World-News

Small-business bankruptcies rise 81% in California

With credit tight and consumers still pinching their pennies, many business owners find they can't go on.

https://snipurl.com/ttps2



US home foreclosures top one million mark

The number of US homes in foreclosure topped the one million mark for the first time ever, according to figures released this week by federal agencies.

https://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/fore-d23.shtml


From Information Clearing House



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bankruptcies
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreclosure

By Sergey Balmasov

"They spent a trillion dollars to add more fuel to the fire of the terrorist war. The Americans crushed Iraq and Afghanistan. There are too many people in these two countries who lost their homes, jobs and loved ones because of the USA, and those people are ready to do anything to harm the Americans. "

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24251.htm



The Troops Protect Our Freedom, and Other Lies I Learned in School

By Kevin Carson

The United States' military does not "defend our freedom." There hasn't been a war in my lifetime that involved a genuine foreign military threat to our freedom, and the United States government has been actively involved in suppressing freedom around the world for decades.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24250.htm



Obama's Role in the Militarization of Mexico

By Mike Whitney

It is presented as a petition of the Mexican president Felipe Calderon for US help in the war on drugs but in reality it was designed in Washington as a way to "push out the borders" of the US security perimeter, that is, that Mexico would take on US security priorities including policing its southern border and allowing US companies and agents into Mexico's intelligence and security operations.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24253.htm



Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan tops $1 trillion

The cost to U.S. taxpayers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 has topped $1 trillion, and President Barack Obama is expected to request another $33 billion to fund more U.S. troops this year.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2611591520100126?type=marketsNews


From Information Clearing House



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Felipe+Calderon
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=global+war+on+terror
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=perpetual+war
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=militarization
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sergey+Balmasov
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kevin+Carson
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mike+Whitney

https://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/whitehead6.1.1.html

Yet More Aid To Dependent Dictators
https://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker36.1.html

We're Screwed!
https://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/maymin8.1.1.html

Profit Prophet
https://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson-brian/wilson-brian16.1.html

--------

Obama has failed his words

National Review
by Jonah Goldberg

12/23/09

From his 2004 DNC keynote speech onward, Obama rejected the partisan divide. He earned points by insisting that invidious descriptions of political opponents were deleterious to civic health and distracted us from the fact that ‘we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.’ In a speech following a June primary victory, Obama said he was ‘absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children … this was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation.’ So, does anyone feel like Americans are coming together? Obama the outsider hasn’t changed the way Washington works; he’s worked Washington in a way that only an outsider with no respect for the place would dare...

https://tinyurl.com/yes2ac7


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Nat+Hentoff
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=John+W.+Whitehead
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=/whitehead
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=/walker
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jonah+Goldberg
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=/maymin
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=/wilson-b

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/23-13



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=permanent+war
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=war+budget
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Hartung

Flares in the Political Dark

Norman Solomon, Truthout: "The winter solstice of 2009 arrived as a grim metaphor for the current politics of health care, war, and a lot more. 'In a dark time,' wrote the poet Theodore Roethke, 'the eye begins to see.' After a year of escalation in Afghanistan, solicitude toward Wall Street and the incredible shrinking health care reform, we ought to be able to see that the biggest problem among progressives has been undue deference to the Obama administration."

https://www.truthout.org/1223095

--------

Obama’s lost opportunity

Heartland Institute
by Greg Scandlen

12/30/09

With President Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats twisting themselves like pretzels to get something — anything — passed on health reform with no Republican support, it’s instructive to review what might have been. During the campaign Obama promised to work in a bipartisan fashion to solve problems. He told one interviewer, ‘I have always been able to work together with Republicans to find compromise and to find common ground.’ If he had stuck with that in health care we might be telling a very different story today...

