I think it’s mostly that nobody knows what the fuck you are talking about.
Regards,
Shodan
So France would initiate a trade war with the US on behalf of Venezuela just because Venezuela is anti-US and France is anti-US? This is really all about sticking it to the US just for grins? In that case, why doesn’t France bypass your bizarre system and just embargo the US right now? Answer, French divestiture would hurt France much more than it would hurt the US as you seemed to grasp earlier.
In other words, France would never agree to such a thing just because Chavez wants it, they will only inititiate economic warfare against the US when the French feel it is in the interest of France to do so. Please, use your head for once. France doesn’t care one bit which dictator rules Venezuela, and they don’t care whether Venezuelan oil goes to the US or to France. There is a global market for oil, it is a commodity, it is sold by producers for the highest price they can get to consumers who buy for the lowest price they can get. So if France buys most oil from (say) Saudi Arabia, and the US buys most oil from (say) Venezuela, neither France nor the US cares which country the bulk of their oil comes from. If France managed to freeze the US out of the Venezuelan oil market so they could buy the Venezuelan oil themselves, all that would happen is that the US would buy fractionally higher-priced oil from other countries, while France paid fractionally higher prices for Venezuelan oil, and Venezula gets less profit on the oil they sell since the increase in price doesn’t go to Venezuela as a producer but rather to the oil transporters who now ship the oil over greater distances.
In other words, Venezuela why is Venezuela selling oil today to the the US, their supposed arch-enemy? Because the US pays the highest price because the cost of the oil plus the cost of transport from Venezuala is still lower than the cost of oil from Saudi Arabia plus the cost of transport from Saudi Arabia. Take a look at a map sometime.
thanks for the tip.
Al Pacino, Scarface…
i. Actually, in real life the only country buyng venezuelan oil that matters is China.
- What trade war? France is a bystander in the proceedings unless she chooses otherwise, and divestiture, as you seem to have difficulty grasping, is ot an act of war. If a court of oompetent jurisdiction, as defined by contracting parties, issues a ruling to one of them and that one complies, this is not a cassus belli.
I will address your other comments after work.
I had postponed a detailed response to your post, promised tho’ it was, because I was more than a little disheartened at our manifest inability to maintain a workable “universe of discourse” . I confess I would not have anticipated your conflation of divestiture with seizure, nor the decision to place purely national interests under the jurisdiction of any court whatsoever to be tantamount to the declaration of a “trade war” by that one of the two nations who, following a proceeding allowing for the TRANSPARANT marshalling and evaluation of evidence, found itself exercising it’s sovereign right to sell Treasuries in the marketplace.
But, and still, as the wise Sec. Defense, the beloved Dr. Demento said in another context, you debate the interlocutor you have, not the one you wished you had…
I resign myself to spelling out our positions in what will no doubt present itself as tedious detail to the nimbler witted of our colleagues, to whom I say, hard cheese…
Let us turn to your objections, which, in the interests of murdered clarity, I will attempt to restate as I understand.
1.So France would initiate a trade war with the US on behalf of Venezuela just because Venezuela is anti-US and France is anti-US?
I understand you to mean that you conceive of no intrinsic benefits to France (which I guess we re using here as shorthand for “French owed oil companies” that might be fashioned into the deal.
Further, I perceive an apprehension that you would have the French entertain vis-a-vis retaliation from the United States were they, in compliance with a divestiture order, sell US instruments of debt.
In this regard, I would direct your attention to the following indices of value which are available to the parties for purposes of reaching a “meeting of the minds” in which the French, (if we are to stay with them for a moment longer) are protected on the downside and “incentivized” (as some corporate mongrelspeak goes) on the upside,
viz: The selling price is to be 70% of the daily ny and london benchmarks. Plus, venezuela will buy a Lloyds policy to indemnify the french central bank for any actual fiancial losses incurred in complying with a devestiture order, if one were to issue.
I fear that you show a failure of imagination by focusing on the narrow question of “who would agree, etc.”
