Mainstream Weekly

American Oligarchs

Eddie J Girdner — 2014-08-08T17:21:12Z

REVIEW ARTICLE
Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman; Grand Central Publishing, New York; 2014; pages: 424.
“He who has no shame owns the whole world.” —Cypriot proverb
In his recent notable book, Capital in the Twentyfirst Century, Thomas Piketty has documented how America is becoming a rentier society like France in the late nineteenth century. Inequality of wealth in 2010 in America showed that the top one (…)

- 2014

On the Current Contradictions of Global Capitalism

Eddie J Girdner — 2014-07-26T12:17:39Z

BOOK REVIEW
Capital in the Twentyfirst Century by Thomas Piketty; Harvard University Press, London; 2014.
This important book is in the tradition of the classical political economy of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx. It is based upon fifteen years of research by the author, a French economist, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics.
In recent decades, too much of economics has been based upon abstract theory and mathe-matical modelling without looking at the trajectory of (…)

- 2014

Erasing Enemies: America's New Way of War

Eddie J Girdner — 2013-07-07T15:31:11Z

REVIEW ARTICLE
The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti; New York: Penguin Press; 2013.
America has been at war for more than a decade. There is no end in sight to this new perpetual war. The battlefield is now the entire world. After 2001, the Bush Neoconservatives essentially declared a war against the entire globe, against whoever dared to oppose the Empire. In a larger sense, of course, this is but an extension of the war for (…)

- 2013

When Will They Ever Learn? Bringing American War Crimes in Vietnam to Light

Eddie J Girdner — 2013-05-11T18:50:20Z

REVIEW ARTICLE
Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse; Metropolitan Books, New York; 2013; pages 370; $ 30.00, hardcover.
The Vietnam War is a case of state terrorism on a massive scale. This is made devastatingly clear from the evidence based upon official documents in the US National Archives and other records explored here. The book is thoroughly documented, backed up with some 86 pages of footnotes. While more than 30,000 books have been published on (…)

- 2013

The Follies of Empire: America in Iraq and Afghanistan

Eddie J Girdner — 2013-02-26T16:43:02Z

REVIEW ARTICLE
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2006. Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2012.
The author is a journalist who writes for the Washington Post. These two recent books reveal many interesting details about America's two latest imperial ventures. America is an empire, as the late Chalmers Johnson documented so well in his (…)

- 2013

Dismantling the Social Safety Net in America

Eddie J Girdner — 2012-05-18T20:36:57Z

BOOK REVIEW
RULING CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE FOX IDIOT BOX
The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson; New York: Oxford University Press; 2012; pages: 245.
The United States is a mature capitalist country on the down side of history. Under neoliberalism, the economic policy since the l970s has been centred on an agenda of rapid and radical de-industrialisation to ensure higher corporate profits. Jobs have since been exported en masse, (…)

- 2012

Capitalism, Republicans, and the American Spring

Eddie J Girdner — 2011-11-05T16:06:56Z

“Help! Thief! I´ve been robbed, I´ve been robbed by the capitalists and the government!” ‘'There aint but two sides, the workers side and the big bosses side.'' —Woody Guthrie
This cry is being heard more and more around the cities and capitals of the United States and Western Europe today and even further around the globe.
Is there a genuine awakening among the American youth? The recent Occupy Wall Street Movement suggests that an awareness of the destructive and unethical nature of (…)

- 2011

The Endless War: America, Afghanistan, and the War on Terrorism

Eddie J Girdner — 2011-09-13T18:13:02Z

REVIEW ARTICLE Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid; Viking, New York; 2008; Maps, Glossary of Terms, Notes, Bibliography, Index.
America has now been in Afghanistan for ten years. Again, America has triumphed. Again, America has failed. Again, countries have been saved. Again, countries have been destroyed. Again, people have been freed. Again, people have been crushed, and maimed, and (…)

- 2011

Politics in the Age of George the Great

Eddie J Girdner — 2008-10-27T13:24:32Z

"He acts as if his head was only made to hold his ears apart." —Hank Williams "I'll come down and help you, I'll rape you, I'll scalp you." —Woody Guthrie “I've been struck by Lightning, Struck by Congress.” —Woody Guthrie
It has been eight years since the putsch in Florida by the neoconservative Storm Troopers stole the presidential election and installed George W. Bush on the White House Throne. The dark days had begun and these dark days have not yet ended. The going after the country (…)

- October 25, 2008

Securing Capitalist Accumulation for America's Ruling Corporate Caste

Eddie J Girdner — 2008-09-23T12:00:56Z

TERROR ON TAP
I
America is marked, as compared to the rest of the world, with a unique feature. If at all possible, every enterprise should be geared to the making of private profit. The public spirit, as such, scarcely exists, although it is cynically alluded to. Rather, it is the profit spirit which prevails. This probably should not be surprising, as the de facto ruling class in America is the business class. Indeed, everything revolves around the “business class”, not only in (…)

- September 20, 2008