David Michael Green

In fact, this is not a matter of stupidity, though there's loads of that to go around. But I bet that when it comes to finding arcane deductions to insert into their tax forms, these folks are actually quite clever. I bet a lot of them could reel off sports statistics or bible verses that would put your head in a fog. No, it's not stupidity. Something else is going on here.

The events of recent decades have been ominous. The events of recent weeks more so.

It's not so much, I guess, the visage of obese, over-fifty, white men angrily wrecking even the tattered remnants of the democratic process in this country that is most disturbing. We've seen that before.

I think it's the willful ignorance translated into incoherent, and in fact ironically self-defeating, rage that I find most discouraging. Can we really live in a country populated by so many fools, people who can so readily, proudly and belligerently be made into tools of their own destruction? Can the greatest political, economic, cultural and military power on the world's stage possibly be so incredibly backward at its core?

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Jeff Gates

In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a generic term to describe the most challenging combatants when waging unconventional warfare. He called them simply “the people in between.” Those people, a dominant force in mainstream American media, comprise a fifth column in support of those skilled at waging war by way of deception.

The term ‘fifth column’ originated in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to depict forces that clandestinely undermine a populace—from within—to aid an external enemy. The term was later cited as a rationale for interning citizens during WWII, including Germans in the U.K and Japanese in the U.S. Israelis routinely refer to Arab-Israelis as a fifth column residing within what Tel Aviv describes as the Jewish state.

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Mike Whitney

Credit is not flowing. In fact, credit is contracting. When credit contracts in a consumer-driven economy, bad things happen. Business investment drops, unemployment soars, earnings plunge, and GDP shrinks. The Fed has spent more than a trillion dollars trying to get consumers to start borrowing again, but without success. The country's credit engines are slowing to a crawl.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has increased excess reserves in the banking system by $800 billion, but lending is still slow. The banks are hoarding capital in order to deal with the losses from toxic assets, non performing loans, and a $3.5 trillion commercial real estate bubble that's following housing into the toilet. That's why the rate of bank failures is accelerating. 2010 will be even worse; the list is growing. It's a bloodbath.

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Allen L Roland

Science will surely remain one-eyed and lacking in depth-perception until it acknowledges the equal validity of subjective, sensory and spiritual experience. And it will continue to record the letter of mere mechanics, and miss the true spirit that brings it all to life, until it comes to recognize the universal urge to unite ~ even within the molecule itself ~ as being the universal attractive force of love:

There is a growing consciousness revolution going on in science ~ a genuine paradigm shift. While mainstream science remains generally materialist and seeing through one eye ~ a growing number of scientists are supporting and developing a paradigm based on the primacy of consciousness. I'm one of them but I'm concentrating on spiritual psychology and the realm of soul consciousness ~ which permeates the unseen sub-atomic world as well as the world of our physical sensory experience.

No one describes this growing scientific impasse more tellingly than Lincoln Barnett, author of The Universe and Dr. Einstein:

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Re-reported by Carolyn Bennett

ARMS to Africa will neither Benefit Africa nor Eliminate Poverty

The only real change and true benefit U.S. foreign policy can make to Africa is to assist and support the United Nations Millennium Goals to eliminate global poverty — especially in Africa because this continent has suffered so deeply for so long under European colonialism and, in contemporary times, under multinational corporate/governmental colonialism that continues a brutal looting far worse than casino-plundered Atlantic cities or Niagara-USA, leaving Africa’s land and peoples bereft, reversing even limited progress eked out in years between wars (cold and hot).

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Joel S. Hirschhorn

As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11 years the scientific evidence for disbelieving the official government story has mounted incredibly. And the number of highly respected and credentialed professionals challenging the official story has similarly expanded. Yet, to the considerable disappointment of the international 9/11 truth movement, the objective fact is that there are no widespread, loud demands for a new government-backed 9/11 investigation. The 9/11 truth movement is the epitome of a marginalized movement, one that never goes away despite not achieving truly meaningful results, which in this case means replacing official lies with official truth. What has gone wrong?

Akin to the definition of insanity, the hallmark of entrenched but marginalized movements is that they continue to pursue exactly the same strategy and tactics that have failed to produce solid results. They indulge themselves with self-delusion, defensive thinking and acting as if the world at large must surely and finally wake up, see the light and embrace the Truth. Years and, potentially, decades go by, but this quixotic status quo remains embedded, as if set in intellectual concrete. There is no brain tumor to blame. Nor any mass hypnosis of true believers to prove. There is just monumental disinterest among the dominant culture, political establishment and the broad public that is far more engaged with other issues, problems and movements.

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