AlterNet: "It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval.
The United Nations' International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. The collapse has already seen 3.6 million lost jobs in the United States. The International Monetary Fund's prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent - the worst since World War II. There are 2.3 million properties in the United States that received a default notice or were repossessed last year. And this number is set to rise in 2009, especially as vacant commercial real estate begins to be foreclosed. About 20,000 major global banks collapsed, were sold or were nationalized in 2008. There are an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to shut down this year. Unemployment, when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers who cannot find full-time employment, is close to 14 percent.
And we have few tools left to dig our way out. The manufacturing sector in the United States has been destroyed by globalization. Consumers, thanks to credit card companies and easy lines of credit, are $14 trillion in debt. The government has pledged trillions toward the crisis, most of it borrowed or printed in the form of new money. It is borrowing trillions more to fund our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no one states the obvious: We will never be able to pay these loans back. We are supposed to somehow spend our way out of the crisis and maintain our imperial project on credit. Let our kids worry about it. There is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to stanch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens. Contrast this with the national security state's strategies to crush potential civil unrest and you get a glimpse of the future. It doesn't look good.
The economic collapse has exposed the stupidity of our collective faith in a free market and the absurdity of an economy based on the goals of endless growth, consumption, borrowing and expansion. The ideology of unlimited growth failed to take into account the massive depletion of the world's resources, from fossil fuels to clean water to fish stocks to erosion, as well as overpopulation, global warming and climate change. The huge international flows of unregulated capital have wrecked the global financial system. An overvalued dollar (which will soon deflate), wild tech, stock and housing financial bubbles, unchecked greed, the decimation of our manufacturing sector, the empowerment of an oligarchic class, the corruption of our political elite, the impoverishment of workers, a bloated military and defense budget and unrestrained credit binges have conspired to bring us down. The financial crisis will soon become a currency crisis. This second shock will threaten our financial viability. We let the market rule. Now we are paying for it.
The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists. Our elected officials, along with the press, have been exposed as corrupt and spineless corporate lackeys. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds. The age of the West has ended. Look to China. Laissez-faire capitalism has destroyed itself. It is time to dust off your copies of Marx."
CommonDreams: "Whatever the truth is about where this economy is heading, one thing is clear: employers are taking every opportunity to slash employment and, if they are unionized, to hammer unions for pay cuts, even when there is no justification for these actions.
Take Safeway Inc., a large national supermarket chain. The company, which had $44 billion in sales in 2007, and which, based upon third quarter figures for 2008 was well on the way to show record sales for 2008, appears to be using the economic downturn as a justification for laying off employees and making remaining employees work harder."
PublicCitizen: "The fact that CEOs are receiving huge salaries, perks and bonuses while taxpayers are facing worries about unemployment, foreclosures and the general state of the economy is outrageous.
Public Citizen is calling for an effective cap on executive pay and the restructuring of executive compensation - one that doesn't contain loopholes and doesn't take a long time to implement. Pay restrictions are a crucial part of fixing financial regulation so we don't have an economic crisis like the current one again.
Sign our petition today and help us reach our goal of 100,000 signatures to send to the Treasury Department."
11:22:27 AM
TimesOnline: "Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has accused the Government of exploiting people's fear of terrorism to restrict civil rights.
Ministers risked handing a victory to terrorists who want people to 'live in fear and under a police state', said the former spy, who retired as Director General of the Security Service in 1996."
The international instrument that is used to propagate fear and destruction all over the world is NATO.
RussiaToday: "Anti-NATO activists are gearing up for mass protests surrounding the alliance's 60th anniversary celebrations. They have gathered in Strasbourg where NATO will hold its summit in April.
From April 3 to 5, 40 heads of state and government leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, will come to Strasbourg and Baden-Baden to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the NATO alliance."
