ecologicando

Hard to imagine 2024

2008-05-06T09:34:00.015+01:00

Considering the passage of Time and the differing perspectives it lends to us. Contemplating the year 2024, in which this author may be around to celebrate a seventieth birthday.

Viewed from this point in history, early May 2008 looking forward, to the year 2024 there seems a way yet to go; and a Way, the way things are shaping up, that will surely be one of much economic, environmental, military and social tragedy.

Looking back over the last century, however, for one who's growing up was 1960s rural England, the first three decades of the century appear very far away, beyond a kind of mental as well as cultural veil that has been formed by the world-changing outcomes of World War II. If 2008 were 1908, we would still find ourselves part of the flourishing for some and world-dominating European Bourgeois order that is known in the UK as Edwardian, the surfeited stage of the European ascendency and the British Empire, with the US still pending as an economic power and the age of oil in its infancy.

There were many even then, like now, who were aware of looming difficulties and contradictory conditions, not least of which were expressed in the movements for unionism, syndicalism, socialism and anarchist 'bottom-up' overturnings of the existing social order; but The Great War and Russian Revolution must have seemed hard to imagine, as it must also have been hard to imagine the likes of the Great Depression on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere that would lead to WWII and the cultural (as well as the technological and all the rest) changes that have followed, that bring us to the present era in which, Cold War and the panoply of US adventures notwithstanding, and with the accompanying resurgence of Asian and other world cultures, the West has yet to see anything like open war or even much by way of guerrilla activity let alone serious social unrest anywhere near its heartlands (I refer to UK-Europe, US-Canada, Australia-NZ, Japan as the West).

Much is shaping up that can come to pass between now and May 2024, of which climate change or destabilisation at least is for sure. Methane outgassing in Canadian and Siberian tundra is not just a sign but an accelerator of this tipping-point-prone inevitability.

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2008-05-01T00:01:00.000+01:00

Framing strategies for thought and action linking 'economics' with 'ecologics'

2008-04-10T09:43:00.004+01:00

Framing strategies for thought and action linking 'economics' with 'ecologics', contrasting the rightist agenda which claims that "Protecting the environment harms the economy""A healthy economy depends upon a healthy environment". with the progressive (and indeed only rational) way forward which must be to be aware and act on the basis that

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There is room here for a stronger frame: An unhealthy economy is invariably also unhealthy for the environment:
The transformation of living nature into dead commodities.
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Eg.... http://www.radicalleft.net/blog/_archives/2008/3/30/3610847.html

... The central problem, it is becoming increasingly clear, is a mode of production whose main dynamic is the transformation of living nature into dead commodities, creating tremendous waste in the process.

The driver of this process is consumption - or more appropriately overconsumption - and the motivation is profit or capital accumulation: capitalism, in short.

...

This leads us to the dilemma of the South: before the full extent of the ecological destabilisation brought about by capitalism, it was expected that the South would simply follow the "stages of growth" of the North. Now it is impossible to do so without bringing about ecological Armageddon.

...

These steps are important, but they should be seen as but the initial steps in a broader, global reorientation of the paradigm for achieving economic well-being.

While the adjustment will need to be much, much greater and faster in the North, the adjustment for the South will essentially be the same: a break with the high-growth, high-consumption model in favour of another model of achieving the common welfare.

...

Among other things, this will mean placing economic justice and equality at the centre of the new paradigm.

The transition must be one not only from a fossil-fuel based economy but also from an overconsumption-driven economy.

The end-goal must be adoption of a low-consumption, low-growth, high-equity development model that results in an improvement in people's welfare, a better quality of life for all, and greater democratic control of production.

/... http://www.radicalleft.net/blog/_archives/2008/3/30/3610847.html

Thursday MAY 1st · Union Square · MASS RALLY for IMMIGRANT & WORKER RIGHTS

2008-04-09T09:07:00.007+01:00

Thursday MAY 1st

Stop the Raids & Deportations
Legalization Now · Justice for ALL

MASS RALLY for IMMIGRANT & WORKER RIGHTS

http://may1.info/

We Say:

* Black, Latin@, Asian, Indigenous, Arab, White -- In Unity there is strength.
* ICE raids are racist, anti-union and violate immigrant and US workers' civil rights & divide families.
* Jobs & homes, not lay-off and foreclosures. Stop demolition of public housing in New Orleans & everywhere.
* No war in Iraq. Bring the troops home now.
* Political asylum for Victor Toro. No deportation for Flor Crisostomo.
* Money for levees in New Orleans, not the US / Mexico border wall.
* Repeal NAFTA, no more U.S. trade agreements that force migration & cause lay-offs here.

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· 12 pm: Gather at Union Square, 14th Street & Broadway
· 4 pm: Rally & March

May Day 2008 is critically important. Will the optimism and hope expressed around the Presidential elections translate into an end of immigrant raids and deportations? Will it bring an end to the foreclosures of homes, the lowering of gas and food prices, or an end to lay-offs?

Whatever the outcome in November, the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights will be marching once again on May Day, International Workers Day to say no to all the attacks against workers here and around the world.

We call on the progressive community, the anti-war movement, the women's & LGBT movement, and especially the labor movement, to come out for May Day 2008. March for solidarity, because an injury to one is an injury to all!

http://may1.info/

cf. ·· Chilean Activist Victor Toro Detained By Homeland Security in Rochester--Held in Auburn http://rochester.indymedia.org/feature/display/19766/index.php
·· http://www.spnyc.org/main/node/574

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··
·· hate comment:
...Toro is currently out on bail, but this hasn’t stopped him from taking time out from his preparations for court to appear alongside Cindy Sheehan as a speaker two weeks ago at a New York anti-war rally.

Regardless, Toro’s case brings up a larger issue: the large number of immigrants in America with openly anti-democratic political views. Of late, the media focus on radical aliens has shifted towards Islamists who seek to create a world dominated by their faith and ruled through sharia. But the problem of far-Left agitators and spies appearing on our shores, if an older problem, is a continuing one with deep roots.

Going back to the early 1900s, the arrival of Communist aliens was one of the main reasons for the immigration restrictions of the Progressive Era. Justly so. Consider this very brief list of foreign-born America-haters and their accomplishments in undermining faith in our society.

