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CounterPunch
March 8,
2003
The Dollar Has Had Its Day
Is There a Eurologist
in the House?
By BEN TRIPP
If a guy in the iceberg business with
a dad in the walrus meat business were to attack the Eskimos
in the name of freedom, people would wonder if maybe he had
a hidden agenda. Now look at George W, who's waging war (his
old man is in the war business) upon the nation with the most
untapped oil (George is in the oil business). You don't have
to be a walrus to know something's up. Yet somehow, the blood-for-oil
mantra doesn't satisfy. I should note that the Arctic analogy
will be dropped henceforward and the walruses are on their own.
We're talking about petroleum. Or are we?
There are many untapped mysteries surrounding
the motives of the Bush administration, and when I say 'untapped',
what I really mean is 'these guys are whackjobs', but this way
of putting things lacks gravitas and I'm after the Pulitzer.
Most commentators, except the incredibly acute ones such as
myself, are content to scratch their wooly polls and wonder why
we must have this war. Is it, as many experts have stated, a
plunder-mad lunge at the world's most promising oil fields, or
is it, as many other different many experts have opined, an
effort to redraw the Near Eastern map along lines which guarantee
Israeli/American sovereignty--thus wresting control of the world's
petroleum from Russo-European interests? Maybe those Eskimos
are up to something and Bush hasn't seen fit to mention it, as
one expert surmised before he fell off his bar stool and landed
heavily on Christopher Hitchens. Still yet more other other
different experts--although they often go to the same parties
as the experts I previously mentioned--say the whole thing is
a cynical ploy to divert domestic attention from a set of disastrous
economic and social policies at home.
These are all plausible enough explanations
for what appears at first glance to be an insane crusade to precipitate
World War Three, crush all resistance to American global hegemony,
and found a Christian empire that feeds on the desperation and
poverty of resource-rich wog subject states. Say it isn't so,
Joe. Not to worry. Us experts are all sure this benighted administration
must have some far less dramatic, policy-based objectives. Yet
we are left feeling vaguely unsatisfied, in much the same way
a large Chinese meal leaves us. Despite all the chewing and
the wide variety of MSG-laden flavors that make the gums tingle
delightfully, in the end we feel gassy, hollow, unfulfilled.
Our fortune cookie contains a blank slip of paper. What betokeneth
this? Experts don't know, bub. But there's an interesting new
theory out there which ought to be examined, like a piece of
mystery meat that shows up in the moo goo gai pan which could
be pork, or walrus, or it could be the very nub of the essence
of the crux of this mystery. It's the Euro, and we all know
who throws that particular currency around.
First, a little background on the Euro.
It's a new currency, as these things are measured. A mayfly
would think it was an old currency, because a mayfly only lives
for one day, but a glacier or even a relatively recent range
of mountains would be surprised to hear the Euro was even in
circulation, which in fact it has been for several years (the
coins and notes since 2002, the unit of exchange since January
of 1999-although the idea of the Euro was spawned by the Treaty
of Rome in 1957 and took form after the Single European Act of
1986. There will be a test, so take notes. We will also be
dissecting frogs.) The Euro has since proved to be a formidable
currency, indexed more or less to the dollar--and during this
administration, at least a dime more. With the American economy
in ruins and the dollar flaccid, the virile Euro stands firm
and proud, reaching nearly to the navel. It is buoyed up by
a variety of nations with differing economic conditions, while
the dollar relies mostly on the spending of the American consumer
-who ain't feeling too flush these days (although 'flush' is
an appropriate term)--and international investment, which is
what the Euro is all about in the first place.
Here's the Euro-based 'why we are going
merde du singe on Iraq' theory: the Euro is the currency
of the future. The dollar has had it's day (which might explain
why the Treasury Secretary John Snow said he "was not particularly
concerned" about the catastrophic plummet in the value of
the dollar--maybe he's already switched to Euros) and the world
is itchin' to move on, especially as the Euro comes in more colors.
The $20 bill will soon have extra colors, but it's too late.
