Franchising refers to the method of practicing and using another person's philosophy of business. The "franchisors" authorize the proven methods and trademarks of their businesses to "franchisees" for a fee and a percentage of gross monthly sales. Various tangibles and intangibles such as
national or international advertising, training, and other support services are commonly made available by the franchisor. Agreements typically last five to twenty years, with premature cancellations or terminations of most contracts bearing serious consequences for franchisees...
As a franchisee, you have little legal recourse if you're wronged by the franchisor. Most franchisors make franchisees sign agreements waiving their rights under federal and state law, and in some cases allowing the franchisor to choose where and under what law any dispute would be litigated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FranchisingNow that the mob/druglord/CIA/Mossad alliance has (at vast expense to the U.S. taxpayer and vast damage to the third world) perfected the "dictatorship camouflaged as free market democracy" business practice, it has decided to franchise it. The franchisees are various drug lords, gangsters, rogue intelligence assets, and crooked bankers. At the level of nation states, Peter Dale Scott calls this franchising "the compardor revolution".
Drugs, Meta-Groups and the Compradorial Revolution
The "wiring together" effected by drugs has helped give a significant boost to the global banking network, particularly in Russia and southeast Asia. In these areas it has also fostered trade and investment, bringing businessmen from previous diverse commercial areas into increasing contact with each other. From this perspective
globalization can be seen as a compradorial revolution: compradorial {NOTE} classes have moved into positions of power, and in some cases their international networks have been more than a match for local state power.
There are three different ways in which this compradorial revolution has proceeded, and it could be shown that drugs have often helped supply a base for all three:
1) In some countries (as in Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, and to some extent Indonesia) these classes have displaced military regimes. Drug-based fortunes clearly played a major role in the compradorial revolution of Thailand.
2) In some countries compradorial elements have succeeding in converting (or, depending on your point of view, corrupting) the cadres of socialist governments.
Drugs have played a significant role in the compradorial embourgeoisement of China, Laos, and Cambodia, and may have played an indirect role in the case of Vietnam.
3) Recently – as in the "color revolutions" of eastern Europe and central Asia –
compradorial elements have helped to oust the remnants of the former Soviet governing apparatus. I hope in this essay to give preliminary evidence that the global drug meta-group I have described has played a role in the "color revolutions" as well.
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{NOTE} A comprador is an agent who acts as intermediary between local and international commerce. The term is used pejoratively in Marxist literature, but I use it neutrally here. Each compradorial revolution must be judged on its own merits
- Peter Dale Scott "The Global Drug Meta-Group" (2005)
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htmAs I have been saying recently at DU, the boundary line between corporate business practices and gangsterism has gotten blurry lately. Corporations act through layers of cutouts and contractors, hiding under the rubric of globalization to avoid any semblance of law or human rights.
Basically, globalization means that our corporate masters are expanding their reach into a heretofore untapped profit center - dictatorship. Since the end of the Cold War, they have been running free-lance, "mom and pop" dictatorships, like Mobutu's Zaire or Mugabe's Zimbabwe, out of business. They're too embarrasing for the globalizers.
The globalizers are looking for stylish dictators, for guys who hire Burson-Marsteller (the PR firm of which Mark Penn, Hillary's media advisor, was CEO) to whitewash their dungeons or gin up lies about Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators. These slick dictators have to be willing to be compradors for the global corporations - to hire their services, to obey their financial regime. This new kind of corporate rule by compador cutout is so obvious, one could draw up a contract:
The Corporate Globalization Network (hereafter called the "Franchisor" agrees to provide to the Local Comprador (hereafter called the "Franchisee"):
1) training in media propaganda, subversion of democracy, and destruction of the middle class and intellectuals
1a) there will be an extra charge for corporate media propaganda in favor of franchisee's "movement" in the first world press
2) covert arms shipments and training for paramilitaries before the coup
3) organization and training of secret police and outsized armies after the coup
4) Chicago-school economic advisors to organize the pillaging of the economy by multinationals
5) access to money-laundering and capital flight services
6) diplomatic recognition from the U.S. and other gangster franchisors.
The Franchisee agrees to provide the Franchisor:
1) the superficial appearance of being a democracy
2) the destruction of all government price supports and subsidies for social services.
3) the privatization of all natural resources, such as petroleum and fresh water.
4) the outlawing of trade unions
4a) where this is not possible, assassinations of labor leaders is an acceptable substitute.
5) the avoidance or repeal of inconvenient laws on environmental protection
6) adherence to the dictates of the IMF, the WTO, and other international loan sharks.
7) the destabilization of neighboring regimes who refuse to "get with the program"
8) finally, the franchisee agrees to generally behave as the franchisor tells him to.
The Franchisor permits the Franchisee to make a profit:
1) by exploiting his citizens and his country's resources
2) by graft and corruption,
3) by intimidation and ethnic cleansing,
4) by growing drug crops or participating in drug smuggling,
5) by being an offshore banking haven,
6) or by any other of the various criminal means accepted by the global elites.
This is the "business model" that is making a fortune for outfits like Carlyle and Halliburton. Every dime they make is another penny that goes to further subverting the U.S. Of course, the main franchise of globalization is located right in Washington DC, on the Street of the Lobbyists, where Grover Norquist is well along in his plans to drown our government and turn America into just another comprador nation. There is a branch office for money-laundering on the Street of Thieves (Wall St.) in NYC. And a branch office for secret police at Blackwater HQ in South Carolina.
Most Americans, bombarded with franchised everything since before they reached consciousness, can't see past the catchy commercials and product placements - our brave ally fighting terrorists, those evil socialists, the War on Drugs, the Global War on Terror, your slogan here. Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" provides the gory (literally) details of getting the bugs out of the franchise; but her emphasis is upon the totalitarian ideology of Milton Friedman. This essay takes the point of view of her earlier book, "No Logo" - namely that "we don't need no steenken' franchise" running our government.
Lest anyone think this franchise concept is just rhetorical, let me give you a case in point - the Georgian assault on S. Ossetia:
1) the Georgian franchisee was put in by a CIA-run fraud (the rose revolution)
2) big oil is running a pipeline through there to compete with the Russians
3) the Georgian franchisee has gotten massive military aid from the U.S. and Israel franchisors, and sent troops to Iraq.
4) the Georgian franchisee has, with the blatantly obvious foreknowledge of the franchisor, tried a sneak attack on a neighboring country at a carefully chosen moment.
5) the franchisor media has done their best to whitewash the gangsterism of the Georgian franchisee.
Of course, now that its clear that the neocon assholes have once again screwed the pooch (and Georgia), the franchisee has no recourse (see the Wikipedia article).
Maybe we should name these franchises. Georgia could be BP-istan. Iraq could be Haliburton-istan. Afghanistan could be Chevron-istan. Feel free to add your own names.
I think my work in this essay is complete.
arendt
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