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MADDOW: We have officially entered the time of year where annoying lists are made and published. And today, amid the top 10 best and worst music videos and celebrity scandals and iPhone apps of 2009, vote for me, came a much heavier list, one that ranks the countries of the world in order of corruption.
Spoiler alert: we are fighting wars in two of the five countries considered to be the most corrupt on the face of the earth.
The watchdog group Transparency International produces an annual ranking of public sector corruption in 180 countries. And according to this year‘s list, New Zealand is the cleanest, most above-board country on earth. Woohoo! Kiwis. The United States, number 19. Thanks, New Jersey. Stay strong, Illinois.
Meanwhile, way down at the bottom, Iraq comes in at number 176, which makes it the fifth most corrupt country in the world, which happens to be an improvement from last year. And at 179 out of 180, the second most corrupt country in the world, Afghanistan, which reportedly got more corrupt this year compared to last year.
And yes, that is the government whose perceived legitimacy among Afghans is supposed to be the key factor in determining our military‘s success in Afghanistan.
Speaking of supposed military success and its relationship to setting giant piles of money on fire, the Justice Department just announced the indictment of Kuwait-based U.S. military contractor accused of defrauding the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars.
Public Warehousing Company, which has changed its name to the less-corruptible sounding “Agility,” has received an astounding $8.5 billion in food supply contracts from the U.S. military since 2003.
It now stands accused of grossly overcharging the U.S. government for that food, double charging for transportation and generally ripping us off at will like we were tourists in bus stations at night.
The investigation is ongoing and the company won‘t be allowed to bid on other contracts until it‘s resolved. But if you think these accusations will create enough of a scandal to threaten the company‘s livelihood, consider the other new wartime contracting news coming out of Iraq today.
The Iraqi government has chosen a new contractor to handle security at Baghdad‘s airport. The $22.5 million contract went to Armor Group. And if when you hear the name Armor Group, your gag reflex starts up a little bit, it‘s because you might be remembering the last time Armor Group made news - that was this fall when the project on government oversight released those pictures showing the Caligula complex enjoyed after hours plus some Armor Group employees whose day job was guarding the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Now, they‘re in charge of the Baghdad airport.
Joining us now is Naomi Klein. The 10th anniversary of her book, “No Logo,” comes out on Friday. Naomi, it is such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for coming in.
NAOMI KLEIN, AUTHOR, “NO LOGO”: Great to be here.
MADDOW: One of the things you write about in the new expanded intro to “No Logo” is the hollowing out of government with regard to contractors.
KLEIN: Yes.
MADDOW: What do you mean by that?
KLEIN: Well, “No Logo” came out 10 years ago. And what it was tracking was this trend in the corporate sector for companies like Nike and Microsoft to announce that they didn‘t want to produce things anymore. They wanted to produce ideas. They‘re in the ideas business.
So we saw the emergence of these hollow corporations which outsourced everything and they just poured their money into marketing. And I think that they‘re a hallmark of the Bush years. And the real legacy of the Bush years is the application of that logic to government.
So you had all these guys like Rumsfeld who had spent the past two decades in the corporate world were all pumped up and hyped up on the latest management consulting trend and they wanted to bring them into government.
And that was Rumsfeld‘s transformation vision. You know, his obsession with transforming the U.S. military - a lot of it had to do with hollowing out, turning it into a brand. The brand was dominance around the world.
But the actual work, the same way Nike outsources all of its production to contractors in China and Thailand. Well, he would outsource of the work of invasion and occupation to Blackwater and Armor Group and Halliburton.
And we‘ve seen - you know, that‘s why I updated the book in that way because I think that that‘s been the most significant about them in the world of branding, is the application of this corporate logic to government and we‘ve seen the effects of it in these corruption scandals.
In the same way, Rachel, that we saw in the ‘90s, the explosion of all of these sweat shop scandals and all these companies going, “Oh, I‘m shocked,” you know, that our suppliers have been using child labor or whatever it is. You lose control when you are pitting all of your contractors against each other in that way.
MADDOW: Well, you say we‘re not going to do the work. We are going to sell the idea of the work being done and then make sure that somebody else actually puts rubber to road. Well, let me ask you about something else that has broken that made me think about your work, both in this and in “The Shock Doctrine.”
The number of former Bush administration officials going into private sector business to cash in on the war in Iraq, oil consulting, business consulting in Iraq - it‘s kind of astounding.
Peter Galbraith, a former Bush administration official, most recently working for the U.N. in Afghanistan, supposedly poised to cash in on something like $100 million personally in oil contract money from Iraq. Does that fit the pattern or are you surprised by this? Is this an outlier?
KLEIN: It absolutely fits the pattern because this war is the most privatized war in modern history. And Donald Rumsfeld designed it this way as a for profit enterprise. And it was a free-for-all.
You know, when I was in Iraq in the same period when Peter Galbraith was advising the Kurds on the one hand as that they could have a Constitution that devolved power to the regions and allowed them to do something that had been unheard of in Iraq, which is - for the regions to sign deals with foreign multinationals.
And Iraqis were called conspiracy theorists at the time for saying, “You know what? We think the U.S. officials are actually trying to break up our country because it‘s easier to get the oil if you‘re dealing with a weaker regional government than when you have to deal with a stronger central government.”
So it turns out that Peter Galbraith, while inserting clauses into Iraq‘s Constitution that, we were told, was stabilizing the country, the key to stability. He also, it turns out, had a five percent share in one of the Kurdish oil fields, which would have been entirely impossible were it not for the language in the Constitution that he personally inserted.
And you know, you mentioned that he was working for the Bush administration. He actually was working for the Kurds. And he started off as a paid advisor. Then, he was an unpaid adviser. So this is why I think it‘s important to say it is legal what he did, but it‘s only legal because there were no laws.
MADDOW: Right.
KLEIN: So - and this, once again, was created by the Bush administration. It created what one former CPA official - Coalition Provision Authority official - described it as a free fraud zone.
Anything went. We saw it with Blackwater. But this was true for all of these government consultants who didn‘t have conflict-of-interest rules applied to them. You can‘t do that. If you are working directly for the U.S. government, you are not allowed to benefit directly ...
MADDOW: Sure.
KLEIN: ... from the advice that you‘re giving to a foreign government.
MADDOW: So become a consultant. Yes.
KLEIN: It became a loophole, yes.
MADDOW: Naomi Klein, journalist, author of many books, including, “No Logo,” which unbelievably is having its 10th anniversary edition released this week which makes me feel old, but also, it‘s awesome. It‘s great to have you right now. I know you are heading to Copenhagen for the big climate change talks. Can we figure out some way to get you on the air from Copenhagen? I‘d love to see you then.
KLEIN: Absolutely. That would be great. All right. Thanks, Rachel.
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