fatwa

Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu
Fri Aug 21 14:28:29 PDT 1998


And since when has war been bad for the US economy? I haven't noticed too many examples. Might be just the thing to get the US and EU over the Y2K crash/slump.

The more serious impediment to a continuation of the computer technology-driven upswing (K-wave or not) is that mentioned by Mark Jones, the stong possibility of a sharp upswing in oil prices sometime after 2000. Indeed, this is not unconnected to the recent events, as Rakesh notes. Barkley Rosser On Fri, 21 Aug 1998 16:16:24 -0400 (EDT) Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> wrote:


> Thinking out loud here, and if these ideas are absurd, I welcome any and
> all challenges.
>
> I think it would be a mistake to understand these strikes in terms
> of a dog wagging presidential diversion. The US faces real problems in its
> geopolitical control of the Middle East and real popular resistance to its
> occupation of Saudi Arabia (one should not forget what a psychological
> blow the hit on the US military installation must have been). And it is
> only stupidity that would allow US intelligence to think this popular
> resistance is spearheaded by billionaire terrorists, whatever groteque
> role they are playing. Indeed the attempt to eliminate this one will
> only embolden popular resistance from Egypt through Lebanon to Syria and
> throughout the Gulf.
>
> At any rate, speaking of Alan Freeman, we should not forget his
> analyses of US imperialism in the Gulf. The US has been successful in
> keeping itself the major arms exporter to this most profitable mega
> market, providing security to some of the most grotesque reactionaries in
> the annals of world history, and
> more importantly it has been successful in ensuring that oil continues to
> be priced in dollars (about the dynamics of this I would love to be more
> informed; for example does oil continue to be priced in dollars because of
> the on going demand by Arab elites for US weapons and security? If this is
> a ridiculous hypothesis, please correct me.)
>
> Without the latter (pricing of oil in dollars), the euro would probably be
> sure to sink the dollar as world reserve currency--which would then
> threaten the continued ability of this late imperial power to buy time
> from its monstrous trade deficits. This is quite an important
> 'conjuncture' for the imperial US to reassert its control over the Middle
> East--the lynchpin of US global power, according to Eqbal Ahmad. And the
> renewed imperial projection is sure to lead to much bloodshed while one
> should expect that in this context of escalation the US will give the
> greenlight to Israel to finish the Palestinians off. I honestly think
> that until know Clinton was trying to pursue a more 'moderate' course,
> rightfully fearing the popular Arab and Muslim resistance an even more
> aggressive stance would provoke. And with a newly aggressive India (and my
> suspicion remains that the US and India were in high level secret
> agreement about the recent nuclear tests) Pakistan will not be able to
> lend much support to any popular resistance to the US occupation. Maybe
> the US thinks it can control the situtation now that Pakistan has its own
> problems or maybe such self-deception is necessary because it must attempt
> to maintain imperial control.
>
> If Clinton has previously had enough sense to understand that such
> US military strikes and retailiations will only further destabilize the
> region and make US rule ever more bloodly (by squandering the little
> socalled soft power it had left), he surely had to kow tow to the
> hawks after his personal debacle. And it is no surprise that this most
> ugly of men would do so.
>
> This nonsense about a K long wave upswing should be dismissed; we have
> entered a period of global depression and soon it will be a period of
> escalated militarism, wars and revolution.
>
> best, rakesh
>
>

-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu



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