From: Hank Roth <odin@halcyon.halcyon.com>
Subject: Coups, counter-coups & the CIA
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 06:36:43 GMT

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
COUPS, COUNTER-COUPS, AND THE CIA
       by Hank Roth
 
It seems too convenient that the system of USSR bureaucratic 
(Stalinist style) Communism (or was it state-capitalism?) joined 
the world market just at a time, when the U.S. was (is) in the 
throes of its own disasterous economic crisis, which as late 
as December 8th, President-elect Clinton questioned if we were 
really in a recovery. 
 
Our national debt tripled during the years under Reagan and 
Bush, from over 900 billion to more than 2 1/2 trillion. The 
prosperity of the 80s, that bred a generation of Yuppies, was 
based on borrowing from our future, which is now. How do we pay 
that debt? 
 
Our investment in the infrastructure of this country has fallen 
drastically. Drive through downtown of any large city today and 
see the deterioration. Social services have been practically 
eliminated. There is massive crime. Bankruptcies have hit an all 
time high; in the last year, almost a million personal and close 
to 80,000 businesses have filed and many just closed their doors 
and abandoned those businesses without filing so they are not 
apart of those statistics.  Unemployment benefits have run out 
and the chronic unemployed are still unemployed. Many others are 
working at temporary jobs and jobs without benefits. There is no 
security in the job market. Middle age workers have been released 
from jobs without pensions and few prospects for their future. 
Confidence is waning. In "Day of Reckoning," ("88") the author, 
Benjamin M. Friedman wrote, "We are living well by running up our 
debt and selling off our assets."  
 
We have essentually two out of control government debts, the 
money borrowed to pay or finance our budget deficit, and the debt 
for the money obtained abroad to finance our trade deficit. And 
we have personal debt, not least of which is credit card debt. 
Like the government, we have been borrowing against our future, 
which increasingly looks very bleak. 
 
Reagan claimed we would grow out of this abyss of high deficits. 
It hasn't happened. His program of cutting taxes to the rich 
(Kemp-Roth legislation) didn't stimulate more capital 
investments and it didn't "trickle down." The poor got poorer, 
the rich got richer and the middle class is disappearing.  Even 
his VP, Bush called it "voodoo economics." His own budget 
director, David Stockman, discredited "supply-side" economics in 
his book. 
 
The need to service our huge foreign debt caused by an 
accumulating trade deficit, means to us a reduction in our own 
rate of consumption, and consequently the lowering of our standard 
of living. Eventually we will run out of foreign lendors. We won't 
be able to sell off our assets, nor should we. The dollar will 
eventually fall and no amount of manipulation will stabilize it. 
 
Countries are out-competing us with their exploited cheap labor. 
Our multinationals are abandoning us for that cheaper labor.
Some still insist on blaming the unions for insisting that 
workers receive liveable wages and their fair share. Some 
contest that claim, alleging that workers demanded too much.
It doesn't mean diddly squat. The corporations could care less.
Labor made concessions and it didn't matter. Workers make more
in Japan and Germany and it doesn't matter. Amerikkka is just too
god-damn capitalist and too god-damn fascist. And workers will
never get his/her fair share here. Profits are all that matter and
in the system we have come to love and revere (just kidding), human
life means nothing but fodder to feed the machinery of capitalist 
toil for misery exploitation.
 
Products are cheaper when obtained from abroad because of cheaper
labor and cheaper resources. The labor and resources are there 
for the taking. If we can't do it by converting their privileged
classes to cooperate, we'll send in the Marines. So with this
socialism for the rich supplied by Uncle, our own companies pack
it up and move to Third World countries to take, forcing up 
unemployment here. We now obtain cameras, TVs, most of our computers, 
air conditioners, autos, all kinds of electronics, toys, cloths, etc. 
from abroad. Our manufacturing base, which made this country strong 
(some would say "great") is disappearing. 
 
We now have a policy of so-called "Free Trade" that encourages 
trade with countries where labor costs are way below ours, so 
our own products no longer can compete and our workers lose 
their jobs or are forced to work for less than liveable wages, 
if they want to work at all---and these less than liveable wages
aren't even enough for rent in some cases, so more people move 
to the street, not as President Reagan use to say because they 
want to, but because our capitalist system is systemically flawed
and even a job is no guarantee one can afford the basic necessities.
 
Businesses can't compete either and are forced out of business. 
Capitalism becomes manic-depressive. The mania of good years becomes 
the depression of bad years. In psychiatric terms, it is sick. 
 
A world wide contraction will also reduce our standard of living 
even more and if we continue to mortgage the future, a few bad 
calculations could conceivably turn into a pair of recessions, as 
we did in 80 and again in 81-82. A world-wide depression is a 
possibility. 
 
To save our standard of living requires foreign markets for 
American goods----such as the USSR and Eastern Europe. And  
we could have a respite from our crisis with these new Eastern 
European markets opening up pursuant to their shift to a market 
economy. That was afterall the plan, wasn't it, when the CIA and 
some say the Pope in collusion with U.S. Administrations engineered 
or at least helped along the Soviet Union's downfall? 
(In time, these East Europeans could become competitors--as did 
Japan and West Germany) 
 
Due to the absolute economic need for new markets for our products, 
we have had forces at work destabilizing countries that made the 
mistake of favoring human needs over capitalist development. 
 
There are a lot of dynamics at work here, not least of 
all our own clandestine influence in Soviet, East European and 
Third World political developments. The world is changing rapidly. 
There is a constant state of flux and these are extremely critical 
times.
 
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