Posted on 19-8-2003
Its
A Liars World
By Eduardo Galeano
For forty-five years, Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi ate the hard bread
of exile. To ease his woes he established a bank, Petra Bank,
in Jordan. When the bank went bust, Chalabi switched countries.
On the way out he made $500 million vanish into thin air, robbing
thousands of shareholders. In 1992, a Jordanian court tried
him in absentia and sentenced him to twenty years of prison
and hard labour. That same year the Iraqi National Congress
was formed in London and Chalabi was consecrated as leader of
the democratic opposition to the corrupt tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
The ubiquitous chorus of resentful foes conspired against him
in the years that followed and accused him of taking a cut of
contributions from the CIA. One of the absent-minded acts on
the list of charges against him was pocketing $4 million.
None of this kept Chalabi from becoming the favourite adviser
for the forces that recently invaded Iraq. His collaboration
enabled the invaders to lie with admirable sincerity during
and after the slaughter that they carried out. And President
Bush confirmed that he had been a good choice: This new ally
had the same habits as his friends at Enron.
Since 1958, Chalabi had not set foot in Iraq. Finally, he made
it back. He is now the favourite mascot of the occupation forces.
***
In Afghanistan, the favourite mascot of the occupation forces
is Hamid Karzai, who is pretending to be president.
Before Iraq, Afghanistan was the chosen site for bombardment
in the new millennium's geography of evil. Thanks to the thunderous
victory of the invaders, there is freedom now. Freedom for drug
traffickers. According to various specialised organisations
of the European Union and the United Nations, Afghanistan has
become the world's principal supplier of opium, heroin, and
morphine. Estimates from these bodies show that in the first
year of liberation the production of drugs increased eighteen-fold,
from 185 to 3,400 tons-the equivalent of $1.2 billion. And since
then, it has continued to increase. Even Tony Blair recognised
this past January that 90 percent of the heroin consumed in
England came from Afghanistan.
The government of Hamid Karzai, which controls only the city
of Kabul, is tight with Washington. Of its sixteen ministers,
ten have U.S. passports. And Karzai himself, a former consultant
for the U.S. oil company Unocal, lives surrounded by soldiers
from the United States, which gives him orders and watches wherever
he goes and as he sleeps.
The invaders were supposed to stay just two months, but there
they remain. This is why: The incorruptible warriors of the
war on drugs have set up shop in Afghanistan to guarantee the
freedom to grow, the freedom to traffic, and the freedom to
cross borders.
Of the reconstruction of this razed country, there is little
mention any more. Ahmed Karzai, brother of the virtual president
and prominent figure in the government, recently lamented: "What
did they do for us? Nothing. The people are exhausted and I
don't know what to tell them."
***
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank don't
launch missiles. They have other weapons for bombarding and
conquering countries and occupying the ruins.
After gutting Argentina, both organisations, early this year,
sent a special team in to look over the accounts. One of the
members of this finance police, Jorge Baca Campodonico, was
put in charge of tax evasion. He is an expert on the subject.
In his country, Peru, a warrant for his arrest is pending for
various indictments. No sooner had he landed in Buenos Aires
than Interpol took him into custody. But the IMF stepped in
and spent a fortune on lawyers to stop the extradition of its
functionary.
***
FIFA, world soccer's governing body, is the game's equivalent
of the IMF: It keeps vigil over the transparency of the most
lucrative of all sports.
Ricardo Teixeira carries out his noble mission in Brazil. This
was decided by his father-in-law, Joao Havelange, when he was
the king of FIFA. Brazil, that magical country, produces extraordinary
players, millionaire coaches, and ruined teams. In late 2001,
after three years and 2,400 pages of findings by two commissions,
the Brazilian senate called for a trial of Teixeira and sixteen
other managers. "The Brazilian Football Confederation is
truly a den of crime, revealing disorganisation, anarchy, incompetence,
and dishonesty," declared Brazilian Senator Alvaro Dias,
the chair of one of the investigating committees.
Then Joseph Blatter, who inherited the FIFA throne from Havelange,
threatened to pull Brazil out of the 2002 World Cup "if
they keep nosing around this matter."
The Brazilian parliamentary inquiry alleged that Teixeira had
embezzled funds, diverted loans, laundered money, evaded taxes,
falsified documents, and committed another twenty types of crime
to make himself rich while succeeding in driving Brazilian soccer,
the most successful in the world, into the red. Teixeira remains
the head of Brazilian soccer. Plus, he now has a very important
position in the upper ranks of FIFA: He is responsible for justice
and fair play for world soccer as a member of a FIFA's six-man
audit committee.
***
The World Cup they vie for each year in the French town of
Moncrabeau has nothing to do with soccer. It is a competition
of the finest liars in the world. Contestants swear they will
tell lies, only lies, and complete lies.
This article, which presents the qualifications of a few possible
candidates, does not mention Silvio Berlusconi of Italy or Carlos
Menem of Argentina. They are not competing, however. They're
simply unbeatable. Neither has ever risked telling the truth,
the whole truth, or even the tiniest crystal of truth. To keep
from straying outside the limits of the law, a somewhat disagreeable
activity, Menem simply bought it: He bought the law with money
he made when he sold the country. As for Berlusconi, he passed
a law just for himself: He threw out the old law and replaced
it with a new one, made to order by Italian tailors.
Berlusconi is still in power. Menem, on the other hand, was
left unemployed by the Argentinean people. But sooner or later
he will reappear, in the service of humanity, in command of
some international organization charged with fighting corruption
and arms and drug trafficking. His credentials are impeccable.
What a grasp of the subject he has.
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