The New York Times Will Print Almost Anything

And lest anyone miss the point, Powell’s article is clear that America is ready to go and shove its version of democracy down the throat of any nation who won’t kowtow. That’s not quite how he puts it, of course, but it is precisely what he means. He says the United States is “resolved to support the young democracies that have arisen in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa”. Other than those few nations who have given their blind obeisance to Washington, that is simply a canard. America has utterly failed to stand behind the duly elected governments of any of those nations unless the leaders are in Washington’s hip-pocket.

§ They have continued to support the vicious Paul Kagame of Rwanda while virtually ignoring the Herculean efforts toward democracy in its closest neighbour, Democratic Republic of Congo.
§ They have had no problem with Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe continuing to breathe the air of this planet.
§ They have no problem supporting the decidedly undemocratic government of China because, well, Wal-Mart needs China.
§ They have continued to work toward the overthrow of democratically elected Hugo Chávez of Venezuela because his nation prefers not to be forced into economic servitude to Washington.
§ They have continued to bully each and every nation whose democratically elected leaders chose not to answer the siren call of Bush’s march to war in Iraq, despite incredible arm-twisting.
§ They convicted an American company of ‘trading with the enemy’ under an outdated and bizarre 1917 law because this company committed the horrendous security breech of selling water purification equipment to Cuban hospitals.
§ They have continued to keep hostage a group of people they kidnapped from Afghanistan without charge or trial by simply labeling them as enemy combatants to avoid having to live up to international law.

The list is far too long, but you get my drift. American interests do not lie in fomenting democracy because democratic people might make democratic choices that are different from what America would want them to make; far better to have friendly, or at least affordable, dictators in those foreign lands.

No matter how you slice and dice or analyze Powell’s comments, they all boil down in the end to a surreptitious defense of "free trade". So let’s be clear: all the trade deals that have proliferated since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect 10 year ago today are anything but "free". This would include the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the General Agreement on Trade Services (GATS). These agreements are highly restrictive and they are designed with several goals in mind: to abolish trade unions; to circumvent the will of democracies to choose their own destinies; to force poorer nations to accept products and produce from the richer nations while blocking the sale of the output from those poor countries; to remove any controls over the movement of capital worldwide and thereby to circumvent the laws and wishes of the various peoples of the world.

Opponents of these trade deals are dismissed as ‘against progress’, or as standing in the way of poorer nations improving their positions. But these criticisms are absolute lies, repeated over and again by a lickspittle press … with the aforementioned Thomas Friedman and his New York Times as among the most vocal cheerleaders for this proposed rape of the world’s people.

Colin Powell can spout all the pathetic rhetoric he likes, and apparently he does like, but the simple facts are that America is not out to protect anything other than its own financial interests. Not the interests of the American people, mind you; but the interests of the few incredibly wealthy groups who long ago took away any pretense that America actually is a democracy. None of America’s military forays have anything to do with democracy — they are solely ventures for America’s taxpayers to enrich America’s corporations.

Welcome to the 2004 version of Newspeak. It is most unfortunate that the New York Times has so little integrity that it would print Powell’s drivel and even more unfortunate that the unthinking masses are going to fall for it in large numbers.

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Paul Harris is self-employed as a consultant providing businesses with the tools and expertise to reintegrate their sick or injured employees into the workplace. Canadian businesses can reach him at paul@working-solutions.ca. He has traveled extensively in what is usually known as "the Third World" and has an abiding interest in history, social justice, morality and, well, just about everything. Paul is also a freelance writer and can be reached at paul@escritoire.ca. He lives in Canada.

Note: What We Will Do in 2004 paul@escritoire.ca