Corporate Globalization and Middle East Terrorism

By Charles Sullivan

08/29/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- By now the whole world knows that America is none of the things that she purports to be; that is, everyone except the Americans. It is said that America has fifty states but in fact she has fifty-one, Israel being the fifty-first. Perhaps Great Britain could be counted as the fifty-second.  

It is ironic that the people who think they are the freest are the most controlled people on earth. It is equally odd that those who think they are part of the greatest democracy the world has ever known do not participate in a democracy at all; nor do they recognize one when they see it. These facts attest to how thoroughly the American people have been propagandized by the corporate media.  

A controlled people have no will of their own. They believe what they are told, and they do what their government tells them to do. They have little intellectual curiosity about the world and rarely, if ever, question authority, much less challenge it. They have little or no knowledge of their nation’s history, and are a frightened and timid people that have no conception of reality.  None are more effectively enslaved than those who think they are free. Americans are slaves to a corrupt system that preys upon them and tells them how well they are treated.  

As America’s fifty-first state—Zionist Israel influences American foreign policy nearly as much as the corporations that run the government. On Capital Hill the Zionist lobby rivals the power of even the wealthiest corporations. The Pentagon, in particular, is heavily influenced by Zionists, and chief among them are Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Michael Rubin. The combination of Zionism and corporate Plutocracy is a particularly deadly and violent one; a perfect storm that has gathered over the Middle East and rained corpses upon the land in a cyclone of savage violence without end.  

The evidence visibly demonstrates that both the American and Israeli governments are savage terrorist states. I make a clear distinction between the people and their respective governments; although the people must bear some of the responsibility for what their governments do. Recent reports from Amnesty International make clear that both nations deliberately target civilians and civilian infrastructure—including roads and bridges, water sanitation facilities, electrical generating stations, ambulances transporting the wounded to hospitals, rescue workers recovering the dead, and even women and children seeking refuge in bomb shelters. Other humanitarian NGOs have uncovered similar findings.  

Not only are such events an abomination, they are acts of extreme cowardice; the work of madmen intoxicated by transitory power in pursuit of private wealth.  

The Israeli and American governments have little regard for life, or human freedoms. Both thoroughly propagandize their own people and call themselves democracies. They are known to kidnap, imprison, torture, and assassinate their foes without due process. Both possess nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the world many times over. The world surely remembers that America is the only nation to hold human life in such low regard as to actually deploy the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even with Japan’s eminent surrender at hand.  

These governments are guilty of the same war crimes that the Nazi leadership was executed for after World War Two. They have histories of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The blood of innocent people runs warm on their hands, and they continually thirst for more.   

It is clear that neither America nor Israel is interested in a negotiated peace in the Middle East. Both governments intend to force capitalism upon the region by systematically invading and occupying the Arab states. Their stated intent is to denationalize the immense natural wealth of the region, and turn it over to private corporations; to force the Islamic Arab states to join the World Trade Organization, and to accept capitalism as the new religious order. Some kind of Middle East Free Trade Agreement will likely be brokered at gun point, and the corporate fire sale will commence. Similar plans exist for other parts of the world.  

Forget what the talking heads on the television tell you, and ignore the idiocy spewed forth by conservative talk show hosts; America’s Middle East policy has nothing to do with threats stemming from the development of nuclear arsenals, or imaginary terrorist plots to maim and kill, as reported in the corporate media. Such claims are useful propaganda, shameless promotions created to deceive a gullible people into believing there is an eminent threat to their freedoms that must be dealt with militarily. None of it is true.  

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was foretold in a document titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” This paper was authored some six years ago by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and a host of neocon luminaries who are always clamoring for war. It provides the blue print for what is to come, but it is conveniently ignored by the corporate media.  

If the neocons and their Zionist allies succeed, Iran will also be invaded and occupied, followed by Lebanon and Syria. Other states will follow, insuring that America and Israel remain in a state of perpetual war for the next hundred years.  Preemptive strikes are the modus operandi. The plan calls for permanent military bases throughout the region, and the U.S. is already constructing fourteen permanent bases in Iraq. America has no intentions of leaving until the last drop of oil runs dry, and Iraq’s natural wealth has been privatized.  

The larger purpose of the American-Israeli Middle East policy is to force capitalism onto the region. If they are successful, the occupied territories will fall under virtual martial law, and virtual U.S-Israeli rule. The dollar will become the currency, and every Arab state will be forced to join the WTO, and to comply with its laws. Membership in the WTO effectively renders a nation’s Constitution and its laws null and void. WTO membership is a key element in the new world order envisioned by the world’s wealthiest people.  

