US occupation attacking Iraqi unions
The intent, I guess, is to make Iraq look exactly like a George W. Bush-inspired America:
On Saturday 6 December 2003 US occupation forces using about ten armoured cars and dozens of soldiers attacked the temporary headquarters of the Iraqi Federation of Workers Trade Unions (IFTU) in the Karkh District of Baghdad and arrested eight IFTU leaders who were subsequently released. The soldiers ransacked and destroyed IFTU possessions, including posters and banners condemning terrorism, covering the federation’s name with black paint, smashing windows, seizing documents, without any explanation or reason. - via Nathan Newman
Many Iraqis who supported the fall of Saddam were looking forward to the right to organize and collect fair wages. Now, the US occupation is making strident efforts to make sure that right is not realized. Unionization would be a huge burden to all of the private corporations setting up shop in Iraq. The Progressive has a whole story - Saddam’s Labor Laws Live On:
The new Iraqi state is a case study in the free market unleashed. The Bush Administration foresees two ways the Iraqi economy will be transformed, and it is taking measures to ensure that workers don’t disrupt either one. First, it will privatize the old state enterprises that have employed most workers. Second, it will create favorable conditions for an army of (mostly U.S.) corporations to set up shop and repatriate their profits outside the country.
When a country is taken over for, what I believe, are reasons of economic gain and control, it’s only a matter of time before evidence of profiting starts showing up in a really obvious way. That’s what we’re seeing with Halliburton and other situations and it’s what we’re seeing here. To bust up Iraqi workers’ unionizing efforts is to make plain the intent to profit from slave wage labor. What else could it mean?
quest54 said,
December 23, 2003 @ 11:01 pm
tarzan
Jeremy said,
December 24, 2003 @ 9:49 am
Iraq was invaded so Bush II could create his own corporate playground and install new military bases. We will be seeing made in Iraq stickers on the crap in Wal-mart in about 10 years.
Kari-Ann said,
December 24, 2003 @ 12:47 pm
Do you really think that the Bush Administration is purposely trampling human rights and all civil decency for financial gain?
I would hope that is not the case.
It’s very hard for me to believe anything I read anymore, whether it be in a newsletter, blog, paper or seen on television. It’s seems every story I hear/read there is an equal and opposite story. I have seriously given up sorting it all out.
Emily said,
December 24, 2003 @ 1:25 pm
You’d first believe that some people over in Iraq must be making the unionizing story up before you’d believe the administration has an agenda that has little to do with human rights? The Bush administration has FAR more to gain by trampling unionizing efforts than the people reporting that story have to gain by making it up. Do you get my point?
Yes, there’s always an opposite story…however I wouldn’t say it’s always equal. There’s a simple rule I use to sort all the news out…follow the money trail. Whose angle is benefiting in the last humane way? If there’s money to be made, corruption is easily justified. The “sides” I go with are the ones whose motives are not material and selfish, but affiliated instead with survival and dignity and equality. You start to see patterns to the power structures in our world and then it becomes easier to sort things out.
And yes, I very strongly believe the administration would purposely trample on human rights…it is naive to give the administration the benefit of the doubt as far as things like this. There’s so much evidence (from sources with nothing material to gain) that power and money are way more important to the agenda than human rights.