JOIN IRAQI WORKERS TO SAY: Hands off our oil!

PUT A SPOTLIGHT ON THE CONSULTING FIRM HIRED
BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO WRITE THE NEW IRAQ OIL LAW!

Tuesday, June 5 at 5:00pm

Offices of BearingPoint (80 M St., SE — near Navy Yard Metro)
5:30 p.m.—march to the Capitol for a picket line (about ¾ of a mile)

(Watch for email alert re other D.C. events with the Iraqis.)

Join with Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Iraq Federation of Oil Workers and Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, President of the Iraq Electrical Utility Workers Union when they pay a visit to BearingPoint, the agent of the US government’s effort to rob the Iraqi people.

Bush and the US Congress are putting tremendous pressure on the “Iraqi Parliament” to pass a new oil law that would transfer control of most of the Iraqi oil reserves to foreign corporations. This is not a new development. As early as December 2002, the US State Department devised a plan to open Iraq to international oil companies “as quickly as possible after the war.” In March 2003, the Heritage Foundation called for full privatization of Iraqi oil. The Iraq Study Group calls for the reorganization of the Iraqi oil industry into a commercial enterprise with “US assistance.”

To further this end, the Iraqi constitution must be amended and a new oil law passed. In July 2003, BearingPoint, the reincarnation of a division of KMPG LLP, an accounting firm brought down during the Enron scandal of 2002, received a contract from USAID to re-write Iraqi economic laws. It was commissioned to write the new oil law and lobby for its passage. This intrusion is illegal under both Iraqi and US law.

Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law, rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies which would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.”

Together we will expose the “Oil Law” for what it is, the bitter fruit of Invasion, Occupation, and Plunder.

DC Labor for Peace & Justice/US Labor Against the War.

This event is part of the VOICES OF IRAQI WORKERS SOLIDARITY TOUR.

For further information go to www.uslaboragainstwar.org or email denicez@verizon.net.