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the amerikan way .....

‘You ask about the motivations, and that is one of the
patterns that comes through when you look at these things all together. 

There’s really a three-stage
motivation that I can see when I watch so many of the developments of these
coups. The first thing that happens is that the regime in question starts
bothering some American company. They start demanding that the company pay
taxes or that it observe labor laws or environmental laws. Sometimes that
company is nationalized or is somehow required to sell some of its land or its
assets. So the first thing that happens is that an American or a foreign
corporation is active in another country, and the government of that country
starts to restrict it in some way or give it some trouble, restrict its ability
to operate freely. 

Then, the leaders of that company
come to the political leadership of the United States to complain about the
regime in that country. In the political process, in the White House, the
motivation morphs a little bit. The U.S. government does not intervene directly
to defend the rights of a company, but they transform the motivation from an
economic one into a political or geo-strategic one. They make the assumption
that any regime that would bother an American company or harass an American
company must be anti-American, repressive, dictatorial, and probably the tool
of some foreign power or interest that wants to undermine the United States. So
the motivation transforms from an economic to a political one, although the
actual basis for it never changes. 

Then, it morphs one more time
when the U.S. leaders have to explain the motivation for this operation to the
American people. Then they do not use either the economic or the political
motivation usually, but they portray these interventions as liberation
operations, just a chance to free a poor oppressed nation from the brutality of
a regime that we assume is a dictatorship, because what other kind of a regime
would be bothering an American company?’ 

Overthrow -
America's Century Of Regime Change From Hawaii To Iraq

Waving, drowning and hoping

From the New York Times

Warily, Iraqis Investing Hope in New Leaders

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 23 — On the cusp of their first permanent government since the American-led invasion, Iraqis are not exactly celebrating. Rather, they seem to be gritting their teeth and clinging grimly to the battered hope for democracy, even in what many see as a strange and uncomfortable incarnation.

Iraq, said one Baghdad doctor, is a drowning man, and the prime minister-designate a floating plank.

"We have to hold on to the wood, even if it has nails," said the doctor, a rheumatologist named Riyadh al-Adhadh. "We need this wood, whatever its shape. It is all that prevents us from going under the sea."

The seven new political leaders chosen Saturday, including a president and prime minister, face tasks with obstacles so great that they appear nearly insurmountable.

The prime minister must appoint a government that can win the confidence of most of Iraq's diverse and feuding groups. Since the American invasion, the religious and ethnic divides of Iraqi society have worsened. The new Constitution was more peace treaty than democratic blueprint. In some areas, daily fighting and lawlessness are already considered civil war.

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Read more at the New York Times, Don't trust our Prime Minister

War, rather than money, used as "globalization" tool

From the Washington Post
Why Globalization Has Stalled

By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, April 24, 2006; Page A17

A few years ago, anti-globalization rioters were clogging the streets, disrupting the meetings of the world's multilateral organizations. Today, something more serious is afoot. The protesters have mercifully vanished, but international institutions are in disarray. Anti-globalization may have lost its voice, but so has globalization.

Start with the breakdown of trade negotiations. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001, the whole world agreed that rich countries should open up to poor exporters. But now the Doha Round of trade talks is virtually dead. This month's deadline for a breakthrough will be missed; the European Union has refused to offer serious cuts in farm tariffs, and the Bush administration has signaled that it's giving up by moving its trade czar to the budget office.

Now consider the International Monetary Fund. Critics from Tim Adams, the top international man at the Bush Treasury, to Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, declare that the IMF needs to justify its existence by shaming currency manipulators, foremost among them China. This is tantamount to saying that the IMF should close down, since there's no chance whatsoever that the Chinese are going to change their currency policy just because the IMF tells them to.

read more at the Washington post
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Gus says:
War is the tool used by the US to enforce "their" idea of globalisation...

senseless conflict ....

‘I read an article some time ago by William Lind in which he stated that America was behaving like Imperial Germany circa World War I. Specifically, he claimed we were embarking on an ill-focused strategic offensive that was accumulating new enemies faster than we could defeat the old ones.

When you look at a map and identify Germany’s adversaries in both world wars, it is staggering that a comparatively small nation tucked away in the corner of the Eurasian land mass actually believed it could win two successive wars against most of the rest of the planet.

But with a toxic mixture of arrogant leadership, cultural hubris, and rampant statism, all things are possible.

Since 9/11, America has embarked on a strategic offensive that is proving just as successful as the Kaiser’s. The neocons, who engineered the invasion and occupation of Iraq using falsified intelligence and cynical propaganda, have exposed America to the virulent hatred of virtually the entire Muslim world. The war has already claimed the lives of thousands of our soldiers, and its geometrically increasing costs threaten to bankrupt our government.’

Wilhelmian America