London's Financial Times, that bastion of left-wing rhetoric, reported 10 days ago that Iyad Allawi, the "prime minister" appointed and approved by Iraq's American management, didn't wait even a month after the "handover" to establish a "Higher Media Commission" to red line the press.

Among the restrictions? Any "unwarranted criticism'' of the aforementioned "prime minister."

"It's for national security," said newly-appointed Higher Media Commission chief Ibrahim Janabi, whom the Times described as "a former Iraqi intelligence officer who for a decade served as Mr. Allawi's eyes and ears while he was (in exile) in neighboring Jordan, but has never worked as a journalist."

And to think that one of the much-ballyhooed acts by U.S. proconsul L. Paul Bremer III, the guy who handed over Iraq's "sovereignty" to the prime minister June 28 before sneaking out of Baghdad, was to shut down Saddam Hussein's dreaded information ministry.

Now the Higher Media Commission is moving into the information ministry's old digs where it's expected to retain many of its 5,000 former state censors. The muzzling has begun.

Last Saturday, the Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language news service often denounced by both Arab dictators and the American administration, was shut down for 30 days so that its journalists have "a chance to readjust their policy against Iraq," according to Allawi.

In announcing his decision, Allawi referred to a government report "on the issues of incitement and the problems Al-Jazeera has been causing." But what those issues are, nobody knows. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, they have not been published.

Coincidentally, the shutdown came the day after U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld trashed Al-Jazeera, again, as "terribly damaging ... to our country in the Middle East."

"They have persuaded an enormous fraction of the people that we're there as an occupying force, which is a lie, that we are randomly killing innocent civilians, which is a lie."

Well, since Al-Jazeera is not legally available on Canadian TV, thanks to a very restrictive decision last month by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and since most U.S. organizations don't report Iraqi civilian casualties, there's no disputing Rumsfeld's latter claim — although thousands of civilians were certainly killed by U.S. bombs last year.

As for his former assertion, that the U.S. is not in Iraq as an occupying force, how to explain the 140,000 U.S. troops there?

This is one handover' that really should be described as a chokehold.

That's because, before he got out of town, Bremer issued 97 legal orders, defined as "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people." Because Iraq's interim constitution requires that a majority of Allawi's ministers, as well as the interim president and two vice-presidents, must agree to overturn any of the edicts, they won't be easy to strike down.

According to last week's Los Angeles Times, the edicts "lock in sweeping advantages to American firms, ensuring long-term U.S. economic advantage while guaranteeing few, if any, benefits to the Iraqi people.

"The Bremer orders control every aspect of Iraqi life — from the use of car horns to the privatization of state-owned enterprises," wrote Antonia Juhasz of the International Forum on Globalization in San Francisco.

Some examples: Order No. 39 allows for the complete privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises and 100 per cent foreign ownership of Iraqi business. Iraqis are not entitled to any of the contracts to rebuild their own country while U.S. multinationals, such as Halliburton, can take the money and run. Meanwhile, Order. No. 17 grants foreign contractors full immunity from Iraqi law which, by the way, just reinstated the death penalty. Order No. 12 drops tariffs and surcharges, destroying local businesses and producers.

"(W)ith Bremer's rules favoring U.S. corporations, there has been little opportunity for Iraqis to go back to work, leaving nearly 2 million unemployed 1 1/2 years after the invasion and, many believe, greatly fueling the resistance." wrote Juhasz.

Some liberation. Some democratic model for Middle Eastern totalitarian states to emulate.

Al-Jazeera's mistake was pointing out these matters to its estimated 35 million viewers.

"More sensitivity and less stridency on Al-Jazeera's part would certainly be welcome," a New York Times editorial stated on Tuesday.

Yet, it added, "Thwarting Al-Jazeera's news coverage will not halt the violence that has been tearing Iraq apart for the past 16 months. But it may spare Mr. Allawi the embarrassment of having that violence so visible to a worldwide audience. It may also give his government a freer hand to abuse human rights and pursue personal political vendettas in the name of restoring law and order."

Clearly, that's already happened.

Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

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