Editor's Note: Mickey Z (Michael Zezima) is the author of Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of "The Good War" (Soft Skull Press, 2000). He also contributed a chapter called "Saving Private Power" to You Are Being Lied To (New York: Disinfo Books, 2001), edited by Russ Kick.
In the most remote regions of Brazil, slave labor is employed to cut down
grand swaths of the precious rain forest to make room to grow eucalyptus which is then burned by male slaves (who exploit the body, mind, and spirit of female slaves forced into prostitution) to make charcoal for the steel mills of Brazil where the poorest of the poor toil for wages that do not sustain them so that steel
can be shipped to a General Motors plant in Mexico (GM is now the largest employer south of the US border) where the poorest of the poor endure
maquiladora conditions so these
automobile parts can then be shipped to a GM plant in the US (roughly 50 percent of what is termed "trade" consists of business transactions between branches of the same transnational corporation) where even the poorest of the poor proudly take on imposing debt to possess a car "Made in the USA" so they can clog the highways that were paved over inestimable eco-systems, filling the air with noxious
pollution as they make their way to the drive-through window of and anti-union fast food restaurant that purchased
the beef of slaughtered cattle that once grazed
on land cleared by male slaves who exploit the body, mind, and
spirit of female slaves in the most remote regions of Brazil.