This is about OIL. Apparently, the secure predictable access to which, is worth blowing up whole countries. Surely the producing country(ies) can find some way to leverage their control so as to motivate buyers, if perhaps at a discount. I believe that I specified that El Caballito knows that he can do nothing for the campesinos if he permits the odious yaqui to ferment the sewer rats who would sell their patrimonia for a whore’s dollar, (and I apologize to all my friends who might otherwise be highly offended at the usage, I mean it metaphorically only, and not as a reflection on you or your work which you know I consider to be a spiritual calling…)
Likewise, if Venezuela’s 18 percent of the world’s reserves don’t float your boat, does that not militate towards the need to accrue other producers to this sanctions regime.
2.In that case, why doesn’t France bypass your bizarre system and just embargo the US right now?
I am trying to direct your attention to the PROCESS
Think of it like a game. To get players to play a game you need
-
stakes
-
rules
The first problem that confronts one who wishes to play games with the US, is that everyone knows that the US does not “work and play well together”
In fact, when it comes to the game called “international law” the US pretty much has picked up its marbles and gone home.
So we start from something of a disadvantage if we wish to drag the US into this game, which really will be to its own good, because it will prevent aggressive adventures by providing a neutral finder of fact for testing the truth of assertions which, in the absence of a forum in which to deconstruct and verify them, turn up in State of the Union Messages, and at UN security council speeches, and such.
Put succintly, we are trying to constrain a neighborhood bully.
That’s exactly why this BIZARRE
,
By adding in a lloyds policy, you create a circumstance in which respected professional actuaries will have to look at the world over the life of the contract, make a reasoned estimate of the conduct of “third parties who must not be named…” towards venezuela, decide by how much to discount the future value of the financial hit to be expected by France, and distill that into a hard dollar.
If, for example, the actuarial calculations projected sanctionable behavior, the premium would be greater. If, however, the value of US instruments were impaired by the folly of the very behavior giving rise to the sanctions, the premium might be less, as the financial impact of forced divestiture would be lesser.
Likewise, the establishment of a tribunal, be it the World Court, or just an arbitration panel. empowers a PROCESS by which the issues are subjected to adjudiction, and the adjudication itself is susceptible of rational analysis because it occurs in a transparent fashion.
(By the way, I think if the offender nation boycotts the tribunal, the appropriate measure would be for the courtto appoint counsel at the expense of the contracting parties. It would be important for the PROCESS to be fair, and to be seen as fair.)
Now, to expand upon the “game analogy”
What we are playing here, if we are venezuela, is the game of “prevent the United States from becoming a criminal agressor against us”
To that end, we need to trap the united states into confronting its psychotic exceptionalism. Hence the reliance on market forces for evaluating the competing claims of the parties as the situation develops over time.
I redirect your attention to my remarks anent Colin Powell v. the Neos, on the Iraq aggression.
Your silence on anything more substantive than the unlikelihood that some buyer (here, France) would purchase oil under the conditions stated, leaves me in the dark as to your understanding of the process, its goals, the field of play that is envisioned for the vindication of those goals, or the assumptions upon which the analysis underlying the process is based You did seem to imply that there were consequences in there someplace that the US might find objectionable (otherwise why anticipate a trade war?)
Could you give me more to work with before I pitch in on what I anticipate will be a lengthy project? This is already tedious, don’t you think?
Also, can we in good fellowship decide to continue our analysis going forward by changing the buyer from France back to China.
Just to make it more interesting…
I had postponed a detailed response to your post, promised tho’ it was, because I was more than a little disheartened at our manifest inability to maintain a workable “universe of discourse” . I confess I would not have anticipated your conflation of divestiture with seizure, nor the decision to place purely national interests under the jurisdiction of any court whatsoever to be tantamount to the declaration of a “trade war” by that one of the two nations who, following a proceeding allowing for the TRANSPARANT marshalling and evaluation of evidence, found itself exercising it’s sovereign right to sell Treasuries in the marketplace.
But, and still, as the wise Sec. Defense, the beloved Dr. Demento said in another context, you debate the interlocutor you have, not the one you wished you had…
I resign myself to spelling out our positions in what will no doubt present itself as tedious detail to the nimbler witted of our colleagues, to whom I say, hard cheese…
Let us turn to your objections, which, in the interests of murdered clarity, I will attempt to restate as I understand.
