July 9, 2011 at 21:55:12

What WikiLeaks Reveal about Corporatism Dominating American Foreign Policy

By Joan Brunwasser (about the author)

My guest today is progressive activist, Rania Khalek. Welcome to OpEdNews, Rania. You recently wrote 5 WikiLeaks Revelations Exposing the Rapidly Growing Corporatism Dominating American Diplomacy Abroad. Sadly, there's nothing new about corporations and government being joined at the hip. So, why did you write this article?

Obviously corporate dominance over Washington is nothing new. But, these cables give us an inside look at the inner-workings of the decisions that get made around the world. And time after time, we see that US diplomats consult with the executives of some of the largest corporations to determine how to deal with conflicts in other countries. These cables also demonstrate the disturbing trend of how our government views any threat to corporate America as a threat to the United States, which is absurd. Just because we know that corporations and US officials have merged, doesn't mean we understand the full extent to which it affects decisions that are made or the implications of those decisions.

Also, the mainstream media has been ignoring the most significant revelations exposed by these cables, which is why I feel it's essential to write about them. People need to know the level of corruption their government is involved in.

Is the press continuing to downplay the significance of the revelations because there's nothing new or because of their corporate masters?

Of everything that WikiLeaks has released, the establishment press has spent more time on reporting about Julian Assange's character and WikiLeaks as an organization, than about the substance of what has been released. This happened during the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan diaries, the US embassy cables, the Guantanamo Files, etc, all which exposed a vast amount of previously unknown instances of government corruption.

For a long time now, the establishment press has acted as an arm of the US government, most of all the Pentagon, where they parrot the "official" version of events, rather than actually covering the truth and holding those in power accountable. And for a long time now, the Pentagon has been devoted to destroying the credibility of WikiLeaks, which they view as a threat. The problem is that the press is so cozy with and dependent on the powerful government officials they are supposed to be covering -- for access, money, career advancement -- that they immediately adopted the government's perspective on WikiLeaks.

But we also have to remember that WikiLeaks has exposed many of the lies and corruption surrounding our wars. And the majority of mainstream journalists who have failed to report on anything of substance revealed by WikiLeaks, were some of the biggest cheerleaders for those wars. So of course they are eager to ignore WikiLeaks revelations, smear Assange's character, and insist that there's "nothing new" in these documents.

So, I guess that leaves it up to the independent and online journalists to educate and inform the public. Are we succeeding in breaking through this formidable barrier?

Independent media has done an incredible job at breaking through the echo chamber of the mainstream news, especially given the resources we're up against. The news and perspectives covered by independent media outlets are what got me involved in politics and journalism, so yes, we are succeeding in reaching people with news and views that are neglected in the corporate media. And WikiLeaks has forced the more mainstream outlets to report on at least some of the revelations whether they like it or not, because it's such a huge story.

That being said, there is still a long way to go, because we are up against such a powerful machine of corporately owned news mediums. And on top of the never-ending mergers of multi-billion dollar media conglomerates, the FCC's failure to enforce net neutrality poses a serious danger to the future of independent journalism, most of which is accessible online. So, reporting on the stories that never get covered is going to become an even more daunting task. For now, I think we need to remember what is at stake and people need to support independent media however they can. And reporting about the corruption exposed by WikiLeaks is the best way to demonstrate how indispensable independent media is.

I'd like to know more about how you got involved in politics and journalism. Can you talk about that a bit, Rania?

Coincidentally, I credit independent media for igniting my passion for politics, social justice, and ultimately journalism. Oddly enough, I have a degree in exercise physiology, which has no relation to politics, let alone journalism. The year I graduated from college was the same year as the 2008 presidential election. I had always been a liberal, mostly of the apathetic and uninformed variety, so in the lead up to the election, I was thrilled about Barack Obama.

I wanted to believe, like most liberals did, that Obama would change US foreign policy for the better, but the skeptic in me wasn't convinced, so I went online searching for evidence, and in my investigation I came upon Democracy Now. I remember watching Amy Goodman report the news for a week straight in absolute disbelief. I was truly shocked by the level of corruption and deceit that was being hidden from me by the corporate news. This led me to other independent outlets and where I was exposed brilliant authors and independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn, and Chris Hedges, to name just a few.

Independent media has helped shape my understanding of the world and has inspired me to become an active citizen, which is why I'm so passionate about journalism. Writing about underreported stories is my way of reaching out to people who are capable of waking up to reality and participate in their communities but are being deprived of that chance by the censorship and information manipulation of the corporately owned mainstream news.

I agree that knowledge is the first step. And that definitely involves circumventing the corporate media. What kind of stories have you been working on besides this WikiLeaks one?

I just wrote a piece about the militarization of local police departments, a story that is almost never mentioned in the mainstream. I also write about the economy, with a focus on stories about the consequences of the recession, unemployment, and budget cuts on average Americans and the disconnect of our mostly millionaire politicians.

Good but scary stuff, Rania. So what do you think? Are the American people going to wake up to what's really happening in time to save ourselves and the democratic institutions we hold dear?

