Exclusive excerpt from The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, and Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, present a short film from Klein's new book

Globe and Mail Update
September 8, 2007 at 12:02 AM EDT

In Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, she argues that an idea that began with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman has determined much of the course of recent history – that a time of crisis, whether a war or a hurricane, offers a strategic opportunity to overwrite the resulting “blank slate” with market privatization and corporatism.

Ms. Klein traces the application of such “shock treatment” to Chile in the 1970s, Russia in the 1990s and elsewhere. She argues that “disaster capitalism” has exploited Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina and Iraq. In this section, she considers the aftermath of George W. Bush's “anti-Marshall Plan”: Rather than help Iraqis rebuild their own economy, as the U.S. did in Germany in Japan in the 1940s, she says, they would permit Western corporations to remake Iraq in their own image. Things did not go as planned. But were some of those goals achieved?

On my flight leaving Baghdad, every seat was filled by a foreign contractor fleeing the violence. It was April, 2004, and both Fallujah and Najaf were under siege; 1,500 contractors pulled out of Iraq that week alone. Many more would follow. At the time, I was convinced that we were seeing the first full-blown defeat of the corporatist crusade. Iraq had been blasted with every shock weapon short of a nuclear bomb, and yet nothing could subdue this country.

The experiment, clearly, had failed.


Now I'm not sure. On one level, there is no question that parts of the project were a disaster. [Former Iraq administrator Paul] Bremer was sent to Iraq to build a corporate utopia; instead, Iraq became a ghoulish dystopia where going to a simple business meeting could get you lynched, burned alive or beheaded. By May, 2007, more than 900 contractors had been reported killed and “more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job,” according to a New York Times analysis. The investors Bremer had done so much to attract had never showed up – not HSBC, or Procter & Gamble, which put its joint venture on hold, as did General Motors. New Bridge Strategies, the company that had gushed about how “a Wal-Mart could take over the country,” conceded that “McDonald's is not opening any time soon.”

Bechtel's reconstruction contracts did not roll easily into long-term contracts to run the water and electricity systems. And by late 2006, the privatized reconstruction efforts that were at the centre of the anti–Marshall Plan had almost all been abandoned on the ground – and some rather dramatic policy reversals were in evidence.

Stuart Bowen, U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, reported that in the few cases where contracts were awarded directly to Iraqi firms, “it was more efficient and cheaper. And it has energized the economy because it puts the Iraqis to work.” It turns out that funding Iraqis to rebuild their own country is more efficient than hiring lumbering multinationals who don't know the country or the language, surround themselves with $900-a-day mercenaries and spend as much as 55 per cent of their contract budgets on overhead.

Jon C. Bowersox, who worked as the health adviser at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, offered this radical observation: The problem with Iraq's reconstruction, he said, was its desire to build everything from scratch. “We could have gone in and done low-cost rehabs, and not tried to transform their health-care system in two years.”

An even more dramatic about turn came from the Pentagon. In December, 2006, it announced a new project to get Iraq's state-owned factories up and running – the same ones that Bremer had refused to supply with emergency generators because they were Stalinist throwbacks. Now the Pentagon realized that instead of buying cement and machine parts from Jordan and Kuwait, it could be purchasing them from languishing Iraqi factories, putting tens of thousands to work and sending revenue to surrounding communities.

[…] Army Lieutenant-General Peter W. Chiarelli, the top U.S. field commander in Iraq, explained that “we need to put the angry young men to work. … A relatively small decrease in unemployment would have a very serious effect on the level of sectarian killing going on.” He couldn't help adding, “I find it unbelievable after four years that we haven't come to that realization. … To me, it's huge. It's as important as just about any other part of the campaign plan.”

Do these about-turns signal the death of disaster capitalism? Hardly. By the time U.S. officials came to the realization that they didn't need to rebuild a shiny new country from scratch, that it was more important to provide Iraqis with jobs and for their industry to share in the billions raised for reconstruction, the money that would have financed such an undertaking had already been spent.

