The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The Good (Student rap tribute to President-elect Obama.):

read more

ATTENTION NEW YORK CITY - THE MOMENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!

Ever since Lionel started his book tour, I've fielded many emails and blog comments seething with outrage, all asking the same question: when will Lionel do a book signing/Q&A in New York City?!?

The time has finally arrived, and Lionel has planned a doozy for his NYC appearance. On Thursday January 8th at 5:30 PM, Lionel will appear at the John Jay College Barnes & Noble in Manhattan (address below). John Jay College is a hotbed of legal scholarship in New York, and among the usual multitudes will be law students eager to hear their favorite former prosecutor hold forth on the baffling contradictions and bizarre practices of our legal system.

This is a chance you'll not soon get again: after his signing and reading, Lionel will open the floor to a Q&A with the budding young legal minds of Manhattan. Aside from sculpting the future Esq's and DA's of NYC, he will also give a disquosition dissecting the persistent phenomenon of "lawyer jokes" and their refusal to die a grisly death.

This is a big one, folks, and well worth a drive or a train ride if you live in the greater NYC area. The info is below. Hope to see you there!

 

CLICK HERE TO BUY YOUR COPY OF EVERYONE'S CRAZY EXCEPT YOU AND ME, AND I'M NOT SO SURE ABOUT YOU

Thursday, January 8th @ 5:30 PM

Barnes & Noble at John Jay College

841 Tenth Avenue @ 55th Street

212 265 3619

 

 

Read More...

US starts New Cold War with Russia: The New Arms Race

Undeterred by massive budget deficits from wars, a falling economy, and financial bailouts, the US government has managed to start a new cold war with Russia. Last Friday, the Russian military announced that it was developing a new generation of ballistic missiles in response to the US government’s decision to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The “peace dividend” that the Reagan-Gorbachev accord provided has been squandered by an arrogant American government seeking world hegemony.

In 2002 the Bush regime unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the US government signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. This treaty stabilized the “assured mutual destruction” that prevented the two military superpowers from initiating war, thus averting a nuclear holocaust for 30 years.

When the Soviet government released its Eastern European “captive nations,” the US government promised not to recruit the Baltic and Eastern European countries for NATO membership. The US government pledged that NATO would not be brought to Russia’s borders. There would be a neutral zone between the Western military alliance and Russia. The American government broke this promise as quickly as it could, bringing former constituent parts of the Russian empire into the American empire.

Last October Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Lithuania to give a guarantee to the Baltics of US military intervention in the event of a Russian attack. Like the British guarantee that Chamberlain gave Poland in 1939, a guarantee that precipitated World War II, Mullen’s guarantee is worthless unless the US government initiates nuclear war with Russia in defense of the tiny Baltic republics, which would be wiped out by the radiation fallout.

The US has tried to incorporate the Ukraine and Georgia, constituent parts of Russia for centuries, into NATO. To clear the way for NATO membership, the Bush regime encouraged the American puppet ruler of Georgia to cleanse provinces, attached to Georgia by Stalin, of Russians in order to end secessionist movements. When Russian troops drove the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army out of the Russian parts of Georgia, the US government lied that Russia had invaded Georgia.

This malevolent lie was too much for the Russians and too much of the rest of the world. It was plain to all that the US, an aggressor state striving to encircle Russia with bases even to the edge of central Asia, had initiated a war that it then blamed on Russia. After Afghanistan, Iraq, Bush’s defense of Israel’s 2006 war criminal attack on Lebanon, and Bush’s false claims of an Iranian nuclear weapon, few, if any, countries any longer believe pronouncements of the US government. The US is regarded worldwide as an aggressor state that lies through its teeth.

This means that unless China decides to play the US and Russia off in order to emerge as the sole world power, there is no one to finance America’s side of the new cold war that the US government has created.

The only other way Washington can finance a new arms race with Russia is to cancel Social Security and Medicare, and to repudiate its massive foreign debts. If Washington does this, the likely result would be revolution at home and isolation internationally.

For decades Washington has prevailed because the US dollar is the reserve currency. It is the world’s money. This advantage allows Washington to purchase almost every other government. There are governments all over the world, from Europe to Egypt, from Ukraine to South Korea to Japan, that are owned by Washington. When Washington speaks of spreading freedom and democracy, Washington means it has purchased more governments to do its will.

These purchased governments do not represent their people. They represent American hegemony.

