[Nettime-bold] Fall-Out of 50 years of questionable policies

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Fall-Out of 50 years of questionable policies

Missing:
8000+ people (from 80+ nations) - even 50 from Bangladesh
9% of office space in New York city
40% of guests in Las Vegas

Fired:
100,000 people in airline industry world-wide

Our way of life:
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced that the U.S. would officially 
consider any threat to Middle Eastern oil shipments to be a direct attack 
on U.S. interests. By that time superpowers already sold $4B+ of 
weapons in the region, which suffered 55 armed conflicts since the end 
of the WW II and by the time of the Carter’s announcement. In 1986, 
Robert Seeley wrote this in The Handbook of Non-violence: “A Middle 
East in which ethnic, religious, and national rivalries are resolved with 
military force and bloodshed, in which the Great Powers arm the 
combatants, in which terrorism is common and innocent bystanders are 
regularly killed and maimed is not only a region of great danger for its 
own people but for the people of the world.”
And what did the Great Powers do? They continued to arm the 
combatants.
Now the oil price is down, again. The high price of oil this summer 
already worried us. Now, OPEC even considered cutting production to 
push the price up in the wake of recent slump. But.... “The United States, 
which has troops stationed in oil-producing Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, 
made it clear that it would frown on a concerted effort to lift prices. So 
OPEC agreed to leave its production target at 23.2 m barrels a day.” Good 
boy.

Tainted globalism:
“The institutions that in most people’s eyes represent the global 
economy - the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization - 
are reviled far more widely than they are admired;”
...here is why...
“The IMF, especially, is criticised for sending its experts into developing 
countries and commanding governments to balance the budget in ways 
that assault the poor - by cutting spending on vital social services, 
ending subsidies or raising taxes on food and fuel, levying charges for 
use of water, and so down the list of shame.” - While those measures 
may be necessary, they inevitably undermine the elected officials of the 
target country, cause social unrest and, in some cases, plunge the 
unfortunate country in civil war. The IMF, meanwhile, NEVER makes 
such requests on the ‘donor’ countries (although their wealth is, at least, 
in part based on their past colonial exploitation of the now developing 
countries...).
U.S. foreign direct investment mostly goes to the rich countries - actually 
only 1% of the total U.S. FDI goes to the poor countries. They get high 
interest loans instead. - Pretty much like people within the country get 
high-interest credit cards with annual fee.
“If you are going to go bust, make sure you are a big developing country 
(Indonesia?) rather than a small one (Yugoslavia?), with debts large 
enough to threaten catastrophic damage to America’s financial system. 
That way you can be assured of prompt attention.” - Again, while about 
two millions American declares bankruptcies, Donald Trump is always 
bailed out.
IMF often acts as a tool of political pressure for the Western world - 
which undermines its credibility as a purely economic institution. “In 
1998, for instance, Croatia was denied an IMF loan payment, even 
though its economic policy was deemed sound by the technocrats, 
because it had failed to hand over war criminals.”

The New Old War:
Every day on television we watch the “protracted and meticulous military 
preparations” to attack global terrorism. The same  “protracted and 
meticulous military preparations” by the terrorist network to attack the 
U.S. went in silence and far away from TV cameras. But the presence of 
both is aimed to morally exhaust the adversary. The superpower enjoys 
the luxury to have its  “protracted and meticulous military preparations” 
widely televised. The mighty ships with immense firepower are slowly 
crawling towards the region - yet nothing can stop their advance, and 
people can just helplessly look into the sky when the missiles are going 
to strike them. The expectation of a strike that cannot be prevented 
drains the morality from the opponent, and Talibans are more 
compromising by the day - they even found Bin Laden in Afghanistan, 
after the third aircraft carrier reached the region. However, we should 
‘make no mistakes’ that Al Qaeda is not doing the same (“protracted and 
meticulous military preparations”) to strike back. They showed quite 
pointedly that they are capable of patient preparations necessary for 
modern global terrorism. And the effect of the knowledge that they are 
indeed preparing, although the U.S. has no information about where and 
how, causes the same morality exhaustion to the U.S. people, as the USS 
Enterprise CNN-covered  reaching the Asian shore causes to the Afghan 
people. Because, the fear is rooted in the same expectation of a strike that 
cannot be prevented. As in the cold war - where the conflict was 
symmetric - the fear of mutual assured destruction hurt both societies 
involved in the conflict, finally exhausting and destroying one (USSR), 
but leaving deep scars in social, economic and political tissue in the US, 
as well - now in the conflict with Al Qaeda - which is asymmetric - the 
fear of horrifying destruction that cannot be prevented remains the same, 
and on both sides the same. So, now, are we going to have the new 
deterrence policy? Terrorist fall-out shelter drills? How would be a treaty 
worked out in the case of asymmetric warfare? What would be 
equivalents? Air-force base for a terrorist cell? And could the ‘other 
side’ be trusted if it doesn’t allow transparency (hmmm, this was the 
favorite question of the U.S. ‘hawks’ in the Soviet question as well)?