The oil grab

Meanwhile, in the midst of the wave of neo-Keynesian epiphanies, Iraq was hit with the boldest attempt at crisis exploitation yet. In December, 2006, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group fronted by James Baker issued its long-awaited report. It called for the U.S. to “assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise” and to “encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies.”

Most of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations were ignored by the White House, but not this one: The Bush administration immediately pushed ahead by helping to draft a radical new oil law for Iraq, which would allow companies like Shell and BP to sign 30-year contracts in which they could keep a large share of Iraq's oil profits, amounting to tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars – unheard of in countries with as much easily accessible oil as Iraq, and a sentence to perpetual poverty in a country where 95 per cent of government revenues come from oil.

This was a proposal so wildly unpopular that even Paul Bremer had not dared make it in the first year of occupation. Yet it was coming up now, thanks to deepening chaos. Explaining why it was justified for such a large percentage of the profits to leave Iraq, the oil companies cited the security risks. In other words, it was the disaster that made the radical proposed law possible.

Washington's timing was extremely revealing. At the point when the law was pushed forward, Iraq was facing its most profound crisis to date: The country was being torn apart by sectarian conflict with an average of one thousand Iraqis killed every week. Saddam Hussein had just been put to death in a depraved and provocative episode.

Simultaneously, Bush was unleashing his “surge” of troops in Iraq, operating with “less restricted” rules of engagement. Iraq in this period was far too volatile for the oil giants to make major investments, so there was no pressing need for a new law – except to use the chaos to bypass a public debate on the most contentious issue facing the country. Many elected Iraqi legislators said they had no idea that a new law was even being drafted, and had certainly not been included in shaping its outcome.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher with the oil-watch group Platform, reported: “I was recently at a meeting of Iraqi MPs and asked them how many of them had seen the law. Out of 20, only one MP had seen it.” According to Muttitt, if the law was passed, Iraqis “would lose out massively because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal.”

Iraq's main labour unions declared that “the privatization of oil is a red line that may not be crossed” and, in a joint statement, condemned the law as an attempt to seize Iraq's “energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future while still under conditions of occupation.”

The law that was finally adopted by Iraq's cabinet in February, 2007, was even worse than anticipated: It placed no limits on the amount of profits that foreign companies can take from the country and placed no specific requirements about how much or little foreign investors would partner with Iraqi companies or hire Iraqis to work in the oil fields.

Most brazenly, it excluded Iraq's elected parliamentarians from having any say in the terms for future oil contracts. Instead, it created a new body, the Federal Oil and Gas Council, which, according to The New York Times, would be advised by “a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq.”

This unelected body, advised by unspecified foreigners, would have ultimate decision-making power on all oil matters, with the full authority to decide which contracts Iraq did and did not sign. In effect, the law called for Iraq's publicly owned oil reserves, the country's main source of revenues, to be exempted from democratic control and run instead by a powerful, wealthy oil dictatorship, which would exist alongside Iraq's broken and ineffective government.

It's hard to overstate the disgrace of this attempted resource grab. Iraq's oil profits are the country's only hope of financing its own reconstruction when some semblance of peace returns. To lay claim to that future wealth in a moment of national disintegration was disaster capitalism at its most shameless.

There was another, little-discussed, consequence of the chaos in Iraq: The longer it wore on, the more privatized the foreign presence became, ultimately forging a new paradigm for the way wars are fought and how human catastrophes are responded to.

This is where the ideology of radical privatization at the heart of the Bush administration's anti-Marshall Plan paid off handsomely. The Bush administration's steadfast refusal to staff the war in Iraq – whether with troops or with civilian administrators under its control – had some very clear benefits for its other war, the one to outsource the U.S. government.

This crusade, while it ceased to be the subject of the administration's public rhetoric, has remained a driving obsession behind the scenes, and it has been far more successful than all the administration's more public battles combined. […]

Corporate mission creep

The longer the war wore on, the more it became a privatized war, and soon enough, this was simply the new way of war. Crisis was the enabler of the boom, just as it had been for so many before.

