Jason Miller: 'Ruthless Exploiters, Inc.: A little poverty never hurt
anybody'

Jason Miller

"It is like paradise and hell. They throw our petitions in the dustbin. They
have everything. We have nothing... If we protest, they send soldiers. They
sign agreements with us and then ignore us. We have graduates going hungry,
without jobs. And they bring people from Lagos to work here."

Eghare W.O. Ojhogar, chief of the Ugborodo community in Delta State (of
Nigeria)

In describing the situation in Nigeria, Eghare presents us with a microcosm
of a modern Inferno, Purgatorio, e Paradiso (about which there is little
divine or comic). In the timeless struggle between the "haves and "have
nots", alarming numbers of "useless eaters" ("have nots") are sliding from
Purgatorio into the abyss of abject poverty's Inferno.

And what heinous transgression did they commit that necessitated their
banishment into the Inferno? They were born, of course. Most of those
experiencing the misery of indigence had the misfortune to enter this world
bearing a losing lottery ticket.

From their birth, the psyches of the poor and homeless in the "developed"
nations and those of the impoverished in the "developing" nations are
battered with the hopelessness and despair of their harsh realities.
(Realities carefully created and perpetuated in a variety of ways by their
"betters").

After spending their formative years pitted against nearly overwhelming
economic and social forces, the message many of them internalize probably
reads something like this:

Sorry, washout. You are the wrong color, ethnicity, caste, social class, or
nationality. Surviving to age 40 will be no small task for you. And if you
manage to do so, your chances of significantly bettering your situation are
quite slim. After all, the lottery winners invest a great deal in
maintaining structural barriers to hold you down. But the good news is that
you can add meaning to your miserable existence by working for slave
wages( or simply withering and dying) to ensure that the tiny percentage of
humanity enjoying economic Paradiso continues to do so and that the
shrinking number of fortunates in Purgatorio experience a degree of comfort
and security.

To gain some perspective on the extent of human suffering, avarice, and
depravity associated with the gross imbalance in wealth and power, weigh
these facts:

1. More than half of the 6.5 billion human souls populating Earth subsist on
less than $2 per day. 790 million of the deeply impoverished suffer from
chronic malnutrition (while 65%% of US Americans are overweight).

2. 20%% of the human race does not have access to clean water and 31%% of the
world's population has no electricity.

3. Combining the gross domestic products of the 48 poorest nations
(representing 25%% of global population) yields a figure that is less than
the wealth of the three richest people in the world.

4. "Developed nations" account for 80%% of the world's consumption and 20%% of
the world's population.

5. The wealth gap between the richest and poorest countries went from 3 to 1
in 1820 to 72 to 1 in 1992.

6. Corporations account for over half of the 100 wealthiest entities in the
world.

7. And most tragically:

"According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they
"die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the
scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes
these dying multitudes even more invisible in death."

That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children
under five years of age, each year."

(Thanks to GlobalIssues.org for the above information)

Earth's ruling oligarchs and plutocrats have created and perpetuated a
socioeconomic dynamic in which the destitute have little or no access to
education, basic healthcare, decent employment, or even basic necessities.
From the United States to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, those
isolated in despairing communities with crumbling or non-existent
infrastructures find themselves mired in impoverished breeding grounds for
crime, high birth rates, substance abuse, and AIDS.

Perhaps an apt message for those impoverished children arriving in this
world with three strikes against them would be:

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", which is most commonly translated
as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

How humane and politically correct those monopolizing Earth's bounty have
become. Monarchy has essentially been relegated to the dustbin of history.
Empire building through brute force is becoming an increasingly rare event.
Certainly the ruling elite maintain potent militaries to exercise their
right to "defend themselves" (as they are doing in Iraq and Lebanon). But
more often then not, the masters of the human race have learned to wield
their economic power like a heavy cudgel, capable of battering their foes
into submission with a few swift strokes.

New age dawning?

As humanity basks in the nurturing rays of a long-awaited sunrise marking
the dawn of a glorious new paradigm, a determined privileged class is
determined to make utopia a reality for themselves. Ushering in a veritable
paradise of free trade, "robust economies", "ownership societies", "freedom
and liberty", and unprecedented profits generated by massive companies
unfettered by frivolous government regulation, predatory human beings now
issue their edicts from corporate skyscrapers rather than moated castles.

