Re: <nettime> Come on over the water's lovely

[Jeffrey Fisher <jfisher@igc.org>]

On Saturday, May 31, 2003, at 10:37 PM, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

> In Ramadi, in another cafe, the maitre d', in honour of my presence,
> flipped the television over to BBC World. Some Beeb type was doing a
> piece about some Baghdadi who hadn't been paid since March. Now what sort
> of fellow hasn't been paid since March? A chap who worked for the toppled
> thug government perhaps?  Might be a committed thug ideologue, might be
> just a go-along-to-get-along type. But, given that the new Iraqi
> government is never going to be as huge as the old one, maybe that chap
> should just stop whining to the BBC and look for a gig in the private
> sector. Ditto for the BBC reporter, come to that.

Iraqi manufacturers, which employed more than one-tenth of all workers 
before the war, are almost powerless to match the new competition.

Their equipment is badly outdated. Their sense of marketing has 
atrophied. In many cases, their image among Iraqi consumers is abysmal.

The free-market shocks are even bigger for Iraq's state-owned 
industrial companies, which produce everything from packaged foods to 
electrical equipment and employ more than 100,000 people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/international/worldspecial/01ECON.html

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