Fifeseebong_27
A Disturbance in the Force
I had to write a 1500-2000 word essay for my International Relations class, and here it is... (I included the footnotes, they're in stupid Chicago style)
Any feedback would be appreciated. The depth I could have/would have gone into with more words isn't there, and procrastinating gave me a day to write it so my transitions in a couple of places are weak
P.S. Being a human of Canadian origin, I thoroughly enjoyed setting up Michael Ignatieff as my opposition and making him look like the lascivious lapdog he is.
Diseased Empire, Altered States: Externalizing costs (lives) as “Spreading Freedom”
The influence of corporations in the crafting of government policy, especially foreign policy, is substantial to say the least. Comprehending the pathological, psychopathic nature of corporations is vital to understanding why the American government has dealt with various countries spanning the globe the way it has - when the way it has conducted itself flies in the face of the lofty ideals often espoused (freedom and democracy), but, in actuality are rarely given priority in constructing and implementing policy. The corporate media has proved an effective tool in shaping public opinion (or making sure that the public at-large doesn’t have one) about issues, as
“it is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will [successfully] integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth… this role requires systematic propaganda.”1 (Chomsky and Herman 2002, 1)
Intellectuals can provide further rhetorical cover for the abuses/excesses of empire with their forays into the media, essentially “join[ing] the monolith, adding greatly to its power and influence.”2 (Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins [hereafter AP & NM], 2002, 24) What all the flowery speech and proclamations of noble intent are designed to obscure is the reality that the American government (and the corporate interests its military roves around the globe protecting/imposing) consider (the vast majority of) human beings to be either: a) resources to be exploited; or, b) obstacles to profit/power (or under the rubric of the state, national security) that can/should be removed by any of a number of means. This view is inhumane in the extreme, attaching virtually no value to individuals, that they “are nothing apart from the social bodies of which [they are members],” but simple “cogs in the machine.”3 (Russell 1953, 58) Basically, the American government is a psychopathic entity – irresponsible, manipulative, grandiose, lacking empathy, refuses to accept responsibility for its actions, and deals with others superficially (this partial list of traits is borrowed from Dr. Robert Hare’s diagnostic checklist).
A corporation, “like the psychopathic personality it resembles, is programmed to exploit others for profit”, and is “legally compelled to externalize costs without regard for the harm it may cause to people, communities, and the natural environment.”4 (Bakan, 2004, 69-73) Thus, all manners of inhumanity or cost cutting can be justified, given the proper cost-benefit projections. For example, after calculating the cost of the 500 fuel fed fire fatalities per year in the U.S. to be $2.40 per car,
“the cost of ensuring that fuel tanks did not explode in crashes, estimated by the company (GM) to be $8.59 per automobile, meant the company could save $6.19 per automobile… if it allowed people to die in fuel-fed fires rather than alter the design of vehicles to avoid such fires.”5 (Bakan, 2004, 63)
That only scratches the surface of corporate callousness to human suffering. In response to the extremely favorable business climate set up in the “Southern Cone” of South America following coups orchestrated or supported by the American government (Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976) more leeway was given to anti-union forces. At the Ford factory in Buenos Aires, “ a battalion of one hundred soldiers was permanently stationed… prowl[ing] the facility, grabbing and hooding the most active union members… [taking] them to a detention facility that had been set up inside the factory gates” before being shipped off to outside prisons where the beatings and torture continued.6 (Klein 2007, 128-9) Being a fictional entity (like a government), a corporation cannot have a conscience. Its sole prerogative is to profit, no matter the means to that end. That is (literally) the bottom line when it comes to a corporation and understanding its motives, so regarding any and all statements about the altruistic motives behind philanthropic endeavors as platitudes used to mollify the public and brand themselves as responsible members of society should not be seen as unduly harsh (even if some of the employees of a corporation earnestly believe in what they are doing).