https://tinyurl.com/yfh5rqf



Back from the brink

The Weekly Standard
by Irwin M. Stelzer

12/30/09

For years, perhaps decades to come, Americans will be whittling away at the mountain of debt the Obama administration has built, in part to apply Maynard Keynes’s nostrums to the sagging economy, in greater part permanently to expand the size and role of government. On the day before Christmas, immediately after its dawn vote to pass the health care bill, when few were watching, the Senate joined the House in raising the debt ceiling so that the administration could borrow enough money — $290 billion — to keep the government running, but only for a few months, so great is the amount of red ink pouring onto the federal books. Congress is also preparing a second stimulus bill — it will have a different name — and instead of using the money flowing in from the banks to repay the government’s bail-outs to reduce the deficit, the president and Congress are converting it to a slush fund to be spent on a variety of new programs. Throw in the fact that no one believes the health care bill will not add to the deficit, and Americans will remember 2009 as the year they loaded huge burdens on their children and grandchildren...

https://tinyurl.com/ydo3eor


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=what+change
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bailout
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=deficit
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bipartisan
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=healthcare
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Keynes
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Norman+Solomon
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Greg+Scandlen
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Irwin+M.+Stelzer

Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "This is a difficult time in American history. The American people have every right to demand to live in peace, enjoy the comforts of economic security, have access to decent health care, be able to send their children to quality schools and live with a measure of security. And yet, at a time when public values are subordinated to the rationality of profits, exchange values and unbridled self interest, politics and the institutions and culture that support it become corrupt, devoid of agents and reduced to empty rituals largely orchestrated by those who control the wealth, income, media and commanding institutions of American society."

https://www.truthout.org/1223094



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=casino+capitalism
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Henry+A.+Giroux

Liberty & Power
by Robert Higgs

12/22/09

In truth, any ‘constitutionally protected rights’ you are now exercising exist solely at the pleasure and convenience of the rulers. The minute the continuation of your life or liberty no longer pleases them, they will, as the Court’s decision makes clear, simply declare you an unperson to be dealt with as they choose, whether they choose to torture you, confine you in a steel cage for the rest of your life, or peremptorily kill you. They recognize NO rights in anyone (except themselves, of course) that they are bound to respect. This horror is the end to which a brave experiment has come. If the rulers can, at their pleasure, declare ANYONE THEY SELECT a legal unperson, the notion that the United States is a free country is nothing but the sickest of sick jokes...

https://hnn.us/blogs/entries/121551.html



Oath Keepers? I’m still waiting

Albuquerque Libertarian Examiner
by Kent McManigal

01/15/10

No, I am not a fan of the Constitution, although I do believe a Constitutional government would be better than the travesty that attempts to rule us now. I have to wonder, though, if the individual Oath Keepers really understand what ‘unconstitutional’ means. Don’t rely on the black-robed furniture abusers of the Supreme Court to tell you what the Constitution means. They are wrong more often than they are right, and it was never their job to tell you and me what the Constitution means. That authority rests in you and me alone. They stole that ‘authority’ for themselves and have gotten away with it so far...

https://tinyurl.com/yaqrugw


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Supreme+Court
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Constitution
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Higgs
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kent+McManigal

Truthout
by Lawrence Wittner

For many years, Americans prided themselves on their nation never having lost a war and this fed into the assumption that it never could lose one. During the Vietnam War, J. William Fulbright, chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned repeatedly of ‘the arrogance of power’...

https://www.truthout.org/topstories/1221093



Lustful money and hateful religion

Strike the Root
by Bob Wallace

12/22/09

In a nutshell, the arrogance and blindness of hubris and overweening pride always leads to some kind of a collapse. It doesn’t matter at all how convinced people are that their economic policies and their religion are absolutely true. Reality always trumps their falsehoods...

https://www.strike-the-root.com/92/wallace/wallace4.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Vietnam
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=arrogance+of+power
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Lawrence+Wittner
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bob+Wallace

MSNBC

12/22/09

Universities and colleges are still waiting for tuition payments for thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who attended school last fall under the new GI Bill, leaving the veterans panicked that they’ll be unable to return to class in January. Veterans Affairs Department officials promise to get them back into the classroom. The VA says the number of veterans with claims unprocessed is now fewer than 5,000 — down from tens of thousands — and the goal is to have them all processed by the end of the year...

https://tinyurl.com/ygm7hsf


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=veterans
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Veterans+Affairs+Department

Viele bunte Pillen
https://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/3/146804



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Pharmaindustrie