1. Change the headline from Obama to ‘all presidents’:
“Offshoring War: How Obama—and Those Moments of Silence—Insult Military Sacrifice
“Honoring those who’ve served,” President Obama said in Seoul two days ago, “is about more than the words we say on Veterans Day or Memorial Day. It’s about how we treat our Veterans every single day of the year.”
Assuming, that is, that those veterans get to come home. Obama is ensuring that hundreds of them, and soon to be thousands, won’t be coming home from Afghanistan. He’s ensuring that thousands will come home maimed, psychologically demolished, irreparable. And he’s doing so knowing, as anyone with an elementary sense of history and a vague memory of the last 10 years should know, that the casualties are in vain. Those men and women are dying uselessly, in cause lost years ago, but still pursued for the same reasons Vietnam was pursued uselessly after 1967: to save face. How ironic, how repulsive, that saving national face hinges on the willful disfigurement of thousands of men and women.
When a president sends soldiers to die in a war that long ago ceased having a claim to being just, a war that quickly lost its chance of being won, and a war fought on behalf of a non-existent nation of tribes as ungrateful as they are resentful, hateful or malicious toward the American presence, those Americans are no longer being sacrificed by their nation. They’re being murdered. The complicity is national, too, down to that pathetic “moment of silence” that’s become the norm at the beginning of local government meetings, allegedly on behalf of servicemen. That silence, more complicit than respectful, is the last thing they need, if this nation were to show its true allegiance to servicemen’s sacrifice. “
http://flaglerlive.com/14380/offshoring-war-tristam
2. “TSA: Travelers Who Refuse Scanning Can’t Leave, Will Be Fined
Passengers ‘Can Not Just Decide to Leave’
“Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave” warned Sari Koshetz, a TSA spokesperson. TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the “full body scanners” and the “enhanced pat down” procedures will be taken into custody.
Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists, face fines of up to $11,000 and may also be turned over to local police. One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects, held until they are convinced they don’t pose a terror threat.”
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/19/tsa-travelers-who-refuse-scanning-cant-leave-will-be-fined/
3. “
The Overrated Hazard of Inflation
The objection of the deficit hawks, of course, is that this will be massively inflationary, diluting the value of the dollar; but a close look at the data indicates that these fears are unfounded.
Adding money to the money supply is obviously not hazardous when the money supply is shrinking, and it is shrinking now. Financial commentator Charles Hugh Smith estimates that the economy faces $15 trillion in writedowns in collateral and credit, based on projections from the latest Fed Flow of Funds. The Fed’s $2 trillion in new credit/liquidity is therefore insufficient to trigger either inflation or another speculative bubble.
In any case, Chairman Bernanke maintains that QE involves no printing of new money. It is just an asset swap on the balance sheets of the bondholders. The bondholders are no richer than before and have no more money to spend than before.
Professor Warren Mosler explains that the bondholders hold the bonds in accounts at the Fed. He says, “U.S. Treasury securities are accounted much like savings accounts at a normal commercial bank.” They pay interest and are considered part of the federal debt. When the debt is “paid” by repurchasing the bonds, all that happens is that the sums are moved from the bondholder’s savings account into its checking account at the Fed, where the entries are no longer considered part of the national debt. The chief difference is that one account bears interest and the other doesn’t.
What About the Inflation in Commodities?
Despite surging commodity prices, the overall inflation rate remains very low, because housing has to be factored in. The housing market is recovering in some areas, but housing prices overall have dropped 28% from their peak. Main Street hasn’t been flooded with money; the money has just shifted around. Businesses are still having trouble getting reasonable loans, and so are prospective homeowners.
As for the obvious price inflation in commodities — notably gold, silver, oil and food — what is driving these prices up cannot be an inflated U.S. money supply, since the money supply is actually shrinking. Rather, it is a combination of factors including (a) heavy competition for these scarce goods from developing countries, whose economies are growing much faster than ours; (b) the flight of “hot money” from the real estate market, which has nowhere else to go; (c) in the case of soaring food prices, disastrous weather patterns; and (d) speculation, which is fanning the flames. “
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22014
4. “Pentagon Blows up Thousands of Homes in Afghanistan
Repeating the horrors of the Vietnam War”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26869.htm
