Wednesday, 6 April, 2005

Lost @ histories end I was talking with someone last week-end, a young women who does child care at our church Sunday mornings. She had the Sunday Washington Post with her, and a reaction to the headlines I suppose many have had. "Three weeks of Teri Schiavo dying slowly amid nonstop media stories, now a week of the pope lying in state on every station and every page." I don't mind the coverage on Pope John Paul, I believe the coverage really is a celebration of his life - more than just a ritualistic exercise. The conversation led on in that direction - her asking why I thought Pope John Paul was a great man, his role in keeping the Polish Church together under the deep shadow of the Soviet regime, lending a portion of his authority to Lech Walensa's Solidarity movement. She surprised me here: "Surely", she said, "Russia and Eastern Europe were far better off under Soviet rule, safe from capitalism. If the pope had a hand taking that away from them; then he inflicted a great calamity on them. Crime, Russian mob millionares corrosivley running and robbing the society. Prostitution rings selling women into slavery [catalogued this week : Human Traffic and Transnational Crime: Eurasian and American Perspectives]. Eastern europe is a mess everyone knows it." She said she had visited Russia and this is what the people there had told her. They especially didn't like Mikhail Gorbechov. "Before him Russia had order, respect, things were all right." Nostalgia is a perverse fiction that can make people believe a great many sad and unhelpful things, such beliefs warm and cheer the hearts of authortarians and police states everywhere. "Didn't I think that communism was a just ethical system - the highest form of government ever developed", she asked. I mumbled something about the tendency of marxist governments to impoverish their people. A tendency to become - intolerent of internal dissent. "Cuba", She continued, "now there is a happy nation where everything is fine and they all love Fidel Castro." I'm sure some do, particularly the ones who can also remember Battista. Cuba is a poor nation I pointed out. "What of it", she said, "what can 'poor' mean if everyone is poor together and shares their lot equally." This is a fine and romatic notion, but Cuba is probably poorer than it ought to be; given its natural and human resources. Plus Cuba may not be all that egalitarian. Communist states arrange themselves into privileged elites, and unprivileged masses with an envied efficiency. Still even the World Bank's own statistics place Cuba's economy in the lower middle-income bracket, where one finds Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines, even the Russian Federation itself World Bank Group - Data and Statistics, and they've maintained that with very little recourse to globalization. I felt lost utterly lost. Lost like a driver on a cross Sahara dunebuggy race who's just noticed his GPS gadget doesn't work. I had been trying to think of things to say about Paul Wolfowitz taking over at the World Bank (better than his being at the Penatgon, or not significantly different). Thinking about the sincerity and direction of his committment to alleviating poverty. Speculating on the World Bank's endeavor to turn worlds wealth over to bankers and the financial service industry; whose primary product appears to be the creation of debt in countries and individuals. Contrasting this with the sincerity of his committment to U S control of the worlds remaining oil production. With Jafari and Talabani in as PM and President of Iraq  New Iraqi PM named - Guardian,  Zalmay Khalilzad named as ambassador,  it seems his work there is done. Ironic, needing to pause and beat the concept of old school command economies back into its box and mail it back to the 20th century, while the 'free' trade/'free' market privatized economy being constructed in Iraq will be the one of most commanded and least open to discussion economies, ever set forth in this world. 11:53:42 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2005 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 5/04/05; 03:30:45.