US- backed Iraq leadership to sell-off state assets

[Judi Lynn]

Last Update: Sunday, September 21, 2003. 8:34pm (AEST)
US- backed Iraq leadership to sell-off state assets

The Finance Minister in Iraq's Governing Council has announced a sweeping package of free-market policies to open the country to foreign investment, allowing 100 per cent foreign ownership in all sectors except oil.

The measures were announced in a statement released by the United States delegation to a meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Dubai.

The policy to sell-off the states assets has been set by the US-installed Council without a mandate from the Iraqi people.

Finance Minister Kamel al-Kilani says it will significantly advance efforts to build a free and open market economy in Iraq.

Under the program, foreign companies will be able to buy Iraqi firms outright, forge joint ventures with Iraqi partners and open branches in the country. (snip/...)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s950407.htm

[Guaranteed]

1. At a low, low price!

Total liquidation sale! Going on now!

[izzie]

2. Would be nice to have Enron run your light company?

Lets send our talent to the whole world.

[Journeyman]

3. Free and open market economy. . .

A market open to all foreigners -- no need to legislatively deny the Iraqis, they've no money. And freely stolen from the Iraqi people, who are evidently too busy looking for flowers among the rubble of their land to notice this ongoing rape of their resources.

I guess, just in case there are people left in that sorrowful land who don't hate our guts yet, here's something that'll hang around for decades, constantly reminding them of the "Coalition's" pillage and serving to spur resistance and sabotage for as long as we remain there.

[Lorien]

26. My thoughts exactly

if it was ugly before, I think it's about to take a turn for the (much) worse! :-(

[Barrett808]

31. "All the Iraqi businessmen and Iraqi people are welcoming this move"

Um, right.

[Sick of Bullshit]

35. Yeah, and I'm sure Americans would welcome invaders from Slobania

selling off the Smithsonian, the national parks, the Interstate highway system, the airwaves, the western mineral lands, the Alaska Oil Pipeline, and all sorts of other goodies to foreign "investors"

:puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke:

[teryang]

4. Collect your spoils while you still can...

Any American corporations that buy into Iraq are this point are very badly advised.

[cthrumatrix]

5. This should be stopped....it's not fair to the people of Iraq.

Of course this is all part of the plan ... it's disgusting.

[Racenut20]

6. Wow! 25 million slaves to "The New World Order".

[RC]

7. The Rape Continues.

Everything but the oil. bu$h&cp got what they want. Now they are selling off everything else so they don't have to deal with it.

However, things are not so rosy for bu$h&co new found oil...
What I would like to know is why everyone but the bushniks has Iraq figured well before the invasion.

Oil, Iraq and America
article | Posted December 16, 2002
<snip>
"True, these fires can be extinguished, as they were in Kuwait. But there is a crucial difference between then and now. Whereas the Iraqi soldiers vacated Kuwait and returned home, the future Saddamist saboteurs, sustained by a sullen, recently disempowered minority, would stay on in the country's oil regions, making it hazardous for US oil corporations to function normally.

Moreover, the scenario of Iraq's oil flowing straight into American gas tanks is predicated on immediate, undisputed access to the commodity by US companies after the post-Saddam regime tears up thirty major oil-development contracts that the ousted government had signed.

This assumption is grossly unrealistic, given the impressive array of powerful countries whose oil companies have inked contracts with Saddam, and the unpredictability of how his regime would be ousted."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20021230&s=hiro20021216

[lanlady]

8. even Steve Forbes is getting his flat tax !

There would be maximum taxes on personal incomes and companies of 15 per cent.

[Nlighten1]

9. Let's see...

Oil Companies will be sold to the Americans.
Telephone company will be sold to the Israelis (They bulldoze your house if you are late...so don't be late)

[izzie]

13. Will they put an age thing on that? You know your house stands if your 65?

:mad:

[Sagan]

10. And away we go!

Let the looting begin!

As usual, though, the Bushistas have miscalculated. You know how they said how great it was that all these Iraqis are educated? Well, they're educated enough to know when they're getting screwed, and I don't think they're going to stand for this.

Civil war is unavoidable at this point, I think.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. W promised that the oil belonged

to the Iraqi people. He failed to mention that eveything else would be up for grabs.

[sspiderjohn]

12. But the Iraqis are too poor to bid! (except Saddam's cronies)

geez . . . . . .

[MetaTrope]

14. One day after one of those leaders got shot, right?

Hmmm.