Emma Goldman. The German-born leftist started a "No Conscription" league to interfere with World War I draft organizing, which led to her eventual deportation. Years earlier, she had conspired with her lover Alexander Berkman in an attempt to assassinate an American industrialist.
Niccolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. These Italian-born anarchists became a cause celebre when leftists asserted that their convictions for murdering a payroll clerk and watchman, ( Parmenter and Berardelli ) were spurred by xenophobia. Ballistics tests have since proved their guilt, however.
Marcus Garvey. This Jamaican-born Black Nationalist and creator of the Back-to-Africa movement dressed in ridiculous fashion and stole from his followers. But, in animating anti-white hatred, he left a long-lasting and unwelcome legacy greatly exacerbating the problem of division among blacks and whites.
Klaus Fuchs. This physicist son of a Lutheran pastor left Germany and went to work on the Manhattan project—where he succeeded in passing key atomic secrets to the Soviets.
Herbert Marcuse. This founder of the "Frankfurt School" of Marxist political theory left Nazi Germany because of his Jewish ancestry and radical politics and came to the U.S. where he worked first for the O.S.S. and then in a high position in the State Department. Leaving in the midst of the "Red Scare", Marcuse assumed faculty positions at leading universities through which he trained a generation of anti-American American academics, including Communist Party USA Vice-Presidential candidate and tenured radical Angela Davis.
Stokely Carmichael. Born in Trinidad, Carmichael rose to be the head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which had been associated with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience. But he moved the organization away from King’s philosophy and allied with the Black Panthers. He also invented—and promoted—the concept of "institutional racism", i.e. racism for which there doesn’t have to be evidence, furthering Garvey’s politics of resentment.
Juan Jose Gutierrez. Born in Guatemala, Guterriez is both one of the present leaders of the radical socialist group ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and the pro-illegals group Latino Movement USA. .

Our tradition of representative government flows out of the unique history of the American nation. We are foolish to assume that foreigners from the many parts of the globe all come here with a common affection and regard for it.

http://www.vdare.com/kahn/070808_toro.htm

·

Dr. Jones (1000+ posts)

Mon May-08-06 02:39 PM
Original message

Why Illegal Immigration is NOT a Civil Rights Issue -->

In recent days, some here on DU have likened illegals to civil rights activists. But can this comparison really be made? Based on the evidence presented, one has no choice but to conclude that illegal immigration and civil disobedience are mutually exclusive.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1130201#1141764

que han vivido bajo el terror,la mentira y la desinformacion por mas de un siglo del capitalismo salvaje en su fase imperialista.

2008-04-09T08:42:00.003+01:00

...este pais,aun con la brujula herrada y que han vivido bajo el terror,la mentira y la desinformacion por mas de un siglo del capitalismo salvaje en su fase imperialista...
http://canarias.indymedia.org/newswire/display/15918/index.php

The Countering of U.S. Imperialism – A Light at the End of the Tunnel

2008-04-06T10:26:00.012+01:00

The Countering of U.S. Imperialism – A Light at the End of the Tunnel
· Comments to this item as at 6 Apr 08 18:15

“All the world thinks of the United States today as an empire, except the people of the United States. We shrink from the word ‘empire’… We feel that there ought to be some other word for the civilizing work we do so reluctantly in these backwards countries.” – Walter Lippmann, 1927

I believe that the above quote by one the most astute American journalists of the 20th Century is right on target and applies even more today than it did in 1927. It sums up what is most wrong with our country: A toxic combination imperialism, arrogance, hypocrisy, and ignorance.

Our imperialistic war in Iraq says it all. Even after the original excuse for the war was proven to have been fabricated, after we killed more than a million civilians, created more than four million refugees and utterly destroyed their country, our leaders still find more excuses to continue the war. Our national news media, while sometimes bemoaning the deaths of American soldiers, rarely says a word about the deaths of more than two hundred times as many Iraqi civilians, or what the Iraqi people think of our occupation of their country – as if their deaths and their opinions simply do not matter. Hannah Arendt was right when she said:

Imperialism would have necessitated the invention of racism as the only possible ‘explanation’ and excuse for its deeds, even if no race-thinking had ever existed in the civilized world.

Any U.S. citizen who doesn’t understand how U.S. imperialism has operated since 1973 should read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. It’s one of the most informative books I’ve ever read, and so easy to read for such a complex subject.

The United States has used two primary tools to advance its imperialistic ambitions: Covert activities and military support to install or maintain in power repressive regimes that are responsive to the needs of U.S. corporations, to the great detriment of the vast majority of a nation’s population, and; influence over international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank) to loan money to desperately impoverished nations while imposing conditions on those nations which are highly favorable to U.S. corporations, while keeping the great majority of its inhabitants impoverished indefinitely – a process something akin to loan sharking or indentured servitude.

The game plan has been to put into practice Milton Friedman’s economic theories, developed at the University of Chicago. These theories, when used in several countries over more than three decades, have served primarily to increase the wealth and power of the wealthy (U.S. and multi-national corporations and the local elite) at the expense of everyone else. The use of these economic policies in association with violent and repressive dictatorships is no accident. Since these policies are so painful to the vast majority of a country’s inhabitants, such measures as kidnappings, executions, disappearances and torture are often needed to keep the country’s inhabitants in line. But often, financial pressures and threats alone are enough to do the job. Taken as a whole, Klein terms these methods “shock therapy” – a therapy that is brutal enough to make a person or a population docile enough to go along with what they’re told to do.

Examples of U.S. imperialism

I’ve discussed this process in several previous posts, using mostly examples from Klein’s book. In “Connection between State Sponsored Terror, Corporate Greed, and Economic Shock Therapy” I describe our imperialistic activities in South America. Klein’s book begins with Chile in the early 1970s, where our CIA conspired to overthrow the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and installed the dictator, terrorist torturer, Augusto Pinochet in his place. I also discuss in that post our imperialist interventions in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, and other South American countries, and our use of School of the Americas and Operation Condor to achieve our ends. Klein summarizes our imperialist interventions in South America:

The Chicago School counterrevolution quickly spread. Brazil was already under the control of a U.S. supported junta… Friedman traveled to Brazil in 1973, at the height of that regime’s brutality, and declared the economic experiment a “miracle”. In Uruguay the military had staged a coup in 1973 and the following year decided to go the Chicago route…. The effect on Uruguay’s previously egalitarian society was immediate: real wages decreased by 28% and hordes of scavengers appeared on the streets… Next to join the experiment was Argentina in 1976, when a junta seized power from Isabel Peron. That meant that Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil – the countries that had been showcases of developmentalism – were now all run by U.S. backed military governments and were living laboratories of Chicago School economics.

