"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world."
James Baldwin, "The Devil Finds Work" 1976

War College warns military must prepare "in extremis" for "civil violence inside U.S."
IMF warns of economic riots
http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/12/15/daily34.html
A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report. The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S. U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought up a worst-case scenario as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that might even require a declaration of martial law.... Gov. Janet Napolitano’s office declined comment on emergency planning and possible civil unrest. Napolitano is president-elect Barack Obama’s pick for secretary of Homeland Security that oversees airport security, disaster response, border security, customs and anti-terrorism efforts. As governor, Napolitano sent National Guard troops to Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in 2003 in response to terrorism threats [SIC].

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Wednesday of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets if the financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are hurt by credit constraints and rising unemployment....
The economy is in recession. Consumer spending is down, foreclosures are up and a host of businesses are laying off workers and struggling with tight credit and the troubled housing and financial markets. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and U.S. Treasury Department have pumped more than $8.5 trillion into the economy via equity purchases of bank stocks, liquidity infusions, Wall Street and bank bailouts and taxpayer rebates. U.S. automakers are seeking more than $14 billion in federal loans with fears they could fall into bankruptcy without a bailout. The U.S.... recession also has hit economies in Europe, Japan and China....

SECOND NORTHCOM 'Garden Plot domestic security' DEPLOYMENT
New Rapid-Response Forces to Bolster Homeland Defense Mission
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=52307

as Marx said, capitalism produces its own gravediggers...
Marx is making a comeback. German bookstores have experienced a 300 per cent increase in sales of Das Kapital in recent months, and visitors are flocking to Marx’s birthplace in Trier – 40,000 so far this year. Jörn Schütrumpf, head of the Berlin publishing house Dietz, which brings out the works of Marx said: “We have a new generation of readers who are rattled by the financial crisis and have to recognise that neo-liberalism has turned out to be a false dream.”
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/10/the-10-biggest.htm...

cultural imperialism: "Slumdog Millionaire" liberal propaganda film gets killer kudos
PLANET OF THE SLUMS: the slum has become the weakest link in the American empire.
By Mike Davis,
TomDispatch.com, April 19, 2004
Today the world is dominated by huge cities, concentrating the working classes of various nations, including the USA, and shifting the balance of power to them.Despite promises and strategies to the contrary articulated here, this new problem for the capitalists and their governments is insoluble ('capitalism does in fact produce its own gravediggers).
The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighborhood militias inflicted 60% casualties on elite Army Rangers, forced U.S. strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT:  "Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain."  Ultimately, a National Defense Panel review in December 1997 castigated the Army as unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World. "The future of warfare," the journal of the Army War College declared, "lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world." Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic "terrorist" insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing megaslums. To help develop a geopolitical framework for urban war-fighting, military planners turned in the 1990s to the RAND Corporatio One of the most important RAND projects, initiated in the early 1990s, has been a major study of "how demographic changes will affect future conflict."  The bottom line, RAND finds, is that the urbanization of world poverty has produced "the urbanization of insurgency" ( The Urbanization of Insurgency: The Potential Challenge to U.S. Army Operations http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR398/]
"Insurgents are following their followers into the cities," RAND warns, "setting up 'liberated zones' in urban shantytowns.  Neither U.S. doctrine, nor training, nor equipment is designed for urban counterinsurgency."  As a result, the slum has become the weakest link in the American empire....
Captain Thomas [ Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj02/spr02/thomas.html] like RAND, is brazenly confident that the Pentagon's massive new investments in MOUT technology and training will surmount all the fractal complexities of slum warfare.  (Dream on.) [...]

Now, 60 years and hundreds of million lives later...
"We have about 60% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its’ population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
George Kennan, former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, Document PPS23, 24th February 1948

predators prey
"It's a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us. When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors."
REV. A. R. Bernard, pastor of New York's largest evangelical congregation on the economic downturn.

"The financial crisis drives home to other nations that 'without an America that is successful financially, economically and therefore also politically, they're not going to be successful,' said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. 'If we don't function well, no one functions well.'
from Tom Raum's "Global woes pose risks, also openings for US", (Yahoo! AP 12/14/2008

as its geostrategic weakness & vulnerability increase...
The crisis gives US new financial power
By Ricardo Hausmann, Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/
The economic crisis in the US signals the end of American global hegemony. Or does it? Pundits from different camps, some with fear and others with glee, contemplate a future where the US will have a much diminished weight in global affairs. But if the US plays its hand well, things will turn out to be just the opposite.

It is useful to remember that power is a relative, not an absolute concept. True, the US has been hurt by the current turmoil but so have many others. The Dow Jones is down by almost 40 per cent so far this year but this makes it pretty much the best performing stock market in the world.

More importantly, as far as power is concerned, unfriendly states such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela are suffering from a dual collapse in the price of their oil exports and the value of their sovereign bonds. Remember the dangerous scenario this past summer with Russia intervening in Georgia and threatening Europe with the energy card? Now, Russian policymakers perform daily prayers just to be able to open the stock market for regular business.

More broadly, the financial meltdown has translated into a sudden stop in capital flows to emerging and developing countries, which threatens to destabilise their growth, their financial systems and their government accounts.

Contrary to popular opinion, the current crisis has very little to do with the Armageddon that Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, predicted over the past few years. In his mind, the widening US current account deficit would eventually top the willingness of the rest of the world to fund it, causing the US dollar to crash while long term interest rates on US Treasury bonds would soar. That has little to do with this crisis: the US has become the only remaining super-borrower, able to issue thousands of billions of dollars in debt at record low rates while the dollar strengthens. People are unwilling to lend to almost anybody except for the US Treasury. This has allowed the US to provide – at record low cost – about $5,000bn (£3,325bn, €3,700bn) to bail out its financial system and organise a Keynesian reflation of its economy.

At the same time, fairly well behaved countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Turkey have essentially lost access to external finance.

What should the US do with its newfound financial power? While it is tempting to use this power only for domestic policy purposes, it would be a mistake to do so.

First, the US is already running a large current account deficit, a reflection of the fact that domestic spending is well above output. Using the capacity to borrow just to spend it domestically is going to aggravate this deficit and leave the US with a worsened external balance that will limit growth down the line.

Second, net public debt is rising sharply just as baby boomers will begin to collect their social security cheques, worsening long-run fiscal solvency.

Third, many countries across the world are going to suffer the consequences of the lack of access to finance at a time where the decline in their export earnings would have warranted more borrowing to smooth things out. If unchecked, this will cause their economies to shrink and their imports to decline, hurting US exports just when they are most needed. Under these conditions, there is the risk that countries will shut themselves off from the global economy and impose the financial equivalent of the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 . This can lead to an unravelling of the consensus for globalisation that has characterised the post-cold war era.

Fourth, if the US re-circulates financial resources, by on-lending to well behaved countries that have lost access because of the financial crisis, it would not increase its net debt but instead would make money for the US taxpayer while helping increase demand for US exports.

Fifth, re-exporting capital to the rest of the world would prevent the inconvenient strengthening of the dollar.

