EU at 50

This week market the 50th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Thus the new super-state the European Union is middle aged. Euroskeptics, realist political scientists and nationalists still argue the evils of integration and economic/monetary union. They revel in what as seen as stupid rules mad by the EU. The best example of a perhaps good idea gone wrong is the British grocer charged with not selling bananas by the kilogram. As he argued, “My customers ask for bananas by the pound so I sell them by the pound. If they asked by the kilogram, I’d sell them by the kilogram.”

While, this is silly there are other problems that face nations in the EU such as the fixed exchange rate takes monetary policy out of individual nations’ hands. (Monetary policy is exemplified in the United States by the Federal Reserve changing the interest rate.) The Mundell-Fleming model argues that nations cannot have all three of the following:

Free Capital Flows
Fixed Exchange Rate
Sovereign Monetary policy

This leaves individual nations to resort to only fiscal policy (taxation and government spending) to jump-start lagging economies.

However, as the economies of the European Union become more integrated, such a need will not exist. As it gets more integrated each EU country will be hit more similarly. Thus, there will be consensus on monetary policy emanating from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Such arguments for economics are all well and good. Although, the number one reason for supporting is war. Or more specifically a lack thereof. Since 1945, there has been no major land war fought in Europe. For those of us born after World War II, this may not seem like such a big deal. But, a quick look at European history shows how amazing this really is.

In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Year’s War. Westphalia recognized for the first time that there were countries and not just domains of specific kings, dukes, etc. But since that time, there has not been 50 years without a major war on European soil – until now.

1650-1700
Northern Wars
Anglo-Spanish War
Great Turkish War

1700-1750
The Great Northern War
War of Spanish Succession
War of Austrian Succession

1750-1800
Seven Years War
Anglo-French War
French Revolutionary Wars

1800-1850
Napoleonic Wars

1850-1900
Crimean War
Franco-Prussian War

1900-1950
World War I
World War II

1950-2000
No major wars

2000-
No major wars

The process of peace put into place after World War II has been the most successful in European history since Neanderthals were driven to extinction by the arrival of homo sapiens on the continent. So three cheers for the European Union and Happy Birthday.