In this post I describe how the IMF was used to plunder Russia following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Klein describes the effect on the Russian people:

After only one year, shock therapy had taken a devastating toll: millions of middle-class Russians had lost their life savings when money lost its value, and abrupt cuts to subsidies meant millions of workers had not been paid in months. The average Russian consumed 40% less in 1992 than in 1991, and a third of the population fell below the poverty line. The middle class was forced to sell personal belongings from card tables on the streets.

In “The Ruling Financial Class” I describe how the IMF did the same thing to several Asian countries whose economies were failing in the late 1990s. Klein describes the effects on the Asian people:

24 million people lost their jobs in this period… What disappeared in these parts of Asia was what was so remarkable about the region’s “miracle” in the first place: its large and growing middle class… 20 million Asians were thrown into poverty in this period of what Rodolfo Wash would have called “planned misery”… Women and children suffered the worst of the crisis. Many rural families in the Philippines and South Korea sold their daughters to human traffickers who took them to work in the sex trade… a 20 percent increase in child prostitution.

And Klein describes how similar processes with similar results were used in Poland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Iraq.

THE CENTURY AND A HALF WAR AGAINST SOCIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES

I discuss the century and a half war against socialism in the United States in detail in this post. One way in which this subject is relevant to the issue of U.S. imperialism is that that, during the Cold War at least, the United States often used the fear of Communism as an excuse to overthrow the governments of other countries (as the Reagan administration did] in Latin America, for example) or to go to war against them (as we did in Vietnam, for example).

Two major problems with that excuse were that in most of the cases where we exercised our imperialism over third world countries: 1) they had no direct link with the USSR, which was the only Communist country that posed a potential military threat to us, and 2) the country was not Communist, but rather socialist. Notwithstanding those facts, the U.S. government utilized a “slippery slope” type of reasoning, where any degree of socialism in a country could represent the first step towards Communism and hence an alliance with the USSR. And then there was the “domino theory”, where any country that turned Communist or socialist could result in other countries doing the same. So, in the name of “freedom and democracy” we repeatedly intervened in the affairs of other countries to overthrow democratically elected governments or prop up ruthless dictators with our military or economic powers.

Reasons for the US war against socialism

Since the purported reasons for our century and a half war against socialism clearly make no sense, it behooves us to consider the real reasons for it. In order to understand those reasons it is first necessary to understand that much of the history of the United States, beginning with the industrial revolution that picked up steam after the Civil War (1861-1865), has involved a type of class warfare, whereby the wealthy have sought to increase their wealth and power by suppressing any movement that sought to bring power to the lower classes.

Policies which tend to benefit the less wealthy and powerful include such things as: protections against environmental degradation; protection for consumers against the risks of dangerous products; protection against dangerous working conditions; anti-trust laws to ensure competition; anti-discrimination laws; progressive tax laws; minimum wage laws; provision of government health care, education, and child care assistance; promotion or assurance of full employment for those able and willing to work; and labor laws that strengthen the bargaining capabilities of workers. These kinds of policies provide needed protections to the most vulnerable of our people and benefit the good majority of the remainder of our people.

The wealthy conservative elite of our society tag the “Socialism” label on all those laws and policies, listed above, that benefit less wealthy and powerful 98% of our population, and especially those that benefit the poor. They accuse anyone who advocates those policies of being “Socialists” and of engaging in “class warfare”. They do that, very simply, because those laws and policies reduce their own wealth and power.

That is what the century and a half war against socialism in the United States has been mostly about. Those conservative elites are right about one thing. The policies that they rail against are indeed socialistic. When added to a primarily capitalistic system, such as operates in our country, they produce a mixed capitalism/socialism system which can maintain the production incentives of capitalism while at the same time guarding against the harmful excesses of capitalism which tend to drive people into poverty and reduce the quality of life of millions of our citizens.

To the extent that successful socialist policies (such as national health care) operate in other countries, they have the potential of providing an example for Americans. If Americans see that the citizens of countries with socialist governments thrive and continue to re-elect those governments, they may consider whether or not it would be beneficial to have such policies instituted in their own country. Thus the need to intervene in those countries when feasible, to make sure that examples of successful socialist governments remain as few as possible. Naomi Klein expands on this idea:

Washington has always regarded democratic socialism as a greater threat than totalitarian Communism, which was easy to vilify and made for a handy enemy… The favored tactic for dealing with the inconvenient popularity of developmentalism and democratic socialism was to try to equate them with Stalinism, deliberately blurring the clear differences between the worldviews. (Conflating all opposition with terrorism plays a similar role today.)

A brief history of the war against socialism in the United States on the domestic front

Our war against Socialism did not start with the Cold War. Suppression of the labor movement in the United States constitutes a major part of our war against socialism. For example, by attributing the Haymarket Square bombing of 1886 to labor leader “terrorists” and imprisoning or executing the alleged perpetrators (with extremely little evidence of their guilt – See “Death in the Haymarket – A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America” for an excellent discussion of this), our elite national news media probably set back the cause of the labor movement by several years or decades. Eugene Debs, perennial Socialist candidate for President of the United States, was repeatedly imprisoned for speaking out about his beliefs. And Richard Hofstadter, writing in 1970, concluded that the United States had experienced at least 160 instances in which state or federal troops had intervened in strikes, and at least 700 labor disputes in which deaths were recorded, with clearly most of the violence being perpetrated by state or federal authorities, rather than by the workers.

The FDR Presidency (1933-1945) represents the first successful effort in our country to introduce socialist policies that produced major benefits for our people. Cass Sunstein, in his book, “The Second Bill of Rights – FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More than Ever”, describes the philosophy that motivated Roosevelt to fight for his radical (at the time) programs to benefit the American people:

To Roosevelt, human distress could no longer be taken as an inevitable by-product of life, society, or “nature”; it was an artifact of social policies and choices. Much human misery is preventable. The only question is whether a government is determined to prevent it…. Foremost was the idea that poverty is preventable, that poverty is destructive, wasteful, demoralizing, and that poverty is morally unacceptable in a Christian and democratic society.

