What is that American oil doing under Arab or Venezuelan soil? Chris Herz

www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=55729

Published: Tuesday, May 02, 2006

VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: We may now regard as proven, thanks to the Busheviki, the basic tenet of socialism: That corporations will either be nationalized by the state, as agent for the people, all of the people … or the state will be privatized by the corporations as agents for the aristocracy.

And nowhere is this syllogism better demonstrated than here in George Bush’s USA.

Whether you wish to use the example of big oil companies like EXXON-MOBIL, or CHEVRON declaring a 49% increase in profit for the past quarter, or the example of telecommunication companies with their unparalleled access (via corrupt campaign contributions) to the US Congress, the scenario is clear.

• With the fall of the USSR and its weird brand of socialism, corporations have felt the way had been cleared to return to their practices of the the nineteenth century. Bribe authority, and plunder society … “Legally.”

Of course big oil and big media are hardly the only culprits. In the Empire, it is hard to find any major industry that really could stand on its own entrepreneurial hind legs and compete without massive subsidy from this corrupted state. This of course is proven by the exaggerated wages and benefits they pay their executives, even as they lose global market share.

Really, what they are about is shown so graphically in the example of ENRON … they buy the politicians who then make the criminal deeds of the corporadoes legal. Only a massive and unconcealable bankruptcy breaks down the conspiracy. Then it is every man for himself.

Even the US military must now be seen as merely the enforcer for the corporate capos. These are merely the wise-guys who compel acceptance of “offers that cannot be refused.” This of course, the most impressive subsidy of all.

Many writers far more competent in the science of economics than I make these points. But I like to take the matter one step away from the pure numerology of economics. I like to show how, for very real, but very evil historical reasons, a majority of the US population still will support this criminal mafia. And like their German Nazi forebears in the 1930s and 40s these people will continue on this path until they and the system which they so fervently support are defeated by an outraged world.

We are a people, a warrior people, who occupy a continent seized by force from its aboriginal inhabitants, and who are thanks to two world wars, the inheritors of the European empires of former days, who insist that force is the final arbiter of international affairs. And this force is focused upon those who have the misfortune to possess resources which we covet.

What is that American oil doing under Arab or Venezuelan soil?

The massive demonstrations that occurred in New York against the latest war for imperial and corporate profit, and today in countless localities across our nation to protest the invidious circumstances of our immigrant communities, are just another proof of this very basic and intractable problem facing the dying empire. But the fact that the institutional structures of the empire; its government and its media, cannot reflect this very large majority, one comprised of the very scientifically and technically competent persons, who in any normal country would be in charge of its public business, should tell the world everything it needs to know about us. And that is that we are ruled by an oligarchy without moral compass, one which considers everything around them their own. And that they can find among the most backwards and superstitious elements of our population about 30% support, will be quite sufficient to plunge the planet into another era of world war.

After all, the Soviet Union was ruled for 70 years by a party which comprised at best only 12-15% of its population. And Germany elected its Fuehrer with no greater a plurality than George W. Bush enjoys at this very moment: When his policies are challenged by massive revolt in the colonies and by looming national bankruptcy.

This is to say nothing of the hyper-militaristic position of the putative opposition, and of those, either seduced by our all-pervasive propaganda, or who knowingly seek the same Bush policies, executed by some more “competent” personalities … for instance Hillary Clinton or John Kerry.

Do not these, the major personalities of the Democratic Party criticize Bush for not committing enough troops to Iraq?

Heaven (or the corporations) forbid that they should suggest for one single moment that the fundamental policy of looting our own people and the peoples of all the world around us is not the sacred right of this brave new corporate empire. That such might thus contain within itself the seeds of its own downfall.

There are many honorable and sincere persons working for peace beyond our borders and for social justice here in our own poor befuddled and insecure homeland. No one salutes their incredibly brave and selfless efforts more fervently than myself, but they will not be able to take state power away from the weirdos of church and corporation who now set our national agenda. The propaganda and other compulsive powers of a modern state are so perfected that we may all confidently expect that only defeat inflicted from without can tear its bemused and indoctrinated people from the illusions and delusions with which they have been so purposely and deliberately afflicted.

The Germans fought with stubborn bravery to the very moment of capitulation. Never for a moment did most question the bizarre and racist nationalism with which their regime had infected its own society. And the Soviets never dreamed for a moment that their fantasies could be deflated, not by the foreign foe, but by their very betrayal of the democratic core values of Marxism itself. But defeat was their common lot.

The struggle of the Venezuelans to live in their own country … to control all of its resources … and to allow the exploitation of said resources only for the common good, is the very most effective action they can take to cripple the imperium which threatens them.

Go for it!

Chris Herz

chris@vheadline.com

www.vheadline.com/herz