FRONT PAGE - Archive File - 04/01/09 -- to -- 05/21/09

Obama Says, "There will be NO prosecutions of anyone in Bush administration" - Alt - (YuTb 9m10s 05/20/09) -- Video - A quote...."No 9/11-Type Commissions, either. **BREAKING NEWS**- On The Rachel Maddow Show, Michael Isikoff reports a secret meeting at the White House today with Obama and AG Eric Holder and human rights activists. Obama announced, emphatically, "There will be NO prosecutions of anyone in the Bush administration" and "No 9/11-type commission either." 5/20/09" -- For more on this issue see....A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the New American Century" - 10-31-08 - mpg & Do It for the Sake of Your Children - 04-26-09 - mpg

Dick Cheney - Tortured Evidence
A quote...."In 2002 the Bush administration was gearing up to launch an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq for profit (and Israel). The CIA at that point was tasked with providing justification in the form of 'evidence' that Saddam had links to "al-qaeda". Under the direction of the office of the VP and the Sec of Defense, the CIA began torturing individuals that they had picked up in random sweeps of Afghanistan and Pakistan (and later Iraq after the invasion). -- To seasoned sadists like Cheney and high level members of the CIA it was clear that far from being a reliable way to extract accurate information from a prisoner, torture was much better suited to forcing a prisoner to state something that was not true - prisoners like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (who coincidentally appears to have been suicided recently in prison in Libya) and Abu Zubaydah who remains in Gitmo to this day." -- For more on this issue see....Making Up Stories - With Torture

A Key 911 “Witness” Turns Out to be an Actor
Contains Video - A quote...."This is the guy who, somehow or another, just happened to know the “official story-line” about how the Towers collapsed right after the event on Sept. 11th 2001. And he just HAPPENED to be interviewed, ready with his analysis. And he just HAPPENED to fade away into history, never coming forward and never beeing identified. This is what he said that day…" -- For more on this sort of issue see....9/11 - NORAD & 9/11 - WTC7 & 9/11 - Commission & 9/11 - Punish or Reward & 9/11 - WTC-1&2 & 9/11 - Planning Guidance

Columbia Space Shuttle Investigation Cost $175 Million. Challenger Investigation Cost $100 Million. 9/11 InvestigationOnly Got $15 Million -- Special Note -  Many people have written on the 9/11 Commission's budgetary constraints. See this. - Want to Know has a great new summary of the Commission's scandalously inadequate budget:"

"The 9/11 commission was originally allotted only $3 million. Eventually, after much begging and haggling, the commission was given $15 million. Yet a CNN article lists the cost of the Lewinsky investigation at $30 million. A Los Angeles Times article states the cost of the Columbia space shuttle disaster investigation was $175 million. --   How could 9/11 – the greatest disaster in American history – be given such a small budget for investigation?

Remember, the Commissioners stated that government did everything it could to cover up and obstruct their investigation:" - also posted at AtheoNews -- For more on this issue see....9/11 - Commission

Like Iraq, the "Facts" Regarding 9/11 Were "Fixed Around the Policy"
A quote...."3 facts show that the government "fixed the facts" regarding 9/11 around a policy decision to exonerate the government from any blame whatsoever.

1. "9/11 Commission's Chief Counsel says Official Story "Almost Entirely Untrue . . . There Was an Agreement Not to Tell the Truth about What Happened"

"As Daily Kos notes in a recent recommended story, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission - John Farmer - states in a new book that the official story of 9/11 "almost entirely untrue". -- also posted at GlobRsrch -- For more on this issue see....Making Up Stories - With Torture

Ron Paul: Israel created Hamas, US created Osama bin Laden
Video - Related Video - A quote...."Amazing. US Congressman,against the resolution support Israel, tells on the floor on Congress that Israel created Hamas for their own agendas like the US created Osama bin Laden." -- For more on the four articles shown above see....US Support of Terror & US Sponsored Civil Wars - Palestine

Obama's Problems With Gas
Maps & Charts -- Some quotes...."Obama thinks a lot about gas in Asia. - Pakistan, and Afghanistan, would benefit from the proposed TAPI pipeline, if it follows the route above. - The USA is in favour of the TAPI pipeline, which could take gas from Turkmenistan to India." -- "What's really going on in Pakistan, India, Iran, Afghanistan and other such places in Asia with links to oil, gas and pipelines? - Is the USA trying to cause divisions between Pakistan and India?" -- also posted at BLN

Global Systemic Crisis: "Financial Surrealism at the Heart of Stock Market Trends"
A quote...."When the world steps out of a 60 year old referential framework  -- The financial surrealism which has been at the heart of stock market trends, financial indicators and political commentaries in the past two months, is in fact the swan song of the referential framework within which the world has lived since 1945. -- Just as in January 2007, the 11th edition of the GEAB described that the turn of the year 2006/07 was wrapped in a « statistical fog » typical of an entry into recession and designed to raise doubts among passengers that the Titanic was really sinking (1), our team today believes that the end of Spring 2009is characterized by the world’s final stepping out of the referential framework used for sixty years by global economic, financial and political players in making their decisions, in particular of its “simplified” version massively used since the fall of the communist bloc in 1989 (when the referential framework became exclusively US-centric). In practical terms, this means that the indicators that everyone is accustomed to use for investment decisions, profitability, location, partnership, etc ... have become obsolete and that it is now necessary to find new relevant indicators to avoid making disastrous decisions."

From My Lai to Bala Baluk - Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off
A quote...."Barack Obama is aggressively stepping up the war in Afghanistan. He's intensified the cross-border bombing of Pakistan and he is doubling the number of U.S. troops to 68,000 by 2010. He's also a strong proponent of pilotless drones even though hundreds of civilians have been killed in bombing raid blunders. -- On May 4, 2009, 143 civilians were killed in a bombing raid in Bala Baluk, a remote area south of Herat. Obama brushed off the incident with terse apology never intimating that the US policy for aerial bombardment would be reviewed to avoid future mishaps."

We wouldn't want to inflame anti-American sentiment
A quote...."There are many bizarre aspects to Obama's decision to try to suppress evidence of America's detainee abuse, beginning with the newfound willingness of so many people to say:  "We want our leaders to suppress information that reflects poorly on what our government does."  One would think that it would be impossible to train a citizenry to be grateful to political officials for concealing evidence of government wrongdoing, or to accept the idea that evidence that reflects poorly on the conduct of political leaders should, for that reason alone, be covered-up:  "Obama and his military commanders decide when it's best that we're kept in the dark, and I'm thankful when they keep from me things that reflect poorly on my government because I trust them to decide what I should and should not know."  It's the fantasy of every political leader to have a citizenry willing to think that way ("I know it's totally unrealistic, but wouldn't it be great if we could actually convince people that it's for their own good when we cover-up evidence of government crimes?")."

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>>>  Making Up Stories - With Torture  <<<

Article #1 -- Silent as the Grave: A Timely Demise Draws the Curtain on a Deeply Rooted Evil -- A quote...."As Scott Horton at Harper's reports -- drawing on the reporting of Andy Worthington -- the Terror War captive who would have provided the most damning evidence of the direct connection between the Bush administration's torture program and its concoction of false evidence to "justify" its Hitlerian act of aggression in Iraq has suddenly, somehow, come over all dead-like. -- Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri -- more usually known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi -- was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and subjected to a series of horrific tortures designed to make him "confess" to non-existent ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. These torture-induced fantasies were then used over and over by top Bush officials -- including the sainted Colin Powell in his infamous "Gleiwitz Incident" appearance at the UN in February 2003, which "sealed the deal" on the war for the bipartisan political and media elites. After this, al-Fakheri was deep-sixed into the blackest quadrants of the American gulag, then secretly "renditioned" to the tender mercies of America's new best friend, Libyan dictator Moamar Gadafy."

