Capitalism and Global Apartheid: Capitalizing at the Expense of the Peoples
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- Published on Thursday, 09 August 2012 13:42
By PNN Reporter
The marriage between capitalism and the imperial, racist and violent project of the powerful- which is implemented here in Palestine by the apartheid regime of Israel-, is the same project being carried out in different regions around the world. It is a project guided and financed by a global society of corporations, industries and politicians, who profit from the suffering and the oppression of the marginalized peoples.
Israeli security companies, such as Elbeit, one of the two main providers of electronic systems across the Israeli Apartheid Wall, obtained a contract to provide this type of systems for the wall between the United States and Mexico. The illegitimacy of the U.S.-Mexico Apartheid Wall- accomplice in the violation of the right to life of the migrants from the South who, fleeing from the repressive sight of this monstrous and violent construction, risk their lives in the dessert, thousands of them dying each year-, is still not accepted at the international level. A white North American will never ask himself if his life is in danger as he crosses the wall freely and without much inconvenience.
Elbeit is also responsible for building drones (unmanned flying vehicles), used by the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank, which are also used to patrol the Mexico-U.S. border. The military uses this as a weapon, violating international law. In 2008, Elbeit got a contract of $22.5 million dollars with the Mexican air force, and a contract of 44.5 million Euros with the British army to provide vigilance technology in Afghanistan. In other words, Elbeit is getting rich through the criminalization of the peoples of the Global South.
Motorola, global company of telecommunications and technology, provides the systems of vigilance in tens of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law. Guilty of the same crime is HP, a global tech company that provides the mechanisms for identification and control at the checkpoints along the Israeli Apartheid Wall, as well as providing equipment and services to the Israel occupation forces. Motorola and HP continue to capitalize with impunity.
Similar contracts have Israeli companies ADS and Magna BS with the Mexican government as well as with U.S. military corporations. The Israeli military gets trained in the U.S. on border tunnel detection. The relations with the U.S. border patrol industry are quite strong.
The U.S. military industry is guilty of arming the oppressive militaristic governments around the world, as in Colombia. The Plan Colombia, a U.S.-Colombian policy to fight the infamous 'war against terrorism and drug trafficking'- cause of around 5 million displaced and thousands of deaths-, is mainly financed by the United States. The same U.S. funded policies are underway in Mexico where more than 50,000 people have died during the last years due to violence generated by these policies. Imposed by the North and financed by their capitalist lords, such policies criminalize and assassinate the citizens of the South.
Similar is the military-corporate agreement between Israel and Colombia. Israel, for the past 20 years, is one of the biggest providers of military aid to Colombia along with the United States. The military intelligence corporation Global CST, owned by an Israeli ex-general, has contracts of more than $10 million dollars in Colombia. The interconnectivity between these global corporate-militaristic systems which--with the blood of the innocent-, draw their borders, create their laws and extract their profits, is not pure coincidence.
Water companies are also involved in this inhumane capitalist apartheid such as Eden Springs, which profits from the water extracted from expropriated Palestinian and Syrian land, water which is sold in the European continent. The Mehadrin Group is the biggest Israeli agricultural company which exports water intensive crops to Europe, providing water to Israeli farmers and millions of cubic meters of drinking water for domestic consumption in Israel from the more than 19 wells it controls.
Merekot is another company that has violated water rights since1950 when it expropriated all the water infrastructure of Palestine. Merekot constantly cuts its water supply to Palestinian villages while it supplies water to the illegal settlements. This happens while the Palestinian people are denied their right to water; the majority of Palestinians consume only 50 of the 100 liters per day recommended by the World Health Organization. Israeli citizens, on the contrary, consume on average 300 liters per day.
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These are only some examples that highlight the impossibility of separating global capitalism with the systems of violence, segregation and criminalization of the world's poor, which are in place in many regions around the globe; systems that are part of one global, imperial structure of apartheid and violence. These companies have more rights than the citizens of the marginalized world, as for them, borders do not exist in this globalized world. They can exploit the natural resources in any part of the world; they can get rich while they assassinate the peoples of the Global South without fear of being judged by the law, since everything they do is "legitimate". The inhumane laws of the global capitalist system are faithfully obeyed by the powerful.
This political, economic and ideological system is sustained not by its policies of "democracy and justice"- the emblem by which this project is sold to the entire world. Rather, it is sustained illegitimately through the violation of human rights, the criminalization of the poor and the world's minorities, and the destruction of Mother Earth in each corner of the globe with the sole purpose of profiting.
