99GetSmart

* THE FINAL WORD ON 2011: A YEAR IN REVIEW BY LEE CAMP

Source: youtube

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4McrdRm21rk

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* END OF THE PRO-DEMOCRACY PRETENSE

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Media coverage of the Arab Spring somehow depicted the U.S. as sympathetic to and supportive of the democratic protesters notwithstanding the nation’s decades-long financial and military support for most of the targeted despots. That’s because a central staple of American domestic propaganda about its foreign policy is that the nation is “pro-democracy” — that’s the banner under which Americans wars are typically prettified — even though “democracy” in this regard really means “a government which serves American interests regardless of how their power is acquired,” while “despot” means “a government which defies American orders even if they’re democratically elected.”

It’s always preferable when pretenses of this sort are dropped — the ugly truth is better than pretty lies — and the events in the Arab world have forced the explicit relinquishment of this pro-democracy conceit. That’s because one of the prime aims of America’s support for Arab dictators has been to ensure that the actual views and beliefs of those nations’ populations remain suppressed, because those views are often so antithetical to the perceived national interests of the U.S. government. The last thing the U.S. government has wanted (or wants now) is actual democracy in the Arab world, in large part because democracy will enable the populations’ beliefs — driven by high levels of anti-American sentiment and opposition to Israeli actions – to be empowered rather than ignored.

So acute is this contradiction — between professed support for Arab democracy and the fear of what it will produce — that America’s Foreign Policy Community is now dropping the pro-freedom charade and talking openly (albeit euphemistically) about the need to oppose Arab democracy. Here is Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a very typical member of the National Security priesthood, writing on Friday in The New York Times about Egyptian elections (via As’ad AbuKhali):

Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt, fear that the elections will produce an Islamist-led government that will tear up the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, turn hostile to the United States, openly support Hamas and transform Egypt into a theocracy that oppresses women, Christians and secular Muslims. They see little prospect for more liberal voices to prevail, and view military dictatorship as a preferable outcome.

American interests, however, call for a different outcome, one that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other. And with lopsided early election results, it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.

Our instinct is to search for the clarity we saw in last winter’s televised celebrations. However, what Egyptians, and Americans, need is something murkier — not a victory, but an accommodation.

I love this passage both for its candor and for what it lamely attempts to obfuscate. Why should “American interests” determine the type of government Egypt has? That it should is simply embedded as an implicit, unstated assumption in Alterman’s advocacy. That’s because the right of the U.S. to dictate how other nations are governed is one of the central, unchallenged precepts of the American Foreign Policy Community’s dogma and it thus needs no defense or even explicit acknowledgment. It simply is. It’s an inherent imperial right.

But Alterman here is expressly admitting the reality that most media accounts ignore: that the U.S. does not, in fact, want democracy in Egypt. It fears it. That’s because public opinion polls show overwhelming opposition among the Egyptian populace to the policies which the U.S. (for better or worse) wants to foist on that country: animus toward Iran, preservation of the peace agreement with Israel, ongoing indifference to the plight of the Palestinians, and subservience to U.S. goals. Indeed, according to the 2011 Pew finding, “nearly eight-in-ten Egyptians have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S.” That tracks opinion in the Arab world generally, where the two nations perceived as the biggest threat are — by far — the U.S. and Israel (not Iran), and the three most admired foreign leaders are Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, followed by Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad.

But even more significant is Egyptian public opinion specifically on the issue of greatest concern for American (and Israeli) foreign policy officials: a nuclear Iran. A 2010 Brookings/University of Maryland/Zogby poll found vast, overwhelming Egyptian support for the view that Iran has the right to have a nuclear weapon, and for the view that a nuclear Iran would be a net positive for the region. That, too, tracks general public opinion in the Arab world, which supports Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons. In light of these facts, does anyone believe that the U.S. government and its pool of experts that exist to justify what it does — the Foreign Policy Community — have even a slight interest in actual democracy in Egypt specifically or the Arab world generally?