Finally, exercising this function would give the US enormous soft power in the world. Countries would have to decide whether they want to play ball with market democracy and benefit from access to the financial resources that the US and others can mobilise, or try to form a separate camp with Russia, Iran or Venezuela just as the rug has been pulled from under them. Re-circulating the money in the needed scale will require more than business as usual at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and regional development banks. These institutions have been lending well below $100bn a year but the collapse of financial markets represents some $700bn in lost access.
Moreover, countries are afraid to ask for assistance for fear of scaring the markets. The US Federal Reserve has already broken new ground by offering $120bn in swap agreements with Brazil, Korea, Mexico and Singapore but this is geographically limited and unilateral. Intervening directly by creating a fund to purchase globally public and private securities, as is being done at home, and the Latin American Financial Regulation Shadow Committee – of which I am a member – has recently recommended, may be a promising way forward.
The author is the director of Harvard’s Center for International Development and a member of the Latin American Financial Regulation Shadow Committee

The Gulf States: Worse to come?
Times of Oman
The Arab Gulf Cooperation Council countries, including Oman, will be adversely affected by the sliding oil prices and they may run into unaccustomed budget deficits in the next fiscal. Oil fell below $34 yesterday to its lowest level in more than 4-1/2 years despite pledges by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) this week to remove 2.2 million barrels per day from its supply, which will be the largest ever reduction by the producer group. The Arab Gulf states will take a double hit from the collapse in oil prices and deep crude output cuts, economists said yesterday. http://www.inteldaily.com/news/140/ARTICLE/9057/2008-12-20.html

Praise from Cheney for Obama’s national security team
Bill Van Auken
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=49685&s2=19
obamacheney_101707_fresh.jpg
As President-elect Barack Obama met with his national security team in Chicago Monday, his appointments drew enthusiastic praise from.. the outgoing vice president, Dick Cheney. "I must say, I think it’s a pretty good team," Cheney told ABC News. "...I think the idea of keeping Gates at Defense is excellent. I think Jim Jones will be very, very effective as the national security adviser." He went on to offer qualified praise for Obama’s pick for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. "I think she’s tough. She’s smart, she works very hard and she may turn out to be just what President Obama needs."... Why shouldn’t Cheney think it’s a "pretty good team"? It’s largely the one he played on...

The national security group assembled by the candidate of "change" is dominated by very same individuals who are directing national security for the administration of George W. Bush and are responsible for policies overwhelming repudiated by the electorate in November.

Robert Gates, responsible for prosecuting the "surge" in Iraq, was there, along with Gen. Jones, who backed Republican John McCain in the presidential election. Also present was Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Admiral Mike Mullen, selected by Bush and Gates as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It appears that both are also likely to remain at their posts. As for Clinton, she lost the Democratic primary contest in large measure because of her support for the war in Iraq. During the campaign, Obama flayed her for having been wrong on this "most important foreign policy decision of our generation." Now he has made her his chief foreign policy aide.

Cheney’s kind words for Obama’s selections came in a wide-ranging interview with ABC News broadcast on Monday and Tuesday in which the vice president defended torture in general and waterboarding in particular. He acknowledged that he had been "involved in helping get the process cleared." While a vast understatement of his intimate involvement in this grisly facet of US policy over the past seven years, this admission nonetheless provides one more piece of evidence that the vice president is guilty of war crimes. He insisted that the US prison camp at Guantánamo should be kept open as long as Washington continued its "global war on terrorism," whose end, he allowed, was unforeseeable. He defended the Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying program. "It’s worked. It’s been successful. It’s now embodied in the FISA statute that we passed last year, and that Barack Obama voted for," he added. He likewise defended the war in Iraq, insisting that the world is "better off" because of it and declaring that "we made the right decision," despite the subsequent exposure of the administration’s false pretext for the war—weapons of mass destruction.

After summing up and justifying all of the crimes carried out by the Bush administration during its two terms in office, Cheney called upon the incoming Obama presidency to continue them. It should, he said, "retain the tools that have been so essential in defending the nation for the last seven-and-a-half years" and eschew any inclination to "fall back on campaign rhetoric to make these very fundamental decisions" about national security.

The composition of the Obama national security meeting in Chicago—together with the statements made by the president-elect stressing his intention to leave a "residual force" of tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq and embracing the overall framework of a never-ending "war on terrorism"—give every indication that Cheney’s advice will be heeded.

There were further indications along these lines in an article on the meeting published Tuesday by the New York Times. It noted that in addition to those assembled in Chicago, Obama has "sought the counsel of an old Republican realist—Brent Scowcroft" and also consulted "former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war." Others whose advice Obama has solicited...include former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, the veteran of the CIA’s Operation Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam who went on to become a member of the Project for a New American Century and the "Vulcans," the right-wing foreign policy advisers to George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign... also served as a chief foreign policy adviser to McCain in 2008. Rounding out the list, Gen. Tommy Franks—"we don’t do body counts"—and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, rejected by his own state’s Democrats because of his vociferous support for the Iraq war....
Gen.TommyFranks: commander in chief of CENTCOM (Central Command) during Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom
"There are a great many people who hate our freedom, who hate our way of life. They don't necessarily hate your child, but they'd kill him in a minute in order to make a statement. We have to go to work and stay at work on all of them. That's why I believe president Bush is right when he says this will not be a short-term engagement."
“The question is do we fight them over there -- or do we fight them here,”,
"We've got more bullets than they have assholes"
...Gates, Jones, Armitage, Scowcroft and Shultz... are leading figures in a ruling establishment for which Obama is to serve as a political front man, providing a new face for US imperialism....

Iraqis Slaughtered Since U.S. Invasion and occupation for 'enduring freedom', 1,284,105
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

One of the great things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED, we cry.
President G. Bush Washington, D.C., Mar. 29, 2006

GREECE, HARBINGER OF WHAT'S COMING, TERRIFIES OUR ENEMIES
snapshot from modern Greek history
The uprising in Greece has a particular relevance at this moment in history. If you read the military manuals and strategy papers of the US architects
of empire, Greece is a centerpiece of "counterinsurgency" doctrine. In the immediate postwar period, the US and England fought an extended counterinsurgency war to suppress the left (communist and anarchist), which had become the most powerful political force in the country through the years of resistance to the German occupation. The strategy was to brutally repress the armed resistance (80,000 British troops and the arming of domestic fascists to kill, imprison, and torture left guerillas), while at the same time promoting elections and including a legitimate "socialist" opposition, which supported surrendering arms and using the parliamentary system. This is the "handbook" the US uses in its imperial wars of conquest and occupation. It's called "promoting Democracy." Appropriate then, this declaration of the Greek uprising: "Their Democracy murders..."
http://katalipsipolytexneiou.blogspot.com/
thanks Marta Rodriguez & Noah Cohen at http://www.onepalestine.org/

attempting to sever political & economic
Are the Greek riots a taste of things to come?
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Greece's riots are a sign of the economic times. Other countries should beware, says Peter Popham in Athens. After firing 4,600 tear-gas canisters in the past week, the Greek police have nearly exhausted their stock. As they seek emergency supplies from Israel and Germany, still the petrol bombs and stones of the protesters rain down, with clashes again outside parliament yesterday. Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be called the first credit-crunch riots.
There have been smaller-scale sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/are-the-greek-riots-a-tas...

“We don’t forget, we don’t forgive” - day of international action against state murders
από solidarity 6:43μμ, Κυριακή 14 Δεκεμβρίου 2008
from: www.informa-azione.info
..broke out in the critical geopolitically south east corner of the European fortress, already considered the first social uprising of the current economic crisis. As the crisis deepens, and it affects severely the everyday lives of the masses...

“Greek protest spread with arrests across Europe”
12/14/08 7:39 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/3706849/Greek-pr...
...Greece has a history of clashes between the police and left-wing, anarchist groups.
A student uprising in 1973 helped bring an end to the country's military dictatorship a year later....
In Spain, 11 protesters were arrested and several police officers injured when clashes took place in Madrid and
Barcelona. In Copenhagen, 32 people were arrested when their protest in support of the Greek protests turned violent.
In neighbouring Turkey, about a dozen left-wing protesters daubed red paint over the front of the Greek consulate
in Istanbul. Around 150 people belonging to a Danish underground movement took to the streets, throwing bottles and paint
bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at Greece's embassies.

