Sweet waters from a bitter fountain
By Richard C. Cook

05/02/07 "Global Research" -- - The mass media show attractive images of the comfortable lifestyles of the upper income earners who benefit from the cash-rich global economy. Which luxury car to drive, which championship golf course to frequent, which hedge funds to invest in, which stock brokers to consult—good questions if you’ve got the money! But behind this attractive scenery, debt, bankruptcy, and poverty are a tsunami that is overwhelming much of the world’s population, including growing numbers in the U.S.

Following close on the heels of these calamities is a worldwide breakdown in law and order. Drug dealing, money laundering, gangsterism, white collar crime, political corruption, weapons trafficking, human slavery, terrorism, and endemic warfare are the dark side of a global financial system where everything has a price, the rich seem above the law, and individual security is almost impossible to attain.

Behind the fences of our gated communities, we fancy ourselves the “good guys” in this scenario. We’ve learned to blame the victim, failing to see that it’s a world the U.S. and the other Western powers have fashioned through our centuries-long march to own or control everything that can have a price tag attached to it.

Meanwhile, “dollar hegemony” has flooded the world with U.S. currency, loans, or debt instruments to support our fiscal and trade deficits, pay for our extraordinary level of resource utilization, induce foreign governments to purchase our armaments, ensure the allegiance of their governing elites, and maintain their economies in subservience through World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund trade and lending policies.

Today we are engaged in the outright military conquest of the Middle East. Our political leaders tell us that if we don’t fight the “terrorists” in Bagdad we will have to fight them on our own shores. But India, which has become our largest armaments customer, has seen a soaring number of suicides among bankrupt farmers left out of that nation’s economy. The illegal immigrants who have flooded the U.S. from Mexico have watched NAFTA destroy their own family farms, where 600 Mexican farmers a day are forced off the land....LINK