TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS
& WORLD TRADE
"We are witnessing an
unprecedented transfer of power from people and their governments
to global institutions whose allegiance is to abstract free-market
principle, and whose favored citizens are soulless corporate entities
that have the power to shape and break nations."
Joel Bleifuss
" A serious and explicit
purpose of our foreign policy [is] the encouragement of a hospitable
climate for investment in foreign nations. "
Dwight Eisenhower, President of
the United States, 1953
*****
"It is the professed
goal of U.S. multinational corporations to control as large a
share of the world market as they do of the United States market."
Harry Magdoff
" Since trade ignores
national boundries and the manufacturer insists on having the
world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and
the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be
battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded
by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations
be outraged in the process."
Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States, 1907
"The achievements of past
struggles and the aspirations of an entire nation are [being]
undone and erased.... No Agent Orange or steel pellet bombs, no
napalm, no toxic chemicals: a new phase of economic and social
(rather than' physical) destruction has unfolded. The seemingly
neutral and scientific tools of macro-economic policy constitute
a non-violent instrument of recolonization and impoverishment."
Michel Chossudovsky, economist
*****
" The Pentagon budget
is part of the funnel by which public funds are transferred to
the high-tech industries. "
Noam Chomsky, American linguist
and US media and foreign policy critic
"... the establishment
can't admit [that] it is human rights violations that make ...
countries attractive to business -- so history has to be fudged,
including denial of our support of regimes of terror and the practices
that provide favorable climates of investment, and our destabilization
of democracies that [don't] meet [the] standard of service to
the transnational corporation..."
Edward Herman, economist and media
analyst
" The Darwinian concept
of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy
of the survival of the slickest. "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
*****
" The so-called "defense"
corporations are multinational conglomerates that have no great
loyalty to the United States; they are in fact no longer U.S.
corporations but transnational entities loyal only to themselves.
"
John Stockwell, former CIA official
and author
"True, the white man brought
great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though
highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And
if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then
what is progress?"
Chief Luther Standing Bear, 1933
*****
"The United States does
not have an automatic call on our resources. There is no mind-set
that puts this country first."
Cyrill Stewert, Chief Financial
Officer of Colgate-Palmolive Corporation
"I spent thirty-three
years in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle
man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short,
I was a racketeer for capitalism."
General Smedley Butler, former
US Marine Corps Commandant,1935
*****
" There is ...a huge tacit
conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational
corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military
cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control
of these countries and "develop" them on a joint venture
basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully
nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the "enforcers"
of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied
with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation
of subversives."
Edward Herman, economist and media
analyst
*****
" As an economy measures
performance in terms of the creation of money, people become a
major source of inefficiency. "
David Korten, economist and internationalist
"This use of the government
of all for the enrichment and aggrandizement of few is a revolution....
These sovereign powers ... have been given by you and me, all
of us, to our government to be used only for the common and equal
benefit. Given by all to be used by all, it is a revolution to
have made them the perquisite of a few."
Henry Demarest Lloyd,1847 - 1903,
US journalist
"Corporations have been
enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow
and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated
in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed."
Abraham Lincoln, American president,
1861-1865
"The immiseration of the
majority is an integral part of the Free World package for the
Third World, the unsavory aspects of the package -- the terror,
the direct spoilation of people and resources, and western complicity
-- must be rationalized and, as far as possible, kept under the
rug."
Edward Herman, economist and media
analyst
"The recent quantum leap
in the ability of transnational corporations to relocate their
facilities around the world in effect makes all workers, communities
and countries competitors for these corporations' favor. The consequence
is a "race to the bottom" in which wages and social
conditions tend to fall to the level of the most desperate."
Jeremy Brecher, historian and
author
" What we have is not
a market economy. It is a corporately planned and controlled economy.
"
" We have a world in which
a handful of corporations, dettached from any link to any place
or community, have extended their power beyond the reach of most
governments. "
" The U.S. has a centrally-planned
economy, in many ways more tightly controlled than any state-planned
economy that we have seen. "
" The political system
... [is] enormously expensive. The only way you can raise the
money to win an election is by appealing to corporate interests,
which then means you're in their debt and have to focus on their
agendas."
David Korten, economist and internationalist
"Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never has, and it never will."
Frederick Douglass, 1817-1895,
escaped slave, abolitionist, author, orator, statesman
"We must find new lands
from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same
time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the
natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping
ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories."
Cecil Rhodes, 1853-1902, British
imperialist and "founder" of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
"A criminal is a person
with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form
a corporation."
Howard Scott
"We are entering a new
phase in human history -- one in which fewer and fewer workers
will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global
population."
Jeremy Rifkin, economist
" Rollback [the destabilization
and overthrow of Third World leftist-populist governments with
right-wing governments] as a foreign policy ... causes untold
devastation and misery for millions overseas, and hinders any
potential positive U.S. influence in world affairs... To the extent
the U.S. public backs rollback, this support is rooted in a misguided
sense of patriotism. Patriotism itself - love of one's country
and one's people - is a natural and reasonable human feeling.
But patriotism which measures one's country by military superiority
over all rivals regardless of consequence is irrational... There
is surely a more rational form of patriotism that searches for
excellence in social, economic and moral spheres rather than in
weapon systems. "
from the book Rollback by Thomas
Bodenheimer and Robert Gould
" With unfailing consistancy,
U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful
of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather
than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous
democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in
dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of
putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of
multinational corporate interests. "
Michael Parenti, political scientist
and author
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