Sunday, August 10, 2003

Are there any more like this?

Signed in May of this year, Executive Order 13303 has been sitting quietly under the radar until recently when Jim Vallette ran across it in the Federal Register. Mr. Vallette and Steve Kretzmann of the Sustainable Energy Economy Network have this to say in TomPaine:
    "...Executive Order 13303 decrees that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void," with respect to the Development Fund for Iraq and "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein."
    In other words, if ExxonMobil or ChevronTexaco touch Iraqi oil, it will be immune from legal proceedings in the United States. Anything that could go, and elsewhere has gone, awry with U.S. corporate oil operations will be immune to judgment: a massive tanker accident; an explosion at an oil refinery; the employment of slave labor to build a pipeline; murder of locals by corporate security; the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The president, with a stroke of the pen, signed away the rights of Saddam's victims, creditors and of the next true Iraqi government to be compensated through legal action. Bush's order unilaterally declares Iraqi oil to be the unassailable province of U.S. corporations..."
A good summary is in The Daily Mojo "Total Immunity?" .