The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Below is just one of a number of short (YouTube) videos that are gaining traction as the American people begin to understand the reality of Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve being allowed to blow up the US economy and now the world economy, with the full blessing of President Barack Obama. This is change we can believe in?
I have rather mixed opinions of Chomsky, but think he is on the mark in this OpEd.
The US Elections: Outrage, Misguided
truthout
17 November 2010
Noam Chomsky
The U.S. midterm elections register a level of anger, fear and disillusionment in the country like nothing I can recall in my lifetime. Since the Democrats are in power, they bear the brunt of the revulsion over our current socioeconomic and political situation.
More than half the “mainstream Americans” in a Rasmussen poll last month said they view the Tea Party movement favorably – a reflection of the spirit of disenchantment.
The grievances are legitimate. For more than 30 years, real incomes for the majority of the population have stagnated or declined while work hours and insecurity have increased, along with debt. Wealth has accumulated, but in very few pockets, leading to unprecedented inequality.
These consequences mainly spring from the financialization of the economy since the 1970s and the corresponding hollowing-out of domestic production. Spurring the process is the deregulation mania favored by Wall Street and supported by economists mesmerized by efficient-market myths.
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added above. The chapter on “Legitimate Grievances” in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (EIN, 2008) comes in two parts–domestic grievances warranting state nullification of federal abuse, and state consideration of secession if the legitimate Constitutionally-derived Republic cannot be restored; and global grievances occasioned by a century of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory capitalism working in unison to loot the commonwealths of all nations–our elite corrupted the other elites, and between them they have come very close to destroying what should be a prosperous world at peace.
Structured Reading on Reality:
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)
Journal: Up to 90 percent of US paper money [in large cities] contains traces of cocaine
Review: Failed States–The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (American Empire Project)
Review: Imperial Ambitions–Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project)
Review: Hegemony or Survival–America’s Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)
Review: The Umbrella of U.S. Power–The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy
Review: Profit Over People–Neoliberalism & Global Order
Review: Manufacturing Consent–The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Consider please the moral implications of concatenating the following events:
The Obama administration just humiliated itself by promising
But according to the Jerusalem Post (13 Nov 2010), getting a 90 day suspension of settlement construction is going to be tough. The Israeli human rights group Peace Now just released a report saying that settler construction is booming. The report says that ‘1,126 foundations have been laid in 45 days, compared to 1,888 for all of 2009’ and that Settlers have built foundations for 1,126 new homes in the seven weeks since the moratorium on such activity expired. Moreover, ground has been prepared for another 523 homes, but the foundations for these units have not yet been laid.
And meanwhile, over in Gaza, the Israeli human rights group Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement just won an FOI court case to force the Israeli government to release official documents that reveal the obvious — namely that it is the Israeli government's policy to inflict collective punishment on the Gaza people and that Israel's blatantly illegal blockade of Gaza is not related to Israel's national security (see below). Nevertheless, the US still refuses to condemn the blockade or make its lifting a condition of continued aid paid for by increasingly strapped US taxpayers.
Would it not be more better for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if the US government exhibited the courage to ally itself with the courageous Israeli human rights groups, like Peace Now, Gisha, and B'TSelem who are peacefully challenging the patently illegal policies of their own government?
NOVEMBER 17, 2010
“PUT THE PALESTINIANS ON A DIET”
MEDIA BURY DOCUMENTS REVEALING ISRAEL’S DELIBERATE POLICY OF NEAR-STARVATION FOR GAZA
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
Israel has been forced to reveal what Palestinians and other observers on the ground have known for a long time: that the blockade of Gaza is state policy intended to inflict collective punishment, not to bolster Israeli “security”.
Continue reading “Journal: Israel, Gaza Blocade, and F-35 Lemon”
Tom Engelhardt
Editor of TomDispatch.com
Posted: November 15, 2010 03:23 PM
The Stimulus Package in Kabul (I Was Delusional — I Thought One Monster ‘Embassy' Was the End of It)
You must have had a moment when you thought to yourself: It really isn’t going to end, is it? Not ever. Rationally, you know perfectly well that whatever your “it” might be will indeed end, because everything does, but your gut tells you something different.
