Whose Human Rights is the Occupation Defending

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Whose Human Rights is the Occupation Defending
by David Bacon

The disaster that is the occupation of Iraq is much more than the war that plays nightly across U.S. television screens. The violence of grinding poverty, exacerbated by economic sanctions after the first Gulf War, has been deepened by the US invasion. Every day the economic policies of the occupying authorities create more hunger among Iraq's working people, transforming them into a pool of low-wage, semi-employed labor, desperate for jobs at almost any price.

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Today Umm Qasr has become war booty. It was the first Iraqi enterprise to be turned over, not just to a private owner, but to a foreign one. Even before US troops reached Baghdad, in Washington DC the Bush administration gave the concession for operating the port to Stevedoring Services of America, a politically- connected firm handling cargo around the world. Privatizing Umm Qasr began the transformation of the Iraqi economy -- from one based on nationalization and production for an internal, domestic market, to one based on ownership by transnational corporations, sending their profits out of the country. To Iraqis, instead of a symbol of national pride, Umm Qasr now represents a new era of foreign domination.

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On September 19, the CPA published Order No. 39, which permits 100% foreign ownership of businesses, except for the oil industry, and allows repatriation of profits. Order No. 37, issued the same day, suspended income and property taxes for the year, and imposes a 15% flat tax on individuals and corporations from 2004 onward. Rightwing ideologues haven't been able to get the US Congress to pass a flat tax proposal despite years of trying, but Iraq has become their playground.

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In Iraq, where Um Qasr was the nation's pride and a source of its wealth for decades, its conversion into a business for the benefit of a Seattle firm and its stockholders was a fundamental human rights violation. By extension, so was the occupation itself, which enforced privatization at gunpoint.



Lots more at link,

I can't help feeling sort of disgusted at the overwhelming evil of the the people that are orchestrating the systemic slaughter and pillaging of Iraq as the world sits by.

(sigh)

will destroy the United States as a country of any consequence?

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They have sown so much hatred in the last year,

I think they have sort of "blown" it.

Imagine,

If only they could shut off all the USA's media,

then they'd be FORCED to see what the rest of the world thinks of them.

Myself, a frequent visitor, and planned retirement in the US,

won't cross that border anymore.

Bush was the proverbial "last straw"