To: bentway who wrote (161281 ) 4/30/2005 10:07:26 PM From: Nadine Carroll Respond to It rotted from within, something that I witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s visiting both the USSR and several of its captive states, and living a year in 1986-1987 within 30 miles of Soviet-dominated East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Any 70s or 80s visitor to the USSR or its vassal sates, in fact, could have come to the conclusion that -- barring a world war -- it was an empire about to expire, and the CIA and others in the American, European, Israeli, and Japanese intelligence services had been saying the same thing since, in some cases the 1960s had been able to forsee the Soviet Union's implosion, but they did not. As for Mr. Hartmann's supposed prescience, I will eat my hat if you find any statement authored by him before 1989 forseeing the imminent expiration of the Soviet Union."If the United States has greatly declined in relative terms as an economic power," writes Todd, "it has nevertheless succeed in massively increasing its ability to siphon off wealth from the world economy. Objectively speaking, America has become a predator; ... [and] is going to have to fight politically and militarily in order to sustain the hegemony that has become indispensable for maintaining its standard of living." must be stealing the wealth from somebody else, you know you are dealing with warmed over Marxism, no more valid now than before. The US has been an engine of growth for the globe, and global development has meant that developing, as well as developed countries grow richer...has the US been growing richer by making Japan and China and SE Asia grow poorer these last 25 years? obviously not.