Of course not. As Noam Chomsky put it recently: “The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world” because “if public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it.” […]

READ @ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/02/end_of_the_pro_democracy_pretense/singleton/

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* 2011: THE YEAR OF RESISTANCE TO CONSERVATISM’S “WAR OF WORDS”

By Richard (RJ) Eskow, Nation of Change

h/t SnakeArbusto

Our lives are defined by invisible wars, wars whose theater of combat is the human imagination. These economic and political wars are waged year in and year out, decade after decade, century after century.

Words are the weapons of choice in these wars, and the corporate-backed radical right adds new ones to its arsenal every year. This year was no different. From “entitlement reform” to “triggers,” the corporate oligarchs couched their aggression in decoy language that made it possible for Democrats as well as Republicans to launch them on an unsuspecting public.

But something was different this year. This was the year that the people came up with some words of their own, outside the corporate- and billionaire-funded think tanks of conservatism. For the first time in many years, the right-wing warriors of language ran into heavy resistance. That’s an important development that should be celebrated — and repeated.

War of the Words

The corporatists own the Republican Party, and large swathes of the Democratic Party too. Most Americans disagree with their ambitions, but they’ve been so good at designing and using these linguistic weapons that the public hasn’t had a chance. Major media journalists have used these words as mantras, while too many Democrats have embraced them for their own selfish purposes.

That’s why they keep winning so many battles, no matter who’s in power.

Some people make the mistake of underestimating the importance of these wars, because they’re fought with words and not actions. But people’s actions are shaped by what they believe, and what they believe is shaped by words.

Nobody understands that better than the corporate interests and their minions. That’s why Newt Gingrich wrote a political memo in 1996 entitled, “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

Now there’s a word that should strike fear in the heart: “Control.”

Control

For the past five decades our national dialogue — and therefore our thinking — has been warped by the use of words as weapons of economic war. From “death tax” to “job creators,” the public has been saturated with prefabricated words and phrases that reshape the thinking of millions of people in an Orwellian way.

Teachers, police, bus drivers and firefighters became “special interests” while mega-corporations became “people” who were being “deprived of their rights.” The values that had inspired all of our nation’s leaders for a century, Republican and Democratic, were suddenly “radical,” “extremist” and “treasonous.”

And rather than resist, Democratic leaders like the Clintons and Barack Obama chose to embrace too many of these inversions in order to serve their own ambitions, a Faustian bargain with terrible implications. (And as it turns out, not a very good way to pursue their own ambitions either — unless you have an Internet bubble or housing bubble to sustain the illusion that “centrism” works.)

There are times when compromise is needed. But you don’t need to reinforce your enemy’s false ideas in order to compromise. With every Democratic concession to corporate-designed Orwellianisms the struggle to create a more effective society suffers another defeat.

Weapons of 2011

The language factories of the Right have been working overtime over the last couple of years to destroy public faith in Social Security and Medicare, destroy the government’s ability to stimulate the economy when it’s needed most, and absolve our political leaders of responsibility for their own actions.

What were the Right’s favorite word-weapons of 2011? Here are a few of the big ones:

“Entitlement Reform:” This phrase is used over and over to describe proposals that would “reform” nothing, but instead would gut the highly popular programs that support seniors and the disabled — Social Security and Medicare. The use of the word “entitlement,” along with the formulation that seniors who collect money from a program they’ve contributed to all their lives are “greedy geezers,” is designed to persuade the public that an elderly woman living on $800 per month is a social parasite – but the hedge fund manager who pays 15% tax rate on his billions is not.

It made some people uncomfortable when we wrote that “Entitlement reform” is a euphemism for letting old people die, but we cited extensive studies that support exactly that conclusion. […]

READ @ http://www.nationofchange.org/2011-year-resistance-conservatism-s-war-words-1325429170

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* ARRESTS AT WHITE HOUSE OVER NDAA MILITARY DETENTION OF AMERICANS, OCCUPY WALL STREET JOINS FIGHT

By Ralph Lopez, War Is A Crime

Buried by the television news media but visible on Youtube, at least three days in a row of protests over NDAA law allowing indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial have taken place recently, with at least 11 arrests confirmed so far.

