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=> Set ASSYRIANS CHALDEANS into their own r

Set ASSYRIANS CHALDEANS into their own r

Posted by Andreas (Guest) - Thursday, December 4 2003, 7:32:38 (EST)
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Shlama all,

Bring Halliburton Home !

... and set Iraqis, here: ASSYRIANS CHALDEANS into their own rights again!

It's THEIR country.

Best

Andreas

--------------------------------

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031124&s=klein

column | Posted November 6, 2003

LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein

Bring Halliburton Home

Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules.

Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing
movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have
focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops,
or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations.

But the "Troops Out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last
soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to
power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of
another country, by foreign corporations controlling its essential services,
by 70 percent unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs.

Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for
an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as
well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation
chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction" and
canceling all privatization contracts flowing from these reforms.

How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's
reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international
convention governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague Regulations
of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, both ratified by the
United States), as well as the US Army's own code of war.

The Hague Regulations state that an occupying power must respect "unless
absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country." The Coalition
Provisional Authority has shredded that simple rule with gleeful defiance.
Iraq's Constitution outlaws the privatization of key state assets, and it
bars foreigners from owning Iraqi firms. No plausible argument can be made
that the CPA was "absolutely prevented" from respecting those laws, and yet
two months ago, the CPA overturned them unilaterally.

On September 19, Bremer enacted the now-infamous Order 39. It announced that
200 Iraqi state companies would be privatized; decreed that foreign firms
can retain 100 percent ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and
allowed these firms to move 100 percent of their profits out of Iraq. The
Economist declared the new rules a "capitalist dream."

Order 39 violated the Hague Regulations in other ways as well. The
convention states that occupying powers "shall be regarded only as
administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests,
and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the
occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and
administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct."

Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines "usufruct" (possibly the ugliest word in
the English language) as an arrangement that grants one party the right to
use and derive benefit from another's property "without altering the
substance of the thing." Put more simply, if you are a housesitter, you can
eat the food in the fridge, but you can't sell the house and turn it into
condos. And yet that is just what Bremer is doing: What could more
substantially alter "the substance" of a public asset than to turn it into a
private one?
In case the CPA was still unclear on this detail, the US Army's Law of Land
Warfare states that "the occupant does not have the right of sale or
unqualified use of [nonmilitary] property." This is pretty straightforward:
Bombing something does not give you the right to sell it. There is every
indication that the CPA is well aware of the lawlessness of its
privatization scheme. In a leaked memo written on March 26, British Attorney
General Lord Peter Goldsmith warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that "the
imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by
international law."

So far, most of the controversy surrounding Iraq's reconstruction has
focused on the waste and corruption in the awarding of contracts. This badly
misses the scope of the violation: Even if the selloff of Iraq were
conducted with full transparency and open bidding, it would still be illegal
for the simple reason that Iraq is not America's to sell.

The Security Council's recognition of the United States and Britain's
occupation authority provides no legal cover. The UN resolution passed in
May specifically required the occupying powers to "comply fully with their
obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva
Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907."

According to a growing number of international legal experts, this means
that if the next Iraqi government decides it doesn't want to be a wholly
owned subsidiary of Bechtel or Halliburton, it will have powerful legal
grounds to renationalize assets that were privatized under CPA edicts.
Juliet Blanch, global head of energy and international arbitration for the
huge international law firm Norton Rose, says that because Bremer's reforms
directly contradict Iraq's Constitution, they are "in breach of
international law and are likely not enforceable." Blanch argues that the
CPA "has no authority or ability to sign those [privatization] contracts"
and that a sovereign Iraqi government would have "quite a serious argument
for renationalization without paying compensation." Firms facing this type
of expropriation would, according to Blanch, have "no legal remedy."

The only way out for the Administration is to make sure that Iraq's next
government is anything but sovereign. It must be pliant enough to ratify the
CPA's illegal laws, which will then be celebrated as the happy marriage of
free markets and free people. Once that happens, it will be too late: The
contracts will be locked in, the deals done and the occupation of Iraq
permanent.

Which is why antiwar forces must use this fast-closing window to demand that
the next Iraqi government be free from the shackles of these reforms. It's
too late to stop the war, but it's not too late to deny Iraq's invaders the
myriad economic prizes they went to war to collect in the first place.

It's not too late to cancel the contracts and ditch the deals.

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