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Obama health bill sets the
stage for assault on Medicare and Social Security
24 March 2010
wsws.com
The passage of the Obama administration’s health care bill
has been greeted with a wave of media commentary hailing the measure
as a milestone in progressive social reform and a political triumph
for Barack Obama.
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“A historic first step,” editorialized
the Los Angeles Times. “Health Care Reform, at Last”
was the headline of the
New York Times’ editorial. As always, the revving up of the
American media to overwhelm and manipulate popular consciousness
has been impressive.
If anything, the major organs of international finance capital have
been even more effusive. Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman
published a commentary in which he writes, “By pushing through
a social reform that eluded generations of presidents from Teddy
Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Mr. Obama can now point to a genuinely
historic achievement.” The Financial Times editorial board
published a similar piece, under the headline “Obama secures
his place in history.”
Behind the celebrations of the health care overhaul lies a definite
perspective. The authors of these commentaries see the legislation
as a major step in confronting profound problems facing American
and world capitalism. They are hailing what they consider a breakthrough
in reining in massive US deficits that are destabilizing the world
financial system.
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Militarizing Latin
America
by Noam Chomsky
Global
Research, March 25, 2010
ZSpace - 2010-03-24
The United States was founded as an "infant empire,"
in George Washington's words. The conquest of the national
territory was a grand imperial venture, much like the vast
expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. From the earliest
days, control over the Western Hemisphere was a critical goal.
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Ambitions expanded during World War II, as the US displaced
Britain and lesser imperial powers. High-level planners concluded
that the US should "hold unquestioned power" in
a world system including not only the Western Hemisphere,
but also the former British Empire and the Far East, and later,
as much of Eurasia as possible.
A primary goal of NATO was to block moves towards European
independence, along Gaullist lines. That became still more
clear when the USSR collapsed, and with it the Russian threat
that was the formal justification of NATO. NATO was not disbanded,
but rather expanded, in violation of promises to Mikhail Gorbachev
that NATO would not even fully extend to East Germany, let
alone beyond, and that "NATO would be transforming itself
into a more political organization." By now it is virtually
an international intervention force under US command, its
self-defined jurisdiction reaching to control energy sources,
pipelines, and sea lanes. And Europe is a well-disciplined
junior partner.
Throughout the expansion of US Empire, Latin America retained
its primacy in global planning. As Washington was considering
the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1971,
Nixon's National Security Council observed that if the US
couldn't control Latin America, how could it expect "to
achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world?" That
policy has become more severe with recent South American moves
towards integration, a prerequisite for independence, and
establishment of more varied international ties, while also
beginning to address severe internal disorders, most importantly,
the traditional rule of a rich Europeanized minority over
a sea of misery and suffering.
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IMF
Head Calls For Huge Global Warming Slush Fund
Strauss-Kahn says interim funding necessary before imposition
of carbon taxes
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison
Planet.com
Monday, March 8, 2010
International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn today called
for a huge global warming slush fund to be established as an interim
measure before carbon taxes are implemented in the name of preventing
weather disasters related to alleged man-made climate change.
Speaking in Nairobi Kenya today, “Strauss-Kahn said the Fund
is concerned about the huge amount of funding needed and the effect
that will have on the global economy,” reports the Associated
Press.
The IMF chief said that an outline paper would be published later
this week which would detail how countries would adopt a quota system
“which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase
carbon taxes or other fundraising methods”.
Strauss-Kahn said that the measure was merely a stop-gap in anticipation
of the longer term implementation of carbon taxes, that is a global
levy on the very substance we exhale.
“We all know that (carbon taxes and other fundraising methods)
will take time and we don’t have this time. So we need something
which looks like an interim solution, which will bridge the gap
between now and the time when those carbon taxes will be big enough
to solve the problem,” Strauss-Kahn said. “And that
is exactly what the IMF proposal is dealing with.”
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