by Linda McQuaig October 25, 2004 There was plenty of outrage south of the border last week over the news that the British newspaper, The Guardian, had organized a letter-writing campaign to influence undecided American voters. "How dare they?" huffed CNN anchor Lou Dobbs. The denunciations of "outside interference" were so fierce one could have easily been left with the impression that Americans are scrupulous themselves about never interfering in the affairs of other nations. Of course, we know this isn't the case. So it was hard not to see a double standard at work. Apparently, invading another country is okay, but writing letters to voters in another country is really crossing the line. Two years ago, America outed itself as a full-fledged military empire, when George W. Bush declared Washington's right to launch pre-emptive wars wherever or whenever it deems necessary. This declaration of the ultimate right to intervene in the affairs of other countries is perhaps the single most alarming policy of the Bush administration. And it has opened up a deep divide between America and millions of people around the world who find the doctrine offensive. Yet, astonishingly, the Bush administration's assertion of Washington's right to launch wars is not even being debated in the current presidential election campaign. If anything, the opposite is happening. Instead of Bush being on the defensive for effectively declaring America an empire, John Kerry has been on the defensive over whether he is sufficiently pro- empire. Ever since Kerry suggested in the first debate that the U.S. invasion of Iraq didn't "pass the global test," Bush has relished the line, bringing it up repeatedly in an effort to paint Kerry as soft on empire. My guess is that Kerry, who took a principled stand against the Vietnam War, would behave less aggressively in the world than Bush. But, in this campaign, Kerry seems keen to present himself as being just as militaristic as the next guy. He's responded to Bush by insisting he'd never allow America's right to wage war to be subject to the approval of other countries, in other words to be bound by the same rules that bind other nations. Of course, abiding by international law doesn't leave a country unable to defend itself. The UN Charter specifies that every country has the right to act in self-defence if attacked. But any other use of force is illegal, unless the Security Council determines it to be in the collective interest of international peace and security. When Washington realized it couldn't win Security Council approval for its plan to invade Iraq, it withdrew its request and went to war without UN approval. In other words, it went to war illegally — a fact noted last month by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a BBC interview. Tellingly, Annan's statement caused barely a ripple in the U.S. presidential race. Although the Iraq war is front and centre in the campaign, the debate is confined to questions like which candidate has a better strategy for winning or whether Americans would be safer if the U.S. had concentrated, instead, on pursuing Osama bin Laden. These are interesting questions, but they don't address Annan's larger point, one that simply doesn't register in the U.S., that Washington has no right to invade another country. In other words, this isn't just about the safety of Americans. It's about the safety of other people, too. Michael Mandel, a law professor at York University's Osgoode Hall, notes that the Nuremberg Tribunal following World War II ruled that starting a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, because it's the crime from which all the other war-related crimes flow. Mandel argues that the invasion of Iraq amounts to the supreme international crime. The Bush administration has tried to claim the high moral ground, stressing that it puts great effort into avoiding civilian casualties in Iraq. This is nonsense. If it is engaged in a war of aggression, any casualties it creates — deliberate or accidental — are a violation of international law, not to mention a gross injustice. And countless Iraqis have been killed by U.S. forces in Iraq. Washington presents its ongoing attacks on insurgents as self- defensive, but Mandel insists that an aggressor has no right to self- defence. "If you break into someone's house and hold them at gunpoint and they try to kill you but you kill them first, they're guilty of nothing and you're guilty of murder." But the typical American voter would have little sense of any of this — unless, perhaps, he or she received a letter from a newspaper reader in Britain who had the barefaced audacity to try to intervene in the affairs of another country. Originally published by The Toronto Star Linda McQuaig's column usually appears every Monday. http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=34769 Reparations in reverse by Naomi Klein October 15, 2004 Next week, something will happen that will unmask the upside-down morality of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. On Thursday, Iraq will pay $200-million (U.S.) in war reparations to some of the richest countries and corporations in the world. If that seems backwards, it's because it is. Iraqis have never been awarded reparations for any of the crimes they suffered under Saddam, or the brutal sanctions regime that claimed thousands of lives, or the U.S.