Fox News reported on its website:

WASHINGTON –  Several Occupy D.C. protesters will likely face charges after they were arrested in a protest outside the White House.

U.S. Park Police say 11 protesters were arrested Monday night because they ignored police orders to leave the grounds. The protesters included some Occupy D.C. participants, though it wasn’t immediately clear if all those arrested were part of the Occupy movement.

The group was protesting a defense funding bill that would allow the president to detain people indefinitely if they are suspected of terrorist activities.

The Youtube poster of the below video says in the upload information:

Protesters out in front of the white house for the 3rd night in a row. NO news coverage. Arrests taking place every night, 11 last night, 7 tonight so far.

In the video the Occupy Wall Street protesters (this can be determined by use of the “human microphone”) demand Obama veto the bill, as the video was taken before Obama signed it last week.

Language in the NDAA is intended to allow defenders to argue that the provisions do not apply to American citizens, language which Rep. Justin Amash (D-MI) called “carefully crafted to mislead the public.”

The deceptions center around Sections 1021 and 1022.  Section 1021 says in substance:

“Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force …to detain…A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda…or associated forces…including any person who has…directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces…The disposition of a person…may include…Detention under the law of war…without trial until the end of the hostilities…”

This is the language from the final House-Senate Conference Committee report (HR 1540 Conference), which is the language that was passed by the Senate after being passed by the House, on Dec. 15, Bill of Rights Day in an 86 – 14 vote.

20 SEC. 1021. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED
21 FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN
22 COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AU-
23 THORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

24 (a) IN GENERAL.—Congress affirms that the author-
25 ity of the President to use all necessary and appropriate
1 force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military
2 Force (Public Law 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes
3 the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States
4 to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b))
5 pending disposition under the law of war.

6 (b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under
7 this section is any person as follows:

8 (1) A person who planned, authorized, com-
9 mitted, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred
10 on September 11, 2001, or harbored those respon-
11 sible for those attacks.

12 (2) A person who was a part of or substantially
13 supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces
14 that are engaged in hostilities against the United
15 States or its coalition partners, including any person
16 who has committed a belligerent act or has directly
17 supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy
18 forces.

19 (c) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—The dis-
20 position of a person under the law of war as described
21 in subsection (a) may include the following:

22 (1) Detention under the law of war without
23 trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the
24 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Rep. Tom McClintock opposed the bill on the House floor saying it:

specifically affirms that the President has the authority to deny due process to any American it charges with “substantially supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban or any ‘associated forces’” — whatever that means.

Would “substantial support” of an “associated force,” mean linking a web-site to a web-site that links to a web-site affiliated with al-Qaeda? We don’t know.

“Substantial support” of an “associated force” may imply citizens engaged in innocuous, First Amendment activities.  Direct support of such hostilities in aid of enemy forces may be construed as free speech opposition to U.S. government policies, aid to civilians, or acts of civil disobedience.

All accusations of who is “Al Qaeda” rest solely on the word of the government, with no witnesses, evidence, or any other form of due process required.

Section 1021 also reads: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law.” But “existing law,” in the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham a key mover of the bill, refers to Padilla v. Rumsfeld in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the government’s claim of authority to hold Americans arrested on American soil indefinitely.

Section 1022 “(b) APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS” states:

(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain a person in military custody
under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

However, although the section says it is not “required” that US citizens be held in military detention, it is nevertheless “allowed.” […]

READ and VIDEO @ http://warisacrime.org/content/arrests-white-house-over-ndaa-military-detention-americans-occupy-wall-street-joins-fight

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* PENTAGON GETS GREEN LIGHT FOR INTERNET WAR

Translated from the Portuguese version by: Lisa Karpova

U.S. lawmakers officially authorized its army to take up so-called “kinetic military actions,” nothing more than a sad method of literally saying “war” in a manner that is a gross understatement. As always in these cases, the announcement came with no fanfare, but quietly, in a short paragraph that includes the military budget for 2012. It may be much more insidious, but not clearer.

