Monbiot and Iraq

[Michael Eisenstadt]

Nightbyrd wrote:
> 
> That's a strange analysis by George Monbiot.

Thanks for thinking to share your thoughts with me 
and other subscribers to the austin-ghetto-list.

i'll try a line by line comment.

> At this moment the US is running a severe capital shortfall.

this is not so at the present period. low interest rates
because there seem to be fewer money making businesses means
plenty of uninvested capital now. the economy is in recession.
 
> The growth in wealth here in the last two decades has not come 
> about because of commodity capacity. 

Of course

> That capacity is shifting to the second and
> third  world. 

It isnt shifting, it has always been there. silver and gold
mined by Spaniards in South America, the Guggenheims and the
copper they mined in Peru, America has mined plenty of iron
and coal in the past. gold and chromium and diamonds and cocoa 
in Africa has been lucrative in the past and still are. 
If by commodity you mean manufacturing, yes that has shifted
from US to newly developed and developing countries. horny-
handed sons of toil may be aesthetically more pleasant to 
look on than white-collar clerks toiling in cubicles, however
the world of bluecollar is a meaner place than middle-class
folk know.

The second and third world? what would that mean? nowadays 
there are only 2 worlds, the developed countries and the 
undeveloped countries.

> Our growth is due to borrowing (balance of debt imbalance) and
> to the efficiencies brought about by computerization and the 
> service economy which utilizes that technology. 

dont understand what "balance of debt imbalance" means. rest
of the sentence is inarguably true.

> Where the US has flourished has been creating efficiencies in 
> production and distribution. 

true. there is still a lot of hightech and lowtech manufacturing 
in US though.

> ...The impetus for the invasion it's much more simple as you often
> suggest. Iraq has the worlds second supply of oil reserves and 
> they are readily available. A quick intro of an American puppet 
> in Iraq plus the introduction of market capitalism and Viola!  
> after the USA is paid back for the cost of liberating the 
> country - the good old boys at Chevron, Texaco, Standard Oil
> etc will be siting on a gravy train for the next 40 years.

Cheney and Bush ARE the oil business. they are wildcatters
and figure why not bet big. so this is part or (all?) of 
their reasoning. BUT why do you assume that they can make
the next move? they cant actually do the war unilaterally.
technically they can but this is not a banana republic and
the rest of the world counts for something and Bush can NOT 
move against Saddam if it is demonstrated that Saddam has 
NO prohibited weapons. which Saddam would be HAPPY to 
demonstrate. the U-2 is flying, there aint going to be no
war. at some point Bush will have to figure out how to stand 
down the military buildup there. once the war ecomes even a 
little bit LESS likely as last 2 weeks seem to show, after 
Blix made his second report, every day there is no war the 
war becomes LESS and LESS likely.

> Nightbyrd

again thanks, Jeff, for thinking to share your thinking 
with me and the subscribers to agl who are NOT subscribers 
to ghetto2.

Who is George Monbiot?

Mike "Nostradamus"