1) From: antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
A scary bold article on USA interventionist tactics and how the Clintonistas used such tactics to tear apart the nation of Yugoslavia!
Kosovo: A European Narco State
When Kosovo proclaimed its "independence" in February, the Western media hailed the provocative dismemberment of Serbia, a move that completed the destruction of Yugoslavia by the United States, the European Union and NATO, as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. If by "peace" one means impunity for rampaging crime syndicates or by "stability," the freedom of action with no questions asked by U.S. and NATO military and intelligence agencies, not to mention economic looting on a grand scale by freewheeling multinational corporations, then Kosovo has it all! From its inception, the breakaway Serb province has served as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on spreading their tentacles East, encircling Russia and penetrating the former spheres of influence of the ex-Soviet Union. As a template for contemporary CIA destabilization operations in Georgia and Ukraine, prospective EU members and NATO "partners," Kosovo should serve as a warning for those foolish enough to believe American clichés about "freedom" or the dubious benefits of "globalization." Camp Bondsteel, located on rolling hills and farmland near the city of Ferizaj/Urosevac, is the largest U.S. military installation on the European continent. Visible from space, in addition to serving as an NSA listening post pointed at Russia and as the CIA's operational hub in the Balkans and beyond, some observers believe that Andreas J.'s notebook may have contained information that Camp Bondsteel continues to serve as a CIA "black site." One motive for rolling up the BND intelligence operation may have been U.S. fears that this toxic information would become public, putting paid U.S. claims that it no longer kidnaps and tortures suspected "terrorists."
The complete article can be found at antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
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From wood s lot (one of our favs)--the Right-Wing Nutjobs in Canada
Harpers Putsch
Eugene Plawiuk
Since winning power in 2006, albeit as a minority government, Stephen Harper has been set on gaining a majority to keep HIM in power as PM. That first summer his reading included a biography of Stalin, the Man of Steel._______________________________________________________________And like Stalin his recent political machinations reminded me of the intriques in the Bolshevik Party as Stalin played off alliances of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Bukharin, and other central committee and politburo members, against each other to maintain power.
In porouging parli[a]ment he saved his job and his government...for the moment.
And despite his protestations about saving demo[c]racy, his actions are the opposite. Which is typical of the right wing, who use language to mean its opposite. For instance Freedom of Information acts passed by right wing governments are anything but that, they actually limit freedom of informantion and access. Just as the Harperocrites transparency and accountability act is anything but.
And right wing parties manufacture political crisies in order to create the conditions to either take power or stay in power.
So when Harper talks about democracy he means something other than parliamentary democracy. Rather he looks south and want to create a PMO with the power of the U.S. Presidency.(....)
... let us recap the Harper government is a minority, the majority of Canadians voted for the opposition. They don't want another election, only Harper does because he has the money to run one. He wants an election not to govern but to finally kill the Liberal party, to run a stake through its heart so it will not rise again.
And that is all his political agenda was ever about. So lets not hear anymore about defending democracy, or being best suited to solve the economic crisis, which he denied we were in and still has not offered any solutions for. Or that he is fighting for Canadian unity against nasty separatists that he was willing to join with to defeat the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin.
Let us understand that Harper and his cronies seek power for its own sake, to mold Canada in their neo-con image. He has pulled off a parlimentary putsch to stay in power. We need a strong coalition to defeat him and replace him in January.
From an Indic Studies site: www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITrethinkingframeset.htm
Rethinking America:
A Trans-Civilizational Approach
by Makarand Paranjape
Centre of Linguistics and English,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
What this Essay Proposes to Do
This essay proposes a different way of conducting American Studies in India than what has been prevalent for the last several decades. I do so not in the manner of a "position paper" that strives to be "objective and empirical," but of a rather subjective, informed narrative of my own encounter with the discipline of American Studies in India.
I began thinking about this topic seriously after I was invited to spend a month at the American Studies Research Centre 1, Hyderabad, in June 1997. The best part of this time at the ASRC was occupied in trying to understand how American Studies were conducted in India. I looked at Ph.D. Dissertations, at books written by Indian scholars on American authors, and also at the history of the discipline in India. 2 In the vast amount of material I collected and examined, I found that there were very few essays on the philosophy and methodology of American Studies in India. Instead, throughout, I encountered the facile assumption that American Studies was a stable area whose aims and methods are to be taken for granted. Such an attitude was in stark contrast with the lively and interminable debates on the nature of American Studies within the U.S. academy itself. 3 Very little, if any, of this excitement carried over to the discipline in India. On the contrary, what seemed prevalent was a sort of (un)healthy careerism to the whole issue of studying the U.S. There is nothing the matter with such pragmatism if it produces decent scholarship. But, I am afraid, that despite the volume of work done by Indians on topics American, there is very little of lasting value or merit. A simple indication of this is that work by Indian scholars of American Studies is rarely cited in research by Americans themselves, nor have we produced any standard work of reference or a "classic" secondary text in the field. 4
This whole issue, I realized, was deeply entangled with some of my perennial preoccupations: Swaraj and the decolonizing of the Indian mind; the dignity and selfhood of the Indian intellectual enterprise; and, ultimately, the struggle between civilizations and ways of apprehending the world in this global environment. That is why I have taken a more active interest in how American Studies are done--or ought to be done--in India and by Indians. My concern is thus with the politics of cultural exchange and the methodology that I employ to critique American Studies in India might be described loosely as the history of ideas and institutions.
But before I outline my own approach, which I have tentatively called "trans-civilizational," I should like to go to the very inception of American Studies in this country. I shall do this to show that the sorts of concerns that I bring to bear on this area are by no means my impositions upon the discipline; instead, they are a part of the original debates about the shape and content of American Studies in India.
Continue reading at link atop this article; pretty interesting; who'd a thought they had American Studies programs in India!
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Sunday, December 07, 2008
The GOP --a Parasite That Murdered Its Host
Only the GOP in America or the Nazi party in Germany could have destroyed a nation so efficiently and have the nerve to brag about it. Now, as we prepare to witness a collapse not seen since that of Rome, we conclude that Bush Jr finished the job begun by Reagan, that is the economic destruction of the United States --its economy, its education, its source of wealth, its future, its security!Government stats prove conclusively that Reagan's tax cuts enriched ONLY his base and began the pernicious trend in which only the very, very rich benefit. The nation plunged into a depression of some two years, the longest and worst depression since Hoover's big one of the 1930s.
Though he had promised to reduce the size of government, Reagan doubled the federal bureaucracy, ran up yearly deficits, doubled the national debt and tripled the deficit. Now --at the end of an era characterized by incompetent GOP 'supply side' economics, a mere one percent of the nation owns more than 90 percent of the population combined. Reagan blazed the trail for George W. Bush, the lesser of two prominent idiots who discredited the election process by --somehow --managing to get into the White House!
With the help of turncoat Democrats along the way, a parasite killed its host. GOP policy and organization killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. There are several words for this. 'Stupid' is one of them! Some basic economics may be necessary to put all this into perspective. First of all --the 'science' of economics may be reduced to a single, simple equation: supply and demand! In Algebraic terms: supply equals demand. Every economy will seek that equilibrium. When an economy produces a surplus i.e, more than can be or will be consumed, prices decline to compensate. When an economy produces too little to meet demand, prices will increase to compensate. For this reason 'supply side economics', so adored by the GOP at least since Ronald Reagan, does not work, will not work and has, in fact, never worked as advertised. Tax cuts benefiting only so-called producers cannot and will never stimulate purchases if there is no real need or demand. Excess revenues will find their way into offshore bank accounts or other tax dodges available only to the nation's increasingly tiny elite. The history of the US since the ascension of Ronald Reagan, an era of GOP incompetence and mendacity, proves conclusively that tax cuts inspired by 'supply side economics' or, as it is often called, 'trickle down theory' never, ever stimulated production or increased employment in any industry at any time. It was and remains a hoax!
Since 1980 and the rise of 'supply side economics' (trickle down theory) America lost its leadership and/or prominent roles in electronics, steel production, automotive production, aircraft production --about every industry that can be named! It bears repeating: 'supply side tax cuts' have never and will never stimulate an economy in any way. Even Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, called 'supply side economics' a 'trojan horse' espoused by 'a noisy faction of Republicans'.'Supply side economics' guarantee that the supply of money circulating in the economy is reduced by an amount equal to that of the value of the tax cut! Here is why that is so: value is created by work --not investment. [See: The Labor Theory of Value] This was Karl Marx's position and, as recent events have proven conclusively, Karl Marx was absolutely correct. Marx was correct because he had learned the basic equation that all economics may be reduced to: supply equals demand!
_____________________To read the rest: existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/
The cowboy's pretty hip to his Economics, though he can get a little simplistic--though, like we've said here at The Daily Growler, it's all so simple it's difficult.
New Photos from tgw:
thestaff(ofhumansandhorses)for The Daily Growler
1 comment:
Always love your NYC photos, BLOGrowler.
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