Corporations

        This is a very serious subject, and perhaps the most important of all my posts about Politics. In this paragraph I will attempt to explain why allowing capitalism and corporations to do certain things is, I'll say it, an evil idea. I will also try to explain why we are allowing these companies to do these things. Also, I will jump around a bit. I will provide an example (the Iraq War) and explain what you can interperet from it.
          March 20, 2003. That is the date of the start of what has been called the Invasion of Iraq. Our troops invaded the northern portion of the country via the southern portion. We quickly staked up positions, and prepared to wage a war that would last nearly seven years and cost over twenty thousand American lives.
           Now there are a few things you need to know. First, the middle east is where about 55% of all of the oil extracting occurs on earth. Iraq has the third-largest amount of oil wells of any other middle-eastern country. It was the perfect spot for the terrorists to attack, but it was even more perfect for the United States.
           Why? Because it was a split nation. It had operated under comunism for several years now, and the people were getting restless. Finally, the southern half of the country rebelled, and tried to fight for democratic freedom. It gave America a clean, right reason to go and invade.
             At the time, Al-Qaeda had organized his group of terrorists, and considering somehow attacking Israel. He viewed the uprising in Iraq to be nothing, and that the better-equiped north would easily quash the strange patriotic feelings. At least, he thought that until America invaded.
              When America started to push at northern Iraq, Al-Qaeda viewed this as an obvious victory for them. So he switched his attention, and began his march to Iraq, eventually meeting our soldiers in battle.
              That is one proof of America's real intent in the war to seize natural resources. President George Bush declared it in the name of wiping out terrorism, when really America brought the terrorists to the country. He purposely lied to make America look good.
               This also brings me to the first proof of the corruptness in corporations. They are called economic hit men. The role of an economic hit man was to go into underdeveloped countries, like Panama and Iraq, and convince them to take out huge developmental loans for corporations like World Bank and USAID. The countries, who were obviously unable to pay back completely, were pressured by American political power until they were forced to pay them back in other ways, like giving up natural resources.
                In his book, Confessions of and Economical Hit Man, John Perkins made this statement:
             
                Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly-paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.
               
                 This was exactly the purpose of the War in Iraq. The corporations were using the government to the extreme to gain access to a rich amount of oil wells. Did they succeed? You bet they did. We now control three-fourths of Iraqi oil wells, and because of this, the people suffer, the economy is shot, and we, America, caused it.
                 Am I done showing the evils of corporations? Not in the slightest, for I still have to tell the story of our troops, and how corporations made their lives miserable, and also the private horrors we have commited on the Iraqi people
                 With the war in Iraq came problems for the military. It could not care for all of the needs of their troops. So, the government decided to use private contractors and corporations to care for the troops and provide a few basic but essential military needs. The corporations worked as hard and as cheaply as possible to squeeze every last bit of money out of the government.
                Here is a breakdown of what corporation controlled what.                 
Triton, CACI- In charge of torture. They took random people off of the streets with either very vauge reasons or no reason at all. They were put into the major prison Abu Ghraib prison, and always shared a cell with a CACI interrogator. They were treated like animals, and were tortured in horrific ways. The people they hired, most of them had not been confirmed loyal to America in the first place, and were unsupervised completely. Triton provided linguists, who were not trained or test and usually underquality. Many lives were lost because of these undertrained people.
               If a soldier hurts a civilian, they are court marshaled. If a contractor's hiree kills a civil, they are sent home, and can come back next week under a new contractor. When a group of these hirees decided to speak out against their contractors, saying that they were acting under orders, they were sentenced to 18 years, and not even an investigation was made against the contractors themselves.

KBR/Halliburton- contracted to build laudry, shower, and mess hall buildings, supply trucks, and hundreds of other small jobs, and an to provide for those things. They took over hundreds of jobs of other mechanics, soldiers, and other professions to try to gain more money. Most of the drivers of their trucks were civilians, and most weren't even from our countries, but the surrounding middle east countries.
           Convoys of trucks were attacked, and many civilians lost their lives. Entire trucks exploded. The drivers had no maps, had no protection, had under-date communication devices etc. The roads they had to travel were hostile, and the drivers were not told of this. The contractors knew that they could get money and replace the expendable civilians with more.
            All of those lives because of the billions of dollars the contractors made every year from the government and military. They basically murdered civilians for their own gain.
            Next, Halliburton was hired to provide clean, safe; drinking, showering, and cooking water. A water purification tester, Ben Carter, was alerted by an officer that he had seen something wiggle in his toilet water. Ben went out and tested the water in the storage tanks. Not a trace of chlorine or other purifiers. Each tank was completely contaminated and riddled with disease upon disease like Typhus and Malaria. The corporation was only interested in cheap profit, and not in how it would affect the troops. The soldiers may come home without a bullet wound, but they will come home with pathogens in their blood, and they won't even know to get tested because they trust the corporation.
              Another offense, this time KBR, is concerned with dining halls and food. KBR had three mealtimes a day, mealtimes that any terrorist or Iraqi knew almost to heart. That is why almost all of single-man attacks were at dining halls. All this because KBR refused to do a 24-hour feeding plan where they always have food available because it costs them more money. They sacrifice lives and positions to save money and to earn profit, because they are paid by how many soldiers they feed, not by how many the save.
              Also, Halliburton charged soldiers forty dollars for a six-pack of coke or pepsi that the army gave for free. The sodas were produced right there in the desert, so there was no huge transportation cost. Halliburton just wanted to squeeze every last drop out of the soldiers. They also charged 99 dollars for every bag of laundry, and it always came back even worse. The soldiers were forbidden to do it by themselves, they had to use KBR.
              Both companies also would buy all the wrong and unneccesary equipment, and then burn it all to claim it as a loss and gain money, and buy even more wrong equipment. And the trucks had no oil filters, so that the engines would break soon, and they could bill the government for new trucks. Even if there was a popped tire, there were no spares, and they blew it up and bought a new truck. Not only that, but they would run empty trucks and bill the government for them. All of this came out, but they were not tried or punished or even forced to pay money back.
           We could have gotten Iraqis to do it better, cheaper, and get them off the streets and into jobs so they could have hope.

          All of these statements and this evidence came directly from soldiers, workers, and leaders that have realized what they did. And these are only four corporations, at only one time. Think of how much damage and money all of the corporations do, and not only to other countries and the military, but to you and me as taxpayers.
          The corporations are the reason why we are in a recession, why the whole world is struggling, and there are no restrictions, no lines drawn, and no announcement of bad deeds to the public. Basically, corporations have free reign.
           But why, why has the government not cracked down on this immediately? Because the corporations pay them, bribe them, lobby for them, and support them so that they look the other way, and so they don't get reported. They hold all the money and power cards, and whatever the corporations say goes.
            Only two years ago did Joe Biden allow our phone lines to be tapped by the phone companies, and only a couple decades ago did our own head of the Department of Public Welfare paid off to announce that smoking did no damage and was not bad for your health by cigarrette companies, because Congress was considering a tobacco ban. That announcement ended it.
            Truly, our country is run by those who have money, and not by the people. It is up to us as citizens to recognize this and to fight back and end the oppression. We can decide our futures, and the futures of our children.