That's a difficult question, and the answer is I don't know. I do know that it will get worse before it gets better, and things are going to change regardless of whether or not people wake up to the realities of our failing economy, catastrophe-inducing climate change, our unending wars, etc. I have no faith in the political system to fix these problems because the majority of our democratic institutions have been taken over by corporate interests. The one thing I do have faith in is people power and nonviolent civil disobedience, workers strikes, etc. Even though the media doesn't report about it, protests against budget cuts and attacks on unions are taking place every day around the country, and after watching what took place in Wisconsin earlier this year, I do believe that Americans are capable of standing up for their rights. So, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Thanks so much for talking with me, Rania. It was a pleasure. Keep up the good work!

http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Come Home America? Not Till Her Corpocracy Leaves

by Gary Brumback / July 9th, 2011

When I recently signed an anti-war letter to be sent to the President and to members of The Congress by Come Home America, a small coalition of concerned citizens that is managed by Kevin Zeese, attorney and political activist, I added the following comment:

I endorse this letter unequivocally. America has been the most warring nation since the end of WWII. It is time to stop this deadly habit that benefits only war profiteers.

Later, I began thinking of the research I had done over the last 10 years on America’s corpocracy and what I had written about “warfare welfare” in my new book, The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. The purpose of this article is to share with readers some of my views and proposals in that book and some additional thoughts I had about the letter after signing it. I will start with those additional thoughts.

My overall opinion of the letter is that while it is well intentioned and has certainly garnered a large number of signatures from luminaries and just plain people like myself, it cannot possibly achieve its aim of persuading President Obama and The Congress “—to end the current illegal wars and start a national dialogue about shifting U.S. foreign policy away from dominance through military might, and toward being a member of the community of nations” (quote from the letter). The reason for my pessimism is simply that America’s endless, winless, deadly warring will never stop until America gets rid of her corpocracy, what I call the Devil’s marriage between powerful corporate interests and all three branches of government.

The corpocracy absolutely depends on America seeking and starting covert wars (e.g., CIA orchestrated coup d’états and the many ongoing shadow wars in the Greater Middle East) and very visible wars. A huge war machine and endless militarism fattens the defense industry, including beefing up its sale of arms (the U.S. is the world’s top arms seller); gives military personnel, spooks, and the likes something to do for their pay checks; opens up, protects, and expands corporations’ foreign markets and exploitation of natural resources (oil and minerals) and cheap labor; keeps the corpocracy’s politicians in office; and distracts the American public from growing socio-economic deterioration at home (e.g., soaring poverty rate, joblessness, etc., etc.).

The changes America has undergone in 235 years have been phenomenal in their nature and impact, yet one constant always remains, war. America, after all, was born in the womb of war, fought by the colonists rebelling from King George’s corpocracy. The letter I signed concluded by stating that “George Washington urged Americans to “cultivate peace and harmony with all” and to “avoid overgrown military establishments,” which are “hostile to republican liberty.” While it is true that he proposed a “proper peace establishment,” it was in name only as he then went on to explain that it would have “a regular and standing force,” “a well-regulated militia,” “arsenals of all kinds of military stores,” and “academies, one or more for the Instruction of the Art [of the] Military.” Would we have expected a different utterance from a victorious army general?

Since the King’s corpocracy there have been four “homegrown” ones. The first was during the Robber Baron’s era. Abe Lincoln said “Corporations have been enthroned—An era of corruption in high places will follow.” It did, but public outrage and Teddy Roosevelt busted this corpocracy. The second was during the Flapper Era. The Great Depression, WWII, and FDR ended it. The third was during the Cold War. The warfare industry and fear mongering politicians helped sustain it. The fourth, is the current one, begun in the 1970’s with a “corporate revolution” triggered by the “battle plan” Lewis F. Powell, soon-to-be a US Supreme Court Justice, sent to the US Chamber of Commerce, a stauncher ally no corpocracy will ever know or find.

The corpocracy in all of its renditions has, in effect, and over time honed to perfection a culture of war in which Americans generally expect and accept America at war. The letter writer alluded to this culture in saying that “the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned of in his final speech to the nation has become deeply embedded.” What the writer did not say is that Ike not only presided over that very complex but also authored the CIA, purportedly to stem the spread of communism but in reality to install dictators friendly to corporate America’s insatiable appetite. His Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, more a hawk than a statesman, is quoted as having said that “In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of external menace.” While making such a statement seems audacious and not unlike Joseph Goebbels’ sentiments, Dulles was merely speaking the truth of the corpocracy and its modus operandi: scare the American people with fear mongering, half truths and outright lies; evoke jingoistic patriotism (“my country right or wrong”); blather about building nations and spreading democracy; and slander peace seekers as weaklings soft on the enemy.

Neither Americans subjugated to its power nor the rest of world confronted,and sometimes devastated, by it has ever seen a more powerful force than America’s corpocracy, along with its myriad allies like the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the numerous think tanks and litigation centers, the captive media, and a foreign enemy or two or three or more.