1.So France would initiate a trade war with the US on behalf of Venezuela just because Venezuela is anti-US and France is anti-US?
I understand you to mean that you conceive of no intrinsic benefits to France (which I guess we re using here as shorthand for “French owed oil companies” that might be fashioned into the deal.
Further, I perceive an apprehension that you would have the French entertain vis-a-vis retaliation from the United States were they, in compliance with a divestiture order, sell US instruments of debt.
In this regard, I would direct your attention to the following indices of value which are available to the parties for purposes of reaching a “meeting of the minds” in which the French, (if we are to stay with them for a moment longer) are protected on the downside and “incentivized” (as some corporate mongrelspeak goes) on the upside,
viz: The selling price is to be 70% of the daily ny and london benchmarks. Plus, venezuela will buy a Lloyds policy to indemnify the french central bank for any actual fiancial losses incurred in complying with a devestiture order, if one were to issue.
I fear that you show a failure of imagination by focusing on the narrow question of “who would agree, etc.”
This is about OIL. Apparently, the secure predictable access to which, is worth blowing up whole countries. Surely the producing country(ies) can find some way to leverage their control so as to motivate buyers, if perhaps at a discount. I believe that I specified that El Caballito knows that he can do nothing for the campesinos if he permits the odious yaqui to ferment the sewer rats who would sell their patrimonia for a whore’s dollar, (and I apologize to all my friends who might otherwise be highly offended at the usage, I mean it metaphorically only, and not as a reflection on you or your work which you know I consider to be a spiritual calling…)
Likewise, if Venezuela’s 18 percent of the world’s reserves don’t float your boat, does that not militate towards the need to accrue other producers to this sanctions regime.
2.In that case, why doesn’t France bypass your bizarre system and just embargo the US right now?
I am trying to direct your attention to the PROCESS
Think of it like a game. To get players to play a game you need
-
stakes
-
rules
The first problem that confronts one who wishes to play games with the US, is that everyone knows that the US does not “work and play well together”
In fact, when it comes to the game called “international law” the US pretty much has picked up its marbles and gone home.
So we start from something of a disadvantage if we wish to drag the US into this game, which really will be to its own good, because it will prevent aggressive adventures by providing a neutral finder of fact for testing the truth of assertions which, in the absence of a forum in which to deconstruct and verify them, turn up in State of the Union Messages, and at UN security council speeches, and such.
Put succintly, we are trying to constrain a neighborhood bully.
That’s exactly why this BIZARRE process recommends itself. Because it is designed to deal in the individual case with exactly the sort of asshole who refuses to come to court.
So we create a rule based process and we peg the process to market mechanisms for evaluating the probability of future events.
,
Thus, by adding in a lloyds policy, while insulating the buyer from a negative outcome that you feared would act as a complete bar to the transaction, you also create a circumstance in which respected professional actuaries will have to look at the world over the life of the contract, make a reasoned estimate of the conduct of “third parties who must not be named…” towards venezuela, decide by how much to discount the future value of the financial hit to be expected by France, and distill that into a hard dollar.
If, for example, the actuarial calculations projected sanctionable behavior, the premium would be greater. If, however, the value of US instruments were impaired by the folly of the very behavior giving rise to the sanctions, the premium might be less, as the financial impact of forced divestiture would be lesser.
Likewise, the establishment of a tribunal, be it the World Court, or just an arbitration panel. empowers a PROCESS by which the issues are subjected to adjudiction, and the adjudication itself is susceptible of rational analysis because it occurs in a transparent fashion.
(By the way, I think if the offender nation boycotts the tribunal, the appropriate measure would be for the court to appoint counsel at the expense of the contracting parties. It would be important for the PROCESS to be fair, and to be seen as fair.)
Now, to expand upon the “game analogy”
We want to create a game that can be played instead of (or at least, beofre) an invasion or other act of aggression.
To that end, we need to trap the united states into confronting its psychotic exceptionalism. Hence the reliance on market forces for evaluating the competing claims of the parties as the situation develops over time.
I redirect your attention to my remarks anent Colin Powell v. the Neos, on the Iraq aggression.