[connor]

15. They never think past this afternoon, do they...

Let's look a little further.

We sell off Iraq, brick by brick, under cover of our local puppets, to corporations and countries around the world.

Time passes. Resentment grows.

Eventually -- next year, a decade from now, someday -- the people of Iraq take it all back, violently if need be, and kick the vultures out. Many innocent people die or are injured in the process. Good relations between the newly insurgent Iraqui state and much of the rest of the world are impossible (or highly strained) for decades. And a whole lot more folks are raised to hate the people that stole from them, breeding that much more potential terrorism.

Hmmm. Cuba. Iran. Sounds kind of familiar (in kind, if not in specifics; specifics are never the same).

We require that American presidents be US-born and at least 35 years of age. Maybe we should require that they pass a rigorous history exam, too.

[starroute]

16. Water may be more important here than oil

Private ownership of the water of the Tigris and Euphrates would meant not only the ability to jack up the rates on the Iraqis, who have no other source -- it would also mean the ability to ship it outcountry and sell it to the highest bidder.

The water wars of the 21st century are only just beginning. Israel has already been rattling sabres at Lebanon over some stream that meanders back and forth between the two countries. Far worse is yet to come.

Oil can be replaced, to a degree, by other power sources. There is no replacement for fresh water.

[leesa]

17. I am so deeply ashamed of my country

I hope I live to see these traitors of the bush Crime Family face capital punishment.

[underpants]

18. 15% max income tax and 5% import (aside from oil) tax

From the "3 soldiers killed in Iraq attacks" thread link.

[Jack Rabbit]

19. Again, the left had it right ahead of the war

From my own article on DU dated February 28:

(W)hat does (Bush) have in store for the Iraqi people?
Perhaps we could take a guess. Let us take a clue from pundits and intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman, who confuse democracy with global free market capitalism. Under this model, the liberators of Iraq would remove from the Iraqi people control of their resources in order to obtain IMF approval for loans from the World Bank. This has been a neo-colonial scheme advanced in other countries. From the perspective of those it is purported to benefit, the workers and peasants of developing nations, this model has been a universal failure. Of course, from the point of view of industrialists and bankers in the developed world, it has worked very well.
Following this prescription for Iraq, we should expect to soon see the new, liberated Iraq saddled with debt and its markets flooded with goods from developed nations. We can also expect to see wages remain low and public services such as water and power privatized. Where any semblance of true democracy exists, such as in several emerging Latin American nations, voters explicitly repudiate this model by choosing leftist leaders like Chavez and Lula. Of course, the Iraqis will not have a Chavez or a Lula. They will have an American military dictator. Some democracy, that.

In April, Naomi Klein wrote about what was about to happen to Iraq:

On April 6, deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: there will be no role for the UN in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably longer than that". And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's coalition responsibility."
The process of how they will get all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction". But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather than rebuilding, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neo-liberals can design their dream economy: fully privatised, foreign-owned and open for business.

Make no mistake about it. The war was not about WMDs, terrorism or making anybody safer. It certainly wasn't about democracy, but really its very opposite: unbridled, free market global capitalism. Iraq's natural resources and accumulated wealth will be turned over to Bush's cronies by American claiming to represent the interests of the Iraqi people.

This is just bad debt. Someday, it will be repudiated as such. I will enjoy watching Halliburton and Exxon get left holding the bag.

[jiacinto]

21. Well

I have issues with the anti-IMF/World Bank people. It's as if they just complain and offer little positive solutions. To me it just seems like they just hate capitalism in general.

[Jack Rabbit]

22. Well, what kind of capitalism is this?

One can even argue that this is not capitalism. It is colonialism.

If somebody came to you and tried to sell drugs, you would say no. That's capitalism. You have the right not to buy. If somebody came and pointed a gun in your face and told you had to buy his drugs or he would blow your head off, that's not capitalism. That's extortion.

Another capitalist analogy for the invasion of Iraq would be where one performs what might be regarded as a service, but was not asked to do so. There is no contract, therefore the beneficiary owes the provider of the service nothing.

The idea is to force the Iraqi people to accept foreign control of their assets and resources. This is being decided by Americans, not Iraqis. Americans invaded the conutry in order to impose this order on Iraq.

What I am advocating here is that the Iraqi people should decide their future and not have the Bushies tell them what is best for them. Let the Iraqi economy benefit the Iraqi people. Let them determine what they want out of it.