The military budget, which approved the classification of the law, states: “Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the potential for and, under specific directions, can perform offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our nation, partners and other interests, in accordance with the principles and legal systems that the Department defines for the kinetic action potential, inclusive within armed conflict and the resolution of the powers of war.”

Intentionally obscure, the text above mentions “kinetic capabilities” and “principles and legal systems.” If someone does not remember, the U.S. military intervention in Libya, in the war that sought the downfall of Gaddafi, they said it was not a “war” but a “kinetic military action.”

And why call it kinetic action, and not war? Because the U.S. president has to ask Congress permission to declare war, he has get their authorization for that. This has not occurred with respect to Libya.

Due to the “between the lines” authorization of the above document, the U.S. president and his commander of the Army now have a free way to declare, also, a war on the Internet where they will operate without the need to follow any principles or legal systems that require permission from Congress.

There are also other obscure terms, for example, what do they consider an “offensive action”? Although not specified, the Pentagon’s strategy for “security on the Internet,” is another nice euphemism. They have been occupied in trying to define the meaning of this offensive for months.

It is worth explaining that “offensive actions” may include the release of viruses of all kinds, the destruction of services and the ability to invade the energy control systems in other countries, disabling their power grids and generating complete blackouts.

We stress the fact that the actions “may include” because there are no precedents in relation to net cyber war or war, and these actions can expect to receive similar responses, as with real warfare attacks, keeping in view everything that has been pointed out as offensive in this text

This threat of war is precipitated by cyber-paranoia, prophesying all sorts of cyber-apocalypse scenarios and other cyber-deception to promote fear.

There is no record of any attacks from hackers that have put anyone in real danger, not even at risk, it is “highly dependent on Internet infrastructure

READ @ http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/terror/28-12-2011/120094-Pentagon_gets_green_light_for_Internet_war-0/

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* NOAM CHOMSKY ON THE US-AFGHAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: ‘PART OF A GLOBAL PROGRAM OF WORLD MILITARIZATION’

“Right now, the United States is militarily engaged in one form or another in almost 100 countries.”

Source: AlterNet

READ @ http://www.alternet.org/world/153471/noam_chomsky_on_the_us-afghan_strategic_partnership%3A_%27part_of_a_global_program_of_world_militarization’/

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* GOLDMAN’S LATEST BOILER-ROOM STOCK: AMERICA

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[…] It seems Jim O’Neill, the head of Goldman’s Asset Management department, is predicting that the United States stock market may go up “15 to 20 percent.” O’Neill apparently believes Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will resort to another round of money-printing, and finally green-light the long-awaited “Qe3,” or third round of “Quantitative Easing.”

The QE programs involve the Fed printing hundreds of billions of dollars and pumping them into the marketplace, where they ostensibly stimulate the economy (although recent experience tells us that the money mostly ends up being swallowed by the financial services industry – but that’s another subject for another time). Anyway, Bernanke declined to go ahead with a third QE program in late 2011, but O’Neill apparently thinks we’ll get it in 2012. From Bloomberg:

“If QE2 doesn’t work, then we’ll get QE3,” said O’Neill, who was named chairman of the money manager in September after working as the co-head of global economics research and chief currency economist at New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. since 1995. There’s a “good chance” the S&P 500 will rise 15 percent to 20 percent in the next 12 months, he said.

O’Neill added that he thought a 20 percent bump would be “relatively straightforward” for the U.S. S&P.

Goldman is building an impressive resume of sweepingly bullish predictions that later on, in retrospect, look more like signals to investors that they should run screaming in the opposite direction. A good example might be May of 2008, when Goldman boldly predicted that oil would go to $200 a barrel; oil would go on to peak at $147 less than two months later and crash to the floor soon after.