The numbers tell the dramatic story of corporate mission creep.

During the first Gulf War in 1991, there was one contractor for every hundred soldiers. At the start of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the ratio had jumped to one contractor for every 10 soldiers. Three years into the U.S. occupation, the ratio had reached 1 to 3.

Less than a year later, with the occupation approaching its fourth year, there was one contractor for every 1.4 U.S. soldiers. But that figure includes only contractors working directly for the U.S. government, not for other coalition partners or the Iraqi government, and it doesn't account for the contractors based in Kuwait and Jordan who had farmed out their jobs to subcontractors. British soldiers in Iraq are already far outnumbered by their countrymen working for private security firms at a ratio of 3 to 1.

When Tony Blair announced in February, 2007, that he was pulling sixteen hundred soldiers out of Iraq, the press reported instantly that “civil servants hope ‘mercenaries' can help fill the gap left behind,” with the companies paid directly by the British government.

At the same time, The Associated Press put the number of contractors in Iraq at 120,000, almost equivalent to the number of U.S. troops. In scale, this kind of privatized warfare has already overshadowed the United Nations. The UN's budget for peacekeeping in 2006-2007 was $5.25-billion – that's less than a quarter of the $20-billion Halliburton got in Iraq contracts, and the latest estimates are that the mercenary industry alone is worth $4-billion.

So while the reconstruction of Iraq was certainly a failure for Iraqis and for U.S. taxpayers, it has been anything but for the disaster-capitalism complex. Made possible by the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Iraq represented nothing less than the violent birth of a new economy.

This was the genius of [former secretary of defence Donald] Rumsfeld's “transformation” plan: Since every possible aspect of both destruction and reconstruction has been outsourced and privatized, there's an economic boom when the bombs start falling, when they stop and when they start up again – a closed profit-loop of destruction and reconstruction, of tearing down and building up. For companies that are clever and far-sighted, like Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, the destroyers and rebuilders are different divisions of the same corporations.

The Bush administration has taken several important and little examined measures to institutionalize the privatized warfare model forged in Iraq, making it a permanent fixture of foreign policy.

In July, 2006, Bowen, the inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, issued a report on “lessons learned” from the various contractor debacles. It concluded that the problems stemmed from insufficient planning and called for the creation of “a deployable reserve corps of contracting personnel who are trained to execute rapid relief and reconstruction contracting during contingency operations” and to “pre-qualify a diverse pool of contractors with expertise in specialized reconstruction areas” – in other words, a standing contractor army.

In his 2007 State of the Union address, Bush championed the idea, announcing the creation of a brand-new civilian reserve corps. “Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them,” he said. “It would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.”

A year and a half into the Iraq occupation, the U.S. State Department launched a new branch: the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization. On any given day, it is paying private contractors to draw up detailed plans to reconstruct 25 different countries that may, for one reason or another, find themselves the target of U.S.-sponsored destruction, from Venezuela to Iran.

Corporations and consultants are lined up on “pre-signed contracts” so that they are ready to leap into action as soon as disaster strikes. For the Bush administration, it was a natural evolution: After claiming it had a right to cause unlimited pre-emptive destruction, it then pioneered pre-emptive reconstruction – rebuilding places that have not yet been destroyed.

So in the end, the war in Iraq did create a model economy – it was just not the Tiger on the Tigris that the neo-cons had advertised.

Instead, it was a model for privatized war and reconstruction – a model that quickly became export-ready. Until Iraq, the frontiers of the Chicago crusade had been bound by geography: Russia, Argentina, South Korea.

Now a new frontier can open up wherever the next disaster strikes.


theglobeandmail.com

Click the abouve link for a video preview


Vertdûr

Naomi Klein. She fuckin nailed it. People should get real high and watch that video a few times and get over their blind obedience to their evil nazi-banker war-profiteer rulers.