Article #2 -- The “Suicide” Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: Why The Media Silence?
Related Article -- A quote...."The Brad Blog, which picked up on the story of the strange death of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi shortly after I published the first account in the Western media on Sunday evening, asked a question yesterday evening that I had been asking myself throughout the day...." -- also posted at CommonDreams

"So, it’s been about 16 hours since we covered indie journalist / historian / blogger Andy Worthington’s detailed report on the reported suicide of the man who falsely “confessed,” during torture, to a false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda … As of this moment, not a single mainstream US newspaper or broadcast outlet has reported on the story. Is it not notable? Or are our newspapers just dead set on ensuring their irrelevance by continuing to not report on news that actually matters, no matter how widely it’s being reported in other parts of the world?"

Article #3 -- More Broken Promises: Obama’s Military Commissions, Detainee Photos Betrayal  -- Special Note - Obama™ Update - A quote...."During the election, Obama said Guantanamo should be closed and habeas corpus restored for the detainees. He said the United States should have “developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.” -- In fact, Obama never seriously considered substantially modifying policies of the previous administration, as is now obvious. His opposition to the “counter-terrorism” policies of the Bush neocons during the election was little more than posturing intended to bamboozle anti-war Democrats and those outraged by human rights abuses. Obama continued the policies of his predecessor after the election, much to the chagrin of Democrats and self-described progressives who bought into his “change” rhetoric."

Article #4 -- Report: much of 9/11 Commission’s findings cite intelligence garnered by torture  -- Possible 9/11 Cover-Up -- (Obama's now up to his neck in this stuff. - mpg) -- Obama™ Update - A quote...."Much of the material cited in the 9/11 Commission’s findings was derived from terror war detainees during brutal CIA interrogations authorized by the Bush administration, according to a Wednesday report. -- “More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques,” writes former NBC producer Robert Windrem in The Daily Beast. “In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.”

Article #5 -- We tortured to justify war
A quote...."Dick Cheney keeps saying "enhanced interrogation" was used to stop imminent attacks, but evidence is mounting that the real reason was to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida." - also posted at CommonDreams -- added/posted - 05-15-09

Article #6 -- One of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Comm Report was Tortured Until He Agreed to Sign a Confession that He Was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ -- A quote...."A special report from NBC news states:  The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission." -- added/posted - 05-15-09

Article #7 -- Death in Libya, betrayal in the west
A quote...."News of the death, in a Libyan jail, of Ibn al-Shaikh al-Libi, a US terror suspect who was the subject of an extraordinary rendition, then tortured in Egypt and Jordan as well as CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Poland has, understandably, raised questions about whether he committed suicide – as the Libyan authorities claimed – or whether he was murdered. Just two weeks ago, representatives of Human Rights Watch saw him in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison, and although he refused to speak to them, they reported that he "looked well." -- also posted at CommonDreams -- added/posted - 05-15-09

Article #8 -- The Media’s Collective Yawn Over Torture for War
A quote...."Faced with what could be the biggest foreign policy bombshell since the Gulf of Tonkin lies cleared the way for Vietnam, the Washington-New York media establishment has chosen to do nothing. Much as D.C. reporters decided several years ago that they were no longer interested covering the Bush administration's duplicity in the run-up to the Iraq war (nor are the David Gregory's of the world interested in revisiting their profession's complicity with the former administration in that regard,) "the press," it seems, has decided to take a pass. And what they're passing on is truly stunning. -- In short, evidence is quickly piling up suggesting that the torture of terrorism suspects, and even the alleged request from no less than the office of the vice president of the United States, to waterboard an Iraqi official, had less to do with protecting Americans from further attack after 9/11, than it had to do with bolstering a phony case for invading Iraq." -- added/posted - 05-16-09

Article #9 -- Like Iraq, the "Facts" Regarding 9/11 Were "Fixed Around the Policy"
A quote...."3 facts show that the government "fixed the facts" regarding 9/11 around a policy decision to exonerate the government from any blame whatsoever.

1. "9/11 Commission's Chief Counsel says Official Story "Almost Entirely Untrue . . . There Was an Agreement Not to Tell the Truth about What Happened"

"As Daily Kos notes in a recent recommended story, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission - John Farmer - states in a new book that the official story of 9/11 "almost entirely untrue". -- also posted at GlobRsrch - added/posted 05-18-09

Article #10 -- Mystery surrounds prison death of terrorist whose testimony was key to Iraq invasion-- A quote...."THE ISLAMIST terrorist who was the key source of the false intelligence used to trigger the US and UK 2003 military invasion of Iraq has been found dead in a Libyan prison cell. -- Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi allegedly commited suicide by hanging in the prison where he was being held in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. His death followed a visit by a team from Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading independent organisations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights." - added/posted 05-19-09

Article #11 -- Guantanamo Investigator Confirms Torture/Iraq Connection
A quote...."On Saturday, I wrote about a new and important McClatchy story that revisited remarks Cheney made to the Rocky Mountain News in 2004, confirming then that they tortured extracted false confessions information from Guantanamo detainees about Al Qaeda/Iraq ties." - added/posted 05-19-09

Regarding the eleven articles shown above: Obama is now making an attempt to cover up the Bush regime's criminal policy of torturing thousands of "suspects", much of which appears to have been deliberately implemented to manufacture false, erroneous and misleading information along with out-right propaganda.

It appears both the Bush and Obama administrations can not afford to shed the bright light of discovery -- an open, public, examination, in a court of law, under the rules of evidence -- regarding their now "joint" conspiracy, for fear of what might actually come out.

A conspiracy that has now morphed into one of enforced silence, intimidation, obstruction and lies.

If so, this would make Obama an accessory after the fact in regards to covering-up torture (a war crime), torture to extract false testimony to launch an illegal war of aggression (a crime against humanity), and finally, torture to extract false information which quite probably prevented, most likely intentionally, the identification of the true perpetrators of 9/11, (treason).

Obama is now just a step away from becoming directly involved in covering up what actually occurred on 9/11....this is treason, plain and simple. – mpg

For more on this issue see....The Convenient Silence of Guantanamo Bay - 05-31-08 - mpg
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The $33,000,000,000,000 Question
Charts - Graphs - Tables - (By the numbers -- Hang on to your hats folks....the numbers do NOT look good. - mpg-- A quote...."Of course US banks made good money in Q1. The environment created for them is the equivalent of the US government reducing the cost of goods to zero for its embattled car manufacturers and then going on to buy - courtesy of the US tax payer - a couple of million cars that nobody really needs. Even Detroit would make money given those conditions! -- Liquidity is trapped -- The problem for the rest of us is that the banks are not sharing the candy they have been handed. Much of the liquidity created by the central banks remains trapped in the financial sector (see chart 1). Quite simply, the multiplier is not doing its job, as many banks prefer to hoard cash rather than increase lending at this juncture. -- This is both good and bad news at the same time. Good because it implies that we probably do not have to worry too much about the inflationary effect of the aggressive monetary easing currently taking place; bad because it means that the economy is not going to kick back to life as quickly as everyone would like – and expect."