So what's an administration to do? Threaten everybody who's
thinking about using the Euro, that's what. After all, the Bush
cabal don't know Dick Cheney about economics, but they know plenty
about the use of force. And who's most likely to adopt the Euro
and hit Bush and his pals right where they live?
OPEC, that's who. OPEC is an acronym
for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (or Ootie
Pootie Eeka Cootie, I've never been clear on which one). OPEC
has started making serious noises about a switch from its current
dollar-based system to a Euro-based system. They've been considering
such a move since the Carter administration, when they were just
going to take an average of popular currencies (a proto-Euro)
and index oil prices to that, because the dollar was so cheap
at the time it was only worth 75¢. OPEC nations include
not only all those camel-ridden states (including Iraq) which
have lately been in the news, but also--wait for it--Nigeria,
Indonesia, and Venezuela. The Philippines also produces oil,
but is not an OPEC member--it just gets a lot of money from OPEC.
Hey, didn't we just start sending troops into all of those regions?
Not Nigeria, but the Philippines (which is right next to Indonesia),
and Colombia, which is right next to Venezuela, and obviously
we've got a couple of guys in the general area of the United
Arab Emirates. Not Nigeria, though? Actually, don't count them
out, because we've just evinced concern about some missing radioactive
material over there, and we may have to send some folks along
to help look for it.
So there's a considerable body of evidence
to suggest America is making play to keep OPEC from doing anything
hasty, like adopting the Euro--which would throw them in league
with America's real enemies: France, Germany, Russia,
and those ever-looming threats Belgium and Finland. Because
the Bush administration is fueled by oil dollars, and if the
oil-producing nations switch from dollars to Euros, it's going
to be left high and dry. Which all makes a crazy kind of sense,
as these theories go. After all, as I said earlier--at least
I hope I did, or my punch line falls flat--the Bush family is
in the oil business, but it's also in the war business. So a
war on Iraq is a win-win proposition. It intimidates all those
oil producing dumps so they know better than to fool around with
the Euro--any one of them could be next--and at the same time,
it fills the war coffers of the people who really matter-and
we're not talking about the Eskimos.
Yesterday's
Features
The Black Commentator
All
About Clarence
Ben Granby
Nightmare
in Rafah
Fidel Castro
Bush's
War on the Dark Corners of the World
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Riding
the Tiger in India: Will the World's Largest Democracy Become
a Religio-Fascist Purgatory?
Linda Heard
Make Way for Reality Politics
Alex Lynch
Tragedy of the Ridiculous War
Paul D'Amato
Obey
the US or Pay the Price
Ron Jacobs
Peace Treaties, Nukes and North Korea
Shulamit Aloni
Murder
Under the Cover of Rigtheousness
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February 28,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet
the New Yorker's Chief Hack: Jeffrey Goldberg
Saul Landau
Now
It's Personal
Michael Neumann
A Plea for Hysteria
Karima Bennoume
The UN: Tool for Peace or War?
The Black
Commentator
The Rev. Sharpton and the Soul of the Democrats
Jennifer Loewenstein
Don't Turn Off the War
Richard Levins
Cuba's Biological Weapons: Why the World Needs More of Them
M. Shahid Alam
Is This a Clash of Civilizations?
Clay Conrad
Juries
and Judges: What's Relevant?
Ben Tripp
Speaking in Tongues: a Guide to Gibberish in the Age of Bush
Eliot Katz
To Declare Preemptive War is to Declare a Bankrupt Imagination
Kurt Nimmo
Paying Through the Nose to Kill Iraqi Kids
Matt Vidal
George W. Bonaparte
Mark Zepezauer
Why the Right Hates America
Mickey Z.
The Anti----War Talk I Never Gave
Jerry Kroth
Jung and the Space Shuttle Revisited
Shyam Oberoi
Chronicle of a War Foretold
Ron Jacobs
What If the Firebombing of Baghdad Were a Nightclub Fire?
Poets' Basement
Eliot Katz and Jim Cohn
Website of
the Weekend
Defense
Tech
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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