[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18284-18285]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           SOVEREIGN ENTITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hulshof). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Metcalf) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, the President warns of the potential of a 
new age of civil wars. He is one of the progressive new center-left 
academics turned leader and a proponent of the view that he and his 
family of progressive thinkers can find the cause of wars and intervene 
with a cure.
  It has been demonstrated time after time that the United States can 
be drawn into war after war, national conflicts within borders and 
across borders. American troops die and suffer for the policy 
formulations we are never informed of and without the specific 
congressional declaration and war powers that the Congress alone 
retains.
  Since the United Nations was founded in 1945, America has not won a 
war but lost each and every conflict but one, depending on your view of 
the Persian Gulf War.
  The Millennium Report recently issued by U.N. Secretary General Annan 
calls for ``a strengthened Corps of Commanders in New York ready to 
organize and intervene with peacekeeping operations within a week or 
two.''
  There is little that I fear so much as U.S. troops being committed to 
such an international force that can intervene without requiring 
specific congressional approval.
  Should this concept ever conclude where it is intended, a standing 
army with a stronger corps of commanders, we will see the development 
of a threat greater than ever in our recent past. Already we have seen 
the power of a few enormous multinational corporations grow to a size 
that exceeds all but the largest nations. Fifty-one corporations are 
presently larger than the bottom 100 nations.
  We have seen the jurisdictional prerogatives of NATO enlarged and 
both our own CIA and NATO find in their mandates to now include 
protecting these same corporations' trade routes and corporate markets. 
How did they find that new information there? Globalization has created 
new sovereigns out of these paper entities. The United Nations would 
create a new standing army to protect these new sovereigns' interests.
  There is much too much hope placed on globalization and the 
interdependence upon nations. The rhetoric only hides the reality of 
who really benefits and what the real consequences are here at home. 
Wages in America are stagnant, and in the last 3 years there have been 
periods of decline.
  Maybe wages are going up slightly in some countries, but this too can 
be explained by other than globalization's trade benefits: the present 
world economy is driven by speculation, not productivity; mergers and 
acquisitions, not growth and new entrepreneurship; workers shifting 
from one well-paying job to three less well-paid service jobs; wealth 
increased for the few investors, owners and profiteers while the 
standard of living drops again and again as every new dollar buys less 
goods for every family.
  We are today proud of an economic boom that nobody would dare suggest 
can be sustained. When the inevitable downturn arrives, wages will be 
scuttled. Wages worldwide will return to

[[Page 18285]]

the pre-speculative period. But the largest corporations will not feel 
the pain, as each merger, each acquisition grants to the parent firm 
unlimited opportunities to downsize further and eliminate more jobs.
  Is there any question about what entities are really sovereign today?

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