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Date Posted: 09:03:55 05/13/03 Tue
Author: Alie
Subject: War? Just Charge It
In reply to: Alie 's message, "How to kick the US where it really hurts" on 08:56:00 05/13/03 Tue

From Global Vision News Network

War? Just Charge It

By Ian Williams
GVNews.Net Crisis Capsule>

NEW YORK, Jan 14, 2003 -- At a press trip to Las Vegas once, I decided that buying new T-shirts would be cheaper than using the hotel laundry. I went to the hotel shopping area and found that I could not buy cotton. "They all wear polyester here," confided the Iranian store attendant. Trawling the wires yesterday, I saw an item from India that showed how globalization was spreading the effects of impending war in unusual ways. The price of polyester is at an all time high because the base chemicals used to make it depend on crude oil. "The War may hit the heartland yet," I mused, anticipating a condition red from the Office of Homeland Security as polyester clothing disappeared from the sales racks.

However, the ripples of fear across the world economy are not so fanciful. They are becoming more and more visible. Countries like Saudi Arabia and even Mexico, which are opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq, have announced plans to increase oil production in the face of rapidly rising prices. This is not to help Washington's war effort. It is a rational response to irrational lack of foresight by the Bush Administration.

The U.S. is too big to fail. If the American economy tanks it brings the rest of the world down with it. Other governments, quite reasonably, are worried about this even though the White House crew, in its early morning Bible studies sessions, is probably perusing with Old Testament fervor the bits in the Book of Judges about Solomon bringing the Philistine temple down on his head

What they almost certainly are not studying is any biblical injunctions against usury. Because in this context the U.S.'s not so secret weapon is not its smart bombs and stealth bombers but its reckless debts. The United States currently owes the rest of the world around $4 trillion dollars, and the Bush Administration response is to give tax cuts to the richest Americans by repealing taxes on estates and dividends.

The President does not care if it raises the deficit even higher, because in a new form of imperial tribute, the deficit will be made up by foreign taxpayers, whose central banks have lent much of the trillions -- and who are too scared of the effects to ask for settlement.

In effect hungry peasants in China will be paying for tax cuts to oil dynasts in Texas. Isn't globalization wonderful? A Superpower that is built on a house of maxed-out credit cards should really think carefully about its long-term future, but the Holy-roller contingent in the White House clearly has difficulty praying and planning at the same time.

When confidence is everything in the modern economy, it is even difficult for other actors to play the part of the little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson tale who pointed out the invisibility of the Emperor's new clothes. In the fairy tale, the crowd laughs the emperor to shame. In real contemporary America, if he commented on Emperor Bush's new clothes, or his court tailors Ashcroft, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the kid would probably be arrested and deported by the INS on suspicion of being an Arab.

If he worked for one of the major networks as a journalist, he would need to start casting about for other career opportunities if he even pointed out that the silk of the imperial robes was really cheap (although rapidly becoming expensive) polyester.

Luckily the public is more acute than so many of its alleged tribunes in the media and legislature. A Time magazine poll this morning, with 116,397 votes cast asked readers to say which country posed the greatest threat to world peace. North Korea got 9.5%, Iraq 12.5% and the United States was the people's choice with an overwhelming 77.9% of votes cast.

Interestingly Time magazine added "NOTE: This is an unscientific, informal survey for the interest and enjoyment of TIME.com users and may not be indicative of popular opinion." One cannot help wondering if they would have added such a footnote if the voters had gone along with the Imperial tailors' version of events? Of course, I may be doing Time a disservice, but in a country where an excellent film like the "Quiet American" has been shelved (censored they would have called it in the Soviet Union) for over a year because it suggests that the U.S. was behind bombings in Saigon almost fifty years ago, or where a fund-raiser for Emma Goldman's archives in the University of California was censored by university authorities because it quoted the anarchist leader about the fears for freedom of speech in World War I, what whistle-blowing career prospects does Hans Christian Anderson's likely lad have?

� Globalvision News Network, 2003 (www.gvnews.net). All rights reserved.

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