Your argument is repetitive and it denies and/or ignores so much US/South American history that you raise the question of your intent.

Mr. Tremblay has made a cogent argument and he has interjected the role of Israel/zionism, but he does not deny US hegemony which Hugo Chavez sites as he lavishes praise on Chomsky’s book of that name.

Few on this blog have ever denied the zionist role in the Middle East, and particularly concerning the Palestinians, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. But you are not satisfied until all of the ME is wrapped under the heading of Zionist policy. I would not shy away from that if I thought that that was the case.

Venezuela’s reserves does not make your case. You ignore the coup attempt supported by the US a few years back and the continued propaganda machine that demonizes Chavez (as it does in kind to Iran’s president). US hegemony is not monolithic. It does not “demand” one action for all. It does follow a pattern but only the mentally “blind” would not acknowledge that Iraq is a fiasco not intended by this administration to keep the US military bogged down and broken as it has. It is not even “practical” for the war machine to march into South America. In fact, most of what the US has done in S. America has been through proxies, CIA, and deep rooted oligarchical polity.

So, please back off this comparison between South American / Venezuela and the Middle East. You seem to want to blame some American “left” and zionist for US hegemony in the ME. Zionism plays its role, but if it didn’t exist the odds are the US would still be in Iraq under this president today. Check US/Britain long history in the region.

Hegemony is about domination, primarily of resources in a region. To think that US oil interests both for our own needs and the power it provides to control the sources is irrelevant - is, well, missing the point.

I would disagree- for very practical reasons. One- between Iraq/Saudi/Kuawait - you have essentially captured 60 percent of the worlds’ oil. Therefore - it is NOT necessary to expend more resources with questionable return on sources such as Venezuela (tops 10 percent of the worlds oil supply).

So it make “practical” sense for the U.S. to “control” oil in the Middle East while the Latin American countries reject the Washington concensus and sell oil to China and the rest of the world at inflated prices while they shift from the dollar to the euros. Your analysis is totally impractical. As the U.S. flood the world markets with dollars that only encourages nations to shift their reserves from dollars to euros because their dollar reserves are losing value.

Also as I stated Venezuela has more in reserves that Saudi Arabia and Latin America is in the “U.S. backyard”. U.S. hegemony and imperialism would demand that the U.S “invade and control” Latin America rather than the Middle East.

Mr. Rowsey, you and others make the same incorrect conclusion to the points I raise about Zionism. Zionism is NOT about “laying and [enormous] amount at the door of Israel”. It about placing the focus on Zionism here in the UNITED STATES. Take a listen to Democracy Now today and listen to the Israeli guest journalist on the show. He lays an “enormous” amount on U.S. supporters of Israel. The point is these zealots have through their lobbies, wealth and influence have disproportionate amount of influence on U.S. policy. The big problem is that the left has ignore or squash any such analysis. To the left the driving force is oil or any other reason that seem to shift any focus from Zionism influence on U.S. policy. I also stated that Zionism is NOT only an issue driven by Jews but also has supporters among evangelicals and has been “normalized” with regard to discourse in the United States.

Hilary Clinton openly supports Zionism and Joe Biden recently proclaim himself a Zionist and they are leading candidates for the Presidency of the United States.

However, I don’t see that my error much affects the main points I was trying to make. And your kindly post referring to me as your friend, I regret to say, is as murky to me as your original one.

http://www.iranpressnews.com/english/source/030750.html

BTW - sorry for the double post - it was a accident. I feel sometimes that the obvious is too often overlooked because it IS obvious.

I would disagree- for very practical reasons. One- between Iraq/Saudi/Kuawait - you have essentially captured 60 percent of the worlds’ oil. Therefore - it is NOT necessary to expend more resourcesw with questionable return on sources such as Venezuela (tops 10 percent of the worlds oil supply).

In addition - the INCREASING of the price of oil from 30 dollars to 80 dollars - is a tremendous multiplier (in terms of how much reserve currency an econmoy needs to hold). For example - 1 million barrels of oil a day which would require a country to keep $30M/day in Forex has now gone up to $80M. This is a difference of 1.8 trillion dollars needed in terms of dollar hegemony- therefore - the mass amount of dollars printed up for the war would be absorbed -when you view it over 192 nations and calculate that 60 percent of the worlds oil MUST be denominated in US dollars and the higher prices insures for the moment -the need to keep even MORE US dollar reserves.

When you look at the major European powers - they are ALL in massive debt- France I thik is close to 70 percent GDP/ Debt. Italy 100 percent!! Also - more significantly they are DEEPLY embedded in the dollar hegemony system - as you could see by the fact that BEFORE the US Fed Reserve - the EU Central Bank fell over themselves in releasing 300 billion dollars of US dollars into the ’system’ for liquidity. The massive shocks to BNP Paribas, NorthRock, and a few German buanks (I thiknk one or tw actually closed) points out this rather incestuous relationship.

Lastly - those with enormous US dollar IOUs (Japan/China) are paralyzed with fear since having close to 2 trillion dollars of US debt (and growing) - by dumping dollars or whatever - they are essentially put in the terrible position of having to take enormous losses on these IOUs if the dollar DOES actually go into freefall-.

Therefore - every one actually loses - and we DO have a system that is actually based on nothing more than belief- the debt ratios have reached so high globally (particularly) for the western nations - that they MUST all pretend nothings wrong or suffer the fate of RUSSIA - which basically means suffering thru 5-10 years of chaos and crime -till the situation gets so bad that an autocratic go0vernment IS te only way out.

