[Peace-discuss] US grand strategy

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Deciding what to do politically depends on an accurate analysis of the 
situation, at home and abroad.  In the absence of such an analysis, the best 
will in the world can do the right thing only by accident. Here is the best 
account I know of. --CGE]

Contours of Global Order: Domination,
Instability, and Xenophobia in a Changing World
Noam Chomsky
Text of lecture given at Westerkerk, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands, March 13, 2011

When we settled on the title for this talk, few could have guessed how apt it 
would prove to be when the time came -- how dramatically the world would be 
changing, and how far-reaching are the implications for domestic and world order.

The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of 
courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces -- coinciding, 
fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of 
working people and democracy in Madison Wisconsin and other US cities. One 
telling event occurred on Feb. 20, when Kamal Abbas send a message from Tahrir 
Square to Wisconsin workers, saying "We Stand With You as You Stood With Us." 
Abbas is a leader of the years of struggle of Egyptian workers for elementary 
rights. His message of solidarity evoked the traditional aspiration of the labor 
movements: solidarity among workers of the world, and populations generally.

However flawed their record, labor movements have regularly been in the 
forefront of popular struggles for basic rights and democracy. In Tahrir Square, 
the streets of Madison, and many other places the popular struggles underway 
reach directly to the prospects for authentic democracy: for sociopolitical 
systems in which people are free and equal participants in controlling the 
institutions in which they live and work.

Right now, the trajectories in Cairo and Madison are intersecting, but headed in 
opposite directions: in Cairo towards gaining elementary rights denied by the 
dictatorships, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and 
hard struggles and are now under severe attack. Each is a microcosm of 
tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be 
far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying 
industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, 
and in what President Eisenhower called "the most strategically important area 
in the world" -- "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "probably the 
richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment" in the 
words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the US intended to keep 
for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.

Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today's 
policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of the influential Roosevelt 
advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the 
Middle East would yield "substantial control of the world." And correspondingly, 
that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was 
clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face 
of major changes in world order since that day.

 From the outset of the war 1939, Washington anticipated that it would end with 
the US in a position of overwhelming power. High-level State Department 
officials and foreign policy specialists met through the wartime years to lay 
out plans for the postwar world. They delineated a "Grand Area" that the US was 
to dominate, including the Western hemisphere, the Far East, and the former 
British empire, with its Middle East energy resources. As Russia began to grind 
down Nazi armies after Stalingrad, Grand Area goals extended to as much of 
Eurasia as possible, at least its economic core in Western Europe. Within the 
Grand Area the US would maintain "unquestioned power," with "military and 
economic supremacy," while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of 
sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs. The careful 
wartime plans were soon implemented.

It was always recognized that Europe might choose to follow an independent 
course. NATO was partially intended to counter this threat. As soon as the 
official pretext for NATO dissolved in 1989, NATO was expanded to the East in 
violation of verbal pledges to Gorbachev. It has since become a US-run 
intervention force, with far-ranging scope, spelled out by NATO 
Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who informed a NATO conference that 
"NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed 
for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and 
other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system.

Grand Area doctrines clearly license military intervention at will. That 
conclusion was articulated clearly by the Clinton administration, which declared 
that the US has the right to use military force to ensure "uninhibited access to 
key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources," and must maintain huge 
military forces "forward deployed" in Europe and Asia "in order to shape 
people's opinions about us" and "to shape events that will affect our livelihood 
and our security."

The same principles governed the invasion of Iraq. As US failure to impose its 
will in Iraq was becoming unmistakable, the actual goals of the invasion could 
no longer be concealed behind pretty rhetoric. In November 2007 the White House 
issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that US forces must remain 
indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors. Two 
months later President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation 
that might limit the permanent stationing of US Armed Forces in Iraq or "United 
States control of the oil resources of Iraq" -- demands that the US had to 
abandon shortly after in the face of Iraqi resistance.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the current popular uprising has won impressive victories, 
but as the Carnegie Endowment reported a few days ago, while names have changed, 
the regimes remain: "A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still 
a distant goal." The report discusses internal barriers to democracy, but 
ignores the external ones, which as always are significant.

The US and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent 
authentic democracy in the Arab world. To understand why, it is only necessary 
to look at the studies of Arab opinion conducted by US polling agencies. Though 
barely reported, they are certainly known to planners. They reveal that by 
overwhelming majorities, Arabs regard the US and Israel as the major threats 
they face: the US is so regarded by 90% of Egyptians, in the region generally 
over 3/4. Some regard Iran as a threat: 10%. Opposition to US policy is so 
strong that a majority believe that security would be improved if Iran had 
nuclear weapons -- in Egypt 80%. Other figures are similar. If public opinion 
were to influence policy, the US not only would not control the region, but 
would be expelled from it, along with its allies, undermining fundamental 
principles of global dominance.

Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the 
real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming 
that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic 
objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.

Elite contempt for democracy was revealed dramatically in the reaction to the 
Wikileaks exposures. Those that received most attention, with euphoric 
commentary, were cables reporting that Arabs support the US stand on Iran. The 
reference was to the ruling dictators. The attitudes of the public were 
unmentioned. The guiding principle was articulated clearly by Carnegie Endowment 
Middle East specialist Marwan Muasher, formerly a high official of the Jordanian 
government: "there is nothing wrong, everything is under control." In short, if 
the dictators support us, what else could matter?

The Muasher doctrine is rational and venerable. To mention just one case that is 
highly relevant today, in internal discussion in 1958, president Eisenhower 
expressed concern about "the campaign of hatred" against us in the Arab world, 
not by governments, but by the people. The National Security Council explained 
that there is a perception in the Arab world that the US supports dictatorships 
and blocks democracy and development, so as to ensure control over the resources 
of the region. Furthermore, the perception is basically accurate, the NSC 
concluded, and that is what we should be doing, relying on the Muasher doctrine. 
Pentagon studies conducted after 9/11 confirmed that the same holds today.

It is normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can, and for 
victims to take it seriously. Perhaps a few brief observations on this important 
matter may be useful. Today is not the first occasion when Egypt and the US are 
facing similar problems, and moving in opposite directions. That was also true 
in the early 19th century.

Economic historians have argued that Egypt was well-placed to undertake rapid 
economic development at the same time that the US was. Both had rich 
agriculture, including cotton, the fuel of the early industrial revolution -- 
though unlike Egypt, the US had to develop cotton production and a work force by 
conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that are evident right 
now in the reservations for the survivors and the prisons that have rapidly 
expanded since the Reagan years to house the superfluous population left by 
deindustrialization. One fundamental difference was that the US had gained 
independence and was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic 
theory, delivered at the time by Adam Smith in terms rather like those preached 
to developing societies today. Smith urged the liberated colonies to produce 
primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures, and 
certainly not to attempt to monopolize crucial goods, particularly cotton. Any 
other path "would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the 
value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the 
progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness," Smith warned. 
Having gained their independence, the colonies were free to ignore his advice 
and to follow England's course of independent state-guided development, with 
high tariffs to protect industry from British exports, first textiles, later 
steel and others, and to adopt numerous other devices to accelerate industrial 
development. The independent Republic also sought to gain a monopoly of cotton 
so as to "place all other nations at our feet," particularly the British enemy, 
as the Jacksonian presidents announced when conquering Texas and half of Mexico.

For Egypt, a comparable course was barred by British power. Lord Palmerston 
declared that "no ideas of fairness [toward Egypt] ought to stand in the way of 
such great and paramount interests" of Britain as preserving its economic and 
political hegemony, expressing his "hate" for the "ignorant barbarian" Muhammed 
Ali who dared to seek an independent course, and deploying Britain's fleet and 
financial power to terminate Egypt's quest for independence and economic 
development.

After World War II, when the US displaced Britain as global hegemon, Washington 
adopted the same stand, making it clear that the US would provide no aid to 
Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for the weak -- which the US 
continued to violate, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a 
debilitating dollar shortage. The usual interpretation of market principles.

It is small wonder that the "campaign of hatred" against the US that concerned 
Eisenhower was based on the recognition that the US supports dictators and 
blocks democracy and development, as do its allies.

In Adam Smith's defense, it should be added that he recognized what would happen 
if Britain followed the rules of sound economics -- now called "neoliberalism." 
He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, 
they might profit but England would suffer. But he felt that they would be 
guided by a home bias, so as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the 
ravages of economic rationality. The passage is hard to miss. It is the one 
occurrence of the famous phrase "invisible hand" in Wealth of Nations. The other 
leading founder of classical economics, David Ricardo, drew similar conclusions, 
hoping that home bias would lead men of property to "be satisfied with the low 
rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous 
employment for their wealth in foreign nations," feelings that "I should be 
sorry to see weakened," he added. Their predictions aside, the instincts of the 
classical economists were sound.

The democracy uprising in the Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe 
in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the democracy uprising was tolerated 
by the Russians, and supported by western power in accord with standard 
doctrine: it plainly conformed to economic and strategic objectives, and was 
therefore a noble achievement, greatly honored, unlike the struggles at the same 
time "to defend the people's fundamental human rights" in Central America, in 
the words of the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of 
thousands of victims of the military forces armed and trained by Washington. 
There was no Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous years, and there 
is none today. And Western power remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world 
for good reasons.