The Land of Two Holy Places and a quarter of world’s oil reserves:
It is kind of embarrassingly obvious that Osama’s ranting against US 
bombing or Iraq and about Israel policies towards Palestinians is pure 
politics - aimed to get more Arab votes of support for his real goal. 
Which is the destruction of Saudi royal family (that stripped him of his 
citizenship and sent him in exile) and removal of the U.S. presence in that 
country. Preferably, of course, he, or some of his pawns, would be the 
ruler. The Islamic purity serves to attract followers. But his eyes are on 
the real price: the immense oil riches below the Saudi sand. So, he is not 
stupid at all. And this plot seems quite old-fashioned, after all. It is just 
that by attacking Saudis directly Al Qaeda would risk killing a lot of 
innocent Wahabbi Arabs, lose support in the Arab world, and get the 
royal family closer to their U.S. protectors. So, no ‘revolution’ can be 
done. Instead, Al Qaeda decided to strike the U.S. and kill a lot of 
innocent ‘infidels’, win tacit support in the Arab world, and get the royal 
family scared away from their U.S. protectors and closer to their own 
demise. He perhaps figured that once he’d become a ‘caliph’, then 
controlling all that oil reserves, he’d also become a real pain in the ass 
and make the world run according to his rules. Well, that’s just one more 
reason to get rid off the need for the environmentally perilous internal 
combustion engine and the dependence on a non-renewable resource of 
fossil fuels. There is one thing about Osama’s caliphate that can’t stop 
coming up in my mind - there was a comic book in former Yugoslavia 
about a Grand Vizier whose only dream was to once become ‘a Caliph in 
place of Caliph’ - so he would go around and in each episode scheme to 
get rid of the good, old Caliph, but he would always somehow, comically, 
fail - his name was Iznogud (is-no-good).

Landmines issue:
Afghanistan holds the world record with 10+ million landmines laid. But... 
“most of the world’s landmines are held by countries that have declined 
to sign the [landmine ban] treaty. China alone is sitting on 110 millions 
landmines, almost half the total stockpile. Russia and America, two other 
determined non-joiners, have stockpiles estimated at 65 millions and 11 
millions respectively.”
http://balkansnet.org/mines.html

Chechens are getting fried:
“This is the first time America has been offered the use of bases in the 
former Soviet Union. In apparent thanks, the Bush administration on 
September 26th strongly backed Putin’s challenge to the Chechens to cut 
their ties to terrorist groups within 72 hours....”

Welcoming the state of terror at home:
Aschcroftism in the US:
“Mr Aschcroft wants discretion to detain foreigners held to pose a threat 
to national security. The detention would be without trial and with only 
minimal judicial oversight. Opponents think this would, in practice, make 
detention indefinite.”
Aschcroftism in the UK:
“David Blunkett, the home secretary, has said darkly that new anti-
terrorism laws may create tension with the Human Rights Act.”

Cleansing the sins of the United States:
(Indonesia’s vice-president Hamzah Haz loud hope)
banning music - while the earlier published list of 1200 ‘banned’ songs 
proved to be a hoax, there are extensive reports on music and 
entertainment industry imposing restrictions on songs they play - it is 
mostly self-censorship, internal corporate guidelines, with no 
government influence, of course - but indeed it serves as a loud 
testimony of the damage that the WTC disaster did to the free speech.
banning films - “[Hollywood] had to delay the release of several movies 
with storylines that were too topical for comfort” - again, it is industry 
self-regulating, afraid of causing the backlash among the conservative 
‘moral majority’ - which already objects to the content of Hollywood 
movies - should they go forward releasing the movies like the Collateral 
Damage at this time - by creating this fear in the heart of the freedom’s 
marketing department (Hollywood), Al Qaeda won a significant victory, 
and Hamzah Haz may be happy in his narrow, selfish, puritanic hopes.

Tony Leon of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance on not cleansing the 
sins of South Africa and the other various aspects of the ostrich 
perspective:
“Every week we have the equivalent number of people dying from AIDS 
as died in the World Trade Center bombing. But our president denies the 
pervasiveness, the cause and the treatment of AIDS.”

Terror pays (it indeed appears to be more winners than losers):
- sanctions against Pakistan and India (that were imposed because of 
their nuclear tests) are lifted
- $3 billion in bilateral loans to Pakistan are rescheduled, more relief on its 
$37B external debt is forthcoming and yet another, more concessionary, 
loan from IMF ($2.5B) is on their way
- Jordan is getting IMF loan, too
- even Sudan, which voting rights in IMF were suspended, because it 
was so far behind in its repayments, could be eligible for new loans 
within a few years (geee, what a generosity!!!)
- special trade preferences extended to Indonesia by the U.S.
- World Bank is “already thinking” of potential projects in Uzbekistan 
and other Central Asian countries (where is all this money suddenly 
coming from?)
- defense industry stocks are rising - but not only military hardware sales 
is up: the sale of handguns is up, too
- the oil price, that was high whole summer, is falling down sharply: it 
“even dipped briefly below $20"  
- manufacturers of American flags can’t meet the demand - 50 million 
flags were sold in the aftermath of the disaster - 10% of them were 
manufactured in China, Taiwan and S. Korea
- gas masks, protective clothing and antibiotics fly off the shelves in 
New York city
- psycho-therapists are booked weeks in advance
- demand for bomb-sniffer dogs soared
- New York landlords are a happy bunch, too - with 9% of office space 
lost, the rents are going to be even higher (as if they were not already 
outrageous)

Other good news:
There was no traffic-jams in New York after the attacks and it was easy to 
find parking on Manhattan - with vehicles being banned crossing the 
bridges and tunnels into Manhattan.
Southwest Airlines announced special cheap fares this week.
The sound of success in Macedonia:
“...a single ethnic Albanian shot dead at a checkpoint. ‘A resounding 
success,’ said Lord Robertson.”

(“Quotes” and data are from The Economist, September 29 issue, unless 
noted otherwise) 

Ivo Skoric




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