Re: SC58

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/273/

PEAK CAPITALISM? A COMMENTARY, By Richard Moore

.............According to capitalist economics the US is bankrupt, deeply in debt, and is hemorrhaging cash-flow losses. We have our fingers crossed that China won't dump it's deteriorating dollar holdings, but we certainly can't expect them to fund a New Deal for us by buying up massive new government security offerings. If capitalism is sacrosanct, a neo-New Deal is not feasible. If capitalism is no longer sacrosanct, then a neo-New Deal becomes feasible.

Indeed, any new economic game is always feasible, as long as there is freedom to declare a new set of rules. Our economy is nothing but a game, a game played with tokens issued by the Federal Reserve, tokens whose value and availability is determined by the Federal Reserve. If they decide to issue a new set of tokens, and base their value on some new story line, they can do so. Their currency never has been based on anything real. We've always needed to close our eyes and trust them in order to get on with life. They've always counted on that, and they can still count on it.

If they want to change the rules of the game -- the tax, credit, and regulatory framework -- they can do so. If they want to insulate the American economy from the global economy, they can do so. If they want to create a game that operates without economic growth in token terms, they can do so. If they want to turn the game into a command economy, they can do that as well. Us peons will be cheered up by whatever game delivers the goods. We always are. And when we're getting the goods, we believe we are living in democracies. That's when our clique ( the western elites ) feels most secure..........

................. In fact, the appropriation of the resources of the Global South has been the hallmark of imperialism from the beginning, and a fully exploited South would not be devoted exclusively to biofuel plantations. There would also be mines, oil wells, cattle and coffee plantations, slum factory zones, etc, each area producing whatever it is most efficient at producing. What is special about the biofuel program is that it signals a 'final assault' on the Global South, the launching of a 'final solution' to the problem of exploiting the resources of the South.

Instead of interventions and intrigues, tin horn dictators and market forces -- instead of all these troublesome mechanisms of indirect resource management, we are now going for the jugular, the food supply. We are setting out to clear the land for our use, so that we can keep the Industrial North running. Most of the people on the land are for our purposes now redundant, what Kissinger -- author of that infamous Government report on population control -- refers to as 'useless feeders'. We can see this final solution in operation already in Sub-Saharan Africa, where six million children die each year from disease and starvation, and the genocidal process is helped along by destabilizing interventions of various kinds, while the media blames it all on droughts and tribal conflicts.

In the decades following World War II the Industrial North experienced a boom period, under capitalism, based on opening up the Global South ('Free World') to exploitation by capital generally, no longer restricted by the old colonial boundaries. Now that the capitalist growth paradigm has collided with the immovable barrier of the Earth's finite resources, a bold new strategy is required in order to keep the engines of the Industrial North running. And once again that strategy will be based on finding a way to more systematically exploit the resources of the Global South. The time has come, evidently, to take a 'final solution' approach to that exploitation.

At the same time, this strategy is likely to include a shift away from growth-based economics and the capitalist paradigm. Acquiring exclusive use of the resources of the South provides the engines of the North with considerable fuel of various kinds, but the Earth remains nonetheless finite. An economic game designed more along feudal lines would be a more suitable response to the reality of finiteness. We'd want a game where wealth is measured in terms of 'resources controlled', rather than by 'success in speculative ventures' -- where people play fiefdom games of various kinds, at various levels, rather than always seeking to innovate and displace old ways of doing things, thus generating growth and waste. Our clique can run the casino for such a game, and rake in its desired take from each transaction, just as well as with any other game...............

............. This brings us to the North American Union, and the new Amero currency. Canadians seem to be a lot more aware of the NAU than are folks in the US. To most Americans (by which I usually mean the US variety), the NAU is just another conspiracy theory. Canadians on the other hand have long felt colonized by America, both culturally and economically. Particularly recently, with both free trade treaties and heightened security malarkey, Canadians can see that they are becoming more and more integrated into a North American system of some kind. They have been much more alert to what's going on, and they've been tracking the somewhat covert progress of this other regional block, the North American Union, which is to be made up of Canada, the US, and Mexico, and which is to have a new currency, the Amero.

Canada has lots of resources and relatively few people. It's got uranium, timber, water, wheat, and much else. Mexico brings to the party lots of cheap labor, lots of good agricultural land, and a variety of resources that can be more systematically exploited with the help of some investment in modernization. The NAU amounts to a colonial expansion on the part of the US, a bit like England absorbing Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in earlier days. On paper there might be some kind equality in the arrangement, but in reality it will be the US operators and the US part of the economy that will get the lion's share of the benefits. For Mexico, the NAU may turn out to be a good thing nonetheless, if it spares them the holocaust being prepared for the Global South...................

........... The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". And indeed, Shock Doctrine and Disaster are apt characterizations of the Holocaust scenario we are on the verge of initiating, as we go for the jugular in the Global South, using market forces to starve the natives off the land.