posted April 16, 2003 at 2:59 p.m. MDTLooks like "permanent war" is quite the meme! (It sure beats drilling down through "war-mongering hate-filled boars".)
In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy [counterpunch.org] - "Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, every major aspect of American life is being shaped by our Permanent War Economy.
Civilian manufacturing industries are being swept away as a war-focused White House and a compliant Congress sponsor deindustrialization of the U.S. (1) They favor production--in Mexico and China, where government powers bar independent unions. As production of both consumer goods and capital goods is moved out of America, unions and whole communities are decimated. ...
[...]
[I]t it should come as no surprise that there is no public "space" for dialogue on how to improve the quality of our lives. Such topics are subordinate to "how to make war". Congress under both Republican and Democratic control has voted the same war priorities into the federal budget.
Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist, reports on 5.5 million young Americans age 16 to 24--without work in 2003--undereducated, disconnected from society's mainstream, restless and unhappy, frustrated, angry, and sad. (4) This population, 5.5 million and growing, is the product of America's national politics that has stripped away as too costly the very things that might rescue this abandoned generation and train it for productive work. But that sort of thing is now treated as too costly. So this abandoned generation is now left to perform as fodder for well-budgeted police SWAT teams. ...
Seymour Melman is emeritus proessor of Industrial Engineeering at Columbia University.His latest book is After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy. Visit his website: After Capitalism.
Also from CounterPunch:
Contract with Iraq - "They put US troops round the Oil Ministry and the headquarters of the Secret Police, but stood aside as the mobs looted Baghdad's Archaeological Museum and torched the National Library. It sounds like something right out of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, only here the troops protecting the American Petroleum Institute are lobbyists and politicians, lobbing tax breaks over the wall."
Post-War Iraq; Asking the right questions - " ... Ever since the UN Security Council refused to endorse the U.S. contention that Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002) authorized military action if Saddam Hussein failed to actively cooperate with UN inspectors, administration spokespersons have insisted that members of the military "coalition" would be the dominant contributors in Iraq's reconstruction and re-integration into the world community. Despite Mr. Blair's attempted gloss concerning the depth of UN involvement in the process the U.S. would allow, President Bush was quite explicit in the limits he envisaged. While praising as "a positive step" the appointment by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of a "personal representative to the process," Bush essentially relegated the UN to a subordinate role. "Well, it'd be a vital role as an agent to help people live freely. That's a vital role, and that means food. That means medicine. That means a place where people can give their contributions. That means suggesting people for the IIA [Iraqi Interim Authority]. That means being, you know, a party to the progress being made in Iraq."
