Saturday, May 06, 2006

Freedom = Corporate domination

Since I've always wondered what W really means when he talks about spreading freedom, I was struck by this clarification over at Alternet.
When George W. Bush says that he wants to spread freedom to every corner of the earth, he means it.

But of course the president that turned Soviet-era gulags into secret CIA prisons in order to do God-knows-what to God-knows-whom isn't talking about individual freedom. He means corporate freedom -- freedom for the great multinationals to extract everything they can from the world's resources and labor without the hindrance of public interest laws, environmental regulations or worker protections.
Alternet interviews author Juhasz who has written a nifty book called The Bush Agenda. I must get this book.
Antonia Juhasz: The Bush administration has implemented a particularly radical model of corporate globalization by which it has teamed overt military might -- full-scale invasion -- with the advancement of its corporate globalization agenda. And this model is particularly imperial -- that's one of the things that makes it different from, for example, the Reagan or Bush Sr. regimes. As opposed to simply replacing the head of a regime that is no longer serving the interests of the administration, the Bush team has gone further -- using a military invasion to fundamentally transform a country's political and economic structure.
And this is true regarding every single US domestic policy as well, except we didn't need a military invasion to pull this off. We've been invaded in different ways. I'll bring up public education.

In every state, the bulk of our tax money goes to fund public education though in most states, especially California, it's not sufficient to do a good enough job. NCLB, a federal legislation, will help divert a chunk of previously untapped state tax money into corporate hands. No wonder the WSJ is so pleased with this new industry sector. And I guess one could view this is as a bipartisan effort as well if you consider the Koch-funded DLC's cheerleading efforts regarding NCLB.