significant sacrifices.
Essential social, medical, educational and retirement services will have
to be gutted so that those funds can be directed towards a necessary military
buildup. Actions taken abroad to establish the preeminence of American
power, most specifically in the Middle East, will bring a torrent of terrorist
attacks to the home front. Such attacks will bring about the final suspension
of constitutional rights and the rule of habeas corpus, as we will find
ourselves under martial law. In the end, however, this may be inevitable.
An empire cannot function with the slow, cumbersome machine of a constitutional
democracy on its back. Empires must be ruled with speed and ruthlessness,
in a manner utterly antithetical to the way in which America has been
governed for 227 years.
And yes, of course, a great many people will die.
It would be one thing if all of this was based purely on the ideology
of our leaders. It is another thing altogether to consider the incredible
profit motive behind it all. The President, his father, the Vice President,
a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders
and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off
this war. Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction
and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously.
Critics of the Bush administration like to bandy about the word “fascist”
when speaking of George. The image that word conjures is of Nazi stormtroopers
marching in unison towards Hitler’s Final Solution. This does not
at all fit. It is better, in this matter, to view the Bush administration
through the eyes of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, dubbed “the father
of Fascism,” defined the word in a far more pertinent fashion. “Fascism,”
said Mussolini, “should more properly be called corporatism, since
it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Boycott the French, the Germans, and the other 114 nations who stand against
this Iraq war all you wish. France and Germany do not oppose Bush because
they are cowards, or because they enjoy the existence of Saddam Hussein.
France and Germany stand against the Bush administration because they
intend to stop this Pax Americana in its tracks if they can. They have
seen militant fascism up close and personal before, and wish never to
see it again.
PNAC’s members include:
Vice President Dick Cheney (a PNAC founder), who served as Secretary
of Defense for Bush Sr.
I. Lewis Libby, Cheney’s top national security assistant
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (also a founding member)
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
Eliot Abrams, prominent member of Bush’s National Security
Council, who was pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal
John Bolton, who serves as Undersecretary for Arms Control and
International Security
Richard Perle, former Reagan administration official and present
chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board
Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation
of Iraq, who was Trent Lott’s national security aide and who served
as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001
Bruce Jackson, Chairman of PNAC, a position he took after serving
for years as vice president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, and
who also headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for National
Security and Foreign Policy during the 2000 campaign. His section of the
2000 GOP Platform explicitly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.
William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly Standard,
a magazine owned along with the Fox News Network by conservative media
mogul Ruppert Murdoch.
Source: TruthOut.com
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