----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >The contracts would go "exclusively to US companies > and to > >subcontractors from nations officially designated as > friendly", the > >report said. > > Is this strictly legal, from a WTO point of view? Or > have we reached that point in the stock market crisis > at which the world goes into a funk of retaliatory > tariffs and beggar-my-neighbour devaluations? Hope not. > > dd =================== Article XXI of the GATT: Article XXI Security Exceptions 1. Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed: (a) to require any contracting party to furnish any information the disclosure of which it considers contrary to its essential security interests; or (b) to prevent any contracting party from taking any action which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests (i) relating to fissionable materials or the materials from which they are derived; (ii) relating to the traffic in arms, ammunition and implements of war and to such traffic in other goods and materials as is carried on directly or indirectly for the purpose of supplying a military establishment; (iii) taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations; or (c) to prevent any contracting party from taking any action in pursuance of its obligations under the United Nations Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security. Combined with the Exon-Florio amendment -regarding mergers and aquisitions relating to "national security"- to the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, the US can legally make decades of further imperial adventures in the name of "national security," all the while securing protection rents for the firms that susbcribe the policy initiatives of the Republicrats. Commodification of power, indeed. Ian