Greek protest spread with arrests across Europe - Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/37...
Under the headline "Greece in self-destruct mode" the conservative daily newspaper Kathimerini said in an editorial: "This
is a country with a state that is in a shambles, a police force in disarray, mediocre universities that serve as hotbeds of
rage instead of knowledge and a shattered health care system. It is also on the brink of financial ruin."
More on Greece (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/)

like u.s. hasn't deployed Northcom permanently in the already police state 'homeland'
French politicians fear youth violence along Greek pattern
By Celestine Bohlen Bloomberg News
December 19, 2008
... economics alone doesn't explain the restlessness in universities and high schools. Students, after all, have no jobs to lose.
Experts speak of another worry, which is the seemingly anachronistic resurgence of vague radical movements, loosely called anarchist, which hark back to the destructive ideology of Mikhail Bakunin, the 19th-century Russian revolutionary, and to the rebellious rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s. Some of it isn't that threatening, like recurring play of the 1979 song, "Another Brick in the Wall," by Pink Floyd, on Alpha radio during the week-long protests in Athens. "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom," goes the angry refrain. But the violence wasn't far behind the slogans. By the third day of rioting, the estimated damage in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece's two biggest cities, was more than €1 billion, or $1.4 billion....
That dread was palpable in France when President Nicolas Sarkozy abruptly delayed for one year a plan to overhaul France's high schools, after students from Bordeaux to Brittany took to the streets in protest.... France chose to defuse the situation by withdrawing the contested schools legislation. In Greece, the government, eager to restore calm, has decided for now to cede the Polytechnic to the protestors. That might buy peace for now, but it won't necessarily soothe the anger.

'Greek Syndrome' is catching as youth take to streets
First it was Athens. Now the Continent's disillusioned youth is taking to the streets across Europe.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-syndrome-is-catchin...
John Lichfield
Saturday, 20 December 2008
Europe exists, it appears. If Greek students sneeze, or catch a whiff of tear-gas, young people take to the streets in France and now Sweden. Yesterday, masked youths threw two firebombs at the French Institute in Athens. Windows were smashed but the building was not seriously damaged. Then youths spray-painted two slogans on the building. One said, "Spark in Athens. Fire in Paris. Insurrection is coming". The other read, "France, Greece, uprising everywhere". It was a calculated and violent attempt to link disparate youth protest movements. Links between protests in Greece and France – and, to a lesser degree, unrest in Sweden – may seem tenuous, even non-existent. But social and political ailments and their symptoms transmit as rapidly as influenza in the television, internet and text-message age.

With Europe, and the world, pitching headlong into a deep recession, the "Greek Syndrome", as one French official calls it, was already being monitored with great care across the European Union. The attempt to politicise and link the disputes across EU frontiers may prove to be a random act of self-dramatisation by an isolated group on the Greek far left....

But behind the unrest lie three other factors: a deep disaffection from the French political system; a hostility to capitalism and "globalism" and the ever-simmering unrest in the poor, multiracial suburbs of French cities...
Students interviewed on the streets of Paris refused to accept that the reforms had been withdrawn. President Sarkozy was not in control, they said. He was "under orders from Brussels and Washington". The real motive was to take money out of the French education budget to "refloat the banks".
The Greek, French and Swedish protests do have common characteristics: a contempt for governments and business institutions, deepened by the greed-fired meltdown of the banks; a loose, uneasy alliance between mostly, white left-wing students and young second-generation immigrants; the sense of being part of a "sacrificed generation". ...

Israel supplying chemical weapons against the Greek uprising
A recent article in the mainstream Greek paper Ta Nea discusses plans to arm the Greek police with heavier weapons for repression in response to the current uprising. These include high-pressure water canons, plastic bullets, and other so-called "non-lethal" weapons familiar in the US and in Europe. In addition to the wish list that has been proposed by the police to the Minister of the Interior, the article also mentions new weapons which are already being supplied--chemicals from Israel:
"What the police will get immediately is more tear gas. The constant firing of chemicals has emptied the supplies of the Greek Police and already the new "acquisitions" from Israel have made their appearance. These are characterized by the demonstrators as 'especially harsh in comparison with those which have been used by our own police.'..."
http://www.tanea.gr/default.asp?pid=2=1=4493178

"... Israel is the subcontractor for American arms to the 'Third World.' There is no terrible regime-Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone - not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel... Israel is a key member of the [U.S.] empire."
Jeff Halper

Capital's crisis requires marriage of politics & fundamentalist religion as WMD
Rick Warren - The New National Preacher
By Michael Collins
(The Intelligence Daily) -- Rick Warren's selection to open the upcoming inauguration created a well justified scandal given his appallingly bigoted views on gay marriage. Equating that institution with both incest and pedophilia shows a total lack of judgment and compassion. This should make him unacceptable for civilized company, not to mention the opening act of the 44th Presidential Inauguration.
Taking a broader look at Warren and his rapid rise to prominence, however, the choice seems logical. Warren has been cultivated as the new Billy Graham, the right wing preacher who ratified the actions of the leaders that he blesses as God's representative. Since the Eisenhower presidency, Graham legitimized every war and military incursion by "visiting" the White House, praying for the current president, and conferring "Godliness" on them. Graham would then go public after the prayer event and say kind things about the president, every president....

.. He referred to the removal of Terri Shiavo's feeding tube as "an atrocity worse than Nazism" even though the woman was in a "persistent vegetative state" with no hope of recovery... On Hannity and Colmes, Warren endorsed Hannity's suggestion that "we" need to kill the current Iranian President: "Warren agreed, saying that stopping evil 'is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers.'" Think Progress
Warren refers to proponents of legalized abortion as "holocaust deniers."...
Rick Warren: "I'm opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that a marriage, I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage. Interviewer: "You think those are equivalent to gays getting married. RW: "Oh, I do." Newsday, Dec. 18, 2008 (2:08)

In 2008, Newsweek named Warren as one of the "15 People Who Make America Great." Shortly after Warren made the remarks about Terri Shaivo, Time Magazine named him to "The Time 100" most "influential people in the world today" Apr. 10, 2005....

The Blessing of the World Economic Forum at Davos: Rick's Debut
He was an invited speaker at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. This is the locked down gathering of the "globalization" elite who created and maintain the current state of economic chaos... High priest of the "war of civilizations", Prof. Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard, says that "Davos people control virtually all international institutions, many of the world's governments and the bulk of the world's economic and military capabilities" (LA Times, Jan. 21, 2007)

What better place for America's preacher in chief. Warren was installed as an international leader by the fun loving crowd at the World Economic Forum. His presence on the stage with world financial and political leaders [pictured Tony Blair, George Soros] was justified by his position as outlined in the Davos program:

Rick Warren
Author, Saddleback Church, USA
Philanthropist, theologian, and global strategist ... Lecturer, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard ... Member: Council on Foreign Relations; Pacific Council on International Policy, Originator of global PEACE initiative to promote reconciliation, equip ethical leaders, assist poor, care for sick, and educate next generation ... People Who Make America Great, Newsweek (2006) America's Most Influential Pastor, The Economist (2007)....

So Rick's a made man, a key fixture in the world elite, and "the cooler" for a potentially rowdy constituency. He's assuming that unofficial national role begun in 1952, the national preacher; an empty job to be filled shortly. Why wouldn't they pick him to warm up the crowd at the Inauguration? It's his job.
[Permission to reproduce in whole or in part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article. Michael Collins www.electionfraudnews.com]

carefully calculated hire...
By Mike Madden, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/19/rick_warren/?source=newslet...
Obama's advisors brought on this fight with his own supporters knowing full well what was coming...the Obama team evidently decided not to alert anyone likely to be upset about the pick ahead of time. News of Warren's involvement came out of the congressional committee working on the inauguration instead of Obama's own inaugural committee, a separate entity. At least initially, aides for Obama's inaugural committee said the decision had come from Congress, not Obama. In fact, that wasn't the case....

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
Sinclair Lewis

The War Prayer
By Mark Twain
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17801.htm

"War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means."
von Clausewitz

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy"
Henry Kissinger http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Military

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.
Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law.

not satire
KREMLIN RULES
Electoral Rot Nearby? The Russians Don't See It
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
The Kremlin's efforts to bolster authoritarian regimes in neighboring states reveal how far Russia goes to create the illusion of democracy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/world/europe/17belarus.html?th&emc=th

U.S. Aid Should Be Earned
Only those countries with a commitment to democracy should be eligible to receive American aid for programs intended to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/opinion/20patricof-frist.html?th&emc=t...

