The Corporate War Room - corporate strategies applied to foreign and

[Dover]

domestic policies, and the use of national financial/military and other resources toward these ends.


Corporate war machine gathers speed

Asia Times, Aug. 16, 2006
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

...Evidence shows that business or economic beneficiaries of war, who do not have to face direct combat and death, tend to be more jingoistic than professional military personnel who will have to face the horrors of warfare. Furthermore, military professionals tend to care more about the outcome of a war and "military honor" than civilian leaders, who often represent some powerful economic interests that benefit from the business of war.

Calling such business and/or ideologically driven warmongers "civilian militarists", military historian Alfred Vagts points to a number of historical instances of how civilian militarists' eagerness to use military force for their nefarious interests often led "to an intensification of the horrors of warfare". For example, he points out how in World War II, "civilians not only anticipated war more eagerly than the professionals, but played a principal part in making combat ... more terrible than was the current military wont or habit". <4>

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq serves as another blatant example of civilian militarists' instigation of war in pursuit of economic and geopolitical gains. A number of belatedly surfaced documents reveal that not only were the civilian militarists, representing powerful business and geopolitical interests, behind the invasion of Iraq, but that they also advocated a prolonged occupation of that country to avail their legal and economic "experts" the time needed to overhaul that country's economy according to a restructuring plan that they had drawn up long before the invasion.
One such document, titled "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth", was obtained from the State Department by well-known investigative reporter Greg Palast. The document, also called the "Economy Plan", was part of a largely secret program called "The Iraq Strategy". (Read here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=PAL20041029&articleId=551 )

Cont'd

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH16Ak01.html

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Iraq `worth it', but for whom?

...The US invasion of Iraq, in 2003, was preceded by the drawing up of a blueprint for the reconstruction of Iraq's economy.

The document titled, `Moving the Iraqi economy from recovery to growth', was nothing but an elaborate and thought-through plan for the transformation of Iraq's centralised economy into a market economy, where the state is marginalised and used as a medium for the creation and perpetuation of an economy subservient to the US and its allies.

In fact, Mr Michael Bleyzer, former executive of Enron, is reported to have told the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld: "We want to set up a business environment where global companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds could come in and create a diversified economy not dependent on oil."

There was never any confusion what the "reconstruction" of Iraq was going to be about. It was not about humanitarian or relief operations — as was made clear by Mr Rumsfeld's much-quoted statement: "I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct that country after 30 years of centralised Stalinist-like economic controls in that country."

The "reconstruction" was about the wrenching open of Iraq's economy to foreign investors, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the introduction of a regime of patents and intellectual property rights and, of course, access to Iraq's oil.

If there is any ambiguity in one's mind about this, all one has to do is read the contract between USAID and Bearing Point, a private business consultancy responsible for reconstructing Iraq's economy.

Among other things, the contract stipulates: "The new government will seek to open up its (Iraq's) trade and investment linkages and to put into place the institutions promoting democracy, free enterprise and reliance on a market-driven private sector as the engine of economic recovery and growth." Bearing Point lost no time in implementing this contract. Approximately a month after Mr Bush's dramatic "mission accomplished" declaration, in May 2003, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Mr L. Paul Bremer II, said at a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan: "Our strategic goal in the months ahead is to set in motion policies which will have the effect of re-allocating people and resources from state enterprises to the more productive private firms." ..cont'd

http://www.blonnet.com/2005/07/01/stories/2005070100340800.htm

[sweetheart]

1. The new religion is above reproach

Corporatism and fascism are the offerings of western society, be raped or die from our Depleted chemical weapons.

Rape is the new excusable non-crime whilst smoking grass is the new mega-crime, all to the tune of the corporatist flute,
leading us down the path to complete and utter stupidity.

[snot]

2. Making the world safe for unrestrained capitalism. nt