The American government has negotiated agreements that are unabashedly pro-investor/multinational corporation, often (in the case of NAFTA) “ rammed through over public opposition, which remained firm despite the near unanimous and enthusiastic backing of state and corporate power, including their media.”7 (Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order [hereafter POP], 1999, 132) Which does nothing to dispel the image that “the “national interest” will be defined by power centers, operating in closed chambers.”8 (Chomsky, POP, 1999, 137) These agreements only serve to further entrench corporate power, with the governments “facilitation of the interests of corporations” justified in circuitous terms – “if serving corporations’ interests advances the public good, then the public good is advanced when corporations’ interests are served.”9 (Bakan 2004, 156)
These interests are not synonymous with democracy and freedom abroad (with exceptions for the people willing to elect leaders who are free to conform to the “Washington Consensus” or suffer the consequences). Differently put, by Woodrow Wilson in a 1907 lecture at Columbia University: “Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process… the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down.”10 (Zinn 2005, 362)
The process of making sure closed doors are battered down, and opened ones stay pried loose can be a messy job, with the media playing a role in framing the discussion (read: boundaries of debate), or making sure there isn’t one, depending on the parties involved. When: (democratically-elected) Jacobo Arbenz seized land owned by the United Fruit Company, Guatemala is made to endure “a CIA-organized coup… initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions…totaling more than 200,000 victims”11 (Blum 2000, 130-1) ; or, Ho Chi Minh, attempting to throw off the yoke of French colonial rule of Vietnam, and models the Vietnamese constitution after the American, his country is subjected to the
“driv[ing] millions of people into what amounted to concentration camps, [barbed-wire ringed “strategic hamlets”]… chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops and ground cover [Mass spraying of Agent Orange, Dioxin, and Napalm]… densely populated areas [were] demolished by saturation bombing”12 (Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, 2004, 38),
the corporate media’s furthest venture into criticism frequently amounts to having a hawk and dove debate between the narrow poles of the “consensus of elites for whom the issues [are] limited to tactics and expedience.”13 (Chomsky and Herman, MC, 2002, 237) The closest they come to an expression of regret or an apology would be to portray the U.S., “alone among nations, as a selfless (if rather oafish) public benefactor… though frequently blundering in an excess of warmhearted generosity.”14 (Chomsky, AP & NM, 2002, 312)
Establishment intellectuals, Michael Ignatieff for instance, will tout the merits of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of the founder’s form of government spreading the world over by “the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion”, and insist that “Jefferson’s vision of America hasn’t degenerated into an ideology of self-congratulation” because “it wouldn’t have inspired Americans to do the hard work of reducing the gap between dream and reality.”15 (Ignatieff, Who Are Americans… 2005, 1-2) While I can concede that it would be hard work (personally speaking) to construct official justifications for policies that have murdered millions of innocents in the post-WWII era (for little more than being stupid enough to have been born in an unaccommodating country deemed “vital” to the American “national interest” at one time or another – consequently having their doors “battered down”), Ignatieff contradicts himself later in the article by implying that American soldiers dying in Iraq will be a
“noble thing if one day 26 million Iraqis could live their lives without fear in a country of their own. But it would also have been a noble dream if the South Vietnamese had been able to resist the armored divisions of North Vietnam and to maintain such freedom as they had. Lyndon Johnson said the reason Americans were there was the ''principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania,'' the right of people to choose their own path to change (my emphasis).”16 (Ignatieff, Who Are Americans…, 2005, 6)
The work necessary for Iraqis to attain freedom (and any number of former client state’s populations) would be (speculation coming…) much less arduous had the American government not installed Saddam Hussein (or Suharto, or Pinochet, or Diem…) in the first place. The fact that a potential future Canadian head of state thinks that America blocking the re-unification of Vietnam agreed upon at Geneva in 1954 because, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “a settlement based on free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States [Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam] to Communist control,”17 (Zinn 2005, 472) is America fighting for the “right of people to choose their own path to change” would be a little disheartening if it weren’t so… expected. Weighing in on the “lesser evils” a democracy must be prepared to use in a battle with “terrorism” (which could easily be replaced by the “Communism” of the Cold War era) Ignatieff states “to defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war,” the questionable validity of the strategy implied by the “may have to” has vanished in two lines, “the question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions.”18 (Ignatieff, Lesser Evils, 2004, 2) Arguing against pre-emptive war, torture, and lack of due process is pretty easy. Pre-emptive wars are wrong, whether to increase Germany’s physical “Lebensraum”, or ostensibly to increase “American economic Lebensraum” as Isaiah Bowman would call it.19 (Engdahl 2007, 106)
Torture and indefinite detention are easy to argue against as well, because as Ignatieff puts it,
“Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be.”20 (Ignatieff, Lesser Evils, 2004, 9)
A Republican Party Committee Congressional report from 1997 that “confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organizations, including [Tim Osman’s] Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda,” wasn’t newsworthy enough to dislodge the Monica Lewinsky scandal that Republicans were trying impeach Clinton over – “‘for having lied to the American people,” [while] “the more substantive ‘foreign policy lies’ regarding drug running and covert operations in the Balkans” remained untouched by both major parties.21 (Chossudovsky 2005, 42) This (and previous examples of state violence) lends credence to Noam Chomsky’s assertion from numerous books and articles, that if the American government wanted to dramatically reduce the incidence of “terrorism” they’d simply have to stop participating in/funding it.