Our Awesomeness in Numbers
More numbers.  Isn't it just awful when those pesky facts constantly keep getting in the way of your own mythic "national greatness" and other assorted hallucinations? - mpg -- A quote...."The OECD report is out. Like a pack of hungry wallabies, the media pounced immediately on the only item worth reporting: the French eat and sleep longer hours than anyone, and yet they're among the thinnest. The Americans work the longest hours, spend half as much time eating as the French, and they're the fattest! No wonder everybody hates the French. Oh, and something the wallabies missed. The French (like most Europeans) are now taller than the Americans. No doubt the nativists will blame short immigrants, except that science has conclusively debunked that myth. Americans are shrinking (in height, not width) because of poor diet and lousy prenatal/infant care...."

Infant Deaths: 28 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey).
Life Expectancy: 24 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey., Hungary, Poland, Czech & Slovak Reps).
Health Expenditures: 1 out of 30.
Poverty Rates: 28 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey).
Child Poverty: 27 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Poland).
Income Inequality: 27 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Portugal).
Obesity: 30 out of 30.
Incarceration: 30 out of 30.
Work Hours: (ranked in ascending order): 30 out of 30.
Height (women): 25 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Korea, Portugal, Japan).
Height (men): 24 out of 30 (Italy, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Korea, Japan).

Geithner Cold Open
Saturday Night Live Video - Geither like you've never seen him before....telling the honest truth. - mpg

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Blue Gold, Turkmen Bashes, and Asian Grids - Pipelineistan in Conflict
A quote...."As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place. -- Yep, it all comes down to black gold and "blue gold" (natural gas), hydrocarbon wealth beyond compare, and so it's time to trek back to that ever-flowing wonderland -- Pipelineistan. It's time to dust off the acronyms, especially the SCO or Shanghai Cooperative Organization, the Asian response to NATO, and learn a few new ones like IPI and TAPI. Above all, it's time to check out the most recent moves on the giant chessboard of Eurasia, where Washington wants to be a crucial, if not dominant, player." -- also posted at WarInIraq

The Children's Crusade
Obama™ Update - A quote...."Day after day, week after week, Barack Obama's "Overseas Contingency Operations" keep churning through the bodies of children: sometimes with chemical weapons that sear their flesh and leave them maimed and disfigured for life; sometimes with carefully aimed bullets ripping through their organs and leaving them dead right on the spot. -- And in every such case, our brave and noble Terror Warriors -- who, lest we forget, are upholding the highest values of world civilization, bringing hope and change to benighted lands and defending our sacred way of life -- run screaming like spinsters in a hissy fit from the slightest hint of responsibility for their actions. Their first response, always, is to blame someone else: either the designated enemy of the day -- or else the burned and shredded children themselves."

The Bad PR of Dead Civilians - Afghan airstrikes and the corporate media
Obama™ Update - A quote...."Early reports of a massive U.S. attack on civilians in western Afghanistan last week (5/5/09) hewed to a familiar corporate media formula, stressing official U.S. denials and framing the scores of dead civilians as a PR setback for the White House's war effort." - also posted at CommonDreams -- For more on this issue see....US Fake Intel / Propaganda

Rebranding the "Long War", Pt 2 - Balochistan is the ultimate prize
& Pt 1: Obama does his Bush impression 
Geo-Strategic Alert - Obama™ Update - A quote...."It's a classic case of calm before the storm. The AfPak chapter of Obama's brand new OCO ("Overseas Contingency Operations"), formerly GWOT ("global war on terror") does not imply only a surge in the Pashtun Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A surge in Balochistan as well may be virtually inevitable. -- Balochistan is totally under the radar of Western corporate media. But not the Pentagon's. An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan's area, rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more than one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of Pakistan's 173 million citizens." -- For more on this issue see....The US's New Map of the Middle East & Divide and rule & The Plan -- according to U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) YouTube - 1.37 min

China takes steps towards full convertibility of the yuan
Financial Warning -- A quote...."China recently announced a series of measures to protect its economy against a possible devaluation of the US dollar by decoupling the Asian currencies from the American currency and using the Chinese yuan to gain access to raw materials from South America, the Caribbean and, most importantly, Russia. -- The Chinese government has serious reasons to be alarmed. As the financial crisis deepens and the US debt multiplies to unprecedented levels, the possibilities of the US dollar failing to maintain its privileged position as the world reserve currency are very real."

Secretary Doomsday and the Empathy Gap - The Everyday Extremism of Washington
A quote...."A front-page New York Times headline last week put the matter politely indeed: "In Pakistan, U.S. Courts Leader of Opposition." And nobody thought it was strange at all. -- In fact, it's the sort of thing you can read just about any time when it comes to American policy in Pakistan or, for that matter, Afghanistan. It's just the norm on a planet on which it's assumed that American civilian and military leaders can issue pronunciamentos about what other countries must do; publicly demand various actions of ruling groups; opt for specific leaders, and then, when they disappoint, attempt to replace them; and use what was once called "foreign aid," now taxpayer dollars largely funneled through the Pentagon, to bribe those who are hard to convince." -- also posted at CommonDreams

Obama Means No Change - Bush By Another Name
Obama™ Update - A quote...."Christopher King argues that President Barack Obama is no different in substance from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and that the European Union should detach itself from the coattail of the USA and develop constructive national and foreign policies based on the European culture and geo-political situation. -- We’ve now seen Barack Obama’s first 100 days. I said I wasn’t hopeful that he would bring any change in US foreign policy but I’m disappointed nevertheless. Deep down I was hoping for the best, although the evidence was against it. Barack Obama is America’s Anthony Blair: looks good but rotten inside. To approve an escalation of killing in Afghanistan has to be rotten but, to be fair, he did warn us. So what has the president given the world so far?"
It's National Nancy Off the Table Day
Satire -- A quote...."That's right, children, it's national Nancy Day, honoring the occasion on May 7, 2006, when Nancy Pelosi first allowed Tim Russert to badger her into agreeing that she wouldn't permit the impeachment of Saint George or Father Dick, not even if they barbequed children on the White House lawn."

The Obama [non]-recovery
Financial Warning - Obama™ Update - A quote...."In an extraordinary interview published in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, President Obama outlined his vision for the US economy in a piece entitled “After the Great Recession.” The interview was conducted by economic columnist David Leonhardt after Obama had delivered a major speech on restructuring the US economy at Georgetown University on April 14. -- In the interview, Obama makes clear that there will be no serious structural reform of the banking system. Any regulatory changes introduced to rein in “some of the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking” that precipitated the financial crash will be designed to restore “confidence and trust” in the financial sector, including the “market for securitized products.” -- Obama specifically rejects restoring the barrier between investment banking and commercial banking put in place by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, the most important financial regulatory reform of the Depression era. The act was one of the victims of the financial deregulation of the late 1990s, carried out by then-President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and current top Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers." - bold by website editor - also posted at AmericanEveryman -- They intend to build even bigger bubbles. - mpg  -- For more on this issue see....Enforcing the Rules -- Too Little, Too Late - 02-27-09 - mpg & The Virtual Economy - 05-01-09 - mpg

The Cold Air of the Dark Ages - Torture and Mr. Obama
Obama™ Update - A quote...."Okay, at least some things are settled. When George W. Bush said "The United States does not torture", everyone now knows it was crapaganda. And when Barack Obama, a month into his presidency, said "The United States does not torture", it likewise had all the credibility of a 19th century treaty between the US government and the American Indians. - When Obama and his followers say, as they do repeatedly, that he has "banned torture", this is a statement they have no right to make. The executive orders concerning torture leave loopholes, such as being applicable only "in any armed conflict". What about in a "counter-terrorism" environment? And the new administration has not categorically banned the outsourcing of torture, such as renditions, the sole purpose of which is to kidnap people and send them to a country to be tortured. Moreover, what do we know of all the CIA secret prisons, the gulag extending from Poland to the island of Diego Garcia?"