As I discuss in this post, FDR’s policies were wildly successful and resulted in the creation of a financially healthy middle class in our country for the first time in its history. Between 1947 (when accurate statistics on this issue first became available) and 1980, median family income rose steadily (in constant 2005 dollars) from $22,499 to more than double that, $47,173.

But then, starting with the rise of the conservative movement in our country, and the election of Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Presidency, FDR’s New Deal began to be progressively dismantled, with consequent stagnation of median income and progressive widening of the income gap in our country. And that’s where we are now.

A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

When I posted on DU my four articles dealing with the imperialistic adventures of our nation as described by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine”, several posters commented on how terribly depressing this whole thing is. Indeed, this is a very depressing subject. But in the last chapter of her book, titled “Shock Wears off – The Rise of Peoples’ Reconstruction”, Klein describes a developing trend, especially in Latin America, that appears to be very hopeful.

The stripping away of the aura of respectability surrounding Friedman’s economic movement

Klein cites the pinnacle of the Neocon movement in the U.S. as being 1994, the year that Republicans took control of Congress. Almost certainly by mere coincidence, but still worth noting, is the fact that the day that the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006 was just nine days before the death of Milton Friedman. By that time, a UN study found that the richest 2% of adults in the world owned more than half of the wealth in the world. Klein writes of that fact:

The hoarding of so much wealth by a tiny minority of the world’s population was not a peaceful process, as we have seen, nor, often, was it a legal one… Many of the men who had been on the front lines of the international drive to liberate the markets from all restrictions were at that moment caught up in an astonishing array of scandals and criminal proceedings.

In support of that statement, Klein cites several instances to show how former victims have been striving to bring the perpetrators of crimes against them to justice: Augusto Pinochet was under house arrest; in Argentina, the former junta leaders were stripped of immunity, with some of those leaders being imprisoned; the former President of Bolivia was wanted on murder charges; in Russia, many of the oligarch billionaires were either in jail or in exile; Ken Lay died in prison; Grover Norquist was accused of influence-peddling; and then there were the whole series of scandals involving Jack Abramoff. Klein notes the significance of all this:

This list, by no means complete, represents a radical departure from the Neoliberal creation myth. The economic crusade managed to cling to a veneer of respectability and lawfulness as it progressed. Now that veneer was being very publicly stripped away to reveal a system of gross wealth inequalities, often opened up with the aid of grotesque criminality…

As people shed the collective fear that was first instilled with tanks and cattle prods… many are demanding more democracy and more control over markets. These demands represent the greatest threat of all to Friedman’s legacy because they challenge his most central claim: that capitalism and freedom are part of the same indivisible project.

The wholesale rejection of U.S. imperialism in Latin America

Klein describes the rejection of U.S. imperialist policies in Latin America:

On the international stage, the staunchest opponents of Neoliberal economics were winning election after election. The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, running on a platform of “21 Century Socialism”, was re-elected in 2006 for a third term with 63% of the vote. Despite attempts by the Bush administration to paint Venezuela as a pseudo-democracy, a poll that same year recorded that 57% of Venezuelans were happy with the state of their democracy, an approval rating on the continent second only to Uruguay’s, where the left-wing coalition party Frente Amplio had been elected… In stark contrast to this enthusiasm, in countries where economic policies remain largely unchanged… polls consistently track an eroding faith in democracy, reflected in dwindling turnout for elections, deep cynicism toward politicians and a rise in religious fundamentalism…

Opposition to privatization has become the defining issue of the continent, able to make governments and break them; by late 2006, it was practically creating a domino effect. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was reelected as president of Brazil largely because he turned the vote into a referendum on privatization… In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, former head of the Sandinistas, made the country’s frequent blackouts the center of his winning campaign…

Rafael Correa… called for the country “to overcome all the fallacies of neo-liberalism”. When he won, the new president of Ecuador declared himself “no fan of Milton Friedman.” By then, the Bolivian president Evo Morales was approaching the end of his first year in office. After sending in the army to take back the gas fields from multinational “plunderers,” he moved on to nationalize parts of the mining sector. In this same period in Mexico, the results of the fraud-tainted 2006 elections were being contested through the creation of an unprecedented “parallel government” of the people… Chile and Argentina are both led by politicians who define themselves against their countries’ Chicago School experiments…

Today Latin Americans are picking up the project that was so brutally interrupted all those years ago. Many of the policies cropping up are familiar: nationalization of key sectors of the economy, land reform, major new investments in education, literacy and health care…

Chavez has let it be known that if an extremist right wing element in Bolivia… makes good on its threats against the government of Evo Morales, Venezuelan troops will help defend Bolivia’s democracy… Rafael Correa is set to take the most radical step of all… Correa’s government has announced that when the agreement for the (U.S. military) base expires in 2009, it will not be renewed. “Ecuador is a sovereign nation… We do not need any foreign troops in our country.”

How Latin America gets away with defying U.S. power

Klein provides three related reasons for how Latin America has been able to get away with defying U.S. power in recent years.

First is the fact of massive amounts of grassroots popular backing for throwing off the yolk of U.S. imperialism and moving on with projects to benefit the whole population. When power is decentralized it is much more difficult to overthrow it. Removing a single leader from power is then not so easy or effective, as the U.S. found out when massive uprisings in Venezuela thwarted its attempted coup against Chavez.

Secondly, Latin American countries have decided that they have had enough of loans from the IMF, with its restrictive conditions that force millions into poverty. The rejection of IMF loans in Latin America has been so complete that their percent of the total IMF lending portfolio has shrunk from 80% in 2005 to 1% in 2007. And it’s not just Latin America. During the same time period the IMF’s worldwide lending portfolio shrunk from $81 billion to $11.8 billion. Klein sums up the future of the IMF:

The IMF, a pariah in so many countries where it has treated crises as profit-making opportunities, is starting to wither away. The World Bank faces an equally grim future.

And finally, there is the fact that the region has become much more integrated in its effort to throw off U.S. imperialism. Many Latin American nations stand ready to share resources with neighbor nations who lack those resources. For example, Chavez has offered heavily subsidized oil to the poorer nations of the region.

