Pocketbook Power

For the past couple of months I've been slowly reading this book and mulling it over. It's very disturbing. The influence of multinational corporations today is far far greater than we think. And yet most of us think the government is to blame. To a point it is, but it is also manipulated by the corporate world to create and enforce policies that benefit the corporate world. As the African National Congress learned soon after taking power in apartheid South Africa in 1994, they had the government but they had no economic power and that is where the real power lies. Because of the economic strangleholds placed on the new government the people of South Africa are worse off today than when they lived under their apartheid masters. Boris Yeltsin destroyed the new Russian democracy to implement repressive economic policies. And Clinton backed him. I had no idea.

I wonder what is really going on in Iraq. A Los Angeles-based company is planning to open a Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience amusement park. So what United States government is going to make sure they make money on that deal? And where exactly is that money going to come from?