In Russia- the primary beneficiaries of ths chaos - the oligarchs of Jewish origins - have had their fortunes diminshed or confiscated recently as Russia re-nationalized their most important assets. The oligarchs quickly converted their assets into pounds and moved to England essentially with billions of pounds that should have re-circulated back into the russian economy to help bolster the social and economic recovery. In other words - flight of capital internationally before the capital was seized and no doubt the Europeans/US will not aid in the repatriation of russian assets since it was due to ‘capitalim’ no matter how corrupt the methodology, actors, mechanisms or motives.

The point is - the dollar hegemony is real but its default would be worldwide (instead of say Ukraine and Eastern Europe as with Russia). Therefore - suddenly diverse sources and countries find themselves with a concensus - until they can themselves move away fro dollar assets to the point that their economies would be less effected - since all economies WILL be effected (perhaps Asia being the least effected).

Despite it being obvious that iyamwutiam is laying an emormous amount at the door of Israel, aren’t the two previous comments taken together saying, essentially, that the Bushies are brilliant? In the fall of 2003, at a college reunion, I went around screaming how stooopid Bush was, so I guess I have a bulit-in predisposition to defend the hypthesis that the man’s at best a lunatic. Which by the bye, I’ve found of great value in trying to read Naomi Klein’s recent book with a grain of skepticism.

I would be grateful to read comments on just one phrase in Tremblay’s article — “But the truth is that Bush II does not give a hoot about American democratic opinion…” I think clarity on that point would help us all get straighter on Iran, Iraq, third party candidates, protest versus dissent, etc, etc. And hey, folks, I’m not a bit confused about what I think about that phrase. I think truer words have never been written.

The dollar hegemony explanation is an interesting angle that essentially supports the “WAR FOR OIL” mantra that is intended to shift any focus away from Zionism as an essential if not the essential reason for these incursions.

Essentially what this line of thinking implies is that nations like Iraq and Iran are challenging dollar hegemony as they move to price oil into euros thus the U.S. has chosen to invade these nation and prop up puppets that will support the hegemony of the dollar by continuing to price oil in dollars.

The logic behind this idea is very weak on its face. The reason being is that if the U.S wants the dollar to remain strong they would not continue to pump dollars in the world markets through wars and continued debt accumulation. It would make much more sense to encourage these nations to remain on the dollar through diplomacy or through internal political coups — similar to the ones in 1953 that brought the Shah of Iran and in the 70’s brought Saddam Huessian to power.

By contrast, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, and perhaps now Ecuador all oil states are converting to the Euro. Yet there are no signs of a any massive military operation by the U.S against any of these oil producing nations. In fact Chavez stated that he has more oil in reserves than Saudi Arabia so the fact that much of Latin America is taking an independent stance especially against the “Washington Consensus” is actually more of an “economic” threat to the U.S. ruling leadership than Iraq and Iran.

Because of the Iraqi resistance, oil production is down and the U.S. invaders has not been able to reap the benefits of any oil revenues. Clearly people don’t like their nations to be invaded and their infrastructure destroyed. However liberals and leftist has deemed the invasion of Iraq a “mistake”. Really?

In fact the invasion of Iraq has been a tremendous success. Like Israel incursion into Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the invasion of Iraq has devastated the Iraqi infrastructure. Iraq has been “bomb back into the stone age” and will take years to be restored and now there is a plan to “partition” Iraq — exactly fitting the Zionist agenda of advancing Israeli hegemony.

Iraq, Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now the plans to bomb Iran’s infrastructure are all design not to advance U.S. hegemony. U.S. hegemony can easily be advanced via diplomacy or coups. Clearly what going on in the Middle East is not about U.S hegemony. It is about Zionism and the fact that Zionism is prevalent and dominant in the U.S. politics today. It was the failure of the Civil Rights movement not to address and challenge ALL FORMS of racism. That failure has allowed Zionism to flourish in the United States as candidly admitted to by Sy Hersh last week on Democracy Now.

To demonstrate how “normal” Zionism is on the United States, Joe Biden openly admits the he too is a Zionist and he’s running for President.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook10052007.html

In addition: it seems to me VERY interesting that this quoted deficit is only federal and does not take into account state deficits and more importantly corporate deficits (which seem to find themselves in the federal deficit (example Long Term Capital Alliance, Enron, Worldcom, the recent mortgage backed CDOs which will be absorbed by the Fed in the guise of Fannie Mae).

There seems to be a LOT of confusion in terms of the federal deficit (which I am sure is not accidental). It would be nice for someone of Mr. Tremblay’s background to perhaps educate and further enlighten the readers. Although a complex topic - I find it astounding that the US can fund military activites, subversive activities (velvet revolutions, recent election in PAkistan, Mexico etc etc), as well their own earmarks/porkbarrels) at the rate they do.

Obviously being a reserve currecy affords certain leeway - but rationally speaking the US especially in recent times (in my view) must have gone beyond the borders of repayment of debt - and default seems to be at our doorstep.

So I am not sure - how China/Japan etc continue to take IOUs, why this level of debt is tolerated and how a country with almost a 300 percent Debt to GDP ratio can continue on -as if it IS the richest country in the world - when an objective analysis has proven time and time again - that it is the MOST INDEBTED COUNTRY in the world.

Anyway - would love to gain clarity on this and hope Mr. Tremblay and others may help us understand this more in depth. Otherwise in my view - the constant drumbeats of war -which seem magically to find more and more allies (First Germany, France, etc) , our own democrats and even the implicit cooperation of China(as tey do not call in their debts) - seem to be to say - that the WHOLE world is giving consent to these wars for he SOLE purpose of propping up a capitalist system that by all objective measures in a complete failure and is completely illusory.