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On 5/29/2010 1:50 PM, Manuel Barrera wrote: > Thanks for the analysis, Artesian. Never doubted Lula's national > capitalist inclinations and would never dream of applauding > "him, and his class, for that." I just found the inter-capitalist > tensions interesting and telling about changing relationships. Here is where I disagree with many, perhaps most people on this list. The system is not simply *capitalism.* It is *imperialism*. So what is more significant here is not that Lula is beholden to a Brazilian capitalist *class* but that he represents the Brazilian *nation.* It is a semi-colonial country, and an extremely important one. Without Brazil, it is very difficult to imagine a united Latin America or South America combating imperialism. And it is as clear as can be that the center of the struggle against the imperialist system on a world scale today is in Latin America. [For example, this week President Chávez declared war on the Venezuelan capitalists, branding them as traitors. In recent months Venezuela has adopted a series of measures that attack the rights and prerogatives of capitalism, most recently preventing the uncontrolled trade in foreign currencies (which makes possible capital flight) in the last pocket that was left, the bond market.] In addition, there is a considerable back story to this Brazil-Iran nuclear affair. Brazil, too, like Iran, was in trouble for pursuing the development of a domestic nuclear industry, including mastery of the *complete* nuclear fuel cycle, which is what you need in order NOT to depend on the imperialist powers for nuclear fuel. But --oh happy coincidence-- dominating the entire nuclear fuel cycle also puts you a hop, skip and a jump away from having the raw material to build an atom bomb. It's true, yes, that for a truly not just genocidal, but planetcidal nuclear arsenal like the US has, you really do need very highly enriched uranium, or better yet, plutonium. But even at relatively low concentrations of U-235, an explosive chain reaction is inevitable if you suddenly throw together in a pile enough of the stuff. After all, that's how nuclear reactors work, well, almost: they put together very close to a critical mass and use carbon rods and various other schemes to keep the fission chain reaction from running away. (That's why nuclear fission technology is inherently very dangerous). Sure, you can't put low enriched uranium on top of a missile or in a bomb bay and fry yourself a few hundred thousand Japanese. But if you put in on a barge and sail it into New York harbor, the statue of liberty is going to be glowing in the dark long after the very sudden funerals for everyone in the vicinity are over. Which is to say there is a certain *rationality* to imperialist paranoia about someone they don't like --or more to the point, someone who doesn't like them-- getting a hold of fissile material. In the words of the poet: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. For a while there, things got pretty tense between Brazil and Mohamed ElBaradei, generally considered an American sock-puppet, who was in charge of enforcing the nuclear supremacy of the existing cartel. Brazil objected to "international" --in reality yankee-- demands for inspections, explaining it wanted to protect its proprietary nuclear tech. ElBaradei eventually settled for something like monitoring the output of Brazil's nuclear processing plant, but not the operation of the plant itself. The United States had no choice but to pretend to be happy. Following that, ElBaradei increasingly resisted Washington's efforts to draft him as a cheerleader for the bomb Iran movement, which led to his having to leave the IAEA. Thus by seeking a negotiated solution to Iran's confrontation with the Imperialist Atomic Energy Commission, (the IAEA, which the imperialists, of course, call it the "International" Atomic Energy Commission), Lula is also defending Brazil's right to develop its own nuclear industry and keep alive the option of being able to develop its own military nuclear capability. Joaquín ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
