Corporate Ignorance
01-09-2008, 10:25 AM
Eh, I promised to myself that I won't engage in Internet Holy Wars with Europeans and Americans on Political Topics, but I can't withstand my rebelious nature.
Excuse for the length, I hope that at least someone will have enough patience and courage to read it to the end.
All that is written here is acually an answer to our debate with Lazlazlaz regarding Palestine, where we briefly touched such topics as Imperialism and Colonization. After writing it, I realized that it has nothing to do with Palestine, so I decided to start a diffrent topic, where everybody can express their views on quite important,connected matters, so my post is kinda chaotic- the role of U.S.-based transnational Big Buisness in Forgien Policy and the structure of the modern(after ww2) world. It's just interesting for me, what you, Europeans and Americans think about Corporations(if you are thinking about them at all, tha's it) .
To me this topic is very interesting, because I can feel it in my guts- I mean, IMF and World Bank. I try to explain why)))
But you know, debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. I can relate to that, being a citizen of Russian Feferation.
From you post, Lazlazlaz, it seemed to me that you think that I try to blame British for being British in a certain period of history, or showing that British were entirly evil. It would be primitive to share this view. Not at all. As you rightly mentioned, Spanish were British predecessors. It's the same old song, you know.
I would like to point out that I'm not a communist Russain psycho who hates the West, America and Europe.
I'm not a communist at all. I just try to look on the things objectivley, using my expirience as a citizen of an exploited, poor country, former Second World, a defeated Soviet Union. Here everyobody fend for themselves. We are not Africa, but in some regions life is VERY funny, belive me. Life in such a place just opens diffrent perspective on things, on moral, on everything- when you see real poverty, real injustice, real crime and real human sorrow. And I simply try to understand how this world works and how it comes to be that way.
I'm not against Britian. I'm not against U.S.I'm not against Russia, I'm not against Saud Arabia. As nations. I'm against British(American, Russian etc.) imperalism( a bad word with a flavour of old good communist propoganda, but it reflects its actual nature well). And I'm against imperialism. Period.
Also, Great Britian is one of my favorite countries in a sense ,i.e I'm a great admirer of British(Anglo-Saxon and Celtic) cutlure, wonderful litrature, history, JRR Tolkien, Orwell, Huxley, C.S. Lewis are my favorite writers of all time etc., but on the other hand, I'm appalled by the policy of the British Empire in the past(as I'm appalled by the policy of any repressive, egocentric institution of modern and past times, despite the efforts of their PR offices to justify their actions- corporate goveremnts, empires- that includes Soviet Union and modern Russian Federation ,as well). There is no excuse for corporate egoism. Egoism can't be justified.
At least, among the victims of that egoism. And that is overwhelming majority of the world, almost 80%.
So we can start a debate only if you accept that broken fates and lives of those children,women and men in the Third World are worthy of attention, that they actually mean anything, alongside with lives with British or American children,women and men...
And they deserve something more then to be "used" in the best intrest of glorious European civilization.
And "used" in that context is often meant to be totally forsaken, deprived of any chance of normal, sane life and often brutally slaughtered by unimaginabe state violence. Our age is the most tracherous one, filled with propoganda and misinformation.
So let us look objectivley on this world.
At the most global scale, we have that infamous North-South conflict, or if be more precise- the exploitation of under-developed countries by developed countires. If we make it short, first exploit the second, using quite intricate system of "help to the Third World" wich is based on neo-liberal ideas.
There are two most wide spread opinions on the matter, if we vulgarize them-
1- is that Modern business world is ok, it has some flaws, but all are happy,
2- And the second(supported by majority) is that it's terrible, richer gets richer and poor gets poorer. So let's try to look into facts.
In my opinion,there isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF chequebook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster-boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep.
So what is the results of a "new age of honest altrusitic global buisness" that we've got after ww2 and death of colonial system?
Developred world ALWAYS exploited Third World with dire concequences to the Third. How can one prove it? Well...
In the last ten years the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5 percent a year. Of the top hundred biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. That means something, eh?
