U.S. Stock Market set to surge on news of Baghdad operations

Huge rally on tap
U.S. progress in battle for Baghdad gives a strong boost to futures, signaling a strong open.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. stocks were set to soar at the open Monday on the shoulders of a global surge into equities and a rally in the greenback following news that U.S. forces have moved into Baghdad.Stock futures were sharply higher, gaining more than 3 percent, suggesting that the Dow Jones industrial average could open up as much as 230 points as investors showed relief that the war may be drawing to a close soon."The market is going to go higher. The first hour should see very heavy volume with elation over the progress that's been made with regard to Baghdad," Steve Previs, a U.S. share trader at Jefferies International in London told ReutersEuropean shares surged, the dollar rose and investors pulled money out of safe-haven bonds, oil and gold, to focus on equities.
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In other news surrounding the military operations in Baghdad...

In one of the more cynical propaganda ploys of the war, British soldiers were shown handing out liter sized bottles of water to desperate Iraqis around Basra. Much ado was made of the arrival of 'humanitarian aid' in the captured Iraqi port city of Um Qasr. What wasn't widely revealed is that the Brit bombing had shut down the water supply to the city. While the Brits handed out a few tens of thousands of liter bottles of water in a show of humanitarian aid for the tv cameras, the water facilities in Basra were capable of pumping millions of liter per hour.

Now UNICEF is expressing concern over a water emergency in Baghdad, as once again the invading forces create a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, and on purpose, too. If past experience is any indication, this 'water emergency' will be met by more of that all important 'humanitarian aid' in the form of those little bottles of water being handed out by troops, to great applause only by those who don't know much about what is going on, no doubt...

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Growing water concerns in Baghdad

"In all, 11 trucks under contract to UNICEF from local Kuwaiti operators were making their way across the southern border with supplies for the towns of Safwan, Zubair and the southern fringes of Basra, including much needed water and emergency health kits." (Note : this 'much needed water' would not have been 'much needed' if the airforce had not knocked out the water supply to the cities. Now a similar problem has developed in Baghdad, and the UNICEF spokesman says...) "Five million people depend on the water system for their daily needs - drinking, cleaning and cooking." UNICEF's alarm was echoed by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNHCOI) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
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It seems this targetting of infrastructure is intended to weaken resistance in Baghdad, and, given that it follows the pattern established previously in urban areas, it is part of the overall military strategy in the battle for the cities of Iraq. Cynically, the disaster can then be played for the media as a 'humanitarian crisis' which of course requires swift military action to avoid 'further civilian deaths' from such things as water borne diseases. Pundits and talking heads can compare the coming wave of water related deaths to those killed by the urban combat and claim that such operations are 'the lesser of two evils' given the even higher number of civilian casualities sure to result if the campaign drags on much longer.

Meanwhile the Red Cross is busy working to repair the damage and get the water system back on line in Baghdad. They did the same sort of work in Basra, with the invading forces knocking out the infrastructure, and then the Red Cross, playing Don Quixote, and beginning to work on fixing the damage.

While the stock market is surging on news of the battle for Baghdad, the Red Cross is feeling a little depressed.

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Red cross horrified by civilian casualities in Iraq. They mention trucks filled with the body parts of the dismembered corpses of civilians as one of the most depressing things they have seen lately.

"Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw 'incredible' levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad. Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad."
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Meanwhile a health crisis is developing in Iraq, due to civilian casualities, the knocked out urban water systems, and the collapse of the nations health care system.

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Aid organisations and the United Nations have highlighted the serious health situation Iraqis are facing as conflict continues country-wide, IRIN learnt on Friday. The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) said without an immediate inflow of money there would be unnecessary deaths of Iraqi children of diarrhoea-related diseases, women would die in childbirth, and there would be a chronic shortage of medicines and supplies in already overstretched hospitals. Dr David Nabarro, the WHO executive director for emergencies and humanitarian action, told IRIN from Geneva that the organisation had requested US $300 million for urgent health needs in Iraq over the next six months, but had only received $3 million so far. He described the Iraqis as "much more vulnerable than just about any other population in the world" ... Because of the war, no aid agencies had been able to get into the central towns of Najaf, Karbala, Nasiriyah or Hillah, where ICRC believed the hospitals were having difficulty coping with casualties from the fighting. "
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With the infrastructure being knocked out in Baghdad, and the articifically created water crisis now affecting Baghdad as well (thus creating the need for more touching television pictures of troops handing out 'humanitarian relief' in the form of those water bottles) "Andrea Hilger of Architects for People in Need, a German NGO working in Baghdad, predicted that the food and health situation of Iraqis in the capital would become "really, really severe" within a week."

Meanwhile, as the U.S. and European stock markets stage a strong rally on the news...

