Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Large Corporations Seek U.S.–European ‘Free Trade Agreement’ to Further Global Dominance

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Large Corporations Seek U.S.–European ‘Free Trade Agreement’ to Further Global Dominance

Click here to access article by Andrew Gavin Marshall from AlterNet.

Although Marshall's headline suggests that he sees the Empire's aggressive pursuit of "free trade agreements" as a way to promote their agenda of global dominance, he doesn't supply much information in this article as to how a US-European trade agreement would promote their global dominance. Instead, he supplies a lot of views from trans-Atlantic ruling class figures and think tanks to justify and promote such an agreement while narrowly focusing on corporations and the benefits they would enjoy to the detriment of ordinary people.

Corporations are undertaking unprecedented drives for the accumulation of profit and power, promoting agendas and projects which re-shape the world in their image, treating governments as toys, the environment as an enemy, and impoverishing populations around the world. We are witnessing a transnational social engineering project, driven by large corporations, aimed at facilitating economic, financial, political and social consolidation into their hands.

Welcome to the era of Cosmopolitical Corporate Consolidation and Colonization.

Thus, he seems to miss the fact that global corporations are the engines of the US-led Empire's financial elites who are the key drivers behind the quest for global dominance. As globalists, of course they want to exploit cheap labor wherever they can find it, and want to reduce social costs to a minimum in their home countries. But what is missing is the reality of this capitalist gang's pursuit of global dominance to counter any opposition both domestically and internationally, especially competition from the rising economies of the BRIC countries which have shown far too much independence.

As capitalist gangs come up against finite resource limits of the planet, the competition for resources and markets is becoming much more intense and dangerous. Hence, we are witnessing regional wars waged by powerful Empire sub-players such as Saudi Arabian led GCC and Israel to secure dominance in the Middle East along with the US Empire's subversion of Ukraine in opposition to Russia. Because Marshall's focus on corporations is too narrow, he misses the wider global geopolitical contest that is driving the Empire's quest for global dominance.