Brian Holmes on Thu, 27 Sep 2001 05:09:45 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> The best defence is to give no offense |
Felipe Rodriguez wrote: "The Cato Institute published a report in 1998 under the name 'protecting the homeland, the best defense is to give no offense.' The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C." Hmmm. Interesting to note that the Cato Institute, "non-partisan" as it may be, is one of the major neoliberal think tanks, and as such, one of the artisans of the present world order. This doesn't invalidate the argument Felipe presents ("historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and terrorist attacks against the United States, etc."). The Cato analysts are in favor a sharply targeted response, respectful of Realpolitik, cognizant of the huge dangers run by the US with its current overblown rhetoric, and concerned about what could be lost under Bush's approximate and all-too-fundamentalist leadership. So far so good. But what do the people at Cato have to lose? What's the invisible agenda of neoliberal "disengagement" from international politics and "concern for the homeland"? Currently second on their website, after the boxed set of articles on terrorism, is this little tidbit: "How Much Could You Earn With a Private Social Security Account? Find out with Cato's new Social Security calculator... see how much you would benefit under the various plans currently being considered by President Bush's Social Security Commission." The Cato is neoliberal. And if being a "Christian" today seems to mean wanting to go on a "crusade" against the Taliban, being a neoliberal means wanting to privatize pension plans. To each his religion. For one it's a way to dream of getting reelected where daddy didn't, for the others it's a more tangible place in the sun, i.e. the juicy retirement you're supposed to get out of the stock market. Does it matter that a working person who would have put his or her retirement movey in the stock market five years ago would today have lost any chance to live decently on a regular income? Apparently not. And unfortunately there is no place in the Cato's self-protective reasoning to consider what adding the monetary mass of the US pension funds to the global stock exchange would actually do to the world. In brief: It would add another huge lump to the finance capital that demands, no matter what, a 15% return annually on investment. And it would give the whole population of retired, voting Americans an interest in a geopolitical "balance" where their privatized pension funds can "extract" that 15%, by whatever means. Part of that balance being, of course, strategic control over the primary "extractive" industry, the petroleum industry. The irony is that September 11 is the day that Salvador Allende's government was deposed by a US-backed coup. Where did the first neoliberal economic policy, crafted by Milton Friedman and the "Chicago boys," go into effect? Chile. And which was the first country to privatize its pension funds? Chile. No harm whatsoever meant to Felipe Rodriguez. But the Cato Institute does give me offence. And I think we had better all work a little harder on defending ourselves against the mostly invisible operations of what has been called the "Wall Street-Treasury complex," i.e. the executors of the neoliberal program thought up by people like those at the Cato. A formation as dangerous to world peace as the military-industrial complex was in Eisenhower's day. Brian Holmes # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net