Bushs Iraq: An appointocracy
By Naomi Klein
The people of Iraq are free, declared US President George
W. Bush in Tuesdays State of the Union address. The day before,
100,000 Iraqis begged to differ. They took to the streets of Baghdad shouting
Yes, yes to elections. No, no to selection.
According to Iraq occupation chief Paul Bremer, there really is no difference
between the White Houses version of freedom, and the one being demanded
on the street. Asked on Friday whether his plan to form an Iraqi government
through appointed caucuses was headed toward a clash with Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistanis call for direct elections, Mr. Bremer said he had no
fundamental disagreement with him.
It was, he said, a mere quibble over details. I dont want
to go into the technical details of refinements. There are, if you talk
to experts in these matters, all kinds of ways to organize partial elections
and caucuses. And Im not an election expert, so I dont want
to go into the details. But weve always said were willing
to consider refinements.
Im not an election expert either, but Im pretty sure there
are differences here than cannot be refined. Ayatollah al-Sistanis
supporters want every Iraqi to have a vote, and for the people they elect
to write the laws of the country your basic, imperfect, representative
democracy.
Mr. Bremer wants his Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to appoint
the members of 18 regional organizing committees. The committees will
then select delegates to form 18 selection caucuses. These selected delegates
will then further select representatives to a transitional national assembly.
The assembly will have an internal vote to select an executive and ministers
who will form the new government of Iraq. That, Bush said in his address,
constitutes a transition to full Iraqi sovereignty.
Got that? Iraqi sovereignty will be established by appointees appointing
appointees to select appointees to select appointees. Add to that the
fact that Mr. Bremer was appointed to his post by President Bush and that
Mr. Bush was appointed to his by the US Supreme Court, and you have the
glorious new democratic tradition of the appointocracy: rule by appointees
appointees appointees appointees appointees selectees.
The White House insists that its aversion to elections is purely practical:
there just isnt time to pull them off before the June 30 deadline.
So why have the deadline? The most common explanation is that Bush needs
a braggable on the campaign trail: When his Democratic rival
raises the specter of Vietnam, Mr. Bush will reply that the occupation
is over, were on our way out.
Except that the United States has absolutely no intention of actually
getting out of Iraq. It wants its troops to remain, and it wants Bechtel,
MCI, and Halliburton to stay behind and run the water system, the phones,
and the oil fields. It was with this goal in mind that, on Sept. 19, Mr.
Bremer pushed through a package of sweeping economic reforms that The
Economist described as a capitalist dream.
But the dream, though still alive, is now in peril. A growing number of
legal experts are challenging the legitimacy of Mr. Bremers reforms,
arguing that under the international laws that govern occupying powers
the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions
the CPA can only act as a caretaker of Iraqs economic assets, not
as its auctioneer. Radical changes such as Mr. Bremers Order 39,
which opened up Iraqi industry to 100 per cent foreign ownership, violate
these laws and could therefore be easily overturned by a sovereign Iraqi
government.
That prospect has foreign investors seriously spooked, and many are opting
not to go into Iraq. The major private insurance brokers are also sitting
it out, having assessed Iraq as too great an expropriation risk. Mr. Bremer
has responded by quietly canceling his announced plan to privatize Iraqs
200 state firms, instead putting up 35 companies for lease (with a later
option to buy). For the White House, the only way for its grand economic
plan to continue is for its military occupation to end: only a sovereign
Iraqi government, unbound by the Hague and Geneva Regulations, can legally
sell off Iraqs assets.
But will it? Given the widespread perception that the United States is
not out to rebuild Iraq but to loot it, if Iraqis were given the chance
to vote tomorrow, they could well immediately decide to expel US troops
and to reverse Mr. Bremers privatization project, opting instead
to protect local jobs. And that frightening prospect far more than
the absence of a census explains why the White House is fighting
so hard for its appointocracy.