And yet the numbers of poor in the world has increased by 100 million.
Statistics.
The top 1 percent of the world has the same combined income as the bottom 57 percent.
Just think about it. What it means.
And visit Nicaragua. Or Russia.
The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.
And the most powerful and rich nation in the world- The United States- spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimate that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.
The priorities of world's elite are seen, and they contradict official rhetoric of businessmen and politicians about compassion and help. Severly contradict.
And I'm not speaking here about murderous after-war foriegn policy of the most powerful States, wich in several cases are close to genocide and falls into catrgoey of war crimes if defined by Nurnberg standarts. And very often, those wars and those tyrincal regimes have "business intrest" of foriegn investors.
Goverment officials are often former coprorate officials or vice versa .
Dirty enourmous profits...
The Centre for Public Integrity in Washington found that nine out of the 30 members of the Defence Policy Board of the U.S. Government were connected to companies that were awarded defence contracts for $ 76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State, was Chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest, in the case of a war in Iraq he said, " I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." After the war, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction in Iraq.
Corporations interfered in politics of independent states. They sponsored political murders.(Panama?) They initiated coup de tates. They supported repressive, tyrannical regimes. And those are facts. It's not a conspiracy theory.
This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again, across Latin America, Africa, Central and South-East Asia.
So, at first, poorest countries are strangled by economic means, if it's not working jackals(intelegence- CIA, KGB) come into scene, if they fail, then the job falls to military.
And now we come to another very interesting thing- the corporate media,and intellectuals who serve the one single purpose- to justify the current state of things in the world.
Despite procliamed and praised humanism, emapthy and kindness(in international law, especially))), the bottom line in this huge propoganda campaign is quite explicit- That current state of things is inevitable. That Paris Hilton has the legal right to sing songs, because her ancestors were evil enough to steal resources. I don't agree. I can't agree.
Well, the mind set is pretty much the same as John Stuart Mill on India: The barbarians(the Third World) are backward and inferior, and for their own benefit we have to uplift them and civilize them and educate them, while exploit their resources and so on. It is pretty explicit.
The psychology behind this is kind of transparent. When you've got your boot on someone's neck and you're crushing them, you can't say to yourself, "I'm a son of a bitch and I'm doing it for my own benefit." So what you have to do is figure out some way of saying, "I'm doing it for their benefit." It's like when you punish a child. "It is for your good, I have to do it. It is my responsibility."
And that's a very natural position to take when you are beating somebody with a club. I'm sure it's probably close to universal. And I think that's the kind of intellectual and moral content behind colonization and modern globalization.
Poor countries that are geo-politically of strategic value , or have a `market' of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, god forbid, natural resources of value — oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal — must do as they're told, or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented, or war will be waged. Nigeria? Panama? War in Bolivia? Exxon Mobile and United Fruit Company? Those names should ring a bell. Those are proven, undeniable facts.
So free market? Free Trade?
In the new era, Apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary. International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in their Bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalise inequity.
Why else would it be that the U.S. taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer 20 times more than it taxes a garment made in the U.K.? Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 per cent of the world's cocoa bean produce only 5 per cent of the world's chocolate? Why else would it be that countries that grow cocoa bean, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try and turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidised electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered by colonising regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same regimes, and repay them some $ 382 billion a year?
You seriously belive that colonization helped India, China and Iran(Persia)? And that without English conquest those countries would be in a less terrible shape then now?
Well, we should start a seperate topics regarding each of those countries....
This system is driven by a concept that has become accepted as gospel : the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits . This belief also has a corollary : that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation .
The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do
endorse common values and goals . One of corporatocracy's most important functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system . The lives of those who "make it," and their accoutrements — their mansions, yachts, and private jets — are presented
as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume .
Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things i s
our civil uty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and
therefore serves our higher interests .
The concept is, of course, erroneous . We know that in many countries
economic growth benefits only a small portion of the population and may in fact result in increasingly desperate circumstances for the majority.
Why I'm writing that? Because I'm trying to understand how it's all working, and why so many people(including many that I know) live in terrible misery...