The impunity with which the American government acts on behalf of its MNCs is interesting in its dichotomous character. Acts are carried out abroad, with the security of knowing they can get away with basically anything while having a massive propaganda system (media) to strangle honest debate internally. Conversely, the murderous violence carried out to further entrench socio-economic dominance by a few families (Rockefeller, Bush, DuPont, etc.) is done to prevent any other “successful” models for development from being established, belying an insecurity about the actual truth of whether or not neoliberal “market” economies are best.
In sum, corporations, psychopathic in their nature, are not promoters of freedom and democracy, as evidenced by the numerous coups supported or orchestrated by corporations (United Fruit/Guatemala, ITT/Chile, BP/Iran, etc.), as well as the support of anti-union thugs/government soldiers who the globe over have been able to harass, beat, torture, and even kill union representatives after a more “conducive” business climate is made to happen with a helping hand from Uncle Sam. The American government will frequently negotiate trade agreements that give corporations and investors even more power over foreign populations and their governments despite quite vocal internal public opposition. The American government has utilized multiple modes of savagery to attempt subduing non-compliant countries, whether conventional (carpet bombing/mining of Indochina and elsewhere), chemical weapons (Agent Orange, Dioxin, and Napalm in Indochina, or depleted uranium in both acts of the Iraq War), and economic as well (Notably Cuba and Iraq – as a wartime intermission). These and other actions taken in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” are skewed in their presentation, by the subservient corporate media, and hypocritical intellectual circles to make it seem as though the American government is a benign actor at worst, acting on Jeffersonian ideals - but poorly executed (Iraq and Vietnam), and at best Washington is a “shining city on a hill” for all to admire and aspire to be like. Their unfortunate enemies, however will stoop to any lows, like terrorism and subversion of democracy to achieve their goals, which America would never do, honest. It isn’t hard then to designate the American government a psychopathic entity, much like corporations, which are the creations of governments.
POSTSCRIPT
Not understanding precisely what I’m trying to say could give the impression I think all members of governments or corporations, because of the psychopathic nature of the institutions, are therefore psychopaths themselves. This is not the case. I agree with Dr. Robert Hare that “they can function normally outside the corporation [or government]… they love their children, they love their wife, and in fact their friends are friends, not things to be used.”22 (Bakan 2004, 56) However, I think it would be wise to consider the fact that there are psychopaths,
“various hybrids of these anomalies, and more rare anomalies known or unknown or insufficiently described, comprise the pool lurking within societies. Such a pool exists in all countries of the world, (but its composition varies) consisting of from 4% to 9% of the total population.
Detailed knowledge on the nature of all of these anomalies, particularly their biological properties, is basic to any prospect of… practical action in all fields that might help to shield humanity from the actions of such social pathogens.”23 (Lobaczewski 2006, 232)
On a closing note, just for consideration in light of these facts, “Nothing is personal in politics, because politics is theater. It is part of the job to pretend to have emotions that you do not actually feel.”24 (my emphasis) (Ignatieff, Getting Iraq Wrong, 2007, 2)
Footnotes
1. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 1.
2. Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: The New Press, 2002), 24.
3. Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), 58.
4. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004), 69-73.
5. Ibid. 63.
6. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2007), 128-9.
7. Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 132.
8. Ibid. 137.
9. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004), 156
10. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States of America: 1492 – Present (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 362
11. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000), 130-1
12. Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (New York: Owl Books, 2004), 38.
13. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 237.
14. Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: The New Press, 2002), 312.
15. Michael Ignatieff, “Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom is Theirs to Spread?”, The New York Times Magazine, June 26 2005
16. Ibid.
17. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States of America: 1492 – Present (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 472
18. Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils”, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004
19. F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Montreal: Global Research 2007), 106.
20. Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils”, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004
21. Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism” (Montreal: Global Research, 2005), 42.
22. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004), 56.
23. Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (Grande Prairie, AB:
Red Pill Press, 2006), 232.
