SUPERPOWER?
The East coast energy blackouts indicate the weaknesses of the America's economy. Its strengths are well known: successively expanding workforce buoying a booming consumer goods sector. But the expansion of the US economy in the 1990s was predominantly extensive, rather than intensive. More people were drawn into productive work, by recruiting women and immigrants into the labour force (In September 1999 the Scientific American reported that more than one million people were migrating to the US each year). The Federal Reserve concluded that the long period of growth in the US was the consequence of wages being held down by 'worker insecurity' (Federal Open Management Committee minutes, 24 September 1996). With low wages, businesses could afford to take on more people, but had less incentive to invest in technology.
Despite the appearance of a technology boom predicated on the internet, too much of that turned out to be speculative investment, and too much of it was dedicated to consumer goods (PCs) rather than producer goods. America's electricity supply is a case in point. Though electricity consumption has been driven up by the growing market for home computing and air conditioning, there has not been a corresponding increase in power supply. The blackout was the result of an economy that has expanded extensively without the new investment to sustain consumption.
IDI AMIN
'I indicated that I was not wholly displeased to hear it', recalls British Prime Minister Edward Heath on the news that Colonel Idi Amin had overthrown Uganda's democratically elected leader Milton Obote in 1970 (The Course of My Life, p.482). Heath had good cause to loath Obote, whose government was overthrown while he led the criticisms of Britain's support for South Africa at the Commonwealth Summit in Singapore.
Heath's recollections play down Britain's support for Amin's coup, which was based on more than the recommendation of an officer at the Ministry of Defence that he 'was the best sergeant I ever had'. Subsequently Amin served a useful purpose in British propaganda, showing what monstrosities happen when Africans rule themselves. But at the time Amin was a useful British ally in the rearguard action against popular nationalism in Africa.
SOLD SHORT
The countdown to open hostility between the British and Zimbabwean governments was uncovered by the Guardian. The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher had brokered the deal that led to black rule in Zimbabwe in 1980, on condition that the nationalist leader Mugabe preserve the interests of British investors. In 1988 Thatcher visited Mugabe to remind him that Britain had provided more than sterling 200 million in aid and military training (at a time when the armed forces were slaughtering the minority Matabele people) and was the largest investor in the country.
But ten years later Zimbabwe got a different message from the new Labour administration. Then Overseas Development Minister Clare Short told Zimbabwe's agriculture minister that Britain would cease financing land reform: 'We do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests.' (11 August) In 1999 Mugabe commented that 'the Conservatives were more mature. This government is inexperienced.' In fact the change of government was just an excuse for a change in policy towards Zimbabwe, from shoring up Mugabe to tearing him down.
-- James Heartfield