Grand Area doctrines continue to apply to contemporary crises and 
confrontations. In Western policy-making circles and political commentary the 
Iranian threat is considered to pose the greatest danger to world order and 
hence must be the primary focus of US foreign policy, with Europe trailing along 
politely. What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is 
provided by the Pentagon and US intelligence. Reporting on global security last 
year, they make it clear that the threat is not military. Iran's military 
spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," they conclude. 
Its military doctrine is strictly "defensive, designed to slow an invasion and 
force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability 
to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's 
nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing 
nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy." All quotes.

The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it 
hardly outranks US allies in that regard. But the threat lies elsewhere, and is 
ominous indeed. One element is Iran's potential deterrent capacity, an 
illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that might interfere with US freedom of 
action in the region. It is glaringly obvious why Iran would seek a deterrent 
capacity; a look at the military bases and nuclear forces in the region suffices 
to explain. Seven years ago, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote 
that "The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it 
turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear 
weapons, they would be crazy," particularly when they are under constant threat 
of attack in violation of the UN Charter. Whether they are doing so remains an 
open question, but perhaps so.

But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its 
influence in neighboring countries, the Pentagon and Intelligence emphasize, and 
in this way to "destabilize" the region, in the technical terms of foreign 
policy discourse. US invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbors is 
"stabilization." Iran's efforts to extend its influence to them is 
"destabilization," hence plainly illegitimate. Such usage is routine. Thus the 
prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace was properly using the term 
"stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve 
"stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country (by 
overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet 
dictatorship). Other concerns about Iran are equally interesting to explore, but 
perhaps this is enough to reveal the guiding principles and their status in 
imperial culture; as FDR's planners emphasized at the dawn of the contemporary 
world system, the US cannot tolerate "any exercise of sovereignty" that 
interferes with its global designs.

The US and Europe are united in punishing Iran for its threat to stability, but 
it is useful to recall how isolated they are. The nonaligned countries have 
vigorously supported Iran's right to enrich uranium. In the region, Arab public 
opinion even strongly favors Iranian nuclear weapons. The major regional power, 
Turkey, voted against the latest US-intiated sanctions motion in the Security 
Council, along with Brazil, the most admired country of the South. Their 
disobedience led to sharp censure, not for the first time: Turkey had been 
bitterly condemned in 2003 when the government followed the will of 95% of the 
population and refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq, thus 
demonstrating its weak grasp of democracy, western-style. After its Security 
Council misdeed last year, Turkey was warned by Obama's top diplomat on European 
affairs, Philip Gordon, that it must "demonstrate its commitment to partnership 
with the West." A scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations asked "How do we 
keep the Turks in their lane?" -- following orders like good democrats. Brazil's 
Lula was admonished in a New York Times headline that his effort with Turkey to 
provide a solution to the uranium enrichment issue outside of the framework of 
US power is a "Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy." In brief, do what we say, or 
else.

An interesting sidelight, effectively suppressed, is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil 
deal was approved in advance by Obama, presumably on the assumption that it 
would fail, providing an ideological weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the 
approval turned to censure, and Washington rammed through a Security Council 
resolution so weak that China readily signed -- and is now chastised for living 
up to the letter of the resolution but not Washington's unilateral directives -- 
in the current issue of Foreign Affairs for example.

While the US can tolerate Turkish disobedience, though with dismay, China is 
harder to ignore. The press warns that "China's investors and traders are now 
filling a vacuum in Iran as businesses from many other nations, especially in 
Europe, pull out," and in particular, is expanding its dominant role in Iran's 
energy industries. Washington is reacting with a touch of desperation. The State 
Department warned China that it if it wants to be accepted in the international 
community -- a technical term referring to the US and whoever happens to agree 
with it -- than it must not "skirt and evade international responsibilities, 
[which] are clear": namely, follow US orders. China is unlikely to be impressed.

There is also much concern about the growing Chinese military threat. A recent 
Pentagon study warned that China's military budget is approaching "one-fifth of 
what the Pentagon spent to operate and carry out the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan," a fraction of the US military budget of course. China's expansion 
of military forces might "deny the ability of American warships to operate in 
international waters off its coast," The New York Times added. Off the coast of 
China, that is; it has yet to be proposed that that the US should eliminate 
military forces that deny the Caribbean to Chinese warships. China's lack of 
understanding of rules of international civility is illustrated further by its 
objections to plans for the advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George 
Washington to join naval exercises a few miles off China's coast, with alleged 
capacity to strike Beijing. In contrast, the West understands that such US 
operations are all undertaken to defend stability and its own security. The 
liberal New Republic expresses its concern that "China sent ten warships through 
international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa." That is indeed a 
provocation -- unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the 
island into a major military base, in defiance of vehement protests by the 
people of Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the standard principle that we 
own the world.

