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"Italy is the most Americanized country of Europe, and thanks to my government it has the most flexible labour market of Old Europe"--Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, New York, September 23, 2003

"To the victor go the spoils, it is said. In the case of this war, the spoils will be going to the victor's business allies as they bring a distinctly corporate form of liberation to the people of Iraq"--Philip Mattera, director of Corporate Research Project

We have been sadly laughing at president Bush as he has been mispeaking everytime he opens his mouth. Yesterday, at the United Nations, he arrogantly justified the pre-emptive strike against Iraq by saying that now "Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country." Guess who is this representative of this liberated country, nothing else but Ahmad Chalabi, a cheerleader of the war against Iraq who has been absent from his country since 1956 and who has been convicted of 32 counts of bank fraud and sentenced to 22 years imprisonment by a Jordanian court in 1992.

We have been saying for a long time that we can't trust our leaders and we began to lament this situation as we covered the misdeeds of former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow, the patriotic politician who was able to balance the books and cut health care in Saskatchewan. Today, Roy Romanow has been awarded with the prestigious Pan American Health Organization award.

Also, we have occasionally covered the misdeeds of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi as he was charged of bribing judges and as he was accused of changing Italian laws to escape justice and concentrate his power. Today, after telling the world that Italian Duce Benito Mussolini was a benevolent dictator who didn't kill anybody Berlusconi was awarded the Distinguished Statesman Award by the Anti-Defamation League in New York for his significant contribution to "the cause of pluralism, tolerance, and democracy around the world."

We live in an upside world, a term I have borrowed from Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano. On September 11, 1973 general Augusto Pinochet, with the assistance of the CIA, bombed out the democratically elected government of Salvadore Allende in Chile and installed his own private government. As a reward for being helped by the CIA, general Pinochet allowed The Chicago School of Economics to carry a 16 year forced laboratory experiment to validate the gospels of the Free Market, deregulation and privatization. As this forced economic experiment proved successful for the selected privateers, so the American democracy of the Free Market began to be forcefully exported around the world.

The last democracy of the Free Market is being forcefully executed today in Iraq, a country with no government and with no constitution, and selected privateers are being successful once again.

References

Pertinent articles published in Ensign

Reuters Berlusconi, Italia paese straordinario per fare investimenti 24 Settembre 2003 http://it.news.yahoo.com/030924/58/2gii7.html

Mattera, Philip POSTWAR IRAQ: A SHOWCASE FOR PRIVATIZATION? April 3, 2003 Corporate Research Project, http://www.corp-research.org/extra_040303.htm

President Bush Addresses United Nations General Assembly The United Nations, New York, September 23, 2003 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030923-4.html

Pitt, William Rivers Situation Excellent, I Am Attacking September 24, 2003 t r u t h o u t, http://truthout.org/docs_03/092403A.shtml

Canada NewsWire Romanow Receives Prestigious Award in Washington September 22, 2003 http://www.newswire.ca/releases/September2003/22/c3359.html

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Nobel Laureates Blast Berlusconi Award (PDF) September 23, 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Berlusconi.html

Kangas, Steve The Chicago boys and the Chilean 'economic miracle' http://www.parallelo-distance.net/shared/The_Chicago_boys.html

The Guardian Say no to privatisation [of Iraq] September 23, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1047638,00.html