"The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States."
US Agency for International Development Source: "Direct Economic Benefits of U.S. Assistance Programs," 1999

"Death squads have been created and used by the CIA around the world - particularly the Third World - since the late 1940s, a fact ignored by the elite-owned media."
Ralph McGehee,Former CIA analyst & author: CIABASE; The Crisis of Democracy Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA

Obama May Keep Mike Hayden as Director of the CIA
12, 05, 08 Paul Bedard
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/12/5/president-elec...
As President-elect Barack Obama continues to build his national security staff, now focused on intelligence, it is possible that he might ask CIA Director Mike Hayden to stay on for a while, intelligence sources say. Much of the speculation about the CIA job has been that Obama wants a change, in part because he disagreed with the CIA's detention policies. But officials are pushing back a little on that issue, suggesting that Hayden has been carrying out the policies backed by Congress and the president before he arrived at Langley, not freelancing on his own. "It's unfair to blame Hayden for things that occurred long before he took the job. But he deserves credit for standing up for the folks over there at CIA, even though a lot of the stuff he has dealt with didn't happen on his watch," said an intelligence official. "Administration policy and American law shape what the CIA does. If the president says he doesn't want something done, that's it. These are his programs," added the official.

"Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China and the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however – if handled right – might offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million) unless food is provided – which we could offer to do ‘at the conference table’."
John McNaughton, US State Department Vietnam policy, quoted in ‘The Mentality of the Backroom Boys.’ by Noam Chomsky, 1973

Army Special Operations Forces FM 3-05.130, Unconventional Warfare
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Army_Special_Operations_Forces_Unconven...
us-fm3-05-130.pdf
This publication is available at Army Knowledge Online (www.us.army.mil) and General Dennis J. Reimer Training and Doctrine Digital Library at (www.train.army.mil).

Like all other instruments of U.S. national power, the use and effects of economic "weapons" are interrelated and they must be coordinated carefully. Once again, ARSOF must work carefully with the DOS and intelligence community (IC) to determine which elements of the human terrain in the UWOA are most susceptible to economic engagement and what second- and third-order effects are likely from such engagement. The United States Agency for International Development's (USAID's) placement abroad and its mission to engage human groups provide one channel for leveraging economic incentives. The DOC's can similarly leverage its routine influence with U.S. corporations active abroad. Moreover, the IO effects of economic promises kept (or ignored) can prove critical to the legitimacy of U.S. UW efforts. UW practitioners must plan for these effects. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-7 Army Special Operations Forces FM 3-05.130, titled Unconventional Warfare.

Wikileaks published this 12-13-08 guaranteeing the disappearance of this critical 248 pg. primary source into the bowels of the Pentagon will not occur
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/126/ARTICLE/9043/2008-12-20.html

Summary
The 248-paged presents the September 2008 revision of US Army Field Manual (FM) 3-05.130, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare, establishing keystone doctrine for Army special operations forces (ARSOF) operations in unconventional warfare (UW). The purpose of the manual is to be useful to understanding the nature of UW and its role in the nation's application of power.
Unconventional Warfare, as of this manual is being defined as Operations conducted by, with, or through irregular forces in support of a resistance movement, an insurgency, or conventional military operations., reflecting two important criteria: UW must be conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces.
The nine chapters cover topics such as Special Forces, Psychological as well as Civil Affairs Operations, while also covering general doctrine, policies and planning considerations in respect to Army special operations forces.

DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Distribution authorized to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors only
to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange
Program or by other means. This determination was made on 28 August 2008. Other requests for this document
must be referred to Commander, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School,
ATTN: AOJK-DTD-JA, Fort Bragg, NC 28310-9610, or by e-mail to JAComments@soc.mil.
DESTRUCTION NOTICE: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the
document.
FOREIGN DISCLOSURE RESTRICTION (FD 6): This publication has been reviewed by the product developers
in coordination with the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School foreign disclosure
authority. This product is releasable to students from foreign countries on a case-by-case basis only.

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

"We are the ruling race of the world. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . . He has marked us as his chosen people. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples."
Sen. Alfred Beveridge

"I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it."
Sen. Orville Platt of Connecticut 1894.

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by the Providences of God – and the phrase is the government's, not mine – we are a World Power
Mark Twain
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/mark_twain_war_prayer.html

“The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
September 2000, Rebuilding America’s Defenses

How a better Middle East would look
By Ralph Peters
"...and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works"
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

Operation Cyclone: How U.S. Created, Funded al-qaeda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989.[1] Operation Cyclone is one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken;[2] funding began with $20-30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987.[3]Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has stated that the U.S. effort to aid the mujahideen was preceded by an effort to draw the Soviets into a costly and presumably distracting Vietnam War-like conflict. In a 1998 interview with the French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."...

Zbigniew Brzezinski played a pivotal role in Operation Cyclone, the codename for a CIA program to arm the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. The idea was to give the Soviets its own ‘Vietnam war’, thus bogging them down in a long and costly war. Brzezinski’s recent efforts to contain Russia is to encircle it in the Caucuses - turning former Soviet satellite states, rife with anti-Russian sentiment, into full-fledged NATO members. There are fears that Brzezinski intends to escalate the conflict between Russia and the West under Barack Obama’s presidency. Especially worrysome are statements by Obama that he has ‘learned an intense amount from Dr Brzezinski’, prompting critics to conclude that an Obama presidency will be a repeat of the Carter administration’s geopolitical manoeuvrings.
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&It...

The CIA's "Operation Cyclone" - "A Few Stirred up Muslims"
Sun Oct 27 01:09:29 2002
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=271
[Zbigniew] Brzezinski not long ago revealed that on July 3, 1979, unknown to the American public and Congress, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorised $500million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and "destabilise" the Soviet Union... The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and in the following years poured $4billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan (Taliban means "student").Young zealots were sent to the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al-Qaeda were taught "sabotage skills" - terrorism. Others were recruited at an Islamic school in Brooklyn, New York, within sight of the fated Twin Towers. In Pakistan, they were directed by British MI6 officers and trained by the SAS. The result, quipped Brzezinski, was "a few stirred up Muslims" - meaning the Taliban. The Wall Street Journal declared: "The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. Moreover, they were crucial to secure the country as a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources."

"I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it." : Sen. Orville Platt of Connecticut 1894.
[Between 1898 and 1934, the Marines invaded Cuba 4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times and Columbia 4 times,” Washington has intervened militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times.]

“We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
David Rockefeller in a 1994 Statement to the United Nations Business Council

Abe, Obama's Model Hero
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 16th US President Source: Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858 (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, pp. 145-146.)
http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/primarysources/emancipation/doc...

"Most New Orleans schools are in ruins, as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."
Former Chief Economist Milton Friedman, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal 3 months after Katrina

"There's been much attention in the press about the fact that those who were left behind in New Orleans were disproportionately poor and African American. I've said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind."
9/5/05 Obama
www.blackcommentator.com/298/298_st_righteous_cause_printer_friendly.htm...