O’Neill himself famously coined the infamous “BRIC” term (Brazil, Russia, India and China), urging investors to throw their money at those emerging markets, arguing that those markets would eclipse the U.S. and Japan as the world’s biggest economies by 2050. Mutual fund investors responded by pouring $70 billion into BRIC over the last decade, but that run looks over now, as $15 billion flowed out of BRIC funds in this past year alone, and some analysts are predicting a $20 percent drop this year. […]

READ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/goldmans-latest-boiler-room-stock-america-20120102

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* NOBODY UNDERSTANDS DEBT

By Paul Krugman, NYTimes

In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.

This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least.

Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits. People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!

And while they’ve been waiting, those rates have dropped to historical lows. You might think that this would make politicians question their choice of experts — that is, you might think that if you didn’t know anything about our postmodern, fact-free politics. […]

READ @ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html

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* THE FALSE PREDICTIONS OF 2011 UNMASKED

By Costas Papachlimintzos, Athens News

READ @ http://www.athensnews.gr/issue/13476/51931

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* JP MORGAN-CHASE MIC-CHECKED AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Source: youtube.com 

h/t Dan Bellini

Occupy Princeton (www.occupyprinceton.net) students mic-check a JP Morgan-Chase Treasury Services info session on December 7, 2011. This is the first direct action taken up by Occupy Princeton – more to come. Full Script below:

“Princeton’s motto is:

In the nation’s service and service of all nations
JP Morgan-Chase, your actions violate our motto
Your predatory lending practices helped crash our economy
We’ve bailed out your executives’ bonuses
You’ve evicted struggling homeowners while taking their tax money
You support mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia
which destroys our ecological future
In light of these actions,
we protest the campus culture
that whitewashes the crooked dealings of Wall Street
as a prestigious career path.
We are here today
as a voice for the 99%
shut out by a system that punishes them
just for being born without privilege.
What we need is not a university for the 1%,
but a university “In the Nation’s Service,
and in the Service of All Nations.”

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ0J_HUsRaI&feature=youtu.be

* OBAMA YEAR THREE: CONTINUING HIS ROGUE AGENDA

By Stephen Lendman, OpEdNews

[…] After winning the most sweeping non-incumbent victory in over 50 years, he broke every major promise made, imposed austerity when stimulus is needed, escalated imperial wars, and hardened repression to curb popular anger.

James Petras calls him “the perfect incarnation of Melville’s Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket. He gives thanks as he packs you off to war.”

He spurns human need, rule of law principles, other democratic values, and right over wrong. Supporters expecting change in year four or a second term are delusional and misguided. In fact, his worst policies lie ahead.

Obamanomics: Waging War on American Workers

In April 2011, Obama announced $4 trillion in largely social spending budget cuts over the next 12 years. In December 2010, with Democrats controlling both Houses, he extended Bush’s super-rich tax cuts after saying he’d end them.

He also agreed to $38 billion in vital social services cuts after promising to preserve them. They include:

• $3.5 billion from Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding;

• $2.2 billion from nonprofit health insurance cooperatives;

• $600 million from community healthcare centers;

• $1 billion from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other disease prevention programs;

• $1.6 billion from EPA’s clean/safe drinking water and other projects;

• $950 million from community development grants;

• $504 million from nutrition aid for poor Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);

• $500 million from education programs;

• $390 million from home heating subsidies to the poor, as well as $2.5 billion for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) announced in February;

• $350 million from labor programs, including grants for community service jobs for seniors;

• other social service cuts;

• $786 million from FEMA first-responder funding;

• $407 million from energy efficiency and renewable energy programs;

• $260 million from National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical research;

• $127 million from the National Park Service; and

• billions less for public infrastructure and transportation spending, while increasing war appropriations by multiples more, including for conquering and controlling Libya.

Moreover, Obama agreed to more draconian FY 2012 cuts and corporate tax breaks as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling before reaching its mid-May limit. More as well over the next 12 years, including:

• $4 trillion overall;

• $770 billion from education, environmental, transportation, and other infrastructure cuts, as well as lower wages and benefits for federal workers when they need more, not less;

• $480 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, besides another $1 trillion from Obamacare;

• $360 billion from mandated domestic programs, including food stamps, home heating assistance, income for the poor and disabled, federal pension insurance, and farm subsidies; and

• $400 billion from military-related spending from unneeded weapons, as well as healthcare and other benefits for active service members and veterans.

