STEALING AMERICA

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Sun, 31 Oct 2004 15:00:05 -0600

STEALING AMERICA

 

STEALING AMERICA

by Nathaniel Batchelder

OKLAHOMA PEACE STRATEGY NEWS

November/December, 2004

 

 

Neoconservatives in the US government posing as patriots are using

America's power to achieve their goal, which is a free hand in the

world for corporations incrementally setting aside the sovereignty of

nations.

 

 

How could it be otherwise? The NeoCons are bought and sold by -- as

well as personally intermingled with -- the world's largest

corporations. They support corporate profiteering as naturally as an

environmentalist plants a tree.

 

 

Corporations are not organized to have a conscience. Their legal

responsibility is to return profits to shareholders. Society may

grieve corporate decisions to outsource jobs; to downsize employees;

to waste the environment; to shift corporate costs to taxpayers.

But individuals challenging a corporation's profit potential will be

replaced.

 

 

Corporations with power and size, like Halliburton, may dictate

through their friends in government foreign policies serving corporate

appetites.

 

 

So the war in Iraq is really about oil. The oil fields and pipelines

in Iraq are secure while the Iraqi people see chaos and social

collapse all around them. Five sizable regions in Iraq are designated

as " No Go Zones " where the US concedes turf they cannot control to

resistance fighters including Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Baathists, and

others. Most Iraqis are glad Saddam is gone. Most also oppose US

occupation.

 

 

World demand for oil is rising some 20% per year, but oil cannot be

pumped much faster. Corporations want control of that oil. Some 17

permanent US military bases are under construction in Iraq, a platform

for expanding US control in the Middle East (er, that is, helping to

spread democracy).

 

 

To the NeoCons, the American people are buffoons to be manipulated and

cowed into cooperating with their agenda. Their website " Project for

a New American Century " outlined years ago their belief that American

power should shape theworld to " our liking. " A war in Iraq to oust

Saddam Hussein was projected as desirable years before 2000. Their

website suggested that bringing the American people along to support

such a war might require some " Pearl Harbor equivalent " event. Until

we resist, we will watch increasing curtailment of free speech and

free assembly in America, already begun with the so-called

Patriot Acts I and II.

 

 

What lies in our future if NeoCons rule?

 

Look south of our border at the living standards of Mexican workers in

maquiladora factories. They live in hovels without running water, yet

even their pathetic salaries of $9 a day are too high for many

corporations, which have relocated to Vietnam, China, and Bangladesh.

Corporations doing that to Mexicans would do it to you. They already

are: tax cuts for the rich, combined with outsourcing, downsizing,

and " temp-helping " American jobs has resulted in the greatest

disparity of wealth in history between America's rich and poor.

 

Moderator: (Republicans outsourced most party data services to India,

this time, that is how much they value the american worker.)

 

What loyalty do corporations have to American workers? None. Their

insatiable focus on reducing costs and increasing profits --

" competition " -- drives them to reduce benefits, cut salaries,

outsource jobs, downsize employment, raze forests, pump oil, and belch

wastes into the environment to achieve the lowest costs. If they can

get government to clean up their mess, so much the better.

 

 

The world is slipping under the control of corporations, many of which

now recruit their own military forces to protect their interests. War

is being privatized. The power of people to regulate corporations is

vested only in our governments. We the People must tell neighbors and

friends of the peril which the NeoCons represent. We the People must

fight to regain popular control of our government -- our only hope for

regulating corporate greed.

 

 

I pray that regulation of corporations, through popular control of our

government, is still possible. This election is a big one.

 

 

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Batchelder is Director of The Peace House

in Oklahoma City, an education and advocacy

center for justice and peace issues.