6139008-History-of-Money

• Iraq should be allowed to join the Worldwide movement for local sustainability by moving away from export orientedeconomics that make trade and multinational corporations the basis of economic development. Government spending,taxes, subsidies, tariff structures, etc. should be reoriented to support local environmentally sustainable productionthat meets local needs (these ideas are expanded upon in the IFG publication, Alternatives to Economic Globalization)The Multibillion Robbery The US Calls Reconstruction & The shameless corporate feeding frenzy in Iraq isfuelling the resistance http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1247867,00.htmlNaomi Klein, June 26, 2004, The Guardian, UKThe Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4bn in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it canmeet. Sure, electricity is below pre-war levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired thanhired. But now the PMO has contracted the British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination,kidnapping, injury and" - get this - "embarrassment". I don't know if Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees fromviolent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't beembarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame.Their god is G: gold O: oil D: drugsIn the run-up to the June 30 underhand (sorry, I can't bring myself to call it a "handover"), US occupation powers havebeen unabashed in their efforts to steal money that is supposed to aid a war-ravaged people. The state department hastaken $184m earmarked for drinking water projects and moved it to the budget for the lavish new US embassy in SaddamHussein's former palace. Short of $1bn for the embassy, Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said he mighthave to "rob from Peter in my fiefdom to pay Paul". In fact, he is robbing Iraq's people, who, according to a recent studyby the consumer group Public Citizen, are facing "massive outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoea, nausea and kidney stones"from drinking contaminated water. If the occupation chief Paul Bremer and his staff were capable of embarrassment, theymight be a little sheepish about having spent only $3.2bn of the $18.4bn Congress allotted - the reason thereconstruction is so disastrously behind schedule. At first, Bremer said the money would be spent by the time Iraq wassovereign, but apparently someone had a better idea: parcel it out over five years so Ambassador John Negroponte canuse it as leverage. With $15bn outstanding, how likely are Iraq's politicians to refuse US demands for military bases andeconomic "reforms"? Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping intofunds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupationauthorities grabbed $2.5bn of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly alreadycovered by American tax dollars.But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From thestart, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim theircountry. Instead, it was treated as an ideologicalexperiment in privatisation. The dream was formultinational firms, mostly from the US, to swoop in anddazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency. Iraqissaw something else: desperately needed jobs going toAmericans, Europeans and south Asians; roads crowdedwith trucks shipping in supplies produced in foreignplants, while Iraqi factories were not even supplied withemergency generators. As a result, the reconstructionwas seen not as a recovery from war but as an extensionof the occupation, a foreign invasion of a different sort.And so, as the resistance grew, the reconstruction itselfbecame a prime target. The contractors have respondedby behaving even more like an invading army, buildingelaborate fortresses in the green zone - the walled-incity within a city that houses the occupation authority inBaghdad - and surrounding themselves withmercenaries. And being hated is expensive. According tothe latest estimates, security costs are eating up 25% of reconstruction contracts - money not being spent on hospitals,water-treatment plants or telephone exchanges.Meanwhile, insurance brokers selling sudden-death policies to contractors in Iraq have doubled their premiums, withinsurance costs reaching 30% of payroll. That means many companies are spending half their budgets arming andinsuring themselves against the people they are supposedly in Iraq to help. And, according to Charles Adwan ofTransparency International, quoted on US National Public Radio's Marketplace programme, "at least 20% of US spendingin Iraq is lost to corruption". How much is actually left over for reconstruction? Don't do the maths. Rather than models ofspeed and efficiency, the contractors look more like overcharging, underperforming, lumbering beasts, barely able tomove for fear of the hatred they have helped generate. The problem goes well beyond the latest reports of Halliburtondrivers abandoning $85,000 trucks on the road because they don't carry spare tyres. Private contractors are also accusedThe Hidden History Of Money & New World Order Usury Secrets Revealed at last! Page 491