Downsizing in Disguise
Naomi Klein
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Like so many Bush foreign policy players, Bremer sees war as a business opportunity. On October 11, 2001, just one month after the terror attacks in New York and Washington, Bremer, once Ronald Reagan's Ambassador at Large for counterterrorism, launched a company designed to capitalize on the new atmosphere of fear in US corporate boardrooms. Crisis Consulting Practice, a division of insurance giant Marsh & McLennan, specializes in helping multinationals come up with "integrated and comprehensive crisis solutions" for everything from terror attacks to accounting fraud. Thanks to a strategic alliance with Versar, which specializes in biological and chemical threats, clients of the two companies are treated to "total counterterrorism services."
To sell this sort of high-priced protection to US firms, Bremer had to make the kinds of frank links between terrorism and the failing global economy that activists are called lunatics for articulating. In a November 2001 policy paper titled "New Risks in International Business," he explains that free-trade policies "require laying off workers. And opening markets to foreign trade puts enormous pressure on traditional retailers and trade monopolies." This leads to "growing income gaps and social tensions," which in turn can lead to a range of attacks on US firms, from terrorism to government attempts to reverse privatizations or roll back trade incentives.
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full at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030623&s=klein
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