|
Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January
23, 2004
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
January
21, 2004
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Spring in Palestine
Ron
Jacobs
Drive, He Said
Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback
January 20, 2004
Stan
Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another
Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier
Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks
Out
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A
Visit to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How
2004 Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No
Stan for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent
WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A
Record to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban
Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red
Alert 2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The
Washington Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
|
January
23, 2003
Rule by the Capricious and the Corrupt
Militarism
vs. Democracy
By WILLIAM A.
COOK
“More
than 725 American military bases (are) spread around the world. ...
Many garrisons are in foreign countries to defend oil leases from
competitors or to provide police protection to oil pipelines, although
they invariably claim to be doing something completely unrelated--fighting
the ‘war on terrorism’ or the ‘war on drugs,’
or training foreign soldiers, or engaging in some form of ‘humanitarian’
intervention.”
Chalmers
Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire
How
many Americans understand the implications of Johnson’s observation?
Bush’s “State of the Union” address, with its repetitive
mantra declaring America’s gift of “freedom” to the
world and its on-going fight against “terrorists” (used
20 times) obscures the reality of America’s deployment of “over
half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents and
civilian contractors in other nations” (Johnson) for purposes
of protecting private investors who use American forces to protect their
private interests, not the interests of American citizens. Indeed, it
is arguable that our invasion of Iraq and our toppling of the Taliban,
a government the US put in place, happened because we needed Iraq’s
oil reserves and the Taliban refused to cooperate with the deployment
of oil and gas lines through their territory. Bush’s idealistic
rhetoric follows a stream of recent efforts to present this administration’s
imperialistic and militaristic agenda as economic freedom for the world
and security at home.
He was
particularly active in November when he spoke to the National Endowment
for Democracy, when the administration supported the international business
deal cobbled together by the corporate representatives at the Free Trade
Area of Americas, and when he addressed the Brits and defended his invasion
of Iraq. All these efforts hinge on an abuse of the word “freedom.”
Bush lassos freedom to economics, as in “economic freedom,”
implying that the management of income or resources has equal rights
with the citizen, that by some occult metamorphosis an economic system
has been reborn as a person. The FTAA business deal in Miami managed
to avoid any reference to humanitarian concerns or laborers’ rights,
although Venezuela pressed for such consideration, as they made possible
“freedom” for trade; the brazen omission of the citizens
from consideration did not cause them to blink as they, too, conferred
on “trade” rights that are reserved for people.
Peggy
Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s speech writer, told Chris Mathews recently
that President Bush’s speech to the National Endowment For Democracy
was a “master piece.” In that talk at the beginning of November,
Bush used Reagan’s speech at Westminster Palace in 1982 as the
reference point for his own remarks. Perhaps Peggy penned Ronnie’s
words? Why else label Bush’s derivative remarks a “master
piece”? Well, there is another reason: it is a “master piece”
of deception, but, then, so too was Ronnie’s. Both speeches embody
the manipulative duplicity of the ruling elite as they mouth “Democracy”
and “freedom” when they mean in their guts “Corpocrisy”
and “indentured servitude.” (“Corpocrisy” is
the apparent rule by the people through a voting process, but the actual
rule by corporate hegemony.)
What Jefferson
feared at the inception of this nation has become the reality of our
democracy: a land governed by “pseudo-aristoi,” as Jefferson
sardonically labeled them, “extremely wealthy individuals and
overly powerful corporations.” This was the third of the “agencies”
Jefferson feared as threats that could destroy a democracy. The remaining
two were other forms of governments like monarchies and organized religions
(Thom Hartmann, Unequal Protection, 2002). Those “overly powerful
corporations” now act as individuals claiming rights under the
14th amendment, would you believe, despite the reality that the Supreme
Court has never stipulated as “law of the land” that corporations
can legitimately claim that right (Hartmann 107). For those who would
argue that the Court has accepted that status based on precedent, remember
that same Court upheld the “Institution of Slavery” on the
same grounds! Precedent is often the imprisonment of the people on the
cross of coddled consistency.
What Bush
describes as the passing of tyranny before the march of freedom masks
the reality of these past twenty years of “globalization,”
the insidious take over of the rights of nation-states by trans-nationals,
at the expense of “universalism,” the caring spread of individual
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to peoples throughout
the world. Perhaps that was what Bush meant when he noted “observers
on both sides of the Atlantic pronounced (Reagan’s) speech simplistic
and naive and even dangerous.” Perhaps Bush realizes that “observers”
sense the truth behind the duplicity. Those observers, particularly
sophisticated Europeans, the kind Bush mocks in his talk, understand
that Reagan’s simplistic truth, freedom for all, masks the reality:
the “momentum of freedom” opens the door of exploitation
for investors who can hire Chinese laborers at thirty three cents per
hour to replace American workers at the Huffy bicycle plant who earned
eleven, and those Chinese laborers work far more than 8 hours per day,
receive no health benefits, are protected by no OSHA regulations, and
have no retirement plan (example taken from remarks made by Sen. Dorgan,
ND at hearings held in Washington in November). Perhaps these same observers
understood the naivety of Reagan’s remarks that assumes the world
desires the American way, or to be more specific, the American consumer
way that requires two incomes to support the American way. Perhaps “dangerous”
is the most explosive of those observations; it cuts to the chase: the
imposition, by force if necessary as Iraq makes clear, of America’s
will on nation-states to ensure ever greater markets for the goods the
trans-nationals produce cheaply by exploiting workers throughout the
“undeveloped” world even as it ensures control of necessary
natural resources owned by those nation-states.
