Who Runs Washington? The Long Reach of Big-Pharma

If corporate-financier interests would jeopardize the peace and stability of an entire nation to maintain a monopoly over a single pharmaceutical – developed not even by them, but by publicly funded research – what would these same sort of corporate-financier interests do if the stakes were infinitely higher – say as high as pushing through a region-wide trade deal that would give such interests monopolies not over a single chemical compound, but over entire industries?

It is clear that elected representatives in Washington, London, and across the rest of the European Union do not represent the interests of those who elected them. Instead, they are clearly subject to and instruments of corporate-financier special interests – not just from across the pharmaceutical industry, but from a variety of industries ranging from finance and banking to big-oil, big-ag, and big-defense.

Understanding this simple truth – demonstrated unequivocally amid Washington’s latest row with its “ally” Colombia – is the first step in formulating a means to rebalance this inequity.

Dealing With Unwarranted Influence 

The leaks revealing Washington’s handling of Colombia, however, provide a valuable potential means of confronting and confounding this immense, unwarranted influence in the immediate future.

The leaks take pressure off the Colombian government itself and put the narrative into the hands of third parties who can more credibly pass on the information to the public. Other nations facing behind-the-scenes coercion might likewise use the “leaked communique” method to take pressure off of themselves, and shift it onto the immense corporate-financier interests bearing down on them.

For the pharmaceutical industry specifically – which has attempted to guard its monopolies under the pretext of providing humanity with invaluable, irreplaceable products and services essential for humanity’s well-being – since pharmaceuticals and other medical therapies are indeed essential matters of life and death, they should be nationalized and the “intellectual property” held by these corporations – paid for by public funding – should be rendered as opensource. This arrangement would be not entirely unlike how the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) approaches space exploration.

For corporate-financier special interests in general, it is essential for both individual nations and local communities around the world to create alternatives to these monopolies and begin the process of systematically and permanently boycotting and replacing them. Not only will this redistribute wealth pragmatically rather than politically, it will create a more equitable balance of power geopolitically.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.