Klein also notes several other examples throughout the world where nations are turning away from U.S. favored Neoliberal economic policies. But Latin America in the prime example, and Klein explains why:

As inhabitants of the first shock lab, Latin Americans have had the most time to recover their bearings. Years of street protests have created new political groupings, eventually gaining the strength… to begin to change the power structures of the state…Once the mechanics of the shock doctrine are deeply and collectively understood, whole communities become harder to take by surprise… Today… there are just too many people in the world who have had direct experience with the shock doctrine: they know how it works…

CONCLUDING REMARKS – TO RIGHT WING FOOLS WHO DON’T LIKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS

I know what the reaction will be of right wing fools who read this post. They’ll be SHOCKED that an American citizen could “hate America” so much. They’ll hate me for failing to take pride in our military might, and they’ll consider me a traitor for my happiness at the thought of our military power being attenuated by third world nations that don’t have the sense or gratitude to do what we want them to do. They’ll say that I want us to “lose” our war in Iraq, that I want to “weaken” our country, and that I don’t deserve to live in this country. Before answering charges such as these, I’d like to preface my remarks by briefly summarizing the balance sheet in Latin America, as described by James Petras in his book “Ruling and Ruled”:

If we add to the concentration of $157 billion in the hands of an infinitesimal fraction of the Latin American elite, the $990 billion taken out by foreign banks in debt payments, and the $1 trillion taken out by way of profits…. over the past decade and a half, we have an adequate framework for understanding why Latin America continues to have stagnant economies with over two thirds of its population with inadequate living standards.

The responsibility of the US for the growth of Latin American billionaires and mass poverty is several-fold and involves a very wide gamut of political institutions, business elites and academic and media moguls. First and foremost the US backed the military dictators and Neoliberal politicians who set up the billionaire economic models.

My answer to those who would castigate me for being outraged over a situation like this is that I cannot take pride in a system that creates billionaires at the cost of throwing millions of people into poverty, misery and fear. I cannot take pride in a country that the rest of the world accurately sees as the world’s biggest bully. And I cannot take pride in bombing the hell out of a country that poses no threat to us, killing hundreds of thousands of its people, and destroying its infrastructure.

None of these things do anything at all to improve my life. Nor do they do anything to improve the lives of the vast majority of my fellow Americans. Instead, they create anti-American hatred, thereby fueling the recruitment of anti-American terrorists, while destroying the lives of millions upon millions of people throughout the world. Only an arrogant idiot could take pride in all that.

Yes, I hate it when my government does those things. Yes, I hope that we “lose” the Iraq war, if “losing” means stopping the death and destruction and taking WW III off the table. Yes, I hope that the rest of the world counters and defeats our imperial ambitions – or rather the imperial ambitions of our wealthy elite and war profiteers who profit from US imperialism.

A government should be judged by how it benefits or harms its citizens and how it benefits or harms the rest of humanity. No nation has the right to destroy the lives of other peoples just to enhance the wealth and power of a wealthy elite minority.

I believe that most Americans and their country will benefit enormously by having their country’s military might and imperial ambitions humbled by the rest of humanity. Then we will be able to live in peace and work with the other nations of the world to make a better life for all of us. If wanting that means “hating America”, then so be it.

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Comments to this item as at 6 Apr 08 18:15
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ecologicando.blogspot.com
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'Regional' Nuclear War Would Cause Worldwide Destruction

2008-04-06T09:18:00.002+01:00

'Regional' Nuclear War Would Cause Worldwide Destruction

By Alexis Madrigal April 07, 2008 | 4:07:27 PMCategories: Military
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/regional-nuclea.html

Think you might escape the aftereffects of a limited nuclear war that happens on the other side of the globe from you? Think again.

Imagine that the long-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan broke out into a war in which each side deployed 50 nuclear weapons against the other country's megacities. Karachi, Bombay, and dozens of other South Asian cities catch fire like Hiroshima and Nagasaki did at the end of World War II.

Beyond the local human tragedy of such a situation, a new study looking at the atmospheric chemistry of regional nuclear war finds that the hot smoke from burning cities would tear holes in the ozone layer of the Earth. The increased UV radiation resulting from the ozone loss could more than double DNA damage, and increase cancer rates across North America and Eurasia.

"Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction," said Michael Mills, co-author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war."

Combined with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war -- which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions -- Mills' modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile. After decades of Cold War research into the impacts that a full-blown war between the Soviet Union and the United States would have had on the globe, recent work has focused on regional nuclear wars, which are seen as more likely than all-out nuclear Armageddon. Incorporating the latest atmospheric modeling, the scientists are finding that even a small nuclear conflict would wreak havoc on the global environment (.pdf) -- cooling it twice as much as it's heated over the last century -- and on the structure of the atmosphere itself.

Mills' work, which appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, used a model from National Center for Atmospheric Research to look at the impact of throwing 5 million metric tons of black carbon, or soot, into the atmosphere. He found that when a cluster of cities are burning together, they end up creating their own weather, pumping soot 20,000 feet into the atmosphere. Once there, sunlight would heat the smoke, and drive it up 260,000 feet above the earth's surface.

Along the way, the hot soot would cause a variety of atmospheric changes with a net result of huge reductions in ozone, which in the stratosphere serves as sunblock for the earth. In the middle latitudes, the researchers found the ozone layer would be reduced by 25 to 45 percent, with the polar regions losing 50 to 70 percent of their ozone coverage. This thinning is known as a "hole" in the ozone layer, and would be many times the size of the famed hole over Antarctica.

According to research cited by the paper, the increase in ultraviolet light falling to earth at the 45-degree latitude -- a little south of Portland, Oregon -- would cause damage to DNA to increase 213 percent.

"It would have a dramatic effect on skin cancer and cataracts and be very damaging to crops and ecosystems," Mills said.

The reduced levels of ozone would persist for five years, with substantial reductions in ozone continuing for another five years after that.

Even if the cause of the war were local, its impacts would be felt across the globe.

"Pretty much everywhere [would be] affected," Mills concluded.

.

2008-04-06T02:27:00.003+01:00

2008-04-06T01:01:00.005+01:00

·

2008-02-29T00:00:00.000Z

2008-02-17T17:24:00.004Z

sendero (1000+ posts)

Sat Feb-16-08 04:59 PM
Original message

For those struggling to understand the subprime..

... crisis, this little cartoon does an excellent job of explaining it.
Warning, there is some foul language here

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjs...