Priority Pentagon items remain untouched to assure annual budget increases, generous supplemental add-ons, and secret open-checkbook intelligence allocations for numerous nefarious purposes.

As a result, people needs are on the chopping block for elimination to satisfy the insatiable appetites of Wall Street, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and America’s super-rich. Obama’s fully on board.

Eliminating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Public Pensions

Political Washington hard-liners want them ended to transfer maximum public and private wealth to the recipients explained above.

Claims about Social Security and Medicare going broke are duplicitous. In fact, both programs are sound when responsibly administered. Nonetheless, they’re on the chopping block for elimination, beginning with benefit cuts, then privatizations to let corporate crooks profit at the expense of beneficiaries.

Obama tasked two deficit hawks for the job. They head his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRF) – former Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff. They’re part of an 18-member team of like-minded members.

They recommended sharp tax reductions for business and super-rich elites. They also want deep Medicare cuts, co-pay increases, Social Security’s retirement age raised, and lower cost-of-living increases among other draconian proposals harming ordinary people enormously.

They’re coming and much more under bipartisan agreement to slash trillions of dollars from domestic spending over the next decade.

By law, automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts over 10 years will start in 2013. They’re to be equally divided between defense and domestic programs.

In fact, expect sustained military spending at the expense of gutting America’s social contract. Either way, lost purchasing power means less spending, fewer jobs, and greater public anger than today’s high levels.

In fact, deficit cutting is secondary. Key is protecting corporate handouts and Bush era tax cuts, as well as expanding them for business and upper-bracket earners.

Obama supports making ordinary Americans and seniors bear the burden so corporations and rich folks are spared. As usual, he talks tough, then caves, no matter the harm and injustice caused. […]

READ @ http://www.opednews.com/populum/printer_friendly.php?content=a&id=143291

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* GLOBAL REBELLIONS: THE COMING CHAOS?

By William I. Robinson, Aljazeera

READ @ http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111130121556567265.html

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* 2011 YEAR OF THE DUPE: ONE YEAR INTO THE ENGINEERED “ARAB SPRING,” ONE STEP CLOSER TO GLOBAL HEGEMONY — TIMELINE AND HISTORY

By Tony Cartalucci, Global Research

dupe n.

1. An easily deceived person.

2. A person who functions as the tool of another person or power.

               tr.v. duped, dup·ing, dupes To deceive (an unwary person).

December 24, 2011 - In January of 2011, we were told that “spontaneous,” “indigenous” uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East in what was hailed as the “Arab Spring.” It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but “spontaneous,” or “indigenous.” In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was stated:

“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

“The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. “

It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous foundations, organizations, and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. As we will see, preparations for the “Arab Spring” and the global campaign that is now encroaching on both Russia and China, as predicted in February 2011′s “The Middle East & then the World,” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself. […]

READ @ http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28343

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* TOXIC TRASH PITS TAKE TOLL ON U.S. SOLDIERS

By Keith Goetzman, UTNE Reader

Did the United States poison tens of thousands of its own soldiers in Iraq with fumes from burning toxic trash? Before you consider it an outlandish suggestion, I suggest you read J. Malcolm Garcia’s moving account in the Oxford American of two American soldiers who made it back from their tours of duty having escaped insurgents’ shells, bullets, and improvised explosive devices—only to die slow, torturous deaths from the effects of garbage torched in open pits by the U.S. military.

Personal stories like those of Billy McKenna and Kevin Wilkins may only become more common in coming years, according to Garcia, since the U.S. military operated at least 23 burn pits in Iraq before combat operations ended this year, including a notoriously noxious one that often literally cast a pall over Balad Air Base.

