Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Ending of America's Financial-Military Empire

By MICHAEL HUDSON
The city of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the end of the road for the tsars but of American hegemony too; as the place not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.

Challenging America is the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the so-called BRIC nations --Brazil, Russia, India and China.
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13 comments:

  1. DancingOpossumJune 17, 2009 at 8:35 AM

    Chris Hedges has a real doom-and-gloom prediction for what's in store for America if this happens:

    Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

    These countries, Hedges writes, have had it with propping up a weak dollar in order to let the U.S. keep expanding military operations against the very countries propping up its spending:

    What the new system will be remains unclear, but the flight from the dollar has clearly begun. The goal, in the words of the Russian president, is to build a “multipolar world order” which will break the economic and, by extension, military domination by the United States.

    Some have said he's being overly pessimistic, but maybe it's worth listening to some doom and gloom. I haven't bought any of the "green shoots" happy talk the corporate media and politicians have been peddling, and if things could get this bad, I want to know.

    Besides, I'm not at all convinced that an end to the U.S. Empire would be a bad thing. Horrific in personal terms to many Americans, yes, and a huge price to pay, no doubt, but maybe if we know it's coming we can take steps to minimize the suffering.

    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt/

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  2. vJune 17, 2009 at 11:00 AM

    You know it is amazing how events eventually bend to what I have been saying for years -

    THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES

    http://notinhisname.blogdrive.com/archive/cm-12_cy-2007_m-12_d-04_y-2007_o-0.html

    However, I do not want anyone to get the impression that I know anything

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  3. anandJune 17, 2009 at 11:07 AM

    v, China, India, Brazil and Russia are rising empires.

    The rise of China, India, Brazil and Russia is very good for the world and America. Faster economic growth and technological innovation in China, India and Brazil facilitates more rapid technological innovation inside the US and higher US and global living standards.

    To the degree China, India and Brazil are willing to play a larger role in solving global problems and in the provision of global public goods, this benefits the US and the world.

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  4. Jemmy HopeJune 17, 2009 at 11:26 AM

    Coming soon, the petro-euro, the collapse of the US economy, and a bottle of whiskey and a revolver for fleming.
    (Cue the sound of helicopters and the doom-laden voice of Jim Morrison)
     

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  5. vzaJune 17, 2009 at 7:03 PM

    TGIA, have you banned fleming?

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  6. Jemmy HopeJune 18, 2009 at 7:00 AM

    I hope not, he can condense all that neo-con bullshit into a few pithy sentences for us ,and save us having to soil ourselves by wading through it to learn what the idiocracy is thinking. (Idiocracy, a word I learned on this forum)

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  7. anandJune 18, 2009 at 7:41 AM

    Fleming is no neocon. He is some type of extreme nativist who is deeply suspicious of Americans who disagree with him. He is also deeply suspicious of foreigners.

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  8. DancingOpossumJune 18, 2009 at 9:17 AM

    In other words, he's deeply suspicious of everyone.

    Jemmy, I think "idiocracy" comes from the movie of that name?

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  9. r.s.June 18, 2009 at 9:55 PM

    so um whats up tgia?

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  10. vJune 18, 2009 at 10:04 PM

    If you have any inkling that this is being accomplished, you are an imbecile.

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  11. Jemmy HopeJune 19, 2009 at 4:15 AM

    I see, Idiocracy the movie. I thought it referred to Bush and co. Still ...

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  12. vJune 20, 2009 at 12:37 PM

    WHY DOLLAR HEGEMONY IS UNHEALTHY

    http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7610

    ReplyDelete
  13. MaracatuJune 20, 2009 at 7:29 PM

    This is excellent.  I had overlooked it before.

    ReplyDelete