At the same time, the corpocracy’s opposition is pathetically weak and unorganized. There is nothing comparable to the massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and even if there were, they would be crushed (the Kent State killings would pale in comparison). There is no national leader of FDR’s stature or capability or viable third political party now or in the foreseeable future. The 150 or so non-governmental organizations (NGOs) opposed to the corpocracy that I researched are splintered, and I strongly doubt my ongoing petition drive aimed at uniting them will ever succeed (click here). Some of them seem to be already “corporatized,” and some, if not all the rest, are too territorial,

And more to the point here on opposition to war, the opposition is totally fractured. There are over 40 anti-war organizations in the U.S. and a smattering of them throughout the rest of the world. The oldest in the U.S. reportedly is the War Resistors League, founded in 1923. The largest in the U.S. reportedly is Peace Action, with over 100,000 members, a national network of 27 state affiliates, and over 100 chapters nationwide. Wars continue unfazed by these divided and conquered anti-war organizations. They need, says Lawrence S. Wittner, a professor of history and once a member of Peace Action’s Board, “a powerful national peace organization, with a mass membership.” Mr. Zeese’s letter hardly reflects such a powerful organization. Moreover, less than a month before he wrote about his new anti-war movement in Dissident Voice (July 6, 2011) Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis mentioned in the same outlet (June 15) yet another new anti-war movement, “A Call to Action – Oct. 6, 2011 and onward.” I do not see it mentioned in Mr. Zeese’s letter or listed among his letter’s endorsers. [It is mentioned in "The Revolution Will Not Be Deactualized," June 15. -- Eds]

If the corpocracy, let alone its warring arm, is to be ended before it ends America I am convinced it will take a unified network of NGOs, including anti-war NGOs, (let’s call the network the US Chamber of Democracy) carrying out a strategic plan of major political, legislative, judicial, and economic reforms that are backed up by a massive coalition of 20 or more segments of the populace most likely to abhor the corpocracy.

To appreciate the scope of what it would take to end the entire corpocracy I will close by listing without discussing what I think it would take just to end the warfare welfare component:

Waging War on War
Establish a Citizen’s Assembly for Peace.
Establish a Department of Peace Keeping and National Security
Establish a Peace Keeping and National Security Council.
Nationalize and reorient the defense industry.
Join the International Criminal Court.
Create a dual draft. (community vs military service).
End the propagandizing of the military and militarism.
Determine the lost opportunity costs of warfare welfare.
Impeach or prosecute officials who commit the U.S. to war on false pretenses or unconstitutionally.
Permanently ban and prosecute defense contractors who defraud the government.
Publish a detailed “name and shame” annual warfare welfare report.
Stop budget overruns in military spending.
Stop emergency and off-the-book defense budgeting and funding.
Include supplemental funding and nuclear weapon funding in the military budget.
Require open and competitive bidding on all contract bids.
Purge the GNP index of defense costs.
Prevent war profiteering.
Stop the manufacture and purchase of useless weapons.
Stop the sale anywhere abroad of arms from U.S. manufacturers.
Eliminate the privatization of the military.
Forbid military recruiting at public schools and colleges.
Eliminate college ROTC programs.

Gary Brumback is a retired psychologist and Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. His forthcoming book is The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave it in the Lurch. Gary can be reached at: garybrumback@bellsouth.net and you can visit his web site at www.democracypowernow.com. Read other articles by Gary.

This article was posted on Saturday, July 9th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Anti-war, Mercenaries, Military/Militarism, NGOs, Weaponry.

CORPORATE HOGGISHNESS RUN AMUCK

Jim Hightower

CORPORATE HOGGISHNESS RUN AMUCK

Friday, July 8, 2011 | Posted by Jim Hightower

They're back. Citigroup, Coca-Cola, IBM, Merck, and dozens of other major U.S. corporations are back in Washington – like hogs at the trough – demanding to be fed another tax boondoggle.

This is not the first pig-out for these oinkers. In 2005, having stashed huge profits in foreign countries and tax havens, the multinational giants came to Washington offering Congress a heck of a deal: We'll bring this money back to the U.S. and invest it here, creating beaucoup jobs, IF you give us a sweetheart tax rate on our profits of only about five percent, rather than the usual 35 percent rate.

The Bushites and GOP Congress enthusiastically took the bait. Sure enough, $312 billion came home... but instead of investing it in job creation, top executives and big shareholders simply put it in their pockets. Sixty percent of the boondoggle was gobbled up by only 15 of America's biggest multinationals – many of which actually shut down American plants, fired thousands of workers, and moved more of their production abroad. Merck, for example brought nearly $16 billion home in October 2005, then announced a restructuring plan the next month to close U.S. plants and cut some 3,500 jobs. You could almost hear the executives chortle and say, "Thanks, suckers."

Well, look out, for a corporate lobbying front is working with Republican House leaders to sucker us again. The group includes such superrich computer giants as Apple, Dell, Google, and Intel, pushing for what they call a "repatriation holiday." With a big stage wink, they promise to create jobs in exchange for that same, dandy, five-percent tax deal.

