USA - Hegemonie zu Ende?

Tea or Coffee? Tee oder Kaffee?
David Brooks: The Wal-Mart Hippies (NYT, 03/04/10). About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution. Today, another social movement has arisen. The people we loosely call the Tea Partiers also want to destroy the establishment. They also want to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.
CoffeepartyUSA

Richard Cohen (WP, 03/23/10):
The health-care vote: One more step on a long, slow journey.
Mitch McConnell is right. The Republican Senate leader, a man whose vision is to deny others theirs, told the New York Times that President Obama's health-care proposal was part of an attempt to "turn us into a Western European country," which, the good Lord willing, is what will now happen. I, for one, could use a dash of Germany, where there are something like 200 private health insurance plans and where everyone is covered and no one goes broke on account of bad health. It's great to be healthy in America, but for too many Americans, it's better to be sick somewhere else. I would also take France or Switzerland, but mostly I'd like Japan, which I move to Western Europe for the sake of argument, and where medical care is as good (or better) than it is here and much less expensive.

Health care reform, Just the Facts: Immediate changes, others that will happen over time (Alternet, 03/22/10).

Reinforcing presumed religious identities: where are women and secularists of Muslim countries in Obama’s speech in Cairo? Friday 5 June 2009 by Marieme Helie Lucas

William J. Federer: OBAMA - A STUDENT OF HISTORY?
In his speech in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009, President Obama stated: "As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance." Civilization is indeed indebted to Islam for Europe's Renaissance, but the President's speech was conspicuous in its omission of certain details. The Renaissance was a revival of interest in Greek art, architecture, sculpture and philosophy, brought about by Greeks fleeing the Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire. It began in the year 1071, when Turkish Muslims defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and proceeded to invade the Byzantine Empire, which is today Turkey. First Muslim Seljuk Turks, followed by Muslim Ottoman Turks, turned Byzantine Churches into mosques, melted church bells into cannons, leveled cities, dug up remains of Christian Saints and gave them to dogs. Toward the end of the Crusades, a Muslim warlord arose named Tamerlane (1336-1405). Related to Genghis Khan, Tamerlane killed an estimated 17 million, conquering from the Black Sea to India....   To escape the Islamic invasion, Byzantine Greek scholars fled west to Florence, Italy, bringing with them their architecture, art, sculpture and philosophy, fueling Europe's fascination with Greek culture. This was called the "Renaissance," which President Obama reminded Europeans they were indebted to Islam for. In fact, the very concept of "Europe" was a result of Islamic invasion, as previously, Europe viewed itself as innumerable independent kingdoms.

Obama meets Chavez.

Chavez presents Obama with a gift: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has greeted US President Barack Obama for a second time at the Latin America regional summit in Trinidad and Tobago. He presented with the US president with Eduardo Galeano's book, The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, chronicling exploitation in the region. Barack Obama later said he assumed the book he was receiving was written by Hugo Chavez himself. (BBC, 4/18/09).
In Open Veins of Latin America Galeano analyzes the history of Latin America as a whole from the time period of the European discovery of the New World to contemporary Latin America arguing against European and later U.S. economic exploitation and political dominance over the region. Open Veins of Latin America was written by Eduardo Galeano in Uruguay in 1971. During this period Galeano was working as a journalist, editing books, and was employed in the publishing department of the University of Montevideo. Galeano states that "it took four years of researching and collecting the information I needed, and some 90 nights to write the book".^[2]Shortly after the publishing of Open Veins of Latin America, in 1973, a military junta took power in Uruguay forcing Galeano into exile. As a result of the book's left-wing perspective it was banned during the military governments of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.(Wikipedia).

"Fool" Robert McNamara dead

Another war victim: The multibillion-dollar project to restore the Everglades has come to a near standstill. By Brian Skoloff (AP). The largest wetlands restoration effort in the world — approved in 2000 and formally known as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, or CERP — was originally estimated to cost $7.8 billion and take 30 years. By last year, the price tag had been put at $10.5 billion, and experts said it could take 50 years. Now it's anybody's guess. In large part because of the cost of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, Congress has appropriated only several million dollars (instead of billions). And the only work that has been done on any of the Corps' 68 projects has been on paper.In the meantime, wildlife habitat continues to disappear, and pollution is killing native plants, allowing nonnative species to invade.

Oliver Stone: Bürgerliche Freiheiten sind perdu. 
Stone wurde in den USA wegen seines Films über Fidel Castro "Comandante" belangt. Er erzählt von der "Operation Northwood",  einer vom Pentagon geplanten Terrorkampagne, die Kuba in die Schuhe geschoben werden und so einen militärischen Schlag der USA gegen dieses Land auslösen sollte. Den Flugzeugattentäter (70 Tote) Orlando Bosch schützen sie nach wie vor. Seit Trumans "National Security Act" aus dem Jahre 1947 würde die Privatheit und die bürgerlichen Freiheiten "abgegraben". Die Bush-Regierung sieht er als Endpunkt in dieser Beziehung.

