[Media-watch] Aid to Iraq

[Mark Priestley]

Dear John
 
I was intrigued by your interview with Hilary Benn this morning on Today.
The interview focused on the aid to Iraq, and the related issue of diverting
money from other worthy causes, but did not touch upon the extensive foreign
debts that will potentially cripple the country, prevent its reconstruction
and affect the welfare of millions of people for decades to come. Surely the
£300 million proposed in aid is an irrelevance when viewed against the
estimated $380 billion owed to foreign banks and corporations; these
corporations are queuing presently to join what is likely to be a systematic
and rapacious pillaging of Iraq's assets. Such asset stripping is
euphemistically referred to as 'reconstruction', but it is not hard to see
who will benefit; it is most certainly not the Iraqi people. One can almost
hear the gleeful rubbing of hands in western boardrooms.
 
I, for one, am sickened by the sight of predatory westerners enriching
themselves at the expense of people who are already victims: victims of the
banks that knowingly lent money to a brutal regime, when it was politically
expedient to do so; victims of the arms companies that sold the weapons to
that regime; victims of the regime that subsequently used these weapons to
repress them; and now victims of the banks that insist on repayment. In a
sense the Iraqi people are now being asked to pay for their own repression,
but of course, as the historian Mark Curtis pointed out, this does not
matter, as the Iraqis are easy to conceptualise as 'non-people'. 
 
The American Nobel Laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz has employed the
concept of odious debt to demonstrate that these debts should be repudiated
and nullified. This notion has been extensively discussed, and Stiglitz is a
figure of considerable standing; and yet there is only one mention of it (in
passing) on the BBC news website. Indeed the issue of Iraqi debt features
only rarely on the website. Most articles seem to focus on the benevolence
and charity of western countries in contributing relatively small amounts
(measured in millions) to the 'reconstruction' effort.
 
I am mystified as to why an issue of such importance is considered to be
non-news at the BBC. Moreover I am astounded that a journalist of your
standing can have an extended conversation with the minister for overseas
development, focus merely on minutiae and fail to mention what is the real
issue. I would welcome your comments on this.
 
Yours sincerely

  --------

Mark Priestley 
Lecturer in Education 
Institute of Education 
University of Stirling 
Stirling FK9 4LA 
Tel. +44 (0) 1786 466272 
Fax +44 (0) 1786 467633 
           
Email m.r.priestley at stir.ac.uk 
Website http://www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/ <http://www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/>
<http://www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/Staff/priestley.htm> 

 
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