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This has been driving me nuts during the entire Bush Junta, and through its aftermath, to today: Bush Junta policy didn't/doesn't make sense from a business point of view. One of my conclusions was that they were just thieves and looters--they had no other agenda, no policy meant anything to them except as it opened up more opportunities for grand theft--and actually this had something of a good side to it, in that Hitler had done the opposite--had built a broken country, Germany, into an industrial powerhouse and great war machine. The Bush Junta was NOT building a great industrial war machine, but instead was BREAKING the U.S.--busting it, destroying it, killing domestic manufacturing, looting the federal government blind, looting the schools, the infrastructure, busting the states and counties, letting the banksters run wild (right off the cliff), and was furthermore looting reconstruction in the countries they invaded! They were building NOTHING--except military bases everywhere, paid for by an increasingly looted and impoverished U.S. taxpayer base.
The good bit (re this looting theory) is that they weren't Nazis, except in spirit. They weren't building anything capable of sustaining a great war for world domination. And thus--I hoped anyway--we weren't likely to see Nazi boots here, goosestepping to Bush. What is there for a Nazi soul to swell with national pride about? Nothing. Massively broken manufacturing system. Massive unemployment. A youth population whose major health problem is being obese couch potatoes so that even massive unemployment couldn't produce enough soldiers (thus, "stop loss" and an unhappy military). And on and on. They were NOT recreating Germany 1930. We were NOT going to see Nazi youth groups marching on the streets here. They couldn't care less what shape they left this country is. They were just THIEVES.
This theory went a long way to helping me understand the Bushwhacks--of the Junta, and today--including their INSANE policy in Latin America, which drove country after country off the U.S./corporate/World Bank/IMF/'neo-liberal" "reservation" and into a leftist democracy revolution. U.S./Bush Junta thuggery in Latin America (including, for instance, the U.S. supported coup attempt in Venezuela in '02, their collusion with white separatists for a coup attempt in Bolivia in '08, etc.) was VERY BAD for U.S. business. Actions like these inspired South America to rebel, and, for instance, to create UNASUR--an EU type organization that does NOT include the U.S. as a member, whose first action was to back up Evo Morales in Bolivia when he threw the U.S. ambassador out and to help quell the white separatist insurrection. Bush Junta policy greatly reduced U.S. corporate access to Latin American resources--oil, gas, lithium, ag land. It has even greatly reduced DEA access to these countries for war profiteering and spying and protecting the CIA's preferred drug lords. It has been a totally counter-productive policy, as to a normal marketplace, in which products--oil, food, cell phones, et al--are exchanged for money. The main beneficiary has been private corporate LOOTERS of the U.S. federal budget, such as Dyncorp (thrown out of Ecuador, had to relocate in Colombia), Blackwater (active in Colombia, "training" "foreign persons" for "use in Iraq and Afghanistan"), and the entire 'war on drugs' private 'contractor' establishment, an inherently unproductive sector, with some revenue streams for monsters like Chiquita and Drummond Coal in U.S. client states, after the they killed hundreds of trade unionists.
If you understand the Bush Junta primarily as THIEVES, a lot of things fall into place. But it doesn't explain everything. How could any U.S. regime--even one that stole its elections--be so TRAITOROUS to the interests of U.S. business--manufacturing, infrastructure, stable financial system, preventing ruinous government debt, etc.--and to the people of the U.S.?
You have to expand the theory to include most U.S. businesses--especially U.S.-based transglobal corporations--ALSO as THIEVES. Their primary motive is NOT to create a healthy economy but to loot everything in sight--their workers, private and public pension systems, the health care system, banks, savings & loan institutions, their credit card customers, the tax base--both by privatizing everything (getting the revenue streams from public works and services) and being tax scofflaws--middle class/poor home ownership, etc., with the ultimate looting at the end of the Bush Junta in the trillion dollar taxpayer-funded bailouts, on top of the trillions of dollars that had already been looted by the war profiteers.
