Chronicles

Vol. 22, No. 8, August 1998

PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL COMMERCE

By Bob Djurdjevic

General Section: VITAL SIGNS; Sub-section: ECONOMICS

"Talk is cheap," skeptics say. "Put your money where your mouth is." "Money talks louder than words," is another folk wisdom. If these ancient sayings still apply today, the wallets of the New World Order's elite have spoken loudly and clearly: Russia is still the main bogey!

Forget the cheap talk about a "Partnership for Peace." Conniving "friendships" like that are made in hell. They tend to lead to war, not peace, as the Hitler-Stalin pact of the 1930s proved. Also, forget the cheap talk about "nation building" and "exporting democracy" whenever our government sends money or American troops abroad. Follow the money to see into which mouth it is being put. Investment decisions of the "Princes of the 20th Century" - the multinational companies - show where they are putting their money. They also prove that democracy is for suckers. And that "free trade" and "globalization" are mankind's latest "black plague."

Unfortunately, all this is "déjà vu all over again," to quote Yogi Berra. Much of what had taken place in Britain in the 18th and 19th century is now happening in Russia, the U.S. and around the world under the New World Order's "globalization" banner. A century ago, the rich got richer; the poor got poorer, and the resulting social injustices gave birth to such ideologies as Marxism and Communism, among others. They also led to several revolutions and two World Wars. We are facing the same prospects today...

Take the concentration of wealth, for example. In 1881, 2,512 Englishmen owned half the land in the United Kingdom, Toynbee noted. In 1994, the top 2.6 million (one percent) Americans had as much after-tax income as did the bottom 88 million (35 percent), according to the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The disparities between the rich and the poor in China, Russia, Latin America and other countries which the NWO elite decided to "globalize" (read colonize) are even greater than in the U.S.

Or take the concentration of industrial production in the cities. In 1696, only a quarter of England's population lived in the cities, while three quarters were the rural dwellers. As agriculture was the dominant economic activity at the time, these statistics imply that three-quarters of Englishmen were economically self- sufficient, supporting themselves off the land on which they lived. By 1760, however, only half of the population lived in the countryside. And in 1881, with the Industrial Revolution in full swing, only one-third lived in rural areas. Such a rapid change had caused a massive destruction of rural communities, forcing a radical change in the way of life for millions of people.

In the 1990s, the "Princes" of globalization shift manufacturing activities to the countries with low labor costs, while leaving high unemployment and devastating communities in the industrialized world (e.g., the "rust belt" of America, the textile mills of Lancashire), and breeding almost continuous labor unrest in France, or social unrest in Latin America, and now in Indonesia.

Nor was the British example from the 19th century necessarily a natural, voluntary shift of population from the countryside to the cities. In his Oxford lectures, Toynbee described, what he called, "the dark side of the Industrial Revolution." Using their economic wealth to buy political clout in Britain's parliamentary system, a tiny minority of powerful landowners and the newly-minted industrialists (think today's NWO elite!), drove the English farmers off the land, forcing them into virtual slave labor in their factories. They did it either by buying up the impoverished farmers' land at fire sale prices, and/or by passing the laws in Parliament which led to a break up of the common ("freeholders") land.

Sound familiar? Remember "Reaganomics," or Margaret Thatcher's celebrated "privatization" in Great Britain of the 1980s? Or similar efforts currently under way in France, Germany and several other "Old Continent" countries? The NWO elite-owned or controlled establishment media are telling the public that privatization is all goodness; that private enterprises can supposedly manage these endeavors more efficiently than governments.

Maybe. But at what price? And more importantly - to whose benefit? Obviously to the benefit of the enterprises' NEW shareholders (after privatization). But what about the interests of the former owners - the PUBLIC? What about the corporate responsibility for improving a society rather impoverishing it?

Nor about the fact that nowhere in modern history was the plunder of a country's national assets done as brutally as in Russia - with a full collaboration of the local quislings. Nor does one read in the establishment media that in Russia, the state continues to be the major shareholder even AFTER the "privatization" had taken place.

