Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill12182009.html

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversightsubcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety. It was during the First World War that Samuel P. Bush and the other board members amassed fortunes selling the weapons and materials of war not only to America but also to Germany. Most of the records and correspondence pertaining to Samuel P. Bush's activities on the War Industries Board were later burned mysteriously, "to save space" in the National Archives. When their business venture officially ended on November 11, 1918, some 37,508,686 human beings had been killed. It set a dangerous precedent for the destiny of America and the destiny of civilization itself. A small group of corporate manufactures, bankers, and industrialists had formulated a devilishly effective method by which profit is extracted from human suffering, war, and death, and their dark technique would be repeated and refined. 'Dynasty of Death' (Part 1) Because of American greed and megalomania a horrific threat, 'the sword of Damocles' hangs over humanity. War is now waged only for profit. Humanity will be consumed by America's greed. America has become the heart of darkness on the earth and Americans should hope that there is no God and no hell.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2009/12/18/yes-we-can-to-no-we-wont

Many people who were Barack Obama's most enthusiastic supporters a year ago have grown disillusioned and angry. Alan Maass looks at the differences between President Obama and Candidate Obama--and where the hope for real change lies. AS THE first year of Barack Obama's presidency drew to a close, one event symbolized the gap between the promise he represented to so many people and the frustrating reality: A war president accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Here was the man who owed his electoral success, at least during the Democratic primaries, to the perception that he was the main antiwar candidate--and he accepted the Nobel in Oslo a week after announcing he would escalate the already-eight-year-old U.S. war on Afghanistan, with a second troop surge that brought to more than 50,000 the total number of soldiers he had committed to the war since taking office.

Link: http://www.redress.cc/americas/cking20091208

Christopher King says that the United States has gone beyond lawlessness and inhumanity into pathologically vicious means of waging warfare. It has experienced blowback from its past actions and can expect more from its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pearl Harbour attack was blowback and current Japanese objections to US base arrangements might be the commencement of blowback from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We have entered a period of government lawlessness, led by the United States, with inevitably serious consequences for everyone. Nuclear war is a possibility. With climate change threatening the planet itself, we do not need this as well. Europe must cease supporting this berserk state. It needs to recover the vision, the spirit of goodwill and humanity that laid the foundations of the European Union. In following America, Europe has lost its way.

Link: http://www.eutimes.net/2009/12/prepare-for-rebellion-obama-orders-us-canadian-troops/

Kremlin position papers presented to Prime Minister Putin today on his upcoming meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen state that the European-US military alliance has authorized an ‘emergency request’ from President Obama to utilize American and Canadian NATO troops to put down what is expected to be a “rebellion” after the expected January, 2010 ‘declaration of bankruptcy’ by the State of California. According to these reports, Obama’s fears of rebellion are due to the economic health of California (the United States largest State Rebellions don’t occur because people or state governments go bankrupt. Rebellion and armed rebellion occurs when people have their food supply cut off. It also occurs as a result of mass arrests and disappearances of large numbers of people during a time of say, economic collapse. So in short if there is rebellion it will be because the government does something brutal and senseless to the people like failing to feed them, or if the government murders and tortures innocent Americans en masse. If the poor beaten sheep actually stood up to their executioners, that could be considered rebellion. One last point, any American president that would call upon foreign troops to kill his own countrymen would be an obvious traitor. So, is all of this likely? Probably not, but it makes entertaining reading.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2009/06/05/how-the-superrich-live

Adam Turl examines the lives of the 10 richest people in the U.S.--and uncovers a rogue's gallery of serial polluters, budget-slashers, CIA contractors, union-busters and right-wing nuts. BACK IN February--when even the mainstream media was convinced the capitalist economy was in full-blown meltdown mode--Newsweek magazine ran an article titled "Why there won't be a revolution." Newsweek wanted to reassure the rich--and convince working people--that the masses weren't getting ready to dust off their pitchforks and head to the town square. "Americans might get angry sometimes," they wrote, "but we don't hate the rich. We prefer to laugh at them." Newsweek couldn't be more wrong. The 10 percent of Americans who rely on food stamps, the 25 percent of Ohioans who are waiting in lines at food banks, the 500,000 people who lost their jobs last month and the millions more who can't find work--these people aren't laughing.