“The burn pit at Balad consumed about 250 tons of waste a day,” he writes, “exposing 25,000 U.S. military personnel and thousands of contractors to toxic fumes.”

Garcia’s immersive narrative is a humanizing look into a slowly unfolding story that has been reported in bits and pieces for a few years, but hasn’t entirely sunken into the national consciousness, perhaps in part because it runs so counter to a reflexively patriotic, military-booster mindset: We wouldn’t have harmed our own soldiers, would we?

It just so turns out that we probably did. Writes Garcia:

The Veterans Administration states on its own webpage that chemicals, paint, medical and human waste, metals, aluminum, unexploded ordnance, munitions, and petroleum products among other toxic waste are destroyed in burn pits. Possible side effects, the department notes, “may affect the skin, eyes, respiration, kidneys, liver, nervous system, cardiovascular system, reproductive system, peripheral nervous system, and gastrointestinal tract.”

The issue first came to public light in 2008 when the Military Times reported on the use of burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, spurring Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) to request a probe by the General Accounting Office.

The GAO looked into it and warned in 2010 that the burn pits violated laws designed to keep service members safe. Pressure mounted on legislators to take up the cause, and despite a general lack of public outrage, the campaign has finally had an effect: Both Missouri Republican Sen. Tom Akin and a bipartisan group of eight senators last month introduced identical bills that would create a registry for service members affected by health problems from burn pit exposure. […]

READ @ http://www.utne.com/Wild-Green/Toxic-Trash-Pits-Take-Toll-on-U.S.-Soldiers.aspx

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* SPRINGTIME FOR TOXICS

By Paul Krugman, NYTimes

[…] So, naturally, Republicans are furious. But before I get to the politics, let’s talk about what a good thing the E.P.A. just did.

As far as I can tell, even opponents of environmental regulation admit that mercury is nasty stuff. It’s a potent neurotoxicant: the expression “mad as a hatter” emerged in the 19th century because hat makers of the time treated fur with mercury compounds, and often suffered nerve and mental damage as a result.

Hat makers no longer use mercury (and who wears hats these days?), but a lot of mercury gets into the atmosphere from old coal-burning power plants that lack modern pollution controls. From there it gets into the water, where microbes turn it into methylmercury, which builds up in fish. And what happens then? The E.P.A. explains: “Methylmercury exposure is a particular concern for women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, because studies have linked high levels of methylmercury to damage to the developing nervous system, which can impair children’s ability to think and learn.”

That sort of sounds like something we should regulate, doesn’t it?

The new rules would also have the effect of reducing fine particle pollution, which is a known source of many health problems, from asthma to heart attacks. In fact, the benefits of reduced fine particle pollution account for most of the quantifiable gains from the new rules. The key word here is “quantifiable”: E.P.A.’s cost-benefit analysis only considers one benefit of mercury regulation, the reduced loss in future wages for children whose I.Q.’s are damaged by eating fish caught by freshwater anglers. There are without doubt many other benefits to cutting mercury emissions, but at this point the agency doesn’t know how to put a dollar figure on those benefits.

Even so, the payoff to the new rules is huge: up to $90 billion a year in benefits compared with around $10 billion a year of costs in the form of slightly higher electricity prices. This is, as David Roberts of Grist says, a very big deal.

And it’s a deal Republicans very much want to kill. […]

READ @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/opinion/krugman-springtime-for-toxics.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

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* CIA: NO BIG DEAL THAT WE TRAINED NYPD TO CONDUCT DOMESTIC SPYING

By Marcy Wheeler, Emptywheel

The CIA announced in September it was going to review a narrow aspect of the way CIA officers set up NYPD’s domestic spying agency in the wake of 9/11. As I pointed out then, the investigation was scoped to ignore key parts of the NYPD’s program.

The NYPD program is, by all appearances, a massive ethnic profiling operation that hasn’t been all that effectiveat finding potential terrorists. DOJ ought to be conducting this investigation as a potential civil rights violation.

But instead, CIA will conduct the investigation, meaning the chances the public will know the result are slimmer even than if DOJ conducted it.