Buying Brand Obama
Obama™ Update - A quote...."Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest." -- also posted at CommonDreams

Obama's Economic Team Banks On Wall Street
(Must Read - This is really good, it describes who got what from whom) -Obama™ Update - A quote...."CONGRESSMAN HENRY B. GONZÁLEZ once asked me if I could name the largest transfer of wealth in our country's history. I stumbled through a couple of New Deal acronyms and had moved on to the defense budget when González stopped me. "Mortgage lending," he said. González was a liberal Democrat from San Antonio who chaired the House Banking Committee from 1989 to 1995. In 1988 he reminded me that at the time a thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage required the average family to pay for its house twice—once in principal and once in interest. He described mortgage lending as a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the stocks-and-bonds class. "

Fake Faith And Epic Crimes By John Pilger
A quote...."These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as ‘the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes [sic] in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole’. International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, the Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, ‘if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves’.

Have Americans Lost All Control Over the Federal Government?
A quote...."Over the last sixteen months, many Americans have watched with despair as the Federal government has wrested virtually despotic control over the American economy away from both individual Americans and private enterprise. They have observed the Federal government’s frantic (and totally unsuccessful) attempts to prop up banks that have revealed themselves to be completely incompetent and bankrupt. They have watched the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board printing more money than has ever been created in the history of these United States. They have watched their so-called "representatives" handing out unimaginable sums of their own hard-earned tax money to scores of bungling companies, like AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler. They have watched in cynical amazement as their newly elected president almost instantaneously broke his promise to end the most un-winnable of two un-winnable wars that they specifically elected him to terminate. They have watched him similarly break his promise to investigate the myriad grisly crimes of the claque that used to claim to be their rulers. And they have watched the American economy steadily slipping further and further into depression."

The Threat
A quote...."…It is necessary to recognize that the ultimate power of every government – whether of kings or caretakers – rests solely on opinion and not on physical force. The agents of government are never more than a small proportion of the total population under their control. This implies that no government can possibly enforce its will upon the entire population unless it finds widespread support and voluntary cooperation within the nongovernmental public."  ~ *Hans-Hermann Hoppe*

"The Department of Homeland Security issued a report on April 7th titled, "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The unclassified part of this report is an open admission our government is a criminal enterprise. While the American Idol faithful will have trouble connecting the dots, the admission is thinly veiled, but there nonetheless."

Waterboard an A-rab for Jesus
A quote...."In a recent column, Eric Margolis labeled the Republicans as "America’s champion of war and torture." Those are some harsh words – harsh but true. -- The recent release of the Bush torture memos and the revelation that the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times and Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times before Bush claimed that we don’t torture has elicited a predictable response from conservative Christians who think the Republican Party is the party of God: silence." -- Let's be clear about this, these people are NOT Christians, they sold themselves and their values a long time ago. - mpg

UAE "torture" scandal and cover-up sparks outrage in the U.S.
Satire - A quote...."As more videotapes emerge documenting the torture inflicted on numerous victims by Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a prince of the United Arab Emirates, the controversy is beginning to jeopardize the UAE's relationship with the United States, a country that absolutely loathes torture and demands real accountability for those who do it:" -- also posted at CommonDreams

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The Virtual Economy - 05-01-09 - mpg
The Vogon Constructor Fleet - 05-01-09 - mpg

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Causes of the Crisis
A quote...."James K. Galbraith | May 01, 2009 | Commentary -- Editor’s note: These remarks were delivered to a meeting of the Texas Lyceum in Austin on April 3, at a debate between University of Texas professor James Galbraith, an Observer contributing writer, and former Majority Leader Richard Armey, chief instigator of the recent Astroturf “tea party" protests. Armey had begun his remarks by noting that his rule in life was “never trust anyone from Austin or Boston,” and proceeded to declare his allegiance to the “Austrian School” of economics, a libertarian view that regards public intervention in private markets as socialism." -- also posted at CommonDreams

"As a matter of economics, public spending substitutes for private spending. It provides jobs, motivates useful activity, staves off despair. But it is not self-sustaining in the absence of a viable private credit system. The idea that we will be on the road to full recovery and returning to high employment in a year or so therefore seems to me to be an illusion. And for this reason, the emphasis on short-term, “shovel-ready” projects in the expansion package, while understandable, was a mistake. As in the New Deal, we need both the Works Progress Administration, headed by Harry Hopkins, to provide employment, and the Public Works Administration, headed by Harold Ickes, to rebuild the country." -- *James K. Galbraith*

Brits Sound Final Retreat From Iraq -- But the U.S. Beat Goes On
A quote...."This week we saw a huge milestone reached in the greatest conflict of our day: yet it passed with scarcely more than a murmur in the American press -- and with deathly silence on the part of the primary architects of the occasion. - We speak of course of the final bug-out of British forces from Iraq, where this week, after six years of slavish service to America's war of aggression, Her Majesty's military gave up their last remaining  base in the conquered land. But as the Guardian astutely points out, the Brits did not turn the base over to the completey liberated totally sovereign Iraqi goverment, but to the tender care of Pentagon, which is pouring thousands of American troops into Basra to guard the occupation's supply lines out of Kuwait -- and keep a watchful eye over the oil-rich region."

The Kingdom of Lies - posted at the Palestine Chronicle
A quote...."Racism is common to most and probably all societies. Laws never seem entirely to eliminate it. It was the essential tool in the creation of modern settler states. The United States could not have come into existence without the obliteration of North American Indian cultures and of large numbers of the people themselves. They had to die so the US could be born. In Australia the indigenous people of Tasmania were wiped out to the last man, woman and child, while on the mainland the tribes were massacred, confined, stripped of their ancestral land and eventually turned into fringe dwellers. Until recently Australia had a prime minister who could deny that aboriginal children of mixed ‘blood’ were taken from their parents up to the 1930s and refused to issue any expression of remorse for their mistreatment. More recent targets of racism have been Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants, while the Howard federal government’s racist treatment of Iraqi and Afghan refugees and asylum seekers remains one of the most shameful chapters of Australia’s history." - also posted at ICH

The Dark Core of the Empire
A quote...."Among the major obstacles to both criminal prosecutions and a truth commission regarding the CIA’s torture program is the underlying reluctance of U.S. officials to focus attention on the super-secret operations of the CIA. - A criminal prosecution, after all, could get out of control, especially one that is being prosecuted by a genuinely honest, independent prosecutor. Prospective defendants might threaten to reveal things that everyone would want to keep quiet."

Farewell, the American Century -- Rewriting the Past by Adding In What's Been Left Out
A quote...."In a recent column, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "What Henry Luce called 'the American Century' is over." Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce's pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing."