Room 641A- you need to know about this

2008-02-17T11:37:00.004Z

...

underpants (1000+ posts)

Fri Feb-15-08 02:49 PM
Response to Original message

57. Room 641A- you need to know about this

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/underpants/10...

In 2003, Room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown San Francisco was filled with powerful data-mining equipment for a "special job" by the National Security Agency, according to a former AT&T technician. It was fed by fiber-optic cables that siphoned copies of e-mails and other online traffic from one of the largest Internet hubs in the United States, the former employee says in court filings.

Neither AT&T nor the federal government has admitted even the existence of a secret room, and the Justice Department is arguing that the cases should be dismissed because their subject matter is a state secret. The communications company, meanwhile, says it is prevented from properly defending itself because of national security reasons and dismisses the employee who briefly saw the room and worked on supporting equipment as a "line technician who . . . never had access to the 'secret room' he purports to describe." <--- that is as scarey an excuse as it is laughable The allegations by Mark Klein, who worked for AT&T's WorldNet Service, underscore the government's dependence on major telecommunications providers to physically tap optic fibers that carry electronic signals around the globe. Some of the evidence also suggests that the NSA efforts were not limited to overseas e-mail communications and included the collection of purely domestic traffic. "I conclude that AT&T has constructed an extensive -- and expensive -- collection of infrastructure that collectively has all the capability necessary to conduct large-scale covert gathering of -based communications information, not only for communications to overseas locations, but for purely domestic communications as well," said Marcus, a veteran computer network executive who worked at GTE, Genuity and other companies before joining the FCC. James X. Dempsey, policy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the evidence gleaned from the AT&T case appears to confirm that "there is a massive surveillance capability built into the network" by the federal government. But, Dempsey added, "the mere fact that the capability has been built and utilized still does not answer the fundamental question -- has it been exercised under constitutional parameters? That, in a way, is what these cases are trying to get to."

Ghost Dog (1000+ posts)

Fri Feb-15-08 11:08 PM
Response to Reply #57

113. In this context, check out Miami-based Terremark Inc:

http://www.terremark.com/about/video-podcast.aspx

http://www.terremark.com/industry-solutions/government....

"Terremark's Managed Routing Service (MRS) leverages the massive global network connectivity provided by the world's largest telecommunications companies located within our carrier-neutral facility. With direct access to the backbones of the world's leading carriers, we connect you directly to the heart of the Internet, consistently delivering the quality of service required for Streaming Multimedia, Voice over IP and other demanding applications. Our ultra secure and reliable facilities are complete with redundant systems and infrastructure. Our highly trained Network Management staff can proactively monitor your service, 24x7x365.

In addition, our high-performance Network Analysis Modules (NAMs) offer proactive monitoring and quick troubleshooting that provides our engineers with visibility into all layers of the network. This enables us to analyze traffic flows for applications, hosts, conversations and network-based services such as Quality of Service (QoS) and Voice over IP (VoIP)."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x93692#93803

The Plosser Dip: potential for core inflation to remain elevated; signs the Fed's credibility is weakening; deeper rate cuts.

2008-02-07T09:26:00.000Z

UpInArms (1000+ posts)

Wed Feb-06-08 09:22 PM
Response to Original message

107. Dow ends day at psychologically important number 12,200 even

Dow 12,200.10 65.03 (0.53%)
Nasdaq 2,278.75 30.82 (1.33%)
S&P 500 1,326.45 10.19 (0.76%)
10-Yr Bond 3.614% 0.027

NYSE Volume 3,799,418,500
Nasdaq Volume 2,357,679,250

how handy!

Wed 6 Feb 2008 DU-SMW (briefing.com):

With the major indices closing near their worst levels of the day, then, Wednesday's session can indeed be labeled a disappointment by market bulls. Most media sources will attribute comments from Philadelphia Fed President Plosser as the catalyst for the downturn. The fact of the matter is that the market was already fading from its highs (the Dow +125; the Nasdaq +29; and the S&P +15) when comments from Mr. Plosser hit the wires around 13:30 ET.

In particular, Mr. Plosser expressed concerns about the potential for core inflation to remain elevated and conceded that there may be early signs the Fed's credibility is weakening. Soon after, though, he also noted that one can "never say never" about deeper rate cuts. In other words, it was a typical "on the one hand, on the other hand" type of delivery that usually characterizes Fed speeches.

The market, after Tuesday's sell-off, focused on the negative elements of his remarks, namely the inflation concerns, and continued sliding in the early afternoon. There was a brief upturn following the Plosser dip, which goes to show the market wasn't as rattled by the remarks as some contended, yet that rebound try also ran out of steam as growth concerns continued to prevail. Once again, the losses were fairly broad-based. The health care sector (+0.03%) eked out a slight gain and was the only sector to close the session with a gain. Strikingly, the utilities sector (-0.15%) and the consumer staples sector (-0.27%) exhibited relative strength, which fits with their defensive appeal in times of uncertainty and slower growth. The energy sector (-1.58%) suffered the biggest loss on Wednesday as a bearish inventory report sparked a 1.5% drop in crude futures to $87.09. Earlier in the day, the Dept. of Energy reported crude stockpiles rose 7.05 million barrels versus an expected build of 2.6 million barrels. The larger than expected build played into concerns about an economic slowdown. Many of the transportation stocks caught a bid, though, with the drop in oil prices and outperformed the market. Separately, the financial sector, which fell 1.06%, underperformed again with big losses in the exchange space taking a toll. Shares of CME Group (CME 485.25, -103.55) plummeted 17% in the wake of a report that the Dept. of Justice issued a comment letter suggesting the separation of clearing operations from the futures exchanges. Technology, down 1.4%, was another influential weak spot that weighed on the broader market. True to recent form, the big-cap technology issues were out of favor as evidenced by the 1.8% decline in the Nasdaq 100 that preceded Cisco's (CSCO 23.08, -0.18) earnings report after the close.

/... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3170603#3171482

"The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson

2008-02-07T09:14:00.000Z

greyhound1966 (1000+ posts)

Wed Feb-06-08 08:15 AM
Response to Reply #28

72. "It is good that Americans don't understand their economic or banking systems,

if they did, we would have revolution tomorrow" - Henry Ford

100% of every dollar the IRS collects is paid to a private bank as interest on money they never had to loan.