DePauw, Delta Zeta and the White American Hubris

My friends are always surprised and shocked that I was in a fraternity during my first attempt at college. And, I have to explain to them that it was a different world. My college had 55 percent of people in the Greek system. In the fraternity, I met a large number of interesting forward thinking individuals. I have to describe that we were more than a glorified drinking club. In fact, my fraternity did more volunteering per person than the campus average.
Yet, my friends always have their own story why fraternities suck. However, each of these stories either involves a small number of individuals who belong to a specific chapter of a fraternity/sorority or the fact that the entire chapter at their school sucked. I will accept this as truth. Birds of a feather flock together; therefore, assholes, racists, and womanizers will probably all join the same fraternity chapter. I’ve heard stories of Kappa Alphas at the University of Georgia flying a 25 foot Confederate Battle Flag.
So, yes, specific chapters can have specific problems. Let me give you two examples that I have pretty good knowledge of. At my school, Allegheny College, the Alpha Chi Ro chapter had some sort of LSD driven “Vampire Party” and pictures of it ended up on the President of the College’s desk. Apparently there was some sort of mayhem where the police, local paper and county offices got involved. Well, both the National Alpha Chi Ro and Allegheny College revoked the chapter’s charter. When I was going there the “Crow House” was nothing but an empty lot as the school had torn down the house with the acquiescence the national Alpha Chi Ro headquarters.
A second example was while I was in school. My fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, had a chapter at Rider College in New Jersey. Well, the brothers at this chapter decided that it would be a good idea if they made pledges participate in a “Dress Like a Nigger Day.” Well, the information on this came out and the College President and the National Office both immediately suspended the chapter’s charter. Then, Maury Povich got involved. There were cries to ban Phi Kappa Psi nationwide. My chapter had to explain to members of the Association for Black Culture at Allegheny that the national office was not only suspending but also going through the process of revoking the chapter’s charter. (I’m sure other Phi Psis nationwide had to do this). Most members nationwide were disgusted by the idea of “dress like a nigger day;” while almost all members were amazed by the stupidity of it.
This gets us to the point of this column. Delta Zeta recently completed a virtual Stalinist purge at DePauw University under the euphemism, “membership review.” Per Delta Zeta’s national headquarters website, “Delta Zeta national leadership undertook the membership review and made decisions thereon based solely upon each woman’s commitment to Delta Zeta's recruitment plans moving forward.”
Yet, those who were not sent to the gulag of early alumnae status were all in the image of the classic white, pretty sorority girl. All those who were not? Got kicked to the curb. This included 3 of the 4 minority girls in the chapter and reportedly many of those who were overweight or had “geeky” majors. Former Delta Zeta Kate Holloway told the New York Times, “Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave.” The national headquarters of Delta Zeta then bussed in what were described as “Barbie doll” clones from Indiana University to run rush – the recruitment process.
Now this may seem as a silly isolated incident designed to keep the Delta Zeta house at DePauw University from closing its doors. But, the Delta Zeta nationals have a history of trying to affect membership at DePauw. The New York Times reported that in 1967 the national office attempted to keep the DePauw chapter from initiating a woman whose father was Black. And in 1982 the DePauw chapter kept a black woman from joining.
While, there is no smoking gun here, I do see a pattern. The national chapter said the sisters were sent to the gulag for not being down with the recruitment plans. Did the recruitment plans involve getting only the archetype sorority girls to join? Did the recruitment plan include not having minorities in it? To quote Public Enemy, “These days you can’t see whose in cahoots/ ’Cuz the KKK wearing three-piece suits.”
But the issue does not end here. Throughout the years America has been more and more inclusive. But on each step up the ladder of inclusiveness there have been backlashes. The 1982 incident corresponds with a time when the President of the United States had announced his presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi (site of Mississippi Burning) and blamed unemployment on women in the workforce. Now this incident shows the extreme hubris that racist prejudicial people and organizations are showing.
In a society where white Americans seem to be trying to marginalize anyone who is not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Delta Zeta’s actions to reject traditional American democratic values is not surprising. Whites are angered over people who speak Spanish. 39% of Americans believe Muslims should carry special ID cards (you know like the Nazis made the Jews have!) There is a growing movement to further take away rights of immigrants by trying to repeal the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship at birth. And, there are people calling in death threats to pizza parlors seeking to make money by allowing people to buy pizzas with pesos.
I ask such covert hate groups as the Heritage Foundation, the America First Party and Delta Zeta to read the Constitution. It says “We the People of the United States of America.” It does not read, “We the White People” or “We the English-only speakers” or even “We the Rich, White Cheerleader looking People.” “We the People” is the central traditional American value. It is such a traditional American value that the framers decided to make it front and center of the most important document in the United States.
I would also like to see every college that has a chapter of Delta Zeta to do an investigation. It would seem likely that the national chapter would commit such un-American acts at other chapters as well. I would like to offer thumbs up to the six women who were not asked to leave the Delta Zeta chapter but did so in protest. Also, a thumbs up goes to TCU’s PanHellenic community for choosing Gamma Phi Beta over Delta Zeta to be the new chapter on campus.
The Delta Zeta national chapter did not respond to requests for comment.

Germany, Newfoundland and the Seal Hunt

First, to those who expected my commentary on the Delta Zeta scandal, I appologize it sould be published by Tuesday.

Secondly, I would like to say I saw a seal in the harbor on Monday and I have to tell you, he was so cute. I wanted to yell to him stay here buddy don't go to Canada.

Well, we got Belgium and soon we well get Germany. Germany is looking to ban trade in Canadian Seal fur. Horst Seehofer, German Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (I'm so glad I don't have to write that title every time I sign my name) announced that the government will introduce legislation to ban seal products from Canada.

However there are many people – especially in Canada who think this is a bad idea. An MP from Newfoundland has challenged Germany's own environmental record, by saying it should get its house in order with the deer and boar hunt, before bad mouthing Canada. Scott Simms, a liberal MP from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (for the remainder of this article I will refer to the province as "Newfoundland," the mainland territory as "Labrador" and the island as "the Island of Newfoundland"), has called for retaliatory trade policy. Mr. Simms wants to ban German venison and boar meat.

Mr. Simms represents a portion of the population who feels that the annual seal hunt is better for Canada than the decrease in seal populations are. But, Mr. Simms is playing a shell game. Let's cover some of this:

MYTH ..1:
The seal hunt is humane.

REALITY:
The Seal hunt is considered so inhumane by most people that the United States banned imports of seal products in 1972. First, that was a long time ago. Second, that means that Richard Nixon signed the bill. Apparently, the Canadian Seal Hunt is worse than using the CIA and FBI to spy on domestic political rivals!

MYTH ..2:
The seal hunt is of major income source for Canada.

REALITY:
The state sponsored CBC– the Pravda of the Great White North – has perpetuated this myth by giving raw numbers that do seem impressive. CA$16.5 million is earned in the seal hunt. That seems like a lot of money until you consider that the GDP or Newfoundland is CA$16 billion. That means the seal hunt nationwide brings in slightly more than one tenth of one percent of the GDP of its second smallest provincial economy. The Canadian National GDP is almost CA$2 trillion, so the seal hunt brings in 8.25^-4% of the economy – that's so small I can't even tell what that number is! The GDP per capita in Newfoundland, in Purchase Power Parity, is about equal to that of Austria at over CA$41,000 (over $35,000 – US). That would mean without the seal hunt Newfies would only be making CA$40,590 on average. Should we get the World Bank to put you on the list ahead of Somalia if you can't club baby seals?

