For a long time now, people have been unhappy about the way the US has tried to dictate the terms of international trade. The US has tried to ensure that the benefit of trading goes to the big international corporations (which are mainly American). They want small countries to accept their terms. America wants to turn the whole world economy into a buyer's market, with the US as the buyer and anyone else as the seller, forced to accept terms which are not in the best interests of their people, their producers, their economy, or their environment. This is one of the reasons for the demonstrations at the World Trade talks and meeting of the G7, which America dismisses as of no importance.	Whenever America's unhappy with a foreign government, it engineers a coup to replace the head of state with someone it prefers. This has been going on for years. Remember the Shah of Iran? Deposed with US help, and Ayatollah Khomeini brought back from exile, only to find he wasn't as pro-US as they'd hoped. Ferdinand Marcos? Supported by the US long after his own people had got fed up with him, but eventually dumped. Now the US has cobbled together a 'government' of pro-US exiles in Afghanistan, and US soldiers are shooting the Mujahaddin, the very people who've been fighting against the Taliban for years. Two more former US allies - Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.	America doen't want to have to bother to obey laws which interfere with its 'right' to make profits. BP (a joint UK/US corporation) is planning to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and neighbouring countries. BP will be able to protect the pipeline with its own military force. The company won't be bound by any laws on the environment or social or human rights, and they can prevent local people living a normal life if it interferes with BP's ability to make profits. Throughout the world, there are hundreds of examples of US companies persuading governments to allow them to ignore local laws and set up business on their terms, and it's local people who have suffered.
We all know that the US uses more than its fair share of the world's resources, as do many other 'developed' countries. But whilst the majority of them have at least recognised the damage they're doing to the planet, the US continues to believe that it has no obligation to make any changes. It refuses to sign the Kyoto protocol. It refuses to take steps to cut down on wasteful use of scarce resources or lower greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, it's trying to 'buy' the emissions of poor countries who haven't reached their own limits. This won't cut down on the level of destructive gas going into the atmosphere, it'll increase it. America seems to think that sharing the burden of changing our ways means everyone must suffer equally, regardless of how much they consume. So if an American with two cars must lose one car, in return a man with two shoes in a third-world country must lose one shoe to make it fair on America. Rather than working together with the rest of the world to find a solution, America prefers to dodge the issue and put the future of the whole planet at risk.	Genetically-modified organisms are another American idea designed to provide more profits for US companies regardless of the damage or possible danger. If the idea was to provide more food for the world's hungry, why would the first inventions be crops that were resistant to a particular company's weedkiller? There are objections to GMOs throughout the world, on several grounds. Farmers in poor countries do not want GMOs. They want to be able to save their own seed from year to year. In the US, 'Heirloom' vegetables are highly prized, but poor farmers elsewhere in the world who have developed their own heirloom varieties of crops that thrive in their local conditions count for nothing with the US multi-nationals. Some people object on ethical grounds. Everything on the planet is finely balanced. We don't know how altering a few genes in one living organism will affect every other living thing on the planet, and until we do, we shouldn't be tampering with the building blocks of life, especially not just so that US corporations can make more profits.	Whilst the US didn't sign up to Kyoto and kept immunity from prosecution for War Crimes (why would that be?), it did sign up to the Geneva Convention. But it prefers to deny that the prisoners it took after its war on Aghanistan are POWs. This is trying to have it both ways. If they weren't POWs, the US had no right to remove them from Afghanistan after the conflict and hold them prisoner elsewhere. They satsify the definition of Prisoner of War in the Geneva Convention, but still America pretends that they aren't - because the US didn't recognise the Taliban as the legitimate Government of Afghanistan, or because the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to a war against terrorism. The US is wrong, and everyone knows it. But America thinks its too important to bother what international law requires. What can anyone do if the most powerful nation on earth, in terms of money or weapons, picks and chooses which of its international obligations it complies with, and rides roughshod over international law?

So there are many reasons people throughout the world might see America as an arrogant foreign power, a destructive, greedy, selfish bully, a nation that wants to be independent of the world around it, only wants to participate in anything so it can take the money and run. The current preparations for war on Iraq have just brought matters to a head, particularly as it seems very likely that the US will go to war no matter what the international community, as represented by the United Nations, or by the millions of people throughout the world who have taken part in peace marches, say. You could say that America has given its critics an opportunity to stand united.

But there are more serious issues. The world is now at a crossroads, and we have to choose between one bully and another. Saddam Hussein has few friends - almost everyone against the coming war is equally against Saddam Hussein. But the point at issue now has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. What the world must now decide is if it will allow America to bully the United Nations into doing its bidding, or whether the United States must be put in its place by the rest of the world. If we allow one country to decide who the leader of another country can be, and if we allow one country to choose the government of another country, where is national sovereignty? Where is democracy? We must stand by our principles and not give in to America's bullying, blackmail, or bribes. If we do not stand firm on this occasion, there will be no freedom in the future for any of us.

We cannot stop America going to war, nor any of our governments joining the US. But we can stop the flow of money into the US. American corporations have a huge influence on our lives, and boycotting American goods will probably mean changing our buying habits. But it also gives us an opportunity to choose our purchases more carefully, which might be a good thing for the planet and our local economies.

Check this list of over 450 big-name products to find which are made by US companies.

Judging by their eagerness to start a war, you'd think America had no idea what a war means. And you'd be right. Until September 11th, America hadn't had to face the reality of war on its own doorstep. That's why to some people what happened on September 11th offered a hope that at last the US might understand what it was prepared to inflict on other nations. Apparently not. They're still ready to take up arms and destroy other people's homes, other people's hospitals, other people's schools, other people's power stations, other people's water supplies, to make some other country's children orphans, some other country's women widows. Looking at the people who suffered from the bombing in Afghanistan, and the conditions they were living in even before all the destruction, how can anyone believe the 'collateral damage' resulting from the sort of war the US engages in is justified? There might be some argument for helping the people of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, but the solution certainly isn't to bomb them.	These are some of the main contractors to the United States Department of Defense: Boeing Dell Exxon GEC Marconi General Electric General Motors Honeywell Hoover IBM Kraft Foods Lockheed Lotus Maersk Line Mobil Motorola Otis Elevator Co. Proctor & Gamble Shell Oil Texas Instruments Unisys For more details, visit: Top Defense Contractors	These are some of the richest American corporations: Exxon Mobil General Motors Ford General Electric Hewlett-Packard Proctor & Gamble Motorola Prudential Financial American Express Coca-Cola Sara Lee 3M Kimberly-Clark Goodyear Tire & Rubber Toys 'R' Us Nike HJ Heinz Colgate-Palmolive Kellogg Pepsi Bottling Texas Instruments Gillette For more details, visit: Fortune500