Tag: obama

Chomsky on Hegemony or Survival

chasdarwinLeave a comment

MIT Professor, author, scholar and philosopher Noam Chomsky:

“The survival of the human species is by no means an obvious thing. There are very severe threats to survival. We learn about them all the time. The threat of environmental destruction is much too real to put to the side. The threat of destruction by weapons of mass destruction — that has come very close many times. We just learned at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, a terminal nuclear war was averted by one word by one submarine commander who countermanded the order to send off nuclear missiles. ”

… So, survival of the species is by no means a sure thing. Decent survival. Well, what’s hegemony? Hegemony has to do with the domination of the International system by small sectors of power. At the moment there happens to be one superpower, but it does not dominate the rest of the world in all dimensions, but overwhelmingly dominates it in one dimension: Namely, the military dimension.  Unfortunately, if you look at the factors that surround hegemony, the short term goals to maximize profit, to increase control of the world and so on, and ask how those goals will play out, turns out they do threaten survival,” said Chomsky.

Let us work, in this Brave New World of domestic sanity and international diplomacy that is the Obama administration, toward survival, writes this author. 

From Raw Story:

 http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Chomsky_Humanitys_survival_by_no_means_0227.html

Out of the Wilderness, Up from supply side economics

chasdarwinLeave a comment

From the NY Times( DAVID LEONHARDT) :

“The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.

The Obama budget — a bold, even radical departure from recent history, wrapped in bureaucratic formality and statistical tables — would sharply raise taxes on the rich, beyond where Bill Clinton had raised them. It would reduce taxes for everyone else, to a lower point than they were under either Mr. Clinton or George W. Bush. And it would lay the groundwork for sweeping changes in health care and education, among other areas.

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years. They do so first by rewriting the tax code and, over the longer term, by trying to solve some big causes of the middle-class income slowdown, like high medical costs and slowing educational gains.”

The author, having read David Stockman’s book, hesitates to credit Reagan with anything likeideas or policy, as he clearly did not even understand either word.

“Happy Days are here again!”

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/business/economy/27policy.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

A bad week for the GOP is a good week for you & me

chasdarwinLeave a comment

From:Huff Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jenkins/worst-week-ever-republica_b_170378.html

“When Republicans suffered a disastrous beating in November’s election, it would have been fair to assume that things could not get worse for them: the-most-liberal-Senator was to be president, Nancy-Pelosi-from-San-Francisco was going to lead a massive Democratic majority in the House, and assorted socialists were going to run things. That was bad, yes, but this week, just like the stock market (funny how that goes), Republicans hit yet a new low. In recent days, Republican leaders were called cheesy, off-putting, disastrous, untrustworthy, and inconsequential, not by Democrats, but by their party’s own members, from high-profile commentators to Governors.

The highlight of the GOP week was, of course, Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to Barack Obama’s Congressional address. The best that can be said for Jindal’s performance is that it channeled Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, presumably not the objective, even for someone who willingly changed his name to “Bobby.” ”

As the author is not hip to ’30 Rock’ (Rock yes, 30 no), I don’t dig the Page ref, but love the verbage.

Progress at last

chasdarwinLeave a comment

From Alternet, five progressive moves from the administration that Fox Noise, etc., might have missed.

Infrastructure:

o 9.3 Billion for high speed rail

o 7 Billion for Broadband

Establishment clause:

o redoing of  ‘faith based’ initiatives

Drug enforcement:

o New czar in town – has reform as agenda

Arms Control

o Sent Kissenger to Moscow to negotiate.

Thanks, see:

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/127848/?page=1