Nice one, Ver. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

Here is a shock Doctrine you should get high and watch

web page

Way to totally ignore the points made by Klein by repeating your lame comparison of the ineptitude of one branch of the business party with another branch. I guess that means you have no real critique of the short film/new book. But deep analysis was never your strong point.

The fact that Saddam was a different kind of threat in 1992 than he was in 2003 was mentioned the last time you posted that video.

Running out of distractions, handjob?

Then perhaps you should get the heck out of Vansterdam ; the exact same shit is going on there. People are being exploited as much , and even more. Selah DML ; PAUSE AND THINK ABOUT THAT.

This is an extension of the the work discussed in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. The Corporatocracy seems to be suffering a major blow in Iraq, maybe this can be thier wakeup call. America is widely hated in most of the world because of their work.

Cost Cutting Contracts

Using Blackwater as an example of what this thread is addressing , I must point out the well known fact that everything the US government has done by itself has ended up costing far more than private companies can perform the same work for. I chose Blackwater as an example because private armies have absolutly no business conducting military operations in a war zone , except possibly as advisors.
What this outfit amounts to in my book is a group of mercenaries who are more prone to go "Cowboys and Indians" than our soldiers are.

These fuckers look more like Hizbullah than anything else.

"Then perhaps you should get the heck out of Vansterdam ; the exact same shit is going on there. People are being exploited as much , and even more. Selah DML ; PAUSE AND THINK ABOUT THAT."

In Capitalistland, everyone gets the minimum wage to begin - for me it was 5.25 an hour. In Vansterdam everyone gets paid at least ten (that's what I got working for Marc). In Capitalistland there are monopolies on entire industries and rulers who won't listen to their serfs ... in Vansterdam there are no monopolies and leaders cannot ignore concerns of their co-workers.

Capitalistland is about war, competition, servitude and intolerance, Vansterdam is about peace, cooperation, freedom and tolerance.

I don't think I will ever leave Vansterdam, I will always seek to improve, expand and promote it until my last day.

I never said the people of Vansterdam itself were the ones exploiting so many of its residents. In Canada , as in any other industrialized nation,people get paid for their skills. A college graduate does not settle for ten bucks an hour. If they are willing to go where the work is , they find employment that matches their abilities.DESV is very much like the Warsaw ghetto before WWII. Take it from there...... It`s the same all over the world.

cheers to naomi klein and alfonso cuaron (Mexican film maker) for putting out this great production

Sounds more akin to Al Gore`s shock doctrine to me. Yeah, concentrate on a fraction of the world`s conflicts and never, ever put your chums in a bad light.





Canadian firm announces oil discovery in Iraq


Heritage Oil announces oil discovery in northern Iraq, estimated to contain up to 4.2 billion barrels.


OTTAWA - Canadian oil exploration firm Heritage Oil on Wednesday announced a major oil discovery in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, estimated to contain up to 4.2 billion barrels.

The Miran West field holds between 2.3 to 4.2 billion barrels of oil, the company said in a statement, but the "highly fractured nature" of the reservoir means only 50 to 70 percent of it is recoverable.

Even so, Heritage Oil president Tony Buckingham said the discovery marks a "significant development milestone" for the company.

The Miran West field together with the neighboring Miran East field, covering 330 square kilometers (127 square miles), have the potential to deliver "significant value," he said.

Trucking of crude oil production from Miran West is expected to start by year-end, with each oil well built capable of producing from 10,000 to 15,000 barrels per day, Heritage said.

"This is excellent news and we look forward to the Miran field exporting oil later this year," said Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdistan regional government's minister of natural resources.

"This will mean that the Miran field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq will make a further contribution to Iraq's oil revenue to be shared by all peoples of Iraq," he said.

Heritage holds a 75 percent interest in the Miran licenses, with Genel Energy International Limited holding the other 25 percent.

Its share price climbed 21 percent to 9.65 Canadian dollars (8.20 US) in morning trading in Toronto. The Calgary-based firm's shares also trade in London.

