CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION, WAR AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IT'S ALL ONE STRUGGLE

CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION, WAR AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IT'S ALL ONE STRUGGLE

by Global Justice Ecology Project http://www.globaljusticeecology.org


The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund-the financiers for
the Empire-have impoverished millions and caused massive
environmental devastation. Their Structural Adjustment Programs
force the world's poorest countries to slash social services and open
their borders to privatization and exploitative foreign investment.
The World Bank also promotes free trade and funds mega-development
projects. All of this is designed to subsidize giant
corporations-enabling them to continue their feeding frenzy on the
world's remaining wild places and traditional indigenous lands. The
U.S. dominates the World Bank.

The U.S. is headquarters to the world's most massive corporations.
With 6% of the Earth's population, it consumes 25% of the world's
resources including one-quarter of the world's oil. It
simultaneously emits 25% of the world's greenhouse gases. The U.S.
military budget is massive-equivalent to the budgets of the next 25
countries combined. This U.S. is utterly dependent on an unimpeded
supply of oil. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter pronounced the Carter
Doctrine, which states that the U.S. will use whatever means are
necessary to ensure the continued supply of oil. National security
depends on oil. A Pentagon study adds to this by stating, "National
Security depends on successful engagement in the global economy."
Indeed, the U.S. economy cannot function without oil, the
over-consumption of which is causing global climatic change, which
threatens the survival of many plant and animal species.

Expansion of the global economy requires "unlimited growth"-a
never-ending increase in the transformation of so-called "resources"
into capital. What does this mean to the Earth? A World Wildlife
Fund report found that one-third of the Earth's natural wealth was
lost from 1970 to 1995. The Smithsonian estimates that the Earth
loses over 300 species per day due to habitat destruction. Likewise,
native peoples are being driven into extinction. Corporate
globalization, with its mandate to put profit first, above both
planet and people, has pushed the life support systems of the Earth
to the brink of collapse. This ecological crisis makes it
increasingly obvious that an economic system based on the
accumulation of wealth and unlimited growth is incompatible with our
finite planet. The transformation of virgin forests, pristine
rivers, etc. into "resources" is simply not sustainable.

The world's violent conflicts revolve around resources: fossil fuels,
fresh water, timber, and minerals. As these resources diminish,
conflicts over these dwindling reserves escalate. Most of the
world's remaining caches of resources are in the Global South:
concentrated largely in the equatorial regions of Africa and Latin
America. A World Bank study found that countries that export oil are
over 40 times more likely to be engaged in war than countries that do
not produce oil.

Corporate globalization (Global Neoliberal Capitalism) is a form of
economic coercion designed to wrest control of natural resources away
from resident populations (mainly poor indigenous peoples and people
of color primarily in the Global South). This economic coercion is
likewise used to transform even human beings into expendable
resources.

Communities that attempt to resist this economic violence are met
with military violence at the hands of paramilitaries, police and
armies. These forms of violence are two sides of the same corporate
globalization coin.

This spring we have a momentous and historic opportunity to confront
the beast in whose belly we live.

In April, the World Bank plans to celebrate its 60th year of
destroying communities and annihilating ecosystems.

We will be there to spoil their party.

The environmental movement, the global justice movement and the
anti-war movement will come together in Washington DC April 21-25 to
confront the Bankers for the Empire-the funding the wholesale
destruction of the earth.

The time is now. 2004 is pivotal. The Presidential elections in the
U.S. combined with the flagrant Empire-driven behavior of the Bush
Administration have resulted in an American public more aware and
receptive to our message than we have seen in a very long time.

We must be loud and we must be strong. Life on earth depends on it.


April Mobilization Updates:

http://globaljusticeecology.org/
http://globalizethis.org/
http://www.50years.org/

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Global Justice Ecology Project
P.O. Box 412
Hinesburg, VT 05461
(802) 482-2689 ph/fax

http://www.globaljusticeecology.org

"Some say that being against globalization is like being against the law of
gravity...then, down with gravity!"...Subcomandante Marcos