24. Michael Ignatieff, “Getting Iraq Wrong”, The New York Times Magazine, August 5 2007
Any feedback would be appreciated. The depth I could have/would have gone into with more words isn't there, and procrastinating gave me a day to write it so my transitions in a couple of places are weak
P.S. Being a human of Canadian origin, I thoroughly enjoyed setting up Michael Ignatieff as my opposition and making him look like the lascivious lapdog he is.
Diseased Empire, Altered States: Externalizing costs (lives) as “Spreading Freedom”
The influence of corporations in the crafting of government policy, especially foreign policy, is substantial to say the least. Comprehending the pathological, psychopathic nature of corporations is vital to understanding why the American government has dealt with various countries spanning the globe the way it has - when the way it has conducted itself flies in the face of the lofty ideals often espoused (freedom and democracy), but, in actuality are rarely given priority in constructing and implementing policy. The corporate media has proved an effective tool in shaping public opinion (or making sure that the public at-large doesn’t have one) about issues, as
“it is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will [successfully] integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth… this role requires systematic propaganda.”1 (Chomsky and Herman 2002, 1)
Intellectuals can provide further rhetorical cover for the abuses/excesses of empire with their forays into the media, essentially “join[ing] the monolith, adding greatly to its power and influence.”2 (Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins [hereafter AP & NM], 2002, 24) What all the flowery speech and proclamations of noble intent are designed to obscure is the reality that the American government (and the corporate interests its military roves around the globe protecting/imposing) consider (the vast majority of) human beings to be either: a) resources to be exploited; or, b) obstacles to profit/power (or under the rubric of the state, national security) that can/should be removed by any of a number of means. This view is inhumane in the extreme, attaching virtually no value to individuals, that they “are nothing apart from the social bodies of which [they are members],” but simple “cogs in the machine.”3 (Russell 1953, 58) Basically, the American government is a psychopathic entity – irresponsible, manipulative, grandiose, lacking empathy, refuses to accept responsibility for its actions, and deals with others superficially (this partial list of traits is borrowed from Dr. Robert Hare’s diagnostic checklist).
A corporation, “like the psychopathic personality it resembles, is programmed to exploit others for profit”, and is “legally compelled to externalize costs without regard for the harm it may cause to people, communities, and the natural environment.”4 (Bakan, 2004, 69-73) Thus, all manners of inhumanity or cost cutting can be justified, given the proper cost-benefit projections. For example, after calculating the cost of the 500 fuel fed fire fatalities per year in the U.S. to be $2.40 per car,
“the cost of ensuring that fuel tanks did not explode in crashes, estimated by the company (GM) to be $8.59 per automobile, meant the company could save $6.19 per automobile… if it allowed people to die in fuel-fed fires rather than alter the design of vehicles to avoid such fires.”5 (Bakan, 2004, 63)
That only scratches the surface of corporate callousness to human suffering. In response to the extremely favorable business climate set up in the “Southern Cone” of South America following coups orchestrated or supported by the American government (Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976) more leeway was given to anti-union forces. At the Ford factory in Buenos Aires, “ a battalion of one hundred soldiers was permanently stationed… prowl[ing] the facility, grabbing and hooding the most active union members… [taking] them to a detention facility that had been set up inside the factory gates” before being shipped off to outside prisons where the beatings and torture continued.6 (Klein 2007, 128-9) Being a fictional entity (like a government), a corporation cannot have a conscience. Its sole prerogative is to profit, no matter the means to that end. That is (literally) the bottom line when it comes to a corporation and understanding its motives, so regarding any and all statements about the altruistic motives behind philanthropic endeavors as platitudes used to mollify the public and brand themselves as responsible members of society should not be seen as unduly harsh (even if some of the employees of a corporation earnestly believe in what they are doing).
