Its the Corporations, Stupid!

By Servando Gonzalez
theintelhub.com
August 4, 2012

“It’s the economy, stupid” is a slight variation of the phrase “The economy, stupid” which James Carville coined as a campaign strategist of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against sitting president George H. W. Bush.

According to Republican media pundits, the main factor that most likely will destroy Obama’s dreams of a second term is the dismal state of the economy. Obviously, the American economy is in bad shape. And it is in bad shape because close to twenty percent of American workers have lost their jobs. And Mitt Romney is going to win the coming election because he will create jobs for Americans — or so they say.

Actually, both Council on Foreign Relations preferred candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, claim that they will solve the unemployment problem. But, apart from the fact that oil magnates, Wall Street bankers and CEOs of transnational corporations are the very ones who created the problem, no president has the power to create true jobs — not even their own jobs.

Just a few days ago, members of the U.S. Congress asked Federal reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, an agent of the Council on Foreign Relations conspirators, for a magic formula to create jobs. Finally, New York Sen. Charles (Chuck) Schumer (CFR) urged Bernanke “to take whatever actions you think would be most helpful in supporting a stronger economic recovery.” [1]

Of course, this is wishful thinking. Only brainwashed morons of the Republican and the Democratic factions of the Repucratic Party can truly believe that the U.S. government, much less the Fed, can create jobs. They seem to ignore that there is nothing in the Constitution about the government creating jobs. And the omission is because the Founding Fathers knew that creating jobs is far beyond the aim and possibilities of any government — unless they are government jobs, which history has shown are totally useless, unproductive and — sorry for using a PC word I hate — unsustainable.
On the other hand, it is a known truism that, in order to solve a problem, first you have to find the true source of it, and both politicians and media pundits either don’t grasp the true source of the problem or simply don’t seem to be interested in finding the true reason why Americans have lost their jobs.

Well, the reason why Americans have lost their jobs is because, as a direct result of the so-called “free trade”[2] and globalization, most corporations have sent abroad their well paying jobs. Unfortunately, during their trip abroad, the well paying jobs changed into poorly paying jobs. Actually, just a perfunctory study of the salaries and working conditions of the workers abroad who got these jobs formerly performed by American workers show that their salaries and working conditions are closer to slavery than capitalism.

Currently, most assembly lines of products destined to the U.S. market are made in factories owned by Foxconn, the company operating the factories in China. Workers in Foxconn factories lack the minimal health and safety standards and work a 60-hour workweek, and conditions and abuse make them veritable sweatshops.[3]

The case of Apple computer assembling iPods and iPhones in Communist China under conditions so inhuman that some workers have committed suicide,[4] is perhaps the most known, but not the only case. The phenomenon, however, is not new.

In the days of Nazi Germany, the I.G. Farben corporation, closely linked to Wall Street bankers, fully integrated concentration camp labor into modern industrial production. From mid-1942 on, the SS was in charge of providing slave workers to German corporations. A few years later, during the war, Germany’s economy had become fully dependent on slave labor. Close to 20 percent of Germany’s entire workforce consisted of slave workers in concentration camps.[5]

The same way as the Chinese government owns the workers in its factories, the Nazi government owned the slave workers and leased them out to private corporations. At the time, the Nazi Labor Minister ordered that all of the workers be fed, sheltered and treated in such a way that they produce to the highest possible extent at the lowest considerable cost. Apple’s “dormitories” in which Chinese workers, some of them under-age, are forced to live and only can escape by jumping out, are a just short step from I.G. Farben’s Nazi slave labor camps. Workers’ conditions in Mexican maquiladoras are not too different either.

And we need to recognize that slavery has proved to be a good thing, at least for the slave masters. The U.S.-based transnational corporations who sent their jobs abroad are making enormous profits. As an added bonus, they have found another way to pay even less taxes in the U.S. Even more important, it is totally legal. Given the fact that corporations have all the money to grease the right government palms, they have managed to encourage legislators to pass laws legalizing their criminal behavior.
Corporations don’t have moral or ethical constraints, therefore, they don’t have any problem with using slave labor. In addition, despite the fact that most American colleges and Universities have produced Diversity and Social Justice Statements challenging students to fight injustices arising from economic inequalities, they have shown a total lack of sympathy for slave workers producing gadgets for American corporations all around the world.

