[PEN-L:28235] Conservatives against slavery?

["pms" <laflame@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bush and Daschle seem united on this one.

Nat Hentoff
Free Markets, Slavery, and Bush
'Are You Living in This World, Mr. Kansteiner?'
July 12th, 2002 3:00 PM


Psychological and physical torture is an integral component of Sudanese
slavery. Of the former slaves we have interviewed extensively, more than 70
percent of the females over the age of 10 reported being raped by their
masters. More than 90 percent of all freed slaves claim to have been beaten
frequently. Forced conversion to Islam is commonplace, and many said they
witnessed executions of disobedient slaves. -John Eibner, Christian
Solidarity International, International Herald Tribune, June 11, 2002


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The globalization of free markets has become a secular religion for
evangelists like George W. Bush and, of course, the American-based
international corporations who preach that in the great getting-up morning,
in the great glory and prosperity of free trade, even China will release its
prisoners of conscience.

At a June 5 hearing of the House International Relations Committee-neglected
by the great majority of the press-the Bush administration's utter reverence
for unfettered capitalism was dramatically revealed. At center stage was
Walter Kansteiner, assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Both
Democrats and Republicans on the committee wanted to know why the Bush
administration continues to fervently oppose an amendment to the Sudan Peace
Act that passed the House by a vote of 422 to 2 last year.

The author of the amendment, Spencer Bachus of Alabama, a conservative
Republican (with an American Civil Liberties Union rating of zero), is
appalled by the enslavement of black Christians and animists in the south of
Sudan, implemented by the National Islamic Front government in the north.

The ravages of slavery in the south have been compounded by ethnic cleansing
in areas where the Khartoum government, in partnership with international
oil companies, is reaping large and growing profits from the oil fields.
Aware of that, Bachus came up with the only realistic way to convince the
National Islamic Front to end slavery.

His amendment prohibits foreign companies from raising capital in the United
States-among other things, from trading their securities on the stock
exchange-so long as these corporations are in business with the Sudanese
government in oil development.

When the Bachus amendment passed the House so overwhelmingly, James
Buckey-head of Canada's Talisman Oil, a major partner of the Sudanese
government-conceded that the bill would have its desired effect. "I don't
think anybody could afford not to have access in the U.S. market," he said.
"No asset is worth that."

And Reuters quoted Michael Young, chairman of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, who pointed out that "the only way to get
Khartoum's attention is to curtail its oil revenues-the only asset that is
keeping it from bankruptcy."

The Bachus amendment was stalled in the Senate by order of the White House.
Tom Daschle, Democratic leader of the Senate, did not offer a word of
protest. On September 11 last year, a coalition of black clergy, members of
Congress, white evangelicals, and such human rights activists as Nina Shea
of Freedom House and radio host Joe Madison were about to lead a massive
protest to the White House. But the terrorists crashing airplanes into the
World Trade Center intervened, and George W. Bush figured Bachus's threat to
free markets was dead.

But the anti-slavery forces have not given up, and-as Vicki Allen of Reuters
reported-at the June 5 hearing, Bush's man on the State Department's Africa
desk, Walter Kansteiner, was asked to justify the White House's killing of
the Bachus amendment in the Senate last year.

Said Kansteiner: "When you can politically determine what companies can list
on your stock exchange, that has long-term implications. . . . It sends all
the wrong signals to the bourses all around the world and those who control
[them]."

California Democrat Tom Lantos, a fierce human rights advocate, asked, "Are
you living in this world, Mr. Kansteiner?" Referring to the National Islamic
Front's making a pretense of seeking an end to hostilities with the Sudan
People's Liberation Army in the south while declaring a continuing jihad
against blacks, Lantos told Kansteiner: "Khartoum is playing the game of
peace while conducting a vicious war of annihilation. . . . As long as the
oil revenues flow to Khartoum, there is little to push the government of
Sudan to negotiate peace."

Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey joined in: "In any war, what you try to
do is starve the aggressor of his lifeline, his fuel line. I'm a free-market
guy to a large extent, but when it comes to a country that has killed 2
million people," how can free markets take precedence?

Also covering this hearing was Jim Lobe of IPS (Inter Press Service). He
noted a telling exchange between Kansteiner and Colorado Republican Tom
Tancredo (another conservative).

"Isn't there some point," Tancredo asked Kansteiner, "where we say this has
gone far enough [to justify capital market sanctions]?"

Said the loyal member of the Bush administration: "I'm sure there is, but
this isn't it."

If the Senate does pass the Bachus amendment, at what point would George W.
Bush sign it into law? Would the horrors of Sudan have gone "far enough" if
the militia from the north ate the enslaved black women after they had
gang-raped them? There is evidence that on one of the long marches to the
north, a slaver cut off a young boy's head and then forced his mother to
carry it. Is that "far enough" to permit the compassionate Christian, George
W. Bush, to allow the Bachus amendment to go through?

As some of the organized abolitionists are coming to realize, nothing will
move Bush until there are mass demonstrations-including civil
disobedience-in front of the White House and elsewhere. That's how apartheid
in South Africa was ended.

A question: Why did the big guns of the press give this hearing a pass?
Slavery is boring?