At 14:18 10/12/2003 -0500, you wrote:
You know I don't like Bush Keith but, I think you haven't thought the context of this through. First of all America is a business nation and Bush has a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard. In American business you punish those who don't support you and reward those who do. It is that simple.
Yes, I appreciate this, but my point is that he is further alienating two of the biggest countries in Europe whose help a member of his own team, viz Powell, was requesting only a day or two previously! The left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing. That was my point.
Keith
It may make lousy government but frankly with our huge tax bill over this war, the idea of a company bringing in money to another country that isn't sharing doesn't strike me all that well either. We don't exist for the rest of the world but for our own people. The justification for this war was an attack on our own people and for that reason the American public support Bush on this. What we don't support is corruption and over charging by American corporations like Halliburton. Halliburton supported Bush and now they are sacrificing little and making a killing. That may hurt Bush but your comments are not resonant over here. They are more anxiety from a distance and speak to your self interest rather than ours. Its not morality or even good government, in fact its nothing personal, its just business.
If you don't like it then argue with the market and stop preaching free trade and TNC's as the saviour of the future. The US is just a TNC competeing in the world and it doesn't care about any competitor's market share other than their own. In that Laissez Faire world, the only security is power and loyalty and if you want that world you can't complain when power is asserted. That is what I meant when I said that government as business is a nightmare. You said you didn't get it and now you are complaining about it. I don't understand that. I speak English, maybe you should learn to speak a little Cherokee. Then we could get around these misunderstandings.
Perhaps it would be good for Europe to do the same since we both are going to be dealing with each other for a long time in this cutthroat world that Ricardo, Adam Smith, Henry George, J.S. Mill and their accolytes have finally given us, not to mention the current varieties like Milton Friedman, etc. etc. I don't know whether it is evolutionary in the sense of the brain or just inevitable given the history of the past thousand years of European systems. But either way it was predictable. As Harrison Ford said to Julia Ormond in the movie Sabrina after he had treated her shabbily, "Don't worry, it was nothing personal, it was just business." He didn't like it and felt like a cad but felt perfectly at home in the more's of the business system. Or as Donald Trump says: "Get Even!" But "getting even" isn't personal, it just a business strategy to reward those who contibute to your business and punish those who don't. Personally I prefir the complexity of Veblin to the whole bunch.
From my standpoint, everything is personal. That is different.
REH
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 3:21 AM
- Subject: [Futurework] Are they going mad?
- What irony! If there could have been any "justification" for America invading Iraq, it was because Saddam was excluding US and UK oil corporations from development contracts in the rich oilfields of northern Iraq.
- What's up with the Bush team? Are they going mad? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy .............
- I think the Bush team is falling to pieces. Consider. Two days ago, Powell wanted NATO to help with the occupation of Iraq. Now the Pentagon comes out with this (below). Of course, this could seen as an immediate riposte to NATO turning him down (or, rather, expressing reservations).
- No, I think the members of the Bush team are now staggering about from one decision to another with little coordination of strategy. They're in a schizophrenic state. They really don't know what to do in Iraq. (Besides, why are they thinking about reconstruction contracts when they should be applying themselves to the prime objective of bringing about an Iraqi government by July?)
- I repeat my guess of a couple of days ago. I think Powell (and perhaps Condee) will resign soon. Then the team will really be seen to be falling apart.
- Now that Howard Dean is overwhelmingly the Democratic front-runner, it's possible that there'll now be a tidal wave of opinion against Bush. I'm amazed that America has been so supine over the invasion so far -- considering Vietnam (and soon, being kicked out of Afghanistan).
- Keith Hudson
- <<<<
- PENTAGON BARS THREE NATIONS FROM IRAQ BIDS
- Douglas Jehl
- WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect "the essential security interests of the United States."
- The directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, represents the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.
- from New York Times -- 10 December 2003
- >>>>
- Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
