Paper to be presented September 8th in the Forum of the People preliminary to the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico
CANCUN, QUINTANA ROO (Sept. 8th) - Last February and March on the eve of the U.S. invasion, some 30 U.S. citizens joined hundreds of Human Shields from 34 counties in Baghdad in an inspired demonstration of solidarity and globalization from the bottom. We had traveled to Baghdad with the intention of placing our bodies between the bombs of Bush and the people of that unlucky country and we met with varying degrees of success. Indeed, none of the infrastructure sites at which the Human Shields positioned ourselves, were bombed by the invaders - but whether this was due to the inefficiency of the U.S. air campaign or our presence on those sites is anyone's guess.
Upon returning home to the United States, the U.S. Shields were formally notified by the Bush regime that they faced 12 years in prison and up to a million dollar fine for violating Washington's unilaterally-imposed sanctions against Iraq by "trading with the enemy." Some volunteers were ordered to fill out forms listing every item they had bought and paid for while in Iraq. As starters, the Bush Treasury Department is hounding three peace travelers - Faith Fippinger, a retired 62 year-old teacher of the blind (the Bushites threaten to seize her monthly retirement checks); Ryan Clancey, 26, a Milwaukee record store owner who brought crayons to the children of Iraq; and the Voices In The Wilderness organization directed by Kathy Kelly, which for ten years smuggled small quantities of desperately-needed medicines into Iraq in defiance of U.S.-U.N. sanctions.
The hypocritical persecution of Iraqi peace travelers on "trading with the enemy" charges by the world's dominant free trader, is only too familiar to U.S. NGOs doing business in Cuba.So, friends, this is how "Free Trade" works in Washington's fevered brain: the Human Shields go to Iraq, buy a glass of tea, and go directly to the penitentiary. Halliburton, Bechtel, and the giants of U.S. industry and commerce descend upon Baghdad and they are given the keysto the city and the run of the country.
While the Human Shields face prison for "trading with the enemy", the World Trade Organization nullifies laws against child labor as an "illegal restraint of trade" and U.S. transnationals dump 6,000,000 tons of poor quality corn, as much as 60% of it transgenic, on Mexico, forcing Indian farmers off their land, and contaminating the germ plasma of the oldest corn culture on earth.
For this on-going criminal enterprise, the Cargill Corporation is awarded the Aztec Eagle, Mexico's highest civilian medal, while the Human Shields go to jail.
The business of war is always good for business whether it is justified by lies about "liberation", "the elimination of (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction", or simply "because god is on our side." The Yanquis invaded and now occupy Iraq behind a smokescreen of some of themost blatant lies ever told, for two essential reasons: resource and markets.
To its great misfortune, Iraq holds the second largest untapped petroleum reserves on the planet and the Bush invasion represents the biggest oil grab in the Middle East since the CIA overthrew the Mossedegh government in Iran 50 years ago. But Washington's aggression,designed as it was by the ex-CEO of the Halliburton empire "to insure U.S. energy security" (dixit Dick Cheney) has not quite worked out the way the Bush boys planned it. Three months after the U.S. president declared victory, the Iraqi resistance plays daily havoc with theinfrastructure, blowing pipelines, and gunning down private contractors. Markets are the other side of the money. It was no mere coincidence that the first act of Bush's administrator L. Paul Bremer III, a Kissinger protege and free trade zealot, was to abolish all import tariffs on consumer goods. The impact on the already-devastated Iraqi economy was to be anticipated. A flood of cheap Chinese goods, particularly clothing and textiles, eclipsed local production andfactories began to close their doors. Manufacturers, who for 12 years of sanctions managed to survive on their wits alone, went belly-up under the onslaught of imports and an estimated quarter of a million Iraqis were thrown out of work.
The shock waves of Bremer's free trade edict touch many lives. Iraqi poultry producers, their subsidies obliterated by a non-functioning agricultural ministry, can no longer compete with the U.S. giant Tyson which is flying tons of chicken legs into the country daily. The U.S.invasion has also been accompanied by an invasion of U.S. franchises - Burger King and MacDonald's, those maximum icons of the corporate globalization of the planet, have staked out locations in Tajir Square, the heart of downtown Baghdad.
"We have succeeded in bringing free trade to the people of Iraq" Bremer recently bragged to a group of U.S. visitors at Saddam's former palace where Bush's envoy now holds forth. A true believer in the neo-liberal mandate, the U.S. proconsul avows to the New York Times that"privatization is the way to go" and has proceeded to dismantle key state enterprises nationalized under the socialist Baath Party rule - Bremer himself will have final say on which industries are deemed "strategic" and which will remain in the hands of the state.
A recent memo issued by Bremer and obtained by the Times, seeks to lure foreign investment to Iraq by promising that all profits can be taken out of the country without any obligation to reinvest there. Among the sectors open to bidding are agriculture and food production, insuringIraq's dependency on transnationals to feed its people for the foreseeable future. Can Cargill and ADM be far behind?
While Bremer waxes rhapsodic about Iraq's coming prosperity (worthy of WTO membership, one supposes), Iraqis die daily of hunger, bad water, curable diseases, infrastructure failure, and Yanqui bullets.
The globalization of free trade is as much a strategy for world domination as is military invasion and occupation. Indeed, the two work hand in hand like the famous good cop-bad cop routine of big city police dramas. Last May, George W. Bush proposed a 22-nation Middle East FreeTrade Area "to expand opportunities" (he did not specify whose) in the region.
The offer came only days after the U.S. president had threatened to invade Syria and Iran and crack down on Saudi Arabia's complicity with terrorists.
The zeal of these U.S. neo-crusaders for "free trade" in the Middle East extends even to the cornerstone conflict in that violated region. During recent Washington meetings with the puppet Mahmoud Abbas, Bush reportedly spoke of a bi-lateral free trade treaty with a newly-createdPalestinian state - if only the Palestinians would behave themselves. So now we know what lies at the end of the road-map: a sort of NAFTA for Palestine. What did you expect?
Israel, of course, needs no such enticements since it has long enjoyed a free trade pact with Washington, an agreement so protective of Israeli interests that U.S. citizens and companies who boycott Israeli products (or who even make inquiries about such a boycott) are subject tothousands of dollars in fines, one more egregious example of "free trade" - U.S. style.The globalization of free trade is a soft weapon when measured against the Mother of All Bombs and Bush's Shock & Awe show, the Cruise missiles and the cluster bombs that destroyed so many Iraqi children - but it is no less devastating. Globalization robs nations of their sovereignty, it insures that they are unable to feed themselves, it mows down forestsand those who resist the invaders, poisons the corn, destroys the environment, sacrifices human rights for commercial rights, and denies the people democracy. In fact, the process of the globalization of free trade being lauded by the WTO and its corporate backers just down theboulevard here, is pretty much what the U.S. invasion and occupation has accomplished in Iraq.
Cancun! Iraq! It's the same war!
(author-journalist-poet-activist John Ross's sixth volume "The War Against Oblivion" chronicles the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas. His memoir of the U.S. Left, "Murdered by Capitalism" will be published in 2004 by Nation Books.)