Deep-seated imperial doctrine aside, there is good reason for China's neighbors 
to be concerned about its growing military and commercial power. And though Arab 
opinion supports an Iranian nuclear weapons program, we certainly should not do 
so. The foreign policy literature is full of proposals as to how to counter the 
threat. One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to establish a nuclear 
weapons-free zone in the region. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference 
at United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of 
the Non-Aligned Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East NWFZ, as had 
been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the 
NPT. International support is so overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is 
a fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but not now. Furthermore, the 
US made clear Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for Israel's nuclear 
program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or for release of 
information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities." So much for this 
method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.

While Grand Area doctrine still prevails, the capacity to implement it has 
declined. The peak of US power was after World War II, when the US had literally 
half the world's wealth. But that naturally declined, as other industrial 
economies recovered from the devastation of the war and decolonization took its 
agonizing course. By the early 1970s, US share of global wealth had declined to 
about 25%, and the industrial world had become tripolar: North America, Europe, 
and East Asia, then Japan-based.

There was also a sharp change in the US economy in the 1970s, towards 
financialization and export of production. There is no time to go into the 
details, but a variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical 
concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1% of the population 
-- mostly CEOs, hedge fund managers, and the like. That leads to concentration 
of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: 
fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. 
Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into 
the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans 
reflexively, the Democrats -- by now what used to be moderate Republicans -- not 
far behind. Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations 
industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the 
best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business 
press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other 
commodities since Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement, and would 
change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost 
$2 billion, mostly corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting 
business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as 
long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn't matter.

While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population 
real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work 
hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises 
that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled from the 1980s.

None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government 
insurance policy, called "too big to fail." The banks and investment firms can 
make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably 
crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their 
copies of Hayek and Milton Friedman. That has been the regular process since the 
Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last -- for the public 
population, that is. Right now real unemployment is at Depression levels for 
much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the 
current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5 billion 
in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6 
million bonus while his base salary more than triples.

It wouldn't do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, 
propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector 
workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions and so on: all fantasy, on the 
model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to 
pick up welfare checks -- and other models that need not be mentioned. We all 
must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.

Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to 
destroy the public education system, from kindergarten through the universities, 
by privatization -- again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the 
population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of 
the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.

Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout US 
history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense 
that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon 
become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but 
the cruelty of the policy is shocking. Who are the immigrants targeted? In 
Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the 
Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan's favorite killers. Others are 
Mexican victims of Clinton's NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that 
managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As 
NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also 
initiated the militarization of the US-Mexican border, previously fairly open. 
It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly-subsidized 
US agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with 
US multinationals, which must be granted "national treatment" under the 
mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, 
not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of 
desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of 
state-corporate policies at home.

Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more 
rampant than in the US. One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about 
the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I 
genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy's Fascist government. 
Or when France, which still today is the main protector of the brutal 
dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities 
in Africa while Sarkozy warns grimly of the "flood of immigrants" and Marine Le 
Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, 
which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the 
Europeans."

The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening 
phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the 
recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France 
to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is 
happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe's most brutalized 
population. In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17% of the vote in 
national elections -- perhaps unsurprising when ¾ of the population feels that 
they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in 
Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10% of the vote in 2008 -- were it 
not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, 
won over 17%. It is chilling to recall that in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3% 
of the vote in Germany. In England the British National Party and the English 
Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. What is happening 
in Holland you know all too well. In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin's lament that 
immigrants are destroying Germany was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor 
Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had 
"utterly failed": the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing 
to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans. Those with a sense of irony may 
recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, 
warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to 
immigrate, because they are too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the 20th century 
ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the US, including 
presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a 
rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to 
eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more 
virulent in times of economic distress.

I have barely skimmed the surface of these critical issues, but do not want to 
end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: 
the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied 
by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is 
destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. 
Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the 
population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full 
well how grave is the threat. But they must maximize short-term profit and 
market share; if they don't, someone else will. This vicious cycle could well 
turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the 
new Congress in the US, propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. 
Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for 
measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true 
believers, for example the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who 
explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that 
there will not be another flood. If such things were happening in some small and 
remote country, we might laugh. Not when they are happening in the richest and 
most powerful country in the world. And before we laugh, we might also bear in 
mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the 
fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis, and in general 
to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 15 years ago, called the "religion" that 
markets know best -- which prevented the central bank and the economics 
profession from taking notice of an $8 trillion housing bubble that had no basis 
at all in economic fundamentals, and that devastated the economy when it burst.

All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine 
prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to 
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they 
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

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