<nettime> The best defence is to give no offense

[Brian Holmes <106271.223@compuserve.com>]

Felipe Rodriguez wrote:

"The Cato Institute published a report in 1998 under the name 'protecting
the homeland, the best defense is to give no offense.' The Cato Institute
is a nonpartisan public policy research foundation headquartered in
Washington, D.C."

Hmmm.

Interesting to note that the Cato Institute, "non-partisan" as it may be,
is one of the major neoliberal think tanks, and as such, one of the
artisans of the present world order.

This doesn't invalidate the argument Felipe presents ("historical data
show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international
situations and terrorist attacks against the United States, etc."). The
Cato analysts are in favor a sharply targeted response, respectful of
Realpolitik, cognizant of the huge dangers run by the US with its current
overblown rhetoric, and concerned about what could be lost under Bush's
approximate and all-too-fundamentalist leadership.

So far so good. But what do the people at Cato have to lose? What's the
invisible agenda of neoliberal "disengagement" from international politics
and "concern for the homeland"?

Currently second on their website, after the boxed set of articles on
terrorism, is this little tidbit:

"How Much Could You Earn With a Private Social Security Account? Find out
with Cato's new Social Security calculator... see how much you would
benefit under the various plans currently being considered by President
Bush's Social Security Commission."

The Cato is neoliberal. And if being a "Christian" today seems to mean
wanting to go on a "crusade" against the Taliban, being a neoliberal means
wanting to privatize pension plans. To each his religion. For one it's a
way to dream of getting reelected where daddy didn't, for the others it's
a more tangible place in the sun, i.e. the juicy retirement you're
supposed to get out of the stock market.

Does it matter that a working person who would have put his or her
retirement movey in the stock market five years ago would today have lost
any chance to live decently on a regular income? Apparently not. And
unfortunately there is no place in the Cato's self-protective reasoning to
consider what adding the monetary mass of the US pension funds to the
global stock exchange would actually do to the world. In brief: It would
add another huge lump to the finance capital that demands, no matter what,
a 15% return annually on investment. And it would give the whole
population of retired, voting Americans an interest in a geopolitical
"balance" where their privatized pension funds can "extract" that 15%, by
whatever means. Part of that balance being, of course, strategic control
over the primary "extractive" industry, the petroleum industry.

The irony is that September 11 is the day that Salvador Allende's
government was deposed by a US-backed coup. Where did the first neoliberal
economic policy, crafted by Milton Friedman and the "Chicago boys," go
into effect? Chile. And which was the first country to privatize its
pension funds? Chile.

No harm whatsoever meant to Felipe Rodriguez. But the Cato Institute does
give me offence. And I think we had better all work a little harder on
defending ourselves against the mostly invisible operations of what has
been called the "Wall Street-Treasury complex," i.e. the executors of the
neoliberal program thought up by people like those at the Cato. A
formation as dangerous to world peace as the military-industrial complex
was in Eisenhower's day.

Brian Holmes






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