[Peace-discuss] [Sdas] FW: The Real Story Behind America's War (fwd)

[parenti susan rose]

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From: Marianne Brun <manni at snafu.de>
To: sdas at onthejob.net
Subject: [Sdas] FW: The Real Story Behind America's War


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Von: portsideMod at netscape.net
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Datum: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 10:47:23 -0500
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Betreff: The Real Story Behind America's War

New Statesman
December 17, 2001

The real story behind America's war

by John Pilger

Since 11 September, the 'war on terrorism' has provided a pretext for
the rich countries, led by the United States, to further their
dominance over world affairs. By  spreading 'fear and respect', as a
Washington Post commentator put it, America intends to see off
challenges to its uncertain ability to control and manage the 'global
economy', the euphemism for the progressive seizure of resources and
markets by the G8 rich nations.

This, not the hunt for a man in a cave in Afghanistan, is the aim
behind US Vice-President Dick Cheney's threats to '40 to 50
countries'. It has little to do with terrorism and much to do with
maintaining the divisions that underpin 'globalisation'. Today,
international trade is worth more than GBP11.5bn a day. A tiny
fraction of this, 0.4 per cent, is shared with the poorest countries.
American and G8 capital controls 70 per cent of world markets; and
because of rules demanding the end of tariff barriers and subsidies in
poor countries while ignoring protectionism in the west, the poor
countries lose GBP1.3bn a day in trade. By any measure, this is a war
of the rich against the poor. Look at the casualty figures. The toll,
says the World Resources Institute, is more than 13 million children
every year; or 12 million under the age of five, according to United
Nations estimates. 'If 100 million have been killed in the formal wars
of the 20th century,' wrote Michael McKinley, 'why are they to be
privileged in comprehension over the annual death toll of children
from structural adjustment programmes since 1982?'

McKinley's paper 'Triage: a survey of the new inequality as combat
zone' was presented to a conference in Chicago this year, and deserves
wider reading (he teaches at the Australian National University:
michael.mckinley at anu.edu.au). It vividly describes the acceleration of
western economic power in the Clinton years, which, since 11
September, has passed a threshold of danger for millions of people.

Last month's World Trade Organisation meeting, in Doha in the Gulf
state of Qatar, was disastrous for the majority of humanity. The rich
nations demanded and got a new 'round' of 'trade liberalisation',
which is the power to intervene in the economies of poor countries, to
demand privatisation and the destruction of public services. Only they
are permitted to protect their home industries and agriculture; only
they have the right to subsidise exports of meat, grain and sugar,
then to dump them in poor countries at artificially low prices,
thereby destroying the livelihoods of millions. In India, says the
environmentalist Vandana Shiva, suicides among poor farmers are 'an
epidemic'.

Even before the WTO met, the American trade representative Robert
Zoelliek invoked the 'war on terrorism' to warn the developing world
that no serious opposition to the American trade agenda would be
tolerated. He said: 'The United States is committed to global
leadership of openness and understands that the staying power of our
new coalition against terrorism depends on economic growth . . .' The
code is that 'economic growth' (rich elite, poor majority) equals
anti-terrorism.

Mark Curtis, a historian and Christian Aid's head of policy, who
attended Doha, has described 'an emerging pattern of threats and
intimidation of poor countries' that amounted to 'economic gunboat
diplomacy'. He said: 'It was utterly outrageous. Wealthy countries
exploited their power to spin the agenda of big business. The issue of
multinational corporations as a cause of poverty was not even on the
agenda; it was like a conference on malaria that does not even discuss
the mosquito.'

Delegates from poor countries complained of being threatened with the
removal of their few precious trade preferences. 'If I speak out too
strongly for the rights of my people,' said an African delegate, 'the
US will phone my minister. They will say that I am embarrassing the
United States. My government will not even ask, 'What did he say?'
They will just send me a ticket tomorrow . . . so I don't speak, for
fear of upsetting the master.'

