As modern civilization approaches the new millennium, mankind looks with a sense of foreboding to the changes that loom on the horizon. Some of a religious persuasion expect a thousand year reign of a messianic kingdom, while others expect a gentler, kinder world promised by people on their television sets, a better world without poverty and inequality, where hunger and oppression have no place. There need not be any confusion as to what the next century will bring. Anyone may become a prophet by examining the character of the emerging world order in our present day. As the round of free trade agreements continue to impoverish the masses while enriching the few, regardless of borders, what more may we expect except the permanent entrenchment of this system of global tyranny? In this article we hope to expose a few of the current trends that point towards global control by a totalitarian system that even now is a step away from completing its objectives.

    One of the most obvious trends is the negating of national borders, setting multi-national corporations (MNC's) free to roam the world at their pleasure. This has been accomplished by the establishment of large trading blocks that were in the works long before they hit the evening news. The three major blocks in existence today are the EC (European Community), NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), and APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Conference). These three blocks are being merged into one under GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which will eventually eliminate all remaining trade barriers.

    National borders are also eliminated along with trade barriers. This allows MNC's based in the U.S. to move their manufacturing operations to poor nations where people work for much less. The assembled merchandise is then sold at a tremendous profit back in the United States. This enriches the large corporations while decimating the American middle class that derived a large portion of its living from manufacturing.

    It may seem strange that these MNC's such as General Electric, NCR and Colgate-Palmolive would not show concern for the effects on America's economy. It is a recognized fact that the large corporations have divested themselves of these concerns. This was expressed by European Parliament member Sir James Goldsmith, who testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on November 15, 1994. In his testimony he said, "What we are witnessing is the divorce of the interests of the major corporations and the interests of society as a whole....We have a system being proposed [GATT] which will result in the massive unemployment, massive hemorrhaging of jobs and capital, but which will increase Corporate profits."

    William Greider made the following statement in his book entitled, Who Will Tell the People? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 394). "Multinational executives work to enhance the company, not the country. The president of NCR Corporation told The New York Times: 'I was asked the other day about United States competitiveness and I replied that I don't think about it at all.' A vice-president of Colgate-Palmolive observed: 'The United States does not have an automatic call on our resources. There is no mind set that puts this country first.' And the head of GE Taiwan, where so many U.S. industrial jobs have migrated, explained: 'The U.S. trade deficit is not the most important thing in my life...running an effective business is.'"

    If these MNC's do not put America first in their business decisions, it is certain they are not any more considerate of the Third World. This is emphasized by the effects that NAFTA is having on the Mexican economy. Mexico is America's newest dumping ground for its subsidized, surplus agriculture products. Mexican farming practices are not as mechanized and efficient as America's agribusiness farms. This has resulted in the displacement that one figure estimates to be upward towards 13 million Mexicans, off the land and into big cities or maquiladora areas. The maquiladora areas are corridors of factories set up by MNC's just inside the Mexican border. It was promised that NAFTA would mean an increase in the standard of living for both Mexicans and Americans, but it as had an opposite effect, pushing wages down on both sides of the border. Many Mexicans who migrate to a maquiladora factory are often paid about a dollar an hour or less, even though the products they make sell for the same price as they would when made in the U.S. Many Mexicans find that they are barely able to subsist on those wages, much less experience a surge in prosperity like the politicians promised during NAFTA ratification.

    For years international money perpetuated Third World poverty and instability, and now that national borders are coming down, MNC's are free to exploit these vast pools of human labor who are eager to work for a pittance. The result is that somewhere in the world there is always some country where workers have suffered more and are willing to work for less, and this has a depressing effect on wages worldwide. It also benefits the MNC's to maintain a pool of unemployed workers in each country, usually at least 5 to 7 percent of the work force, in order to pressure wages downward.

    In his review of the book Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order (1994 by Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh), R.C. Longworth, Chicago Tribune writer made the following statement in his review that seems to describe this global trend very well. On March 27, 1994, he wrote, "Global production is not beginning to employ the growing number of people who want jobs. Even those with jobs find that the pressures of globalization are pushing wages down....This flow (of money), coupled with the ease with which companies move jobs around the globe, has shattered the ability of national governments to control their own economies....The trends can only accelerate...(resulting in) even moral outrage...where traditional ways of life are under assault by international forces. This understandable reaction, by people who have lost control of their lives to vast impersonal forces, is no more than a futile gesture in a world where no country can afford the luxury of dropping out."

    MNC's have also developed a science called "transfer pricing" which enables them to avoid paying about $50 billion in taxes a year (1992) in the U.S. An article by J.W. Smith entitled, "The IMF World Bank/GATT/NAFTA/WTO/Military Colossus: MERGING CORPORATE MERCANTILISM" describes the "transfer pricing" scheme this way:

    "(1) On paper [the MNC will] move their headquarters to, or establish a subsidiary in, a third country tax haven (there are thirty-nine of them); (2) build their factory in a low-wage developing world country with a low unit cost of production, say ten dollars; (3) invoice (bill) their production to the offshore tax haven at a price that leaves no profit, that same ten-dollar production cost; (4) invoice that production from the tax haven to a high-wage country at a price that will show a profit in the paper corporation in the tax haven and none in the real corporation in the high wage country, let's say thirty dollars per unit, ship their products directly from the low wage developing country to the high wage developed country, and bank those tax-free profits in the tax haven which is nothing more than a mailing address and a plaque on a door. No products touch that offshore entity; even the paperwork is done in corporate home offices. In 1980, there were eleven thousand such corporations registered in the Cayman Islands alone, which has a population of only ten thousand." The result is a new paradigm where "the former siphoning of weak nations' wealth to wealthy citizens domiciled in mother countries and subject to the laws of that country has been replaced by a legal system to siphon the wealth of both the developed and undeveloped world to stateless corporations domiciled in offshore tax havens and subject to no law but their own." (ibid).

    The multi-national corporations are the servants of international finance and reveal the true character of their masters. While they spread propaganda leading the masses to expect a better world, current trends betray the real motives at work behind this "New World Order." Instead of taking the world into a wonderful new age, the MNC's seek to return the world to the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and the advent of the sweatshop. They capitalize on the created human misery in the Third World, dragging their own developed nations down to that level as well. In addition to the economic pressure they apply to the world, they evade their share of the tax burden with a clever shell game, leaving the masses to bear that burden while they reap enormous profits. This is not a system that is going to change in the year 2000 or at any other time. It is a system that has been planned and cultivated for some time and is just now coming out of the closet. It is the very nature of the New World Order.

    Anyone with a background in economics will tell you of the consequences of impoverishing the middle class, or the working class, who are the engine of the economy. The MNC's may have a theory to counteract the certain contraction of commerce that will be the result. Perhaps they plan to keep the economy going by building more prisons and military hardware, useful for keeping the masses under control when they protest. They will not, however, be able to evade the effects of their actions like they do their taxes.

    For one, the ripple effect of middle class collapse is even now producing a shock effect that will shake down their house of cards, resulting in a complete collapse that will not be manageable with federal agents, tanks and helicopters. The Oklahoma City bombing was just a foretaste of that. Secondly, both sacred Scripture and other prophetic writings point to a cataclysmic event that will bring an end to this oppressive system and all those who support it. Even now this event is upon us.

    "With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures: by thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches: therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou has set thine heart as the heart of God; behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness. They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas [go to the bottom]." Ezekiel 28:4-8.

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