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Wednesday, August 20, 2008 |
EdinburghFestival: "The unbridled power that's overtaken the United States during the Bush years has caused the average American to suffer the loss of privacy and personal freedoms, higher hurdles for non-Americans trying to enter the country, and the indignities and offenses of extra-judicial renditions to black sites and places like Guantanamo."
RawThought: "James K. Galbraith's The Predator State is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the economics of our era. Galbraith sets himself the task, not only of exposing the discredited economic orthodoxies of our generation, but also documenting the economy as it really exists, and setting an agenda for the future."
MotherJones: "Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature - a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live."
Argus: "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 will be published Sept. 8 by Simon & Schuster with an announced first printing of 900,000 copies.
'There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision-making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers,' Woodward's longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said Tuesday. 'This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes.'"
ICH: "America is a country badly in need of therapy. We don't know who we are anymore; everything is topsy-turvy. It's like we're suffering a national identity crisis and need a turn on the couch. There's just been too much change too fast and no one really knows what's going on. Even stanch conservatives are in a daze from the daily overload of bad news.
Our national symbols have also taken a pasting since Bush took office; the American flag in particular. Old Glory used to embody our collective aspirations whether that meant 'traditional values' or 'liberty and justice'. But no more. Now the flag has become proprietary; the property of a small gaggle of neo-fascists and right-wing loonies who display their shiny brass lapel-pin on their chest to identify themselves to other like-minded wackos.
America needs to spend a little time on the couch reassembling its shattered psyche and reconnecting with its inner-self. That means, sorting through the rubble of the Bush years and getting back to basics; a strong commitment to justice, human rights and personal liberty."
11:52:12 AM 
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Guardian: "Silvio Berlusconi's government was today engaged in a vigorous damage limitation exercise after Pope Benedict appeared to lend his immense moral authority to speculation that Italy was in danger of returning to fascism under the tycoon's hardline, rightwing leadership.
In his customary midday Sunday address, the pontiff expressed concern at 'recent examples of racism' and reminded Catholics it was their duty to steer others in society away from 'racism, intolerance and [the] exclusion [of others]'."
11:17:42 AM
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Yesterday The New York Times had a link to one of my Georgian posts on their Saakashvili page. It still is available on their Blogrunner page. Of course this is just their apology for a proper analysis of the situation and in particular for the advice they give on their pages for the future. Sowing hatred is the main object of the mainstream media. Common sense, reason and justice are still conspicuous by their absence. Which again shows the West is usually the cause of wars.
WorldNetDaily: "The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.
Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war."
It is the purpose of NATO to prevent war. If they continue annexing the states around Russia, it is bound to cause more conflicts. Russia has the right to peaceful borders. Warmongering nations don't belong in NATO.
TheNewAmericanEmpire: "The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a relic of the Cold War. It was created on April 4, 1949 as a defensive alliance of Western Europe countries plus Canada and the United States to protect the former countries from encroachments by the Soviet Union.
But since 1991, the Soviet empire no longer exists and Russia has been cooperating economically with Western European countries, supplying them with gas and oil, and all types of commodities. This has increased European economic interdependence and thus greatly reduced the need for such a defensive military alliance above and beyond European countries' own self-defense military system.
But the U.S. government does not see things that way. It would prefer keeping its role as Europe's patronizing protector and as the world's sole superpower. NATO is a convenient tool to that effect. But maybe the world should be worried about those who go around the planet with a can of gasoline in one hand and a box of matches in the other, pretending to sell fire insurance.
As of now, it is a fact that the U.S. government and the American foreign affairs nomenklatura see NATO as an important tool of American foreign policy of intervention around the world. Since many American politicians do not anymore support de facto the United Nations as the supreme international organization devoted to maintaining peace in the world, a U.S.-controlled NATO would seem to be, in their eyes, a most attractive substitute to the United Nations for providing a legal front for their otherwise illegal offensive military undertakings around the world. They prefer to control totally a smaller organization such as NATO, even though it has become a redundant institution, than to have to make compromises at the U.N., where the U.S nevertheless has one of the five vetoes on the Security Council.
That is the strong rationale behind the proposals to reshape, reorient and enlarge NATO, in order to transform it into a flexible tool of American foreign policy. This is another demonstration that redundant institutions have a life of their own. Indeed, when the purpose for which they have been initially established no longer exists, new purposes are invented to keep them going.
In conclusion, it would seem that the humanist idea of having peace, free trade and international law as the foundations of the world order is being cast aside in favor of a return to great power politics and gunboat diplomacy. This is a 100-year setback."
Saakashvili is a warmonger and does not deserve a place in NATO. The Georgian people should understand that Saakashvili is using them in his dirty game, that Saakashvili will set the Georgian population out for more dangers. Georgia should depose Saakashvili now.
Guardian: "Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country.
US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.
To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do."
Wars are big industry now. Disaster capitalism is a sign of the crumbling integrity, sense and morality of the West. The West is losing it. Its concern for human rights, freedom, democracy has clearly been shown to be false propaganda. What it is all about is brutal greed, imperialism that tries to mobilise the civilians by tremendous propaganda campaigns to convince us their imperialism is benign, and that there is an enemy at the gates, be it in Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China or Pakistan. And America seems to consider all nations as enemies, if they don't do what Big Brother says.
Israel too has become an aggressive nation. From victim it has become the aggressor and is doing the same to the rightful owners of Palestine as the Germans did to the Jews. It's a crying shame. Israel has been training the Georgian army for war.
YNet: "Former Israeli soldier returns disillusioned from training Georgian soldiers for company owned by Brig.-Gen. Hirsch in preparation for war with Russia; says confidential army material such as charts, officers' names was revealed to foreign troops.
Defensive Shield [is] a company owned and operated by Brigadier General (Res.) Gal Hirsch, to help train Georgian soldiers for battle.
Defense Shield stated in response that 'all of the company's actions were approved by the Defense Ministry, including the materials transferred to the training companies'."
One important and very dangerous element in military warfare is the privatization of war. Former generals, commanders now have their private 'security companies', which are nothing but mercenary armies. These evade proper democratic control. War is just a step away with these hotheads in command. For them war is a profitable business.
Haaretz: "Last week, Haaretz ran an article by Aluf Benn about the United States warning Israel not to pull any surprises and attack Iran without informing the Americans ahead of time. Israel's response was snooty and defiant: 'Israel reserves the right to take whatever action it deems necessary if other efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear program fail.'
The ink was not yet dry on Israel's macho reply before Russia invaded Georgia, spewing anti-Western rhetoric and threats that it would also attack Poland if the United States carried out its plan to deploy missiles in former Soviet bloc countries refusing to bow to Moscow's authority.
There is a lesson for Israel in all this: If Israel is dragged into a war, God forbid, it is liable to find itself very much alone. Israel cannot rely on the automatic involvement of America, which did not lift a finger to stop the brutal Russian offensive."
'Brutal Russian offensive'? Israel has been very brutal in the past and still is brutal in the most indecent way. They trained and armed the Georgian army too. The Russian repsonse to Saakashvili's attack was proportionate and nothing but a mere signal Russia wouldn't accept further attacks on the independence of South Ossetia. It was a short but decisive response, unlike the bloody carnage Israel and the West are dispensing on a daily basis.
11:15:18 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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