Americans like to think of their country as a "beacon of freedom" in the world. In fact, the two words that President Bush likes to use in his speeches are "freedom" and "victory". The problem is, those words ring hollow when the President himself has decided to circumvent the law and spy on American citizens. Some in the mainstream media have become alarmed and are warning of a police state:
The White House needs to tell the Pentagon promptly to destroy the records of protesters as required, within three months. It also needs promptly to tell the NSA to return to following the rules, to get the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before monitoring Americans’ communications. The idea that all of this is being done to us in the name of national security doesn’t wash; that is the language of a police state. Those are the unacceptable actions of a police state.
The consequences of this surveillance is already being felt on college campuses in terms of what students may be permitted to read:
NEW BEDFORD — A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
These events are not being lost on America’s alliance partners in Europe. An American diplomat writes from Berlin:
I feel compelled to share with you what the world looks like from Berlin, where as the dutiful employee at a powerful American NGO, I have witnessed America’ soft power in Europe evaporate in the period of roughly four months.
It began with Katrina. It continues with al-Masri (still a burgeoning scandal in Germany for those who have forgotten about it back home). And now this spying nonsense. Sure, we’ll continue to score our high-level meetings with Merkel and Steinmeier, and we’ll get our chance to lobby them for our niche cause. But it’s our niche cause that gives us the access, otherwise we wouldn’t have a prayer meeting with these folks. The truth of it is, what I see in the eyes of our European partners is something much more humiliating than I could have imagined: pity. They know we didn’t have anything to do with this crap. And they still meet with us anyway. But whatever moral authority our organization carried with it on the basis of being American is completely gone. America is now a nation well beyond law, abusive of its own citizens, indifferent to mass suffering, and rolling along without any regard for, well, anything.
[…]The US has nearly exhausted its soft power in Europe. (Some may argue that Merkel is pro-American, but let’s keep in mind she only represents 32 percent of Germany. The rest of the German political class looks at us like we’re abused and fearful wives held at the nape by a beast of a husband.)
Telepolis has a good overview in German of President Bush’s latest assault on American civil liberties. Meanwhile, (via Atlantic Review) historian Tony Judt, in a recent interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, labels the United States a Third World country. I have to admit that the Bush administration has done irreparable damage to our standing in the world. ( I will write a review of Tony Judt’s excellent Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 in a future post).
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This is an article I have published in http://www.ohmynews.com
kind regards
Hartmut Kaiser
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
The War in Iraq and the Dollar’s Slide
[Opinion] Historically, inflation was often preceded by wars
Hartmut Kaiser (emperor) Email Article Print Article
Published 2007-05-02 11:35 (KST)
Throughout most of the Vietnam War, the U.S. dollar was fixed to the value of gold under the Bretton Woods Agreement (one ounce of gold for $35). But by 1971, as the costs of the Vietnam War skyrocketed and the U.S. financed the war by debt and an increase in the money supply (dollars), the administration under President Richard Nixon had to give up the money-for-gold guarantee. In the wake of the Vietnam War, the 1970s brought a slide in the dollar’s value, not only against gold but also against the French franc and the deutsche mark, among other currencies. In 1981, one ounce of gold cost more than $800.
Today, history repeats itself: the Cost of War Web site shows that the war in Iraq has so far cost the U.S. $422 billion — and the cost of the U.S.’s increased military budget is not completely included in that number. The Federal Reserve System under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke responded to this with a dramatic increase in the money supply, which led to so-called asset price inflation: most foreign currencies, not only the euro, but also the British pound, the Indian rupee and many others, rose against the dollar. So did the value of gold, which, in terms of dollars, has almost tripled since the beginning of the war on terror.
Germans have their own, profound memories of inflations triggered by wars: The great inflation in Germany in 1923 was caused by the World War I and made possible the rise of the Nazis. World War II brought inflation and rendered the deutschemark worthless until the currency reform of 1948.
What does a crumbling U.S. dollar mean for the U.S. and the rest of the world?
First, inside the U.S., the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, since the rich can hedge their fortunes against a falling dollar. The U.S. will more and more resemble countries like Brazil and many of those in Africa where a tiny, filthy rich elite runs the country and gets all the important jobs in government and industry. An impoverished majority will be kept in ignorance and without access to healthcare and education. Falling voter turnout will render the U.S. a democracy in name only.
Second, the power of the U.S. as a center of world capitalism is weakened as gains of wealth outside the U.S. shift the gravity centers of the world economy.
The countries that benefit from a weak dollar are those that have their own strong currencies like the euro and those who have commodities like oil. Thus, Russia, Iran and Venezuela — all foes of the U.S. — will gain in strength and influence.
It is true that the U.S. has one asset that is stronger than all its competitors: the military. Yet the use of the United States Army in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia combined with the arrogance of the Bush administration and its disrespect for human rights, as Guantanamo shows, leads to hate, anger, resentment and widespread anti-Americanism everywhere outside the U.S. This may affect American trade and business.
As history shows us, empires not only rise but also fall. Following the long decline of the Roman Empire, the Arabs ruled from A.D. 500 until 1500 from Spain to India, and Malta to Tanzania. From 1500 on, Portugal and Spain commanded huge empires. Later, the Dutch and the British ruled over the majority of mankind.
The end of the British Empire coincided with the rise of the U.S. as a superpower. Now, the United States’ superpower status is fading away, as the war in Iraq war marks the end of an era.
2007-05-02 11:35 (KST)
©2007 OhmyNews
Other articles by reporter Hartmut Kaiser
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