My job, she said, was “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U .S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire — to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs . In turn, they
bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people . The owners of U .S. engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.”

Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops . Oil companies wantonly pump toxins into rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants, and committing genocide among ancient cultures . The pharmaceutical industry denies lifesaving medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans . Twelve million families in our ow United States worry about their next meal.¹

1. U.S . Department of Agriculture findings, reported by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), http ://www.frac.org (accessed December 27, 2003). ↩︎