Big Corporations and Trade Agreements

    Corporations, in one form or another, have been around as far back as ancient India and ancient Rome. Although some of the core characteristics that are found in modern corporations had not yet been implimented, they, nonetheless, were enterprises with shareholders who invested money for specific purposes. Corporations in the Roman Empire were sanctioned by the state, while corporations, such as those in the Maurya Empire were mostly private commercial entities. When we speak of Rome, we are speaking of an Empire, with an Emperor and Rome, itself was run as a corporation, that is, a corporation limited to the elite and for the Emperor.

    Today, in America, we find a combination of these two forms of incorporation. In America, corporations are sanctioned. If a corporation desires to have any semblance of success, they are sanctioned by the state and, if they are of a particularly large size or produce a product that is overseen by governmental agencies, they must, by law, be sancitioned. When applying for incorporation, they structure the corporation, so that these standards are met, giving them assurance that their corporation will be sanctioned. They are expected to follow these standards in the course of their operations. Many of them do not, however, and some even pay lobbyists to lobby for deregulation, loophole legislation and laws that exclude then from abiding by the standards. This is legalized corruption, benefiting only the wealthy and most often detrimental to the "ordinary" American citizen.

    Large corporations are directly involved in the establishment of the various trade agreements that have been devised to control both national and international trade. Trade agreements are, in essence, agreements between corporate structures to control who trades with whom. To a large degree, corporate santioning has become corporate censorship, and this, in itself, fosters corruption.

    There are some countries in which corporations are allowed to practice standards that are a little more lax (at present), but these, too, are being brought under into conformity with global guidelines in order to standardize and universalize incorporated entities. Much of this is being and has been accomplished through various Trade Agreements such as:

Agadir Agreement between Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan

Andean Community Free Trade Area: between Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam

Central American Common Market (CACM) between Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua

Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) between the U.S., Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic

Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) between Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro

Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) between Burundi, Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe

European Free Trade Association (EFTA) between Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein

Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA) Between Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, the "State of Palestine", Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE (United Arab Emerites) and Yemen

G-3 Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela (Venezuela has reported that it intends to pull out of the agreement).

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, U.S. and Mexico (This is the binding factor that will result in the North American Union.)

South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) between India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Maldives.

Then, there are the "Proposed" regional agreements. Here is a list of agreements currently in negotiation. Agreements that are only in the discussion stages, without any formal action by the parties involved, are not listed.

Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) + 3 (People's Republic of China, South Korea, and Japan) Free Trade Area

Canada Central American Free Trade Agreement

Lebanon joining the Agadir Agreement

Faroe Islands (autonomous entity of Denmark) joining European Free Trade Association (EFTA)

People's Trade Treaty between Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela

GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development Free Trade Area between Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova

FTA of Bay of Bengal Initiative for MultiSectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC)

Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) among members of APEC

Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) between United States and the European Union

Here is a

to the WIKI page, if you would like to study for yourself and gain a deeper understanding of the issues envolved.

    Each of these trade agreements is being implimented by global corporations - corporations that "trade" with each other across national and international boundaries. These corporations, which are often governmental, or tied very closely with the government or nation they represent, oversee other corporations that are national, privatized corporations such as: trusts, foundations, endowments and, mainly, banking corporations. Noice how many of these trade agreements include the term "Free"? This is Orwellian double speak. Neither the trade agreements nor the standards that ae imposed upon the trading countries are free. They all come with, in most cases, a very steep price. They can not and will not be implimented in a country or nation that is not willing to surrender its soverignty. The term Free is only relevant to the fact that, for the large corporations and banksters, goods and products, as mentioned earlier, will flow freely for them. The emphasis is on the flow. It DOES mean that the countries and nations that are party to the agreements can freely trade, but this is always subject to the controllng interests of the banksters and countries cannot, of their own volition, trade with just any other country. Their "Freedom" is limited, in that they can only trade with those countries and nations with which the have an agreement. So, in actuality, what Free Trade Agreements have done is remove the invironment of Free Trade. The focus is on global control of everything from large industry, the environment, politics and transportation to Big Pharma, eugenics and even the advancement of scientific discovery cannot proceed without their approval. As a matter of fact anywhere where you find incorporation, you also find this overriding system of control.

    Notice the top listing under the "proposed" agreements - the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Upon formal institution of the Security and Prosperity Parnership, this will be more than a proposed agreement - It will work in coordination with NAFTA, filling in the gaps, covering the bases and initiating the final changes that that absolve our nation's soveriegnty. All of this is being done by and for Big Corporations for their own global profit, without regard for America citizes, their views or desire to continue to love in a soverign nation. That for which our soldiers died in World War I and World War II and are dying for, right now, in Iraq is being given away or sold to the highest bidder or most powerful.

    We are given a glimps of the interrelationship of NAFTA and FTAA in the useof the word "Area." That area is now coming to be known as the North American Union, under the guise of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Notice also the plurality of the word "Americas." This in connection with the word "Area," reveals the expanded intent to, later, merge South America as a part of their continental integration plot. That has bee under strained discussion for some time, but Argentina, Chile and Venezuela are holding out, resisting the surrender of their soverignty.

    If you want to rise to the top of the asset heirarchy of America, it is very advantageous to be incorporated. There have been many laws written that protect individuals within a corporatation from both liability and accountablility in regard to corporate corruption. Not all corporations are corrupt, but it easy to trace corruption in the larger corporations (it's in the news on a daily basis), and it is becoming more an more evident that Big Corp concerns itself, far more, with profits and gains than with providing adequate personal service or quality products. The only products that are manufactured to high precision standards are the ones they produce among themselves, for their "corporate" useage, such as: munitions, war machinery, body armor (though the soldiers in Iraq may question this one), medical and biological research equipment and the like.

At a June "Taming The Corporation" conference, consisting of numerous speakers of renown, and attended by many "in-the-know" individuals, many facts were presented inregard to the current state of corporateness.

Lying Down with Hyenas
Alec Dubro
June 11, 2007

Alec Dubro is senior editor of TomPaine.com.

Ralph Nader opened the Taming The Corporation conference with a somewhat gloomy and rueful assessment. He and his people had held a similar conference 35 years ago, and nothing much has changed in the interim.

Much of the rest of the conference outlined, in more or less convincing detail, what most people in the U.S. already know: Corporations run the place. In fact, only 40 percent of Americans think corporations make a positive contribution to the public good. And as for public trust, as the McKinsey Quarterly told The New York Times, large global corporations are at “the bottom of the list — beneath nongovernmental organizations, small regional companies, the United Nations, labor unions and the media.”

And, as the conferees pointed out, the corporations earned this distrust. According to:

James Brock, professor of economics at University of Miami Ohio, the antitrust law is a story of taxidermy. In short, it’s dead.
Kathryn Mulvey of Corporate Accountability International, corporations are succeeding in their drive to make water a commodity rather than a public right.
Andrew Kimbrell of the International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety, by marketing genetically modified seeds that withstand certain chemicals, Monsanto has been able sell 120 million more tons of herbicides around the world.
Ralph Nader, corporations have 38,000 full-time lobbyists in Washington who effectively control the government.

While the evidence of corporate misrule appeared overwhelming, the picture of America that emerged was, at the very least, incomplete, if not misleading. Speakers disagreed whether the U.S. was approaching fascism, or already had it. They did agree that rule by private interests was ascendant, and they enforced that rule by law and arms. If you didn’t actually walk out the door, you could imagine that the United States resembled Italy under Mussolini.

Here is a

the the article, if you would like to read it in its entirety.