So, if you have any opinions on the matter, it would be interesting to hear them.
Excuse for the length, I hope that at least someone will have enough patience and courage to read it to the end.
All that is written here is acually an answer to our debate with Lazlazlaz regarding Palestine, where we briefly touched such topics as Imperialism and Colonization. After writing it, I realized that it has nothing to do with Palestine, so I decided to start a diffrent topic, where everybody can express their views on quite important,connected matters, so my post is kinda chaotic- the role of U.S.-based transnational Big Buisness in Forgien Policy and the structure of the modern(after ww2) world. It's just interesting for me, what you, Europeans and Americans think about Corporations(if you are thinking about them at all, tha's it) .
To me this topic is very interesting, because I can feel it in my guts- I mean, IMF and World Bank. I try to explain why)))
But you know, debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. I can relate to that, being a citizen of Russian Feferation.
From you post, Lazlazlaz, it seemed to me that you think that I try to blame British for being British in a certain period of history, or showing that British were entirly evil. It would be primitive to share this view. Not at all. As you rightly mentioned, Spanish were British predecessors. It's the same old song, you know.
I would like to point out that I'm not a communist Russain psycho who hates the West, America and Europe.
I'm not a communist at all. I just try to look on the things objectivley, using my expirience as a citizen of an exploited, poor country, former Second World, a defeated Soviet Union. Here everyobody fend for themselves. We are not Africa, but in some regions life is VERY funny, belive me. Life in such a place just opens diffrent perspective on things, on moral, on everything- when you see real poverty, real injustice, real crime and real human sorrow. And I simply try to understand how this world works and how it comes to be that way.
I'm not against Britian. I'm not against U.S.I'm not against Russia, I'm not against Saud Arabia. As nations. I'm against British(American, Russian etc.) imperalism( a bad word with a flavour of old good communist propoganda, but it reflects its actual nature well). And I'm against imperialism. Period.
Also, Great Britian is one of my favorite countries in a sense ,i.e I'm a great admirer of British(Anglo-Saxon and Celtic) cutlure, wonderful litrature, history, JRR Tolkien, Orwell, Huxley, C.S. Lewis are my favorite writers of all time etc., but on the other hand, I'm appalled by the policy of the British Empire in the past(as I'm appalled by the policy of any repressive, egocentric institution of modern and past times, despite the efforts of their PR offices to justify their actions- corporate goveremnts, empires- that includes Soviet Union and modern Russian Federation ,as well). There is no excuse for corporate egoism. Egoism can't be justified.
At least, among the victims of that egoism. And that is overwhelming majority of the world, almost 80%.
So we can start a debate only if you accept that broken fates and lives of those children,women and men in the Third World are worthy of attention, that they actually mean anything, alongside with lives with British or American children,women and men...
And they deserve something more then to be "used" in the best intrest of glorious European civilization.
And "used" in that context is often meant to be totally forsaken, deprived of any chance of normal, sane life and often brutally slaughtered by unimaginabe state violence. Our age is the most tracherous one, filled with propoganda and misinformation.
So let us look objectivley on this world.
At the most global scale, we have that infamous North-South conflict, or if be more precise- the exploitation of under-developed countries by developed countires. If we make it short, first exploit the second, using quite intricate system of "help to the Third World" wich is based on neo-liberal ideas.
There are two most wide spread opinions on the matter, if we vulgarize them-
1- is that Modern business world is ok, it has some flaws, but all are happy,
2- And the second(supported by majority) is that it's terrible, richer gets richer and poor gets poorer. So let's try to look into facts.
In my opinion,there isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF chequebook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster-boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep.
So what is the results of a "new age of honest altrusitic global buisness" that we've got after ww2 and death of colonial system?
Developred world ALWAYS exploited Third World with dire concequences to the Third. How can one prove it? Well...
In the last ten years the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5 percent a year. Of the top hundred biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. That means something, eh?
And yet the numbers of poor in the world has increased by 100 million.
Statistics.
