The Daily Grasshopper

Today, the Daily Grasshopper goes international! I want to extend a warm welcome to the new readers from Germany, who have been assured that resistance to war in the U.S. is stronger than it outwardly appears. I hope these daily essays give them some idea of the kind of discussions that are happening at the grass-roots level here in the U.S., and how awareness about our government's actions is being created by old-fashioned muckraking on new-fangled machines. Guten Tag!

For those who have just started getting the "Daily Grasshopper," old editions can be found at http://www.dailygrasshopper.com. Some of the links to news articles from the earlier essays are dead, but otherwise they should be useful (I hope). On to the papers...

It's pretty clear from today's news that the U.S. commitment to democracy in the Middle East does not extend to votes taken by the democratically-elected Turkish Parliament. As you know, the Turks voted on Saturday to reject U.S. troop deployment in that country. More on some of the fallout from that in a moment.

The New York Times' headline authoritatively claims that "TURKEY WILL SEEK A SECOND DECISION ON A G.I. PRESENCE." The lead paragraph of the story assures us that the decision to revisit Saturday's vote was made "under intense American pressure." No kidding - Washington resorting to arm-twisting to get an unfavorable decision overturned? How pedestrian... The article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/03/international/middleeast/03TURK.html

The message from the Bush Gang, ever vigilant in their pursuit of democracy worldwide, seems to be "We don't care how many votes it takes - keep on going 'til you get it right." The definition of "right," of course, is whatever the American war planners desire, not the wishes of the people of Turkey (95 percent of whom, give or take a few, oppose the war on Iraq) or their democratically-elected officials.

The Wall St. Journal article, "Turks' 'No' to Troops Shows Cost to U.S. Allies," explains it this way:

"ISTANBUL, Turkey - A political crisis in Turkey, brought on by Parliament's refusal to allow thousands of U.S. troops to use Turkish military bases, illustrates the growing cost to pro-American governments in the Middle East region.

The Parliament Saturday rejected a motion to let the U.S. base as many as 62,000 combat troops in Turkey in exchange for a multibillion-dollar package of loans and grants, despite the plan's endorsement by Turkey's ruling party. The decision delivered a sobering setback to Washington's preparations for a potential war with Iraq."

Notice that when a vote goes against the interests of the U.S., it qualifies as "a political crisis in Turkey." A more accurate account would have declared it "a political crisis in Washington, D.C." but the Wall St. Journal reporters, Guy Chazan and Hugh Pope, understand one of the unwritten rules of covering U.S. foreign policy: we're always in control. No crisis here.

That assessment is belied by the reaction that the officials who voted to reject the measure received from their constituents. Maybe a true "political crisis in Turkey" is what would have happened if the vote had gone the other way. There were 100,000 people protesting outside the chamber when the vote was taken (from the Times article):

"But the overwhelming reason that the measure failed, Turkish leaders said, was the demand of the Turkish people to stay out of the war.

'I hate romanticism in politics,' said Mehmet Fehmi Uyanik, a legislator who voted against the measure. 'I'm a realist. And every day, I'm not kidding, I got 60 or 70 messages from people telling me to vote against.'"

And we shouldn't overlook some of the factors that were just below the surface (also from the Times article):

"But as legislators discussed the vote, it became clear that the reasons were more complex.

The biggest unresolved issue was Washington's insistence that Turkey adhere to its agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which has imposed strict austerity measures on the government. Turkish officials were hoping to obtain a $6 billion grant from the United States before reaching an agreement on the next installment of the fund's multibillion aid program.

Several Turkish legislators complained of what they described as the United States' overbearing and sometimes petty approach to the negotiations.

Turkish officials said American diplomats sought to avoid paying taxes on everything they bought in Turkey, from fuel to food. One dispute, which Turkish lawmakers said lasted more than a week, involved the question of who would pick up a roughly $30,000 tab for identification labels intended for American troops in Turkey."

A second, less flagrant, example of our government's willingness to flout rules that they expect other, perhaps less civilized, nations to adhere to is made clear in an Associated Press story that appears in today's Boston Globe. It's title is "US eyes plan for tear gas use in Iraq." You can read it here:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/062/nation/US_eyes_plan_for_tear_gas_use_in_Iraq+.shtml

Now, in a war that could feature the first-ever use of tactical nuclear weapons (by the U.S., in case you weren't aware), I can see how people might shrug off the fact that our government might unleash the same crowd-control measures that are used right here at home whenever someone has the nerve to protest the actions of the World Bank or WTO. What the Associated Press story doesn't report on is the political ramifications that this ploy is already having for our Number One ally in this mad adventure - Britain. For more on that, check out this story from yesterday's Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=383006

So, getting back to the fallout from the vote. As I'm writing this, it is likely that the "virtual senate," the international financiers who dictate government policy by investing or withdrawing capital from countries based on their willingness to play by the Golden Rule ("He who has the gold rules"), is waging an attack on the Turkish stock market to punish them for appeasing their population with an antiwar vote on Saturday. For those who think I'm just way too cynical, be assured that I'm not pulling this out of thin air. It's reported in today's New York Times:

"When the Turkish Parliament narrowly rejected the deal on Saturday, White House officials were stunned. Word arrived today from Ankara that Turkey's leaders might give their Parliament a second chance to approve the troop deployment, and White House officials described their best hope of resurrecting the deal as a huge plunge in the Turkish stock market on Monday morning caused by investors realizing that large amounts of American aid may not materialize."