But Bush’s
duplicity reflects nothing more than a continuation of the abuse of
the language that characterizes the American voices that have controlled
our government since its inception. What Bush proposes here is nothing
new; it simply pushes American economic practice off shore, onto other
countries, since our markets are now inadequate to satisfy the insatiable
greed of the corporate class. As far back as 1975, Professor Takaki
in Iron Cages shed light on America’s Capitalistic underbelly.
He tracked Richard Dana’s two years before the mast as it revealed
the reality of Capitalistic enterprise and its incessant need to create
new markets and exploit labor to produce more goods at the cheapest
possible cost. “The American emphasis on productivity and profits,
moreover, had a stifling effect on the quality of human life in the
work situation,” Takaki notes.
But quality
of life is not an issue in accounting’s bottom line. Dana had
left Boston in 1852 on board a trade ship carrying cotton goods around
South America to Mexico City and San Francisco. The cotton goods were
produced in New England mills on looms driven by Irish girls, indentured
servants, slaves to the mill owners and investors. The cotton came from
slave plantations that offered the cheapest possible labor. But the
cotton was grown on land taken from the Natives who had been “ethnically
cleansed” or killed, land illegally obtained. When Dana arrived
in San Francisco, the cotton was loaded on trains that ran on rails
over the bodies of Chinese coolies, more indentured servants working
for slave wages. The whole capitalistic process thrived on the backs
of workers exploited for the purpose.
But now
the corporations need cheaper labor because they must pay decent (read
“too high”) wages in America and that cripples profits.
The world now becomes the playground for this most recent “Industrial
Revolution.” Never mind that we learned about exploitation of
workers -- unsafe working conditions, no health coverage, no child labor
laws, no retirement benefits, no job protection, and no labor rights
-- two centuries ago during our previous industrial revolutions here
and in England; laborers in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico, and any
other country that can be controlled and exploited must endure what
English and American workers endured before the laws caught up with
the corporations… and that took a hundred years! This is the freedom
Bush promises: freedom for exploitation, freedom for investors, freedom
to profit at the expense of people unable to protect themselves.
Consider
the benefits of “free markets”: “U.S. workers lost
879,280 jobs as a result of NAFTA in the past 10 years … with
all fifty states and the District of Columbia losing jobs to NAFTA between
1993-2002” according to Robert Scott (the Economic Policy Institute).
If we can do this poorly with two nations involved, imagine the number
of jobs yet to be lost when we migrate our jobs to 34 nations upon implementation
of FTAA! But lest one think that the Mexican citizen benefitted from
America’s loss of jobs, think again. “The cost to the Mexican
consumer has risen by 257%” since the inception of NAFTA and the
“earnings of Mexican growers of corn, wheat and rice, along with
beans, have plummeted” (LA Times, Nov. 20, 2003).
Who, then,
benefits from such agreements? Need you ask? “Free trade eliminates
tariffs, giving the economic advantage … to those industries blessed
with governments capable of delivering massive subsidies. In other words,
to the already industrialized and wealthy nations” (LA Times).
Note how free trade slips from the legislation when it is detrimental
to corporate America. The Medicare bill recently passed scurried through
our representatives in the dead of night and attempted to eliminate
“free” choice purchasing of medicine from Canada even as
it ensured profits of 139 billion to pharmaceutical companies over the
next five years. Free is free only for the “pseudo-aristoi”!
Add to this bill the Fast Track bill that passed the House and the Senate.
“The bill has language that forbids enforcement of workers’
rights and environmental protection” that should be enforced in
agreements like that moving through the FTAA. Indeed, the bill strips
out a clause that would protect women against discrimination (“Stop
the Free Trade Area of the Americas,” www.organicconsumers.org/).
Our government guarantees “freedom” to a “paper person”
as it denies it to one of flesh and blood.
