| In the new "civilizing" of the world, the U.S. needs to harness the labor and resources of other nations. The agenda, according to Antonio Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda" and leading expert on international trade and finance policy, predates the Bush Klan by some 30 years, and Juhasz writes, "its advocates certainly hope it will outlast him." It is an agenda, as Bush himself said before the U.N. in 2005, weeks after Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf region, "for freer trade." "Freer trade is part of our agenda for a freer world." Juhasz explains that "free trade is shorthand for a number of economic policies that expand the rights of multinational corporations and investors to operate in more locations, under fewer regulations, with less commitment to any specific location." This is, indeed, shorthand, for freedom -- but freedom for White multimillionaires/billionaires to make huge profits, to dominate the world, to "civilize" developing countries, peoples of a darker hue, the working class, and the poor into acquiescing to their place in the new world order. Little mention was made about small farmers around the world who are committing suicide because "developing" countries have been forced to contend with economic regulations established by the World Trade Organization. In India, Juhasz writes, "over 20,000 farmers committed suicide," and in "the Andhra Pradesh district 1,600 farmers have killed themselves." "By expanding trade, we spread hope and opportunity to the corners of the world, and we strike a blow against the terrorists," Bush said to the U.N. audience. Were these farmers "terrorists"? Free trade works just as well in Iraq where U. S. soldiers are forced to go door to door, confronting women and children ("terrorists"?) at gunpoint while the U.S. builds the world's biggest embassy using Iraqi labor and paying low wages. Free trade is the weapon of mass destruction against "terrorists" out there -- in those "foreign" and poor lands. Domestically, we have a form of "free trade" underway too. There's "free trade" of labor mostly from Mexico. Migrant workers work all day for little pay for themselves but profitable income for agricultural corporations. In the cities, receiving low wages, they tuck corners of sheets and care mostly for the children of White families. These workers live in fear of immigration agents who could send them back to hope and opportunities in their own country. For a long time, the 9th Ward in New Orleans will look as if it were just hit by Hurricane Katrina yesterday, and the exiled residents will be waiting to return for a long while still. Black children ("terrorists"?) will continue to be undereducated by well-meaning folks who themselves are in denial about race and its role in the U.S. agenda -- now the Bush Agenda. The labor of these children, when grown enough, will be needed to fuel the prison industrial complex here at home. Halliburton is guaranteed to make a profit either way. It is "old fashion" to talk about race and its link to foreign and domestic policies of the Bush agenda. There's a deliberate effort on the part of the administration and those who carry out the bidding of this administration to hush talk of race, to ";make race irrelevant," as my colleague at the Black Commentator writes. "Skin color," Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad explains, "is one of the defining facts of American life." But "when you don't feel compelled to think about skin color, chances are that you are White; and those that do, most likely fit a demographic description, namely, African-American, Asian American, Latino, American Indian, or a blend of any of these." The Bush agenda does not sit well with most of us citizens, increasingly targeted by domestic economic policies that make race irrelevant -- the better to ignore the needs and ultimately the citizen of these people. Are we to be deemed "enemy combatants" if we, too, resist the corporate take over of domestic economies that squeeze the life out of us? Or should we, like the rest of the world's "developing" nations, peoples of a darker hue, working class, and poor, accept their fate under the Bush agenda? You would have to be color blind not to see the connections and the disturbing goals of the Bush agenda. "If the Bush agenda is allowed to stay its course, the poverty, inequality, hostility, and violence it generates will intensify and grow," writes Juhasz. How much more damage will this agenda create in the next 18 months? Why should we wait to see what results from the growling of Chertoff's stomach? We need freedom from the Bush agenda! Let us freely trade idea about how to proceed to impeach Bush and Cheney. Thaw the hopes of those who think the agenda will live on beyond Bush and Cheney. We, peoples of a darker hue, have lived on this earth for a much longer time than the Bush agenda! |
| Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels "The Bush Agenda" |
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