The Rise and Rise of Global Corporations.

My intuitive antennae have been twitching of late regarding large corporations and their role in global government.

Let me explain: Most recently we had the Swine Flu scare and instantly, the World Health Organisation ramps it up to a pandemic, triggering huge orders of anti-viral drugs in the first instance, then once a vaccine against swine flu is created, huge quantities of that as well. It seems that the relationship between the WHO and pharmacological corporations is a bit too close.

Now of course swine flu didn't turn out as bad as we thought, us the taxpayer are saddled with billions of pounds worth of worthless drugs, with the profits of the big pharma corporations swelled.

Then we get this nugget which came to my attention thanks to Old Holborn, where the WHO want to start a global tax on internet access in order to fund their activities to (supposedly) help improve the health of poor countries. But who really benefits? If its funding research and not actually buying an supplying drugs, then certainly not the poor countires mentioned. To be honest, the main beneficiary of such a tax would be big pharma corporations.

The same can be said of global warming: a scare whipped up about nothing, some dodgy science and hey presto, we have a new funding source for a number of big corporations. Financial trading corporations get to skim the money off carbon trading, the pharma companies will probably come up with some pharmalogical-based solution to carbon capture and/or alternative fuel production. Even the oil companies can profit, by changing to Hydrogen production and supply, because its infinately easier to produce than drilling for oil and all that refining they have to do currently.

You might think the push to ban smoking was health related, but just stop to think again. Why was there an outright ban on public smoking as opposed to some sort of compromise? Who gets to benefit? Well, directly the big pharma corporations do, because they are the people supplying the drugs to either wean us off, or directly replace cigarettes. Yes, to an extent we the people benefit as we lead healthier lives, but in quitting smoking, we may get away from one big corporation, only to fall prey to the clutches of another. Not only that, but if our lives are healthy and we live longer, there is more of a chance we will need medication to extend our latter days. Yes, medication supplied by big pharma corporations.


Now, cast your mind back to the days of GM crops and the unfathomable enthusiasm for GM crops shown by our government, despite the vast majority of the public being against. In the end the government for once had to bow to public pressure, but for a while there was a sense that the government would railroad the issue against public opinion. Again, ask yourself who profits from such a policy? Not us, the little people, but big corporations.