Your silence on anything more substantive than the unlikelihood that some buyer (here, France) would purchase oil under the conditions stated, leaves me in the dark as to your understanding of the process, its goals, the field of play that is envisioned for the vindication of those goals, or the assumptions upon which the analysis underlying the process is based You did seem to imply that there were consequences in there someplace that the US might find objectionable (otherwise why anticipate a trade war?)
Could you give me more to work with before I pitch in on what I anticipate will be a lengthy project? This is already tedious, don’t you think?
Also, can we in good fellowship decide to continue our analysis going forward by changing the buyer from France back to China.
Just to make it more interesting…
Christ! Good luck replying to that post Lemur866…hope you have your handy dandy decoder ring to translate that bullshit into english. I can’t even follow what the hell alaricthegoth is babbling about now, and usually I can at least follow along. Guess that puts me squarely out of the “nimbler witted of our colleagues” camp here.
-XT
Don’t flatter yourself.
Let’s see if I understand this. France will agree with Venezuela to institute some sort of sanctions against the US if the US performs some actions that France and Venezuela agree in advance would constitute agression on the part of the US against Venezuela.
OK, fine. Countries engage in treaties all the time. So Venezuela will become a French protectorate, France will guarantee Venezuelan independence? The trouble is that your proposed actions on the part of France are both to much and too little. If the US decides to invade Venezuela and seize the oil fields and string Chavez and his buddies from the lampposts, French divestiture of US securities won’t exactly be much of a deterent, would it?
And if the US actions are short of invasion, France isn’t going to impose sanctions against the US, because that will start a trade war with the US. I’m not sure why you believe that the automatic nature of the sanctions, being imposed by some court-like third party would make any difference. You lovingly imagine France stepping in as Chavez’s protector and causing pain to the US if the US interfere’s with the Great Man. So France imposes sanctions–of whatever type. What exactly do you imagine the US will do in response? Nothing? You really think France’s attempt to impose sanctions against the US will be met with cowering and whimpering from the US? Or will the US retaliate against French retaliation?
What I’m trying to get across is that thwarting US agression isn’t cost free. You can’t set yourself up as an enemy of the US and expect to get away with it, can you? To put it in terms you might understand, you pull a knife, we pull a gun. You send one of ours to the hospital, we send one of yours to the morgue. See what I’m getting at? France tries to hide behind its little tribunal, its game, and the US is going to respond, and things are gonna get ugly right quick. Monroe doctrine. Everything in the western hemisphere is America’s backyard, see? And we’re cowboys here, right? Anyone who tries some citified move like them there Frenchies, well, who knows what might happen?
To contain agression, you’ve gotta be willing to, you know, contain agression. Now do you understand?
alas, you do not appear to , but thank you for trying,
You have isdescribed the mechanism for the transition fom :Venezuela feels insecure to:divestidure occurs, the uS laughs, and the tanks rroll in.
by eliding the process you have missed the point.
Also, you have still not graspe exactly what is contem[plated by the divestiture should it occur.
Let’s go back to the Iraq example, especilally since we know in this instance that France was prepared to cross the us with a securioty ouncil veto, han which there are few sharper sticks in the eye.
Let me restate that one of the most important areas of public discourse that this process is intended to affect is the internal political struggle playing out over any act of aggression that is under consideration,.
In our example, you will recall that Collin Poweel was wiidely credited with opposing the Iraa zdventure, and counseliling caution.
Assume, arguendo, that this description of powell’s position is true, and assume also that today we all wish he had prevailed over cheney et al.
So now, if we go back to the summer of 2002 when cheney started beating the nuclear nightmare drum, and Powell and large components of the us security apparatus raised caveats, let’s add in our hyopothtical 'international bully restraining order" process.
Saddam has a contract with France that says the following:
Upon the filing of a petition for an international bully restraining order, France shall inventotry and report on the particular instruments of debt which it holds issued by the US government. If, after litigation before the World Court, a finding issues that the complaints of Iraq are meritorious, an order will issue directing the US tyo desist from the several acts and or statements that the COURT finds objectionabkle.
The inventoried securities, upon the issuance of the restraining order will be depoited with a trustee, who will hold them pending the good conduct or oterwise of the united states. If the restraining order is violatted, THEN the trustee shalll sell the debty instrumentys in the open market.