Read rest of long, deep, important articulation….
Phi Beta Iota: Please take the time to link to the entire article at Huffington Post. Tom Englehardt has produced one of the most gripping, detailed, insightful, and provactive snapshots of how three monstrous billion dollar “embassies” in Baghdad, Kabul, and now Islamabad, are the last clarion of the Empire. His piece is a “must read,” both an epitaph on the Empire, and sadly, a preface to the next 20 years of death and debt as we wind down all that has been set in motion.
Obama inherited a federal deficit that was spinning out of control (mostly because of decreased tax take and increased expenditures for automatic stabilizers, e.g. unemployment insurance), and pressure is growing to cut Social Security (perhaps the most efficiently run program in government) while placing Defense (one of the most inefficiently run programs) off limits. These political pressures are not new and in fact have been building up for years. So, as a first cut into a complex issue, perhaps it is time for the angry masses to ask which political party put them into the fiscal straight jacket that is setting them up for this horrible choice?
A. Democrats?
B. Moderate Republicans?
C. Right Wing Republicans?
Hint:
Green => Reductions in the burden of Gr. Fed. Debt (as measured by the debt to GDP ratio)
Red => Increases in the burden of Gr. Fed. Debt
Posted on 06. Nov, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in US
Suspected White House leakers are on the run
By Wayne Madsen
President Obama was urged by the few White House insiders from whom he still takes advice to leave the country on his ten-day 
Asian trip, his longest trip abroad since becoming president, in order to not inflict any more damage to the Democratic Party in the wake of one of the worst electoral defeats for the party of an incumbent president in recent history. According to sources close to the White House, who put themselves in great danger by even talking to members of the media, the plans to have Obama leave for a visit to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan are an attempt to get Obama out of the country while top Democrats can sort through the political disaster created for the party by Obama's increasingly detached-from-reality presidency.
Virtual political guerrilla warfare has broken out between Obama's inner circle on one hand and senior Democratic officials, including outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party strategist James Carville, former Demcratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, and, behind-the-scenes, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton, on the other.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a remarkable “hit job” that will need much more corroboration. We see two underlying stories that merit exploration. First Story: Obama is scaring his own party. It took a lot to piece together all the little bits that have been hyped together here. Second Story: Obama is beginning to see that he can only win a second term as an Independent, without Biden and without Clinton II. What we do know is that Obama's advisors to date have been a mix of pogomists, pollsters, and political groupies. If he ever gets a grip on strategic reality and commits to restoring the Republic with Electoral Reform, he could still be the George Washington of the 21st Century. On this article, at this time, we stand with Barack Obama and not his detractors.
Complete Madsen reprint below the line so our military colleagues do not have to visit the other site.
Continue reading “Journal: Obama to Leave Democratic Party?”
Israeli False Flag Attack on U.S. Motivated 1963 Senate Investigations – Newly Declassified Files
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Fears of false flag and foreign funded covert operations designed to influence U.S. policy drove the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to launch exhaustive investigations and call for warranted enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). A newly declassified March 17, 1961 memo unsealed and released by the National Archives and Records Administration on October 21, 2010 outlined the Senate's rationale for investigating Israel lobbying groups and other foreign agents active across the United States.
“In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels…..there have been occasions when representatives of other governments have been privately accused of engaging in covert activities within the United States and elsewhere, for the purpose of influencing United States Policy (the Lavon Affair).”
The Lavon Affair refers to a false flag Israeli terrorist bombing plot code named “Operation Susannah” against U.S. targets in Egypt. It was designed to reverse U.S. policy pressuring British withdrawals and reverting control of the Suez Canal to Egypt. Israeli agents infiltrating as Arabs were discovered, arrested and criminally prosecuted in Egypt when their explosives malfunctioned, leading to a crisis in the Israeli government.