Now that the Great Hegemon is bankrupt and its economy is collapsing, thanks to unbridled greed, American influence is waning. The US dollar cannot survive the massive red ink that the US generates.

When the dollar collapses, the image of a strutting Washington as “the world’s only superpower” will evaporate. The evil that is the American government will find itself at war with its own people and those of the rest of the world.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

The Cost of Hegemony Is Beyond Reach

Undeterred by massive budget deficits from wars, a falling economy, and financial bailouts, the U.S. government has managed to start a new cold war with Russia. Last Friday, the Russian military announced that it was developing a new generation of ballistic missiles in response to the U.S. government's decision to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The "peace dividend" that the Reagan-Gorbachev accord provided has been squandered by an arrogant American government seeking world hegemony.

In 2002 the Bush regime unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the U.S. government signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. This treaty stabilized the "mutual assured destruction" that prevented the two military superpowers from initiating war, thus averting a nuclear holocaust for 30 years.

When the Soviet government released its Eastern European "captive nations," the U.S. government promised not to recruit the Baltic and Eastern European countries for NATO membership. The U.S. government pledged that NATO would not be brought to Russia's borders. There would be a neutral zone between the Western military alliance and Russia. The American government broke this promise as quickly as it could, bringing former constituent parts of the Russian empire into the American empire.

Last October, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Lithuania to give a guarantee to the Baltics of U.S. military intervention in the event of a Russian attack. Like the British guarantee that Chamberlain gave Poland in 1939, a guarantee that precipitated World War II, Mullen's guarantee is worthless unless the U.S. government initiates nuclear war with Russia in defense of the tiny Baltic republics, which would be wiped out by the radiation fallout.

The U.S. has tried to incorporate the Ukraine and Georgia, constituent parts of Russia for centuries, into NATO. To clear the way for NATO membership, the Bush regime encouraged the American puppet ruler of Georgia to cleanse provinces, attached to Georgia by Stalin, of Russians in order to end secessionist movements. When Russian troops drove the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army out of the Russian parts of Georgia, the U.S. government lied that Russia had invaded Georgia.

This malevolent lie was too much for the Russians and too much of the rest of the world. It was plain to all that the U.S., an aggressor state striving to encircle Russia with bases even to the edge of central Asia, had initiated a war that it then blamed on Russia. After Afghanistan, Iraq, Bush's defense of Israel's 2006 criminal attack on Lebanon, and Bush's false claims of an Iranian nuclear weapon, few, if any, countries any longer believe pronouncements of the U.S. government. The U.S. is regarded worldwide as an aggressor state that lies through its teeth.

This means that unless China decides to play the U.S. and Russia off in order to emerge as the sole world power, there is no one to finance America's side of the new cold war that the U.S. government has created.

The only other way Washington can finance a new arms race with Russia is to cancel Social Security and Medicare and repudiate its massive foreign debts. If Washington were to do this, the likely result would be revolution at home and isolation internationally.

For decades Washington has prevailed because the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency. It is the world's money. This advantage allows Washington to purchase almost every other government. There are governments all over the world, from Europe to Egypt, from Ukraine to South Korea to Japan, that are owned by Washington. When Washington speaks of spreading freedom and democracy, Washington means it has purchased more governments to do its will.

These purchased governments do not represent their people. They represent American hegemony.

Now that the Great Hegemon is bankrupt and its economy is collapsing, thanks to unbridled greed, American influence is waning. The U.S. dollar cannot survive the massive red ink that the U.S. generates.

When the dollar collapses, the image of a strutting Washington as "the world's only superpower" will evaporate. The evil that is the American government will find itself at war with its own people and those of the rest of the world.
.

Read More...

Can Senate Democrats New Fundraiser Win Over Wall Street?

For the last two elections, Senate Democrats have benefited from their chief fundraiser’s ties to Wall Street, one of the biggest givers in all of federal politics. Under the leadership of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee collected more than $12.8 million in this election cycle from the securities and investment [...]

Read More...

Seeking Integrity at the CIA

by Ray McGovern

Editor's Note: An underlying factor in the national security crises confronting the United States has been the corruption of the US. intelligence process, with analyses tailored to fit the desires of the policymakers and with laws bent to permit torture and other abuses.

In this guest essay, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern reflects on what went wrong and what now needs to go right:

The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) must be a person whose previous professional performance has been distinguished by unimpeachable integrity and independence. The director must have the courage of his or her own convictions.

