On Thu, 10 Sep 1998, Mark Jones wrote:
> And in any case, why
> would anyone prefer Germany or Japan to the USA?
Because they're less barbaric to their semiperipheries and don't
engage in regular bombing runs on 3rd world villages. Germany also
cancelled 10% of Eastern Europe's debt in 1993 and has been spending
billions of DM propping up Russia, via aid programmes, housing flats for
Russian soldiers who departed from East Germany, etc. and is about to
elect a Red-Green government which is going to repudiate neoliberalism as
a model for the EU. Japanese banks are rolling over Indonesian and South
Korean loans, and their low interest rates have prevented the Asian crash
from becoming a true Depression. Germany/Japan have no equivalent of our
CIA/NSC black-ops designed to terrorize or destabilize the
semi-peripheries; instead of funding Cold War thugs, they spend way more
of their GDP on developmental assistance than the US. Heck, they even
trade fairly with Cuba.
They're not bastions of socialism, but they are societies where the
workingclass has, for various reasons, garnered tremendous social and
political power, and is unafraid to use it. As Gregor Gysi put it, es lebe
der Igel!
-- Dennis