Link: http://www.prnewswire.com:80/news-releases/watchdog-group-says-ties-to-health-insurance-companies-make-sen-joe-lieberman-an-insurance-puppet-78310302.html

Online advertising campaign in Connecticut and Washington, D.C. asks if health insurers are pulling the strings. Public Campaign Action Fund, a national campaign finance watchdog group, named Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) its second "Insurance Puppet" in an online advertising campaign targeting Connecticut and Washington, D.C. "Senator Lieberman has received $448,066 in campaign contributions from the health insurance industry during his time in Washington," said David Donnelly, Public Campaign Action Fund's national campaigns director. "With so much money from the industry filling his campaign coffers, it's not surprising that Lieberman has spent the last year parroting any and all insurance industry talking points he could find." The campaign finance watchdog group will release an "Insurance Puppet" each day at InsurancePuppets.com for the rest of the week in an effort to educate the public about the impact of the health insurance industry's campaign contributions on the health care debate. The industry has donated $17.7 million in campaign contributions to the Senators taking part in the current debate, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Link: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/12/giant-banks-and-their-congressional.html

According to the following Democratic and Republican congress members, economists, financial experts and journalists, the "too big to fails" (with help from bank-friendly voices in Congress) are trying to make the bailouts permanent:

Unless we break up the too big to fails, they will again make speculative gambles that drive them into insolvency (as they have again and again), and the government will bail them out over and over - perhaps secretly - sending the American taxpayers the tab (through taxes or inflation).

Link: http://pubrecord.org:80/special-to-the-public-record/6171/af-pak-racket-obama-illusion-comes/

The economic elite have escalated their attack on the U.S. public by surging military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As Obama announced plans for escalating the war effort, it has become clear that the Obama Illusion has taken yet another horrifying turn. Before explaining how the Af-Pak surge is a direct attack on the US public, let’s peer through the illusion and look at the reality of the situation.

Now that the much despised George W. Bush is out of the way and a more popular figurehead is doing PR for Dick Cheney’s right-hand military leader Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is leading his second AF-Pak surge now, and with long time Bush family confidant Robert Gates still running the Defense Department, the masters of war have never had it so good.

Link: http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=465

Jones stated: “Hollywood Is Owned By The Arabs’ - The Arabs Own Everything!” That stunning statement simply shattered the credibility meter. He simply will not criticize or even mention ‘World Zionism’ except in passing. Alex Jones does a syndicated and internet-based show for KLBJ 590 AM, owned by Emmis Communications, (”Emmis” is the Hebrew word for “truth”), which operates radio stations in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Apparently, Alex Jones also likes to work for Emmis and knows very well, indeed, how to keep his mouth shut. Veteran Jeraselam Post Reporter, David Shamah, (a vehement Zionist), exposed Alex Jones for “being on the Jews’ payroll.” A direct quote from the article on Shamah’s Website, Digital Newzgeek. Jones believes that the world is run by the Rockefellers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group. When Jones keeps pounding home the theme about the ALL-powerful Global Elite - not mentioning Zionism, the message of who is running the West and America is lost. Remember the BEST disinformation is at least 90% truth.

Link: http://ampedstatus.com:80/the-critical-unraveling-of-us-society

The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.

1) The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top 1 percent, the gap between the top 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent of the U.S. population has grown to a record high.

2) As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefited the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, and it is also benefiting by only paying 1 percent in taxes.

3) The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth."

As the looting is occurring at the top, the U.S. middle class is just beginning to collapse.

Link: http://leconomistamascherato.blogspot.com/2009/11/fed-prepares-for-global-domino-default.html

Tim Duy - Director of Undergraduate Studies of the Department of Economics at the University of Oregon and the Director of the Oregon Economic Forum - noticed an amazing sentence in the minutes of the most recent meeting of the Fed Open Market Committee: As has already been widely noted, the minutes of the most recent FOMC meeting reiterated the Fed’s eagerness to reverse, not extend, policy: Overall, many participants viewed the risks to their inflation outlooks over the next few quarters as being roughly balanced. Some saw the risks as tilted to the downside in the near term, reflecting the quite elevated level of economic slack and the possibility that inflation expectations could begin to decline in response to the low level of actual inflation.

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9097853

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says. There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts. And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified. Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error. "We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board. Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded. "Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.

