{"id":168563,"date":"2015-07-27T14:53:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T14:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=168563"},"modified":"2015-07-27T18:29:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T18:29:21","slug":"working-class-war-fodder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/working-class-war-fodder\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Class War Fodder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Who in their right mind would be prepared to fight and die for Shell, Chevron or Coca Cola? Who with half a brain would choose to put their life on the line for Goldman Sachs, Bank of America or General Electric? Any volunteers? I\u2019m guessing there wouldn\u2019t be many.<\/p>\n

Then again, I could be wrong. Think of the tens of thousands of NATO troops who over the last decade or so have been in\u00a0Afghanistan\u00a0or\u00a0Iraq. Drunk on the potent aphrodisiac of nationalism and a military that sells life in the armed forces as resembling some computer game reality, young mainly working class men have lined up in their droves to put their lives on the line for their respective governments.<\/p>\n

Enticed by the glamour of armed forces\u2019 adverts that proclaim \u2018see the world\u2019 or \u2018learn a trade\u2019 (in an era of suppressed wages, off-shored jobs, imposed austerity and massive profits), when few poorer people have little chance of doing either, \u2018serving queen and country\u2019 (or some other nationalistic slogan) seems like a good option.<\/p>\n

This form of economic conscription has meant no shortage of young men signing up to fight wars in far-away lands. Sold under the outright lie of \u2018protecting democracy\u2019, \u2018humanitarian intervention\u2019 or another apparent high-minded falsehood, thousands have gone off to kill and die and pledge allegiance to a \u2018greater good\u2019.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the greater good of humankind, queen, flag or country that is at stake. Forget about blurry-eyed patriotism or idealism. These young men are spilling their own blood and the blood of countless others on behalf of corporate interests.<\/p>\n

Western \u2018liberal democracy\u2019 has nothing to do with empowering people and everything to do with enslaving them and making them blind to the chains that bind them. It is the powerful foundations and think tanks headed or funded by private corporations that drive US policies and its war agenda.<\/p>\n

Through their funding or by direct membership of various foundations, think tanks and government bodies, US domestic and foreign policies are formulated to serve corporate interests. It is the Brookings Institute, International Crisis Group and Council on Foreign Relations, among others, where the real heart of the US government lies. In Britain, Chatham House plays a similar role.<\/p>\n

John Perkins book \u2018Confessions of an Economic Hitman<\/a>\u2019 details how poorer countries have been neo-colonised by a cabal of US corporations, banks and government agencies. This is achieved via a combination of targeted assassinations, bribery, deceit and financial loans leading to debt dependency. If all of that fails, the troops are then sent in under the banner of \u2018humanitarianism\u2019 or protecting \u2018national security\u2019. Corporate\u00a0America\u00a0has been the leading hand in virtually every\u00a0US-backed conflict since 1945, from\u00a0Guatemala\u00a0in the 1950s right up to\u00a0Syria\u00a0and Ukraine today.<\/p>\n

Who but a misinformed and brainwashed public would think for one minute that such corporations and their foundations, institutes and agencies would let ordinary folk have any say in policies that would adversely affect their power or enormous wealth? There is no way they would allow any genuine form of democracy that could disrupt their aims. What is required and achieved is an ignorant and misinformed public that places an X on a ballot form every four years in favour of competing corporate-sponsored politicians. A public that readily lines up to support the corporate war agenda, and a public from which a cannon fodder army of young men is recruited to die on the battlefields of Asia.<\/p>\n

And as those young men are delivered to their families inside a wooden box or return home suffering from the long-term effects of using health-destroying weapons, there can only be one thought among decent minded folk \u2014 \u2018what a waste.\u2019<\/p>\n

But young men being carted away in a body bag or suffering from life-long illnesses means nothing to the men these wars are fought for. They are just \u2018collateral damage\u2019 in pursuit of the \u2018greater good\u2019. Not the greater good of lofty idealism. But the corporate brand of \u2018greater good\u2019 \u2014 greed, resource grabs, ever more profits and ever more power.<\/p>\n

The mainstream media glorifies the military at every available opportunity. Obama calls armed forces personnel \u2018the real patriots\u2019. In Britain they are \u2018our brave lads\u2019. Such rhetoric serves as a smokescreen to hide the true nature of the illegal, imperialist wars NATO continues to engage in.<\/p>\n

For many, it seems strange that our \u2018brave heroes\u2019, our \u2018true patriots\u2019 who were sent out to kill, so often have to rely on charities when back from the battlefield to piece their health and lives back together again. But it\u2019s not so strange. Henry Kissinger, the criminal responsible for scorching, torching, maiming and killing tens of thousands is reported in the book \u2018The Final Days<\/a>\u2019 (Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein) to have referred to\u00a0military men as \u201cdumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter Elvis Costello once wrote in his song \u2018Oliver\u2019s Army’: \u2018Call careers information, have you got yourself an occupation\u2019. The song is regarded as an anti-military statement and that particular lyric is reminiscent of a TV ad campaign by the British army to attract young men straight from school from mainly economically deprived areas at the time – the ‘boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne’.<\/p>\n

The reality is that these young men are regarded by the wealthy beneficiaries of the war agenda as constituting disposable working class fodder who have little idea about what or who they are really fighting for. The\u00a0interlocking directorate<\/a> of ruling class corporate interests has sold the livelihoods of the working class to the lowest bidder abroad or are now destroying them via ‘free’ trade agreements or austerity. With few decent job prospects, young men are expected to sign up to kill and die for millionaire and billionaire interests whose contempt for ordinary people across the globe is palpable.<\/p>\n

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Colin Todhunter is an independent writer. His work appears on CounterPunch, RINF, Global Research, The 4th Media, The Ecologist, Countercurrents and elsewhere online and in the print media.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Most ‘alternative media’ sites are unable to pay writers for their work. The financial model of the corporate media does not apply. These sites tend to carry no advertising and are kept alive courtesy of reader donations. Support independent writers in the ‘alternative’ media<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who in their right mind would be prepared to fight and die for Shell, Chevron or Coca Cola? Who with half a brain would choose to put their life on the line for Goldman Sachs, Bank of America or General Electric? Any volunteers? I\u2019m guessing there wouldn\u2019t be many. Then again, I could be wrong. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1214,"featured_media":168570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-168563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}