The article can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/03/international/middleeast/03ASSE.html

So we can see that when the game is on the line, it really comes down to the money, and all the nice-sounding rhetoric about democracy, which is just fine for presidential speeches before the American Enterprise Institute, goes straight out the window. At that point, it's time to "make the economy scream," as Nixon dictated to his operatives when things weren't going according to plan in Chile thirty years ago.

It is significant that the harsh International Monetary Fund (IMF) restrictions on the billions of dollars being offered to the Turkish government was part of the deal-breaker, as revealed in today's Times. You may recall that I wrote a couple of days ago that so-called "free trade" agreements are nothing more than a corporate Bill of Rights that allow the world's biggest businesses to profit at the expense of the majority of the world's population.

The conditions that these free trade agreements impose on countries that agree to participate (and it's nice to know just how "voluntary" participation can be when the U.S. is calling the shots, isn't it?) are modeled on the "Structural Adjustment Policies" - the "strict austerity measures" to which today's Times article alluded - that the World Bank and IMF have made infamous over the last two decades. Basically, in exchange for foreign investment, governments have to agree to radically restructure their domestic economies to create a favorable climate for corporate interests. That includes raising taxes and interest rates, slashing social spending, loosening restrictions on foreign investors, and gearing the domestic economy for export production. The interests of the people, sort of like the overwhelmingly antiwar position taken by the people of Turkey, typically get short shrift in this process.

An example of this is the plight of corn farmers in Mexico, to which I referred you in one of my earliest essays. The harmful effects of the provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were predicted by many prior to the ratification of the proposal back in 1994. Now, almost ten years later, we see an opinion piece in the New York Times that points out what was obvious to many people all along: that "free trade" principles have to be adhered to by all participants, or else the result will be a continuation of the strong exploiting the weak. Which is what the "Washington Consensus," or "neoliberalism," or "free trade" is all about.

From the article in today's Times (which, incidentally, lobbied heavily for NAFTA's passage in its editorials at the time, and continues to be a cheerleader for so-called "free trade"):

"In January, campesinos from all over the country marched into Mexico City's central plaza to protest. Thousands of men in jeans and straw hats jammed the Zócalo, alongside horses and tractors. Farmers have staged smaller protests around Mexico for months. The protests have won campesino organizations a series of talks with the government. But they are unlikely to get what they want: a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, protective temporary tariffs and a new policy that seeks to help small farmers instead of trying to force them off the land.

The problems of rural Mexicans are echoed around the world as countries lower their import barriers, required by free trade treaties and the rules of the World Trade Organization. When markets are open, agricultural products flood in from wealthy nations, which subsidize agriculture and allow agribusiness to export crops cheaply. European farmers get 35 percent of their income in government subsidies, American farmers 20 percent. American subsidies are at record levels, and last year, Washington passed a farm bill that included a $40 billion increase in subsidies to large grain and cotton farmers.

It seems paradoxical to argue that cheap food hurts poor people. But three-quarters of the world's poor are rural. When subsidized imports undercut their products, they starve. Agricultural subsidies, which rob developing countries of the ability to export crops, have become the most important dispute at the W.T.O. Wealthy countries do far more harm to poor nations with these subsidies than they do good with foreign aid."

The whole article, "Why Mexican Corn Farmers Go Hungry," can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/03/opinion/03MON3.html

I guess to some people it might seem "paradoxical to argue that cheap food hurts poor people." But when you take the time to look at who's making the arguments for "free trade" (the Business Roundtable, the G8 finance ministers, the U.S. Treasury), and who's making the arguments for "fair trade" (human rights organizations, campesino support networks, environmentalists, and a growing number of trade unions here and abroad), maybe it's not such a paradox, after all. In fact, one of the "win-win" outcomes for the corporations in the "free trade" game, which goes unmentioned in the Times article, is that once you've destroyed the peasant population's ability to sustain themselves, they're easy pickings for the sweat shops that spring up all over the place in the wake of the flood of subsidized agricultural products. What a deal, huh?

It's just the way it works when Washington is calling the shots. Sort of like how we have to undermine Turkish democracy to establish democracy in the Middle East. It seems like a paradoxical argument, but it's just the way things work when "our interests" are at stake.