The company is engaged in oil exploration in Uganda, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malta, Pakistan, Tanzania and Mali, and has a producing property in Russia.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=31919

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http://www.oil.gov.iq/MINISTRY'S%20STRUCTURAL.php

You do not rebuild a conquered nation`s economy, military, government or any institutions which could threaten you in the future if all you want is oil.

MARCH 18, 2009 Iran's Cheap Goods Stifle Iraq Economy
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By GINA CHON
NAHRWAN, Iraq -- Brick-factory owner Dhary al-Shimary is thinking of calling it quits after 30 years in business, even though Iraq's demand for bricks has never been higher.

"Iranian bricks are invading Iraq," says Mr. Shimary, whose soot-belching factory on the outskirts of this trash-strewn town employs 300 people. "And the government is doing nothing to help us."

From bricks to buses to rice, Iranian imports have poured into markets across war-torn Iraq. The goods are providing Iraqis with many cheap products they otherwise can't afford or make themselves. But they're also undermining local industries that are struggling to compete at a time when job creation is a top priority for both Baghdad and Washington.

Iranian Goods Flood Iraqi Markets
View Slideshow

Gina Chon/The Wall Street Journal"What are these young men going to do when they lose their jobs here?" Mr. Shimary asks, pointing to a group of workers in their twenties, sitting on the ground at his factory. "If we close, these young people will have to do bad things to support their families."

Iraq's hopes for peace and growth increasingly depend on domestic manufacturers like Mr. Shimary. Until now, Iraqi agriculture and industry have been peripheral to the country's recovery efforts. That's because in recent years, Baghdad funded more than 90% of its state spending with oil revenues, capitalizing on high international prices to bankroll its reconstruction and provide state jobs for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

But with oil prices down sharply in the past nine months, Iraq's leaders have slashed the budget repeatedly. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki says one of its top priorities is to diversify the economy and create private-sector employment. Such new jobs would not only stoke the economy but also prevent a wave of joblessness that could threaten Iraq's fragile security.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, head of U.S. troops based in southern Iraq, says that jobs threatened by Iranian goods are a growing concern. "We've got to find a way to turn that around," he says.

Iraqi manufacturers' struggles are in part an unintended consequence of Washington's policies. In the days after the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority suspended most tariffs and duties for imports, hoping to stoke demand and energize the country's long-closed economy. But with neighboring Iran supporting its domestic industries with generous subsidies and protective tariffs, Iraqi manufacturers say they were left to compete on an uneven playing field.

After international sanctions against Iran in 1979 prevented the country from trading with many overseas partners, Iran learned to make more goods from construction materials to cars cheaply at home. Now, Washington's concerns about Iranian influence over politics in Baghdad are joined by the worry that Iran's massive export machine could threaten entire sectors of the Iraqi economy.

A White House official said the Obama administration is conducting a broad policy review in regards to Tehran. "We're looking toward the future of our relations with Iran," the official said.

An Iranian embassy official said Iranian businesses are helping average Iraqis by providing goods that cost less than similar products on the market. He added that Iran wants to help Iraq in its reconstruction efforts.

Industry's Plight
The plight of Iraq's industries has been largely overshadowed until now. In 2007, Iraq ran a large trade surplus -- its exports amounted to $41.3 billion while its imports reached $5.6 billion. But once oil receipts are stripped out, Iraq's huge trade surplus turns into a deficit: Iraq exported less than $200 million in non-oil products and imported nearly $4 billion.

The imbalance is particularly stark with Iran. Addressing the situation will be a challenge, judging by the experience of the brick factories here.

Though brick-making in Iraq dates to the beginning of urban civilization, it wasn't until the late 1970s that it became a booming industry in Nahrwan, 40 miles east of Baghdad.

Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, entrepreneurs here turned a desolate tract of land outside of town into an expanse of factories where local sand was mixed into bricks and fired hard in cavernous kilns. The government provided a power substation that generated free electricity, built a water-treatment plant nearby and gave the factories free heavy fuel oil for the furnaces. Nahrwan provided the bricks for Saddam's sand-colored palaces and public projects.

