[Marxism-Thaxis] US 'reconstruction' of Iraq collapses
VP Biden seems to be in Iraq to try and prevent the collapse. The reason American military people aren't dying in large numbers is that the military is on its bases and not engaging in much combat against the Resistance--it lets it proxies do that, or relies on air forces. But one does have to wonder what the end game is here: is it permanent bases and 50,000 'support' troops and trainers or complete withdrawal. This piece of propaganda says that they will withdraw entirely by 2011, but what does that mean? Withdraw to their bases, as they already have done? That is the only withdraw the DoD is planning. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38079757/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/ excerpt: But some Iraqis have compared the current hurried reconstruction effort to the haphazard American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. United States officials acknowledge that the current effort to accelerate rebuilding projects in Iraq is based on plans to reduce the American military forces in the country to 50,000 by September from about 85,000 now, and to withdraw entirely by the end of 2011. Many reconstruction projects continue to require security provided by the American military. In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, after American officials told local leaders that they intended to speed up projects because a nearby United States Army base was scheduled to close this summer, Iraqi officials said they found that construction standards had slipped so drastically that they ordered an immediate halt to all American-financed projects, even though American inspectors had deemed the work to be adequate. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Recessionary American capitalism returns to the basics--Hayek and Rand
I still think a religious revival is next. If a hurricane gets the oil slick and spews it all over the New South, that ought to be interesting. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/friedrich-hayek-darling-of-the-right-is-reborn-in-the-usa-2017267.html excerpt: Gurus of Economics *When the financial crisis and the Great Recession presented challenges for politics and for economics unlike anything seen since the 1930s, sending people scurrying for the economic philosophers of more than half a century ago, the first they reached for was John Maynard Keynes. An economist who rose through the ranks of the British civil service, he was instrumental in restoring the UK after the Great Depression, and in reshaping the global financial order after the chaos of the Second World War. As well as providing the academic underpinning for government efforts to stimulate demand in the economy, he also had much to say about banking. "Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation." On the same Fox programme in which Glenn Beck proselytised Hayek's tome, he also waved a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged', the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand, the Russian-American philosopher who is another darling of the libertarian right. This book, too, has found its way back into the charts. In it, Rand fantasises a "strike" by America's most productive capitalists and creative scientists, driven away by government interventions that restrict their businesses and redistribute their wealth, a strike that leads to the collapse of society. Alan Greenspan, the deregulating chairman of the US Federal Reserve, was a Rand devotee. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