A senior US official telephoned the Ugandan government to ask that
its ambassador to the WTO, Nathan Irumba, be withdrawn. Irumba chairs
the WTO's committee on trade and development and has been critical of
the 'liberalisation' agenda. Dr Richard Bernal, a Jamaican delegate at
Doha, said his government had come under similar pressure. 'We feel
that this WTO meeting has no connection with the war on terrorism,' he
said, ' yet we are made to feel that we are holding up the rescue of
the global economy if we don't agree to a new round of liberalisation
measures .' Haiti and the Dominican Republic were threatened that
their special trade preferences with the United States would be
revoked if they continued to object to 'procurement', the jargon for
the effective takeover of a government's public spending priorities.
India's minister for commerce and industry, Murasoli Maran, said
angrily: 'The whole process is a mere formality and we are being
coerced against our will . . . the WTO is not a world government and
should not attempt to appropriate to itself what legitimately falls in
the domain of national governments and parliaments.'

What the conference showed was that the WTO has become a world
government, run by the rich (principally Washington). Although it has
142 members, only 21 governments in reality draft policy, most of
which is written by the 'quad': the United States, Europe, Canada and
Japan. At Doha, the British played a part similar to Tony Blair's
promotion of the 'war on terrorism'. The Secretary of State for Trade
and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, had already said that 'since 11
September, the case is overwhelming for more trade liberalisation'. In
Doha, the British delegation demonstrated, according to Christian Aid,
'the gulf between its rhetoric about making trade work for the poor'
and its real intentions.

This 'rhetoric' is the speciality of Clare Short, the International
Development Secretary, who surpassed herself by announcing GBP20m as
'a package of new measures' to help poor countries. In fact, this was
the third time the same money had been announced within a year. In
December 2000, Short said the government 'will double its support for
trade-strengthening initiatives in developing countries from GBP15m
over the past three years to GBP30m over the next three years'. Last
March, the same money was announced again. Short, said her press
department, 'will announce that the UK will double its support for . .
.. developing countries' trade performance . . .' On 7 November, the
GBP20m package was announced all over again. Moreover, a third of it
is in effect tied to the launch of a new WTO 'round'.

This is typical of the globalisation of poverty, the true name for
'liberalisation'. Indeed, Short's title of International Development
Secretary is as much an Orwellian mockery as Blair's moralising about
the bombing. Short is worthy of special mention for the important
supporting role she has played in the fraudulent war on terrorism.

To the naive, she is still the rough diamond who speaks her mind in
headlines; and this is true in one sense. In trying to justify her
support for the lawless bombing of civilians in Yugoslavia, she
likened its opponents to Nazi appeasers. She has since abused relief
agency workers in Pakistan, who called for a pause in the current
bombing, as 'emotional' and has questioned their integrity. She has
maintained that relief is 'getting through' when, in fact, little of
it is being distributed to where it is most needed.

Around 750 tonnes are being trucked into Afghanistan every day, less
than half that which the UN says is needed. Six million people remain
at risk. Nothing is reaching those areas near Jalalabad, where the
Americans are bombing villages, killing hundreds of civilians, between
60 and 300 in one night, according to anti-Taliban commanders who are
beginning to plead with Washington to stop. On these killings, as on
the killing of civilians in Yugoslavia, the outspoken Short is silent.

Her silence, and her support for America's $21bn homicidal campaign
to subjugate and bribe poor countries into submission, exposes the
sham of 'the global economy as the only way to help the poor', as she
has said repeatedly. The militarism that is there for all but the
intellectually and morally impaired to see is the natural extension of
the rapacious economic policies that have divided humanity as never
before. As Thomas Friedman wrote famously in the New York Times, 'the
hidden hand' of the market is US military force.

Little is said these days about the 'trickle down' that 'creates
wealth' for the poor, because it is transparently false. Even the
World Bank, of which Short is a governor, has admitted that the
poorest countries are worse off, under its tutelage, than ten years
ago: that the number of poor has increased, that people are dying
younger. And these are countries with 'structural adjustment
programmes' that are meant to 'create wealth' for the majority. It was
all a lie.

The truth lies in the figures of actual 'aid'. America gives just 0.1
per cent of its gross national product. Last year, the US Senate
foreign aid bill included a pittance of $75m for the poorest - a tenth
of the cost of one B-52 - while $1.3bn went to the Colombian military,
one of the world's worst violators of human rights.

Giving evidence before a House of Commons select committee, Clare
Short described the US as 'the only great power that almost turns its
back on the world'. Her gall deserves a prize. Britain gives just 0.34
per cent of GNP in aid, less than half the minimum laid down by the
United Nations.

It is time we recognised that the real terrorism is poverty, which
kills thousands of people every day, and the source of their
suffering, and that of innocent people bombed in dusty villages, is
directly related.

www. johnpilger. com

-- 




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