If the
consequence of free trade in these “undeveloped countries”
siphons workers from the countryside thus depleting native food sources,
stuffs them into overcrowded ghettoes creating thereby unsanitary conditions,
shackles the laborer to the production line at pitiably low wages, and
forces them to suffer without benefits of any kind--health care, safe
working conditions, unemployment compensation, or retirement --then
the United States, that subsidizes and protects these corporations,
cripples peoples’ freedom and denies them the rights it claims
to provide. Worst of all, it indicts the American citizen as complicit
in this exploitation of other people. Ted C. Fishman made this observation
in Harpers: “The freeing up of the world’s markets may have
nothing to do with the declining fortunes of many of its citizens, but
the capitalist impulse can just as powerfully prolong poverty as end
it” (August 2002). To illustrate his point, Fishman notes, “Over
the twenty years ending in 1980, gross domestic product in Latin America
and the Caribbean grew by 75 percent per person, but over the next twenty
years --the period of great market liberalization and international
investment --GDP rose only 6 percent.” The duplicity inherent
in Bush’s selling democracy as “economic freedom”
and “free trade” when its real product is exploitation of
the worker and enhanced profits for the investor is at best cynical
and at worst insidious.
While
Bush expounded on the virtues of America’s presence across the
world, noting that the US had “made military and moral commitments
in Europe and Asia which protected free nations from aggression and
created the conditions in which new democracies could flourish,”
he failed to mention that “expanding U.S. military presence worldwide
only serves to reinforce the economic hegemony” that guarantees
survival of the corporations that exploit the citizens of the undeveloped
nation-states as they take control of that nation’s natural resources
(“Free Trade May Not Be Fair Trade,” Roger Hollander, LA
Times, Nov. 2003). Bush continues his exhortation of American largesse:
“we also provided inspiration for oppressed peoples.” Indeed!
How were the Palestinians inspired? Did our worship of Sharon’s
savagery inspire? Did our overwhelming financial support for his indomitable
military force inspire? Did the Bush administration’s incarceration
of over 1,000 in Guantanamo without due process - no criminal charges,
no consultation with lawyers, and no rights whatsoever - inspire? Did
the occupation of Iraq preceded by an internationally illegal invasion
inspire?
But there’s
more! Bush, energized by the applause from the National Endowment personnel,
declaimed, “…militarism and rule by the capricious and corrupt
are the relics of a passing era.” Really? What is our rule in
Iraq? What is more “capricious” than the unilateral invasion
of a nation that has done nothing to America but to threaten a new born
Christian Zionist’s belief in his mythological mission as portrayed
in the Book of Revelation? What is more corrupt than support for the
war lords of Afghanistan who throttle the poor population of that country
while raking millions from the American people through their tax donations?
What is more corrupting than support for the terrorists who live in
Israeli settlements and thrive on the destruction they can inflict on
Palestinians? What duplicity is this?
But there’s
still more! “China has discovered that economic freedom leads
to national wealth … Eventually men and women who are allowed
to control their own wealth will insist on controlling their own lives
and their own country.” How, pray tell, does a person control
“their own wealth” when the industry moguls threaten to
fire the employee if he/she objects to the working conditions or attempts
to unionize to obtain the benefits and job protection that belongs to
them by right, a strategy used to offset unionization in the U.S. as
well as in “undeveloped” countries (“Stop the Free
Trade Area of the Americas”). How does one control his/her wealth
when they make 33 cents per hour and live in squalid conditions with
no benefits? When I spoke with business faculty at Yantai University
in China in the mid-90s, they understood then that the new industrialization
did not provide for workers’ health care or retirement. They saw
the pollution that spread like a brown blanket over Beijing. They spoke
of streams that had been turned into cesspools. But they also knew that
the trans-nationals would not enter China if the government imposed
regulations that forced the industry to spend on safety, health care,
or workers’ rights. “In reality,” as Roger Hollander
states in the LA Times, “for historical and geopolitical reasons,
what Third World countries are ‘best at’ is having their
natural resources extracted and exported to the industrialized nations
(which in turn sell back manufactured products at a high cost) and having
their populations exploited for cheap labor.” If this is the historical
reality of Bush’s “economic freedom” and “free
trade,” why does he lie to the American people and convert rapaciousness
into rights that will accrue to the citizen? What duplicity is this?
But the
duplicity here has a source, the “National Security Strategy of
the United States of America,” issued in September 2002 as a guide
to this administration’s foreign policy. There, George enunciated
that “free enterprise” made the third leg of “a single
sustainable model for national success.” He continued, “In
the twenty-first century, only those that share a commitment to protecting
basic human rights and guaranteeing political and economic freedom will
be able to unleash the potential of their people and assure prosperity.”
How, given the statistical evidence that graphically illustrates the
degradation of human rights described above, could the potential of
people be unleashed?
What has
been unleashed and what will be unleashed is the potential for further
corporate exploitation of people and resources and the continuing erosion
of personal rights. This administration is committed to the empirical
dominance of the corporate powers that it represents protected by an
unparalleled military that it sustains, all in the facetious name of
“protecting American interests” even as they impose their
will on all the countries of the world. One can only resort to cynicism:
corporations are rogue nation-states that wander the world like whores
seeking to bed with whoever will offer the most breaks for the bang.
This is not freedom for the people; it is freedom for the “overly
powerful corporation.”
William
A. Cook teaches English at University of California at La Verne.
He can be reached at: cookb@ulv.edu
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax--Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links / |