DRUGS, WAR AND TRADE ARE JUST BUSINESS AS USUAL

Jfk, Cia, Kgb, Fbi, Nsa, Ufo, Nasa. There may be no necessary relationship
between some or any of them, but all have figured in various conspiracy
theories over the years. In terms of looniness, some of these constructs
have even matched the one-man play written for Lee Harvey Oswald by the
Warren Commission. (The multiple gunmen theory of the JFK assassination
recently received support from acoustic analysis of law enforcement audio
tapes from Dealy Plaza. This goes to show that the nuttiest of conspiracy
theories doesn't automatically disqualify all of them. )

I think it fair to now add WTO, GAT, NAFTA and the IMF into the alphabet
soup of dark doings. This brings me to a conspiracy theory of my own, one
that subsumes all the acronymns above. I call it BAU: Business As Usual.
There's nothing new under the sun, I contend-just minor variations on the
age-old theme of the elite accumulating power and protecting privilege,
while trying to snooker everyone else into believing otherwise.

Consider the equation made between corporate success and nationalistic
pride: Americans are proud of Coca-Cola, Germans proud of Volkswagen, the
French proud of Peugeot, etc. It doesn't run both ways; in fact, most
transnational corporations have never had any particular allegiance to
their points of origin. In 1996, at the annual stockholders' meeting of GM
in Deleware, a lone stockholder noted the presence of the American flag on
one side of the platform. Observing that GM had eliminated 73,000 U.S.
jobs, while creating the exact same number in low-wage countries in the
past decade, he asked CEO John Smith and the board of directors to join him
in pledging allegiance to the flag. They refused. (Perhaps there'd have
been a better chance if it was a pirate flag.)

This kind of refusal is in keeping with the transnational spirit. In 1968,
the telecommunications giant ITT received $26 million in compensation from
the American government for damage done to ITT's German plants by Allied
bombers. As Anthony Sampson put it in his study of the wartime activities
of the company, "the only power (CEO) Sosthenes Behn consistently served
was the sovereign power of ITT." Business As Usual.

As for war in general, for most of the 20th century, from the Krupp's
arming of European powers to the more recent British/American arming of
opposing Middle Eastern interests-Iran and Iraq included-it's been BAU.

BAU also enters into the alleged link between cocaine trafficking and CIA
covert operations. Defenders of the spook network admit that maybe once or
twice a plane registered to the agency flew into L.A. or Miami packed with
Bolivian marching powder-but these were aberrations, they say. Besides, the
pilots were of Colombian, Nicaraguan, or Honduran origin. Uh-huh. The fact
is, as a matter of course, the CIA signs on foreign nationals as paid
operatives, since having blue-eyed boys from Yale or Harvard sitting around
cantinas quaffing Cerveza doesn't provide for the best cover.

In fact, the intelligence agency drug connection goes back at least to
World War II. In the meticulously researched and sobering Whiteout: The
CIA, Drugs and the Press, Andrew Cockburn recounts how Mussolini's war on
the Sicilian mafia made the latter a useful ally of the United States
against the fascist leader. To demonstrate American goodwill, the Office of
Naval Intelligence arranged the release of mobster Lucky Luciano, America's
most notorious gangster after Al Capone. According to Cockburn, not only
did this cement a long association between American intelligence services
and the mafia, it also had enormous consequences for the global heroin trade.

Yet even by World War II, official complicity in drug trafficking was
already BAU. The 19th century "opium war" was initiated by Chinese attempts
to block the British imports of opium from India, on the grounds it was
harming people's health. Disturbed by government interference with trade,
the British replied with warships, forcing the Chinese to cede Hong Kong
and winning the day for drug addiction.

Given the arc of history, I think it safe to conclude that FTAA, GAT, WTO,
and NAFTA are new moonshine for an old kegger. The label reads BAU-and the
drinks are on us.