AlterNet: "We have a remarkable ability to create our own monsters. A few decades of meddling in the Middle East with our Israeli doppelgnger and we get Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Iraqi resistance movement and a resurgent Taliban. Now we trash the world economy and destroy the ecosystem and sit back to watch our handiwork. Hints of our brave new world seeped out Thursday when Washington's new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s.
It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval."
11:13:16 AM
After the elections the situation in Israel seems to be getting worse.
Sott: "In a third consecutive day of mass arrests Israeli forces stormed the northern West Bank town of Jayyus near Qalqiliya early morning Wednesday and seized 65 Palestinian youth in an ongoing military operation."
TonyGreenstein: "'We actually don't have any other way to exercise international pressure except calling our friends and supporters in the trade unions around the globe to call for this Boycott and Divestment.' stated Manawel Issa Abdellal, member of the Executive Committee of the 250 thousand member Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) in a recent speech to union activists and labor movement supporters in San Francisco."
B'tselem: "Testimony: Border Police officers beat members of the a-Rajabi family in their house, Silwan, East Jerusalem, Jan. '09"
NotMyTribe: "Nobody in the United States is safe when they speak out against the Israeli killing machine. The Israeli Zionist Machine has just succeeded in firing yet another US Left professor, Joel Kovel, from his university position, this time at Bard College."
Telegraph: "Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran's nuclear programme, US intelligence sources have revealed.
It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime's illicit weapons project, the experts say.
The most dramatic element of the 'decapitation' programme is the planned assassination of top figures involved in Iran's atomic operations."
Haaretz: "Nevertheless, it should be noted that Israel has been carrying out similar covert activities for about a decade, ever since Iran was first suspected of seeking nuclear weapons. The U.S. journalist James Risen has written recently that the CIA and the Mossad have planned together a number of sabotage operations against the Iranian program, including damaging power lines to nuclear sites in order to cause harm to computer systems and equipment."
IPS: "Israel is bracing for a wave of lawsuits accusing the Jewish state of substantial human rights violations during its 22-day military assault on Gaza which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and nearly 5,000 wounded, more than half of them civilian.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have confirmed that phosphorous bombs were used over Gaza. It is against international law to use phosphorous in densely crowded civilian areas."
Israel is now using every tool they can find to push the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing. They are also using the internet to influence opinion world-wide with the megaphone desktop tool.
Judith Weisman, a Toronto psychotherapist, a member of Independant Jewish Voices, and a founding member of Not In Our Name, Jews for a Just Peace and the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation (of Palestine) spoke out against the war in Gaza.
SteveLendman: "On February 10, Israel held parliamentary elections for 120 seats in its 18th Knesset. The process repeats every four years unless the body calls an earlier election by majority vote. The prime minister may also ask the president to request one early that will proceed unless the Knesset blocks it. Parliamentary terms may be extended beyond four years by special majority vote. Israel has no constitution. Under Article 4 of its Basic Law: The Knesset:
'The Knesset shall be elected by general, national, direct, equal, secret and proportional elections, in accordance with the Knesset Elections Law.' Every Israeli citizen 18 or older may vote, including Arabs who are nominally enfranchised, may serve in the parliament, but can't govern or in any way influence policy.
Under the law for Arabs and Jews, no candidate may challenge Israel's fundamental Jewish character or demand equal rights, privileges, and justice. The essential Zionist identity is inviolable. The law works only for Jews. Israeli Arabs have no rights. They're denied equal treatment and justice, even those elected to public office. Israel calls this democracy. South Africa called it apartheid. Nazi Germany called it fascism.
On January 21, Israel's High Court unanimously reversed the ban after Arab politicians appealed, but this behavior shows what Arab citizens face in a country affording rights only to Jews. Nonetheless, election law states that all votes are of equal weight, without saying only Jewish ones matter, not those of Arabs or members of other faiths. Israel is a Jewish state. Others are outsiders, unwelcome, unwanted, disadvantaged, without rights, and criminally abused at the whim of the government."
11:02:53 AM
