Lords of Capital Versus The Planet
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"The Lords of Capital and their accomplices have drowned
the world in non-productive, ‘fictional' money that is constantly bet on one
non-productive proposition or another."
The corporate mega-criminals are all pleading not guilty to
speculating the price of oil into the stratosphere, while their servants in the
Bush administration rush to appear as character witnesses for the perpetrators.
Oil prices have multiplied
seven-fold in the last seven years of Bush-Cheney rule - a time of
unceasing American wars and threats of war in oil producing regions. That alone
should have pushed oil prices far beyond peacetime levels - and it has. The
U.S. Congress pretends it's trying to find out what's behind the
ever-escalating price of crude oil and gasoline at the pump, even mustering up
the courage to make threatening noises at Wall Street's Lords of Capital. But
it's all a front to appease desperate and angry consumers, who are urged by the
U.S. Secretary of Energy to put the blame on the uppity and unworthy Chinese
and Indians, who insist on trying to catch up economically with the
Americans and Europeans after suffering so many centuries of white Western
colonial and imperial rule.
Unfortunately, lots of Americans will buy Bush's racist
argument. That's the way they have been raised. Looking at the world through
white supremacist glasses is - like cheap oil - a fundamental aspect of the
"American way of life."
George Bush's aggressions, actual and verbal, in the Middle
East and everywhere oil can be found, make future global energy-delivery
prospects extremely uncertain. Any fool can figure out that American and
Israeli threats to set the Persian Gulf aflame in a war against Iran make
future supplies of oil iffy propositions - enough to tempt even honest citizens
to place bets on global catastrophe. But despite the Bush regime's eagerness to
keep tensions at excruciatingly high pitch for years on end, oil supplies have
not been interrupted even for a moment. The threat of war against Iran does
provide a powerful upward pressure on oil prices, and the U.S. Congress is
making things much worse by pressing for a naval
blockade of Iran - an act of war. But even such political insanities cannot
begin to account for the price madness of recent years. Only concentrated,
organized capital, relentlessly distorting economic realities as it moves
through international markets - much as gravity bends space and time - can wreak
the havoc we have witnessed in oil trading. The tracks of the criminals are
clearly seen, leading straight back to Wall Street.
"The threat of war against Iran provides a powerful upward
pressure on oil prices."
However, the current oil price crisis should be viewed as an
episode in a much larger saga. Over a generation ago, finance capital, which
produces nothing, won its long struggle against productive, industrial capital.
The Lords of Finance rule. They make money through manipulation of markets, or
even by compelling the governments they control - like the U.S. government - to
print money for them. They scheme and conspire to create artificial
wealth - and in the process hem in and hold back the world's productive
capacity. A group of European luminaries including former German chancellor
Helmut Schmidt issued a warning against what they called "fictitious
capital... that does very little to improve the human condition...." Actually, it's worse than that. The Lords of
Capital and their accomplices have drowned the world in non-productive,
"fictitious" money that is constantly bet on one non-productive proposition or
another - including betting that something horrible will occur very soon to
halt the flow of oil.
Humanity can't afford to play in that kind of casino. The
Lords of Capital must be swept into the dustbin, or our collective history will
come to an end. You can bet on that.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive
editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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