We are about to understand the true cost of our ignorance.

redqueen (1000+ posts)

Wed Feb-06-08 03:16 PM
Response to Reply #72

107. "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson -- The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809)

"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?" Bertolt Brecht

greyhound1966 (1000+ posts)

Thu Feb-07-08 05:16 AM
Response to Reply #107

185. Brilliant!

/... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2821847

foto: Costa norte de Fuerteventura desde la Bocaina.

2008-02-04T09:45:00.002Z

A music video called "YES WE CAN"

2008-02-03T12:58:00.000Z

Sat Feb-02-08 05:30 PM

Original message

MUST SEE: Musicians/Actors turn Obama's NH speech into a music video called "YES WE CAN"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4349153

Edited on Sat Feb-02-08 05:36 PM by Bleachers7

This is amazing. This is a star studded cast.
http://www.dipdive.com

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yq0tMYPDJQ
abc News "What's the Buzz" Interview with Will.i.am about celeb-filled music video Yes We Can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBn7FEtn0E8

The Evolution of Evil By Joel S. Hirschhorn: Perhaps a global political apocalypse has already arrived.

2008-02-03T12:43:00.000Z

February 1, 2008

The Evolution of Evil By Joel S. Hirschhorn: Perhaps a global political apocalypse has already arrived.

Activists and dissidents should understand that evil forces and tyrannical governments have evolved. Just as human knowledge and science expand, so do the strategies and instruments used by rulers, elites and plutocrats. By learning from history and using new technology they have smarter tools of tyranny. The best ones prevent uprisings, revolutions and political reforms. Rather than violently destroy rebellious movements, they let them survive as marginalized and ineffective efforts that divert and sap the energy of nonconformist and rebellious thinkers. Real revolution remains an energy-draining dream, as evil forces thrive.

Most corrupt and legally sanctioned forms of tyranny hide in plain sight as democracies with free elections. The toughest lesson is that ALL elections are distractions. Nothing conceals tyranny better than elections. Few Americans accept that their government has become a two-party plutocracy run by a rich and powerful ruling class. The steady erosion of the rule of law is masked by everyday consumer freedoms. Because people want to be happy and hopeful, we have an epidemic of denial, especially in the present presidential campaign. But to believe that any change-selling politician or shift in party control will overturn the ruling class is the epitome of self-delusion and false hope. In the end, such wishful thinking perpetuates plutocracy. Proof is that plutocracy has flourished despite repeated change agents, promises of reform and partisan shifts.

The tools of real rebellion are weak. Activists and dissidents look back and see successful rebellions and revolutions and think that when today’s victims of tyranny experience enough pain and see enough political stink they too will revolt. This is wrong. They think that the Internet spreads information and inspiration to the masses, motivating them to revolt. This is wrong. They await catastrophic economic or environmental collapse to spur rebellion. This too is wrong.

Why are these beliefs wrong? Power elites have an arsenal of weapons to control and manipulate social, political and economic systems globally: corruption of public officials that make elections a sham; corporate mainstream media that turn news into propaganda; manipulation of financial markets that create fear for the public and profits for the privileged; false free trade globalization that destroys the middle class; rising economic inequality that keep the masses time-poor and financially insecure; intense marketing of pharmaceuticals that keep people passive; and addictive consumerism, entertainment and gambling that keep people distracted and pacified.

The biggest challenge for dissidents and rebels is to avoid feel-good therapeutic activism having virtually no chance of removing evil and tyranny. Idealism without practicality tactics without lofty goals, and symbolic protests pose no threat to power elites. Anger and outrage require great strategic thinking from leaders seeking revolution, not mere change. And social entrepreneurs that use business and management skills to tackle genuine social problems do nothing to achieve political reforms. To the extent they achieve results they end up removing interest in overthrowing political establishments that have allowed the problems to fester.

What is the new tool of tyranny? Technological connectivity achieved through advanced communications and computer systems, especially the rise of wireless connectivity. The global message to the masses is simple: Buy electronic products to stay plugged in. Connectivity may give pleasure, but it gives even more power to elites, rulers and plutocrats. It allows them to coordinate their efforts through invisible cabals, to closely monitor everything that ordinary people and dissidents do, and to cooperatively and clandestinely adjust social, financial and political systems to maintain stability and dominance.

In this dystopian world all systems are integrated to serve upper class elites and the corporate state, not ordinary people. When ordinary people spend their money to be more shackled to connectivity products, they become unwitting victims of largely invisible governmental and corporate oppressive forces. They are oblivious that their technological seduction exacerbates their political and economic exploitation. Though some 70 percent believe the country is on the wrong track, they fail to see the deeper causes of the trend. And if Americans were really happy and content with their consumer culture, then why are they stuffing themselves with so many antidepressants, sleeping pills and totally unhealthy foods? In truth, the vast majority of people are in denial about the rotten system they are trapped in (aka The Matrix). They are manipulated to keep hope alive through voting, despite the inability of past elections to stop the slide into economic serfdom.

/... http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/print_friendly.php?p=opedne_joel_s___080201_the_evolution_of_evi.htm

Espías y Armas Estadounidenses en las Islas Canarias

2008-02-03T09:27:00.001Z

Espías y Armas Estadounidenses en las Islas Canarias

Vuelos de Rendición: 32 escalas en Tenerife de aviones fletados por la CIA para el traslado por medio mundo de supuestos terroristas, detenidos sin cargos oficiales y sin la menor cobertura legal, y llevados a centros secretos u oficiales propios o de terceros países con el fin de burlar las leyes y someterlos a interrogatorios humillantes y torturas.
Buques de Suministro: buques de los escuadrones de preposición de la Armada estadounidense, que participaban en acciones de abastecimiento de armas -incluidas químicas- a los conflictos armados en Afganistán e Irak, realizaron 35 escalas en los puertos de Las Palmas, Santa Cruz y Arrecife sólo entre noviembre de 2002 y marzo de 2005.
Puestos de Espionaje: presencia en los entornos de los aeropuertos canarios de Los Rodeos y Gando de los denominados Centros de Tecnología de Inteligencia Contraterrorista (CTIC), dependientes del gabinete de Defensa de la administración Bush.

cf. el

Convenio de Cooperación para la Defensa, firmado por España y Estados Unidos en 1988, y reforzado y ampliado en 2003 con el Protocolo de Enmienda.