"The Negro youth and moderate must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries."
J. Edgar Hoover,FBI Chief, re: COINTELPRO  against the Black Panther Party

Racist Genocide in New Orleans Continues: "Like 911, Add Water"
by liz burbank
http://www.burbankdigest.com
[edited version originally published 9/3/05 "A Catastrophic Success": A Holocaust Shaped by Race]
Katrina was no accident, no surprise, no act of 'mother nature', the 'gods' , nor the result of 'bureaucratic incompetence' and 'poor communication'. The human and environmental and impact on New Orleans of a hurricane of this magnitude had been scientifically calculated. Rescue and recovery were deliberately withheld, working class Black people militarily imprisoned, forcibly dispersed and murdered by the armed state's violence.
National oppression and its ideological engine racism, are the lynchpin of u.s. capitalism, built and grown on genocide and slavery. Katrina is a major intensification of America's historical genocide, a premeditated physical and psychological attack on the Black Nation, part of a strategy to destroy its strength, pride, cultural cohesion that has led in revolutionary resistance against this system in its deepest crisis..
A renaissance of Black resistance and leadership, historically the leading edge of revolutionary resistance in the U.S., is what the postmodern slavemasters fear will give rise to a movement here in the 'homeland', in solidarity with international resistance, to defeat its global "new world order" agenda . Thus Katrina and the brutal aftermath was engineered to serve the capitalist agenda in two interrelated ways: uprooting, dispersing and destroying the Black Nation, while simultaneously inflaming reliable amerikan racism and support for the consolidation of a fascist mode of state capitalism -- under the pretext of "rescue, relief and recovery” from a "major casualty-producing event" called a “natural disaster.” [...] http://lizburbankdigest.blogspot.com/2006/03/racist-genocide-in-new-orle...

Barack Obama and the “End” of Racism
Juan Santos
... we stay silent, as a rule, on the job. We stay silent as a rule, in the white world. Barack Obama is the living symbol of our silence. He is our silence writ large....
Obama plays the role of a Black Cinderella. He does for Black folks what Cinderella does for girls. He shows that oppression and silence can be good for you – at least if you are the one the prince chooses, or if you are the one who gets to be the prince. It’s total fantasy. It’s a glass slipper that will break at the arch and be turned on us like a broken beer bottle or a jagged-edged knife; the same knife Obama has threatened to turn on the people of Iran and Pakistan...

Obama doesn’t represent peace – he represents an expansion of war and the power of Empire. He’s even more extreme on this than Bush himself, except in his public rhetoric. He doesn’t represent the real and legitimate needs, desires and hopes of Black people - he refuses to speak openly of the most fundamental issues affecting Black people. He doesn’t represent the “end of racism,” but the perpetuation of oppression in a new guise...
Attaining authentic freedom requires, as its barest starting point, the naming of what keeps us subjugated. What keeps us subjugated is the very system Obama wants to rule. The system, even with Barack Obama as its first Black emperor, is not our hope. It’s our enemy, the enemy of the world, and, because this system is rapidly undermining the ability of the planet to foster and sustain life, it is the enemy of all Life on Earth. This is exactly the understanding that the Christian fascists... want to crush out of our awareness, and the lack of such awareness is exactly what Barack Obama depends on if he is to remain a symbol of the impossible dream that the system can be something other than what it is. [...] http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2008/02/barack-obama-and-end-of-rac...

Katrina's Hidden Race War
By A.C. Thompson January 5, 2009 edition of The Nation.

"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need."
U.S. Brig. General William Looney, (Interview Washington Post, August 30, 1999) Referring to the mass- murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sorties by U.S.war criminals in first eight months of 1999

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."
Albert Einstein, 1947

P20G: Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism
From the Moscow Times, Nov. 1, 2002.
Darkness Visible: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism is Now in Operation (2005)
From the Moscow Times, Jan. 25, 2005 follow-up to "Into the Dark."
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/darkness-visible-pentagon-pla...

“We will wage information warfare, but we will fight with infantry”
1997 US Army War College: “WE HAVE ENTERED AN AGE OF CONSTANT CONFLICT…”
“We, the winners, are a minority……We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the “clash of civilizations” is incontestably right…..One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims…….
Information destroys traditional jobs and traditional cultures; it seduces, betrays, yet remains invulnerable. How can you counterattack the information others have turned upon you? There is no effective option other than competitive performance. For those individuals and cultures that cannot join or compete with our information empire, there is only inevitable failure (of note, the internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community) … The next century will indeed be American, but it will also be troubled. We will find ourselves in constant conflict, much of it violent. The United States Army is going to add a lot of battle streamers to its flag. We will wage information warfare, but we will fight with infantry. And we will always surprise those critics, domestic and foreign, who predict our decline…” [...] http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/97summer/peters.htm

from Army Special Operations Forces FM 3-05.130, titled Unconventional Warfare, {see above}
It is important for the official agencies of government, including the armed forces, to recognize the fundamental role of the media as a conduit of information. The USG uses SC to provide top-down guidance for using the informational instrument of national power through coordinated information, themes, messages, and products synchronized with the other instruments of national power. The armed forces support SC themes and messages through IO, public affairs (PA), and defense support to public diplomacy (DSPD). The armed forces must assure media access consistent with classification requirements, operations security, legal restrictions, and individual privacy. The armed forces must also provide timely and accurate information to the public. Success in military operations depends on acquiring and integrating essential information and denying it to the adversary. The armed forces are responsible for conducting IO, protecting what should not be disclosed, and aggressively attacking adversary information systems. IO may involve complex legal and policy issues that require approval, review, and coordination at the national level. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-2)

Microsoft: "From the depth of our heart -- thanks to The Israeli Defense Forces"
Microsoft and the National Security Agency
http://killinghope.org/aer44.htm

“Trusted Computing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1H7omJW4TI

WHAT IS TCPA? WHY SHOULD YOU GIVE A DAMN?
http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html

Social Repression and Internet Surveillance
By Nikki Alexander, 1-04-08
“Unless a way of intervening in the radicalization process can be found, we are condemned to stepping on cockroaches one at a time.”
RAND CORP. terrorism expert Brian Jenkins re: H.Res.1955 sponsored by Jane Harman (D-CA) and H.Res.1695 authored by Dave Reichert (R-WA)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18998.htm

"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media"
former CIA Director William Colby (died suddenly after freak canoe accident) Bernstein's 1977 Oct. Rolling stone article.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, science for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignorable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
Albert Einstein

"If the people are not convinced (that the Free World is in mortal danger) it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert danger. With the support of public opinion, as marshaled by the press, we are off to a good start. It is our Job - yours and mine -- to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America's might."
Charles Wilson, Chairman of the Board of General Electric and Truman appointee to head the Office of Defence Mobilization, in a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association, 1950

“The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press.” . . . . “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
"At the Audubon", 12/13/1964, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, Ballantine Books, 1964

STATE MOUTHPIECES: CRIMINALLY COMPLICIT in PSYWAR 'NEWS'
Editorial
A Policy for Preventing Genocide
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16tue2.html?th&emc=th
Darfur, Congo, Rwanda and, before that, Bosnia. It is hard to contemplate man’s capacity for inhumanity without feeling despair and paralysis.
The world usually pays attention only after the killing has spun out of control, when ethnic, religious and political divides are rubbed so raw that the furies are infinitely harder to calm. By that point, the United States and others are faced with the agonizing choice of either intervening militarily or allowing the killing to go on.
A new report by a task force headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Defense Secretary William Cohen offers some hope, arguing that it is possible to prevent genocide before it spins out of control. It offers practical policy suggestions — what Mrs. Albright calls a “mechanism for looking at genocide in a systematic way” — for the next administration.
The report says that early warning and prevention are key and calls on the White House to create a senior-level interagency committee directed by the National Security Council to analyze threats of genocide and mass atrocities around the world and consider appropriate preventive action.When initial signs of mass atrocities are detected, the task force would also require the intelligence community to do a full policy review and prepare a crisis response plan. The goal is to engage leaders, institutions and civil society in affected communities urgently, and at an early stage when talk and other help may defuse the situation. The task force urges the United States government to spend an additional $250 million annually on crisis prevention and response efforts, with a portion going to help international partners, including the United Nations and regional organizations, build their capacity.
It is hard to generate political will to fix a problem before it has crested. But if there is any doubt about the need for a new policy and structure, consider the Bush administration’s desperate failure in Darfur. Four years after President Bush declared the mass killings there genocide, the horrors continue. As many as 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes. With the region increasingly engulfed in interrebel warfare, a political settlement appears to be even further out of reach.
We hope President-elect Barack Obama and his top aides will seriously consider the report’s policy recommendations before they, too, find themselves grappling with such agonizing choices.

