World-News

Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com: "Is it too early - or already too late - to begin drawing lessons from 'the Long War'? That phrase, coined in 2002 and, by 2005, being championed by Centcom Commander General John Abizaid, was meant to be a catchier name for George W. Bush's 'Global War on Terror.' That was back in the days when inside-the-Beltway types were still dreaming about a global Pax Americana and its domestic partner, a Pax Republicana, and imagining that both, once firmly established, might last forever."

http://www.truthout.org/1019092



Post-Bush Stress Disorder

Jonathan Alter, Newsweek: "In 'The Godfather,' Sonny talks about going 'to the mattresses,' meaning war with rival Mafia families. Now President Obama and the Democrats are holing up together on their Posturepedics as they work out battle plans on health care, banking reform, and Afghanistan. The question is whether they'll be daring soldiers of the future or content to fight the last war."

http://www.truthout.org/1019094

--------

“War on Terror” II

Cato Institute
by Julian Sanchez

10/19/09

We know the rules by now, the strange conventions and stilted Kabuki scripts that govern our cartoon facsimile of a national security debate. The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place. Conservatives hit the panic button on the right-wing noise machine anyway, keeping the delicate ecosystem in balance by creating the false impression that something has changed. We’ve watched the formula play out with Guantanamo Bay, torture prosecutions and the invocation of ’state secrets.’ We appear to be on the verge of doing the same with national security surveillance...

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10640



The Pentagon’s recruitment two-step

AntiWar.Com
by Kelley B. Vlahos

10/20/09

While the framers may have had other things to say — this being the eighth year of two simultaneous foreign interventions in which the nation’s leaders still cannot clearly articulate why we are there and what a so-called victory or exit should look like — that is another story. This is a story about how the military sells escalation, and to do so effectively, it must convince the public that its volunteer forces are healthy, hearty, willing, and able to surge another day. For one, it lowers its recruitment goals year after year, and then when it achieves or exceeds those goals, it enjoins mainstream news reporters in the Pentagon briefing room to write the story straight. That’s how you get headlines like this one from the Washington Post: ‘A Historic Success in Military Recruiting; In Midst of Downturn, All Targets Are Met.’ Then it throws the words ‘historic’ and ‘record high’ around so much that reporters like Eli Lake at the right-wing Washington Times apparently get confused...

http://tinyurl.com/ykq68rw


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

America's Growth Industry
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/715.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Abizaid
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Global+War+on+Terror
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Pax+Americana
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreign+intervention
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=national+security
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=state+secrets
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=executive+power
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=civil+liberties
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recruitment
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=surveillance
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=healthcare
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Tom+Engelhardt
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jonathan+Alter
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Julian+Sanchez
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kelley+B.+Vlahos

What is $1.42 trillion? It's more than the total national debt for the first 200 years of the Republic, more than the entire economy of India, almost as much as Canada's, and more than $4,700 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/16/business/AP-US-Deficit-Danger.html?_r=2&hp



Foreclosures: 'Worst three months of all time'

During that time, 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter -- whether a default notice, auction notice or bank repossession, the RealtyTrac report said. That means one in every 136 U.S. homes were in foreclosure, which is a 5% increase from the second quarter and a 23% jump over the third quarter of 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/15/real_estate/foreclosure_crisis_deepens/


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=national+debt
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=federal+deficit
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreclosure

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/sovereignty-resolutions.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bryce+Shonka

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/chapman-b1.1.1.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Geithner
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bob+Chapman

By Dean Baker

Banks might suffer if China stopped buying US debt, but the US economy as a whole would be much better off.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23756.htm



The Dollar Will Not Crash

By Mike Whitney

What difference does it make if China and Russia are unhappy? Who gives a hoot? Toppling the dollar is going to take a concerted effort by people who truly despise the system, not the blather of malcontents who are simply envious of US power.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23757.htm



The Two Americas

By Andre Damon and Joe Kishore

The big banks have used government money to return to profitability and the stock market has risen more than 50 percent since last March. The market has been pushed up by investors awash in cash who have no productive outlet for their money. But its extraordinary rise is also a vote of confidence in the Obama administration by bankers and big investors who have been reassured that it is fully committed to protecting their interests.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23752.htm



A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction

By Chris Hedges

Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23755.htm

--------

The Zero Discount Value of Gold and Dethroning the Dollar
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff317.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Dollar+crash
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Big+Banks
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stock+market
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Dean+Baker
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mike+Whitney
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Andre+Damon
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Joe+Kishore
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Chris+Hedges
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/rozeff

By Mike Whitney

The Republicans have become deficit hawks. It's more phoniness from a party of phonies. They've decided to stake their political future on opposition to Obama's agenda. It doesn't matter what it is; they're against it. Stimulus is bad because extends unemployment benefits and keeps the states on life support. The Republicans have a better idea; let's build more bombs and slash taxes.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23753.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=hawk
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=unemploy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mike+Whitney

Damit wollen die Länder Lateinamerikas und der Karibik ihre Abhängigkeit vom US-Dollar und von den USA abbauen.

http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/8/146370

You Might Be A Constitutionalist If . . .

by Pastor Chuck Baldwin

More than thirty years as a student of American history, constitutional government, and the Holy Bible leads me to the conviction that the two major political parties in this country (at the national level) are equally culpable in stripping America of its founding principles. In my opinion, both the Democrat and Republican parties in Washington, D.C., have zero fidelity to the U.S. Constitution and zero respect for America's foundational precepts. In my studied opinion, neither........

http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin541.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bipartisan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Constitution
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/baldwin

SCOTT THILL

alternet.org - The Dow's at 10,000, and the bankers are reaping huge bonuses, but the economy in which the rest of us live is a disaster.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143330/the_robber_barons_are_back_--_hide_your_money


From TomPaine.com

--------

Fall Of The Republic Exposes How Financial Terrorists Are Imposing Global Enslavement

Alex Jones' brand new documentary blockbuster reveals how elite oligarchies are plotting a new dark age for humanity

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, October 19, 2009

While the criminals who have hijacked the world financial system continue to pose as saviors and swallow up more power in the name of fixing the very problems that they created, Alex Jones latest documentary blockbuster Fall Of The Republic exposes the real agenda of the financial terrorists who have bankrupted America in their quest for world domination and global serfdom.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/fall-of-the-republic-exposes-how-financial-terrorists-are-imposing-global-enslavement.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=financial+system
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bonus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robber+Baron
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=oligarch
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Scott+Thill

Our Future Blog
by Isaiah J. Poole

10/16/09

Mr. Big Stuff himself, as he used to be called on CNBC during his heyday, has spoken once again. But this time, Alan Greenspan has uttered an inconvenient truth. So, will Washington and Wall Street listen? The former Federal Reserve chairman’s statement Thursday before the Council of Foreign Relations in New York about today’s megabanks (’if they’re too big to fail, they’re too big’) is so self-evident a fifth-grader would get it. But the adults who are formulating economic policy at the Treasury Department and on Capitol Hill have treated that simple statement as heresy. … Neither has there been much of a ripple in the financial press over Greenspan’s comments...

http://tinyurl.com/yk2pkd7


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Greenspan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Council+of+Foreign+Relations
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Federal+Reserve
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Isaiah+J.+Poole