So the day after Cheney’s speeck in August 2002, Saddam files, and sets forth his case that he is not the bad guy Cheney says he is.
He says,Hey, I destroyed the weapons; I had nothing to do with Al Quaeda’
[ It wasn’t me at Halabja, it was my cousin… whatever.
The point is that the next morning news of the filing will resound across the us and world fiinancial netwlrks, because SOME analysis will become incumbent upon the commentatators’;.
If the market thinks Saddam is full of shit, US instuments are unchanged or up.
If the market thihks George is full of shit, they go down.
Let’s assume, (since in hindsight we know who was full of shit) that the market on treasuies drops (I mention this again since my first iteration apparently fell upon sterile soil).
Now Powell dan turn to Rumsfield and say, Dr Demento, the invgsible hand of the bond market is giving you the finger.
So now, some six months before comencing the war, the neocons get negative feedback about how their actions are viewed.
this feedback is not partisan, it is not agenda-ridden. It is merely trhe market pronouncing judgement upon the legitmacy oft he contending positions.
THIS IS WHAT THE SECURITY COUNCIL VOTE WOULD/SHOULD HAVE DONE BUT BUSH CHICKENED OUT. the objective of my “bizarre” system is to force the US to confront the reazlity of international opinion despite our attempts to deny it.
Moreover, our refusal to submit to the rules of international law maks it necesary tyo create a new sort of forum with a broad eough context to embrace even the recalcitrant Jorge.
I’m really bumping up against my patience asymptote, so I’ll suspend for a while and resume in the am.
But, no. You do not understand.
You understand nothing.
o
What?
I think I understand what he’s saying, but it’s dumb.
Remember back when there was a “terror futures market” proposed by somebody? This is sort of like that, but using the actual financial markets. Essentially, France would sign a treaty with Iraq (or Venezuela or whoever) agreeing that in the event Iraq had a greivance with the United States and won a decision in the World Court, France would divest its investments in the US economy if the US did not immediately move to remedy that greivance.
alaric seems to think that it would never come to this, because the markets would move based on what they expected the outcome to be. In the case of Iraq, say, if Hussein had filed a greivance with French backing the markets would immediately move depending on who the traders thought would win - the US or Iraq.
If it looked like Iraq would win, it would cause the markets to fall and would provide negative feedback to the administration - who would then change course.
Of course, it’s silly because France has no interest in seeing the US economy actually suffer (although, I don’t doubt they’d like to see their economy perform better relative to ours). Second, it would be a major bridge burning and despite differences in Iraq (and weapon sales to China and a few others), the French and the US cooperate on lots of other foreign policy initiatives so its best if neither country does anything too drastic to injur the other. Last, it would cause a major rip in the EU because the UK would certainly oppose this, as would Italy. And if Merkel takes charge of Germany, she would oppose it, as well. Not to mention the Central European countries. Plus, with the merged currency and financial markets in Europe, I’m not even sure if France could divest unilaterally.
Is that what it is? Thanks.
I am hesitant to ask alaric for clarification for fear it will trigger another bucketful from his stream of consciousness, but what would be France’s motivation for doing this? Are they going to make money off it, apart from selling arms to Iraq or from the oil-for-food program?
It sounds from your description that France is going to be expected to be in charge of trying to control the US with threats of divestment. Is it just out of the goodness of their hearts, or will they be empowered to do so by the UN Security Council, or how does that work?
If you are willing to plow thru whatever alaric is posting. I keep waiting for him to ask, "Have you ever really looked at your hand?’, and conversations like that never really went anywhere when I was in college.
Regards,
Shodan
Maybe I’m gettin’ old (41) but, as I’ve said in other threads, I’ve seen the world wax and wane in its opinion so many times that to have France or any other country in the world commit to something like this makes no sense. People are ALWAYS mad at the US for SOMETHING. I’ve seen our flags burned and our Presidents hung in effigy all over the place for the cause celebre du jour.
