Untitled Document

Philosophy

Empire’s don’t last, no matter what the neo-cons think.

Mr. Craig B Hulet?

As it happens, unfortunate wanderers often put to the test the halls of safety, bringing to light by their mere presence the values that have been cultivated in these, and revealing whether those who are prosperous have learned that the outcasts' misfortune commands their care. For he who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth should be the first to know its value... --Homer

Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, recently wrote an intriguing piece titled “Practice to Deceive: Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare scenario--it’s their plan.” He argues that the neo-conservatives have a vision for what they want to do in the Middle East and deception has always been part of their ideological make-up. In one telling paragraph he captures the argument Craig B Hulet has made for almost fifteen years; specifically during Persian Gulf I and later in his book The Hydra; Hulet argued that Bush Senior’s [administration] leading thinkers sought nothing short of a corporate empire. Not on the Roman model exactly, but one where the use of military force is prominent and used primarily to benefit the western (read American dominated) corporations which make up our present monopoly, cartelized, corporate system, not the American people themselves! That it is global is understood now, though at the time (1990) it was considered a conspiracy theory. That its ideology is Corporatism is now become clear to all but the blind. Marshall wrote that the current crop of neo-conservative hawks have a vision for the world, a vision not “unlike,” but “exactly like” a religious epiphany. Regarding the present plan for the entire Middle East, not just Iraq, he stated it this way:

“The hawks' [other] response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. ‘We need to be more assertive,’ argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, ‘and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia.’ Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States ‘occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region.’...What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics.” (emphasis added, CBH: The Washington Monthly, April 2003.)

Hulet argued on radio shows for almost two decades that this was the real political objective of each administration, whether Democrats or Republicans were in the White House. Hulet argued forcefully on the Jim Bohannon Show recently that Bush Junior was building an empire, whether it was defined properly by Hulet, or were we changing the definition of the word “Empire,” was Bohannon’s only retort. Change the definition, fine, words and their terms of usage change all the time as knowledge and reality sinks in and the truth can only be understood by the new terms and phrases of the day. But Empire, an American-led empire, a corporate empire, “is” what the current administration is all about. Not only in the Middle East shall we make war, but the world over if necessary. As the tenacious John Pilger recently wrote while sitting in on a meeting of journalists and aid workers in Iraq,... “It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the ‘test case’, says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini’s definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing ‘incredible’ levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is ‘debated’ on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue.” (Independent.com, April 20, 2003)

Corporazioni was what Mussolini’s regime was called...Corporatism is its English phrase, fascism is the economic foundation (not Nazism as the progressive left has claimed for 50 years).

Date: April 21, 2003

Globalization and monopoly capitalism is the problem not free trade.

Craig B Hulet?

The recent book by Mike Moore (not the self-important iconoclast), but the former head of the WTO, titled A World Without Walls, Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance, had his book reviewed in a rather flattering light, the reviewer stating in one paragraph “So why would a "veteran labor/social democrat" embrace liberal economic internationalism? Because, he writes, "freedom and equality of opportunity act in direct opposition to protected powerful and privileged forces. (Peter Sutherland, April 21 2003 the reviewer is chairman of Goldman Sachs International and was formerly director general of the World Trade Organization)

During the same week the debate rages on at the Powell dominated FCC over the centralization of the major and now minor media. Specific FCC staffers believe the diversity index they are arguing shows that current limits on ownership of a TV station and one or more radio stations in a market are unnecessary. The staff is also expected to recommend:
* Raising from 35% to about 45% the cap on the national audience a TV broadcaster can reach with affiliates it owns.
* Easing a ban on owning two TV stations in smaller markets.
* Keeping a ban against mergers between the top four networks.

The last is the only good news, the rest promises not a reversal of the merger activity but a less speedy trend in the very same direction: more mergers and a further centralization of an already toady media that today has little diversification let alone any separate dissenting voices. The problem, as I see it, is that the liberals, conservatives and progressives still all agree to not disagree that a true free enterprise system that set out (as it originally did under antitrust rules) to protect true free enterprise simply no longer exists with the exception of the very small independent shops that produce what doesn’t matter in the global context. All the rest is set to further centralization with more mergers and acquisitions; bigger being better in the minds of all sides; free enterprise the enemy of all sides; managed competition replacing anything free in enterprises.

The Seattle WTO protestors, that Mike Moore complains about in his new book, he is right, have it wrong: they protest the profits corporations make because they still think in the anarchic terms that some sort of benign socialism eliminating profits would cure all ills; conservatives ignorantly believe that GE and Boeing stand for free enterprise when they in fact fight it at every turn, demanding market competition be regulated, markets carved up to their joint liking and competition removed by mergers and takeovers of anyone who might look like a future competitor. Liberal internationalists, the most ignorant of all, naively think that managed competition has some relationship to genuine competition and pursue the WTO agenda with the most vigor. Not even the irrelevant libertarians make an argument, as they too, like the progressives, know they will never have a seat at the table if they argue for true free enterprise, so they side with the conservatives in pretending they believe monopolists like GE and Boeing, Disney and Microsoft, actually want competition and that is what they practice. Movies like The Insider about the tobacco industry’s seven dwarfs clearly not clearing up the matter of what constitutes monopoly practices!

America is quietly going the way of Mussolini’s Italy and Weimar Germany before Hitler. Corporatism rules the WTO; progressives believe “it” represents free enterprise so, per contra, socialist nonsense would be their answer. Liberals ignore the distinction so as to be part of the future authoritarian global regime. Conservatives think GE stands for free enterprise so cannot figure out how to protest the WTO at all, and because they hate progressives they support the WTO so as to remain distinct tribally from the former tribal drum-beaters. Clearly Mike Moore’s quote above is then both correct and raw sophistry. The WTO is better than a global socialist state; maybe better than anarchic nation-state competition over scarce resources. But managed competition’s corporatism and the slow disintegration of nation-state sovereignty over economic issues that matter (as opposed to those that do not, like pornography and non-fiction books on international relations) renders the global landscape with its synthesis: fascism’s corporazioni.

All Americans and all the world loses. The wars today and the future wars are about this and nothing more; anyone that argues that these wars are about liberation or WMD are as foolish as Mike Moore is deceitful.

Date: April 23, 2003

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