Wage slaves and sweat shop laborers have supplanted serfs and chattel
slaves. Five major corporations comprise 90%% of the mass media in the United
States. What are their specialties? Shaping public opinion to maintain the
illusion that one of the world's most rapacious and bellicose nations is a
"benevolent superpower" and enticing those who fall prey to their charms to
experience a virtually insatiable desire to acquire more material
possessions. A brain-washed complacent citizenry perpetually ready to go on
a buying binge is a wet dream for the ruling elite.

For many, the survival of their families depends upon the meager pay they
receive from corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart. More fortunate wage slaves
earn enough to cover the cost of necessities and to attain the goods the
corporate media push like Ecstasy. Shopping....what a rush!

Between the US Americans who have high discretionary income and the easy
credit issued to those who don't, demand for consumer goods is nearly
infinite. With grossly unfair laws (protecting consumers, the environment,
and workers) squeezing their profits, those ingenious devils amongst the
ruling elite concluded they would locate in "developing" countries where
they could truly rape, pillage and plunder. Hence the worsening plight of
those beholden to their corporate masters both in the United States and
abroad.

Where is the wealth?

And just how heavily are the world's assets concentrated into the hands of
the elite? While the United States is by no means home to the entire world's
de facto aristocracy, it is the "leader of the obscenely rich world" and by
default is the "leader of the (ostensibly) free world".

For example, Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at
Santa Cruz wrote in 2001:
"In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households
have 44.1%% of all privately held stock, 58.0%% of financial securities, and
57.3%% of business equity. The top 10%% have 85%% to 90%% of stock, bonds, trust
funds, and business equity, and over 75%% of non-home real estate. Since
financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing
assets, we can say that just 10%% of the people own the United States of
America."
And thanks to the Bush administration, that 10%% is maintaining a firm grasp
on what they own.

Pernicious and Enduring Lies

The predator class pacifies its subservient underclass with the myth that in
the United States and the satellite "free market economies" it has
established (at gun-point or through the subversive activities of the CIA),
everyone can become a successful entrepreneur by starting their own
business. Yet like the lie that all impoverished individuals except widows,
orphans, and the infirm are responsible for their own circumstances, this
malicious fairy tale ignores several realities. Like the fiction about the
impoverished, it assumes that all people are on a level playing field.
However, that notion is far removed from reality. Some people have a higher
quality education than others. Individuals receiving a high degree of
support from friends and family are much more likely to succeed than those
who have little or no support. While some starting a business have financial
resources behind them, others have virtually nothing but their drive and
ideas. Market forces, weather patterns, competition, health, and many other
variables can serve to make or break a "budding capitalist". And no two
people are alike or face the same conditions.

Approximately 150 million of those young and healthy enough to work in the
United States earn a wage or salary. (Versus a relatively paltry figure of
20 million who are self-employed). 85%% of small businesses fail within 5
years. Corporate leviathans like Wal-Mart and Microsoft have defied
anti-trust laws to crush myriad competitors, including many small
entrepreneurs. Horatio Alger success stories are none too plentiful in the
"land of opportunity". And the grim reality is that the Goliath corporate
giants usually prevail against the David small businesses.

In 2003, the average worker in the United States was netting $517.00 per
week. How much were CEO's taking home at that time? A mere $155,000. 52
times per year. That is a staggering 301 to 1 differential. In 1982 the
ratio of CEO to average worker pay was "a mere" 42 to 1. From 1990 to 2003
US corporate profits rose 128%%.

To further appreciate the obscene avarice of the world's plutocracy,
consider that the average garment worker in Bangladesh earned 13 cents per
hour in 2004. The "10%% of the people who own the United States" and their
counter-parts in nations around the globe are doing very well thanks to the
blood, sweat, and tears of the remaining 6 billion or so human beings on the
planet.

Incorporating their Avarice

Corporations are the Holy Grail for the rich and powerful. They provide
moneyed individuals investment vehicles which afford them extremely limited
personal liability, financially and criminally. By the late 19th Century in
the United States, corporations had acquired many of the legal rights of a
human being. Despite their roots in British colonialism and the deep
apprehensions of founders like Thomas Jefferson, corporations have come to
dominate the United States and much of the world culturally, politically,
and economically.

