"Political power", said Mao Tse-Tung, "grows out of the barrel of a gun". In the covert shadows of the last Gulf War, the G7 proved itself to be the world's largest barrel. The G7 is not a social club of 7 industrialized nations having a common political ideology, but rather, a conglomerate possessing the same economic-gunpowder: Corporatism!

Corporatism is an economic system which entails the preservation and sanctification of the private fortunes of the major industrial and cartel monopolies, whose syndicates back political leaders and are themselves then brought into the government to run the levers of the economy. In the ideological sense, Corporatism is a government of vested interests, by vested interests, and for vested interests!

Corporatism, undoubtedly, has over the centuries been in existence in one modified form or the other. The presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler, were largely backed by the interlocking directorate of many of the same capitalist interests: Standard Oil, General Electric, I.G. Farben, General Motor, Dupont, and the DuPont, Morgan, Rockefeller and Warburg families.

During the Allied Bombing of Germany in the last World War, the factories of Standard Oil, General Electric, General Motors, Ford and I.G. Farben within Germany -- which were churning out war materials for the Reich -- were "off limits" as targets. Instead, the Allied High Command took the moral plunge and began the "strategic" bombing of civilian populations in Germany. In one instance, an estimated 2,592 Allied planes dropped a total of 8,334 tons of bombs in Hamburg. The onslaught left forty thousand dead, and 214,000 homes destroyed. The military objective was to cripple the Nazi war machine and break the Germans' will.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the recent Gulf War gave Corporatism -- through the auspices of the United Nations Organization -- a whole new corpus, and may have provided the ground work for the formation of the G7. In any event, the invasion of Kuwait was not by any account a singular event in history. Nor did the invasion displace Kuwaitis in the manner the Bosnian- Moslems and Croats were being massively displaced in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Instead, what was principally at stake in the invasion of Kuwait was the future of Corporatism and its coveted growth in that region

Showcasing Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Gulf War provided the Allied Forces an unparalleled opportunity to showcase their new weapons systems. According to Kathryn Schultz, research analyst at the Center for Defense Information, the Gulf War was "a deadly advertisement campaign used to boost the sales of U.S. weapons around the world". Immediately after the Gulf War, U.S. arms sales jumped from $23 billion a year to over $63 billion.

In the 43-day Gulf War, Allied planes dropped an estimated 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq and Kuwait. Cost of reconstructing Kuwait was estimated at fifty billion dollars, thus setting the stage for several American and European companies to sign multi-billion dollar contracts for the reconstruction of Kuwait. Even more appalling are inferences that some of these companies were working on reconstruction designs four months prior to the war. This would imply that the blueprint for reconstruction was based upon a predetermined blueprint for the destruction of Kuwait by Allied Bombs!

Zones of Exploitive Influence and Incarceration

Similarly, the war in the Balkans – while operating on the pretext of historic rivalries dating back half a millennium – had its roots in the imperialist drive to first destroy existing socialism and then divide the spoils among the imperialist powers involved in the break-up. It was Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the 1914 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, who brilliantly conceptualized the essence of imperialist capitalism and presented it in a nutshell: "Imperialism is characterized by the concentration of the control of production, resources and wealth into ever fewer hands, the formation of cartels and trusts, the concentration of financial power in the hands of a few large central banks and a growing rivalry, tending toward war, between "great" powers racing to divide the world into zones of influence".

The breakdown of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, are glaring examples of "great powers racing to divide the world into zones of influence". In the Balkans, Serbian atrocities were singled out in order to establish a new economic chessboard in the region. Serbia has less industry and wealth than Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Naturally, Serbia was of lesser interest to the G7 as an economic chessboard than Bosnia and Croatia. Checkmating the Serbs from taking over Bosnia or Croatia, assured an economically stable and uncontested field for corporate welfare.