Video: Preventive Priorities for the Next Administration
Part of a CFR Center for Preventive Action Symposium
Speaker: Madeleine K. Albright, Principal, The Albright Group; Former U.S. Secretary of State
Presider: Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations
Webcast: CFR LIVE WEBCAST: Center for Preventive Action Symposium: Session One: Preventive Priorities for the Next Administration
From remarks of Madeleine K. Albright on Preventive Priorities for a New Era, Dec. 9, 2008
"...the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities is a top priority of the United States...we must inquire into the motives of those who threaten violence; into the character of their leaders...it requires being true to a certain core of principles. For me those principles include a commitment to democracy and respect for the dignity of every human being..."
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Albright%20Prepared%...
http://www.cfr.org/publication/17937/preventive_priorities_for_the_next_...

Madeleine Albright interview with 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996, in response to a question whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as a result of U.S. sanctions were worth it: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

John Doerr’s Advice for Barack Obama: Hire Bill Joy as Chief Tech. Officer
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, the billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr was interviewed by John Heilemann, a contributing editor at New York magazine who came in from Chicago, fresh off the Obama campaign trail. He had a few questions for Mr. Doerr that, he said, came directly from the president-elect.
First, Barack Obama wanted to know whom Mr. Doerr would recommend for chief technology officer of the United States, a position that Mr. Obama has promised to create. Mr. Doerr’s first choice was Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems...
Restore the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research and development arm of the Defense Department, “to its former glory and autonomy.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/john-doerrs-advice-for-barack-o...

GREEN $
Environmentalists Wary of Obama’s Interior Pick
“It’s time for a new kind of leadership in Washington that’s committed to using our lands in a responsible way to benefit all our families,” Mr. Obama said. “That means ensuring that even as we are promoting development where it makes sense, we are also fulfilling our obligation to protect our national treasures.”
Mr. Salazar, wearing his customary ten-gallon hat and bolo tie, said that his job entails helping the nation address climate change through a “moon shot” on energy independence. But that would include not just the development of “green” energy sources like wind power, but also the continued domestic development of coal, oil and natural gas, fossil fuels that generate greenhouse gases when they are burned....Oil and mining interests praised Mr. Salazar’s performance as a state official and as a senator, saying that he was not doctrinaire about the use of public lands....Marc Smith, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, said in a statement that Mr. Salazar understood that energy security can be achieved only by making use of all domestic energy sources, including those found on and under public lands.

NOT A DIME DIRECTLY TO THOSE WHO PRODUCE CAPITALIST PROFITS, NOW BLED MORE DEEPLY BY SAME BAILOUT BENEFICIARIES
'75% in US bear the brunt of recession':
In almost one home in five (18%) someone has lost a job in recent months, in more than a quarter (27%) a worker has had pay cut or working hours reduced...
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=78781&sectionid=3510213

Obama team considers $850 billion stimulus
In addition to spending on roads, bridges and similar construction projects, Obama is expected to seek additional funds for numerous programs that experience increased demand when joblessness rises, one Democratic official said. Among those programs are food vouchers and other nutrition programs, health insurance, unemployment insurance and job training programs. Obama advisers have been contacting economists from across the political spectrum in search of advice as they assemble a spending plan that would meet Obama's goal of preserving or creating 2.5 million jobs over two years.
Among those whose opinions Obama sought were Lawrence B. Lindsey, a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush during his first term, and Harvard professor Martin Feldstein, an informal John McCain adviser and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28278398/

The "Wait ‘Til He Gets In" Delusion: The President Elect is Not a Latent Lefty
by Paul Street
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, there are still those who think that Barack Obama "is a ‘true progressive' whose left and democratic orientation has been ‘squandered' or carefully hidden thanks to his national political ambitions and/or the influence of his political handlers."...
One of the more recurrent refrains I heard from many of Barack Obama's progressive supporters in late 2007 and through the recent election went like this: "Oh, he has to say and do that stuff to get elected. The corporate and military powers that be will sink him if he acts as left as he really is. Just wait until he gets in: then you'll see the real progressive deal." "That stuff" included Obama declaring his readiness to bomb Iran, saying that black Americans had come "90 percent" of the way to equality, treating Jeremiah Wright's anger over American racism as inappropriate for the current era, proclaiming that the U.S. invaded Iraq with noble intentions, and saying that "the Surge" was "succeeding beyond our wildest imagination." Other parts of the Obama campaign package: advancing nuclear power and Ethanol, claiming that leading Wall Street firms and other large corporations were as interested as anyone else in "American renewal" (they "just hadn't been asked" to help the country, Obama said last year), supporting the unilateral use of military power even in "situations beyond self-defense" (in a 2007 Foreign Affairs essay), and calling for an expansion of U.S.-imperial armed forces.

Capitalism: it's all about capital's worldwide war against labor for hegemonic profits and power
"Today's capitalist seeks to rid himself of the obligations of yesterday's labor agreements."
... today's capitalist seeks to rid himself of the obligations of yesterday's labor agreements, and to start off every day with a clean sheet and the promise of unfettered profits. Not only does the capitalist seek a world in which he owes nothing to society; he prefers a world of hunger, in which potential employees will be glad to receive whatever is offered. Job and retirement security are the enemies of profit, because they provide workers with options.
The whole concept of retirement is in jeopardy in the United States, a prime target of today's lean and incredibly mean capitalism. Corporations torpedoed retirement security for unsuspecting millions by successfully marketing 401(k)s to replace fixed income retirement plans. They transported a whole generation of would-be retirees naked into the stock market jungle, where they are helpless to protect themselves - the ultimate insecurity. Now they want to rob retired auto workers of what they have earned from lifetimes of sweat. I call that a capital crime. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

CAPITALIST PROTECTION RACKET: BUSINESS AS USUAL ON MORE DRAMATIC SCALE SOLD BY NYT AS AN INDIVIDUAL ABERRATION
Madoff Misled SEC in '06, Got Off
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122956182184616625.html
Securities and Exchange Commission investigators discovered in 2006 that Bernard Madoff misled the agency about how he managed customer money, according to documents, yet the SEC missed an opportunity to uncover an alleged Ponzi scheme... the agency had Mr. Madoff in its sights amid multiple violations that, if pursued, could have blown open his alleged multibillion-dollar scam. Instead, his firm registered as an investment adviser, at the agency's request, and the public got no word of the violations.

Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders
Bernard L. Madoff's fraud, the first worldwide Ponzi scheme, lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than anything like it in history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20madoff.html?th&emc=th

Judge signs order to protect Madoff investors
NEW YORK – A federal judge on Monday threw a lifesaver to investors who may have been duped in one of Wall Street's biggest alleged frauds, saying they need the protection of a special government reserve fund set up to help investors at failed brokerage firms.

Madoff, Under House Arrest, Agrees to Security ‘to Prevent Harm or Flight’
December 19, 2008
Under a new bail agreement, Bernard L. Madoff will be placed under 24-hour house arrest at his East Side apartment and will hire a team of security guards to watch his apartment building around the clock, federal prosecutors said on Friday. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors said they had modified the original terms of Mr. Madoff’s bail agreement so that he would not need to find four people to co-sign his bond. Mr. Madoff had been unable to meet that condition, prosecutors said. Even his sons, Andrew and Mark, were apparently unwilling to help. A lawyer for the sons has said they were unaware of the scheme and are cooperating with the authorities. Instead, Mr. Madoff agreed to the nightly curfew... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20bail.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

The Madoff Double Bluff
Muhammad Rafeeq
12-19-8
Since his arrest the press is full of people extolling his virtues as a decent human-being and "who would ever of believed it?". It would be so easy for this man to deny any wrongdoing because he could bring out an army of good character witnesses and he could just point at some suspect-looking goy in his hedge fund organisation to lay the blame on. So a truly heart-warming confession. And it was apparently made to his 2 sons, both of whom who worked for the fund and who had absolutely no idea that this fraud was being perpetrated, until such time as this astounding confession. But then I started to look more closely at the mix of investors who have lost money. About half of them are professional investing institutions. Look at this quote from the UK's Daily Mail newspaper (online) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1096228/Lloyds-London-
braced-claims-Madoff-meltdown-makes-directors-targets-lawsuits.html) "Full details of the exact losses are yet to emerge. Hedge funds and banks have so far admitted to having around £16billion with Madoff - only half of the total that is reckoned to have been lost. Some of the biggest casualties are Swiss private banks, which have taken hits amounting to about £2.5billion. Spanish bank Santander had £2.1billion of client money with Madoff. HSBC has admitted to lending about £600million to funds who wanted to use debt to gear up their positions with Madoff. RAB capital, the hedge fund that lost huge sums on investing in Northern Rock, has revealed that it is exposed to Madoff to the tune of around £6million."