What gross hoggishness! State and national budgets are being slashed – and these fat greedheads are trying to scam America with a tax holiday for themselves. To fight their greed, go to www.usuncut.org.

"Companies Push For A Tax Break On Foreign Cash," The New York Times, June 20, 2011.

Corporate Marking: A unified theory of mental pollution.

Blackspot Blog

Michel Serres

A unified theory of mental pollution.

Micah White

Photo from karavanepapou.blogspot.com

Read the French translation.

Michel Serres, an eccentric French philosopher, has written the first truly philosophical work of the mental environmentalist movement, a radical re-conception of pollution that hones the Adbusters critique. The big idea of his book, Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution?, is that animals, humans included, use pollution to mark, claim, and appropriate territory through defiling it and that over time this appropriative act has evolved away from primitive pollution, urine and feces, to "hard pollution", industrial chemicals, and "soft pollution", the many forms of advertising.

"Let us define two things and clearly distinguish them from one another," Michel Serres writes, "first the hard [pollutants], and second the soft. By the first I mean on the one hand solid residues, liquid gases, emitted throughout the atmosphere by big industrial companies or gigantic garbage dumps, the shameful signature of big cities. By the second, tsunamis of writings, signs, images, and logos flooding rural, civic, public and natural spaces as well as landscapes with their advertising. Even though different in terms of energy, garbage and marks nevertheless result from the same soiling gesture, from the same intention to appropriate, and are of animal origin."

The importance of Michel Serres' contribution to mental environmentalism is that he is the first to philosophically ground mental environmentalism upon a unified theory of pollution that explains how advertisements are an extension of toxic sludge. Until now, the mental environmentalist argument has been that just as polluted rivers are a necessary byproduct of creating paper so too are polluted mindscapes a byproduct of creating consumers. While this argument is still true, and Serres makes a similar point in his book, Serres has managed to do something even more profound: he has shown why one cannot be an environmentalist without also being a mental environmentalist. In closing the gap between physical and mental toxins, Serres has closed the gap between physical and mental ecology.

"The captain who unloads waste in the high seas has never seen, or rather has never let, the countless smiles of the gods emerge; that would be too demanding, or even creative. Shitting on the world, has he ever seen its beauty before? Did he ever see his own beauty? And so, he who dirties space with billboards full of sentences and images hides the view of the surrounding landscape, kills perception, and skewers it by this theft. First the landscape then the world."

Beyond simply being a philosophical treatise, Malfeasance is a passionate rallying cry. Suddenly aware that the earth is being claimed by the soft pollution of corporations, Serres does not hide his anger. And that is the final way in which his book is a mental environmentalist work, it does not argue for acquiescence but yells for dramatic social revolution.

"It makes me suffer so much that I need to say it over and over again and proclaim it everywhere; how can we not cry with horror and disgust confronted with the wrecking of our formerly pleasant rural access roads into the cities of France? Companies fill the space now with their hideous brands, waging the same frenzied battle as the jungle species in order to appropriate the public space and attention with images and words, like animals with their screams and piss. Excluded from those outskirts, I no longer live there; they are haunted by the powerful who shit on them and occupy them with their ugliness. Old Europe, what ignorant ruling class is killing you?"

—Micah White

AlterNet.org

WATER

AlterNet / By Scott Thill

The UN Is Aiding a Corporate Takeover of Drinking Water

Billions of dollars are being given out to the most ardent promoters of water privatization.

July 3, 2011 |

Early last month, pharmaceutical titan Merck became the latest multinational to pledge allegiance to the CEO Water Mandate, the United Nations' public-private initiative "designed to assist companies in the development, implementation and disclosure of water sustainability policies and practices."

But there's darker data beneath that sunny marketing: The CEO Water Mandate has been heavily hammered by the Sierra Club, the Polaris Institute and more for exerting undemocratic corporate control over water resources (PDF) under the banner of the United Nations. It even won a Public Eye Award for flagrant greenwashing from the Swiss non-governmental organization Berne Declaration. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

"There is no admission of problems with the Water Mandate, or the United Nations Global Compact itself" -- the strategic policy initiative committed to human rights, labor and the environment -- Blue Gold and Blue Covenant author and activist Maude Barlow, who also chairs the National Council of Canadians and Food & Water Watch, explained to AlterNet. "These initiatives continue to flourish, not least because the most powerful member states of the United Nations are fully behind them. This also means that the United Nations is not funded fully. Programs and agencies often rely on private sponsorship to function, and are often barely getting their core administrative budgets funded."

Another major problem is that routinely compromised and controversial institutions like World Bank, International Monetary Fund and regional development banks in general are in control of the United Nations' biggest projects. In April, the World Bank assumed control of the United Nations Climate Conference's new $100 billion Green Fund, which is the opposite of a comforting proposition, considering the World Bank's repeatedly noxious financing of oil and coal projects.