Does the U.S. government want to fix this problem and force the corporations to bring the jobs back home? Well, if it really wants to do it, the solution is very simple: it is called protectionism. Just by raising tariffs on companies bringing into the U.S. products made abroad that they used to make in the U.S. will solve the problem overnight.

Transnational corporations know it, and they see protectionism as their main threat. According to media pundit George Will, a faithful member of the Council on Foreign Relations, protectionism and anti-globalization could be lethal to the U.S. economy, because, “It threatens international trade, the engine of economic growth, which is the surest means of ameliorating poverty, which is the world’s principal cause of preventable death.”[6]

What Mr. Will does not mention, however, is that the so-called “free trade” and globalization have only benefitted the big transnational corporations, not the people. Far from ameliorating poverty, “free trade” and globalization have increased it. Moreover, “free trade” policies have stopped economic growth in most countries of the E.U. and in the U.S. Actually, the only economies that have grown are the personal fortunes of the CEOs and stockholders of these corporations, not the people working abroad for them. Early this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook shamelessly reported to a delighted group of shareholders that Apple has amassed $100 billion in cash.[7] In its quarterly statement released in April, Apple reported a staggering $39.2 billion in revenue.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government will not even attempt to create tariffs because currently most members of the three branches of the U.S. government have been bought like pigs in a country fair, and are in the pocket of some transnational corporations. As a result, our elected politicians will never bite the hand that feeds them. Currently, our touted “representative government” do not represent the American people any more, but the corporations whose largesse provide the funds who keep the corrupt politicians reelected.

So, is there another solution to the problem? Well, there is one, but perhaps it is not the best for American workers.

Some Mexican business leaders of the city of Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, are trying to convince American corporations like Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, and others, to move their production facilities from the Chinese sweatshops to the sweatshops in the Mexican city.[8] Their argument is sound: the cost of labor in Juarez is between $2.20 to $3 per hour, while in China labor rates fluctuate between $1.80 to $2.30 per hour,[9] but the lower transportation costs from just across the border may mean even bigger profits for the corporations.

Therefore, simple logic indicates that, as soon as the cost of labor in the U.S. goes below the cost of labor in Mexico and China, the big corporations will voluntarily bring their jobs back to America without any government pressure. And, once the jobs are back, and American workers are making less than $1.50 an hour working 60 hours a week in sweatshops lacking the most elementary health and safety conditions, the economy, that is, the corporations’ economy will improve even more, unemployment will be a thing of the past and everybody will be happy for years to come.
Don’t you agree?

Allied bombings during WWII spurred Nazi corporate industry demands for concentration camp labor and encouraged public acceptance of mass slave labor as a legitimate measure to win the war. How far are we today from accepting the implementation of slave labor in the U.S. as a necessary measure to win the War on Terror? I don’t think that the people who accepted the use of torture as a legitimate means to get information from suspects will have any scruples about the use of slave workers.

Now, how can teachers explain to their students that a country which allegedly fought a bloody civil war to end slavery, now is so eager to promote slavery abroad? How can they explain why some descendants of American slaves now stand in line for hours to buy ridiculously expensive shoes made by slave workers? Have Americans lost their sense of shame?

Corporate mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh, allegedly a defender of capitalism,[10] repeat over and over that everything corporations do is right, because it is legal. We should remember, though, that everything American slave owners were doing was legal, because at the time slavery was an activity protected by the laws of the land. After the War Between the States, however, anti-slavery laws were enacted, making slavery illegal.

The Founding Fathers of this country saw as self-evident truths “that all men[11] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It comes as no surprise, though, that oil magnates, Wall Street bankers and CEOs of transnational corporations ensconced in organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations Organizations, the Trilateral Commission and others they have created, are viciously anti-Constitution and work ever harder to destroy US sovereignty and substitute it with the slave masters’ paradise they call the New World Order.

