Boston Globe
by Thomas Oliphant

12/01/05

Had President Bush chosen to be candid and honest yesterday at the Naval Academy, he could have added a simple sentence to his oration on how marvelously things are going in Iraq. That sentence would read: Representative Jack Murtha is correct. In fact, if anything, the pro-military Democrat from Pennsylvania probably understated his case that the United States can and should withdraw its troops from Iraq over the next six months, leaving only a rapid response force in one of the Persian Gulf emirates. Had Bush chosen candor and honesty, he could have said flat-out that Hillary Clinton was correct this week in calling for a plan to withdraw troops next year in the aftermath of December's parliamentary elections. The president didn't do either because he was not being candid or honest about the situation in a place where he insists on an open-ended military commitment...

http://tinyurl.com/9guxu


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The American Prospect
by Tara McKelvey

12/01/05

On a rainy November afternoon, Zbigniew Brzezinski, author, most recently, of The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership,

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009K75RM/rationalrev08-20

outlines a new Democratic strategy from his Center for Strategic and International Studies office on K Street. Some Democrats, such as Senator Joseph Biden, say they regret their decision to support the Iraq war. What do you think Democrats overall should be saying and doing? The Democrats have a responsibility vis à vis the American people: to act as an alternative and to provide a vision of a strategy that avoids the pitfalls of what the Bush administration has created. The fact of the matter is that Democrats failed to do that during the grand debate over whether or not to go to war in Iraq. To be sure, some Democrats can rationalize their decisions by saying they gave the president contingent authority, and he pushed much further and acted unilaterally. Nonetheless, the fact is Democrats, tacitly at the very least, and explicitly in some cases, went along with a presidential decision based on a case that was dubious at best and mendacious at worst. Some leading Democrats have even acted as if they wanted to be part of the Bush cabinet, helping him prosecute the war in Iraq. L’outrance, as the French would say...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10672


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Tom Paine
by Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus

12/01/05

Last January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that one of his top priorities as chairman of the Group of Eight industrialized countries would be to rally the G8 to action on global warming. Unspoken in that announcement, but obvious to all, was Blair's intention to target President Bush, who in 2001 withdrew the United States from the Kyoto protocol regulating greenhouse gas emissions. As world leaders convened last July, there was much anticipation over what kind of agreement the G8 would reach. By the end of the summit, it was clear that Blair's hopes had been dashed. The White House succeeded in so watering down the G8's communique on global warming that it ended up being weaker than the statement President Bush's father had signed 13 years before...

http://tinyurl.com/aosg7


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

CounterPunch
by Elaine Cassel

12/01/05

In these two cases, our government has violated every principle of constitutional law and criminal procedure that at one time made our criminal justice system something to be proud of. The Bill of Rights held no hope for these men. Only the right of habeas corpus -- that last hope for the hopeless that holds the President to account for imprisoning someone -- got then in the court house door. But the government taught them a civics lesson they didn't learn in school: the President, at least this President, thinks he can walk all over the Bill of Rights -- your rights -- and get away with it. When one maneuver fails, they have another up their sleeves...

http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel12012005.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

LewRockwell.Com
by Anthony Gregory

12/02/05

The state is a protection racket, not much different in kind from any organized crime syndicate. Just as the state fails in its ancillary functions, such as schooling and caring for the poor, so does it fail in its advertised primary function as an institution of protection. That’s why it's a racket. That's why it's a fraud. Even if one thinks the state can be set up so as to protect people's rights more than it abuses them, a libertarian should probably look at the current situation and conclude that the state does not, in fact, protect us on balance...

http://lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory100.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

12/02/05

In the mind of an ideologue, words have the power to transform reality, to defy the laws of nature and overcome all earthly powers. Are we losing the war? Well, then, let us have more words -- a presidential speech, preferably delivered before an audience of adoring Praetorians, is enough to turn the tide. Are the insurgents gaining popular support, to the point where even the elected Iraqi government our soldiers are dying to protect has declared that Iraqis have the 'right of resistance?' Well, then, the answer is to re-name them 'rejectionists,' denounce them as 'terrorists,' and insist that we will henceforth describe them as 'enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government' instead of insurgents. As Arianna Huffington wittily put it, it's 'victory through vocabulary.' This sums up not only Bush's 'victory plan' but also the radical subjectivist mindset of the War Party. This is the essence of Bushevism -- the same radical subjectivism that worships 'revolutionary will' and led Mao to decree the creation of backyard steel furnaces during China's 'Great Leap Forward'...

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8198


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Tampa Tribune

12/01/05

A spy-agency analysis released Thursday contends a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, casting further doubt on the leading rationale for escalation of the Vietnam War. Much as faulty U.S. intelligence preceded the invasion of Iraq, the mishandling of intercepted communications 40 years earlier is blamed in the National Security Agency paper for giving President Johnson carte blanche in the conflict. The agency put out more than 140 long-secret documents in response to requests from researchers trying to get to the bottom of an episode that unfolded in the South China Sea on Aug. 4, 1964, and has been disputed since...

http://tinyurl.com/7eyyu


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Better start preparing...does anyone have any idea what will happen durring the next great depression?

beefree


THE ECONOMIC, MILITARY and cultural reach of the U.S. may be unrivaled, but as an empire it's no strapping young buck. Those days are over, say Addison Wiggin and Bill Bonner in their new book, "Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis." The authors describe with sardonic humor — and no small amount of name calling — how America has become an overfed, imperial has-been and economic basket case.

Ostensibly, America is the most prosperous nation on the planet. But it's also the world's largest debtor and biggest consumer, the "world's mouth," according to Wiggin and Bonner, who are respectively the founder and editorial director of Agora Financial, a Baltimore-based publisher of financial newsletters and web sites1.

Meanwhile, as the country inches toward bankruptcy, Americans buy houses as investments, drain their homes of equity and spend what they don't have, say Wiggin and Bonner. Folks are living well above their means, yet drowning in an ever-rising sea of debt. A recession is imminent, predict the authors, and American hegemony will wane.

http://www.smartmoney.com/theproshop/index.cfm?story=20051201

Empire of Debt

Book Link:
http://tinyurl.com/dmx3f

http://www.rense.com/general69/dia.htm


Informant: Milo