·
·
·

Dice textualmente el artículo 2 del mencionado Convenio: "España concede a Estados Unidos de América el uso de instalaciones de apoyo y otorga autorizaciones de uso en el territorio, mar territorial y espacio aéreo españoles para objetivos dentro del ámbito bilateral o multilateral".

... Pero también se acordaron medidas de cooperación en materia antiterrorista, gracias a las cuales los servicios de espionaje de ambos países se intercambian información y pueden llegar a trabajar conjuntamente en determinadas operaciones, principalmente en la lucha contra el terrorismo de cariz islamista radical.

Con la cobertura de los acuerdos bilaterales y la buena relación de los servicios secretos, Estados Unidos pensó que no tendría incovenientes en usar a Canarias como una base crucial e imprescindible para su enorme despliegue militar.

Vuelos, buques y escuchas

En este contexto y según el reciente informe del eurodiputado italiano Claudio Fava, son 32 las escalas en Tenerife de los aviones fletados por la CIA para el traslado por medio mundo de supuestos terroristas, detenidos sin cargos oficiales y sin la menor cobertura legal, y llevados a centros secretos u oficiales propios o de terceros países con el fin de burlar las leyes y someterlos a interrogatorios humillantes y torturas. Asimismo, el Gobierno central confirmaba el año pasado a requerimiento de PSC, IU e ICV que buques de los escuadrones de preposición de la Armada estadounidense, que participaban en acciones de abastecimiento de armas -incluidas químicas- a los conflictos armados en Afganistán e Irak, realizaron 35 escalas en los puertos de Las Palmas, Santa Cruz y Arrecife sólo entre noviembre de 2002 y marzo de 2005.

El último episodio conocido es la presencia en los entornos de los aeropuertos canarios de Los Rodeos y Gando de los denominados Centros de Tecnología de Inteligencia Contraterrorista (CTIC), dependientes del gabinete de Defensa de la administración Bush, que motivó dos iniciativas de solicitud de información el pasado mes de abril del grupo de IU-ICV, tanto en el Parlamento español como en el de la Unión Europea. El despliegue de estos centros y el paso por Canarias de los buques con armamento entrarían en las competencias de los convenios, pero no así los vuelos de la CIA.

/... http://canarias.indymedia.org/newswire/display/15712/index.php

Notes:

Miércoles, 3 de mayo de 2000

El nuevo Gobierno pedirá renegociar el Convenio de Defensa con EEUU.

Aznar desea un replanteamiento de la presencia militar norteamericana en España en función de nuestra plena integración en OTAN - EEUU ha transmitido su deseo de potenciar el uso de la base de Rota - Exteriores buscará el apoyo de Washington para conseguir un puesto en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU en el 2003.
Convenio de Cooperacion para la Defensa entre el Reino de España y los Estados Unidos de America, de 1 de Diciembre de1988.
Acuerdo administrativo de desarrollo del Convenio de cooperación para la defensa entre el Reino de España y los Estados Unidos de América, de 1 de diciembre de 1988, hecho en Madrid el 10 de abril de 2002. - Boletín Oficial del Estado de 16 de Julio de 2007.
Protocolo de enmienda del Convenio de Cooperación para la defensa entre el Reino de España y los Estados Unidos de América, de 1 de diciembre de 1988, hecho en Madrid el 10 de abril de 2002. - Boletín Oficial del Estado de 21 de febrero de 2003.
Acuerdos bilaterales: Derechos reconocidos a favor de las Fuerzas Armadas de España en los Estados Unidos de América.

Oil companies, Oil-Services companies and Oil-Rich countries. Another twist in the ongoing "ironical consequences of outsourcing" saga.

2008-02-03T01:45:00.000Z

Oil-services companies such as Schlumberger, the world's largest, closely followed by the likes of Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International and Smith International, undertake much of the actual boots-on-the ground exploration and production engineering and maintenance work that provide oil companies (and by extension society at large) around the world with their life-blood. At administrative and management levels, other service companies are contracted to provide everything an oil company needs from project design and management through accountancy and legal services, marketing, supply and of course customer relations requirements (the infamous help-desk in Bangalore and similar). The oil company itself is on course to be transformed into little more than a hard, extremely wealthy core providing finance and strategic management to the aforesaid exploration and production projects. Everything else can be outsourced.

One ironic consequence of this is that oil-rich countries and other title-holders to potential underground petroleum and gas resources find they too can turn to the same outsourced-services providers as the oil companies, in the process cutting out the oil companies themselves, and their take, as middlemen. Nils Pratley's Viewpoint "The growing fly in Big Oil's ointment" in the financial pages of the Guardian, 1 Feb 2008, puts it this way: "Oil-rich nations no longer feel the need to ring a member of the Big Oil club when they want to exploit their natural resources." Such national oil majors as Aramco of Saudi Arabia and others across Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as Norway and, effectively, Russia come to mind as model alternatives quite independent of mostly G7-based Big Oil but highly dependent on the flotilla of services companies attending them.

Another rather ironic but, it is to be hoped, healthy consequence could be summed up in the nicely Orwellian-sounding phrase: "Small business good; Big business bad."

Consider this: This division of labour, as it were, amongst a plethora of much smaller services companies (the largest, Schlumberger itself, is but a quarter of the size of Exxon) opens up the field of services provision to the kinds of open competition, manouverability and innovation only smaller businesses can provide. Such flexibility and diversity is surely both ecologically and economically more sound than the monolithic-titanic model Big Oil may have been more accustomed to up to now, and will undoubtedly thrive to the point of eventually rendering the Big companies themselves obsolete.

Always within limits set by effective regulation, such breaking-down of large and very-large corporations into leaner, more efficient and competitive relative tiddlers able to react quickly to such changing conditions and requirements as, for example, new energy projects would appear to be both natual and intelligent at this point in history and should be encouraged and applied in all areas of a healthy economy.

The Exxons and Wal-Marts of this world need to be broken up and cut down to size. The liberation of creative economic energy this would release is what will be needed if we're to power the next wave of economic evolution heading into what will clearly now be a fragile and potentially fractious future.

· ecologicando

http://ecologicando.blogspot.com/2008/02/oil-companies-oil-services-companies.html

notes:
Philadelphia Oil Service Index (^OSX)