The crisis that won't go away

by Tom Pearson

The headline in the Financial Review ran: "All talk and no action as 
Doha deadlines slip away". The article beneath it lamented the failure of 
the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to meet deadlines in securing trade 
agreements. Part of the reason can be found in the intransigence of the 
transnational drug companies in their pursuit of profits, making demands on 
under-developed nations that those nations cannot accept.

For example, the WTO was to have eased trade strictures on intellectual 
property rights so nations grappling with HIV-AIDS could import affordable 
generic drugs. Such "concessions" would eat into the profit bottom line and 
so are unacceptable to the drug cartel. Any wonder that nations resist such 
blatant arrogance and exploitation.

And such is the depth and breadth of the crisis that the so-called Western 
democracies have introduced fascistic legislation under cover of anti-
terrorism measures to crush popular resistance to vicious austerity 
programs. After all, globalisation is not a volunteer-based community 
program.

It is the imposition of dictatorial trade, investment and other economic 
measures that include increased exploitation of labour and unfettered 
access to natural resources.

This will not save the system from crisis: it is but a postponement of the 
next inevitable crash. Nor will war resolve the contradictions that are 
everywhere making themselves evident.

The International Monetary Fund blames the current economic quagmire on the 
Wall Street crash that began in 2000, exacerbated by the war on Iraq. Other 
economists point to the war plus the SARS virus hitting jobs and profits.

Corporate number crunchers are using these and other phenomenon to take the 
razor to jobs. Around the world workers are being laid off in their 
millions, thrown on the scrapheap in the name of rationalisation, 
downsizing, trending down and any number of other euphemisms for the sack.

The odour of desperation is pungent.

The increasing scarcity of water around the globe has seen a corporate 
strategy for turning this basic means of existence into a commodity to be 
sold for profit at the highest price.

There are plans now in Australia to "mine" and "bank" water, for it to be 
privately owned and sold.

Increasingly capitalism is denying more and more people the very basic 
necessities of life, and more and more people are joining the many 
movements against its policies and demanding their needs be put before 
profits.

Above this chaos, anarchy and slaughter, the banner of "freedom and 
democracy" has been hoisted. Iraq, bombed into the ground by the US, has 
been "liberated".

The USA is the "land of the free" with more than two million people in its 
jails, the biggest prison population in the world.

These contradictions arise out of a system based on exploitation and 
oppression. Capitalism has no solutions for the people. Death and 
destruction, as we are now witnessing in Iraq and Afghanistan, are tools of 
trade. So too are the fascistic laws.

As the public representative of the most extreme gangster elements 
imperialism, Bush in cowboy guise swaggers on the stage as a heroic figure 
fighting a lone fight for freedom.

He is the individual battling against all that fetters "man's" freedom, 
using the considerable power at his disposal. This is the media line and 
the capitalist illusion — one man alone civilising the world and salvaging 
it from terror and anarchy.

Bush's "liberty" is lies and propaganda, trying to hide the real causes of 
inequity and social upheaval. And Bush the individual represents corrupt, 
criminal and depraved capitalist interests.

Driven by the crisis of the system everywhere, Bush and his gangster 
cronies have resorted to naked violence, to a drive world for world 
domination.

But the crisis will not go away until Bush and his class everywhere are 
disposed of.