The top 1 percent of the world has the same combined income as the bottom 57 percent.
Just think about it. What it means.
And visit Nicaragua. Or Russia.
The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.
And the most powerful and rich nation in the world- The United States- spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimate that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.
The priorities of world's elite are seen, and they contradict official rhetoric of businessmen and politicians about compassion and help. Severly contradict.
And I'm not speaking here about murderous after-war foriegn policy of the most powerful States, wich in several cases are close to genocide and falls into catrgoey of war crimes if defined by Nurnberg standarts. And very often, those wars and those tyrincal regimes have "business intrest" of foriegn investors.
Goverment officials are often former coprorate officials or vice versa .
Dirty enourmous profits...
The Centre for Public Integrity in Washington found that nine out of the 30 members of the Defence Policy Board of the U.S. Government were connected to companies that were awarded defence contracts for $ 76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State, was Chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest, in the case of a war in Iraq he said, " I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." After the war, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction in Iraq.
Corporations interfered in politics of independent states. They sponsored political murders.(Panama?) They initiated coup de tates. They supported repressive, tyrannical regimes. And those are facts. It's not a conspiracy theory.
This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again, across Latin America, Africa, Central and South-East Asia.
So, at first, poorest countries are strangled by economic means, if it's not working jackals(intelegence- CIA, KGB) come into scene, if they fail, then the job falls to military.
And now we come to another very interesting thing- the corporate media,and intellectuals who serve the one single purpose- to justify the current state of things in the world.
Despite procliamed and praised humanism, emapthy and kindness(in international law, especially))), the bottom line in this huge propoganda campaign is quite explicit- That current state of things is inevitable. That Paris Hilton has the legal right to sing songs, because her ancestors were evil enough to steal resources. I don't agree. I can't agree.
Well, the mind set is pretty much the same as John Stuart Mill on India: The barbarians(the Third World) are backward and inferior, and for their own benefit we have to uplift them and civilize them and educate them, while exploit their resources and so on. It is pretty explicit.
The psychology behind this is kind of transparent. When you've got your boot on someone's neck and you're crushing them, you can't say to yourself, "I'm a son of a bitch and I'm doing it for my own benefit." So what you have to do is figure out some way of saying, "I'm doing it for their benefit." It's like when you punish a child. "It is for your good, I have to do it. It is my responsibility."
And that's a very natural position to take when you are beating somebody with a club. I'm sure it's probably close to universal. And I think that's the kind of intellectual and moral content behind colonization and modern globalization.
Poor countries that are geo-politically of strategic value , or have a `market' of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, god forbid, natural resources of value — oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal — must do as they're told, or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented, or war will be waged. Nigeria? Panama? War in Bolivia? Exxon Mobile and United Fruit Company? Those names should ring a bell. Those are proven, undeniable facts.
So free market? Free Trade?
In the new era, Apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary. International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in their Bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalise inequity.
Why else would it be that the U.S. taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer 20 times more than it taxes a garment made in the U.K.? Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 per cent of the world's cocoa bean produce only 5 per cent of the world's chocolate? Why else would it be that countries that grow cocoa bean, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try and turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidised electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered by colonising regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same regimes, and repay them some $ 382 billion a year?
You seriously belive that colonization helped India, China and Iran(Persia)? And that without English conquest those countries would be in a less terrible shape then now?
Well, we should start a seperate topics regarding each of those countries....
This system is driven by a concept that has become accepted as gospel : the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits . This belief also has a corollary : that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation .
The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do
endorse common values and goals . One of corporatocracy's most important functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system . The lives of those who "make it," and their accoutrements — their mansions, yachts, and private jets — are presented
as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume .
Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things i s
our civil uty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and
therefore serves our higher interests .
The concept is, of course, erroneous . We know that in many countries
economic growth benefits only a small portion of the population and may in fact result in increasingly desperate circumstances for the majority.
Why I'm writing that? Because I'm trying to understand how it's all working, and why so many people(including many that I know) live in terrible misery...
So, if you have any opinions on the matter, it would be interesting to hear them.