Dissent Mag

Honorable Exit From Empire

by Patrick J. Buchanan

As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Lee’s retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur’s retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947 – and a Muslim-Hindu bloodbath ensued.

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By David Wann, Denver Post. Posted July 26, 2008.

Our economic success, as it’s generally measured, obscures some deep social problems.

By certain measurements, the U.S. economy has been quite successful in the last several decades, but the fundamental question remains: Successfully what?

We may lead the world in categories like gross domestic product, average house size, and ownership of color TVs, but we also “lead” the industrial nations in debt per capita, the child poverty rate, overall poverty rate, ratio of people in prison, rate of traffic fatalities, murder rate, carbon dioxide emissions per capita, and the per capita consumption of energy and water.

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By Ivan Eland, Consortium News. Posted July 24, 2008.

The TSA’s “no fly” terrorism watch list contains between 400,000 and 1,000,000 names. If you’re on the list by mistake, good luck getting off of it.

After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA’s swollen terrorism watch list.

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Politics / US Politics Jul 24, 2008 - 07:33 PM

By: Michael_Pento

I know it’s hard to believe but Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is a Republican. It was especially hard to keep that in mind during his appearances on the Sunday talk shows this weekend. His stated mission was to garner support for the bailout plans of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM ) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE ). I hoped that he, being of the party that supports free markets, would have instead asked why the government is involved in the real estate market in the first place. I preferred that Treasury would have repudiated any further association with the GSEs and cease to allow them to raise new capital with the backing of the government.

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By Mike Whitney

24/07/08 “ICH” — - Last Wednesday, at an improvised press conference, George Bush gave what may have been the most comical performance of his eight year presidency. Looking like the skipper on the flight-deck of the Hindenburg, Bush tried his best to reassure the public that “all’s well” with the economy and that everyone’s deposits were perfectly safe in the rapidly disintegrating US banking system. Leaning lazily on the presidential podium, Bush shrugged his shoulders and said,

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By ALAN FARAGO

On the Wall Street Journal OPED page, James Grant– of the outstanding Grant’s Interest Rate Observer– writes, “Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage. But today Wall Street’s damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too-tolerant populace.” (”Why No Outrage”, WSJ, July 19, 200

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The Greatest Threat America Has Ever Faced: the GOP?
The Mother of All Messes

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Republicans are sending around the Internet a photo of a cute little boy whose T-shirt reads: “The mess in my pants is nothing compared to the mess Democrats will make of this country if they win Nov. 2nd.”

One can only wonder at the insouciance of this message. Are Republicans unaware of the amazing mess the Bush regime has made?

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Slammed: Welcome to the Age of Incarceration
What happens when you lock up 1 in every 100 American adults?

By Jennifer Gonnerman

July/August 2008 Issue

The number first appeared in headlines earlier this year: Nearly one in four of all prisoners worldwide is incarcerated in America. It was just the latest such statistic. Today, one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is locked up. In 1970, our prisons held fewer than 200,000 people; now that number exceeds 1.5 million, and when you add in local jails, it’s 2.3 million—1 in 100 American adults. Since the 1980s, we’ve sat by as the numbers inched higher and our prison system ballooned, swallowing up an ever-larger portion of the citizenry. But do statistics like these, no matter how disturbing, really mean anything anymore? What does it take to get us to sit up and notice?

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