As for the Bushies, they have said all along that they are going to liberate Iraq and that Iraq (i.e., the Iraqi people) would shoulder the cost of the reconstruction. The Iraqi people did not ask for this arrangement. Consequently, the Iraqi people owe Bush's corporate cronies nothing.

However, Mr. Bush has placed half of his army's combat divsions in Iraq to enforce this illegal contract. In effect, he is pointing a gun at the heads of the people of Iraq telling them that they will accept this contract. This is extortion.

My problems with global capitalism is that it generally works this way. If the people have anything to say about how their resources are to be used, they would use it to their benefit and not that of US banks and multinational corporations. Of course, if democracy gets in the way, there's always a trade board -- meeting in secret with minutes of the procedings sealed -- to rule in favor of the wealthy foreign interests. If the people continue to tell the Northern interests to get lost, as they should, then there's always police in riot gear to set them straight.

Or, in the case of Iraq, American troops.

[reprobate]

27. Or, in the case of Venezuela......

Or, in the case of Venezuela, attempted coups and assasinations.

This junta now in charge knows no boundaries to the evil that they do.

[Jack Rabbit]

28. Exactly

Capitalism is the natural and ideal market model. A buyer and a seller come together and freely enter into a contract of mutual benefit.

What we have in global capitalism is something else. A stronger party uses its superior strength to coerce a weaker one into doing business it might not otherwise do. There is no contract into which each party has entered freely. This isn't about mutual benefit or a market. This is about power.

A good question for discussion would be whether or not there is any such thing as capitalism as defined in this post. Or do we again have another case that might have fascinated Plato where the ideal is perfect but its manifestation in the material world is corrupt?

[teryang]

23. There is nothing "free market" about this

Capitalism at the point of a gun is something else.

[Jack Rabbit]

24. Agreed

See my response to Carlos (post number 22).

[jiacinto]

20. Some businesses should be privatized

But energy/electric deregulation has been a nightmare. Those shouldn't be soled. But a government shouldn't be owning a shoe factory.

[Bridget Burke]

32. Why don't we let the Iraqi's decide

Exactly what THEY want privatized? And on what terms?

[9215]

37. You know what is going to happen

Carlos and you still get misty eyed over this free market crap. The people of Iraq need to decide this matter.

Of course the issue is secondary when one considers that the country was overrun by an army run by fascists who lied to get the war on.

[baldguy]

25. AmerIraq Inc

A wholly-owned subsidiary of BushCo.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

29. Robbery "Legitimized" by Invasion

:grr:

DTH

[olmy]

30. Meanwhile at Governing Coucil Headquarters.....

"So what do you WANT to pay?" OK...but Haliburton HAS to put in the road to the Mall O' Iraq.

[Barrett808]

33. Standard IMF policy

Fire-sale of public assets, coupled with devaluation of currency and removal of subsidies to the poor (esp. for food and power). The inevitable crackdown on the subsequent "IMF riots" signals the installation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and militarization of the police force. Government default is delayed indefinitely by continual debt scheduling exercises, keeping the nation in an ongoing state of dependence.

Works like a charm.

[PurityOfEssence]

34. Smirking George's lot: Would you buy a used country from this guy?

Only slightly damaged, just driven by a little old despot down to the corner for a carton of anthrax.

Seriously, this is criminal. How do these people have any mandate from the people to sell off the property of the people?

[frank frankly]

36. this nightmare

what a horrible thing that we, as a country, are doing.
it won't work.
it will only get worse
we are robbing them left and right
so awful

[dArKeR]

38. Iraq to become free-market labratory - TGM

Iraq is to become a free-market economic laboratory, with levels of foreign ownership and privatization never before seen in the Arab world, its U.S.-appointed government announced Sunday.

http://theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030921.wiraqecon0922/BNStory/Front/

[ozone_man]

39. This is revolting, but certainly not surprising.

It's the way the U.S. has operated for 50 years now. That is overthrowing governments to allow multinational corporations to take over previously state owned assets. I guess it would have been a bit too obvious to allow the oil assets to be foreign owned also.

[JPace]

40. Sounds like the AWOL Regime

is going to make sure they have all the
future money potential of Iraq in the bag
and under contract before any other nation
can get involved in these decisions. In
other words....send your nations troops
here to get shot at but don't think you
are going to get a piece of any of the
business angles.

[iam]

41. Okay fellers

time to start a-rapin'!
(the country's wealth that is)