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quickly and easily those in power manage to divert our
attention from the real issues of the day, and from
the questions that are more inconvenient for themselves.
Consider, for example, the extraordinary fallout of
the Volcker Report, the peculiar result of an exercise
which was stage-managed from beginning to end by a US
government that has shown its complete contempt for
both international law and the UN itself.
Quite
apart from its other effects, this has completely diverted
the attention of national and international media from
the huge and ongoing corruption in Iraq. Currently the
real scam is happening there, whereby the Iraqi people
are not only under daily physical attack but are also
deprived of even basic reconstruction because of the
pervasive corruption of the American military contractors
so beloved of the Bush administration.
This has meant that, even while tens of billions of
dollars are supposedly spent by the US on ''reconstruction''
and American companies rake in the profits on such activity,
Iraqi citizens continue to be denied basic services,
the infrastructure continues to be in a shambles (and
even more is destroyed by the day) and even workers
for such companies are denied their due wages.
Yet none of this is documented, much less advertised
and disseminated in the international press and other
media, which maintains a veil of silence and allows
the rampant looting of Iraq by its current rulers -
both US and local - to persist. And because so much
of what happens in Iraq now is explicitly hidden and
non-transparent, it is extremely difficult to get any
real sense of the actual extent of what is acknowledged
to be widespread corruption.
We may still get some idea, though, from the instructive
yet sorry example provided by relief work within the
US - in the areas like New Orleans that were hit by
Hurricane Katrina. The enormous damage caused by Katrina
- and the complete failure of local and national governments
to look after the citizens - are now well known. But
the bleeding of the region continues, and is now being
extended, by the manner of the post-disaster reconstruction
and relief work.
The recovery of the city of New Orleans has been slow,
especially because the City of New Orleans is now so
impoverished and without federal support that it has
been forced to lay off thousands of workers who could
have played a crucial role in the much-needed reconstruction.
But there were other areas that were affected, where
it was expected that the US government would take a
much more pro-active role in ensuring a rapid recovery.
For example, among the destruction caused by Katrina,
a number of US military bases along the Gulf Coast of
the US were affected, with the buildings destroyed and
streets and other infrastructure badly in need of cleanup
of the human and other debris. Since these were military
installations, it was expected that the Bush regime
would spare no expense in a rapid reconstruction, given
both the current importance of the military and the
close association of the Bush administration with a
range of military contractors.
But the sleaziness of the subsequent deals is already
having its effect. Immediately after Katrina, as part
of ''emergency measures:, President Bush suspended the
Davis-Bacon Act, which requires employers to pay "prevailing
wages" for labour used to fulfil government contracts.
The administration also waived the requirement for contractors
rebuilding the Gulf Coast to provide valid employment
eligibility forms (I-9 forms) completed by their workers.
These measures operated to increase the profitability
of the contractors who were brought in for the reconstruction
of the military bases. The foremost among these was
Halliburton - the company which has recently benefited
from so many US government in the United States, Iraq
and Guantánamo Bay. The company here appeared
in the form of its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown Root, now
known simply as KBR.
The ''emergency'' labour market deregulation measures
allowed Halliburton/KBR and its subcontractors to hire
undocumented workers (usually migrants from Mexico and
other countries in Central America) and pay them very
low wages well below the legal minimum wage. Usually
these migrants were brought in on promises of much higher
wages, but their illegal status meant that they had
no bargaining power and could not register any complaints,
even with non-payment.
Intense political pressure has forced a reversal of
these labour market measures - President Bush reinstated
the Davis-Bacon Act in early November, while the Department
of Homeland Security reinstated the I-9 requirements
in late October. But these policies have already allowed
extensive profiteering by these favoured companies beneath
layers of legal and political cover.
There are documented cases of very young workers - often
as young as 15 or 16 years old - being brought in from
Mexican villages (especially poor regions such as Oaxaca)
by subcontractors, made to work for weeks, and then
not even paid at all, forced to sleep on the streets
of New Orleans because they have nowhere else to go.
The subcontracting companies in turn claim that they
have let the workers go because they have not been paid
for months by KBR, which meanwhile has continuously
been receiving payment for the reconstruction work from
the US government.
So the migrant workers are exploited and denied their
dues, while local workers have not only lost all their
material possessions as well as sometimes their family
members, but even their jobs. And these local workers
are not being used for the reconstruction work because
they would have to be paid the minimum wages and be
given basic workers' rights.
If this is happening to ''relief work'' within the US,
imagine the scale of worker oppression and corruption
in countries like Iraq. And yet all of us in the rest
of the world still allow representatives of such regimes
to preach to us about corruption and supposedly murky
deals.
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