Alarming Moves Designed To Change Our World

By James Donahue

As if we are living on a giant chessboard, the pieces have been silently moved into place without many of us realizing that the queen is about to fall. The shadow rulers of the world appear about to make their final move. Once it happens, and it will probably occur unexpectedly, the world as we have known it will be changed forever.

Here are a few of the key signs that should be alarming us.

Arming The Police

The sudden passage of the Patriot Act and declaration of the Bush "War on Terror" following the 9-11 attacks made it possible for the authorities in high places to peek into our private thoughts. They read our e-mail, examine our bank accounts, tap into our telephone and Skype conversations and even use sophisticated devices to listen to our private conversations from behind the walls; all in the name of protecting us from would-be terrorist attacks. But is it really a paranoid government worried about a possible public rebellion?

There have been massive expenditures of money for continued build-up of the U.S. military even though this nation already has the most powerful and sophisticated military that has ever existed. A lot of this money has been funneled by way of Homeland Security grants and even "free" military equipment through the Department of Defense into state and local police departments. We are seeing more and more police officers appearing in black, full-bodied military dress and armed with powerful weaponry designed more for war than for public protection.

Our police now possess armored vehicles with mounted guns, high-tech listening and heat-sensor devices. They are using drug-sniffing dogs that also are trained to detect bombs. SWAT teams, once used only in extreme cases, are not appearing everywhere, often raiding homes in search of felony suspects, illegal narcotics labs and sometimes bomb-manufacturing operations. The raids sometimes occur at the wrong homes, frightening and even causing heart attacks and the deaths of innocent citizens.

In addition to being apparently equipped for mass crowd control, our police officers are acting more aggressively than ever before. Incidents of beatings and shootings of unarmed and benign civilians are appearing in the news almost daily all over the country. Many of the attacks appear racial in nature. There has been a growing "us-and-them" sense between the police and the general populous.

"Right-To-Work"

There has been an almost secret war between corporate employers and labor unions going on at state levels just about everywhere. Conservative state lawmakers are passing "right-to-work" laws that prohibit unions from forcing workers to pay union dues. This in turn is forcing a destruction of the labor unions that have been protecting workers, negotiating for safer working conditions and better wages for the past 70 years. Major industrial plants have been moved overseas in search of non-union workers willing to assemble and package the products we purchase for much less than U.S. workers demand.

A little-known force against American labor unions has been the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which also seeks an end to state and federal laws establishing wages for public construction projects. Employers are now getting away with filling vacant positions with so-called "part-time" or "contract" workers who do not receive benefits like paid vacations, health insurance and sick pay. Workers can be fired without cause. Minimum wage laws also are on the firing line in many areas.

A recent report by Jody Knauss, senior analyst at Center for Media and Democracy, stated: "Since many state contracting laws encourage or require public authorities to select the low bidder, prevailing wage laws are an essential backstop in preventing a public contracting ‘race to the bottom.’ Prevailing wage laws do not prevent non-union companies from bidding on public contracts or in any way favor unionized companies over non-union ones."

With cheaper, untrained and non-union and non-apprenticed workers building the nation’s roads, bridges, sewer and water systems and public buildings, the danger of shoddy workmanship is a growing issue. We know of entire highway projects that had to be replaced within a year or two because they did not survive a winter freeze and heavy truck traffic.

Land Grabs

We noticed a story in Truthout website that the World Bank was holding its sixteenth annual "Conference on Land and Poverty" in Washington, D.C. in March. While this was going on, hundreds of civil organizations were busy denouncing the World Bank’s role in global land seizures.

So why have these two forces come to loggerheads? It seems the World Bank represents over 40 percent of the corporate wealth of just 147 companies; most of them centered in the western part of the world. Thus the rules involving the control of the land and distribution of wealth are "rigged in favor of a tiny elite."

What is happening is that the World Bank is involved in things like "public-private partnerships" with third-world countries to build public works projects like roads, dams and other costly projects, supposedly under the guise of helping those countries go through a transition to progress. But what is occurring is that the projects are leading to land grabs and the mass displacement of tens of thousands of people and a transition to corporate agriculture and a destruction of local jobs and culture.

The bank and its employees strangely view what is happening as progress and development. But it is being done at the expense of the poor natives and for the financial benefit of the big corporations that get involved. It is thus a subtle and undercover way by which the wealthy few are seizing land, property and resources all over the world.

Trans Pacific Partnership

Lastly there is a report that the United States and 11 other nations are rushing into a new international trade agreement known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) that has been kept carefully under wraps now for months. Now President Barack Obama is asking Congress to give him "fast track" authority to move quickly into this and a similar agreement with the European Union. If he gets his wish, Mr. Obama will have the power to enter into the deals without giving Congress time to review them or make changes.

Now that some information about the TPP are getting revealed, the critics are coming out of the woodwork. They note that the treaties will cover almost three quarters of the global economy and slice away the existing U.S. controls on food safety. It opens the door for food imports from world nations with much lower safety standards than exist in the United States. And this is a blueprint for big trouble.

Other critics have noted that TPP will mean another big loss in labor for U.S. workers, and there are provisions in the agreement that prevent litigation between participating countries in the event of spoiled or damaged imports. There are no rules for labeling of food imports, thus it would be impossible to determine the origin of disease outbreaks or if the food is genetically modified.

These are only a few of the known issues linked to TPP. We can only hope Mr. Obama is not rushing into a "deal" the nation does not need or want to have to deal with.