a thread from the
Alas Babylon Yahoo Group
Paul starts the thread: Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of Treasury under Franklin Roosevelt, was a modern prophet. He came out with an idea whose wisdom is sorely missed by today’s Politically Correct morons. Basically, Morgenthau proposed to de-industrialize Germany after WWII and reduce the people to a pastoral existence.
That would have prevented adding 50 million plus German consumers and 150 million plus Eastern European consumers from depleting the world’s oil, but this plan of great foresight was abandoned when FDR died on April 1945.
I also think Marshall Plan was a huge mistake, in retrospect. A fatal mistake for the part of Western Civilization. While adding relatively little to the advancement of Western Civilization, Europe did consume a lot and imported legions of bipeds.
And Europe also gave a lot of money to ‘humanitarian’ (Read: “biped-feeding”) aid, significantly increasing the number of bipeds. United States had a chokehold on the world economy from 1945 to about 1955, which it foolishly gave away. In retrospect, Europe and Japan should not have been rebuilt by the US. It would have been much better for these nations to remain in third-world living conditions, consuming much less.
Morgenthau was up to something, I must say.If he had his way, the world wouldn’t be facing a dieoff now. Maybe in 200 years, but not now. Citizens of France and Germany would have roughly the same standard of living as citizens of Russia now. A Soviet domination of the world might not have been a bad idea, in retrospect. After all USSR did kill off millions of bipeds.
Paul
But Paul……..
Your ‘elite’ was only thinking of themselves…as they usually do. According to Noam Chomsky in his book “What Uncle Sam Really Wants”:
“Postwar planners like George Kennan realized right off that it was going to be vital for the health of the US corporations that the other Western industrial societies reconstruct from wartime damage so they could import US manufactured goods and provide investment opportunities. (I’m counting Japan as part of the West, following the South African convention of treating Japanese as “honorary whites.”) But it was crucial that these societies reconstruct in a very specific way. The traditional right-wing order had to be restored, with business dominant, labor split and weakened, and the burden of reconstruction placed squarely on the shoulders of the working classes and the poor.
The major thing that stood in the way of this was the antifascist resistance, so we suppressed it all over the world, often installing fascists and Nazi collaborators in its place. Sometimes that required extreme violence, but other times it was done by softer measures, like subverting elections and withholding desperately needed food…..”
So, as you can see, all those bipeds were actually needed. You wouldn’t expect your elite to get in there and actually clear up the rubble, now would you? They might get dirty!
Lise
John jumps in: … and not to be missed is the fact that under Marshall Plan post war reconstruction, the energy base changed in Europe from coal to oil (by then coming on stream with an extraordinary margin) from the Middle East.
The major beneficiaries of this change in the energy base were the Seven Sisters (the Majors) who between them had monopoly control over ME oil production.
Big Oil with its monopoly power was the major player (as it is now) standing to benefit from the course of world events – which it has in large measure, shaped.
Now that we are headed from oil being an abundant resource (the production of which needed to be controlled to maintain price) to a scarce resource, profits for those Big Oil companies and other entities that can appropriate reserves and distribution systems (eg pipelines from the Caspian that might just happen to pass through Afghanistan) seem to be assured. How high will oil prices go– and profits with them?
The unappreciated problem: Oil Price spikes since the 1940’s have always been followed by recession.
The only way out of our current horrendous predicament is:abject and total humiliation of the Big Oil cabal that has taken control of the US government. And that is under way through actions that are of its own making.
Peace