"That gives control of billions of dollars to those who have been the most ardent promoters of water privatization," added Barlow, whose foreword for the Council of Canadians' recently damning report on private sector influence over the United Nations (PDF) argued that the planet is on the verge of a water crisis of terrifying proportions. "We're also seeing the IMF forcing indebted nations to sell off public assets, including water systems, as a condition of receiving financial support. The whole system is rigged for these corporations, and they still are losing contracts, not meeting their obligations and watching as remunicipalization moves forward in France and other core markets."

That kind of illogical corporate performance would logically lead to less control, not more. But the United Nations continues to hand over the reins to multinationals like its new cosigner Merck, which has repeatedly settled in court over everything from carcinogenic pollution to deceptive marketing. Despite the fact that the United Nations' own Joint Inspection Unit stated in a 2010 report (PDF) that the Global Compact's corporate partnerships were an unregulated mess.

"The lack of a clear and articulated mandate has resulted in blurred focus and impact," the report stated. "The absence of adequate entry criteria and an effective monitoring system to measure actual implementation of the principles by participants has drawn some criticism and reputational risk for the Organization, and the Office’s special set up has countered existing rules and procedures. Ten years after its creation, despite the intense activity carried out by the Office and the increasing resources received, results are mixed and risks unmitigated."

The report suggested that not only was a clearer mandate from Member States required to "rethink and refocus" the Compact's corporate partnerships, but that the United Nations' General Assembly must better direct the Secretary-General to delineate the Compact's overall functions "in order to prevent a situation whereby any external group or actor(s) may divert attention from the strategic goals agreed to promote interests which may damage the reputation of the United Nations." The short version? It's not working, and won't work in its current form for the foreseeable future.

But the United Nations' own advice to itself has evidently fallen mostly on deaf ears.

"Unfortunately, the United Nations appears to be embracing more and more partnerships with the corporate sector across the board," Corporate Accountability International campaign director Gigi Kellett told AlterNet. "Civil society has been raising concerns about this flawed approach for over 10 years. There are strong voices within the United Nations, including some Member states, who are questioning the partnership paradigm adopted by the UN and calling for more transparency and accountability."

But they are voices in the wilderness without the concerted support of a motivated public, as well as the usual civil society champions who make stopping this strain of corporate abuse their life's work. Power truly respects only one thing, and that is equally exercised power. And the public is fully empowered to make all the change it wants, provided it can unplug itself from distracting sex scandals and mainstream media marketing primarily designed to nurture its collective complacency.

"Corporations rely on people's tacit support and willingness to look the other way when they engage in conduct that harms people or the environment and undermines democratic governance and decision-making," Kellett said. "When people come together in coordinated fashion and withhold their support from a corporation, that relationship is turned on its head. Boycotts are one powerful way that individuals can withhold their support, but there are range of other strategies. When activists come together and raise questions about a corporation's actions and tie them to its brand and image, the resulting media exposure can greatly impact how the corporation is perceived by consumers, investors or even government regulators."

But how do you boycott a multinational that controls your water supply? Can you shame a mammoth corporation into abdicating control over a lucrative commodity that should instead be regarded as a universal human right? Talk about your Sisyphean tasks.

"Boycotts are much more difficult with water than a product like Coke," said Barlow. "There are no substitutes for water, and when these corporations are given monopoly power over water systems, boycotts are very unrealistic. Suez, Veolia and others are very concerned about their corporate image, but there is no effective means to hurt them financially except to end or block the contracts before they are signed. Boycotts have been very effective as public awareness campaigns, but citizens need to apply pressure on their governments as the first step in stopping the proliferation of voluntary initiatives."

Demanding regulation of the private sector's products -- from water and natural resource commodification to inscrutable financial instruments and beyond -- as well as the public's political electives appears to be the paramount first principle. Because the problem is getting worse and going nowhere, especially now that our dystopian climate crisis has permanently disrupted business, and existence, as usual. From escalating warming and extreme weather to destabilized nations and environments, Earth is already precariously balanced on the tipping point. And giving profit-minded corporations voluntary control over their power and procedures is a 20th century anachronism best left behind.

"We have not proven to have what it takes to deal with the climate crisis," argued Barlow, "and this is because it is all seen as a giant political and financial game, rather than the best and only chance to head off a catastrophe like we have never before imagined. Climate change is upon us, but we will never admit it fully, nor invest in stopping it, if our governments continue to represent corporate interests above others. It is up to us to challenge our states, and make sure they know we are engaged and aware."

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

Uncle Sam Food History Exhibit Promotes Food Control

by Rady Ananda / July 2nd, 2011

Oh, gag me with a bowl of propaganda. The National Archives is hosting a historical exhibit on government say in what we eat and grow and how to cook it: “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam: The Government’s Effect on the American Diet.” From the opening lines of the website, you know our control freak “Uncle” has launched another major psyops campaign to convince us that Government Knows Best when it comes to food:

We demand that our Government ensure that it is safe, cheap, and abundant. In response, Government has been a factor in the production, regulation, research, innovation, and economics of our food supply.