-led invasion, which United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Anan recently called "illegal." Instead, Iraqis are the ones being forced to pay reparations for crimes committed by their former dictator. Quite apart from its crushing $125-billion sovereign debt, Iraq has paid $18.8-billion in reparations stemming from Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait. This is not in itself surprising: As a condition of the ceasefire that ended the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam agreed to pay damages stemming from the invasion. More than 50 countries have made claims, with most of the money awarded to Kuwait. What is surprising is that even after Saddam was overthrown, the payments from Iraq have continued. Since Saddam was toppled last year, Iraq has paid out $1.8-billion in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi-tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37-million has gone to Britain and $32.8- million has gone to the United States. That's right: In the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8-million in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: The vast majority of those payments, 78 per cent, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website. Away from media scrutiny, this has been going on for years. Of course, there are many legitimate claims for losses that have come before the UNCC: Payments, for example, have gone to Kuwaitis who have lost loved ones, limbs, and property to Saddam's forces. But much larger awards have gone to corporations — of the total amount the UNCC has awarded in Gulf war reparations, $21.5-billion has been allotted to the oil industry alone, with $16-billion to the Kuwait Petroleum Co. alone. Jean-Claude Aimé, the UN diplomat who headed the UNCC until December, 2000, publicly questioned the practice. "This is the first time as far as I know that the UN is engaged in retrieving lost corporate assets and profits," he told The Wall Street Journal in 1997, and then mused: "I often wonder at the correctness of that." But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation"awards from Iraq over the past 13 years: Halliburton ($18-million), Bechtel ($7-million), Mobil ($2.3-million), Shell ($1.6-million), Nestlé ($2.6-million), Pepsi ($3.8-million), Philip Morris ($1.3-million), Sheraton ($11- million), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys 'R' Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait — only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505- million in 1999. According to a UNCC spokesperson, only 12 per cent of that reparation award has been paid, which means hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam Iraq. The fact that Iraqis have been paying reparations to their occupiers is all the more shocking in the context of how little these countries have actually spent on aid in Iraq. Despite the $18.4- billion of U.S. tax dollars allocated for Iraq's reconstruction, The Washington Post estimates that only $29-million has been spent on water, sanitation, health, roads, bridges and public safety combined. And in July (the latest figure available), the U.S. Department of Defence estimated that only $4-million had been spent compensating Iraqis who had been injured, or who lost family members or property as a direct result of the occupation — a fraction of what the U.S. has collected from Iraq in reparations since its occupation began. For years, there have been complaints about the UNCC being used as a slush fund for multinationals and rich oil emirates, a backdoor way for corporations to collect the money they were losing as a result of the sanctions against Iraq. During the Saddam years, these concerns received little attention, for obvious reasons. But now Saddam is gone and the slush fund survives. And every dollar sent to Geneva is a dollar not spent on humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Iraq. Furthermore, if post-Saddam Iraq had not been forced to pay these reparations, it could have avoided the $437-million emergency loan that the International Monetary Fund approved on Sept. 29. With all the talk of forgiving Iraq's debts, the country is actually being pushed deeper into the hole, forced to borrow money from the IMF, and to accept all of the conditions and restrictions that come along with those loans. The UNCC, meanwhile, continues to assess claims and make new awards: $377-million worth of new claims were awarded last month alone. Fortunately, there is a simple way to put an end to these grotesque corporate subsidies. According to United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which created the reparations program, payments from Iraq must take "into account the requirements of the people of Iraq, Iraq's payment capacity . . . and the needs of the Iraqi economy." If a single one of the three were genuinely taken into account, the Security Council would vote to put an end to these payouts tomorrow. That is the demand of Jubilee Iraq, a debt-relief organization out of London. Reparations are owed to the victims of Saddam Hussein, the group argues — both in Iraq and in Kuwait. But the people of Iraq, who were themselves Saddam's primary victims, should not be paying them. Instead, reparations should be the responsibility of the governments that loaned billions to Saddam, knowing the money was being spent on weapons so he could wage war on his neighbours and his own people. "If justice and not power prevailed in international affairs, then Saddam's creditors would be paying reparations to Kuwait as well as far greater reparations to the Iraqi people," says Justin Alexander, co-ordinator of Jubilee Iraq. Right now, precisely the opposite is happening: Instead of flowing into Iraq, reparations are flowing out. It's high time for the tide to turn.
Friday
ain't it a great time to be an american..pheh...
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