Jefferson's expression of concern to George Logan in 1816 was well-founded:
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of
strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Not only was the aristocracy of moneyed corporations born. Its power has
grown to such monstrous proportions that it has virtually crushed the life
from a still relatively nascent social experiment based on democratic ideals
and Constitutional law.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the pharmaceutical industry
alone has spent $675 million lobbying the government to shape public policy
over the last seven years. The insurance industry spent even more if one
includes campaign donations. Through their corporate proxies, the moneyed
elite invest a great deal in the United States' political system. They
expect and receive a great deal in return.

"Defending" the predator class is an expensive proposition

Spending at a clip of $600 billion per year (including Iraqi Occupation
costs), the United States accounts for 50%% of the world's military spending.
As George Bush (the current public face of the world's plutocracy) so sagely
reminded us, "Free nations are peaceful nations." To manufacture the many
instruments of peace which prove how free we are, the United States relies
on 737 defense contractors, sometimes known as the military-industrial
complex. Of those 737 contractors, a mere five have received government
contracts totaling $284 billion over the last six years. Lockheed Martin,
Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics do quite well at
the public trough. Halliburton has also fared nicely since former CEO Dick
Cheney took office and helped lie the United States into the Iraqi
Occupation. Facilitating killing is their business, and business is good.

Sedating the masses with consumerism, spin, fear-mongering and historical
revisions; lobbying heavily; donating huge sums to political campaigns; and
maintaining the military industrial complex are powerful means of securing
the seats of power in DC and Tel Aviv. However, the predator class has yet
another weapon at its disposal: the revolving door between government and
major corporations. Men like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are but two
stalwarts of the privileged class who have traversed back and forth from
roles of great influence in major corporations to positions of power within
the government. But they are not pioneers. Theirs is a path blazed by many
before them and almost certain to be followed by many after them.

A glimpse of the ugly reality of pathological avarice in action...

To move beyond an abstract analysis of the machinations of the oppression
and exploitation of most of the human race by a select and privileged few,
consider one of many specific examples. For years, British and US oil
interests have enjoyed the complicity of the criminal ruling elite in
Nigeria in plundering an incredibly valuable natural resource. In return a
majority of the indigenous people have received land too polluted to farm,
brutal attacks by government forces, and extreme poverty.

According to an article written for Amnesty International:
"It's 10 years since the Nigerian Government executed the well-known Ogoni
writer and human rights campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa. But little has changed for
the people of the Niger Delta, reports Seth Jordan....

...Oil was discovered in the Ogoni region in the late 1950s by the Royal
Dutch/Shell Group....by the 1990s an estimated US $30 billion worth of oil
had already been extracted, and oil revenues accounted for over 98 per cent
of Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings; the 550,000 local farmers and
fishermen who inhabited the coastal land had received little except a
ravaged environment. Once fertile farmland had been destroyed by
uncontrolled pollution, and virtually all fish and wildlife had vanished.
Only a handful of local people were employed by the oil companies or
benefited economically in any way....

"On 4 February 2005, soldiers from Nigeria's Joint Task Force fired on
protesters from the Ugborodo community at the Escravos oil terminal run by
Chevron Nigeria. One man was shot and later died from his injuries. Thirty
other demonstrators were injured by blows from rifle butts and other
weapons. Neither the government nor the oil company provided adequate
medical care or helped to transport the injured."
Nigeria provides a potent example of the blatant abuses of the impoverished
masses by the privileged few. But sadly, it is but one of many such cases.

While the rapacious individuals who wield the power in this world have
stacked the deck heavily in their favor, there are glimmers of hope. The
United States and Israel are both failing in their wars of aggression in the
Middle East. A wave of democratic socialism is beginning to sweep South
America. A populist leader may still win the presidency in Mexico. Joe
Lieberman was ejected. And checks and balances were at least temporarily
restored in the United States when a federal judge ordered George Bush to
obey the Constitution.

A collective populist movement is slowly evolving. It is only a matter of
time before humanity's oppressed put aside their religious, racial, and
nationalist differences to unite against their common enemy. When six
billion people act in unison against a few million, there will indeed be a
new world order.

Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself
intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays have
appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive correspondence at
willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson