Amerika, zemlja velika

[April]

Sinoć na RTS - Bush, Olivera Stouna. Kakav god stav imali prema filmu, prilično zanimljiv izbor za prajmtajm 11.septembra.

[iDemo]

ISIS je napravio pun pogodak sa onim snimcima.

Jasno. Ti snimci ce nekome (ako vec nisu) da zavrse neki posao... To tako ide™.

[x500]

U svetlu dugotrajne borbe protiv islamskog terorizma:
http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=255489

[Eraserhead]

NEW YORK – The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush’s response to the attacks compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

 

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

 

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America’s war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900 billion. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

 

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax “relief” for the wealthy.

Today, America is focused on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America’s future can, in no small measure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key reason why America went from a fiscal surplus of 2% of GDP when Bush was elected to its parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 trillion – $17,000 for every US household – with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50%.

 

Moreover, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Trillion Dollar War, the wars contributed to America’s macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the US.

 

But then the US Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang that resulted.

 

Ironically, the wars have undermined America’s (and the world’s) security, again in ways that Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive America about the wars’ costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures – say, for armored and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives, or for adequate health care for returning veterans. A US court recently ruled that veterans’ rights have been violated. (Remarkably, the Obama administration claims that veterans’ right to appeal to the courts should be restricted!)

 

Military overreach has predictably led to nervousness about using military power, and others’ knowledge of this threatens to weaken America’s security as well. But America’s real strength, more than its military and economic power, is its “soft power,” its moral authority. And this, too, was weakened: as the US violated basic human rights like habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called into question.

 

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US and its allies knew that long-term victory required winning hearts and minds. But mistakes in the early years of those wars complicated that already-difficult battle. The wars’ collateral damage has been massive: by some accounts, more than a million Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly, because of the war. According to some studies, at least 137,000 civilians have died violently in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last ten years; among Iraqis alone, there are 1.8 million refugees and 1.7 million internally displaced people.

 

Not all of the consequences were disastrous. The deficits to which America’s debt-funded wars contributed so mightily are now forcing the US to face the reality of budget constraints. America’s military spending still nearly equals that of the rest of the world combined, two decades after the end of the Cold War. Some of the increased expenditures went to the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader Global War on Terrorism, but much of it was wasted on weapons that don’t work against enemies that don’t exist. Now, at last, those resources are likely to be redeployed, and the US will likely get more security by paying less.

 

Al Qaeda, while not conquered, no longer appears to be the threat that loomed so large in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But the price paid in getting to this point, in the US and elsewhere, has been enormous – and mostly avoidable. The legacy will be with us for a long time. It pays to think before acting.

 

 

 

[Zaz_pi]

Sada ce jos ispasti da je Bus i rat u Iraku kriv za balon nekretnina a ne pucanje balona interneta i ono sto je uradio Klinton sa sve manipulacijom racunanja inflacije kako bi se smanjio budzetski deficit, pustanja Kineza ka STO, deregulacije koje su dovele do razlicitih balona(mada je to zapoceo Regan a Klinton nastavio)...

By Robert E. Scott | February 1, 2000

No one can predict the future. But the Clinton Administration is confidently forecasting that the huge U.S. trade deficit with China will improve if Congress accords China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) in order to accommodate Beijing’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). President Clinton claims that the recently signed trade agreement with China “creates a win-win result for both countries” (Clinton 2000, 9). He argues that exports to China “now support hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” and that “these figures can grow substantially with the new access to the Chinese market the WTO agreement creates” (Clinton 2000, 10). Others in the White House, such as Kenneth Liberthal, the special advisor to the president and senior director for Asia affairs at the National Security Council, echo Clinton’s assessment:

“Let’s be clear as to why a trade deficit might decrease in the short term. China exports far more to the U.S. than it imports [from] the U.S….It will not grow as much as it would have grown without this agreement and over time clearly it will shrink with this agreement.”1

 

Inace, lepo je bilo dok su Kinezi kao robovi pravili robu za Wal-Mart a kamate onda otisle nisko jer inflacija pada, pa kupujes pet SUV, tri kuce na kredu a ono cena vecno raste, pa preprodajes pa si jos bogatiji, berza raste li raste zbog niskih kamata a ti ulazes i zaradjujes... Ali, nije se bas ocekivalo da ce ekonomski toliko puci kao 2008.

Kamate u SAD su pocele da skacu za vreme polovine osmogodisnjeg Busovog mandata. kada je on ulazio u Belu kucu kada su kamate pocele da padaju jer je FED poceo da panici zbog pucanja interneta i Nasdaqa jos 2000.  Od 2004 FED pocinje da podize kamate sto se poklapa sa ratom u Iraku cime pocinje da utice na pucanje balona nekretnina a ne stvaranje. Skok cena nafte nije toliko uslovljen Irakom, jes us Saudijci, ti verni saveznici, podigli znacajno prozivodnju, kao sto su i Rusi dizali, vec zbog neverovatnog rasta potraznje Kine i Katrine, a onda i spekulacije.

Slicna stvar sa pucanjem raznih balona ce se desiti kada Centralne banke zapadnih zemalja pocnu da dizu kamate u buducnosti sa istorijskih minimuma samo mnogo gore jer je gomila privatnog duga prebacen na drzavu a privatni dug nije znacajno pao, stavise, opet se pumpa.

Napad na Irak nije imao logiku u Al Kaidi vec u nafti zbog bliskog vrhunca svetske proizvodnje, barem jeftine konvencionalne nafte. Za SAD je to bila neophodnost u tom trenutku kada apsolutno dominiraju i verovatno samo u tome vide neku opasnost. U sta se to pretvorilo je druga stvar ali dovoljno govori i o toj tako mocnoj US Army i raznim stratezima tamo, sto je sve preterano.

Bus je zapoceo pricu sa skriljcima a Obama je pokusao da to obustavi na neki nacin, sada se time hvali. E, sada mozda ce ispostaviti da je Obama bio u pravu za par godina iz gomile razloga ali ne onih na koje je on mislio kada se protivio.

Ove pricice su tipicne za americku javnu scenu gde propaganda dominira. To se danas najbolje moze pratiti na primeru Sirije.

Edited September 14, 2014 by Zaz_pi

[189-]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-utah-police-shooting-20140914-story.html

 

nastavlja se...

[Eraserhead]

Danas na predavanju iz poslovnog prava profesor navodi slucajeve u kojima je dozvoljena diskriminacija i jedan od razloga je "clanstvo u Komunistickoj partiji". Naravno ljudi u sali su poceli da se smeju i nisu mogli da veruju da je tako nesto jos na snazi. Dakle u Americi ako si clan Komunisticke partije to moze biti razlog za otkaz.

[Zaz_pi]

Da li tako nesto postoji za neonaci i profasisticke organizacije u SAD?

[Eraserhead]

Da li tako nesto postoji za neonaci i profasisticke organizacije u SAD?

 

Ne znam da budem iskren. Mozda postoji neka zaostavstina iz WW2. Doduse komunizam je novijeg datuma.

[Zaz_pi]

Znaci taj primer nije naveo?

[Eraserhead]

Znaci taj primer nije naveo?

 

Ne.

[Zaz_pi]

Zahvaljujem

[Turnbull]

Kakav promašaj, Zazek. Da, naravno da članstvo u fašističkim organizacijama nije navedeno kao opravdan razlog, ali ne zato što je Amerika bila mekša prema fašizmu nego prema komunizmu (mada je i to tema za diskusiju, naravno), nego zato što je komunizam doživljavala kao živog i aktivnog konkurenta u borbi za hearts&minds, a fašizam - nije. U neku ruku to pokazuje pre bliskost liberalizma i komunizma u borbi oko nasleđa prosvetiteljstva. Komunisti su tu, i kunu su u isto što i mi - slobodu, jednakost, sreću za sve, itd. zato i jesu opasni. Fašisti su tamo neki čobani, budale, ne samo da su poraženi, nego ih ne vidimo uopšte kao ozbiljnu ideološku konkurenciju.

[iDemo]

Kakav promašaj, Zazek. Da, naravno da članstvo u fašističkim organizacijama nije navedeno kao opravdan razlog, ali ne zato što je Amerika bil

mekša prema fašizmu nego prema komunizmu (mada je i to tema za diskusiju, naravno), nego zato što je komunizam doživljavala kao živog i aktivnog konkurenta u borbi za hearts&minds, a fašizam - nije. U neku ruku to pokazuje pre bliskost liberalizma i komunizma u borbi oko nasleđa prosvetiteljstva. Komunisti su tu, i kunu su u isto što i mi - slobodu, jednakost, sreću za sve, itd. zato i jesu opasni. Fašisti su tamo neki čobani, budale, ne samo da su poraženi, nego ih ne vidimo uopšte kao ozbiljnu ideološku konkurenciju.

Ne samo sto su (pravi) fashisti porazeni nego su najbolji od njih (koji nisu zavrsili na vesalima i/ili u Juznoj Americi) inkorporirani u "nashe" redove - za svaki slucaj a za potrebe borbe protiv komunizma...

 

 

 

Allegiance  German Empire (to 1918)

 Weimar Republic (to 1933)

 Nazi Germany (to 1944)

 West Germany

 NATO

[Zaz_pi]

Erasere, koje je jos primere pominjao cenjeni profesor, ako nije tesko da odgovoris?