Torture and Treason
(Must read, for one of the key concepts of the Neocons' criminal enterprise) - This is the very heart of the matter folks, don't lose sight of it.  The Neocons set it all up and that includes murdering people to start their various wars for profit. - mpg -- A quote...."Let us pause the news cycle here and strip away the desperate delicacy of this language. The Gitmo intelligence crew was being told, from the highest levels of the Bush White House and the Pentagon - think Cheney, think Rumsfeld - to keep slamming these guys' heads against the wall, to keep pouring water down their throats, to keep tormenting them with dogs and insects, until they blubbered, in their pain and terror, a word or two that would justify the long-planned (and completely pointless) invasion of Iraq. -- This drags the torture "debate" out of the fog that mainstream pundits are paid to generate - does it work? is it legal? is it cruel? is it counterproductive? - and exposes something that is troubling at the level of the soul, and begs only one question. -- Is it treason?" -- For more on this issue see....The Convenient Silence of Guantanamo Bay - 05-31-08 - mpg

Kiss the Era of Human Rights Goodbye - What Bush Willed to Obama and the World
A quote...."These days, it's virtually impossible to escape the world of torture the Bush administration constructed. Whether we like it or not, almost every day we learn ever more about the full range of its shameful policies, about who the culprits were, and just which crimes they might be prosecuted for. But in the morass of memos, testimony, op-eds, punditry, whistle-blowing, documents, and who knows what else, with all the blaming, evasion, and denial going on, somehow we've overlooked the most significant victim of all. One casualty of the Bush torture policies -- certainly, at least equal in damage to those who were tortured and the country whose laws were twisted and perverted in the process -- has been human rights itself. And no one even seems to notice."

Robert Byrd Demands Torture Investigation
Quote of the Day.....

"The recently leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as the four released memorandums from the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), confirm our worst fears. These documents point to brutal, inhumane acts which were repeatedly carried out by U.S. military personnel, and which were authorized and condoned at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. These acts appear to directly violate both the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. Spain and the United Kingdom have already initiated investigations of Bush Administration officials who approved these acts. The United States needs to investigate as well. To continue to ignore the mounting evidence of clear wrongdoing is a national humiliation." -- *Sen. Robert Byrd*, the longest-serving Senator in US history

When the President Does It, That Means It is Not Illegal - Alt  (YuTb - 4m21s - 04/29/09)
Video - A quote...."By Cenk Uygur - April 30, 2009 "Huffington Post" -- Condoleezza Rice was recently speaking at Stanford when students asked her an excellent question on waterboarding and torture. They have her answer on tape and it isn't pretty. Condi Rice absolutely pulls a Nixon."

Obama's Sins of Omission
A quote...."THE HISTORY of American liberalism is one of promoting substantively modest if superficially radical reforms in order to refurbish and sustain the status quo. From Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to Bill Clinton's New Covenant, liberals have specialized in jettisoning the redundant to preserve what they see as essential. In this sense, modern liberalism's great achievement has been to deflect or neutralize calls for more fundamental change - a judgment that applies to President Obama, especially on national security."

The Financial Barbarians at the Gate
Audio Analysis - A quote...."The Financial Barbarians at the Gate" with financial economist and historian, Dr. Michael Hudson. Europe; worsening financial situation and indebtedness; the history of banking and the criminalization of the banking system; tax policy; real estate asset inflation; US imperialism via the monetary system; neoliberal/neofeudal economics; classical political economy; finance capital breaking away from industrial capital; the financial crisis leading to a political crisis; similarities with the Roman Republic; what measures labor should take." -- For more on this issue see.....Enforcing the Rules -- Too Little, Too Late - 02-27-09 - mpg.  -- See also the quote shown below....

"[To the possessor of money capital] “the process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money-making. All nations with a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process of production.”—  *Karl Marx*, Capital, Volume II, “The Circuit of Money Capital”

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Do It for the Sake of Your Children - 04-26-00 - mpg

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Top of the Heap: The Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Any full and genuine investigation of the torture system would reveal the shocking extent of Democratic complicity with it. And certainly a criminal investigation -- which could not be steered and hobbled by a "blue-ribbon" panel of Establishment grandees -- would be even more dangerous in that regard. A genuine, independent probe of the Bush torture system would also doubtless lead back to covert tortures countenanced by Democratic and Republican administrations going back for several decades, as Bernard Chazelle noted recently. -- The second reason why Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership are resisting, with all their might, a full investigation for the torture system is that they want to uphold what is perhaps the central principle of the American state today: the unaccountability of the ruling elite. [Glenn Greenwald speaks to this point here.] They want to retain the freedom of action to do "whatever it takes" (that tough-guy phrase so beloved by "savvy" insiders and their sycophants in the press) to maintain themselves and their cronies and their class in a position of dominance, wealth and privilege. The law is not for them; the law is for the rubes, the suckers, the rabble, the losers -- for you and me, in other words."

Killing Civilians - How Safe Do You Actually Want to Be?
A quote...."Almost like clockwork, the reports float up to us from thousands of miles away, as if from another universe. Every couple of days they seem to arrive from Afghan villages that few Americans will ever see without weapon in hand. Every few days, they appear from a world almost beyond our imagining, and always they concern death -- so many lives snuffed out so regularly for more than seven years now. Unfortunately, those news stories are so unimportant in our world that they seldom make it onto, no less off of, the inside pages of our papers. They're so repetitive that, once you've started reading them, you could write them in your sleep from thousands of miles away." -- also posted at CommonDreams

Torture, Iraq and 9/11
(Must read, exceptional analysis) -- A quote...."5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said "my interest is to hit Saddam". - He also said "Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not." -- And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement "judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time", is the statement "Hard to get a good case." In other words, top officials knew that there wasn't a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway." -- also posted at GlobRsrch & OpEdNews -- For more on this issue see....The Convenient Silence of Guantanamo Bay - 05-31-08 - mpg

The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project
A quote...."With the release of the U.S. Senate's report on the Bush Administration torture program, it is now incontrovertibly clear – and officially established by the highest, most respectable Establishment institutions – that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a host of other top officials deliberately, willingly, and with malice aforethought, established a system of interrogation using brutal techniques that they knew were against the law. Hence the need for the torture memos that attempted to give retroactive legal cover for atrocities that were already taking place at the orders of the White House and the Pentagon. They were also told repeatedly that these tortures were ineffective at producing useful intelligence. (For more detail, see the excellent stories at Salon.com here and here.)"

Jane Harman: Angry, partisan, civil liberties extremist
(Must read, for the rich, savory, well deserved and extremly well served razor sharp satire.) "Jane -  The Bimbo From Rand Corp. - Harman" has been thoroughly hoisted by her own petard. -- How utterly sweet and joyous life can be. - mpg -- A quote...."Blue Dog Rep. Jane Harman -- once the most vigorous Democratic cheerleader of Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- is rip-roarin' angry today.  Apparently, her private conversations were eavesdropped on by the U.S. Government!  This is a grave outrage that, as she told Andrea Mitchell just moments ago, demands a probing investigation:" -- also posted at ICH

The Pulitzer-winning investigation that dare not be uttered on TV
(Must read, for the surprising discovery that good, honest, meticulous, investigative journalism of the highest caliber is sometimes well rewarded) -- A quote...."The New York Times' David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered.  Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow's exposés:" - also posted at ICH & CommonDreams & OpEdNews & LewRockwell -- Sincere congratulations to David Barstow and the New York Times - mpg - For more on this issue see....The NYT's Article - Behind TV Analysts, The Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

Housing Bubble Smackdown: Bigger Crash Ahead & The Housing Bust Takes Center-stage -- A quote from the first article...."Due to the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium at the end of March, the downward slide in housing is gaining speed. The moratorium was initiated in January to give Obama's anti-foreclosure program---which is a combination of mortgage modifications and refinancing---a chance to succeed. The goal of the plan was to keep up to 9 million struggling homeowners in their homes, but it's clear now that the program will fall well-short of its objective. -- In March, housing prices accelerated on the downside indicating bigger adjustments dead-ahead. Trend-lines are steeper now than ever before--nearly perpendicular. Housing prices are not falling, they're crashing and crashing hard. Now that the foreclosure moratorium has ended, Notices of Default (NOD) have spiked to an all-time high. These Notices will turn into foreclosures in 4 to 5 months time creating another cascade of foreclosures. Market analysts predict there will be 5 MILLION MORE FORECLOSURES BETWEEN NOW AND 2011. It's a disaster bigger than Katrina. Soaring unemployment and rising foreclosures ensure that hundreds of banks and financial institutions will be forced into bankruptcy. 40 percent of delinquent homeowners have already vacated their homes. There's nothing Obama can do to make them stay. Worse still, only 30 percent of foreclosures have been relisted for sale suggesting more hanky-panky at the banks. Where have the houses gone? Have they simply vanished?"