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Hospital staff and facilities in Baghdad are stretched to the limits

"Fighting in and near Baghdad appears to have continued pretty much unabated. The ICRC delegation in Baghdad is hearing the continuous sound of fighting from parts of the city ... Hospitals in Baghdad visited during the morning of 5 April report a continuous inflow of war-wounded patients and say they are treating hundreds of casualties. Hospital staff and facilities are stretched to the limits. On Friday, four Baghdad hospitals visited by ICRC medical staff reported they had received several hundred war-wounded patients as well as dozens of fatalities. The hospitals are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the situation."
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According to Air Force General Michael Moseley, speaking on April 4th, the American Airforce was going to switch tactics, and no longer confine its bombing campaign to the outskirts of Baghdad, but would begin to fight a type of house to house bombing campiagn from the air. While this experimental strategy might spare combat foot soldiers the onerous task of fighting house to house themselves, the unleashing of anti-tank aircraft, helicopter gunships, and fighters and bombers on an urban area can only increase the burden on Baghdad's struggling health care system. Since this new tactic of skirmishing within the Baghdad city limits began witnesses have reported 'uncountable number of corposes' lining streets and roads, and hospitals are becoming unable to cope with the not unexpected wave of casualities.
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During the latest skirmishes this weekend...One hundred patients an hour entering Bahgdad hospitals
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Nevertheless, stock markets are rallying at the news that fighting has now moved into Baghdad. The news is being reported in anti-septic terms by the major American media, and to get an idea of the kind of catastrophe that is unfolding requires that one look behind the scenes for alternative sources of news. The Americans do not have the ground forces to surround or invade Baghdad (a city of 5 million that is 30 miles wide). But stock markets are rallying on news aerial 'house to house' combat is now being fought in Baghdad, a novel idea, certain to result in more of those lop sided casualty figures. The casualities in Baghdad this weekend number in the many thousands, with the Americans reporting one dead and a couple wounded.

Perhaps what is causing this stock market rally is not only the novel idea of aerial house to house combat, but even more so the prospect of great profits to be made exploiting the new colony...
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Corporate interests in Iraq war

"Under George W. Bush, the United States is once more embarked on one of its periodic flirtations with imperialism, aimed in this instance not at territorial aggrandizement, but at political, cultural and commercial dominance ... It would provide a protective umbrella for the expansion of economic globalization, which is taken (both here and abroad) to be synonymous with Americanization, since a plurality of the world's multinational business corporations are based in the United States. It would spread "market democracy" - laissez-faire capitalism within an electoral framework of government - the only feasible and permissible form of democracy, according to its advocates. (Social democrats need not apply.) ... The public, for its part, has been invited to follow the flag to all corners of the earth, regardless of the cost, to make the world safe for freedom, democracy and (incidentally) the international corporate agenda. The very same multinationals that have exploited the American people for years (via free-trade agreements, tax loopholes, deregulation, and the like) now want those very same people to underwrite their exploitation of the developing world through the Bush doctrine."
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In the past, the colonialist powers could always find colaborators in the nations they were conquering, and today is not different. As MSNBC reported the 'Iraqi exiles' are in favor of dismantling Iraq's nationalized oil industry and handing it over to the large multinationals. The Iraqi exiles also agreed that Iraq should be used as a tool by these oil interests to bust the power of OPEC, and no doubt force oil prices lower.
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Big role urged for oil firms after war

LONDON, April 5 — Iraqi exiles and senior U.S. officials agreed Saturday that international oil companies should take a leading post-war role in reviving Iraq’s oil industry, delegates to a policy meeting said. THE TALKS, held under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, also resulted in a recommendation that Baghdad stay in OPEC, though without limits on production, Iraqi delegates said ... A statement afterward called for Iraqi oil and natural gas to be exploited for the benefit of the Iraqi people ... Some oil company executives had thought post-war nationalism would prevent early access to oilfields that, apart from those in Saudi Arabia and Mexico, are the only significant reserves not yet open to commercial capital ... Phillip Carroll, the former head of Shell in the United States, is said to be a candidate to oversee oil policy with Iraqi economist Muhammad-Ali Zainy in line to become his second in command.
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While there is probably going to be another one of those rallies on the world's stock markets, it is important to understand that these rallies consist mostly of speculators trying to get the best of other speculators. Since the beginning of this year the stock markets have seen the lowest volumes they have ever seen, and many of the major brokerage houses have been reporting losses and/or laying off large number of staff since no one is really interested in buying stocks this year. The fact that the Bush administration actually gutted the regulatory power of the SEC might have something to do with this lack of confidence in the good behavior of major corporations, after disclosures of wide spread fraud over the last four or five years to disguise the slumping economy which had drained these corporations of their profits. Stocks are still trading much higher than the historic Price to earnings ratio, and therefore prices would have to fall a lot further to bring themselves in line with the true earnings level. The fact that they remain high in the midst of the slump combined with the extremely low volumes is evidence that most of what you see happening in that Stock market is just the activity of those day traders and speculators hoping to rip each other off and make a quick buck, and not something that is fundamentally meaningful or worth considering as some kind of 'sign' as to how the nations are faring. The fact that these day traders are piling into the market on one piece of news (only to jump ship on some other piece of news) is a bit of news that would only be of interest to day traders and speculators and those who are addicted to following their daily adventures on the stock markets of the world...

As for Iraq, I agree with Albert Einstein, and think that some sort of socialism is the wave of the future (As Einstein put it, 'Humanity will need a radically new way of thinking if we are to survive'). However, at the very least, the oil of Iraq should remain nationalized, and not plundered by American corporate interests (with those jubliant day traders eagerly scrambling for the crumbs that fall off the table).

Meanwhile this stock market surge, being driven by the speculators who remain in the market, continues despite continuing weakness in the economy, which included yet another 108,000 job losses in March, plus another half million who were removed from the official unemployment rate due to the fact that they had given up on looking for work.The Great Depression... George Bush versus Albert Einstein on economic policy...