World-News

By Sibel Edmonds

If these points don't sound outrageous and if they don't make the state of our liberties look dire and pathetic, then we are all in deep trouble.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24183.htm



American Fascism

By political definition the US is now fascist, not a constitutional republic

By Carl Herman

The definition of "fascism" has some academic variance, but is essentially collusion among corporatocracy, authoritarian government, and controlled media and education. This "leadership" is only possible with a nationalistic public accepting policies of war, empire, and limited civil and political rights.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24181.htm



Are Americans a Broken People?

Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression

By Bruce E. Levine

A psychologist asks: Have consumerism, suburbanization and a malevolent corporate-government partnership so beaten us down that we no longer have the will to save ourselves?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24184.htm



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By Carl Herman

A lie of omission is a lie; it intentionally leaves out crucial information to create a false representation of reality. Obama lied in omission in his Orwellian Peace Prize acceptance speech by claiming, "America has never fought a war against a democracy."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24179.htm



Fighting Another Dumb War

By Chris Hedges

I have spent enough time inside the American military to have tasted its dark brutality, frequent incompetence and profligate ability to waste human lives and taxpayer dollars.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24180.htm

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The clarity of false choices

Reason
by Jacob Sullum

12/16/09

‘There are those who claim we have to choose between paying down our deficits … and investing in job creation and economic growth,’ President Obama said last week. ‘This is a false choice.’ During the same speech, he asked his audience to ‘let me just be clear’ that his administration, having racked up the biggest budget deficits ever, is embracing fiscal responsibility, as reflected in his vow that ‘health insurance reform’ will not increase the deficit ‘by one dime.’ For connoisseurs of Obama-speak, the address featured a trifecta, combining three of his favorite rhetorical tropes. There was the vague reference to ‘those who’ question his agenda, the ‘false choice’ they use to deceive the public, and the determination to ‘be clear’ and forthright, in contrast with those dishonest naysayers. These devices are useful as signals that the president is about to mislead us...

http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/16/the-clarity-of-false-choices



Which comes first: Interventionism or terrorism?

Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G. Hornberger

12/16/09

Following up on my last two blogs regarding the important debate over what has motivated people to commit terrorist acts against the United States, two questions arise: First, why does the U.S. government persist in his claim that the terrorists are motivated by hatred for American freedom and values when the overwhelming weight of the evidence is virtually conclusive that what has motivated the terrorists to strike against the United States is U.S. foreign policy?

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-12-16.asp



Speak no evil

The New Republic
by John B. Judis

12/17/09

The lines most cited in Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech were those about evil: ‘Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.’ These lines won approbation from both liberals and conservatives. … While I don’t object to the idea of just war, and have supported the various wars that Obama cited in his speech, and wouldn’t balk at calling Al Qaeda or Hitler evil, I think Obama ventured onto dangerous terrain by invoking the existence of evil as a justification for war. That kind of argument suggests neither moral realism nor prudent idealism, but the crusade-like, messianic foreign policy — pitting good against evil — that got the country into so much trouble during the last administration...

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/speak-no-evil



A diplomatic casualty of war

In These Times
by Roger Morris & George Kenney

12/14/09

The rare resignation on principle is always telling in American government. When Matthew Hoh left the State Department in October — a Marine Captain in Iraq who became a diplomat in Afghanistan early this year — his act was significant far beyond the first reports. Hoh speaks grim truth to power. His message is that to pursue the Afghan war policy in any guise — including President Obama’s prescription of 30,000 additional, rapidly deployed troops — will be utter folly, trapping America in an unwinnable civil war in the Hindu Kush, and only fueling terrorism...

http://tinyurl.com/yaj96hk


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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Der Chef der UN-Drogenbehörde sagt, das schmutzige Geld sei oft das einzige Kapital gewesen, das noch verfügbar war.

http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/8/146748



Der frühere Fed-Chef Volcker reitet wieder

Einflussreichster Kritiker der Finanzmärkte redet den mächtigsten Bankern ins Gewissen.
http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/8/146742



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American Principle Is Power

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, Truthout: "With the release of the so-called 'torture' memos and now the full Senate Armed Services Committee's report on detainee treatment, the debate over detainee abuse has focused on further investigations into the military personnel, intelligence operatives and even lawyers involved in the detention and treatment of detainees like my client, Fayiz al-Kandari."

http://www.truthout.org/1214094



Obama's Wars, Obama's Casualties, Obama's Responsibilities

Paul Sullivan, Truthout: "On Veterans Day 2009, President Barack Obama walked through the headstones in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, DC. He was deliberating his impending decision to escalate and then terminate the Afghanistan War. On December 1, Obama announced his temporary escalation of the Afghanistan War with the deployment of 30,000 new troops, to the dismay of both pro-war neoconservatives and antiwar activists. On December 6, 2009, the New York Times quoted a presidential adviser as saying Obama was 'totally at peace,' as troops would begin returning home by July 2011."