The American government has negotiated agreements that are unabashedly pro-investor/multinational corporation, often (in the case of NAFTA) “ rammed through over public opposition, which remained firm despite the near unanimous and enthusiastic backing of state and corporate power, including their media.”7 (Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order [hereafter POP], 1999, 132) Which does nothing to dispel the image that “the “national interest” will be defined by power centers, operating in closed chambers.”8 (Chomsky, POP, 1999, 137) These agreements only serve to further entrench corporate power, with the governments “facilitation of the interests of corporations” justified in circuitous terms – “if serving corporations’ interests advances the public good, then the public good is advanced when corporations’ interests are served.”9 (Bakan 2004, 156)
These interests are not synonymous with democracy and freedom abroad (with exceptions for the people willing to elect leaders who are free to conform to the “Washington Consensus” or suffer the consequences). Differently put, by Woodrow Wilson in a 1907 lecture at Columbia University: “Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process… the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down.”10 (Zinn 2005, 362)
The process of making sure closed doors are battered down, and opened ones stay pried loose can be a messy job, with the media playing a role in framing the discussion (read: boundaries of debate), or making sure there isn’t one, depending on the parties involved. When: (democratically-elected) Jacobo Arbenz seized land owned by the United Fruit Company, Guatemala is made to endure “a CIA-organized coup… initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions…totaling more than 200,000 victims”11 (Blum 2000, 130-1) ; or, Ho Chi Minh, attempting to throw off the yoke of French colonial rule of Vietnam, and models the Vietnamese constitution after the American, his country is subjected to the
“driv[ing] millions of people into what amounted to concentration camps, [barbed-wire ringed “strategic hamlets”]… chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops and ground cover [Mass spraying of Agent Orange, Dioxin, and Napalm]… densely populated areas [were] demolished by saturation bombing”12 (Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, 2004, 38),
the corporate media’s furthest venture into criticism frequently amounts to having a hawk and dove debate between the narrow poles of the “consensus of elites for whom the issues [are] limited to tactics and expedience.”13 (Chomsky and Herman, MC, 2002, 237) The closest they come to an expression of regret or an apology would be to portray the U.S., “alone among nations, as a selfless (if rather oafish) public benefactor… though frequently blundering in an excess of warmhearted generosity.”14 (Chomsky, AP & NM, 2002, 312)
Establishment intellectuals, Michael Ignatieff for instance, will tout the merits of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of the founder’s form of government spreading the world over by “the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion”, and insist that “Jefferson’s vision of America hasn’t degenerated into an ideology of self-congratulation” because “it wouldn’t have inspired Americans to do the hard work of reducing the gap between dream and reality.”15 (Ignatieff, Who Are Americans… 2005, 1-2) While I can concede that it would be hard work (personally speaking) to construct official justifications for policies that have murdered millions of innocents in the post-WWII era (for little more than being stupid enough to have been born in an unaccommodating country deemed “vital” to the American “national interest” at one time or another – consequently having their doors “battered down”), Ignatieff contradicts himself later in the article by implying that American soldiers dying in Iraq will be a
“noble thing if one day 26 million Iraqis could live their lives without fear in a country of their own. But it would also have been a noble dream if the South Vietnamese had been able to resist the armored divisions of North Vietnam and to maintain such freedom as they had. Lyndon Johnson said the reason Americans were there was the ''principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania,'' the right of people to choose their own path to change (my emphasis).”16 (Ignatieff, Who Are Americans…, 2005, 6)
The work necessary for Iraqis to attain freedom (and any number of former client state’s populations) would be (speculation coming…) much less arduous had the American government not installed Saddam Hussein (or Suharto, or Pinochet, or Diem…) in the first place. The fact that a potential future Canadian head of state thinks that America blocking the re-unification of Vietnam agreed upon at Geneva in 1954 because, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “a settlement based on free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States [Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam] to Communist control,”17 (Zinn 2005, 472) is America fighting for the “right of people to choose their own path to change” would be a little disheartening if it weren’t so… expected. Weighing in on the “lesser evils” a democracy must be prepared to use in a battle with “terrorism” (which could easily be replaced by the “Communism” of the Cold War era) Ignatieff states “to defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war,” the questionable validity of the strategy implied by the “may have to” has vanished in two lines, “the question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions.”18 (Ignatieff, Lesser Evils, 2004, 2) Arguing against pre-emptive war, torture, and lack of due process is pretty easy. Pre-emptive wars are wrong, whether to increase Germany’s physical “Lebensraum”, or ostensibly to increase “American economic Lebensraum” as Isaiah Bowman would call it.19 (Engdahl 2007, 106)
Torture and indefinite detention are easy to argue against as well, because as Ignatieff puts it,
“Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be.”20 (Ignatieff, Lesser Evils, 2004, 9)
A Republican Party Committee Congressional report from 1997 that “confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organizations, including [Tim Osman’s] Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda,” wasn’t newsworthy enough to dislodge the Monica Lewinsky scandal that Republicans were trying impeach Clinton over – “‘for having lied to the American people,” [while] “the more substantive ‘foreign policy lies’ regarding drug running and covert operations in the Balkans” remained untouched by both major parties.21 (Chossudovsky 2005, 42) This (and previous examples of state violence) lends credence to Noam Chomsky’s assertion from numerous books and articles, that if the American government wanted to dramatically reduce the incidence of “terrorism” they’d simply have to stop participating in/funding it.
