Thursday, March 01, 2007
The Left criticizes US, and what of it?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
How to begin? There is a complex thesis to expound that ties together the Chavez and Ahmadinejad proletarian revolutions, US history of oil politics, the Marxist analyses of the disasters of neoliberal economics (Tariq Ali) and US history, nay, world history, as a long chain of morality conflicts between the haves and have-nots, and the immorality of both US major parties, particularly in the conduct of wars (Howard Zinn), the neocon thesis of bringing democracy to the Middle East , with disastrous results; and, to confuse those of you who have followed me this far, about the Kidric reform that saved Yugoslav Communism. Overarching all this is the ominous addition of two more warships to the US flotilla in the Persian Gulf, and the secret visit of VP Cheney to Pakistan, to talk to President Musharraf about attacking the Taliban, but, just possibly, also about the threat of a US action against Iran.
Why this, my tirade, to shock the peaceful people of Manhattan’s East Midtown? Well, we are the hosts of the UN, the most important resource for inhibiting the destruction of the world as we know it by all of the above players, and I’m proposing that it should behoove us to protect that piece of real estate against those of our neighbors who see it as waste of our, the taxpayers’ money. Park protectionists and CB6 to note.
Let’s start with Big Oil, the Marxists’ bugaboos. The US runs on oil, we are economically dead without it, unless we go nuclear, and that dangerous alternative will take decades to implement. President F. D. Roosevelt recognized the shrinking of local oil reserves, and our protection of the Gulf tyrants stems back to his policies. It is legitimate self-preservation, and the neocons’ ostensible quest for democracy in the Gulf, if successful, would lead to a popular vote and the electing of people who are overwhelmingly against the US. If we walk out of Iraq, it will split into three countries, and the Iran-backed Shiite hegemony will roll over Kuwait and the Saudi Shiite eastern oil province, and we will be in the worst economic position.
Shifting to Venezuela, another oil resource, with Hugo Chavez gaining popular support by spending confiscated oil millions on the proletariat – some in US and in Great Britain, bizarrely, subsidizing London bus fares for the poor, to offset increases due to oil prices. He models himself on the folk hero Simon Bolivar (born 1783, died of tuberculosis 1830), who by 1825 had kicked the Spanish rulers out of the upper tier of South America (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the country named after him – Brazil shed its Portuguese king in 1889), turning into a dictator in the process. Allied with Bolivia’s coca protector Evo Morales and Cuba’s Fidel Castro (Tariq Ali’s Axis of Hope), Chavez attacks the US , IMF and the World Bank’s neoliberal economic policies. The neolibs, you will remember, led by economists Frederic Hayek and Chicago’s Milton Friedman, advocated stable currency, free trade, free market, thereby fostering the evil multinational corporations. Opponents also include ex-World Bank economist Josef Stiglitz, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and a number of conservative populist politicians (Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot) who see such treaties as NAFTA as sources of US loss of manufacturing facilities and jobs; true enough, when the US has to rely on China and Japan for technology products more complex than a toaster (we also note that the populist designation has come to cover both ends of the political spectrum.)
Anyway, the politicians of the left have been given to excessive rhetoric- Chavez’s “smell of sulphur” speech at the UN, Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe out Israel - causing the US to think of radical countermeasures . Not a good move, guys. Further, Chavez’s policy of nationalization wiping out private ownership, which is also putting street sweepers who carry his guns in charge of large corporations will soon destroy Venezuela’s oil based economy, and his spending on political priorities abroad will anger the workers. This is the Kidric context - unbridled Stalinist Communism in 1945 Yugoslavia, leaving people barely in ownership of their toothbrushes, caused such an uproar in the seven provinces, that wise local politicians - Boris Kidric, Edward Kardelj and Milovan Djilas led Josif Broz Tito in 1948 to the path of reform, installing a worker-owned industrial environment, condemned by Joseph Stalin as national Communism. But the workers prevailed, approving of product-based compensation, and the system prevailed, until the collapse of the Evil Empire and the rise of nationalism in that world. Something for the axis of anti- neoliberalism to consider, besides the fact that they may be creating narco-nations that destroy not only the nasty capitalists but also their own working class.