Besides, world opinion isn’t monolithic either. Not even Western Europe speaks with one voice, and what if the next French premier gets elected on a totally different platform–what if in the upcoming trial of Saddam such evidence is put forth of craven French collaboration with his regime that the French government falls, the people have a change of heart, and decide to engage more fully in reconstructing Iraq (fat chance, but this whole thread seems built on those)? What then of their treaty with Venezuela? The OP seems to be suggesting a restart of the Cold War among different axes. Screw it, we’ve been through all that, and the US had to hold its nose and align itself grudgingly with some pretty nasty people to stop the spread of Red Commies–including the Shah of Iran.
Well, it’s not just France, and we’re not talking about Iraq anymore, that was just an example. To distill the OP down to something understandable:
alaric is trying to figure out a way for Venezuela’s Chavez to protect himself from being overthrown by the US in some way, be it coup or proxy invasion through Colombia. To do this, he would need to find an ally or allies with the muscle to counter US strength. Since nobody can challenge the US militarily and no combined alliance would have the logistical capabilities of actually opposing the US, especially in a country in the Western Hemisphere, alaric is suggesting an economic alliance.
Venezuela would propose a summit where a group of economically significant states would get together and sign a treaty that states they will all divest their US investments should the US threaten, overtly or covertly, one of them. This grand alliance would include China, France, Germany, Venezuela, Brasil, and an assortment of other countries.
Why would these countries do this? Well, Venezuela would bribe China by providing them with as much oil as they can pump. France and Germany would join in because of their desire to see a global counterweight to US power, various S. American countries would join in for the same reason as Venezuela - security from US aggression.
At least, that’s what I think he’s saying.
Thanks for the explanation.
It sounds like they would be threatening the US by saying, “Don’t do this, or we are going to suffer nearly catastrophic economic losses by selling our US investments at a big discount to the Japanese.” Or are we just talking trade wars here?
I hate to keep pushing the burden of figuring out what he is talking about back onto you, but otherwise it makes literally no sense.
And what does Castro have to do with it?
Regards,
Shodan
He will be buying the New York Yankees.
No, the former.
It’s OK, I think I’ve got the art of deciphering him down.
Not much. Since El Caballo (The Horse) is Castro’s nickname, alaric is giving Chavez the nickname El Caballito (The Little Horse) since he’s a left-wing nationalist in the mold of Castro.
Thanks for the translation Neurotik! It makes much more sense now…at least from the perspective of understanding what he’s babbling about. It makes nearly zero sense to me from the perspective of being a workable plan, but at least not I know what he’s saying!
Speaking of flattering oneself. What makes you think that I feel that usually being able to follow your convoluted bullshit and ramblings is flattering to ME? Have you ever thought that you might try one of these OPs without all the code, slang, randomly inserted non-english words (on a generally english speaking board), wild hyperbole…oh, and the use of a spell checker? I mean, are you trying to be confusing because you think its cool or something? That you really only want to debate with folks who can sift through the bullshit to tease out whatever the hell you are trying to say? I’m truely curious as to your motives.
-XT
not exactly.
I think I have come at this the wrong way.
Let’s imagine, by way of “thought experiment” how the run up to the Iraq agression might have proceeded were there a world government with competent jurisdiction to adjudicate security issues between member states. (sound familiars/…)
Such a world government would have a world court. In this court, the Bush administration would marshall all of the sundry argunents that they made over the months up to March 2003 (and after, as the arguments are a work in progrss…)
If we deconstruct the flow of information from the administration and it’s impact upon the political class and the populace at large, we see immediately that the search for clarity would have been vastly enhanced through the application of several basic procedural templates that are thought to force clarity upon parties or witnesses who would obfuscate.
That is to say, when Bush responds “we were attacked, and that’s why it was necessary to bring democracy to Iraq by removing Saddam (without benefit of prior referendum…)”“unresponsive” and order him to go at the question again. This in stark contrast to the teeth grindingly frustrating structure of the presidential news conference, where follow-up questions are out of bounds.
Cross examination is nothing BUT folllow up questions.
Ah, but you say, we have no world court, you moron! you are trying to do on the cheap what a world government would collect taxes to support.
Quite true.
I am seeking to duplicate, though a collateral forum, as it were, some of the salutary benefits which might have flowed had some force intervened to prevent the neocons from reifying their vision.
