The Wal-Mart corporation is set to announce plans to purchase the island of Taiwan, “from whoever can produce a legal deed first,” according to an internal memo. A copy of the memo was given confidentially to The Bubble News Service by a Wal-Mart employee, and only on condition of receiving help with his food stamp application.
According to the memo, Wal-Mart officials are well aware of the disputed ownership of the island, recognizing that both China and the United States claim the deed. But these officials believe a continuing and even escalating dispute will just be bad for business. (Suggestions that Taiwan itself claims independent ownership of its own island and affairs was dismissed in the memo as “piffle.”)
The memo, signed by Wal-Mart Vice-President for World Acquisition Milo Minderbinder III, will offer a combination of cash and “all the AA batteries their nimble little hands can carry,” in return for the island.
“This is not about politics or culture or even what’s right and wrong; it’s about business,” according to Minderbinder, whose grandfather once lost a fortune selling chocolate-covered Egyptian cotton during World War II. (The elder Minderbinder had originally made that fortune by buying eggs for seven cents and selling them for five cents to United States forces stationed in Italy, claiming to make a profit on volume.)
In the memo Minderbinder claims that any conflict involving the possibility of military action over Taiwan could lead to a vast call-up by the Chinese, resulting in less workers available to produce cheap foreign goods for Wal-Mart’s stores and supercenters.
“Can you imagine the effect on profits if we have to start buying from America again, and just because the Chinese suddenly have a billion people in uniform and armed to the teeth?” Minderbinder asked in the memo. “We just can’t afford the prospect of paying fair wages, and restoring a middle class that would prefer to shop at Macy’s or even a Target.”
Officially, the Obama Administration had no comment when presented with a copy of the Wal-Mart memo, but privately one official, who spoke only on condition of receiving a free Sam’s Club membership, said the administration sees the wisdom of Wal-Mart’s move.
“It’s a heckuva lot cheaper than trying to impose stability and democracy at the point of a gun,” said the official, casting his eyes toward a nearby map of Iraq. The official said a secret task force was already at work looking into tax cuts and subsidies for other companies contemplating buying up problem countries and rogue nations.
“There should, of course, be a premium paid for the purchase of any of Axis of Evil nations,” said the official, who quoted from task force minutes but only after a case of 64-oz. cans of Starkist tuna was placed in front of him.
This is not the first time an American company has been implicated in an effort to buy and own an entire country. According to a diary kept by a member of the Medellin drug cartel, cocaine king and CEO Pablo Escobar had tried to offer the country of Columbia to Halliburton in exchange for a “good deal” on some “processing and refining equipment.” According to the diary, Escobar then pulled the offer off the table after receiving his first invoice from Halliburton, and realized he was being gouged.
It remains uncertain at this point just what Wal-Mart’s next move can be. “There’s really no international law dealing with the subject of nations being purchased by multinational corporations,” says Robert Saccamanno, of the American Institute of Ranting (A.I.R.), a conservative “think” tank. “Not that international law or any international organization has ever been able to stand in the way of what a multinational decides to do, mind you.”
In fact, Saccamanno’s book, “Why We’re Better Than Everyone Else: America and the Nuke Card,” Saccamanno writes precisely about multinationals purchasing problem nations. In charts and graphs, Saccamanno shows how the cost of the outright purchase of any country that “does not agree with us,” would actually be less than what the current healthcare reform bill will eventually cost U.S. taxpayers.
