Re: role of Third World governments

RKM-

If you have evidence that the U.S. installed Iran's Islamic regime, you
shouldn't hide it from the rest of us.  That claim flies in the face of
what the rest of us know, which is that with the Iranian Revolution, the
U.S. lost an important strategic puppet state.

As for Amin's analysis of the collapse of regulatory mechanisms, it's a
good example of going beyond the headlines.  The Bretton Woods system
broke down back in the early 70s -- the onset of floating currencies, no
longer pegged to the dollar, pegged to gold, was a key step in the decline
of U.S. financial power (see MacEwan's "Debt and Disorder" on MRP for more
on this).  With the rise of inequality in the core countries, the
capital-labor pact broke down, which had been a bedrock of social
stability since WWII.  Of course labor is down, if not totally out, but
the assumption of common interests has been shattered.  And the whole TINA
mentality (There Is No Alternative to the market, coined by Thatcher?) can
sound desperate at times, coming from people like Thomas Friedman in the
NYT, who is absolutely clueless about the real nature and motivation of
the "anti-globalization" movement.  

As both Joseph Nye, imperialist strategist, and Noam Chomsky both observed
as the Soviet Union collapsed, the world is left with one military power,
the U.S., but 3 economic powers, the U.S., W. Europe, and Japan (hence,
Trilateralism).  That is an ongoing reality that will quickly seem more
salient once the inevitable U.S. recession finally takes hold, and talk of
the U.S. as the Hyperpower will seem, well, hyperbolic.  And one
consequence will be that imperialist mechanisms including the IMF and WB
will appear less monolithic, because the European and Japanese voices in
their directorships will be strengthened.

RH