The Face of Empire
A talk presented at the session on "Contradictions and Antagonisms in the Present Phase of Capitalist Globalization" at the European Network for Alternative Thinking and Political Dialogue, November 7, 2002, Florence, Italy.
by William K. Tabb, Monthly Review Nov. 2002

Robot soldiers that the Pentagon is developing may invade hostile terrain, shoot enemies and care for wounded human comrades within the next decade, defense analysts say. By ALLISON BECKER, Cox News Service (in PBP, 9.7.07).
But there are some voices raised in opposition to such a future. By George McEvoy (Palm Beach Post, 14.707). "The idea of robots blasting each other into junk heaps may sound much more desirable than any more Bull Runs. But until they invent robots that bleed and feel pain, I think they will just make it easier to go to war."

An end to evil: Neokonservative wollen »vierten Weltkrieg« wieder ankurbeln. Richard Perles »Wie man den Krieg gegen den Terror gewinnt«. Von Knut Mellenthin, junge welt, 6.2.04

Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz: Dominance Ideology and Hegemonic Decay
Part I: The Economy 
Part II: Containment  

Messianic Imperialism - From the Euphrates to Armageddon
by Eric de Bear

Alain Gresh: La dimension religieuse. l'humanité, 8. Mars 2003

Der amerikanische Albtraum
Vom Millionär zum Milliardär: Befreit von allen Gleichheitsidealen, reißen die Reichen in den USA immer mehr Wohlstand an sich. Die Mittelschicht löst sich auf .
Von Paul Krugman
For Richer By Paul Krugman (NYT-Magazine, 20. Oct. 2002): mirrored and sources.

"Plan Colombia" angelaufen: Collateral Damage
Film betrachtet von Günter Langer

Fundamentalisten der neuen Mitte: Die dünne Luft der Opposition
Mike Davis

Bushs Gewissheiten: Allianzen und Optionen der US-Politik
Immanuel Wallerstein

A Brief History of Terrorism by the USA  by Howard Zinn

• Racism still not overcome in the USA:
  Blacks in the United States are imprisoned at more than five times the rate of whites, and Hispanics are locked up at nearly double the white rate, according to a study released Wednesday by a criminal justice policy group. The report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based think tank, found that states in the Midwest and Northeast have the greatest black-to-white disparity in incarceration. Iowa had the widest disparity in the nation, imprisoning blacks at more than 13 times the rate of whites.Such figures "reflect a failure of social and economic interventions to address crime effectively," as well as racial bias in the justice system, said Marc Mauer, the group's executive director. (David Pitt, AP, 18.7.07)
  
  

• Sicko - Michael Moores neuer Film über das US-Gesundheitssystem (taz, 2.7.07).
  

Messianic Imperialism - by Eric de Bear
Update: US-Evangelikale und der Libanon-Konflikt. Die "Road Map" führt nach Armageddon. (tagesschau, 5.8.06).
Apple-User sind überdurchschnittlich oft Anhänger der Intelligent-Design-Schöpfungslehre. Rund 53 % fühlen sich zu "Think different" der Neokreationisten hingezogen - so lautet das überraschende Ergebnis einer eben von der S.I.R.E-Stiftung (Foundation for Social Information Research Environment) veröffentlichten Studie. (TP, 1.4.07).

Richard Cummings: The Iron Triangle. So strong is the bond between lobbyists, defense contractors and the Pentagon that it is known in Washington as "the iron triangle." And this triangle inevitably gets what it wants. Why? Because in the revolving door system, a defense contractor executive can surface as an official in the Department of Defense, from which position he can give lucrative contracts to his former employer, and his prospects for an even better paying job in the private sector brighten. Former aides to members of congress become handsomely paid lobbyists for the companies they were able to help in their position on Capitol Hill. Such lobbyists can spread their corporate-funded largesse to the friendliest members and their aides on the Hill. And so on. These people make up the K Street oligarchy that, despite all the vituperative rhetoric in recent years about campaign finance reform and insidious special interests, run Washington. For the war companies, things have worked out perfectly. Whatever the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, business is booming. Not long after Bush took office, Lockheed Martin's revenues soared by more than 30 percent, as it was awarded $17 billion in contracts from the Department of Defense, a far cry from the lean years of the Clinton administration. (Playboy, 17.1.07). 
Look up for other members of the Iron Triangle (Boeing, Halliburton etc.) at corpwatch.org.

Angler - The Cheney Vice-Presidency, Part 1,  Part 2, (Washington Post, starting 24.6.07), or Dr. No, as Maureen Dowd called him: "Vice is casting himself as a constitutional chimera,  an extralegal creature with the body of a snake and a head of a sea monster." (NYT, 24.6.07).


Bush's granddaddy's Nazi front corporations .