DANNY GLOVER: Has the Congress taken up that? I know they did that to some extent over the AGOA Act, but you look at how Latin America has defeated the Free Trade of the Americas, and as resounding as a defeat as that, called into question that. How has Congress looked at free trade? How have they looked at the debt itself? We have an opportunity now with a Democratic congress to really call committees forward to look at this idea around the debt and free trade.
REP. JOHN CONYERS: There's no question that we've got to turn free trade into fair trade. And I come from Detroit, and, as you know, our manufacturing base of automobiles is suffering greatly. It's far easier to bring in a foreign car to this country than it is for us to bring an American product to anywhere else in the world. So that's what we have to get to. The 110th Congress is two months old. We are working to repair so many things that have gone wrong, it's not even funny. Our agendas in most of the committees -- I know with Charlie Rangel -- are overloaded and overtaxed, but we've got to, first of all, relieve these poor nations of debt. You, Harry Belafonte, Nelson Mandela, the Congressional Black Caucus, progressives throughout the country have been talking about getting rid of this debt and then promoting trade. And nothing, Danny, is more disturbing to me than last week's announcement that the US was building a huge military base in Africa. Question: what for?
What for?
Oil. Oil. Oil. Good to see that "lenin" is finally noticing that.
ReplyDeleteCobalt and copper and bananas and lots of other stuff too, of course, but all this is of relatively marginal importance.
Oil. No oil, no globalised capital. No oil, no "economic growth". No oil, no USA. No oil, no Way of Life. It really is that simple. Hence all the recent effort.
I don't think they care about the Way of Life. That's rhetoric. They would like the Way of Life in the US to be the Way of Life in Cité Soleil.
ReplyDeleteRemember New Orleans.
They care about controlling the maximum amount of wealth and in every possible way thwarting, obstructing, crushing people's ability to resist. That's it.
and they think ahead.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, though: if something resembling the Way of Life becomes no longer guaranteeable for at last a slight majority of the US population, then "controlling the maximum amount of wealth" becomes at least slightly more difficult for the rulers of the US. Revolting peasants have never yet been welcomed by robber barons; dealing with them involves an unpleasant expenditure of energy (translated into money), and some real risks. It's much safer for exploiters when the people they're openly exploiting are located an entire continent away.
ReplyDeleteAnd "economic growth" has to be ensured.
It goes without saying that the same applies to the EU, and increasingly to China and India too. A quarter billion angry motorists with empty gas tanks is a problem for any ruling class, especially when those workers can't get to work. Not to mention the people who are starving because oil-based fertilisers and pesticides have become unaffordable, or because their land has been given over to the production of ethanol as a gasoline substitute.
Commercial oil production began in Pennysylvania in 1859. I hope it is a coincidence that the world's population has increased fivefold since then. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the world is currently ruled by Oilman Bush and Oilman Cheney, or that the Democratic Party is doing nothing whatsoever to stop their "War" on "Terror", or that that "War" is concentrated in the Middle East.
"And nothing, Danny, is more disturbing to me than last week's announcement that the US was building a huge military base in Africa. Question: what for?"
ReplyDeleteThe much-maligned Michael Ruppert was predicting very firmly four years ago that the next stage of the "War" on "Terror" would be in Africa, with the convenient discovery of "Al Qaeda cells" there and a consequent "need" for the US army to intervene as peacekeepers. It's not that Africa can compete with the Middle East as a source of oil (obviously not); but that it represents a much more easily exploitable source of the stuff, which will keep the US and Britain ticking over for perhaps a few years yet.
"if something resembling the Way of Life becomes no longer guaranteeable for at last a slight majority of the US population, then "controlling the maximum amount of wealth" becomes at least slightly more difficult for the rulers of the US"
ReplyDeletethis is what they are preparing for though, clearly. the next thing. because this thing - the current system - can't last forever. This is why there is an obvious assault on the "american way of life", immiseration, thirdworldisation, the end of institutions and consitutions despite the fact that these have heretofore been essential pillars of capital's legitimacy. Marx was right. Capitalism is not sustainable forever. The next thing is upon us.
"And "economic growth" has to be ensured."
ReplyDeleteNot really; This too is rhetoric. The rate of profit has to be sustained. Ultimately only the oligarchy's control of everything and everyone has to be sustained. These people are not ideologues, not keynesians, not nationalists. They're a global ruling elite whose only concern is self preservation and perpetual increase of wealth and power. They may be wrong about their strategy - the abolition of the global and the national legal order - but it's not hard to follow the reasoning if you assume they do know everything everybody else knows.
there is no obstacle to the US acquisition of oil. This can't be a motive. Why wouldn't total sell oil to americans as quickly as exxon? The shareholders are international. This argument is not sound. Nothing had to be done to force Sadam Hussein to sell oil to americans; anyway the US public actually gets most of its oil from closer places. There was no threat that the US public would have to consume less oil if the ownership of the oil production and wells remained exactly as it was. Oil is a commodity - if you can afford it you can have it. The Bush policy is only making it harder and harder for americans to fill up their cars; that extra consum^ption of course,like the property boom, cuts back on the purchase of other stuff. It is in every way a policy that is designed, in every detail, to destroy what the audience understood Bush I to mean by 'the way of life'. He was painting a furriner as a threat to american prosperity, for the usual purposes. that is, he was conjuring an outside foreign threat to americans lifestyle and standard of living. But of course he himself and his clique are the threat. Under their tightening control of the country the american 'way of life' - what people understood this to mean - has in fact changed dramatically, and continues to rapidly degrade.
ReplyDelete"But of course he himself and his clique are the threat."
ReplyDeleteWell, I have no illusions that the Bush (oil) clique cares much more about the average American than about the average Indian or African. But if that clique poses a threat to the average American (and it surely does), then it's not because there's an endless amount of oil to go around forever and Bush and Cheney simply hiding it so they can make more money in the long run. Like frogs, dodoes, dinosaurs and people, oil is not guaranteed to last, and all the serious studies I've read say it won't. Especially when an ever-larger number of people are being dragooned ever-faster into a way of life that forces them to use more and more and more of the stuff.
In the meantime, of course, some few people are getting very rich because of this, especially those (such as Oilman Bush and Oilman Cheney) who have good reason, and money enough, to be well-acquainted with the best available statistics and prognoses.
i think their plan is to drastically reduce the population of the planet, actually.
ReplyDeletethen it's not because there's an endless amount of oil to go around forever and Bush and Cheney simply hiding it so they can make more money in the long run. Like frogs, dodoes, dinosaurs and people, oil is not guaranteed to last, and all the serious studies I've read say it won't. Especially when an ever-larger number of people are being dragooned ever-faster into a way of life that forces them to use more and more and more of the stuff.
ReplyDeleteexactly, so a geostrategic, old fashioned, unkewl analysis is due here: the Western governments want to get their hands on energy resources in Russia.
This is simultaneously what the Empire wanted since the dawn of time. And has always resulted in massive DEATH. WAR. BLOOD.
But Slovenes, whose child Dr. Zizek is, have already robbed the Russian ally in the microcosm of the Yugoslav situation, so how could we expect them to do anything else but offer a kewl Teletubby analysis of what is otherwise a geo-strategic problem?