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Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (6656)	5/27/2004 9:08:24 AM
From: Rock_nj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

As an outsider, it appears to me that the US is the victim of a bloodless coup in which Christian fanatics, Zionists, Big Oil, the Banks and the Military-Industrial-Complex have taken control. That's a fair assessment of where America stands in 2004. There is a strong alliance between conservative evangelical Christains who hold a lot of sway in the conservative southern U.S. and big business interests in the rest of the U.S. It's not really an alliance that makes much sense on a practical level, except for the fact that they aren't liberals, so they have that in common. It's not like big business does poor conservative southern Christain folks any favors either. One of the reasons why the living standards in the southern U.S. are so bad is because big business has run roughshod over them at every opportunity (sending jobs overseas, lowering wages and working conditions), which makes this whole alliance rather odd, but it has held together and even grown over the decades since the 1960s. I'd actually argue that all those groups that you cited from Christains to big business have always controlled the U.S. in one way or another. The Democratic party was once the southern Dixiecrat party, and despite their populist tendancies, the Dems have always supported the interests of American capital to one degree or another. If there has been a coup in the U.S., it has been a silent one that has taken decades of social conditioning to achieve. The culmination of this effort was the 1994 Republican takeover of the House (which was done fairly and squarely in a democractic fashion) and the 2000 election of George W. Bush in which Bush won Florida in dubious fashion, with help from his brother purging the election rolls. Now these neocons are in over their heads in Iraq with a war that serves both the intersts of Christains and big business. The problem with America is that for far too long, we've focused our energy outwards, and neglected domestic priorities. Iraq is just another in a long line of foreign adventurism that has squandered American resources both human and financial.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (6656)	5/28/2004 3:58:15 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

Re: As an outsider, it appears to me that the US is the victim of a bloodless coup in which Christian fanatics, Zionists, Big Oil, the Banks and the Military-Industrial-Complex have taken control. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I'd lump Christian fanatics and Zionists together and label them "Judeofascists", then I'd dismiss Big Oil --as I explained previously, the oil market is basically a monopsony, that is, a market swayed by a predominant buyer, the US. Keep in mind that the US alone soaks up 25-30% of the world's oil production and that most oil producing countries have no other chip to bargain... Mideast countries have to sell their oil to the US, whether they like it or not. And if those countries did manage to stick together and impose a $100/barrel to the US then US oil companies could just tap West African oil at a much, much higher rate than the current one. Instead of splurging billions of dollars on maintaining troops in iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc., the same amount of money would be spent on oil prospecting and drilling from Angola to Nigeria. () As for the so-called military-industrial complex, I think it's time to update Eisenhower's most famous coinage: it's now more appropriate to talk about the media-military complex (). Gus () Message 19847041 Message 19850328 (**) Message 20170555

To: sea_urchin who wrote (6656)	5/28/2004 10:10:45 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20039

Footnote... Did you know that it's actually the US gasoline shortage that's driving up the price of crude oil --and not the other way around??? That's the textbook definition of a monopsony. Clue: International crude prices shoot up on concern over US shortage REUTERS LONDON, APRIL 30 [2004]: International oil prices hit fresh 3-1/2 year peaks on Friday led by an all time high price for US gasoline, a market haunted by fears of a shortage in the period of peak summer demand. London's Brent crude stood at $34.85, up 47 cents, hitting a session high at $35.00, its highest since October 2000. US light crude gained 47 cents to $37.78 a barrel US gasoline hit a fresh all-time peak of $1.2510 a gallon on Friday. "Gasoline is relentless in the face of weakening fundamentals across the rest of the crude complex," Josh Sadler, energy analyst with Societe Generale, said in a report. "Current (US gasoline) stock levels need to increase at least five percent by the end of May to alleviate the continued upward price pressure," he said. Further ahead, Sadler said tightening credit in China could slow down its sizzling economy and erode its soaring demand for oil. China this week ordered some smaller banks to stop lending for several days until May 1, when the week-long Labour Day holiday begins, in its latest bid to clamp down on easy credit. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told Reuters this week Beijing was committed to forceful measures to cool its dangerously fast-growing economy. But that remained a backdrop to the US Gasoline picture, said Tony Nunan, risk management manager at Mitsubishi Corp. "The market is so focused on the US Gasoline situation that China's news does little to check the fact that growing demand is still an underlying bullish factor," Nunan said. The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Thursday urged OPEC to boost production limits at their June meeting to help top up world oil inventories, but cartel-member Venezuela said there were no plans to do so. "That is not planned," Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said on Thursday, "We have been cautious. We did one cut, and we will continue to evaluate what measures we will take to defend prices." indianexpress.com