Now the confession does not look right at all. It is possible to accept the idea of a Ponzi scheme be played on members of the public, who are ignorant of how such schemes are worked, in fact the schemes are targeted specifically at such people. Yet Madoff would have us believe that he managed to convince professional investment companies to put their funds with him without any due diligence being performed. This is clearly nonsense. I have acted as a professional consultant to major EC and US financial institutions on corporate and institutional credit risk and the idea that anyone in HSBC or Santander could authorise large investment without the internal checks and controls being employed is almost impossible. To try and believe that EVERY institution that invested in Madoff circumvented their internal control procedures IS impossible....

It is not possible to hide things like this internally for very long, months at the most; 20+ years, NEVER. So why plead guilty? The answer is simple. Look on the net and you will see that because this case is being labelled a fraud, it would appear that investors are going to be able to claim their investment back under the US government's financial fraud protection scheme. A judge has already given his approval in principle for compensation, without any evidence having been presented and financial fraud being demonstrated in a court of law. And it would appear that there will never be such a demonstration in a court of law. Why? It would appear that all the funds financial records are mostly "missing" (rather like Dov Zakheim's US$1.4tn) and those few records that do survive are in a terrible mess. However, since the guy has pleaded guilty we do not need to demonstrate the fraud, because he says he is guilty... and these "victims" have also been told by the US tax authorities that they will probably also be entitled to claim back some taxes on these defrauded sums. Rather than saying this hedge fund has gone bust ... the CEO chooses to fess up to fraud.

Madoff Moved The Money To Israel?
by Mark Graffis
Finally, sources say that the wealth from 'Madeoff's' scam has been fully transferred to Israel and that "most if not all of the clients have been made aware" that their money is available to them in Israel and that it was felt that this was a necessary measure in protecting certain high level clients in the face of a collapse of the USA. A European bank executive has said early this morning that the Banks involved in 'Madeoff's' fund were exposed through loads and leveraging and that these loans will be repaid in full from Israel. All of the charities involved have Israeli offices, so they also are of an understanding that their money is now available there. Sources say that Madoff has a base in Israel and that he will offer all clients his services there as a continuum to his services in New York. Speculation has it that he is advising transfer of client's funds into physical gold holdings in coded safety deposit boxes.... on fear of collapsing US dollar and seizure of funds by IRS and courts for fraud committed during the sub prime bubble. The Swiss bank client leak has caused these banks to no longer be viable avenues for asset concealment. Madoff's clients are not just in the US. He has moved funds to Israel for clients in Russia, France, England and Swiss in the scheme in... Some insiders saying the amount involved may be closer to $100 Billion.

George Soros: " one of Wall Street's most powerful players": profiting from disaster, hedge fund billionaire - democrat party/Obama major funder,
U.S. govt.'s NGO partner in global imperialist 'soft power'
Investors take stock in aftermath of Katrina disaster
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/701883d0-2329-11da-86cc-00000e2511c8.html
September 12 2005
As loss adjusters and surveyors begin the painstaking task of assessing the full extent of damage from Hurricane Katrina, it will not only be insurance companies clamouring for accurate information. A number of hedge funds, tantalised by the prospect of attractive returns, have entered the reinsurance market, and some are expected to incur losses from the hurricane. One way hedge funds have entered the market is by backing reinsurers such as Glacier Reinsurance, which was launched in December with funding from Soros Fund Management and HBK Investments, as well as UK- listed reinsurance broker Benfield. Another is Bermuda-based Cig Reinsurance, backed by Citadel Investment Group.... Hedge funds have also been providing reinsurance capacity directly to the market through various contractual instruments. This can include investing in catastrophe bonds, or participating in reinsurance arrangements whereby one fund provides collateral against potential losses....Robert Bredahl, president of Benfield's US reinsurance broking operation, says catastrophe, or "cat" bonds, tend to be used to fund the highest layers of a programme where the chance of a loss is more remote. At the lower layers, where the probability of a loss is higher but the potential loss smaller, collateral is more likely to be provided by a single hedge fund. These structures are more likely to incur losses from Katrina than those funded by cat bonds.... there should not be uncertainty about hedge funds' ability to pay claims because in the main they had collateralised their obligations. This is one attraction of structures involving hedge fund money as well as of cat bonds compared with traditional reinsurance - there is no credit risk for the insurers or reinsurers on the other side of the trade.Indeed, Nelson Seo, managing partner at Fermat Capital Management, a hedge fund manager specialising in insurance-linked securities, says: "For cat bond investors, it's not been that traumatic an event, so far. Few, if any, cat bond structures are likely to be forced to pay out by Katrina, because the storm does not appear to have been quite large enough. But even for funds that look likely to take losses, higher reinsurance premiums in the aftermath of Katrina could actually encourage them to step up their activity in the sector.

Investors should have looked at Madoff's golf scores
Jeremy Warner, 12/16/08
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jeremy-warner/jeremy-...
...The hedge fund industry, with the active connivance of those who invest in it, has spent years fighting greater oversight, and indeed has long trumpeted the fact that it is largely unregulated as one of its main attractions.... the hedgies have always operated at the wild frontiers of the capital markets, and though many portray themselves as low risk, you'd be crazy to invest without your eyes wide open. Adequate due diligence is the order of the day for any investment business which isn't fully underwritten by government regulation.
Back in the early 1990s, while on The Independent on Sunday, I was involved in an investigation into the affairs of George Soros, the hedge fund manager then newly made famous as the man who broke the Bank of England. Not much was known about hedge funds in those days. We found it a genuine revelation to discover that the apparently spectacular returns were in large measure down to the application of leverage. More revelatory still was the discovery that Mr Soros and his partners took a substantial share of any profits the funds made on top of their normal management fee, while not being exposed to any of the downside. All this is today old hat, but at the time it was little understood outside the elite of financial markets. Eventually we were persuaded by our libel lawyers it wasn't fraudulent to charge a "carry" or to use "leverage", provided investors knew about it, but we were able to conclude that because it encouraged excessive risk-taking it was potentially quite dangerous, both to investors and the financial markets as a whole....
As for the bankers – Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC among them – that lent hundreds of millions of dollars in leverage to funds of funds against the collateral of the Madoff assets, well what do you expect? They are only bankers, after all. In the scale of the wanton destruction of shareholders' and depositors' money revealed by the unfolding crisis of the past year and a half [digest: not to mention its $8 trillion-plus bailout fixes to-date], this is but a drop in the ocean....