First, let me be clear that I DO NOT ARGUE THAT THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF DIVESTITURE WOULD HAVE THE INTRISIC MUSCLE TO DETER AN AGRESSIVE ADVENTURE.
(certainly not French divestiture, although Chinese divestiture would be another kettle of fish)
Divestiture is primarily a symbolic act. It is a public shaming. It means your behavior is so hideous, we don’t want to lend you money, etc. To this extent, the market feedback we might anticipate seven or eight months out from an actual injunction-cum-violaition-cum divestiture would be useful insofar as itrepreented at least some independent evaluation of the parties prospects going forward. It is not so much what particular move the bond market makes, so much as we are providing information to which the financial meia must respond, if only to explain why they do not anticipate an extreme reaction. \
That process of explanation, argument, speculation and projection will have a life of its own with constant reference to the underlying equities between the parties and the veracity or disingenuousness of the arguments.
Because money is at issue, credibility of the ccomentators is more highly valued, and vindicated by more careful vetting of the factual nexus on which their analysis is based.,
(that’s why the news pages of the Wall Street Journal are superb and the editotials are (scratchy) toilet paper.
(It would be less theoretical in its conduct guidance impact, however, were the contracting party contemplating divestiture China)
By having this symbolic opprobrium be the outcome of a contest, we have a reality show…
Trials are, as court tv has demonstrated, enormously educational.
Trials are, as Micheal Jackson has demonstrated, wildly entertaining.
Trials are, as Terry Schiavo has demonstrated, efficient at screening out bullshit.
The rules of evidence, for instance, would have prevented the kinds of hearsay that turned into bio weapon mobile labs (remember that phony intercept that powell read with a fake middle east accent :did you hide the weapons habib? O yes, lion of the desert, all of the germs, and the poisons, and the viruses, and all that bad stuff"
that turned “curveball” into someone who’snewly empowered bullshit could actually cause the death of several thousand americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis,.
Likewise, the Niger forgeries would immediately have been unmasked.
Most importantly, the kind of vetting and analysis that should have ben done by th press and was not, would be routine, transparent, and supported by reasoned argument subject to testing, rebuttal, clarification, etc.
The filibuster any question, ignore and deny any reality, conflate any unrelated issues style of this adminstration means that old methods of behaviour modification are useless.
So now we have a contest, with real if largely symbolic consquences,.
Consequences like getting “voted off the island”
Presuming cameras in the courtroom for the proceedings, we might hope to bring a good deal of light to the public discourse surrounding the issues of war and peace that were given such short shrift as we, all casual like, marched off to war.
Now, the market interactions are yet a seperate “collateral forum” which will generate information.
The primary goal of this whole “bizarre” process is to generate information in a form that will have the maximal impact at the “points d’appui” in decisionmaking, private, governmental, and political.
In order to generate robust information, the proponents must be in good faith.
Per contra, Bush at a press conference makes Gregory Hines look like Long John Silver.
One attack on this problem is to establish a collateral forum (ie, the world court without an aerican agrement to jurisdiction). Here the US is faced with a dilemma.
To answer the petition, and place its cards on the table, the adminstration implicitly accepts the legitimacy of the court’s jurisdiction in the specified area.
If they choose to ignore the proceedings, however, the Judge appoints, oh, Nico Scalia, to represent the interests of the US at the proceedings.
Now focus on the fact that the court will issue at some point a final injunction that will go down a list of bad acts that Iraq has accused the US of.
In this area it will be enormously useful to have a way of verifying the range of charges made (provacative overflights, cia on the ground, blah blah blash) against the US prior to outright invasion, as well as the US rebuttals (your radar “painted our jets”).
Moreover, as the court thrashed out the Bush contention that any hostile language and/or actions in preparation for war were justified by the need for regime change, the urgency of which Scalia would defend as only he can, many of the fact questions that are the subject of enormous confusion would be clarified by the juxtaposition of all the evidence, and all of its provenance, in a manner calculated to give more weight to more reliable evidence.(this would be the wmd bullshit, the butcher of baghdad bullshit, whathaeyou)
Finally, the court would issue an injunction, which is an important procedural step not to brush past.
Courts may order only that the status quo change, or that it not change.