The impunity with which the American government acts on behalf of its MNCs is interesting in its dichotomous character. Acts are carried out abroad, with the security of knowing they can get away with basically anything while having a massive propaganda system (media) to strangle honest debate internally. Conversely, the murderous violence carried out to further entrench socio-economic dominance by a few families (Rockefeller, Bush, DuPont, etc.) is done to prevent any other “successful” models for development from being established, belying an insecurity about the actual truth of whether or not neoliberal “market” economies are best.
In sum, corporations, psychopathic in their nature, are not promoters of freedom and democracy, as evidenced by the numerous coups supported or orchestrated by corporations (United Fruit/Guatemala, ITT/Chile, BP/Iran, etc.), as well as the support of anti-union thugs/government soldiers who the globe over have been able to harass, beat, torture, and even kill union representatives after a more “conducive” business climate is made to happen with a helping hand from Uncle Sam. The American government will frequently negotiate trade agreements that give corporations and investors even more power over foreign populations and their governments despite quite vocal internal public opposition. The American government has utilized multiple modes of savagery to attempt subduing non-compliant countries, whether conventional (carpet bombing/mining of Indochina and elsewhere), chemical weapons (Agent Orange, Dioxin, and Napalm in Indochina, or depleted uranium in both acts of the Iraq War), and economic as well (Notably Cuba and Iraq – as a wartime intermission). These and other actions taken in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” are skewed in their presentation, by the subservient corporate media, and hypocritical intellectual circles to make it seem as though the American government is a benign actor at worst, acting on Jeffersonian ideals - but poorly executed (Iraq and Vietnam), and at best Washington is a “shining city on a hill” for all to admire and aspire to be like. Their unfortunate enemies, however will stoop to any lows, like terrorism and subversion of democracy to achieve their goals, which America would never do, honest. It isn’t hard then to designate the American government a psychopathic entity, much like corporations, which are the creations of governments.
POSTSCRIPT
Not understanding precisely what I’m trying to say could give the impression I think all members of governments or corporations, because of the psychopathic nature of the institutions, are therefore psychopaths themselves. This is not the case. I agree with Dr. Robert Hare that “they can function normally outside the corporation [or government]… they love their children, they love their wife, and in fact their friends are friends, not things to be used.”22 (Bakan 2004, 56) However, I think it would be wise to consider the fact that there are psychopaths,
“various hybrids of these anomalies, and more rare anomalies known or unknown or insufficiently described, comprise the pool lurking within societies. Such a pool exists in all countries of the world, (but its composition varies) consisting of from 4% to 9% of the total population.
Detailed knowledge on the nature of all of these anomalies, particularly their biological properties, is basic to any prospect of… practical action in all fields that might help to shield humanity from the actions of such social pathogens.”23 (Lobaczewski 2006, 232)
On a closing note, just for consideration in light of these facts, “Nothing is personal in politics, because politics is theater. It is part of the job to pretend to have emotions that you do not actually feel.”24 (my emphasis) (Ignatieff, Getting Iraq Wrong, 2007, 2)
Footnotes
1. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 1.
2. Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: The New Press, 2002), 24.
3. Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), 58.
4. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004), 69-73.
5. Ibid. 63.
6. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2007), 128-9.
7. Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 132.
8. Ibid. 137.
9. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004), 156
10. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States of America: 1492 – Present (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 362
11. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000), 130-1
12. Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (New York: Owl Books, 2004), 38.
13. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 237.
14. Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: The New Press, 2002), 312.
15. Michael Ignatieff, “Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom is Theirs to Spread?”, The New York Times Magazine, June 26 2005
16. Ibid.
17. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States of America: 1492 – Present (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 472
18. Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils”, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004
19. F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Montreal: Global Research 2007), 106.
20. Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils”, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004
21. Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism” (Montreal: Global Research, 2005), 42.
22. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004), 56.
23. Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (Grande Prairie, AB:
Red Pill Press, 2006), 232.
24. Michael Ignatieff, “Getting Iraq Wrong”, The New York Times Magazine, August 5 2007
