Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Hot-Money Cowboys of Baghdad

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Hot-Money Cowboys of Baghdad

Click here to access article by Steven Lee Myers from The NY Times.

This Iraqi capitalist vulture sees a great profit opportunity in the devastation of his country resulting from US war crimes:

What makes Iraq’s economic potential so great, he explained, despite everything, is not just its abundant natural resources — it is the shattered state of Iraq itself: the damage done by the American war, but also the long, steady decay under Saddam Hussein, from the war with Iran that began in 1980 through the invasion of Kuwait a decade later and the crushing international sanctions that followed the first gulf war. The country has been decimated, and therein lies its potential.

Capitalists not only get rich waging wars, but they get rich re-building countries after their wars. As Deng Xiaoping of China said, "to get rich is glorious".