Though painting Uncle Sam as Mrs. Doubtfire, when it comes to the results of government intrusion into the food supply, he’s more like Joseph Mengele. Over the last hundred years, we’ve seen climbing rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and neurological disorders, thanks to Uncle Sam’s “regulation” of food additives and environmental pollutants. We’ve also seen the number of farms decline by 98%.

Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally is only too happy to regurgitate the promotion of government control of food, pointing out when Uncle Sam actually provides a social safety net, to wit: the SNAP program, otherwise known as food stamps.

She fails to mention that 184 House Democrats (along with 217 Republicans) just voted to make deep cuts in US food assistance in the 2012 Agricultural Appropriations bill (HR 2112), which I summarized here, based on the analysis of several different experts, and my own stumbling through the massive bill.

One piece I relied on, by Congressmen Sam Farr and Norman Dicks, points out that though the Women, Infants and Children program got a slight boost, the $6 billion budget nowhere near meets the needs of the 50 million+ US citizens who live in poverty, most of them women and children. That’s less than $150 per year for each hungry person.

But, hey, how about those foreign resource wars that Uncle Sam funds to the tune of $1.2 trillion?

Two years ago, the estimate of those in poverty reached 47 million. Since then, unemployment has boomed while the number of jobs has declined. You do the math; I’m sure the number of those truly living in poverty is much higher than 50 million, though recent government figures assert that the number in poverty hovers at 40 million.

Trueman hails a feature of SNAP that allows recipients to buy seeds and vegetable plants. Yes, that is a good feature. Too bad that HR 2112 made the following cuts, note Farr and Dicks:

Funding for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which serves predominantly low-income seniors, is $138.5 million. This is $38 million (22%) below the 2012 request and $37 million (21%) below 2011.

Funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which works with states to assist food banks, is $38 million. This is $12 million (24%) below the 2012 request, and about $11 million (23%) below 2011. The bill also cuts $51 million (20%) from the funding that TEFAP receives annually from the SNAP program.

The bill reduces the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program to $15 million, which is $5 million (25%) below the $20 million level that has been provided for many years. The program gives vouchers to WIC participants for the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables at state-approved farmers’ markets.

Trueman does acknowledge that Big Ag’s lobby has twisted Uncle Sam’s arm to the detriment of the public, but fails to acknowledge that the Obama Administration is well known for appointing those lobbyists to key positions.

* He’s got Monsanto heading his newly created Food Safety czar in the person of Michael Taylor, whom Jeffrey Smith describes as the “person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history.”

* Obama appointed biotech poster boy Tom Vilsack as head of the USDA, who’s been sued twice so far for violating law by approving genetically modified crops without proper environmental assessments.

* He made Monsanto lobbyist and pesticide-pusher Islam Siddiqui the US Ag Trade Representative.

* Obama also put Elena Kagan on the US Supreme Court. In the No-GMO world, she is most notorious for her government-funded support of Monsanto when she served as Solicitor General.

Speaking of the “economics of our food supply,” which the exhibit touts, the new ag appropriations bill also made deep cuts to local and regional food system development programs. Agribusiness giants dominate the market today. This is Uncle Sam setting US priorities. The Senate is now reviewing HR 2112.

Without expressing any comprehension of the impact of food control legislation, Trueman blows the horn of the Food Safety Modernization Act:

Sure, Uncle Sam’s always been kind of a drag, with his stern face and wagging finger. But to ‘nanny-state’ haters, he’s a Beltway busybody in drag, democracy’s Mrs. Doubtfire, a Maryland Mary Poppins. If you believe that government is always the problem, never the solution, then you have no use for, say, more stringent food safety regulations…

Really? Mrs. Doubtfire? The FSMA promises to enforce irradiated foods, promote genetic engineering, and run out of business small and midsize operators on which we’ve thrived for hundreds of years. Burdensome hyper-regulation will force them to upgrade their facilities to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars or lose their license. A veritable Big Food dream, and an Oliver Twist nightmare.

“Safety” has nothing to do with the FSMA – this is about forcing us to eat factory-produced foods adulterated with GMOs, chemicals, drugs and nanomaterials, where most of the nutrition has been removed. It’s really a nice racket – for the medical profession, pharmaceutical industry, and chemical manufacturers, as well as Big Ag.

In fact, this kind of regulated contamination of US food (and the environment) prompted the making of The Idiot Cycle, an excellent film showing how Uncle Sam’s “nanny-statism” is making us all sick so that chemical companies and Big Pharma (sometimes one and the same) can earn obscene profits. (My review here.)

Like all the “modernization” acts, the Food Safety Modernization Act is but another in a long line designed to enhance profits of Big Business at the expense and health of the rest of us, including the environment.

Though this probably deserves its own essay, let’s take a brief look at some of those “modernization” acts and their impact on us:

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 deregulated the financial services industry, leading to the collapse of global finance, from which we have still not recovered (except for those banksters and their bailouts, which both Bush and Obama signed despite 95% of the public opposing them.)

Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 also deregulated Wall Street, allowing for credit default swaps, unlimited trading in food commodities futures, and the infamous “Enron loophole,” which benefited (among others) the wife of the congressman who authored it: Phil Gramm.

Farr and Dicks also point out that the 2012 ag appropriations bill defunds the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that seeks to rein in food commodities trading. This would bring food prices down, but the House defunded it in HR 2112.

Also see, e.g.:

F. William Engdahl’s Getting Used to Life Without Food;

Ellen Brown’s How Banks and Investors Are Starving the Third World; and

Frederick Kaufman’s The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it.

Help America Vote Act of 2002 (a modernization act) replaced hand-count and lever technologies with software, which can be hacked without detection. By 2004, 95% of the U.S. said goodbye to verifiable election results, no matter what election officials say. (See my annotation of 21 scientific reports condemning computerized voting systems.)

Voter Registration Modernization Act of 2009 didn’t pass, but don’t ignore it. This bill seeks to set up online voting, another ludicrous assault on democracy. There is no way to ensure these votes are valid.

Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 Already discussed here, but in more detail in several pieces listed here. Steve Green’s famous piece, S.510 Is Hissing in the Grass, woke up fans of food freedom and food sovereignty with Canada Health whistleblower Shiv Chopra’s quote:

If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.

Oh, we’re seeing that. Not only has the FDA increased its raids on natural food producers and sellers, but (as many readers know), it also recently claimed authority under the FSMA to seize food without credible evidence it’s been contaminated.

When you think about what’s in 90% of US food, the risk of becoming ill from natural foods and supplements is far, far below what’s happening to the majority of Americans, with climbing rates of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and neurological disorders. Yet natural food producers are under attack by Uncle Sam given his commitment to global trade rules.

This isn’t Mrs. Doubtfire or Mary Poppins. This is Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Josef Stalin all rolled up into one. This isn’t a nanny state; this is food fascism – criminalizing our right to eat the foods of our choice, grown and prepared as we like, while destroying the ability of family and mid-size farms to earn a living.

I’m sure the “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam” exhibit will provide a fascinating study – not into enhanced food safety or increased health invoked by federal policy, because that clearly has not happened – but in the power of propaganda.

Bob Koehler says these types of efforts “abandon us in a state of feel-good pseudo-security.” Despite that, and you can blame this on morbid curiosity, I hope to see it.What’s Cooking is on display through January 3, 2012.

Rady Ananda began blogging in 2004. Her work has appeared in several online and print publications, including three books on election fraud. Most of her career was spent working for lawyers in research, investigations and as a paralegal. She graduated from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture with a B.S. in Natural Resources. Read other articles by Rady.

This article was posted on Saturday, July 2nd, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Agriculture, Food/Nutrition, GMO, Health/Medical.

Having Cake and Eating it Too: Corporations, The New Secessionists

The New Secessionists

by James Keye / July 1st, 2011

It is not States now that wish to secede from the Union, although some opportunistic politicians are striking that pose. It is rather the Corporate Confederacy. Corporate entities were given possibility and a chartered “birth” by human created infrastructure – economic, legal, martial and social stability created by the State – but now that they have consolidated wealth power to a point that equals nation-states, their managers realize the possible power to secede from the political state, to be free of its control and, consequentially, be free of any obligation to the human beings upon which the corporate entity depends for their detailed function.

A pure secession from the State is, however, not easy (or possible); it is a bit like trying to separate consciousness from the brain in which it resides. The model is that of an organism trying to become free of the demands of its individual cells – the ‘idea’ that fulfilling my desires is limited by my body and that I might ignore the actions of individual organs and cells, divorcing my ‘self’ from their needs. Such a view, of course, would tend to be held in secret by the economic elites, and would be not only an incredible hubris, but also an incredible mangling of metaphor in the service of a form of schizophrenia.

And so business is moved to a more old fashion form of escape – freedom through domination: the Corporate Confederacy must actually take over government in order to be free of it. (The prescient reader will be ahead of me.) When one State secedes from another, it must create all the machinery of a new State often using the old State as template; like budding a new plant from the old one. Some things are specifically rejected, otherwise there would have been no secession in the first place, but for the most part new States, in such situations, are much like the old.

But the Corporate Confederacy doesn’t really want to create a new State, corporate managers just want to be free from the obligations of citizenship in the old State; they want all of the institutional support, stability and coercive power, but none of the responsibility to the people and the institutions upon which corporations depend. This presents the Corporate Confederacy with the dilemma of how to be free of a structure that it requires in order to exist.

What we are seeing today is the opening parts of this struggle. The first impulse is to destroy the existing structures that seem to oppress corporate action – to, by whatever means, create the conditions in which corporations can act with impunity – and to replace them with models from the corporate template. But the corporate template is remarkably incomplete for the purpose and corporate authority has little idea of how to proceed. Autocratic authority is an early choice, supported by all of the “tricks of the trade” and wealth power. And so we are seeing a kaleidoscope of theories and efforts to explain and form into law what is really the quest for lawlessness by corporate and wealth power.