In the case of Somalia, military intervention had been sanctioned by the U.N. on humanitarian grounds and principles. At the core of the political spin was the oil rich reserves in Somalia. Between these reserves and the G7's expandable wallets, was the formidable warlord, General Mohammed Farrah Aidid. His demise, however, paved way for a puppet regime sympathetic to Corporatism and Somalia is once again forgotten as one of the most anemic color on the map of survival.

 

The Question of Tibet and Palestinian

As for Tibet and Palestine, neither have any oil or mineral reserves to give Allied Forces the needed incentive to risk allied lives and bombs to dislodge the two countries from the yoke of occupation. Tibet and Palestine, therefore, come under the purview of U.N. resolutions which unfortunately as happens to be the case in most instances, is merely a rhetoric gun lacking a trigger, ammunition, or both! At its nebulous best, the Oslo initiated talks would give the Palestinians the autonomy of a POW camp. Tibet for that matter, is a virtually unaccounted POW camp!

Presently, for the Palestinians, an occupied or forfeited Jerusalem is an uncompromising agony, non-amiable and insoluble. For the Israelis, it is a biblical ecstasy. In a world where co- existence is essential to the realization of survival, one is left to question how a biblical ecstasy can be fulfilling when the agony it renders is of the kind that incites reciprocal hatred and bloodshed?

The Bible is a not a Title Deed to the demographic makeup of this planet, nor is God a bonafide party to any political aspirations or uprisings. Only human beings prevail as undisputed authors or co-conspirators of their political rise and demise. To draw God into the vortex of human instability is to thoroughly contaminate religion with state.

In the retributive sense, the terror of occupation is no less fearful than the terror of terrorism itself. One induces the other. Under the canopy of occupation the will to persist, obviously, becomes as resolute, dogmatic or defiant as the will to resist. The escalating violence in the Middle East, therefore, is another stoic reminder that the circumstances of occupation is a damning inheritance and can never ever be truly ratified through the edict of bullets, bombs or missiles.

Religious Fundamentalism vs. Corporatism

In summary, the United Nations Organization, which was founded on the humanitarian precept of preserving life and influencing peace, has in the wake of the Iraq-Kuwait conflict, set a deadly precedent, wherein, the authority to push the button and drop bombs comes from the same moral cranium. Certainly, a disconcerting dichotomy!

Similarly, the U.N's rhetoric that "Iraq's weapons of mass-destruction" must be destroyed, is a rather supererogatory cry if not altogether foul -- given that the U.N. charter was penned by a group of nations who had gunpowder residue on their fingertips, and all of whom, subsequently, had the atom bomb as their attache case. To this day, the atom bomb represents a de-civilization of the powers of human creativity.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, Corporatism lost its arch nemesis: Communism. Communism was ideally suited to fulfil the common man's aspirations while thwarting the rich man's impulse towards capitalism. With the fall of communism, the common man has once again been lured to a life of pluralistic ideals, the kind that defies conservation and ensures the accumulation of insurmountable debts. But the real threat to Corporatism today comes from the revival and spread of religious fundamentalism, which is sizzling in the very region -- the Middle East -- where oil is yet the world's strongest currency.

Through Corporatism, oil was given its material ascendancy. Deserts were transformed into havens of extravagance and as the power of oil diversified, so did regional conflicts. The world's first comprehensive Code of Law, "An Eye for an Eye" (lex talionis), which was authored by King Hammurabi of Mesopotamia (Iraq), became the Order of Existence in the Middle East. However, through the dictates of the New World Order, King Hammurabi's equitable lex talionisbecame poignantly retrogressed into "A Thousand Eyes for an Eye"!

Perhaps, in deference to the omnipotence of Allied bombs and Allied Materialism, man is once again looking upon God as the timeless alternative to human crisis. And since religion and corporatism are as incompatible as Satan and God, the revival of religious fundamentalism, undoubtedly, pitches Corporatism directly against God. The showdown is tantamount to a stance of divine intervention versus the vagrancy of bombs and missiles!

In the final analysis, two larger questions remain: Will Corporatism succeed where communism failed in achieving global domination? Subsequently, will Corporatism, like nuclear waste, become an irreversible curse on future generations?