Democracies are Actually Controlled by Big Business

At least Jim Marrs and Joseph Farrell certainly think so (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this provocative show)! If this is the case, then perhaps we shouldn’t get too excited about democratic movements like the "Arab Spring," since they may consist of simply putting a new big business in the place of the current one now ruling these countries.

In the Guardian Weekly, Gary Younge writes about the situation in the UK, but it certainly sounds familiar to those of us in the US: "The basic assumption about electoral politics in a democracy is that the process connects popular will to political power. In the absence of that fundamental assurance, disaffection and the cynicism that comes with it are almost inevitable. Elections become discussions not about who or what will or could change, but just who will win, and politicians become performers, embraced for their ability to articulate the concerns of the electorate without any real sense that they might meaningfully address them.

"In the gap between democratic aspirations and the stasis of the political class, legitimate resentments fester. Where solutions are needed, scapegoats are offered. With a handful of exceptions (including the US) voter turnout is falling across the globe while confidence in electoral politics is fading. According to a Gallup poll from 2002, majorities on every continent believe governments do not represent the will of the people."

Younge quotes economist Benjamin Barber as saying, "By many measures, corporations are more central players in global affairs than nations. We call them multinational but they are more accurately understood as postnational, transnational or even anti-national. For they abjure the very idea of nations or any other parochialism that limits them in time or space."

Younge gives a startling example of this. Despite our avowed concern for Haiti, and the constant news footage of suffering people that was shown after last year’s earthquake there, "A series of articles based on the WikiLeaks cables by a Haitian paper, Haiti Liberte, in collaboration with the US magazine the Nation , revealed how the US lobbied alongside factory owners, including contractors for some of the priciest jeans and underwear in the west, to force the 38 cents an hour rate in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere even lower. They pressured the former Haitian president, Rene Preval, to undermine the popular democratic will in the interests of greater profits for garment manufacturers."

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