Normally the moving party, that is the person or entity who files the lawsuit, and gets things going, wants to change something about the status quo.
for instance, if the status quo is you are not paying me back the money I lent you, and keep on giving me excuses, I figure that the status quo is just fine with you, and I want to change iit by getting an order pursuant to which your bank will just pay me directly.
Or, if the status quo is that a rapist is traveling about and breaking into home, etc, we want to change the status quo by removing his freedom of motion. Hence, the People will start a criminal action.
HOWEVER
When we like the status quo just fine, and we want to prevent our neighbors little brats from pissing on our roses (iie, we want to foreclose an action in the future which will change the status quo.) then we get an injunction rather than an attempt at remediating an unwilingness to pay (example 1) or punishing some prior bad act and fully precluding a repietition. (example 2).
In the Iraq example, Bush would have been faced (presumably) with a detailed and specific list of rhetorical claims he might no longer make (just as youir neibhbor will be directed in the restraining order you receive to desist in his constant whispering in your ear that he will “fuck you up good” if you don’t stop parking your car in front of your house, where he used to park his second 29 foot motor home, (his first one is parked in front of HIS house)
Likewise, he would be enjoined not to amass forces in Kuwait in preparation for invasion, and not to invade, etc.
But, you say, how will this injunction slow down Bush’s rush to war. He will piss on the injunction at the superbowl halftime, alaric you nit wit.
Perhaps he will.
But the information generated by this forum would be available to serve as spinal prosthesis for quivering democrats; and by “information” I mean not only the data adduced by the litigation process, but the information conveyed by the court’s decision itself.
The fact that an impatial tribunal, after weighing the arguments and facts, judged the adminstration’s case bogus would surely signify, if not conclude the issue.
Let us deconstruct this a little further.
The injunction having issued, under the erms of the contract (rules of the game) that we have set forth, there is now a quantifiable penalty that will be delivered in the event of violation.
This, then, becomes a further information generator, in this case, acting as an alarm signalling that the bad behaviour we sought to deter continues to loom as a menace.
Here the market evaluation becomes poignant. Recall, if you will, the concerns expressed by the Brit AG vis-a-vis the legal underpinnings for the prtoposed iraq adventure.
He listed only three possible cassi belli
- legitmate self defense
- security council imprimatur
- Flagrant crimes against humanity.
Ruling out 1 and 3, the AG agonized over how to place Saddam iin such violation of the inspection regime as to furnish the underpinnings for a security coucil approval of the invasion.
That approval, of course, was the subject of the vote that never came.
Since this adminstration (and iits likely successors) have declared their outlawry, we must ensnare them in the quasi-legal process.
Here, since the change in the status quo (which must occur if a proposd sanction is effectively deter an enjoined threat)occurs entirely without any incursion into or interference with the affairs of the US, there is available to the “world conscience”
another way station where the catastrophe of Iraa could have been averted, that is to say the moment AFTER the conclusion of the litigation, where the miscreant is punished not by automatic arrestk, but by automatic divestiture.
Here, again, we are trying to leverage the geopolitical impact of the information we are generating.
So in the iraq example, where we had persistent mendacity surrounding the true and fixed bellicose intentions of the angloamerican gang, one might envision an enforcement action, say in January 2003, which would have with clarity directed world attention to the inexorable and unlawful juggernaut bearing down on the people of Iraa.
To recap:
We can’t go to real court, the US says fuck the court.
So we wil go to fake court, and we will structure arange of game outcomes which will take on desirablity just because no one likes to get a lower score than his opponent.
Now that we have a contest, the US has to play to win; even if we try to hide from the game.
Like it or not, at the end of the process the meretricious arguments would fall away,and the meretorious would prevail, and the lying, spinning tap dancing hacks and their journalistic familiars would have been thwarted from pursuing their horrendously effective disinformation campaign loosely characterized as :
we were attacked. The guys who attacked us don’t like us. (theres’ deep thinking for you). Then there’s Saddam, well, back in 91 we attcked him. The guys we attacked don’t like us.
Saddam probably was happy when Osama attaked us. Saddam probably wished he could have attacked us like that. Saddam has to go. because, we were attacked"
which disinformation campaign has resulted in the nauseatingly persittent lumpen meme linking Saddam to 9/11