Link: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/11/19/cooling/index.html

Temperatures haven't risen this decade, as climatologists expected. Is it sunspots? Ocean currents? Secret volcano? At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average. Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopping climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year. Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/11/15/2009-11-15_the_worst_is_yet_to_come_unemployed_americans_should_hunker_down_for_more_job_lo.html

Foreclosures hit record, to worsenNew York's unemployment rate hits 9%, highest since April 1983Greenman: The left's hypocritical silence on American dronesAOL to lay off third of staffRohatyn: America's very scary economic predicamentThink the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%. While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/13/eminent

Homeowners in New London, Connecticut took on the city’s leaders after they announced plans to condemn all of the homes in one neighborhood to make way for a private development project for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The city said it would bring in thousands of jobs. After a 2005 Supreme Court ruling against the homeowners, the entire neighborhood was bulldozed. This week Pfizer announced it is shutting down its research center. In 2005, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision called Kelo v. New London. It’s probably the most controversial court decision since Roe v. Wade. The difference was, this time almost everyone in America was on one side: everybody thought it was wrong. And that decision stemmed from a fight, a street fight, really, that took place in this neighborhood over a seven-year period between a small group of neighbors who fought against the city of New London, who wanted to take their neighborhood away. The decision stood for the idea that government, local government or state government, can take people’s private land or private homes and turn it over to a private developer for private development or private gain.

Link: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6399

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1285.htm

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

There comes a time in everyone’s life when the TRUTH, no matter how horrible, catastrophic or repugnant it may be, must be faced. America, your turn to awaken to the TRUTH is now at hand! For many years we, and others like us, have been shouting warning, after warning, after warning to you….but you have not listened. Not only did you fail to listen but upon our issuing some of our first warnings we were ridiculed.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1284.htm

According to these reports, Obama stated to Putin that the US Government was in “total disarray” after what the American President called a “putsch” made against him by high-ranking members of the US Military during a ‘fractious’ meeting in the White House of the United States top Military, Intelligence and National Security officers over the future course of the war in Afghanistan... Obama further reported to Putin that Gates told him, “in no uncertain terms” that the President had “no power whatsoever” over US Military decisions regarding Afghanistan whereupon Gates then ‘leaked’ to the US propaganda media his intention to massively increase America’s troop levels in the Afghan war zone. Even worse for Obama, who is already struggling with a collapsing economy, Gates further undermined the President by ordering 6,600 armored war trucks at a cost estimated to be in excess of $8 billion the US Military intends to pour into Afghanistan during the coming year at the expense of his Nations people already struggling under their Nations massive war debts. When queried by Putin as to his ability to regain control of those factions opposing him Obama in these reports is quoted as saying, “I may not make it”. Further troubling evidence of the disarray the US Government now finds itself in as Obama wages this titanic battle against the right-wing fascist forces seeking to destroy him can be seen in the actions of the powerful US Senator Jim DeMint who is openly defying the White House by traveling to the Central American Nation of Honduras to give his support to the CIA backed coup leader, Roberto Micheletti, who recently overthrew that countries legitimate President Manuel Zelaya and put his Nation under martial law.

Link: http://liberty.hypermart.net/Newsletter/4/5_9-11_Commission_Omissions.htm

On May 30, 2001 Tom White, a former Enron executive, was appointed by the Bush administration to be Secretary of the Army, and more importantly the "executive agent for the Department of Defense". The next day on June 1st, Tom White radically altered existing DOD protocols and issued a new DOD directive placing all decision-making powers, specifically in the case of 'Derelict Airborne Objects', under the control of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Having served his purpose, White was eventually fired by Rumsfeld, allegedly for disagreeing about a weapons system.5 The 9-11 Commission has failed to ask Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and others many key questions concerning the mass murder of over 2800 Americans in New York on September 11, 2001. Perhaps the most glaring of these questions is: Why, after the FAA alerted the military concerning the grave threats posed by the hijacked airline flights, was the Air Force prevented from responding?

Link: http://www.truthout.org/1005093

Unemployment will almost certainly in double-digits next year -- and may remain there for some time. And for every person who shows up as unemployed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, you can bet there's another either too discouraged to look for work or working part time who'd rather have a full-time job or else taking home less pay than before (I'm in the last category, now that the University of California has instituted pay cuts). And there's yet another person who's more fearful that he or she will be next to lose a job. In other words, ten percent unemployment really means twenty percent underemployment or anxious employment. All of which translates directly into late payments on mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans, and loss of health insurance. It also means sleeplessness for tens of millions of Americans. And, of course, fewer purchases (more on this in a moment).