Hands up if you made billions of dollars out of the credit crisis
Hedge fund 'masters of the universe' face Congressional grilling over their role in the global credit crunc
14 November 2008
Billionaire financiers George Soros, Jim Simons, John Paulson, Philip Falcone and Ken Griffin take the oath at yesterday's Congressional hearing... In a piece of public theatre that reflected not just the present crisis, but a decade or more of vastly increased income inequality, the five men declared themselves innocent of causing the market meltdown and insisted that their riches reflected hard work and investment insight. ... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hands-up-if-you-made-bi...

finance capitalist chuckles & ironies
"...his Manhattan-based hedge fund, Paulson & Co, has been able to sign up Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, as an adviser. The appointment raised a chuckle in dealing rooms across the city, since Mr Greenspan is being damned as the architect of the housing market's disastrous bubble."
The man who bet on the credit crisis – and took home $3.7bn last year
17 April 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-man-who-bet-on-the-...
John Paulson bet that the mortgage market was headed for a crash. Now he can afford to move home...a jarring comparison for the millions of American homeowners struggling with their soaring mortgage payments, but there is one man who has profited so much from the credit crisis that he is jumping a few rungs on the property ladder this year. John Paulson, a previously obscure hedge fund manager from New York, who took home $3.7bn (£1.9bn) last year, after betting on a calamity in the mortgage market.
It is certainly the biggest single pay-day in the history of Wall Street, more than twice anything previously achieved even in the bloated hedge fund industry. It is worth spelling the total out with all the zeros: $3,700,000,000, the equivalent of a lottery jackpot every day for a year.
No wonder Mr Paulson is trading up in the Hamptons, the upstate playground for New York's rich and famous, where he has just bought a 10.4-acre lakefront compound – complete with staff quarters, two outhouses and ocean views – for $41m. His more modest seven-bedroom, three-acre "cottage" a mile down the road, is up for sale with a price tag of $19.5m. (In another example of his trading acumen, that is a profit of almost $7m during the two years he has owned it.)

Alpha Magazine, the industry journal that did the sums, calls his performance last year "the greatest hedge fund trade of all time". It has turned Mr Paulson into an industry legend overnight, courted by powerful bankers and politicians, anxious for insight on how bad the housing crisis in the US and the global credit crunch might still get.

With his new-found influence, his Manhattan-based hedge fund, Paulson & Co, has been able to sign up Alan Greenspan, a former head of the Federal Reserve, as an adviser. The appointment raised a chuckle in dealing rooms across the city, since Mr Greenspan is being damned as the architect of the housing market's disastrous bubble.
Mr Paulson's story is rich with other ironies. Now 52, he learnt his trade in part during four years at Bear Stearns, the investment bank which lost billions in 2007 making optimistic bets on mortgages that were the mirror image of Mr Paulson's. Its collapse last month is the defining catastrophe of the credit crisis. He also shares a name with – but is no relation of – Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, whose tenure has been spent trying to shore up the housing market.
John Paulson set up his hedge fund in 1994 and spent more than a decade as a middle-ranking fish in an increasingly crowded pond, until realising 18 months ago that the mortgage market was headed for disaster as millions of US homebuyers were signing up to loans they would not be able to afford. There would soon be a day of reckoning for borrowers and their profligate lenders, he calculated, and the multi-billion dollar market for mortgage derivatives was bound to collapse. Putting his own money, his clients' money and billions of dollars of borrowed funds into the bet, he won big. Paulson & Co, his fund, had $6bn under management at the start of 2007 and $28bn at the end. The gains on his own capital and his cut of the fund's fees netted him $3.7bn over the period.
That puts him on Alpha's list of top earners ahead of George Soros... who has also been betting on economic calamity in the US and took home $2.9bn.

not corruption, capitalist business as usual
According to annual report released Monday by the White House the government's spending exploded by 25% in 2008, putting taxpayers more than $1 trillion in the hole before the bailout costs [now over $8.2 bn.] are included
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/16/spending-soars-25-before...

Moguls and Arab States Are Big Donors to Clinton Charity [sic]
Lifting a cloak of secrecy, former President Bill Clinton disclosed the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of a deal with the Obama transition team.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/us/politics/w19clinton.html?8au&emc=au

BO gets supportive advice from Herr Rove
Mr. Obama is assembling a strong and intelligent team of people with muscular views and large personalities. Will the individual parts cohere into a well-functioning whole? Things that sound good often work less well in reality. Having served in the White House for nearly seven years and carefully studied how the modern presidency functions, it strikes me that some of Mr. Obama's steps may make smooth operations harder. There are many things more interesting to the press than how the White House is organized, but few things matter as much, as every president will attest.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser [aka 'brain'] and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122956235082116649.html#printMode

"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
--former CIA Director William Colby, Bernstein's 1977 Oct. Rolling stone article.

It is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world...
These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people...
Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the patriots, while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims -- they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight:
Eugene V. Debs [The Canton, Ohio, Anti-War Speech. June 16, 1918]

digest: in fact the only way to end this political-economic suicide through revolutionary war?
CULTURE WAR VS CLASS WAR VS HOLY WAR VS EARTH WAR
BY Gary Corseri
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=1437&print=1
12/20/08

“… pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks…”
–Mark Twain (The Mysterious Stranger)
While the handful of contemporary philosopher-kings (largely on the Web these days!) ponder the ponderous evolution of humans over the eons–and even the ebb and flow of life-forms over the vast reaches of geophysical time–masses of consumer worker-soldier ants stuff and gorge, vomit and defecate on their own and others’ food and energy resources. They can’t help it. They’ve been programmed by nature and, worse, a rapacious, predatory-capitalist, materialist mind/heart-set to seize every opportunity to plunder, rape, steal, hoard, waste and conquer.
But, I digress... before rudely interrupting myself with speculation on our malleable character and all-too-often sordid human penchant to expropriate and exploit, I was going to say, We Amer-I-CAN’s have just won one fleeting victory in the Culture War, but we’re losing our asses in the Class War vs Holy War vs Earth War. And while some of us have been ejaculating self-praise for “change we can believe in,” the more sober polar bears among us perceive solidity melting beneath our paws and holy-war hunters and madmen behind every errant ice floe...
Our human flaws are not in our hearts, but in our minds and our spines. We do not perceive how we have been used and manipulated by noisy fear-mongers century after century. We do not perceive how war morphs into war and how the noisy little elite harness the passions of war to divide us from ourselves and from our kindred across the borders. I suppose after the “War on Terror,” we shall have a “War on War.” Fought with even better weapons!...War vs War.
And if we have the minds to perceive the nature of the duplicities of a socio-political-economic system that promotes complaisance and inanition among the dominated sheep–and complacency and violence among the sheep-herders, have we the spines to stand up and stop bah-ing? Or is it already too late?
A Senior Editor of Culture and Arts at Cyrano’s Journal Online, he can be reached at Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.

politically powerful though the biological reductionist thesis is problematic*
Capitalism Short Circuits Our Moral Hard-Wiring
By Gary Olson
...In the words of famed primate scientist Frans B.M. de Waal "You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions."
We know that cultures are set up to reward some people and disadvantage others. Capitalists maintain domination, in part, through subtly but actively creating society's prevailing cultural norms. Antonio Gramsci's writing reminds us that this control is achieved through the mass media, education, religion and popular culture as subordinate classes assimilate certain ideas as "common sense." It isn't that individual deviations don't occur within the interstices of society but generally they don't threaten elite control.
If we assume that the human brain or more specifically, the aforementioned mirror neuron system, is the implicit target of elite propaganda, then the current economic meltdown provides an almost unprecedented opportunity for us.
Perhaps not since the 1930s have our citizens been more skeptical of received wisdom about our socioeconomic system. That is, the carefully manufactured narrative of market capitalist identity and its assumptions about human nature are now thrown into sharp relief. .. we know that organizing an alternative to our vicious system of "natural" hyper-individualism will enhance the opportunity for the empathic aspect of our nature to flourish. Social historian Margaret Jacobs captures my optimism with her insight that "No institution is safe if people simply stop believing in the assumptions that justify its existence." Therein lies both our challenge and responsibility.
Gary Olson, Ph.D., is chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. Contact: olson@moravian.edu
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21499.htm
*highly recommended: Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature , 1984, coauthors evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, neurobiologist Steven Rose and psychologist Leon J. Kamin critique sociobiology, biological determinism and the reductionist gene-centric view of evolution.