Without integrity and courage, all virtue is specious, and no amount of structural or organizational reform will make any difference.

Though a 2004 law gave most of the DCI's intelligence community-wide authority to the new position of Director of National Intelligence – after the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and after the false intelligence analysis on Iraq's WMDs – the same principles regarding integrity and courage apply to the DNI.

Instructive lessons can be drawn from the performance of George Tenet, the sixteenth CIA director since the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, and from his predecessors regarding what attributes a director needs to discharge the duties of the office as the National Security Act of 1947 intended.

The director should have already made a mark on the world by excelling in a field unrelated to intelligence work – business, the military or academia – bringing a well-established record of honesty and competence.

If he comes from more humble circumstances than most top administration officials, it is essential that her or his strength of character and self-confidence be such that there is no need to depend on the anointing of Washington hoi aristoi for reassurance of self worth.

These qualities are all the more essential because of the mismatch of responsibility and authority in the Director of Central Intelligence's position.

As the chief foreign intelligence adviser to the President, the director has broad responsibility for coordinating the intelligence effort of a dozen agencies of government, but has little operational or budgetary control over most of them. As a result, the director's authority is essentially ad referendum to the President.

Too many Directors of Central Intelligence, out of a desire to be good team players, have been reluctant to seek and invoke that authority. A notable exception was Admiral Stansfield Turner, whose military background instilled in him an acute appreciation of the need for command authority to match responsibility.

Turner knew he had to take determined steps to dispel the ambiguity – and did. Thus, when the parochial interests of, say, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the National Security Agency got in the way of his intelligence community coordinating responsibilities, Turner would simply meet with President Carter and lay it on the line.

"If you want me to be able to discharge my responsibilities as your principal intelligence adviser," he would say, "you need to tell the Attorney General to instruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be more responsive, and the Secretary of Defense to tell the National Security Agency to do the same."

In other words, there is a way to deal with the anomalies inherent in the director's portfolio, but it takes a DCI who is willing to put noses out of joint in order to assert the necessary authority to do his job. Such directors have been few and far between.

What Tenet Should Have Said

Read More...

A Truth-Teller for Our Times

Excerpt: By October 2005, when American casualties in Iraq had not yet reached 2,000 dead or 15,000 wounded, and our casualties in Afghanistan were still modest indeed, informal "walls" had already begun springing up online to honor the fallen.

Read More...

Saudi prince: US oil independence "not applicable"

US oil independence "is non-applicable" despite US President-elect Barrak Obama's assurances, said former Saudi Chief of Intelligence Prince Turki Al-Faisal Wednesday evening.

Al-Faisal said in statements to KUNA, during a seminar held on Saudi-US relations organized by the Arab contemporary studies center in Georgetown University, "Saudi should not be worried concerning Obama's attempts to launch oil independence, as oil remains the cheapest source of power, therefore it cannot be made indispensable." He added that the US call for independence in the field of energy was also on Bill Clinton's agenda, but the US continued to buy oil.

He noted that the US did not only import oil from the Middle East, but also from Canada and Mexico, therefore the issue was not limited to Saudi alone but to the US neighbors. The prince said that Saudi was near the end of the oil era, as it was investing in human resources through sending its students abroad to gain experiences and knowledge.

Read more: Kuwait News Agency

Read More...

Guide to Smoking Pot Around the World

Written by Sascha Matuszak From an American kid hitting a bong while watching Harold and Kumar to a Moroccan enjoying hash with his afternoon tea, people all over the world smoke cannabis.Despite the popularity of weed and hash, most governments in the world have deemed it harmful to the individual and society as a whole.There are [...]

Read More...

Secret Plan For IMF World Dictatorship

G-20 Summit In DC On 11-15-8By Webster Tarpley11-10-8 This is a confidential strategy paper for the November 15 G-20 summit in Washington DC. This is not a new Bretton Woods in any sense, but rather a British-steered attempt to impose the dictatorship [...]

Read More...

Today's TRMS

Happy Election Day! On today's show we are talking about the HOW of voting. How active duty soldiers vote, how the campaigns get out the vote, how Florida will or won't get voting right this year. Rachel's guests will be Sean Quinn from fivethirtyeight.com, Paul Rieckhoff, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Read More...
<

WeAreChangeLA infiltrates Sarah Palin's Kool-Aid Convention