World-News

Salon
by Glenn Greenwald

09/02/09

[H]uge swaths of the right-wing movement were devoted to an unprecedented veneration of George Bush. A whole industry on the Right was created to convert him into a warrior-deity, including truly creepy reverence books by National Review writers �. Some on the Right actually speculated that God intervened in our elections because he had hand-picked Bush to be our leader. Even Bill Kristol admitted that the GOP had turned into little more than a Bush-centered personality cult, telling the New York Times: ‘Bush was the movement and the cause.’ More than any single, discrete issue, what motivated me to begin writing about political issues was the warped climate of hero worship constructed — by the Right and the media — around George Bush as a ‘War President.’ If you search long enough on the Internet, can you find examples of random people or vapid celebrities guilty of excessive Obama worship? Obviously. One can find virtually anything using those methods. But the personalized veneration of George Bush, particularly during his first term, was systematic and engulfing...

https://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/02/bush/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GOP
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bill+Kristol
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Glenn+Greenwald

Daily Reckoning
by Byron King

09/01/09

The big problem — obviously, the headline issue — with the US economy is too much debt. (That’s the BIG problem. There’s a long list of other problems after that.) And the debt problem is getting worse, not better. Debt is ubiquitous across US society. Debt permeates the culture. Practically the whole nation has bitten off more than it can chew. Within the past two generations, the US economy has transformed from what Harvard historian Charles Maier calls an ‘empire of production’ (which is what won the Second World War, for example) to an ‘empire of consumption...

https://dailyreckoning.com/an-empire-of-consumption/

 

New bull, new bubble, new meltdown?

MSN MarketWatch
by Paul Farrell

09/01/09

Something’s in the air. You can feel it. A new bull. Hype? Maybe, but also a roaring new bull — and eventually another meltdown. Television is a metaphor for our cycles, so see how America’s becoming a huge ratings competition. Yes, Americans want another bull, another bubble, even another meltdown. Guess what? It’s already here, folks. The next big market-economic-business cycle has arrived ahead of schedule. This is what makes us America. We love challenges, risk-takers and winners. The nobody who suddenly becomes a big somebody is the biggest of all TV metaphors for who we are...

https://tinyurl.com/mwycqu



The undead of the banking world

Freedom's Phoenix
by Bill Bonner

The world economy is recovering, or so people believe. Stocks are going up — led by the banks. But are the undead of the banking world really stronger? Ha ha … don’t make us laugh. But the world seems to believe it.” (09/02/09)

https://tinyurl.com/ll6lmx


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=US+economy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bubble
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=consumption
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=debt
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recovery
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Paul+Farrell
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bill+Bonner

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/02-0

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=healthcare
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bonus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jennifer+Liberto

NOW on PBS: "On Friday, September 4, at 8:30 pm EDT on PBS, learn how Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a government prosecutor set on convicting alleged 9/11 conspirator Mohamedou Ould Slahi, changed his mind after getting access to details of Slahi's treatment at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay. Couch, who was friends with a co-pilot of one of the jets hijacked on September 11, 2001, says Slahi was tortured."

https://www.truthout.org/090209Y?n

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mohamedou+Ould+Slahi

Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "Under the Bush administration, a seeping, sometimes galloping, authoritarianism began to reach into every vestige of the culture, giving free rein to those anti-democratic forces in which religious, market, military and political fundamentalism thrived, casting an ominous shadow over the fate of United States democracy. During the Bush-Cheney regime, power became an instrument of retribution and punishment connected to and fueled by a repressive state, a bullying rhetoric of war, a ruthless consolidation of economic forces and an all-embracing free-market apparatus and media-driven pedagogy of fear that supported and sustained a distinct culture of cruelty and inequality in the United States."

https://www.truthout.org/090209R?n

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Cheney
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=authoritarianism
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=fundamentalism
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Henry+A.+Giroux

On Keynesian poison from the state
https://www.lewrockwell.com/clancy/clancy17.1.html

Spend, Spend, Spend, Spend
https://list.lewrockwell.com/t/1630130/12759198/98637/0/

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=US+economy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Keynes
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=/clancy

https://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north752.html

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=deficit
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/north

TrimTabs Estimates U.S. Lost 335,000 Jobs in August and 5.9 Million Jobs in Past Year

In the past twelve months, the U.S. economy has lost 5.9 million jobs, the largest annual job loss in records dating back to 1970.

https://snipurl.com/rjug9

 

Jim Hightower: Holding Wall Street Bankers Accountable

Who's this guy, this guy in New York who has dared to confront some of the biggest Wall Street elites and demand answers? You've probably never heard of Jed Rakoff, but he's a federal district judge whose Manhattan court gets many of the cases involving the financial powers.

https://snipurl.com/rjugk


From Information Clearing House

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=job+loss
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jim+Hightower

The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to turn over documents they were ordered to produce to a civil rights group under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

https://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/01/cia-refuses-to-release-torture-documents/

 

Obama formalizes Bush policy on digital searches and seizures

The Obama administration disclosed on August 27 that it will carry on Bush administration policies that allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize and search international travelers' laptop computers, cellular phones, cameras, and other electronic devices, even in the absence of suspicion of criminal activity.

https://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/digi-s01.shtml

 

Phrase 'War on Terror' Returns to White House Lexicon:

Asked Tuesday whether the use of the phrase was intentionally, Gibbs answered, "We're focused on getting the strategy right."

https://snipurl.com/rjuf2


From Information Clearing House

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Global+War+on+Terror
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Homeland+Security

Afghanistan for Dummies

By Ray McGovern

I'm going to ask for my money back. I've seen this Afghanistan movie before. The first time, Vietnam was in the title.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23410.htm

 

Bush's Third Term? You're Living It

By David Swanson

There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23411.htm



Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.

https://snipurl.com/rjuaa



US reports question Afghan policy

The report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says only 15 per cent of those deployed are US citizens, raising both security and credibility questions for the US mission.

https://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/09/20099215511387322.html



Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites

The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others - any space where the White House "maintains a presence."

https://snipurl.com/rjueo


From Information Clearing House

 

https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Vietnam
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=habeas+corpus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=signing+statement
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=executive+order
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=rendition
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=detention
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=interrogat
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=contractor
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ray+McGovern
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=David+Swanson