Look at the Jeffrey Sachs-style "Harvard Capitalism," which many Russians nowadays justifiably regard as "Harvard Communism." In a typical Russian enterprise privatized by the Harvard-prescribed "voucher" system, 46 percent of the (grossly understated) value went to workers, five percent to management, 29 percent was sold at cash auctions (mostly to foreigners?), and the remaining 20 percent was left in state's hands. As Anne Williamson wrote in her just-completed book, "How America Built the New Russian Oligarchy,." "the state's shareholding dwarfed others' claims, and therefore, was still the controlling shareholder of any 'privatized' Russian asset."

Oh, but the public now gets a chance to buy shares in the companies being privatized, some will argue. True. But even then, mostly at inflated prices. For, the stockmarket trading, where the NWO architects "coincidentally" chose to place the privatized public assets, is being done by institutions the very NWO elites own. An even better bargain is the fact that they get the first crack to buy PUBLIC ASSETS at fire sales prices. By the time we, the PUBLIC, the FORMER owners - now disowned by the corrupt politicians - get to bid on such privatized assets, it is usually at inflated prices. Plus the commissions, of course, paid to the transnationalists' institutions.

This plunder of national assets under the guise of "privatization" and "reform" is occurring around the world, only on a smaller scale. For example, Latin America's in-take of the foreign capital in 1996 rose by 52% to $39 billion, the highest increase in the world and a record high for this continent. The investments in Argentina tripled in 1996 to $4.3 billion. If one compares these figures to less than $1 billion per year which Russia averaged in the 1990s, one would think that Latin American people are basking in prosperity. Not so.

Carlos Saul Menem, elected president of Argentina in 1989, has ruled like a czar, issuing over 300 decrees, according to a recent FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Menem's globalization of the Argentine economy - meaning privatization and fire sales of state-owned assets to foreign interests - has caused millions of Argentineans to become exiles in their own country. In the province of Jujuy, for example, some 42 percent of the people are unemployed or doing menial work, according Bishop Marcelo Palentini. "They used to ask for raises; now they ask for jobs," he told the New York Times. YPF, a former state-owned Argentinean oil company used to employ 5,000 people. Now has only 500 employees. But YPF made a $900 million profit in 1996, delighting its foreign owners.

"Menem thinks that by putting our country at the service of the International Monetary Fund, he brought us into the First World," Carlos Santillan said, a union leader in Jujuy province. "But workers have lost in a few years rights they fought for over a century. We're a colony here. All that is missing is to have (Bill) Clinton come here and plant the American flag."

But Clinton won't have to disgrace our flag any more that he has already done, because the "Princes" do it for him. Deceitful chameleons that the globalists are, at the Wal-Mart store in Buenos Aires, an Argentine flag flutters over a sign reading, "Proudly in Argentina." "What is clear is that it is changing the Argentine way of life: families buy their bicycles here, sometimes using dollars; the corner bicycle store is no more," the New York Times reported. Any time you see that anywhere in the world that the Almighty Dollar is the currency of choice, you know that the "Princes of the 20th Century" have claimed yet another colony.

As the multinationals drove many of Argentina's small entrepreneurs out of business, some of the American globalist elite, as epitomized by Ted Turner, George Soros, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzeneger and others, have moved in and taken over the lands where ones gauchos freely roamed. "There are more fences going up in Patagonia as the internationally wealthy install themselves on newly acquired estates," the New York Times reported. "I used to go and camp or fish but now I hear that Ted Turner is here, Rambo there, the Terminator somewhere else. And I say, no, this is not my Argentina," said Orlando Mendes, a local resident.

Foreign investors are not impervious, however, to the risks of "divided societies," a New York Times term for Brazil, Argentina's bigger neighbor which has until recently mostly resisted the globalization pressures. But Brazil has now surpassed Mexico as the largest recipient of foreign investments - nearly $10 billion in 1996 vs. Mexico's $7.5 billion. Yet in early 1998, five Wal-Mart stores in Brazil were attacked and robbed by assailants operating in large groups armed with assault rifles. Such social unrest was Brazil's "reward" for opening its doors to foreign capital, just as has been the case in Russia and other developing countries.