Mr. Shimary, who came from a farming family, bought a factory in the mid-1980s. At the industry's height in the 1980s and 1990s, the area's 167 manufacturers each turned out about 60,000 bricks a day, according to the Brick Factory Association of Nahrwan. Iraq's relative isolation, and its closed borders with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, gave Iraqi brick makers a monopoly.

The 2003 U.S. invasion, and the looting and violence that followed, forced Mr. Shimary and his fellow factory owners to shut down. Sunni insurgents gained sway in the surrounding Diyala province, and Nahrwan's factory complex, which once employed more than 50,000 workers, became a ghost town.

In 2006, local officials persuaded Mr. Shimary and other owners to return, promising stable supplies of fuel and electricity. Mr. Shimary reopened his factory and hired back part of his work force. Later that year, an al Qaeda mortar attack hit the substation that powers the brick factories and knocked out two of three transformers.

In 2007, as part of the surge strategy, the U.S. put a small base in Nahrwan. Aiming to help factory owners boost production, the U.S. military organized dozens of owners into the Brick Factory Association and arranged meetings with the Iraqi central government in Baghdad. The government promised fuel-oil deliveries -- 11 tankers to each factory per month, at government prices of $3,000 to $5,000 apiece.

But factory owners say they've been receiving half or less of their monthly fuel allotments. Their power substation remains a ruin of rusting equipment and cut or disconnected cables. The two transformers damaged in the al Qaeda attack, still missing parts and surrounded by pieces of shrapnel, remain idle. Mr. Shimary says that he and others spend $1,000 or so a day for fuel to run large generators.

Mr. Shimary, who currently employs about 200 workers, says he can make about 40,000 bricks on a good day. But he and other factory owners say erratic fuel and electricity supplies mean there are many bad days. Their bricks have to be baked for 24 hours, they say, and an unanticipated furnace shutdown can ruin a batch.

Proof of this can be seen in Karbala, some 120 miles to the southwest, where contractor Mohammed Baqir points to a pile of broken bricks. "Iraqi bricks used to be famous, and well known for their quality," Mr. Baqir said. "It's sad what has happened to the industry."

Stacks of Iranian Bricks
Nearby stood stacks of Iranian bricks that the contractor was using, along with Iranian marble and Iranian cement, to build a private home. Mr. Baqir said he would prefer to buy Iraqi products but had no incentive to do so. Iranian bricks cost about a third less than Iraqi bricks.

The Iranian government subsidizes its manufacturers' exports in several ways. Tehran offers reduced-price fuel and electricity to homes and enterprises across Iran. It gives tax breaks to Iranian manufacturers and pays its exporters 3% of the value of the goods they send out of the country. Iran also levies import tariffs of up to 150% on inbound goods.

"To export to Iraq is more profitable," says Hassan Sattahee, an Iranian brick-factory owner who has been making sales in Iraq for the past four years. He estimates Iraqi sales account for much of his business's 30% growth since 2003.

To the frustration of the brick-makers in Nahrwan, the Iraqi government, cities and their subcontractors continue to buy Iranian bricks. Earlier this year, the Basra Investment Commission announced a $1.5 billion housing and shopping complex that will be built by an Iranian company using Iranian-made materials. Most of the new schools and municipal buildings in Karbala are made of Iranian bricks.

Land Left Fallow
The experience is similar in industries across Iraq. The country's transportation ministry bought more than 400 buses and trucks from Iran in 2007 and 2008, drawing the ire Iraq's struggling State Company for Automotive Industry. Farmers in Iraq -- long considered the region's breadbasket -- are leaving land fallow as rice, watermelons and tomatoes stream in from Iran. In 2008, for the first time, Iraq became a net food importer, according to its Ministry of Agriculture.

Iraqi industries want subsidies and trade protections, but this will take time. Last year, Iraq's Finance Ministry drafted a customs tariff law, rules that are necessary for Iraq to join the World Trade Organization. But the draft law didn't contain the product-by-product tariff numbers normally included in such regulations, so the ministry had to go back to the drawing board. It could be a year or more before such a law is in place.