Big bank profits are bogus! Massive public deception!
Charts - A quote...."How can our trusted authorities be so blatantly deceptive and still keep their jobs? Perhaps you should ask Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Not long ago, for example, he declared that the total losses from the debt crisis would not exceed $100 billion, while conveying the hope that most of those losses could be soon written off. Also around that time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated the losses would be $1 trillion, with only a small percentage written off. -- The IMF’s latest estimate: $4 trillion in losses, with only one-third of those written off so far. Bernanke’s error factor: He was 4,000 percent off the mark, in a world where 50 percent errors can be lethal. -- Meanwhile, based on fourth quarter Fed data, we find that, among the nation’s megabanks, six are at risk of failure in our opinion (seven if you count Wachovia and Wells Fargo as separate institutions)." -- also posted at ICH

Senator: Government Used Communist Torture Techniques Aimed at Extracting FALSE Confessions  -- (Must read, for the outrage) - A quote...."Senator Levin, in commenting on the Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture declassified today, drops the following bombshell: -- "In SERE training, U.S. troops are briefly exposed, in a highly controlled setting, to abusive interrogation techniques used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions. The techniques are based on tactics used by Chinese Communists against American soldiers during the Korean War for the purpose of eliciting false confessions for propaganda purposes." -- For more on this issue see....The Convenient Silence of Guantanamo Bay - 05-31-08 - mpg

When the Deal Goes Down: Obama Signals Move to Save Bush Bigwigs on Torture
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."There has been much throwing about of brains on the matter of Barack Obama's ballyhooed "turnaround" on the torture prosecution issue. As usual, there is much less to the Beltway puffery than meets the eye -- although a key aspect of the burgeoning Torturegate affair can be found buried deep in the New York Times story on the subject."

Rule of law vetoed by President Obama - posted at Online Journal
Obama™ Update - A quote...."There are no headlines or pontificating pundits, but the real news that has become crystal clear to any but the most delusional and distracted Americans is that President Obama has no commitment to applying the rule of law where it counts. Certainly, not applying it to the large number of rich and powerful people that have violated our Constitution and plunged the nation into economic disaster. - Again and again, we hear the flimsy argument from Obama and his top advisors that he wants to look forward and not backward. This is tortured logic when it comes to delivering justice in a nation supposedly cherishing the rule of law."

Obama’s First 100 Days: Worse Than Even We Predicted
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."From protecting Bush officials who ordered torture from prosecution, to maintaining and expanding the American empire, to warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, all have remained and intensified under Obama. -- As President Barack Obama approaches his first 100 days in office, the corporate media prepares a new round of fawning idolatry about the Obama administration’s “achievements,” yet a summary glance at what Obama has actually done in that short time with regard to expanding the Bush police state and the Neo-Con empire is worse than even we predicted."

Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."On any rational assessment the popular new president is skating on thin ice. Pollyanna bulletins about the economy puff up from the White House and Federal Reserve, like auguries of a new Pope through the  Vatican chimney. “Habemus spem.” We have hope. We’ve just heard it from President Obama: "We are starting to see glimmers of hope across the economy." From Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who’s so far unleashed $12 trillion in booster money, we get the always sinister reassurance, like Death giving the Appointee in Samarra a friendly tap on the shoulder, "the foundations of our economy are strong".

Home of the Barricaded, Land of the ‘Fraid
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."April 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- There are few statistics as stunning as the following simple, single number:  The United States spends two times more on its military than all the other countries of the world, combined.  -- Yes, that's right.  All 200 or so of them.  Combined. -- According to GlobalSecurity.org, last year, the US dropped about $625 billion in taxpayer dollars on its military, while all the rest of the world together spent $500 billion. (The aggregate global figures come from 2004, but have been steady over the prior decade.)  However, if you also add in nuclear weapons costs handled separately by the Energy Department, Veterans Affairs, interest on money borrowed to fund previous wars, and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the total rises to a jaw-dropping one trillion dollars per year. -- Think of how astonishing that is."

Tortured Logic: Obama Writes Off Old Crimes While Promoting New Outrages
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."I have little to say at the moment on details of the Bush torture memos released by the Obama Administration, beyond what I have been saying for many years now about these sickening practices, and what they say about America's bipartisan, imperial elite, which countenanced them, and often openly championed them. (I think my first piece on America's torture system was written in early spring 2002 -- a column printed in the Moscow Times, drawn from readily available stories in the mainstream press. America's willing practice of torture as an official policy has been open knowledge for almost the entire decade. But I will admit the bit about using putting insects into the torture box of a wounded, deranged captive was new.) -- also posted at ADS

Keith Olbermann: "President Obama, You Are Wrong" - (YuTb 4m59s 041609) Video - A quote...."MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" Takes on President Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA Interrogators for torture - 04/16/09"

Obama v. Nuremberg
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."I have heard very little in the mainstream media about the most compelling rejection of the Obama administration’s decision to grant immunity from prosecution to torturers, which arose out of Nuremberg trials. At Nuremberg, the defense that one was just following orders was rejected as a war crimes defense or a shield to prosecution, and was relevant, if at all, only to sentencing. Nuremberg Principle IV states:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

The Year of Cockeyed Optimism - "The foundations of our economy are strong" - posted at ICH -- Obama™ Update -- A quote...." April 16, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Retail sales fell in March as soaring job losses and tighter credit conditions forced consumers to cut back sharply on discretionary spending. Nearly every sector saw declines including electronics, restaurants, furniture, sporting goods and building materials. Auto sales continued their historic nosedive despite aggressive promotions on new vehicles and $13 billion of aid from the federal  government. The crash in housing, which began in July 2006, accelerated on the downside in March, falling 19 percent year-over-year, signaling more pain ahead. Mortgage defaults are rising and foreclosures in 2009 are estimated to be in the 2.1 million range, an uptick of 400,000 from 2008. Consumer spending is down, housing is in a shambles, and industrial output dropped at an annual rate of 20 percent, the largest quarterly decrease since VE Day. The systemwide contraction continues unabated with with no sign of letting up." -- also posted at CounterPunch & GlobRsrch

The Crisis That Could Bring Down Obama
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Goldman Sachs reports better-than-expected profits this quarter. Wells Fargo cleared record profits last week. The President, understandably, points to signs of hope and encourages Americans to be optimistic about the economy. But when do we move from healthy confidence to a confidence game? The banks are reporting profits thanks to massive infusions of taxpayer bailout funds. It's simply silly to be lulled by cheery-sounding reports when the institutions are actually insolvent. At some point we have to take a clear-eyed look at the massive failure of our financial system. Ignoring it won't make it go away." -- also posted at ICH

Forget Star Wars. It’s Back To Colonial Warfare
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates finally put an end to this debate. Gate’s newly announced defense budget makes clear that America’s military future lies in what the Pentagon calls, "expeditionary warfare" or "counterinsurgency operations." These, it is clear, will take place mostly in the Muslim world. - The British, less given to euphemisms than Americans, used to call their distant operations against unruly natives, "colonial warfare" or "little wars." -- also posted at ICH

