GLOBALIZE THIS!

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

OIL-LUSTING BUSH ADMINISTRATION DRAWN TO IRAQI SIRENS

In Greek mythology, sirens were sea nymphs who inhabited an island surrounded by dangerous rocks and sang so enchantingly that all who heard were drawn near and shipwrecked. A fitting metaphor for the Bush administration's misadventures with iraqi oil? Development economist extraordinaire Jeffrey Sachs would argue so.

Writing in the Financial Times today, Sachs debunks the Bush administration's neo-realist thinking on American hegemony that views dominance of Middle Eastern oil resources as the keystone to continued U.S. supremacy.

Sachs: "Yet the vice-president's view of US energy security is dead wrong, in terms of both energy economics and geopolitics."

Sachs argues quite compellingly that a vast supply of economically competitive alternative fossil fuels is well within our reach...not to mention potentially vast untapped markets for sustainable energy technology that is languishing amid a dismal market failure (it doesn't help when the latest energy bill passed by the Republican Congress lavishes subsidies and tax cuts on fossil fuel extraction and dinosaur power plants).

On geopolitics, Sachs argues that the American attack on and occupation of Iraq will foment the same disaffection that toppled the U.S. imposed Shah of Iran and is threatening the U.S.-backed monarchy in Saudi Arabia. (Witness an article in today's New York Times: "Talk of Tikrit's Favorite Diner: Hatred of Hussein, Fury at U.S.
".)

¶ 12/23/2003 02:32:06 PM

Monday, December 22, 2003

Inquiry Suggests Pakistanis Sold Nuclear Secrets (NYT)

Two quick points:

"The Pakistani action to question Dr. Khan's associates was prompted by information Iran turned over two months ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency, under pressure to reveal the details of a long-hidden nuclear program."

Gee, I guess the United Nations is actually pretty effective at monitoring and uncovering illicit programs to build weapons of mass destruction. (Oh, and these were the same inspectors Bush booted out of Iraq).

"A senior Bush administration official, while declining to comment on what was learned when Pakistani officials questioned the men, said that all three had been 'well known to our intelligence folks.'"

So, the Bush administration knew the Pakistanis were selling "nucular" (sic) secrets to the "axis of evil" (Iran and North Korea), and yet still thought it was a good idea to provide the Pakistanis with military aid and sophisticated weapons sales, preferential trade concessions (that undercut U.S. workers with exploited Pakistani labor), and an air of legitimacy to a military dictatorship.

¶ 12/22/2003 01:12:09 PM

Sunday, December 21, 2003

A ROLE FOR GOVERNMENT

Because people go to their jobs to work, not to die.

¶ 12/21/2003 07:09:13 PM

AND HERE IS A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE STATE OF GLOBAL POVERTY AND INEQUALITY

¶ 12/21/2003 07:02:55 PM

POVERTY, AMERICAN STYLE

Timothy Smeeding, world renowned poverty expert:

"In 1997 -- in the midst of a robust economy -- one in five American children lived in poverty. This is about double the rate in other wealthy industrialized nations, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries...We in America have high child poverty rates because we choose to, not because we cannot do anything about it. Other nations make different choices and get different results."

¶ 12/21/2003 06:57:07 PM