http://www.truthout.org/1214098



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William Fisher, Truthout: "The question is: Can the US government force the dismissal of a lawsuit against it simply by claiming that national security would be endangered if the suit went ahead? On Tuesday in San Francisco, the nation may move one step closer to an answer. That's the day the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will appear in a federal appeals court in San Francisco to argue that a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's unlawful 'extraordinary rendition' program should go forward."

http://www.truthout.org/1214097



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http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=national+security
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Washington Post
by Eugene Robinson

12/10/09

The traditional Nobel Peace Prize lecture, given every year at Oslo’s modernist City Hall, does not usually include such words as: ‘I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed.’ President Obama accepted the Nobel for peacemaking by delivering an eloquent, often grim treatise on the nature and necessity of warfare. Anyone who doubts his commitment to the war in Afghanistan, which he has escalated with an ‘extended surge’ of 30,000 new U.S. troops, should read a transcript of the Oslo speech. Hawks who suspected — and doves who hoped — that Obama was a secret pacifist will see that although he did not set out to be a ‘war president,’ he has accepted his fate...

http://tinyurl.com/y9hjoln



Is “law of love” an antidote to war?

Christian Science Monitor
by staff

12/10/09

A mix of idealism and national self-interest has often marked American leadership in the world. But not many US presidents have put the golden rule at the center of their foreign policy. What President Obama calls the ‘law of love’ (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) as a focal point of his sweeping speech in Oslo after being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. … And he readily admits, after only 10 months in office, that his moral stances, rather than any concrete action, won him the prize. But one particular action — sending more troops to Afghanistan even as he was being honored as a peacemaker — required him to speak of the differences between a ‘just war’ and one waged outside global ’standards that govern the use of force’...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1210/p08s01-comv.html



The ongoing arrogance of Washington and Obama

Center for a Stateless Society
by Alex R. Knight III

12/12/09

A long time ago, George Washington made a very dangerous and arrogant statement: ‘It must be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal service to the defense of it.’ So this alleged hero of the ‘Revolution’ was not so revolutionary after all, it would seem...

http://c4ss.org/content/1541


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

High Noon in the White House

Melvin A. Goodman, Truthout: "President Barack Obama noted last week after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that the United States 'has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades.' While this was certainly true in Germany and Japan during World War II as well as in Korea, there have been too many occasions in the past four decades when presidents - usually in their first or second year in office - have used force in situations that have not served the interests of the United States, let alone the global community."

http://www.truthout.org/1214093



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
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Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Benjamin Weingarten

12/11/09

Political success, as reflected in the recent gubernatorial races appears ever-more staked on the state of the economy. Official unemployment recently measured 10 percent, though the more-honest gauge (U-6) shows the nation running unemployment at a Depression-like 17.2 percent. In response to high unemployment numbers, Barack Obama has said, ‘I will not rest until all Americans who want to work can.’ Yet Mr. Obama’s policies belie his words...

http://mises.org/daily/3907


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=unemploy

ABC News

12/13/09

The Senate on Sunday passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill with increased budgets for vast areas of the federal government, including health, education, law enforcement and veterans’ programs. The more-than-1,000-page package, one of the last essential chores of Congress this year, passed 57-35 and now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9322998


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=spending+bill

Children as young as four should be monitored for signs of brainwashing by radical extremists, counter terrorism police have warned.

http://snipurl.com/todki


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=counterterrorism

By David Michael Green

The simple and sad fact is that greedy elites will always use their power to acquire unseemly quantities of wealth, unless one or both of two conditions obtain. The first is that they are socialized to be slightly less greedy, slightly more patriotic, and remotely compassionate about those who have nothing. They may also recognize, as Henry Ford did, that their long-term prospects are rather heavily tied to those of all the rest of us.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24168.htm



The People Speak

Democracy Is Not a Spectator Sport

By Howard Zinn

"If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24169.htm



Obama's Big Sellout

By Matt Taibbi

The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24178.htm



Drug Money Saved Banks in Global Crisis, Claims UN Advisor

By Rajeev Syal

Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24175.htm



2010: "The Year of Severe Economic Contraction"

By Mike Whitney

Eight of 10 Americans rate joblessness a high risk to the economy in the next two years, outranking the federal budget deficit, which is cited by 7 of 10. An increase in taxes is named as a high risk by almost 6 of 10.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24174.htm



Despite US Laws, Thousands Still Virtual Slaves in America

They toil in factories and massage parlors, on fruit and vegetable farms, and inside homes, hotels and restaurants from California to Maine. Stripped of their humanity, they're often threatened with their lives, or their families' lives, if they don't submit to the traffickers' demands.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/13-5



US jobless claims rise, job openings decline

Initial US jobless claims in the week ending December 5 rose 17,000 from the previous week, confounding economists who had predicted a decline. The increase in the number of workers filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits brought the total of such claims for the week to a seasonally adjusted 474,000.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/usec-d11.shtml



US: Child hunger, called the 'silent epidemic

With the economy faltering, the number of youngsters living in homes without enough food soared in 2008 from 13 million to nearly 17 million, the Agriculture Department reported last month.

http://snipurl.com/todmg


From Information Clearing House



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