Dissent Mag

By MIKE WHITNEY

Insolvency’s dark shadow hangs over Wall Street. One major player, Bear Stearns, has already gone under, and from the looks of it, another investment giant may be on the way down. It’s getting ugly out there. The so-called TED spread*, which measures the reluctance of banks to lend to each other, has begun to widen ominously suggesting that the money markets think another dead body will be floating to the surface any day now.

Note - video “American low wage workers’ tour” below the article

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By Maya Schenwar, TruthOut.org. Posted April 7, 2008.

The coming months may be crucial in determining what kind of “friends” the US and Iraq are going to be over the long haul.

As violence rises again in Iraq, negotiations to institutionalize US economic dominance continue unabated.

While the battle of Basra raged last week, a series of talks between the Bush administration and the US-backed Maliki government rolled forward. These negotiations may have at least as many implications for Iraq’s future as the violence on the ground.

Note - video “Rep. Dennis Kucinich: Stealing Iraq’s Oil “Is a War Crime!” below the article

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By Pablo Ouziel

07 March, 2008
Countercurrents.org

It is always good to know as a citizen that your leaders think everything is under control, for this reason I can only begin to imagine the relief people in the United States must feel when President Bush publicly acknowledges; “I believe that our economy has got the fundamentals in place.” I must admit however that I struggle to understand where the president is getting his data from and I dread to think what things will look like by the time he admits that “fundamentals” are not really “in place”. According to Alan Greenspan “as of right now, U.S. economic growth is at zero”, “home prices will continue to weaken” and a boom in oil prices is going to “go on forever”. As he puts it, the US is “clearly on the edge.”

Note - video “Job losses key issue in Ohio” below the article

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By Kevin B. Zeese

04 April, 2008
Countercurrents.org

In the last two weeks Senator Obama has been sounding rather hawkish. Perhaps he believes he has the Democratic nomination wrapped up and now can start running to the center-right. The peace movement needs to let him know his positions are not acceptable.

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by Tom Burghardt / April 12th, 2008

Tuesday’s Washington Post reports that FBI investigators “with the click of a mouse, [can] instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico.”

Last month, I wrote that evidence of the Bureau’s massive spying operations on Americans had been uncovered and “that a new FISA whistleblower has stepped forward with information about a major wireless provider apparently granting the state unrestricted access to all of their customers’ voice communications and electronic data via a so-called ‘Quantico Circuit’.”

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By Peter Goodchild

21 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org

I woke up with stomach trouble and an eye infection, and there was no electricity. When I tried to report the power failure, the automated answering service told me to stay on the line, and that I would be able to connect with a representative within half an hour or an hour. The wind was so strong that it threatened to blow my canoe off its winter platform. I crushed the snow down to make a path to the old outhouse. On my way back I picked a few kale leaves exposed by the melting of the snow. But this was January 9, 2008. What would the future be like?

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Review of: The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict (, )

By Jim Miles
Source: Palestine Chronicle

April, 13 2008

The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. W.W. Norton & Company, N.Y. 2008.

Note - video “New Study on the Cost of the Iraq War THREE TRILLION DOLLARS” below the article
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by David Michael Green

Published on Friday, April 11, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Seeing John McCain and David Petraeus talking about the Iraq debacle this week is a frightening reminder of how easily we Americans are able to slip into war. And how frequently we do. And how hard it is to get out once we’re in. Assuming, of course, we even want to get out.

Note - video “Eisenhower warns us of the military industrial complex” below the article

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