MYTH ..3
Seals are eating all the fish.

REALITY
Even Canada's Pravda accepts, and I quote: "But both sides [pro-seal and pro-clubbing-baby-seals] now appear to agree that seals and cod can coexist." Really, you mean to tell me that the seals aren't destroying the North Atlantic Cod fisheries? You mean seals are not eating up their source of food to a point where they would destroy their own population? Thank you for such a admission.

MYTH ..4
Culling quotas are put in place to control the seal population.

REALITY
Well, this seems like you just made it up. I do not seem to remember seals overwhelming Nova Scotia. The Halifax government has not been overrun by the Emperor of Harp Seals! And, if the hunt was to cull this overwhelming seal population, would it really matter whether Germany would buy the products.

So, if you are a German citizen I urge you to call your MP and tell them to vote for the ban. And, Mr. Simms, I tell you what, I'll never buy German boar meat again if you support the ban of the Seal Hunt. Deal?




You can find a list of restaraunts that are boycotting Canadian Seafood until the hunt is over at this link:
http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/why_a_boycott_of_canadian_seafood/restaurants_who_support_boycott.html

J'Accuse: Oil and Iraq

The Iraqi cabinet regarding the ownership of oil rights in Iraq has approved a new law. This law will open the oil fields of Iraq to private investment like no country in the Middle East has seen since the British Government held Iranian oil under BP. Liz Arnone, co-chair of the United States Green Party has said, ""The Iraqi hydrocarbon law, if approved by Iraqi lawmakers, will provide lucrative profits for U.S. energy corporations by placing up to 2/3 of Iraqi oil resources under foreign control."1 On the other hand Christopher Hitchens has praised the new law. Focusing on the distributive elements of the law Hitchens says, "The new law proposes a federalized control over oil and gas, with a distribution of revenue that would be in proportion to the population of each province."2 Whether it is a good law or an imperialist mandate for American energy firms is at issue here.

Here are the questions to be answered. Will the new law help American energy firms? How will this effect prices at the pump? Was the invasion exclusively over oil?

In a speech to the country George Bush called on the Iraqi government to pass the new oil law. He said, "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis."3 But, he conveniently did not mention that the law would also give the Iraqi government the ability to create production-sharing agreements with foreign oil companies. These PSAs would be thirty-year agreements where the foreign oil companies would have exploratory and production rights unheard of in the region.

The region’s major oil/natural gas producers all own their own oil rights and contract out to foreign oil companies the tasks of drilling, refining, etc. According to what we know of neoliberal economic theory, this should actually make the country a slow growth country if the government owned the oil and controlled its production. Yet Iran, the most democratic of Middle Eastern countries has the greatest equality in income distribution. Meanwhile, Qatar and Kuwait have per capita GDPs that are off the charts for countries of such low industrialization.

So does this mean that these oil rich countries are doing something wrong by controlling their oil wealth? It would seem not, where the problem seems to lie is in the institutions. Saudi Arabia is a country with a petroeconomy that is the exclusive purview of the House of Saud – one giant fief. Here inequality is rampant and its per capita GDP is low. Meanwhile, the slightly more democratic Qatar and Kuwait have increased GDP per capita; and, the most democratic Iran has increased equality to that almost of the United States.4

So, this law will not assist a democracy in increasing equality. Instead it merely enriches the firms that pay for these PSAs. Meanwhile, less wealth will be transferred to the people as an army of 144,000 troops representing a government of neoliberal pro-big oil props up a weak democratic regime in Iraq. Of course it will help American oil firms; but, not exclusively, I’m sure BP will be helped as well.

How will this affect how much I pay at the pump? It won’t affect me at all as my Trek hybrid street bike takes no gasoline, but for many it is important. But one would have to say it would not affect the price your paying. In a perfectly competitive market where there are innumerable producers of a product, the more supply there is the cheaper it will be. Therefore, opening up Iraq’s oil fields would lower the price of gas.

However, the petroleum market is not a perfectly competitive market. Production is controlled by a cartel of nations and distribution is controlled by an oligopoly of firms. OPEC, the cartel, was eleven nations in 2002: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. In 2002, these 11 countries accounted for 78 percent of the world’s petroleum production.5 And, since 2002, Angola has joined.