How to begin? There is a complex thesis to expound that ties together the Chavez and Ahmadinejad proletarian revolutions, US history of oil politics, the Marxist analyses of the disasters of neoliberal economics (Tariq Ali) and US history, nay, world history, as a long chain of morality conflicts between the haves and have-nots, and the immorality of both US major parties, particularly in the conduct of wars (Howard Zinn), the neocon thesis of bringing democracy to the Middle East , with disastrous results; and, to confuse those of you who have followed me this far, about the Kidric reform that saved Yugoslav Communism. Overarching all this is the ominous addition of two more warships to the US flotilla in the Persian Gulf, and the secret visit of VP Cheney to Pakistan, to talk to President Musharraf about attacking the Taliban, but, just possibly, also about the threat of a US action against Iran.
Why this, my tirade, to shock the peaceful people of Manhattan’s East Midtown? Well, we are the hosts of the UN, the most important resource for inhibiting the destruction of the world as we know it by all of the above players, and I’m proposing that it should behoove us to protect that piece of real estate against those of our neighbors who see it as waste of our, the taxpayers’ money. Park protectionists and CB6 to note.
Let’s start with Big Oil, the Marxists’ bugaboos. The US runs on oil, we are economically dead without it, unless we go nuclear, and that dangerous alternative will take decades to implement. President F. D. Roosevelt recognized the shrinking of local oil reserves, and our protection of the Gulf tyrants stems back to his policies. It is legitimate self-preservation, and the neocons’ ostensible quest for democracy in the Gulf, if successful, would lead to a popular vote and the electing of people who are overwhelmingly against the US. If we walk out of Iraq, it will split into three countries, and the Iran-backed Shiite hegemony will roll over Kuwait and the Saudi Shiite eastern oil province, and we will be in the worst economic position.
Shifting to Venezuela, another oil resource, with Hugo Chavez gaining popular support by spending confiscated oil millions on the proletariat – some in US and in Great Britain, bizarrely, subsidizing London bus fares for the poor, to offset increases due to oil prices. He models himself on the folk hero Simon Bolivar (born 1783, died of tuberculosis 1830), who by 1825 had kicked the Spanish rulers out of the upper tier of South America (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the country named after him – Brazil shed its Portuguese king in 1889), turning into a dictator in the process. Allied with Bolivia’s coca protector Evo Morales and Cuba’s Fidel Castro (Tariq Ali’s Axis of Hope), Chavez attacks the US , IMF and the World Bank’s neoliberal economic policies. The neolibs, you will remember, led by economists Frederic Hayek and Chicago’s Milton Friedman, advocated stable currency, free trade, free market, thereby fostering the evil multinational corporations. Opponents also include ex-World Bank economist Josef Stiglitz, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and a number of conservative populist politicians (Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot) who see such treaties as NAFTA as sources of US loss of manufacturing facilities and jobs; true enough, when the US has to rely on China and Japan for technology products more complex than a toaster (we also note that the populist designation has come to cover both ends of the political spectrum.)
Anyway, the politicians of the left have been given to excessive rhetoric- Chavez’s “smell of sulphur” speech at the UN, Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe out Israel - causing the US to think of radical countermeasures . Not a good move, guys. Further, Chavez’s policy of nationalization wiping out private ownership, which is also putting street sweepers who carry his guns in charge of large corporations will soon destroy Venezuela’s oil based economy, and his spending on political priorities abroad will anger the workers. This is the Kidric context - unbridled Stalinist Communism in 1945 Yugoslavia, leaving people barely in ownership of their toothbrushes, caused such an uproar in the seven provinces, that wise local politicians - Boris Kidric, Edward Kardelj and Milovan Djilas led Josif Broz Tito in 1948 to the path of reform, installing a worker-owned industrial environment, condemned by Joseph Stalin as national Communism. But the workers prevailed, approving of product-based compensation, and the system prevailed, until the collapse of the Evil Empire and the rise of nationalism in that world. Something for the axis of anti- neoliberalism to consider, besides the fact that they may be creating narco-nations that destroy not only the nasty capitalists but also their own working class.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:36 AM 
