[R-G] Escobar: A bailout and a new world

[Anthony Fenton]

   Sep 26, 2008
	
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI26Ak02.html

THE ROVING EYE
A bailout and a new world
By Pepe Escobar

WASHINGTON and SAO PAULO - The George W Bush administration's US$700  
billion no-accountability scheme, globally, informally dubbed "cash  
for trash", is making all the headlines. Simultaneously, there's the  
small matter of the United Nations General Assembly sanctioning the  
troubled birth of a new, multipolar world. As a 21st-century  
counterpart to the Dadaist Manifesto, this chain of events is priceless.

One just had to listen to the speeches. Brazilian President Lula da  
Silva passionately expounded the new political, economic and  
commercial geography of the multipolar world. He praised the Union of  
Latin American Nations (UNASUR) - the first treaty uniting all South  
American nations in 200 years. He blasted



supranational economic institutions that now have no authority - and  
no policies - to prevent "speculative anarchy".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy correctly described the Wall Street  
meltdown as the biggest crisis since the 1930s. He is proposing to  
"rebuild" capitalism - in fact, in his original French, to "moralize"  
capitalism, not subjected to wily market operators, with banks  
financing development and not engaging in speculation, and with firm  
control of credit agencies. Sarkozy described speculators as "the new  
terrorists". US Republicans of course call Sarkozy's plan socialism -  
as if the Ben Bernanke-Hank Paulson bailout scheme was not no-holds- 
barred socialism for the wealthy.
UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon urged the democratization of the UN.  
This would mean in practice a new International Monetary Fund and a  
new World Bank - both still controlled by the US and Western Europe.

And then Bolivian President Evo Morales nailed it. The new multipolar  
world should get rid of imperialism and colonialism. Evo stressed  
there's no possible social peace under hardcore capitalism - the  
global masses would heartily agree. Of course Evo didn't fail to  
recall the longtime, concerted Bush administration campaign against  
him - once dubbed "the bin Laden from the Andes" by a former US  
ambassador. He stressed there was not a single word of condemnation by  
the US of relentless right-wing terrorism in Bolivia, unlike all the  
nations of South America talking with one voice via UNASUR.

Evo also revealed that Bush sent him a message - "If I'm not your  
friend, I'm your enemy". Evo's response: "I'm a friend of the American  
people, I'm anti-imperialist. If they like me, OK; if not, it's also  
OK."

What the UN is NOT talking about is how the US will be able to sustain  
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and go against Iran, the Pashtuns in  
Pakistan or Russia if the Chinese, the Japanese and sovereign wealth  
funds of the Gulf petromonarchies decide to stop financing these  
demented adventures. That's the larger-than-life elephant in the UN  
house: everybody knows that the end of the unipolar world is tied to  
the fact that Washington simply cannot continue to be a superpower  
financed by foreigners.

The Bush administration would do anything to push Georgia into the  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and totally choke off Russia. Bush  
himself still referred to Iran at the UN as "terrorists". But Iranian  
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, after proclaiming that the American  
empire is waning, preferred to stress conciliation - he would rather  
have a "friendly" relation with Washington. He would meet Barack Obama  
or John McCain - whoever is elected to the White House. His beef is  
with Zionists - not the Jewish people. He said the Israeli regime  
would disappear in the same way as apartheid South Africa and the  
Soviet Union - maybe after what he called a "humanitarian" solution, a  
referendum in Palestine where Palestinians would decide their own  
future.

Burn, baby, burn
And while Rome - that is, Wall Street plus Washington - burns, Russia  
sends the mighty Peter the Great - with 20 nuclear missiles - plus an  
anti-sub destroyer for military exercises with Venezuela in the  
Caribbean. The flamboyant Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez didn't even  
show up at the UN - he's busy doing mega-deals with another emerging  
superpower, China. The US Navy's 4th fleet - disbanded in the 1950 -  
is back to police South America; the Brazilian military wasted no time  
launching their own military exercises to protect what they call the  
Blue Amazon, their new, huge offshore oil fields.

And then, live from New York, there was Republican vice presidential  
nominee Sarah Palin's speed-dial diplomacy - from Henry the K  
Kissinger - did they talk about Metternich and Clausewitz? - to Hamid  
"mayor of Kabul" Karzai and Colombian friend of Bush Alvaro Uribe. The  
media had literally a few seconds (29 with Karzai, 20 with Uribe) for  
a photo op, and that was it.

Did the beehived, bespectacled creationist hockey mom learn anything  
about foreign policy? The mystery remains. She may be cursing the  
cancellation of her meeting with Irish pop icon/world leader Bono.  
They won't be singing One together. Blogger Andrew Sullivan nailed it:  
"Since Sarah Palin was selected for the vice presidential nomination,  
Mahmud Ahmadinejad has given more press conferences than she has."

With the meltdown on Wall Street, it will be very hard for Republican  
candidate McCain to pay for his "vision" of America as world's top dog/ 
policeman. In a dramatic gesture, he has "suspended" his campaign and  
bailed out of Friday's presidential debate as well (late night talk  
show icon David Letterman nailed this one: "What are you going to do  
if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've  
got a guy like that now!"

It took "maverick" McCain roughly over a week to go from a "the  
fundamentals of the economy are strong" deregulation mantra to Great  
Depression gloom and finally to bail himself out from his own campaign  
and a debate to boot. Not bad for a self-confessed ignoramus in  
economic matters. McCain anyway still counts on the Bernanke-Paulson  
$700 billion scheme - and he'll still be pushing for even lower taxes  
for the US ultra-wealthy.

And while the new multipolar world was being sketched out in midtown  
Manhattan, and McCain was busy trying to run away from his own  
presidential campaign, the US took a few more steps to quickly become  
the new Brazil - appalling social inequality, tremendous concentration  
of wealth, in sum, the law of the jungle. Call it the revenge of the  
developing world.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is  
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a  
snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com 
.