Peter, you left out a very significant factor - the religious right. This is a group that claims they have god on their side while sacking the countryside. Not only foreign countrys but their own also. Look at the problems the republicans are in, improper hundred million dollar contracts, outing of CIA operatives, election campaign irregularities, as well as the escapades into various countries, to name a few.

I would think the fundamentalist religious believers are the basis for many of these issues just as they are in Iran, were in Iraq/Afganistan, and historically in Rome.

When you get right down to it religious bigots are all cut from the same cloth be they Muslim or Christian - some are just a bit smoother than others.

I love a good bash imperialism, and evil corporations rant as much as the next soft lefty.

But this is just over the top irrational tripe. Instead of looking for evil empires and grand schemes, 'my' opinion (yes opinion) is that we are better served looking at history through the prism of the cumulative self interest and forces that shape(d) it.

Thats my five cents.

James

Its quite fascinating how paranoid some people can be. The international neo-con world takeover?.(Insert laugh here)

Some things you obviously are unaware of
1. Walmart is a private company and has nothing to do with your paranoid fantasies about George Bush. Its like saying Woolworths is a part of John Howards plan for world domination.
2. George Bush didn't cause the Tsunami or other climatic changes. Global warming may actually be a natural occurrence. (We had an ice age before human habitation!)
3. Investment of money in the Iraq war did not cause the slow response in News Orleans. (Try lack of co-ordination between government agencies as a non-paranoid starter)
4. You are the perfect example of why some university faculties need a kick in the arse. They breed extreme Left wing ideologues who have not been required to produce anything vaguely balanced for a long time.
5. If the US stayed out of International Politics you,like me would currently be dead.

Oh good stuff, neo con conspiracy, oil running out (yes but not for a few more decades) and market forces will dictate next technology), global warming (is it proven man contributes significantly to this? and just why is Mars’s polar Caps retreating?)

Forget all the above because the problem with this article is there is no SOLUTIONS offered. Many people bemoan the fact of the world going to hell but I rarely see practical solutions offered. Oil running out? How do we handle? Global warming – if (big if) man is a significant contributor how to feasibly deal with it. Plans like Kyoto have not worked, what next? And not something that stalls economies and creates poverty and probably makes the problem worse. And lets hope that developing countries see this global warming as another excuse for the West to supply “cheap” alternatives. Another form of imperialism?

And what is with the whole imperialism thing. If that means that the “West” is trying to get democracy, freedom and “capitalism” installed in places that might resist. Well this western system seems to have worked. Just why are free democracies the most powerful nations over the last few centuries? And do not give me the colonial exploitation crap. Africa lost most of the colonial power influence at the same time as Asia. Why is Asia booming and Africa not? And to the future. Cannot change history.

If there is something better, please tell us. People continually hear “the sky is falling” but what is the answer. I should sign this Frustrated rather than Big Fish.

The argument that it is easy throw the yoke of guilt on either the religious right or the neocons is too populist and has too little factual reasoning behind it. There are a diverse group of interests involved as in any politically-sustained global fallout, and we too often spill the blame on the side we most like to oppose, without seeing the complete picture.

The utopia builders, a la McMahon, have set up their boutiques in the global market to sell their soddy product. After the collapse of the historically misplaced Communist utopia, the Left's sorcerer's apprentices are now concocting their new mantric utopia of global governance, to take the place of the displaced one.

Two fundamental contradictions haunt your argument and ultimately bury the phantoms of the Neo-cons and of neo-imperialism that you raised. Your own chronology debunks your argument. You state that "in the 1970s a new global system was emerging. Your phantoms however, the Neo-cons were only in power in 2000. By this time the system was already robust and on its course. The cons were not fabricating a new version of it, but were merely its new managers. And in the aftermath of 9/11 they were also trying to protect it. That was the reason why they went to war, not oil.

The second fundamental flaw is, that while you claim that "human experiences are too diverse to bend to the logic... of one global market", your panacea to neo-imperialism is global governance. At the same time you concede that such governance would have "to bend to the logic of...one global market. But how will you place such governance upon such "diverse', non- homogeneous societies? Didn't the recent failure of the EU to unite, which is homogeneous, teach you anything?

Your remedy is intellectually unhinged and cannot be taken seriously. All you accomplish is to replace the phantoms of the Cons with your greater phantom of global governance. With such intellectual credentials, Plato would never allow you to enter his Academy.