Neoconned Again
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."After successive elections unseated the Republican majority and sent John McCain to defeat, neoconservatism seemed like a spent force. Francis Fukuyama wrote wistfully about life “After Neoconservatism” in 2006. Ian Buruma described the McCain campaign as the neocons’ “last stand” and harrumphed that they “will not be missed.” -- also posted at ICH

Czar [Stooge, Bagman, AIPAC Lackey] Obama
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."The president's incredibly imperialist wielding of executive power. -- President Barack Obama's claim to czarlike powers in a perpetual global war against international terrorism has been blunted by a judicial appointee of former President George W. Bush. Last week, in the case Fadi al Maqaleh, United States District Judge John D. Bates denied that President Obama could make suspected "enemy combatants" disappear into the Bagram Theater Internment Facility at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan without an opportunity for exoneration. (While President Obama has abandoned the term enemy combatant for Guantanamo Bay detainees, he has retained the label for detainees held elsewhere.)" -- also posted at ICH

Frontline Video - Pakistan: Children of the Taliban
Video - A quote...."Correspondent Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is traveling across her fractured homeland to investigate the rising popularity of a new Pakistani branch of the Taliban, now threatening the major cities, blowing up girls’ schools and declaring war on the Pakistani state. - Her journey begins at a rehabilitation center in Peshawar, where she talks with many young victims caught in the crossfire of this war."

Scott Horton Interviews Dahr Jamail
Audio Interview - Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Dahr Jamail, writer for Foreign Policy in Focus, discusses the Iraqi government’s unwillingness to incorporate Sunni “Awakening Councils” into the regular army, the walled-off autonomous conclaves within Baghdad, the decimation of Iraq’s health care system and forty years of U.S. meddling in Iraqi affairs."

Embedded Bellwether: The Paper of Record Prepares the Public for More Slaughter
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Noam Chomsky, among others, has noted how faithfully and thoroughly the corporate American media advances the agenda of the state, achieving a near Pravda-like degree of servitude without any need for the kind of overt, direct control once practiced by Pravda's Soviet masters. This is done, in large part, unconsciously; that is, most of the practitioners (and all of the owners) of the corporate media share the same assumptions and values of the nation's ruling elite. They don't have to be told to believe what the elite believe; they believe it already."

An emerging progressive consensus on Obama's executive power and secrecy abuses
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."In the last week alone, the Obama DOJ (a) attempted to shield Bush's illegal spying programs from judicial review by (yet again) invoking the very "state secrets" argument that Democrats spent years condemning and by inventing a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim that not even the Bush administration espoused, and (b) argued that individuals abducted outside of Afghanistan by the U.S. and then "rendered" to and imprisoned in Bagram have no rights of any kind -- not even to have a hearing to contest the accusations against them -- even if they are not Afghans and were captured far away from any "battlefield."  These were merely the latest -- and among the most disturbing -- in a string of episodes in which the Obama administration has explicitly claimed to possess the very presidential powers that Bush critics spent years condemning as radical, lawless and authoritarian." -- also posted at CommonDreams & ICH

Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects and Promotes CIA Torture Mavens
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."It was obvious from the moment that Barack Obama appointed Leon Panetta to head the CIA that there was going to be no serious investigation -- much less prosecution -- of the high crimes of torture committed by the agency at the order of the Bush White House. Panetta, a Clinton retread (who actually began his career in the Nixon administration), has always been a bland, feckless, obedient servant of the Establishment; he has no outside power base, no pull, no heft, no popularity -- nothing that would enable him to grab hold of the CIA with both hands and clean that fetid, blood-encrusted house. And of course, it was precisely this kind of powerless figure that Barack Obama wanted in the post."

The Warren Report - "Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!"
Obama™ Update -- A quote...." April 10, 2009 "ICH" -- On Tuesday, a congressional panel headed by ex-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren released a report on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's handling of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Warren was appointed to lead the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) in November by Senate majority leader Harry Reid. From the opening paragraph on, the Warren report makes clear that Congress is frustrated with Geithner's so-called "Financial Rescue Plan" and doesn't have the foggiest idea of what he is trying to do. Here are the first few lines of "Assessing Treasury's Strategy: Six Months of TARP":'"

Getting a Death Grip on Memory
A quote...."A headline in the New York Times announced a few days ago: "Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory." This news ran above the fold on the front page. "Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain," the article began. Readers quickly learned that it's starting to happen: "Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory..." -- Big deal. American media outlets have been pulling off such feats for a long time."

Light at the End of the Tunnel? Wrong! -- The Decade of Darkness
A quote...."It's been 21 months since two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted, setting off a series of events which have led to the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression. No one expected the financial earthquake to shake this hard or ripple this fast. The failure at Bear triggered a shock in the secondary market where mortgage loans are repackaged into securities and sold to investors. That market is now completely paralyzed cutting off 40 percent of funding for consumer and business loans and thrusting the broader economy into a deep recession. Banks and financial institutions have been forced to curtail their off-balance sheet operations and build their reserves which have ballooned from $45 billion to nearly $700 billion in the last 6 months alone. Like millions of homeowners who have seen their home equity vanish and their retirement savings slashed in half, the banks are hunkering down, hoping they can outlast the deflationary hurricane ahead."

Countdown: Professor Turley on TeamObama: "A Breathtaking Expansion of Sovereign Immunity"  - Alt - Video - Obama™ Update - (YouTube - 4 min 15 sec - April 07, 2009) -- A must see video. - mpg

Obama, the ICRC Report and ongoing suppression
Obama™ Update - A quote...."Following up on the latest extremist Cheney/Addington/Yoo arguments advanced by the Obama DOJ in order to shield Bush lawbreaking from disclosure and judicial review -- an episode I wrote about in detail yesterday, here -- it's worthwhile to underscore the implications of Barack Obama's conduct.  When Obama sought to placate his angry supporters after he voted for the Bush/Cheney FISA-telecom immunity bill last June (after vowing the prior December to support a filibuster of any such legislation), this is what he said (h/t notavailable):" - also posted at ICH & CommonDreams

There are no excuses for ongoing concealment of torture memos
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."Those are the torture memos that are now at the heart of a growing controversy, as the Obama administration has sought multiple delays (a total of four) of the court-imposed deadline for it either to (a) disclose those memos to the ACLU or (b) declare that it will refuse to do so and explain why.  The last deadline was Thursday, April 2, and on that date, the Obama DOJ obtained yet another extension, making the new deadline April 16.  Two weeks ago, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reported that Eric Holder and White House counsel Gregory Craig had overruled the vehement objections from ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden and others in the intelligence community and had decided to disclose the memos.  But thereafter, the Obama DOJ, rather than release the memos, instead sought another extension of the deadline, and numerous sources -- including The New York Times' Shane, Newsweek's Isikoff, and Harper's Scott Horton -- then reported that the anti-disclosure crusade inside the Obama administration is being led by John Brennan. " - bold by website editor -- also posted at ICH

PJB: Should We Kill the Fed?
A quote...."“(T)he very people who devised the policies that produced the mess are now posing as the wise public servants who will show us the way out,” writes Thomas Woods in “Meltdown.” - Already in its sixth week on the New York Times best-seller list, this eminently readable book traces the Fed’s role in every financial crisis since this creature was spawned on Jekyll Island in 1913. - The “forgotten depression” of 1920-21 was caused by a huge increase in the money supply for President Wilson’s war. When the Fed started to tighten at war’s end, production fell 20 percent from mid-1920 to mid-1921, far more than today." -- also posted at ICH & HumEvents

Economics Professors: Global Crash Worse Than During First Year of Great Depression
Charts -- A quote....Many people (including me) have pointed out that the crash in the U.S. has arguably been worse than during the first year of the Great Depression. - But the Great Depression was a global, not just a U.S. crash. So how does the last year compare to the 1929 depression on a world-wide basis? - Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O'Rourke have written a paper conclusively showing that the global crash has been worse in the last year than during the first year of the Great Depression. - Because a picture is worth a thousand words, you can quickly see what they're talking about by looking at the following 4 graphs...."

