![]() This in turn sparked a need for the United States to continually engage in military aggression around the world. Having been pumped full of money during World War Two, these companies leveraged the fear of communism to continue to receive massive funding. The military industrial complex is a term used to describe the network of companies that form America's defense contractors and the Department of Defense. To persist with its shift towards a highly militaristic view and a desire to influence the world. Some of this was born out of naked fear of the brutal totalitarian visions of Communism being imposed around the world, but there were less legitimate reasons for the U.S. took on the lead role in influencing global public relations. had become activist, and since much of Europe was rebuilding after the war, the U.S. shifted during World War Two from its non-interventionist international relations stance to finally show up and then take all the credit, it also created an international relations monster. In democratic societies, laws reflect the will of the military often seems to be deployed in actions that specifically support American corporate interests - or that "national interests" are frequently conflated to a high degree with corporate interests. The problem with free trade agreements, Parenti (158) notes, is that the restrictions in these agreements typically are against governments: "no free trade restrictions are directed against private business almost all are against governments" and there are enforcement mechanisms within the free trade agreements that create an extrajudicial system for changing domestic laws regardless of domestic support. Trade agreements are almost always signed by governments without referendum, and therefore the process does not take into account the needs of all stakeholders, only those who have been invited to participate in the policy discussions, typically corporate interests. ![]() He notes that many of the institutions of globalization help to promote the ability of corporations to extend their influence around the world. After having already argued that corporations rule America, this is the next step in that line of reasoning. Parenti argues that globalization undermines democracy. citizens and ensure that large-scale resistance to corporatist policies is undermined at every turn. ![]() has a large infrastructure dedicated to " national security" that serves to monitor U.S. Even to this day, it is hard to protest a globalization meeting without facing down the riot police. Regardless, Parenti does outline a pattern of repression of political dissidents, whose speech is theoretically protected, but whose rights are routinely violated. This part of the argument is far too thin and poorly structured - he did not mention the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex for some strange reason, despite that being one of the most egregious examples of government repression of alternate views - break up the poor black communities by putting all their young men in prison, twenty years at a time - for as little as a bag of weed. government, especially with respect to civil rights conflicts. Parenti checklists a handful of cases of overt political repression by the U.S. Odd that slavery and women's suffrage are issues not discussed under the rubric of repression - those seem pretty obvious, and make the case much more strongly than a handful of anecdotes. ![]() However, some political repression is described in these chapters. Parenti's case about corporations ruling America is presumably made prior to Chapter 10. His logic is certainly debatable at times - Lloyd Corporation v Tanner simply affirms what had already been written in the First Amendment and noting a lack of such speech protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and similar human resources acts - the Supreme Court doesn't make the laws the evidence is in the fact that there have been no changes to the First Amendment passed, and that is a much weaker case for corporate influence (Parenti 120). He notes several instance where he believes that corporate interests have passed laws that place them above citizens (Parenti 119). At the outset of Chapter 10, he writes "the corporate-dominated state," essentially confirming his views with respect to this. At the heart of his view is that the United States is ruled by corporations, specifically a corporate plutocracy. Parenti (151), in the book Democracy for the Few, outlines his views of the U.S. ![]()
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