So what are we to conclude from all this? Where the "Princes" tread - crime, misery and social unrest soon follow. Just as was the case when the Industrial Revolution elites dislocated and enslaved the formerly independent farmers. "So, the more things change, the more they are the same?"

Not quite. Sometimes they get worse. The imbalance in capital investments between China and Russia, for example, is bad news for world peace. The fact that such political instability is being caused deliberately makes a mockery of the globalists' line - "world peace through world trade." On the contrary, a state of low-grade perpetual war seems to be what Big Business wants.

Why? To answer that question let's move on to the Balkans and the Middle East. In the Balkans, the U.S. government's policies have stoked the fires of war which led to the greatest human and material carnage in Europe since World War II. Since the American-imposed "peace" agreement, signed in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, 98 percent of foreign investment has ended up in the Muslim-Croat federation. The Serbian half of Bosnia got only two percent of foreign aid. So the war and colonization of the Orthodox Christian Serbs continues. It's just that money has replaced the bombs as the weapon of choice.

Now, which will be the first country where NATO will be deployed? Answer: BOSNIA! In fact, NATO has already been deployed in Bosnia for about five years, however surreptitiously. And it is there to stay. Just as the U.S. troops have never left the Arab lands after the Gulf War.

The similarities between American actions in both areas are striking. Another small country, another "hot" region of the world, another gangland example of the U.S. and other West (America, in particular) to flex its muscles.

The U.S. government built up Saddam Hussein's military capabilities in the 1980s. During the Iraq-Iran war, for example, it was the U.S. and British governments that supplied to Iraq most of the terrible weapons of mass destruction. The French and the Germans also pitched in. The reports by Reuters and by the (London-based) Independent, as well as by the Wall Street Journal in early February, provide all the gory details. And then, Iraq suddenly becomes a "bogey" in 1990, a remarkable turn about face by the West. If peace in the Middle East were indeed the objective of the New World Order leaders, the Gulf War troops could have easily taken Baghdad and dislodged Saddam Hussein in 1991. But no, the victorious U.S. President decides to save Saddam for another President to use as a punching bag.

But WHY would the New World Order leaders want perpetual low grade wars?

Once again, follow the money. What country, do you suppose, leads the whole world in terms of the growth of its gross domestic product (GDP)? Answer: BOSNIA! Bosnia GDP increased by 50 percent in 1996, the first post-Dayton year, according to a January 1998 issue of the London-based ECONOMIST.

What nation came second? ALBANIA! Another country which has just had a close brush with civil war, and where international troops and monitors are now deployed as "peacekeepers."

Closer to home, we've seen similar tactics at work in Panama, El Salvador, Haiti...

In Panama, for example, a planeload of American business executives, ready to start writing reconstruction contracts, arrived in Panama City in 1989 while the street fighting was still going on, the former head of OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation), Fred Zeder, told me when we met in Washington in June 1990. Ron Brown's ill-fated 1996 mission landed in Bosnia and Croatia even before all the I-FOR troops had been fully deployed.

See a pattern? First destroy them, then take over and rebuild them. Which kind of puts a "black humor" spin on an old one-liner: QUESTION: What's the difference between mechanical and civil engineers? ANSWER: Mechanical engineers build the weapons; civil engineers build the targets. Either way, both the destruction and the rebuilding helps keep the bankers' and multinationals' businesses humming. Either way, Big Business wins.

So isn't interesting that seemingly unrelated events - Bosnian war, the NATO expansion, and the perpetual middle-eastern crisis - all have one common denominator: INCREASED SPENDING! Mostly by governments. Just as was the case in Korea,Vietnam, the Gulf War, Haiti... The object is not to win. It is to prolong the foreign deployment. Because that means INCREASED SPENDING! More money for the "Princes," more tax burdens and body bags for Main Street.

Which why it's worth recalling President Dwight Eisenhower's warning to the nation in his farewell speech in 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial-(congressional)-complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of that combination endanger our liberties or democratic process."

ATTRIBUTION: Bob Djurdjevic heads up Annex Research (http://www.djurdjevic.com) which analyzes global economic and geopolitical affairs and Truth in Media (http://www.beograd.com/truth).

Back to Index of Columns...