:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 10.23.2005 ::

:: "THE LOBBYIST OCCUPATION OF IRAQ" ::

2006 PROJECT CENSORED AWARD WINNER
Project Censored 2006: The News That Didn't Make the News
By Greg Palast

In his article “Adventure Capitalism,” Greg Palast exposes the contents of a secret plan for “imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq’s banks and bridges—in fact, ‘ALL state enterprises’—to foreign operators ... especially the oil.” This economy makeover plan, says Palast, “goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before.”

This highly detailed program, which began years before the tanks rolled, outlines the small print of doing business under occupation. One of the goals is to impose intellectual property laws favorable to multinationals. Palast calls this “history’s first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation’s copyright laws.”

It also turns out that those of us who may have thought it was all about the oil were mostly right. “The plan makes it clear that—even if we didn’t go in for the oil—we certainly won’t leave without it.”

In an interview with Palast, Grover Norquist, the “capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right,” makes the plans even more clear when he responds, “The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election.” No, these things were to be determined by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the interim government lead by the U.S.

Before he left his position, CPA administrator Paul Bremer, “the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan.” These orders effectively changed Iraqi law.

Read more here.

Here's the original article from TomPaine.com.

ALSO
Download the MP3 of Silence of the Media Lambs featuring Greg, part of Say it LOUD: New Songs for Peace, produced by Pacifica Radio and The Polemic Consortium.

posted by me

:: 7:59:00 AM [+] ::
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