[snip]

So is CIA particularly worried? Both James Clapper and the CIA flack appear to be narrowly parsing the potential problem: whether or not there are CIA officers on the streets of NY, whether they are investigating domestically as opposed to overseas (remember, the NYPD is sticking its nose into overseas investigations, too).

And, surprise surprise! CIA’s Inspector General just announced that it found no problem in its narrowly scoped investigation.

The agency’s inspector general concluded that no laws were broken and there was “no evidence that any part of the agency’s support to the NYPD constituted ‘domestic spying’,” CIA spokesman Preston Golson said.

[snip]

David Buckley, the CIA’s inspector general, completed his review in late October. It’s not clear if his report opens the door for other municipal police departments nationwide to work closely with the CIA in the war on terror.

Let the ineffective, wasteful domestic spying continue then, I guess! […]

READ @ http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/12/24/cia-no-big-deal-that-we-trained-nypd-to-conduct-domestic-spying/

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* TWO MINUTE VIDEO: O, DAMN YE WALL ST. GENTLEMEN

By Washington’s Blog

Art is in the brilliant video from ovaria; following are the independently verifiable facts that the “99%” are embezzled by the “1%” for over a trillion of our dollars every year.

How does the 1% do this?

They purchased corporate media to cover their assets, that’s how.

This article shows how the Federal Reserve System causes the opposite of their stated goals. This is, obviously, criminal fraud. Upon your basic economics education, I invite you to embrace the power of calling what the 1% does as CRIMES. When the 99% recognize the 1% as CRIMINALS and demand arrests and prosecutions, we’ve won.

My Open proposal for US Revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic economics is my strongest work to explain and document these CRIMES.

My Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now is my strongest work to explain and document that criminal Wars of Aggression and looting have been central in US policies for over 150 years. History’s purpose is to recognize patterns of behavior in the present.

May 2012 be the best year yet for us all, and may that be ongoingly true each new year for all beings on this beautiful and so far dominated planet.

I admonish and invite the criminals among the 1% to reclaim their heart, their love, and stand with 100% of humanity, and 100% of themselves. […]

READ @ http://www.washingtonsblog.com/

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* OCCUPY CHICAGO CHRISTMAS CAROLS: JINGLE BELLS

source: youtube.com (h/t Jerry Boyle)

Special thanks to Lance Robbins (the awesome street drummer)

Emanuel, Emanuel
The Mayor sold us out!
16 million to his banker friends
That’s what he’s all abou-out!
Emanuel, Emanuel
The Mayor sold us out
Fines and fees and job layoffs
Cutting workers till they shou-out!

You’ll be a one term Mayor
Cause the people who you serve
Don’t think that you really care
About their jobs at all (no, no, no!)
We’ll occupy all day
and we’ll occupy all night
Until you change your way
We won’t give up our fight!

Emanuel, Emanuel
The Mayor sold us out!
16 million to his banker friends
That’s what he’s all abou-out!
Emanuel, Emanuel
The Mayor sold us out
Fines and fees and job layoffs
Cutting workers till they shou-out!

The Mayor’s only friends
Line his pockets full of cash
He’ll sell out city piece by piece
Till we’re left with only ash (cough, cough, cough)
We are here to say ENOUGH
That we just won’t take no more
When Rahm tries to take your job
Just tell him: there’s the door!

Occupy, Occupy
Occupy in your heart!
People fighting for their human rights
Can never be torn apa-art
Occupy, Occupy
Occupy in your heart
Join us against these budget cuts
And the Mayor will fall apart!

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PXXJufcojg

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* FELIZ NAVIDAD FROM TENT CITY 2011

source: youtube.com (h/t Jerry Boyle)

Be grateful for what you have, some people are doing time for a chance to be an American in the 21st Century. La lucha sigue hermanos y hermanas. Citizen Me: The Forgotten Class (2012) Documentary Film

www.facebook.com/citizenmethemovie
www.twitter.com/citizenmemovie

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4zjK_72uLs&sns=fb