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09/24/2004: "Big-Assed Weekend Edition (Dave Blood and the Children's Crusade)"
The date for the Dave Blood memorial/benefit show has been set. It will
take place on Sunday November 21st, in Philadelphia, at the Trocadero.
Tickets will set you back $15 but, since the profits are going to charity,
you should buy as many as the law allows (Even if you don't plan on
attending). Joe, Dean, and I (accompanied on bass by Dan from the Low
Budgets) will be performing anywhere from 14 to 20 Dead Milkmen songs.
I encourage everyone who can attend to do so, but please don't refer to
this show as a "reunion" - unless, of course, you've found a way to bring
Dave back, in which case you can call it whatever the Hell you want. I,
by the way, have started referring to Dean, Joe, and myself as "The
Living-Dead Milkmen".
Dave Blood was not only a band mate but he was a very dear friend. He was
light-years ahead of many people in understanding the impact of economics
on world events. If he was still with us, I'd love to get his opinion on
Naomi Klein's article, Baghdad Year Zero, in the September issue of
Haper's, in which she puts forth the theory that it's not so much
the damage done by bombs during the invasion of their country that has
turned the Iraqis against the US occupiers, but the damage done by
lasses-faire economic policies that were instituted afterward.
Fist, I should point out that I, like more than a few others, was not
impressed with Ms. Klein's book No Logo. Also, the very same issue
of Harper's in which her piece appears also features the now
infamous Tentacles of Rage article. That said, the piece is a
devastating read.
Ms. Klein does a fine job of portraying Iraq as a sort of petri dish for
Neocon ideology. In other words, with the Iraqi slate wiped clean, so to
speak, Neocons could now use the country to prove that privatization and
raw capitalism are the way to go (Things they couldn't do in America
because of pesky labor and environmental laws).
First, while most of the world's press was focusing on the physical damage
done to Iraq, Paul Bremer, who was in charge of the US occupation, held a
sort of garage sale in the form of the following Orders:
Order 37 lowered Iraq's corporate tax rate from approximately 40 % to 15 %.
Order 39 allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets
(excluding natural-resources) and allowed investors to take 100 percent of
their profits, made in Iraq, out of the country. They also would not be
required to reinvest in Iraq and they would not be taxed.
Order 39 allowed foreign corporations to sign sweetheart leases and
contracts that would last for forty years.
Order 40 extended the same loving terms as the previous Orders to foreign
banks
The sole economic policy of the Hussein regime that Bremer left intact was
a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.
Now there were only two things preventing foreign corporations from turning
Iraq into a Capitalist Disneyland - the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the
Hague Regulations of 1907. Both of these state that an occupier is the
"administrator" - and not the owner of "public buildings, real
estate, forests and agricultural assets" of the country it is occupying.
Or, to put it another way, Bremer didn't own the assets he was trying to
give away.
"Well," apparently Bremer thought to himself, "If I don't have the
authority to hold a garage sale, who would?"
And so it was announced that on June 30 the occupation would officially
end, and a new government - which many have referred to as a puppet
government - would step in. This government would be free to hold Bremer's
garage sale.
Slowly, foreign businesses began to replace Iraqi businesses. And the
Iraqis got pissed. Violently so.
During Bremer's first four months in charge of the occupation, 109 U.S.
soldiers were killed and 570 were wounded. In the following four months,
as Bremer's economic policies went into effect, the number of U.S.
casualties just about doubled, to 195 soldiers killed and 1,633 wounded.
By the way, I would be gravely remiss if I failed to mention one of the
most chilling parts of Naomi's article -the young Neocons who have been
put in charge of the rebuilding of Iraq. Precocious tykes like Jay Hallen,
24, who had applied for a job at the White House and ended up in charge of
launching Baghdad's new stock exchange. And Scott Erwin, 21, a former
intern to Dick Cheney, who is now - and I shit you not - assisting Iraqis
in the management of finances and budgeting for the domestic security
forces. When asked what his favorite job before his present one was, Scott
replied "My time as an ice-cream truck driver."
Of course the Director of Foreign Relations in the Ministry of Trade is a
grown-up, and an Iraqi. His name is Ahmad al Mukhtar. His last steady gig
was reading the English-language news on television. Unlike the late Dave
Blood, Ahmad does not hold a degree in economics.