Insolvency vs. Liquidity, or Austrians vs. Keynesians
A quote...."On one side of the debate are Austrians using Austrian economics, on the other side are Keynesians using Keynesian economics. Gary North writes "The government, which is running a trillion-dollar deficit this fiscal year, is adding ever more debt to save the favored banks. It is buying the banks' insolvency in the name of future taxpayers." North sees the bank problem as insolvency. Concerning FED and government power to create money and "fix the crisis," Lew Rockwell writes "Good liquidity needs to be based on savings and capital, and it cannot be created by decree. Decrees end up creating money out of thin air, which ends up overriding market preferences and generating inflation. Everything officials do to fix the crisis ends up prolonging it." Rockwell sees the FED’s provision of liquidity as impossible to reconcile with preferences, and with the attempt to provide it being counterproductive."

Resist or Become Serfs
A quote...."The lies employed to camouflage the economic decline are legion. President Ronald Reagan included 1.5 million U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine service personnel with the civilian work force to magically reduce the nation's unemployment rate by 2 percent. President Bill Clinton decided that those who had given up looking for work, or those who wanted full-time jobs but could only find part-time employment, were no longer to be counted as unemployed. This trick disappeared some 5 million unemployed from the official unemployment rolls. If you work more than 21 hours a week-most low-wage workers at places like Wal-Mart average 28 hours a week-you are counted as employed, although your real wages put you below the poverty line. Our actual unemployment rate, when you include those who have stopped looking for work and those who can only find part-time jobs, is not 8.5 percent but 15 percent. A sixth of the country is now effectively unemployed. And we are shedding jobs at a faster rate than in the months after the 1929 crash." -- also posted at ICH

For more on the three articles shown above see....Enforcing the Rules -- Too Little, Too Late - 02-27-09 - mpg

VIDEO: More IMF "Economic Medicine" Is Not the Solution - G-20 Proposals will exacerbate the Global Economic Crisis -- Alt - (YouTube - 10 min 50 sec - April 03, 2009) - Video - Michel Chossudovsky describes exactly how the loan sharks at the IMF conduct their scam - mpg -- A quote...."The Centre for Research on Globalization presents Michel Chossudovsky: "More IMF Economic Medicine Is Not the Solution"

Wall St. ticks off the world
Some quotes...."The current international financial disaster brought on by Wall Street has created 25 million unemployed around the globe. People everywhere are mad as hell at both their leaders and America." -  " But this financial crisis won't be resolved until the rotten U.S. financial sector is restored to health, transparency, and integrity. Many major U.S. financial institutions are insolvent: their liabilities exceed assets. Neither they nor the Obama administration will admit it, or take necessary action. -- That's because the U.S. financial industry has grown far too powerful. Today, finance is America's leading industry at about 24% of GDP. Manufacturing has shrunk to 12%. Wall Street's "Masters of the Universe" grew so rich they were able to buy or manipulate most politicians and government regulators." - bold by website editor -- That's right folks, all this money is being spent to literally create....more money, not factories, or infrastructure, or social services or products, but just simply more paper. There is no more "there" there to this economy, it's a fake economy producing fake profits for fake people.  This entire nation, and anybody who follows it, is on the "road to hell" (quote from Sarkozy). - mpg -- also posted at CommonDreams

Bill Moyers Interviews Glenn Greenwald & Amy Goodman
Video Interview - Bill Moyers talks with alternative media heavyweights Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman about what can and can’t be addressed in big corporate media. Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald are the first recipients of Park Center for Independent Media Izzy Award (named for I.F. Stone)." -- ||  Transcript  ||  Podcast Mp3  ||

Let's Play Pretend!
A quote...."When elementary school kids want to escape the confines of their circumstances they pretend to be pirates, princesses, and Jedi knights. Now, with the relaxation of "mark to market" valuation rules announced yesterday by the accounting trade's self-regulatory body, our bankrupt financial institutions can escape their own reality by pretending to be solvent. The unraveling of our fairytale economy over the last few months has not yet convinced us that the time has come to put away childish things. The applause that greeted the news yesterday on Wall Street is a clear sign that we still have some growing up to do."

Bill Moyers Interviews William K Black
Video Interview - The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout" -- ||  Transcript  ||  Podcast Mp3  ||

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Wall Street Love's Making Money -- Literally - 04-02-09 - mpg

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South Park - Stan Marsh takes us through the mortgage crisis - (YuTb - 8m 50s - 032609)
Video - Related Video -- A quote...."From this week's episode of South Park, "Margaritaville," Stan Marsh and others get hit with the backlash of the credit crunch."

Darkness Renewed - Terror as a Tool of Empire
A quote...."Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in. -- But there's a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn't understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation's communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more?" -- also posted at ICH

Fake Faith and Epic Crimes
A quote...."These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, "if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves."

Beyond Here Lies Nothing: Surging Further Into the Abyss
Obama™ Update -- A quote...."The political class has failed us. At every level, they have failed us. Republican and Democrat, they have failed us. Liberal, conservative and centrist, they have failed us. They have lived on lies, and lived by lies, for so long that they no longer know how to comprehend the truth, much less communicate it or – God forbid – act on it. And so they plow on deeper into the darkness, in zombified pursuit of pointless goals, heedless of the signposts warning of danger, like some demented wagon train dragging a load of dead mules toward the edge of a cliff. "

Beware Those Treacherous Afpakis
Obama™ Update -- A quote...." President Barack Obama has now taken full ownership of the Afghanistan War. Gone are Washington’s pretenses that a western "coalition" was waging this conflict. Gone, too, is the comic book term, "war on terrorism," replaced by the Orwellian sobriquet, "overseas contingency operations." -- Obama’s announcement last week of deeper US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan – now officially known in Washington as "Afpak" – was accompanied by a preliminary media bombardment of Pakistan for failing to be sufficiently responsive in advancing US strategic plans."

Neoconservatism: The Return - A new incarnation, a new name – and the same old warmongering -- Obama™ Update -- A quote...."It was a neocon moment: there they were, the organizers of the Foreign Policy Initiative, the new neoconservative think-tank – Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, and Robert Kagan, with Clifford May, Randy Scheunemann, and junior neocon James Kirchick in tow. It was the occasion of FPI’s first public event – their Washington coming out party, so to speak – and who should show up but I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. A more fitting symbol of the neoconservative tendency in American politics – its history, its methods, and its essential criminality – could hardly be conceived. -- While John McCain was ostensibly the main attraction, the real focus of the conference was a celebration of the man who defeated him. As David Weigel put it, the FPI conference turned into a "Neocons for Obama" festival, as super-hawkish foreign policy maven Fred Kagan hailed President Obama’s Af-Pak offensive as the best thing since the Iraqi "surge":" -- One wonders how all those starry-eyed, anti-war, Obamatrolls feel now that they've been completely and utterly betrayed? Foolish perhaps, stupid, dumb, used.....what? - mpg

G20 - Make or Break? - (RN YouTube - 14 min 43 sec - March 31, 2009)
RN Video - A quote...."Engdahl: The question in the EU is - will they go down with the dollar system or find their own way? "