The distribution is then controlled by an oligopoly of firms. An oligopoly is a market system whereby a small number of firms control the industry and compete with each other with advertising or creating brand loyalty rather than price. A perfect example of oligopoly is the soft drink market. There is Coke and there is Pepsi. Other firms either produce a lower quality soda or a high quality niche soda. (While Moxie and RC have the brand loyalty of those who don’t want to throw up once they’ve taken a sip). But, for most of the soda products out there one must give Coke or Pepsi money to drink high-fructose corn syrup.

The same goes for gas. What used to be known as the Seven Sisters are now the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP control the distribution of petroleum with other firms and small stations merely competing for the crumbs. In such an environment does one think any of these firms or countries not in OPEC would try to slow their gravy train by charging less for gasoline? No, what would happen is that those firms in Iraq would merely have to give fewer profits to the home government.

Now finally, was this war over oil? General Smedley Butler once complained that it was a shame that The United states had to invade Nicaragua to protect loans given by Wall Street Bankers. While the words of one dissident Marine General from the first half of the century is not enough to declare that invasions of Nicaragua and Haiti were wrong and it does not necessarily translate to today’s issues. It does open the door to questions of why interventions happen.

Let’s skip forward to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). In a 1998 letter to President Clinton, this organization expressed its displeasure regarding Saddam Hussein. They listed three reasons why the United States should overthrow Hussein. His weapons of mass destruction threatened

1) "the safety of American troops in the region;"

2) "our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states;" and

3) "a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard"6

Now I am sure President Clinton and probably every President since George Washington got crazy letters about who to invade and why on a daily basis. What makes the PNAC letter so telling is who the PNAC are. The PNAC’s "Statement of Principles" from 1997 was signed by Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes, Dan Quayle, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.7 The letter to President Clinton was further signed by Richard Armitage, Richard Perle and John Bolton.8

So, this organization that in 1998 thought the US should invade Iraq in order to, among other things, protect oil was made of some heavy hitters. In the Bush administration they are: the President’s brother and kingmaker in Florida, the Vice-President, a crazy rich man with a flat-tax, a former Vice-President, the Vice-President’s Chief of Staff turned fall guy turned jailbird, the Secretary of Defense, the Assistant Secretary of Defense, The Assistant Secretary of State, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and the US Ambassador to the United Nations. I quote C&C Music Factory: "Things That Make You Go Hmmm." (That’s a group you haven’t thought of in years.) So it was not about oil? Yet, oil is the reason seven members of the administration and the President’s brother gave for invading Iraq five years before it actually happened. Hmmm.

Now let’s move on to the National Energy Policy Development Group’s March 2001. This was the super secret group run by vice President Dick Cheney. The Vice President refused to give a detailed account who were the advisors of the group or what was said in any meeting. The group came to among other conclusions that the United States should pressure oil-producing companies "to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment."9

So, let’s see, the United Sates is run by members of the PNAC who support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to defend oil. One of those members then runs an organization that says the US should try to get countries to allow foreign investment. Who does this really help? The average American pays more for gas then when this whole thing started. The Iraqis have to live in fear of national compatriots. Well, the energy companies must enjoy the possibility of sweetheart deals.

But why would the administration want to give the oil companies sweetheart deals?

Dick Cheney was head of Haliburton which gave him million dollars of stock options which he has yet to exercise, meaning he could make tens of millions as Haliburton’s stock continues to rise.


Former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was head of the American Automobile Manufactures Association – the lobbying group for the big three automakers.

Former Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans was the CEO of oil and energy company Tom Brown, Inc. up until he took office.

Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez was the Orlando Utilities Commission.

Former Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow was head of CSX, the railway company that sold its lines to the Carlyle Group, which has employed both President Bush and former President Bush, an energy finance group with links to the House of Saud and the bin Laden family. This sale immediately proceeded his appointment.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served on the board of Chevron, even having a oil tanker named after her.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage left the office and became a director for the ConnocoPhilips oil company.

President George W. Bush was partner or CEO of Arbusto Energy, Spectrum 7, and, later, Harken Energy.

I am sure that not one of these people will make any money from the fact that oil companies would be able to have direct dealings with Iraq. Hmmm.



______________________

1. http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2007_03_05.shtml

2. http://www.slate.com/id/2161629/

3. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html

4. United Nations Development Program. 2006. United Nations Human Development Report 2006, Beyond Scarcity: Power, Scarcity and the Global Water Crisis. (New York: UN). Table 14, pp. 332-334 and Table 15 335-338.

5. "Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries." 2003. Penguin Dictionary of Economics. 7th edition. (New York: Penguin). 287.

6. Project for the New American Century. January 26, 1998. "Letter to President Clinton on Iraq." http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

7. http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

8. http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

9. National Energy Policy Development Group. 2001. Reliable, Affordable and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future. P. 8-18.