Truthout: Freedom, Incorporated

[Raster]

as usual, good stuff from Brother Pitt

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 21 June 2004

I pulled in to Nazareth,
Feeling 'bout half past dead.
Just need to find a place
Where I can lay my head.
"Mister, can you tell me where
A man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand,
"No" was all he said.

- 'The Weight'

The June 30 deadline for the delivery of 'sovereignty' to the people of Iraq is right around the corner. If the talk coming out of the administration is to believed, this will be an historic moment: The United States of America will deliver freedom to a people long oppressed by a brutal dictator.

After seventeen car bombings in seventeen days, with whole sections of Iraq beyond the control of American forces, and with 840 American soldiers dead, it appears that the Iraqi people are not so sanguine about this proffered American liberty. Many here on the home front cannot understand why these people would bite the hand that is trying to feed them. After all, who would not want our brand of freedom?

Perhaps the Iraqi people know more about what we define as 'freedom' than we do.

Freedom, in this case, comes with corporate sponsorship: Halliburton, Carlyle, Bechtel, CACI, DynCorp, Parsons Corporation and many others. These corporations are, in many ways, the sharp end of American policy decisions in Iraq. The U.S. military has the guns, and serves often as the enforcers of this corporate policy, but these are the companies doling out electricity, food and jobs to the people of Iraq. Some of these companies - CACI and DynCorp for starters - also have guns. They are the ones running the show, and the people of Iraq know this full well.

<snip, more to read>

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/062104A.shtml

[struggle4progress]

1. Government is our only protection against corporate power. eom

[Raster]

2. it looks like the government is now subservient to corporate power...

More from W.R. Pitt (bold emphasis added)...

"Even so, their power worried even the greatest minds of that age. President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter written to a Col. William Elkins on November 21, 1864, wrote, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

"What made Lincoln fear corporate power? He feared it because he saw that power growing before his very eyes, despite the controls which had been put in place. He feared it because he watched first-hand a process which haunts us to this day: War allows the power of corporations to grow explosively. During the Civil War, corporations made huge profits from procurement contracts to supply the federal government with everything it needed to keep a massive army functional and on the move.

[struggle4progress]

3. International corporate power is even more dangerous ...

... when there is no international law to control it. "Free trade" without effective legal restraint on the corporations creates powerful entities subject to no law.