Some Iraqis, of course, have benefited since the borders with Iran opened after the 2003 invasion. Iranian pilgrims started flooding into holy Shiite sites in southern Iraq that had been closed to them for decades, boosting local hotels, restaurants, tour operators and other areas of local economies.

Those benefits haven't extended to Nahrwan. Electricity poles, minus the cables, line the road from the town's garbage-strewn market area to the industrial expanse on the outskirts. The sky darkens closer to the factories, and flecks of black ash swirl like a light snow.

Brickworkers earn about $10 a day at the factories here, which still account for more than 30,000 jobs in the area. Many of them house their families in makeshift shacks amid the factories.

Kadhim Hassan Hussein lives here with his five sons, age 7 to 17, who all work with him in a factory, he said. Mr. Hussein said he hasn't been paid in more than two months because his employer hasn't had enough fuel to operate. He said he is running out of savings to support his family. He blames cheap Iranian bricks.

"Iran could not control us militarily so now they are trying to control us by the economy and flooding us with their products," he said.

Joblessness is a mounting concern. Police here say reports of auto theft, robberies and burglaries are up in the past six months. Officials in Washington and Baghdad, meanwhile, fear that unemployed young men could be potential recruits for violent sectarian groups still active across Iraq. A January report by the United Nations and other nongovernmental organizations estimated that among Iraqi males between the ages of 15 and 29, the unemployment rate is 28% and rising.

A worker at another factory, who gave his name only as Riyad, said he used to work for Sunni insurgents. These people, he said, paid him a few hundred dollars per job to launch a mortar or place a roadside bomb to target American troops. But he didn't like the work, he said, and a year ago he jumped at a job at a brick factory. Now that the industry is working at reduced capacity, he is worried about how he will support himself.

"This isn't the greatest job, but at least it's an honest one," he said. "I can tell my family about this job."

—Roshanak Taghavi in Tehran and Jabbar al-Obaidi in Baghdad contributed to this article.
Write to Gina Chon at gina.chon@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123732669334561799.html

[size:14pt] Only the evil West takes advantage? Fangoo! Even you are a capitalist swine.

Give people a living wage and access to a higher standard of living, and they simply will not give a damn who or what supplied them.


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Let me see you put up or shut up. That`s just employees. Shareholders earnings etc. would make your #1 enemy billions of times more credible than you`ll ever become.

The war on global terror is just another example of what is widely known in the field as " Problem Reaction Solution". 9/11 was a classic example of this. It may be hard to accept but the U.S government just needed an excuse to enter this war on terror ( which is a fabricated truth ) to control the middle east and create a common enemy. Now if you look back in history you startt seeing that this has happened before. A few examples: WW1 and WW2 were wars funded by the U.S because the banking cartels saw that they could make vast sums of money, and they did. There are many more scenarios like this and once you start researching these subjects like i have then you start to see the broader picture.
The ultimate goal from this is what we all have probably heard the politicians call "The New World Order". This is very real. The powers of this world created secret societies i.e The Bilderberg Group, The Illuminati, The Skull And Bones. These three are just a few secret societies that are moulding the shape of your very existance. There ultimate goal is to enslave the world to the point where every thing you do or say could get you killed. This is why we have to educate and inform ourselves and empower ourselves to stop this from happening. The awakening has already started.

I beg to disagree. The USA did not create Bin Ladin`s organization or the Islamic Iranian revolution. The USA had war declared against it by Iran and Al Qaeda long before 9/11. You do not read very well, do you?

Part of Bin Ladin`s 1996 fatwah declaring war...
... My Muslim Brothers of The World:
Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy --your enemy and their enemy-- the Americans and the Israelis. they are asking you to do whatever you can, with one own means and ability, to expel the enemy, humiliated and defeated, out of the sanctities of Islam. Exalted be to Allah said in His book: { and if they ask your support, because they are oppressed in their faith, then support them!} (Anfaal; 8:72)

O you horses (soldiers) of Allah ride and march on. This is the time of hardship so be tough. And know that your gathering and co-operation in order to liberate the sanctities of Islam is the right step toward unifying the word of the Ummah under the banner of "No God but Allah" ).