Governing, which equals control from the corporate perspective, is often a matter of putting the right people in place to give the right orders – for corporations that means tough-minded corporate loyalists who will toe the line of the bottom-line, and see to it that ‘those below them’ do too. This is not ‘evil’ in the corporate frame of reference no matter how much suffering and injustice is experienced by the ‘consumer’ of corporate governance: “It’s nothin’ personal, Rosco, ja know, it’s just business.”

But can nation-states allow corporations to actually manifest the insanity of corporate secession? A. Lincoln – an expert on State secession was deeply concerned with growing corporate and wealth power – offered many reasons for rejecting the secessionist demands of the southern states; I think he would have been somewhat flummoxed by our corporate secessionists; the shear craziness is mind-boggling. To recap succinctly: corporations have gained sufficient power that they can effectively fight governing regulation, but must take over governing to finally be free of it. They are utterly unequipped to actually govern, but don’t realize that, being, as they are, blind beyond their frame of reference. They can buy anything and almost anyone, but that only functions in the corporate frame, not a true governing frame of reference.

Faced with these facts, I think that Mr. Lincoln would have had the courage to fight a different kind of civil war, perhaps an even more difficult one than the Civil War actually fought. You will remember that that one had armies marching and fighting at our doorsteps, killed possibly a million of the nation’s citizens, did billions in damage and is still remembered bitterly by a major section of this nation. What would be the consequences of denying the Corporate Confederacy its secessionist plans?

There are a number of parallels. Many southern members of congress dissolved their loyalty to the Union before 1861, but remained in their elected positions acting in ways damaging to the Union. Comity disappeared and was replaced with open hostility. Today, corporate senators, representatives and governors are showing that their loyalty is no longer to the Union, the constitution or the people, their disrespect for those who don’t share their perspective is obvious and some of their behavior is in violation of their oaths of office.

The arguments have a familiar ring to them. The Southern Confederacy couldn’t imagine functioning without a captive labor force over which they had complete control. They required ‘freedom’ from economic restraints imposed by a hostile Northern government (which was actually often doing the bidding of northern business interests). The Corporate Confederacy is trying to remove all employment protections and regulations to effectively create a pool of serfs from which they can select labor completely on their terms.

A mythology was created in the south that the plantation system and slavery were beneficial to all concerned, a natural and God given arrangement.¹ In the face of sound economic argument that such a system was fatally flawed, the myth was fertilized with social arguments and fears. The “free market” and capitalist ideologies of today are similar myths and their failures are hidden behind a smoke screen of abortion talk, homophobia, racism and xenophobia. Again, what the myths share in common is the supporting of the narrow short-term interests of an elite or corporate cabal.

It is time to take a stand against this corporate secession and reattach corporations to the control of nation-states; this would be obvious if it were clear that the choice is actually between social democracy and fascism. As bad as the nation-state model has been, it will continue to be better than government by corporate power. It would be the corporate model to create a Government Division, as both a coercive force and a profit center. There is no place in corporate thinking for “something for nothing” which is how government services tend to be viewed, except, of course, for those services that extract wealth from the many and put it into the ‘capable’ hands of corporate managers.

While there are many differences between secession by regions of nations and secession by an economic segment of a nation, the biggest is that the Corporate Confederacy cannot and will not govern even if it succeeds in its version of secession by domination; it is still secession from responsibility; the opposite of effective governance.

Powerful national and international corporate entities no longer respect State power; their wealth power and information control have superceded the chartering function of the State. And they only weakly respect the obligation of the State to protect the people from the privations of wealth power. With their vast wealth, the world’s leaders and greatest sophists can be bought to present the corporate argument via the corporate owned media allowing for the illusion of governing to be maintained for a time. But the only actual governing style available in the corporate frame is a brutal and distant autocracy, and ultimately the people will decide just how much of that kind of abuse they will take.

(In my research for this idea I came across this piece by Roger Bybee posted in January of this year in which he talks about corporate secession. This is a shorter and slightly modified version of an essay of the same title posted on the Keye Blog)

1. A version of John C. Calhoun’s (1782 – 1850, Senator, South Carolina) defense of slavery might very well have been heard in the corner offices of Enron, might still be heard on Wall Street or among the corporate majority on the present Supreme Court: spoken to the US Senate in 1837: “I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slavehold states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good – a positive good….I hold, then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history.” It was a simpler time with still some remainder of honesty in public life: Calhoun seems to be speaking for today’s elite with this: “Liberty is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious to be capable of either appreciating or of enjoying it.” We forget that such views remain important in the thinking of those who attain power and wealth, and need to dominate others to retain them. [↩]

James Keye is the nom de plume of a biologist and psychologist who after discovering a mismatch between academe and himself went into private business for many years. His whole post-pubescent life has been focused on understanding at both the intellectual and personal levels what it is to be of the human species; he claims some success. Email him at: jkeye1632@gmail.com. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.

This article was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Corporate Globalization.