War in Iraq going well

Catholic New Times, Nov 16, 2003

PETERBOROUGH, Ont.--The war in Iraq is not going off the rails for corporate leaders and politicians Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, said writer-activist Naomi Klein at Trent University in Peterborough recently at the annual Margaret Laurence lecture.

"Although they did not expect so many casualties", she said, "on the economic front, it is bomb, then buy."

"In the USA, we call the system neo-conservative, in Latin America, neo-liberal and in France "savage capitalism", but whatever the term it all leads to McGovernment: mass downsizing of public service, privatization and deregulation so that investor rights prevail." Klein, who is author of "No Logo" and "Fences and Windows", writes a syndicated column for the Globe and Mail and the Guardian newspapers.

"The profit potential for companies in Iraq is enormous," she said: water, intellectual property, seeds, oil. "Capitalism is a drug addict and growth" is its drug.

Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon, McDonalds, Walmart all plan to reconstruct Iraq with huge no-bid contracts of Bechtel's one billion dollar contract to reconstruct 49 bridges, only 3 have been completed.

U.S administrator Paul Bremer laid off 400,000 Iraqis in a programs of "deBaathification," leaving unemployment at 70 per cent.

"George Bush's claim to be bringing democracy to Iraq is the peace movement's entry point in to resistance, using his own words," Klein said.