Friday, November 04, 2005

The Triumvirate

The Oil corporations, the banks and the war industries together exert a stranglehold on the lives of billions of people around the globe as well as the majority of American citizens. This is certainly not a new development, but is the culmination of some sixty years of political evolution. Gore Vidal made the point that the American republic has, in fact, been dead these past sixty years. He refers to a “National Security State” that came into being during the presidency of Harry S Truman when the National Security Act became law and the United States embarked on what came to be called the Cold War. The idea for this act was born, following the Second World War, with the realization that in order for the United States to maintain and extend its economic hegemony it must wage “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” a term coined by the late historian Charles A Beard in 1947.

It is an undeniable fact of life that the national economy is irrevocably tied to the military industrial complex. The war industries have become dependent upon war and the preparation for war on a continual basis. Much of the world has been armed with highly technical, sophisticated and deadly weapons through United States arms sales. Even though the scientific community has been strongly critical of the efficacy of an anti-ballistic missile system, such a system is being built.

It is through the military and military hardware that the Middle East has been plagued with United States intervention, through both overt and covert operations, for the purpose of securing not just the use of oil but the very control of this precious economic resource. It is part of the insidious will to power and empire.

The accepted paradigm for globalization has been established and promulgated by the banking industry operating through its various agencies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Their collective policies primarily benefit US financial interests and often work to the detriment of the countries that are allegedly helped by their efforts.

A new player has joined this group, and that is the national media. The most obvious reason why the media has become subservient to corporate interests is the simple fact that they have been essentially subsumed by the towering conglomerates many with direct ties to the war industries, oil and banking.

A return to the republic may at this point be no more than wishful thinking, unless, the American people demand that the government become accountable to their needs. I don’t see any such awakening happening anytime soon. We have become a nation of weary, submissive, mesmerized and ignorant people.

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