The independent Arab states will be coerced into accepting loans from the IMF and the World Bank. A key feature of these loans is that they require the state to open its borders to private ownership and foreign investors (privatization). That is what occurred in Iraq when the Bremer orders were issued. A puppet government is installed to lend the appearance of legitimacy to the process. Some kind of Middle East Free Trade Agreement will likely be brokered at gun point; the inhabitants will eventually lose their cultural identity and become westernized. Imagine downtown Baghdad with a McDonalds at every corner, and Wal-Mart Super Centers all around.   

This is the New World Order envisioned by George Herbert Walker Bush—corporate governance by the world’s wealthiest individuals. For everyone else it will be a world-sized gulag with all the accoutrements of a concentration camp.    

Western capitalists break into a cold sweat when they think about the money to be made. They see private wealth in the form of the Middle East’s immense oil reserves, cheap exploitable labor, and the millions of new consumers that capitalism demands. 

Any nation that resists corporate globalization will be labeled ‘terrorist states,’ and subjected to military invasion. The imperial invaders will declare that these states are developing nuclear weapons and present an eminent threat to the U.S and its allies. The corporate media will report that we are bringing democracy to the Middle East. All of this should sound hauntingly familiar.   

Once the groundwork is laid, the invasion of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, and all of the corporations that are plundering Iraq can begin in earnest. Some 150 American corporations are already reaping billions in stolen Iraqi wealth. That is just the beginning.   

The masters of war are promoting their agenda of corporate globalization by equating the resistance to free trade with terrorism. As all things Bush, this is just marketing hype and brazen lies—pure propaganda. By linking resistance to free trade to terrorism in the public mind, the perpetrators expect to market future wars and more occupations to the people who will be required to carry them out.  

Speaking truth in America is becoming tantamount to an act of sedition, or terror. We already know what happens to terrorists in Bush World.  

Acting as America’s fifty-first state, Israel’s elite will also reap the economic spoils of war, and expand its power throughout the region. She will then be in position to police the territory, and to put down insurrections with weapons made in the USA.  

Much of the world already knows that democracy and capitalism are an oxymoron. As we can see (if we are willing to look), capitalism and free trade oppresses human freedoms, rather than foster them. Do the people of Iraq feel liberated? Their country is being divvied out to corporate predators, while America holds a gun to their heads. When will we remove our blinders and see with clear eyes? Every atrocity that America and her allies accuse their enemies of committing, they have themselves committed. Will we ever remove our blinders and see with clear eyes? 

There will never be peace as long as capitalism thrives and men without souls occupy human flesh. Nations will be carpet bombed, and millions of innocent people will suffer and die horribly. The corporate CEOs and their share holders view this as a small price for others to pay, so long as they profit.  

In an article published in The New Yorker this week, Seymour Hersch exposed the Pentagon’s covert plot to invade Iran. The corporatocracy considers Iran as the crown jewel of the Middle East. What the Plutocrats did not count on, however, was the fierce resistance the occupying forces have encountered in Iraq, where nothing has gone according to plan. Beyond the green zone there is no part of the country that is safe. The world’s most powerful military cannot defeat the building guerilla resistance that continues to grow and intensify. In Lebanon, the world’s second strongest military was unable to defeat Hezbollah and its antiquated weaponry.  

While these are viewed as ominous signs for the New World Order, they are an indication that there may be justice in this world after all. The fierce resistance to occupation by the Palestinians on the West and Bank and the Gaza Strip, the spirited defiance to occupation in Iraq, and the repulsion of the Israeli military from Lebanon are cause for hope. They are victories for the people against their oppressors. Apart from the aggressors, the world recognizes the right of all peoples to resist foreign occupation and to determine their own fate. It is a moral duty. There is hope in resistance. Someone once said, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” 

In their unfathomable hubris, both the Israeli and the American governments have seriously underestimated the spiritual strength and determination of the freedom fighters resisting corporate globalization. They will never stop fighting until the occupiers have been driven out, as occupying armies always are. The invaders can kill the majority of the population with their sophisticated weaponry, but those who remain will expel them, as the Vietnamese expelled the U.S. from Viet Nam. History has taught us these lessons again and again, but we Americans do not know history; nor do we want to know it.  

Sources: 

The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time, Antonia Juhasz, May 2006 

Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, Dick Cheney and others. 

National Security Strategy of the USA, Dick Cheney and others, September, 2002. 

Dick Cheney’s Song of America, David Armstrong 

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Richard Perle and others, 1996 

Watching Lebanon, Seymour Hersch, New Yorker, August 21, 2006 

Mad Dog on a Leash, Sheila Samples, Dissident Voice, August 15, 2006 

Democracy Now!, Pacifica Radio Network, various dates 

Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free lance writer residing in the hinterland of West Virginia. He welcomes civil comments at csullivan@phreego.com.