From our place we raise our palms humbly to Allah asking Him to bestow on us His guide in every aspects of this issue.

Our Lord, we ask you to secure the release of the truthful scholars, Ulama, of Islam and pious youths of the Ummah from their imprisonment. O Allah, strengthen them and help their families.

Our Lord, the people of the cross had come with their horses (soldiers) and occupied the land of the two Holy places. And the Zionist Jews fiddling as they wish with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the route of the ascendance of the messenger of Allah (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM). Our Lord, shatter their gathering, divide them among themselves, shaken the earth under their feet and give us control over them; Our Lord, we take refuge in you from their deeds and take you as a shield between us and them

Our Lord, show us a black day in them!

Our Lord, show us the wonderment of your ability in them!

Our Lord, You are the Revealer of the book, Director of the clouds, You defeated the allies (Ahzab); defeat them and make us victorious over them.

Our Lord, You are the one who help us and You are the one who assist us, with Your Power we move and by Your Power we fight. On You we rely and You are our cause.

Our Lord, those youths got together to make Your religion victorious and raise Your banner. Our Lord, send them Your help and strengthen their hearts.

Our Lord, make the youths of Islam steadfast and descend patience on them and guide their shots!

Our Lord, unify the Muslims and bestow love among their hearts!

O Lord pour down upon us patience, and make our steps firm and assist us against the unbelieving people!

Our Lord, do not lay on us a burden as Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord, do not impose upon us that which we have no strength to bear; and pardon us and grant us protection and have mercy on us, Thou art our patron, so help us against the unbelieving people.

Our Lord, guide this Ummah, and make the right conditions (by which) the people of your obedience will be in dignity and the people of disobedience in humiliation, and by which the good deeds are enjoined and the bad deeds are forebode.

Our Lord, bless Muhammad, Your slave and messenger, his family and descendants, and companions and salute him with a (becoming) salutation.

And our last supplication is: All praise is due to Allah . http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html

The sonof a bitch got more than he thought he would. Now he`s facing troops in Pakistan, Aghanistan; military bases in Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Afghanistan and he`s just about to get 68,000 troops rolling everything up into a death blow with Russian railways shipping war material for US. The Middle East has always been more divided against itself than united against any common enemy. Right now terror groups are quickly becoming less popular than Barack Obama in the Middle East.


http://cdalinks.blogspot.com/2009/01/clown-combat-from-kyrgistan.html

Yes, the US created Bin Laden organization. They trained and supplied them. That relationship is in the public record. You are not so foolish as to try and deny published facts from the holy writ of your own government are you?

Secondly, yes the US is also partly responsible for the Iranian revolution. If your government had not supported a dictator who oppressed his people, there would have been little need for a revolution don't you think?

Furthermore, Iran has never declared war against America. I challenge you to present such a declaration.





Do you notice that Bin Laden is calling for the Liberation of Palestine?

Who is responsible for the occupation of Palestine? Who ensures that such an horrible situation is not resolved? The U.S. and her allies.





Once again this is a religious declaration, specifically concerning treatment of Al Aqsa, the second most holy place in all of Islam.

Now, imagine if you were a devout Christian. Pretend that you believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now Imagine that someone tried to excavate under The Church of the Holy Sepulchre for any reason. What would your reaction be to persons not of your faith fucking with a holy site? Would you not be wroth?




Bin Laden got exactly what he wanted. A costly, divisive war that would prove to the world that America was a negative influence on the world. Also, he was following in the footsteps of his handlers, who taught him how to fuck a superpower in the ass with a bunch of cave dwelling fanatics.

But deep analysis was never your strong point.

The fact that Saddam was a different kind of threat in 1992 than he was in 2003 was mentioned the last time you posted that video.



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