The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
The last word — as with Viet-Nam, we did not lose the battles…
See Also: Iraq (48 Reviews)
And Especially:
Review: We Meant Well – How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People
Review: Grand Theft Pentagon–Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror
Review: The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace
Review: Losing the Golden Hour–An Insider’s View of Iraq’s Reconstruction
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on War Complex—War as a Racket
As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.
December 23, 2011 | By Trevor Timm
The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:
Continue reading “Electronic Frontier Foundation: 2011 Secrecy Skyrockets”
Governor Buddy Roemer merits a look.
Buddy Roemer is a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. He served in Congress from 1981-88 as one of the last truly conservative Democrats who crossed the aisle to back the Reagan agenda. He later was governor of Louisiana and switched party affiliation to the GOP. A longtime business executive, Mr. Roemer founded and was CEO of Business First Bank, a small community lender with $650 million is assets.
Memorable Line: “I'm a Methodist boy, and I believe in miracles.”
Memorable Line: “I want Washington DC to stop being the capital for corruption.”
We are going to move from denial to realization. Physical world events will drive the process of realization. The primary trend is between stability and instability. We are moving from a multi-class system running from Super Elite to Unperson into a model of have's and have-nots, the unpersons. Labor has become a problem because less than 500 million are involved in life support activities thereby leaving more than 7 billion people very vulnerable to dependency (and treated as expendable containers). We are watching a redistribution process bound towards divestiture as more people become unpersons. Destruction of paper assets, debt collapse, bank failure, and war are all part of the redistribution process. With more unpeople, it becomes easier to reduce population through death and abuse. Our current economic structure has at least six trajectories of support; the physical world, human capital, transportation, technology, rule of law,and money.
Fukishima, Katrina, Gulf of Mexico oil spill — all examples of entire populations treated as “unpersons.”
See Also:
MARK JEWELL
Associated Press, 22 December 2011
EXTRACTS:
Bogle says he's paying close attention to tax policies he considers unfair, including one that's favorable to the fund industry and investors with taxable accounts. The top rate for dividends and long-term capital gains is historically low at 15 percent, as a result of the extension of Bush era tax cuts that Congress and President Barack Obama agreed to a year ago. In contrast, top earners pay 35 percent on regular income. He doesn't like that disparity.
. . . . . . .
As for capital gains, there ought to be some distinction between capital made by people who start businesses, and contribute value to society, and capital made by gamblers on Wall Street, some of whom win. Earned capital income should carry the regular dividend rate, but capital income gains by trading, and particularly short-term trading, should pay a higher tax, even than the present ordinary income rate.
. . . . . . .
Q: What's your take on the Occupy movement?
A: I'm happy to say that my current income puts me in the 99 percent group. So maybe I'm not so happy, I don't know.
This movement has brought to the surface some very serious problems in our country about disparities in opportunity and income. So many young people are having a terrible time getting a job.
Young people have great idealism, and the Occupy movement has been a bit unrealistic at times. So what? I can't imagine a worse America if our younger generation didn't have great idealism. I salute them for their enthusiasm, and their mission.
The negative side is that they just pushed too hard for too long. It's very difficult for any movement without any seeming leadership — other than a good idea — to have any sense of taste or judgment. Who's to say, ‘This is going too far'? In some places, it's just gone on too long, and it's been too disruptive. So I think it's good that we've been cleaning up the plazas where the Occupy movement set up.
See Also (Steele Reviews in Each Case):
John Bogle, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
On 12 December, I described a concatenation of warmongering pressures that were shaping the popular psyche in favor of bombing Iran. Now, in a 21 December essay [also attached below], Steven Walt describes a further escalation of these pressures — in this case, via the profoundly flawed pro-bombing analysis, Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike is the Least Bad Option, penned by Matthew Kroenig in January/February 2012 issue of the influential journal Foreign Affairs.
One would think that our recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and our growing strategic problems in Pakistan, not to mention our economic problems and political paralysis at home, would temper our enthusiasm for launching yet another so-called preventative war. But that is not the case, as Kroenig's analysis and the growing anti-Iran hysteria in the debates among the the Republican running for president show (Ron Paul excepted) show. Moreover, President Obama’s Clintonesque efforts to triangulate the pro-war political pressures of the Republicans, while appeasing the Israelis, may be smart domestic politics in the short term, but they add fuel to the pro-war fires shaping the popular psyche. Finally, as I wrote last January, lurking beneath the fiery anti-Iran rhetoric are more deeply rooted domestic political-economic reasons for promoting perpetual war — reasons that have more to do with sustaining the money flowing into the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex in the post-Cold War era than in shaping a foreign policy based on national interests.
While it is easy to whip up popular enthusiasm for launching a new war, our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that successfully prosecuting wars of choice are quite another matter. Nevertheless, as my good friend Mike Lofgren explains in his recent essay, Propagandizing for Perpetual War, devastating rebuttals like Walt's are likely to have little effect on the course of events.
One final point … a surprise attack on Iran would trigger a far tougher war to prosecute successfully that either Iraq or Afghanistan. If you doubt this, I suggest you study Anthony Cordesman’s 2009 analysis of the operational problems confronting Israel, should it decide to launch a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Yet, the beat goes on.
Chuck Spinney
The Blaster
The worst case for war with Iran
Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy, 22 December 2011
If you'd like to read a textbook example of war-mongering disguised as “analysis,” I recommend Matthew Kroenig's forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs, titled “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option.” It is a remarkably poor piece of advocacy, all the more surprising because Kroenig is a smart scholar who has done some good work in the past. It makes one wonder if there's something peculiar in the D.C. water supply.
There is a simple and time-honored formula for making the case for war, especially preventive war. First, you portray the supposed threat as dire and growing, and then try to convince people that if we don't act now, horrible things will happen down the road. (Remember Condi Rice's infamous warnings about Saddam's “mushroom cloud”?) All this step requires is a bit of imagination and a willingness to assume the worst. Second, you have to persuade readers that the costs and risks of going to war aren't that great. If you want to sound sophisticated and balanced, you acknowledge that there are counterarguments and risks involved. But then you do your best to shoot down the objections and emphasize all the ways that those risks can be minimized. In short: In Step 1 you adopt a relentlessly gloomy view of the consequences of inaction; in Step 2 you switch to bulletproof optimism about how the war will play out.
Kroenig's piece follows this blueprint perfectly.
4 Star Generals Warn Against Against NDAA Indefinite Detention
The Intel Hub
December 21, 2011
Two four star Marine generals have written a stunning op-ed in the New York Times which demands that President Obama veto the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill that allows the government to use the military to indefinitely detain American citizens without due process.
Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar, both 4 star Marine generals, published the piece on December 12. The op-ed starts with a direct demand that President Obama veto the NDAA bill in order to protect our country from the “false choice between our safety and ideals.”
It then gets into one of the most blatant anti American treasonous provisions in the history of the United States.
One provision would authorize the military to indefinitely detain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, including United States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be a thing of the past.
Some claim that this provision would merely codify existing practice. Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States — and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.
The generals then go on to cite the fact that most in the military have not even asked for this extreme new power.
Sadly, many at the Pentagon are openly planning on unleashing the military on the American people and if we do not see more high level military personal speak out against this and other tyrannical bills America is finished as we know it.