I just heard a lecture by journalist Reese Erlich (Alternative Radio) in which he explains how U.S. aid to Afghanistan works. Say, a private firm in Washington lobbies for and gets a million dollar contract to help an Afghan farming community. This private firm never leaves Washington DC. It knows nothing about farming. Its business entirely consists of GETTING such contracts. It takes $500,000 off the top to maintain its executives, lobbyists and offices in Washington. Then another $250,000 is raked off by a U.S. subcontractor in Afghanistan which is supposed to put together the aid package. They have to build an impenetrable compound for their doings in Kabul and provide hazard pay on top of already enormous salaries. All their needs are provided for--housing, food, transportation--so almost none of that money goes into the Afghan economy. It remains in U.S. banks. Then they start distributing sub-sub-contracts to Afghan firms connected to the extremely corrupt, drug trafficking, and U.S.-funded Karzai government. If the purpose of the money was crop conversion (replacing heroin poppies with food or other crops), we can be sure that that never happens. And the actual farmers receive so little of this money that they are likely driven TO heroin production because they're so poor.
75% of the money appropriated by Congress to help a farming community in Afghanistan is bled off the top to make these corporate leaches richer and the rest is dribbled away mostly to corrupt Afghan firms.
The originating lobbying firm in Washington is considered a legit "business" but they are THIEVES, stealing massive amounts of OUR money on the LYING premise of helping poor Afghan farmers. And, ultimately, we are talking about trillions of dollars--in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in numerous U.S. 'client states' around the world (such as Colombia, Haiti--where $9 billion in earthquake aid has failed to even begin reconstructing the country--and multiple other examples), and here at home--with lying, thieving bullshit going on with the Katrina disaster and the BP spill--all to the enrichment of private corporate thieves--and, indeed, throughout the federal and state governments, with EVEN THE COUNTING OF OUR VOTES now being a PRIVATE CORPORATE, PROFITABLE enterprise!
It isn't just the Nazi-minded Bush Junta being thieves, in contradiction of their goal of world domination (can't dominate the world with a broken country). It is the entire predatory capitalist enterprise, with numerous transglobal corporations launched from our shores, with loyalty to no country or people, looting everything and everybody. The Bush Junta was just the worst of it--or the most naked, ugly manifestation of it. And it isn't just Americans looting Americans. We might be able to get some control of that. It's Americans also letting others--the sheiks of Araby, the Chinese, European/UK banksters, --loot us, as well as looting and oppressing their own people. It is an "octopus." We don't know where to turn to find the mechanisms that we might bring back under democratic control.
I recommend the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, here, as the place to start. It's a doable citizen project--a vital one--and could "snowball" into general rejection of Corporate Rule, while giving us back the very important, strategic, practical power of electing people who will act in our interest.
To come back to Cuba, and WHY the U.S. has such an INSANE policy about Cuba, that actually harms U.S. business interests,--frankly I think it's the example of free, universal and very high quality medical care, as well as free education through graduate school, and other socialist ideas that fly in the face of looting everybody. The U.S. government stands firm against social responsibility in favor of massive corporate thievery. And our government and its transglobal corporate puppeteers fear us, they really do. Their 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines tell us that. They think we might take back our country, and rein in these predators. Also, if there is one thing that Cuba stands for--besides social justice-- it is sovereignty, the right of that tiny island country to go its own way. Our transglobal rulers have done everything they can to break our sovereignty as a people. They hate national boundaries and strong local/national governments that protect their peoples' interests. They subvert, bully, bribe and buy national governments to betray their peoples' interests. Cuba has resisted this, amazingly, all these years. It may not be as democratic as some of us would be comfortable with, but it IS democratic in many ways, and it has served the Cuban people well. Has our allegedly democratic government done so?
Ironic, isn't it?--that Cuba has arguably ended up MORE democratic than the USA--cuz, think about: If you are very sick and you have $100,000 in medical bills that you can't pay, are you really free? If a far rightwing connected private corporation (ES&S, which just bought out Diebold) owns your vote, with their 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, do you even have a right to vote? If five rightwing billionaire CEOs own and control all the 'news' media, and hammer rightwing, corpo-fascist propaganda into everybody's heads, 24/7, do you really have a right of free speech? If you join with others to protest some government/corporate outrage, and get "caged" on a side street, or beaten and arrested, do you have really have a right to assemble? If the government has gone absolutely stone deaf to the interests of most of its people, do you really have a right to petition your government? If an insurance company can deny you vital medical procedures because they are "too costly," do you even have a right to live?
Cubans have gained many rights, while we have lost them. And due to the INSANE U.S. embargo of Cuba, we--on the whole--are not able to compare and contrast. Why is that? It ain't because of Cuba.
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