cooper dot se.

this page is called cooper.se because it represents much of my thought since studying for a semester in sweden in the spring of 2005. this thought process has continued on down to the beginnings of my real adult life....what comes next? let's talk about it....and many other things of course.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Chicago Olympics and Iraqi Businesses....Happy New Year!

I am still sitting at home and therefore have had time to peruse the news. I have also been reading over the blogosphere and in particular, bloghdad, a word I saw today describing Iraqi blogs that I like and think I will put into use in the future.

But first, something a little closer to home. I was reading earlier today about how Chicago is strongly considering bidding for the 2016 Olympic Games. This is very exciting to me. This writer's vision for the games, though written back in July, was particularly inspiring and made me want to stick around the city for years to come. As if I didn't want to already....!

The other topic of interest for me today, as always, is Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor, a paper have a great deal of respect for, has this interesting piece about small businesses in Iraq. I bring this up because it reminded me of an article I read by Naomi Klein early last year.

She was making the point that the Coalition Provisional Authority was putting too much faith in the free market to rebuild Iraq. The Monitor article references Article 39 which, according to the Monitor, gives "foreign companies unfettered access to Iraq, effectively freezing many local companies out of the rebuilding effort."

Did the CPA really think it would be that easy? While I am a liberal in the traditional sense of the word, I think that it was unbelievably arrogant and naive to assume that Iraqis would take this standing up. I believe that free markets must be introduced gradually. Even the United States is not a completely free market.

It may well have been this over-liberalization of the market in Iraq that spurred the insurgency. How many workers must have been laid off in the streamlining process of free market business? It is extremely likely that many laid-off workers found a warm welcome from many insurgent groups.

So where to go now? Well, that's partly why I have this blog, to discuss events and how they are changing the world and how we as human beings should respond. I welcome any ideas. I still think security is obviously the most important point to work on. That's a pretty easy answer though.

Peace to all.

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