Under the current US plan for Iraq, the transitional national assembly
would hold onto power from June 30 until general elections are held no
later than Dec. 31, 2005. Thats 17 leisurely months for a non-elected
government to do what the CPA could not legally do on its own: invite
US troops to stay indefinitely and turn Mr. Bremers capitalist dream
into binding law. Only after these key decisions have been made will Iraqis
be invited to have their say. The White House calls this self-rule. It
is, in fact, the very definition of outside-rule, occupation through outsourcing.
That means that the world is once again facing a choice about Iraq. Will
its democracy emerge stillborn, with foreign troops dug in on its territory,
multinationals locked into multiyear contracts controlling key resources,
and an entrenched economic program that has already left 60 - 70 percent
of the population unemployed? Or will its democracy be born with its heart
still beating, capable of building the country Iraqis choose?
On one side are the occupation forces. On the other are growing movements
demanding economic and voter rights in Iraq. Increasingly, occupying forces
are responding to these movements by using fatal force to break up demonstrations,
as British soldiers did in Amarah earlier this month, killing six. Yes,
there are religious fundamentalists and Saddam loyalists capitalizing
on the rage in Iraq, but the very existence of these pro-democracy movements
is itself a kind of miracle: after 30 years of dictatorship, war, sanctions
and, now, occupation, it would certainly be understandable if Iraqis met
further hardships with fatalism and resignation. Instead, the violence
of Mr. Bremers shock therapy appears to have jolted tens of thousands
into action.
Their courage deserves our support. Last week, at the World Social Forum
in Mumbai, India, author and activist Arundhati Roy called on the global
forces that opposed the Iraq war to become the global resistance
to the occupation. She suggested choosing two of the major
corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq and
targeting them for boycotts and civil disobedience.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush said, I believe
that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom. And
even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise
again. He is being proven right in Iraq every day and the
rising voices are chanting, No, no USA. Yes, yes elections.
Source: (Toronto) Globe & Mail
No childs behind left
By Greg Palast
Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my sister. But
dont you ever lie to my kids.
Deep into your State of the Siege lecture tonight, long after sensible
adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, you came after
our children. By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, you
said, We are regularly testing every child ... and making sure they
have better options when schools are not performing.
You said it...and then that little tongue came out; that weird way you
stick your tongue out between your lips like the little kid who knows
hes fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey tongue
dart out and I thought, He knows.
And what you know, Mr. Bush, is this: youve ordered this testing
to hunt down, identify, and target for destruction the hopes of millions
of children you find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.
Heres how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in the classrooms
of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words
and phrases. They are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many
failed.
Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children
ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to make sure they
have better options when schools are not performing.
But there is no better option, is there, Mr. Bush? Wheres
the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in
cash-poor districts? Wheres the open door to the suburban campuses
with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of
Cain.
And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score, dont
get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know
the color of the kids left behind; and its not the color of the
kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy.
You know and I know that the testing is a con. There is no better
option at the other end. The cash went to the end the inheritance
tax, that special program to give every millionaires son another
million.
But youll tell me you took tests as a youth. I know you did. And
you scored on the Air Guard flight test 25 out of 100, one point above
too dumb to fly. But you zoomed past the other would-be flyboys. They
were stamped, Ready for Nam. And you took a test to
get into Yale. And though your pet rock scored a wee bit higher than you,
your grandpa on the Yale board provided the better option
which got you in.
Here in New York City, your educational Taliban, led by Republican Mayor
Bloomberg, had issued an edict to test the third-graders. Winnow out the
chaff and throw them back, exactly where they started, to repeat the same
failed program another year. In other words, the core edict of No Child
Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind another year.
And another year and another year.
You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity program
- because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather,
it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: Identify
the nations loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap.
The system will provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets
at the Yale alumni club, to punch the McDonalds cash registers color-coded
for illiterates, to pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the
new service economy order.
Source: Guerrilla News Network
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