Is it time to wage a war against transnational corporations who use slave work to make their products? Is it time to pass laws absolutely prohibiting the import and selling in this country of products made by slave workers? Or, if the Federal Government in cahoots with corporate capital chooses to ignore this crime, it is time for some anti-slavery states to secede from the Union?
During World War II, 8 to 10 million Jews, Roma (Gypsies), Poles, and other Eastern Europeans, were forced to work under inhuman conditions as slave workers for Nazi corporations, including IG Farben, Audi, BMW, Daimler-Benz, Siemens, Leica Camera, Volkswagen, Ford Werke, A.G. BASF, Bayer, Daimler Chrysler, Degussa-Huels, Fred Krupp, Hoechst and Siemens. Also, Japanese corporations like Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo and Nippon Steel extensively used slave workers.
Many years after the end of the war, some of this slave workers sued these corporations and asked for compensation for his labor. As expected, their claim was struck down by the Supreme Court as an improper state intrusion into foreign affairs. But now we have a totally different case, because the corporations who have been using slave work are American. Is it time for slave workers in Mexico and China to sue Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, and others who profited with their salve labor? I think so. As Americans love to say, sue the bastards! Hit them where it hurts: in their wallets.
In less than three generations, America has changed from a beacon of liberty to a projector of slavery and involuntary servitude all around the world.

Cuban patriot José Martí once said that watching in calm the commitment of a crime without trying to stop it makes you an accomplice. Either we stop right now American corporations from using slave labor abroad, or we all become part of this horrendous crime against humanity. We cannot seriously claim that America is the land of the free, while some American corporations enjoy the enormous profits produced by slave workers

Notes:
1. Anthony Mason, “Bernanke, Congress appeal to one another to fix U.S. economy,” CBSNews.com, July 17, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57474338/bernanke-congress-appeal-to-one-another-to-fix-u.s-economy/
2. Free trade is actually free only for big corporations. I.e., we have a free trade agreement with Mexico, NAFTA. Also, some very expensive prescription drugs are sold in Mexico for one tenth of their U.S. price. So, why nobody has tried to just drive a few miles across the border, buy them there, bring them to the U.S. and sell them here for a profit? Because if the customs agents in the border see them they will confiscate all of them. And don’t tell them that it is legal because most likely they will put you in jail.
3. According to CNN, an explosion on a Foxconn building on 16 May, 2011, killed two workers and injured 16.
4. An article on Wired magazine on February 2011 reported that in the past five years there have been 17 suicides at the Foxconn plant assembling Apple products.
5. Christopher Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage, 1995), pp. 84-86.6. George F. Will, “The Perils of Protectionism,” Newsweek, March 29, 2004, p. 84.7. See, Jay Youndaghl, “Apple’s Dirty Money,” East Bay Express, March 7-13, 2012, p. 7.
8. See, Gabriel Vasquez, “Could Bad PR and Increased Competitiveness Bring Apple to Juarez?” Juarez-El Paso Now, July 2012, p. 44.
9. Given the fact, however, that Apple and other companies do not pay the Chinese workers directly, but to Foxconn, owned by Chinese Communist Party leaders, one can surmise that the workers’ hourly pay is way below that figure.
10. I say “allegedly,” because Limbaught conveniently ignores that monopoly capitalism — the type of capitalism he loves — is not capitalism at all, but socialism, either in its Facist of Communist variety. Monopoly capitalists hate true capitalism.
11. In the pre-PC English language of the time “men” comprised both men and women.
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Servando Gonzalez is a Cuban-born American writer, semiologist and intelligence analyst. He has written books, essays and articles on Latin American history, intelligence, espionage, and semiotics. Servando is the author of Historia herética de la revolución fidelista, The Secret Fidel Castro, The Nuclear Deception and La madre de todas las conspiraciones, all available at Amazon.com.

He also hosted the documentaries Treason in America: The Council on Foreign Relations and Partners in Treason: The CFR-CIA-Castro Connection, produced by Xzault Media Group of San Leandro, California, both available at the author’s site at http://www.servandogonzalez.org.

His book, Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People appeared in late 2010 and is available at Amazon.com. Or download a .pdf copy of the book you can read on your computer or i-Pad. His book, OBAMANIA: The New Puppet and His Masters, is available at Amazon.com.

 Servando’s new book (in Spanish) La CIA, Fidel Castro, el Bogotazo y el Nuevo Orden Mundial, just appeared, and is available at Amazon.com and other bookstores online. He is already working on his next book, The Council on Foreign Relations and the Betrayal of the American People: A Chronology of Treason, which he plans to have ready by the end of this year.