The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
TODAY's INTERVIEW: Elena Panaritis on Cyprus
Elena Panaritis is an institutional economist, property rights expert, and social entrepreneur. In more than a decade as an economist at the World Bank, Panaritis spearheaded several institutional reforms, particularly property rights reform in Peru. Her book Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust
DOD is circling the wagons to keep the F-35 propped up in the declining Pentagon budget. Importantly, as noted by a prime Lockheed mouthpiece offering his thankfulness for it, GAO's newest report on the F-35 offers a conclusion that the F-35 is on track for improvement–the data notwithstanding. In point of fact, what the GAO conclusion does show is that some long term negative–and management induced–trends have gone viral in the investigatory agency where I once worked. As a result, DOD has been allowed unseen influence on a GAO report. Skeptical? The latter half of a new piece at Foreign Policy explains.
The magazine's title for my article only off-handedly hints at the nature of the problem; it is not so much a “conspiracy” as the effects of an equal relationship between GAO and DOD. The piece is available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
Foreign Policy
Is there a government conspiracy to save the F-35?
BY WINSLOW WHEELER | MARCH 22, 2013
Until recently, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter had been having a pretty rough time.
In 2012, its estimated average “program acquisition unit cost” was reported to have doubled, from the $81 million per copy anticipated in 2001 to $161 million, flight tests revealed deficiencies in achieving the F-35's modest performance requirements, and scheduled full-rate production was delayed to 2019.
Like a car careening down a mountain road, we seem unable as a people and as a nation to gain control of our government and to make it serve national wellness instead of profit. Day after day these stories track the degradation of our quality of life.
Only mass demonstrations and mass voting is going to change this, and we seem to lack the political will as citizens to do either. We hate Congress, but most love their Congressperson, seeing no contradiction.
Monsanto's Death Grip on Your Food
FRITZ KREISS – Nation of Change
Our children are obese because of the “foods” they eat. They have diabetes because of the high fructose corn syrup. We have girls experiencing menarche at 9, and breast development at 10 because of the hormones they unwittingly absorb because of industrial animal husbandry. And now we are discovering a growing number of them are autistic. The list goes on an on, all resulting from a society that is structur! ed for maximum profit for the few.
CDC: One in 50 U.S. School Kids Has Autism
ABBY OHLHEISER – Slate
After Cyprus, New Tolls For The Euro
Reflections: After the attempted tolls on bank savings in Cyprus for saving the Euro, a new kind of tolls can be heard in the distance for the currency. The fundamental trust in the currency as a store of value has been broken, according to multiple signs across Europe. Even with the Cypriot parliament backpedaling frantically, the situation appears snowballing – there could be a bank run in two weeks.
. . . . . . . . .
In the past days with the Cypriot bailout measure, these first signs of a currency collapse scenario have materialized. People are now actively seeking to trade off their Euros, no longer trusting them as a store of value. When this has happened in the past to currencies, they have not survived.
America's Three-Tiered Justice System
Wednesday, 20 March 2013 00:00
By Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis
Big shots are above the law, the government now admits, but a three-tiered justice system has Congress churning out new bills to keep the prison industry booming.
“Equal Justice under Law,” is the motto inscribed on the frieze of the United States Supreme Court building.
Sticklers for semantics say that the modifiers “equal” and “under law” in the Supreme Court's motto are redundant, because justice by definition is equal treatment under a system of written and publicly accessible rules. Whether that is the case is precisely what is at issue in America today.
Sub-Titles Only:
Tier I: The Great and the Good
Tier II: The Great Unwashed
Tier III: The Untouchables
March 19, 2013. Ten years ago today the Bush regime invaded Iraq. It is known that the justification for the invasion was a packet of lies orchestrated by the neoconservative Bush regime in order to deceive the United Nations and the American people.
The US Secretary of State at that time, General Colin Powell, has expressed his regrets that he was used by the Bush regime to deceive the United Nations with fake intelligence that the Bush and Blair regimes knew to be fake. But the despicable presstitute media has not apologized to the American people for serving the corrupt Bush regime as its Ministry of Propaganda and Lies.
It is difficult to discern which is the most despicable, the corrupt Bush regime, the presstitutes that enabled it, or the corrupt Obama regime that refuses to prosecute the Bush regime for its unambiguous war crimes, crimes against the US Constitution, crimes against US statutory law, and crimes against humanity.
In his book, Cultures Of War, the distinguished historian John W. Dower observes that the concrete acts of war unleashed by the Japanese in the 20th century and the Bush imperial presidency in the 21st century “invite comparative analysis of outright war crimes like torture and other transgressions. Imperial Japan’s black deeds have left an indelible stain on the nation’s honor and good name, and it remains to be seen how lasting the damage to America’s reputation will be. In this regard, the Bush administration’s war planners are fortunate in having been able to evade formal and serious investigation remotely comparable to what the Allied powers pursued vis-a-vis Japan and Germany after World War II.”
The media is doing its usual vapid tour of the 10th “anniversary” of the American invasion of Iraq. Far better to consider how the nation permitted the disgrace to happen. Mike Lofgren cites three important lessons to learn.
For myself, I believe it most important to consider the domestic politics and careerist posturing that drives civilian (and military) leaders to beat the drums of war in order to manipulate political (and budgetary) decisions, or worse to simply advocate war.
Consider Mike's lessons below as you read in the morning news articles of the current US B-52 exercises over the Korean peninsula and the hysteria of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in reacting to a historically minor budget correction. Given the nature of the North Korean regime, is this the time to bait them? Have the Joint Chiefs shown they are capable to dealing with budget events they have only had a year and a half to prepare for? Is there an American domestic political (and budgetary) content to the US escalation of events in Korea?
As you read Mike's important column below, it is useful to think about such questions.
Former Congressional Staffer, author of The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
On the decennial of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the persons responsible have shown remarkably little guilt over launching an unprovoked war of aggression, even when the lamentable results might be expected to give one pause to rethink the enterprise. Marveling at the complacency about Iraq of America's foreign policy elite as they are fawningly interviewed on the Sunday talk shows, columnist Alex Pareene says that “[p]eople who were integral in the decision to wage that war sat there and opined on what the United States should do about Iran and China and North Korea and no one laughed them out of the room. It was disgusting.” Disgusting, but hardly surprising here in the United States of Amnesia.
Are there any lessons to be drawn from the debacle? Here are three tentative conclusions:
Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — Learning from the Past”
