How civically hep are we?
Survey Report Excerpts from The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

A sizable minority of Americans find themselves at the intersection of these two long-standing trends in news consumption. Integrators, who get the news from both traditional sources and the internet, are a more engaged, sophisticated and demographically sought-after audience segment than those who mostly rely on traditional news sources. Integrators share some characteristics with a smaller, younger, more internet savvy audience segment - Net-Newsers - who principally turn to the web for news, and largely eschew traditional sources.

Like web-oriented news consumers, Integrators are affluent and highly educated. However, they are older, on averagIntegrators also are heavier consumers of national news - especially news about politics and Washington - and are avid sports news consumers. Television is their main news source, but more than a third cite the internet as their primary source of news during the day. This reflects the fact that a relatively large proportion of Integrators log on to the internet from work (45%).e, than those who Net-Newsers are the youngest of the news user segments (median age: 35). They are affluent and even better educated than the News Integrators: More than eight-in-ten have at least attended college. Net-Newsers not only rely primarily on the internet for news, they are leading the way in using new web features and other technologies. Nearly twice as many regularly watch news clips on the internet as regularly watch nightly network news broadcasts (30% vs. 18%).

This web-oriented news segment, perhaps more than the others, underscores the challenges facing traditional news outlets. Fewer than half (47%) watch television news on a typical day. Twice as many read an online newspaper than a printed newspaper on a typical day (17% vs. 8%), while 10% read both.

Television dominates as the favored news source among Traditionalists. And at each time of the day - whether morning, daytime, dinner hour, or late at night - overwhelming majorities who get news at these times cite television as their main source. Unlike the news Integrators, or those who mostly get news from the web, most Traditionalists say that seeing pictures and video, rather than reading or hearing the facts, gives them the best understanding of events.

Most Americans fall into the three core news audiences - Integrators, Traditionalists, or Net-Newsers. The fourth group - the Disengaged - are very much bystanders when it comes to news consumption. They are less educated on average than even the Traditionalists and exhibit extremely low interest in - and knowledge of - current events. Just 55% of the Disengaged get any news on a typical day, and just 20% know that the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives.consider the internet their main source of news. Overall, Integrators spend more time with the news on a typical day than do those who rely more on either traditional or internet sources; far more enjoy keeping up with the news a lot than in any other news segment.

That wasn't religious fervor in his eyes last night. That was religious hypocrisy.
Topic: God and Politics
well ... at least until the babies he saves grow old enough to join up. Then all pro-life bets are off. John McCain has also declared that he will be a pro-death guy with a pro-death presidency in mind. His presiding premise is that war is the only foreign policy useful for spreading America's corporate-driven globalization. It's a premise of economic and imperial design masquerading as the perfect form of democracy and democratic freedoms.

Senator John McCain told the conservative evangelical audience Saturday night that if elected, he would be a "pro-life President and have pro-life policies"

Really?

That wasn't religious fervor in his eyes last night. That was religious hypocrisy.

If we are going to incorporate public demonstrations of religious self-righteousness based on literalist Biblical values, let us begin and end with a literalist reading of the Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan.

Those scriptural passages are all we need to know if we want to have a better society than what we have now.

What we have now is a parsing of spiritual values in the same manner as we have parsed America's "core values." We parse our core values in order to justify or look the other way when our country behaves as a self-interested take-no-prisoners global imperialist.

We can't spread love by spreading hate.

We can't spread tolerance by spreading intolerance.

We cannot consciously stop judging and condemning others by spreading judgmental thinking, condemnation and self-righteousness.

But we can transform ourselves by following the real teachings of Jesus and not the lies of morally bankrupt self-bloated hypocrites. You know of whom I speak. Loudly posturing bible-waving moral midgets like John Hagee and CUSI who would have you believe that Jesus applauds when innocent human beings are collaterally killed in order to further foreign-policy stupidity,

Do any of us believe that human beings can be destroyed righteously? Do American Christians in a technologically advanced military society actually assume that God is pleased that airborne bombers can fly in a formation resembling a cross as they kill innocent mothers, fathers and children?

Can we accept this form of global abortion and call it good?

Can we sit in our churches once a week and walk about with a pious smile pretending to be like Jesus?

If you think such brings a smile to the face of the Prince of Peace, you need to stop spending so much time in your churches and more time in the real world.

Where Jesus walked.

Considering that these were standard expectations just 50 years ago, it's a reminder of how fast things can change.
Now Playing: My wife found these yesterday. How to behave wisely.
Topic: Humor Bits & Pieces

LoL  --  What if children today were taught to follow these 'rules for children' from the 1950's?   Oh, they are definitely rules that I was taught!     - Lietta

Here are some etiquette "rules" or "suggestions" addressed to children from the 1950s that I found on a loose sheet from an old handbook, I thought they were interesting to share.

Considering that these were standard expectations just 50 years ago, it's a reminder of how fast things can change.

1. Always greet the members of your family when you enter and always bid them goodbye when you leave.
2. Always rise to a standing position when visitors enter, and greet them after your elders.
3. Never address a visitor until he has started the conversation unless he is a person of your own age or younger.
4. Never interrupt a conversation. Wait until the party talking has finished.
5. Always rise when your visitor or your elders stand.
6. Never let your mother or your father bring you a chair or get one for themselves. Wait on them instead of being waited on.
7. If you leave or cross the room you should say "Excuse me."
8. If a visitor should say, "I am glad to have seen you," you should say, "Thank you."
9. Never run up and down the stairs or across the room.
10. Talk in a low, even voice. It denotes refinement.
11. Always give way to the younger child. It is your duty to look after them instead of fretting them.
12. Never retire without bidding the members of your family good night.

Follow these suggestions and you will assist in making the members of your family happy as well as in benefiting them in many other ways.

Gates is not truth talking, only telling us what he wants us to know.
Topic: Wise Governance

"Russia is showing signs of returning to its authoritarian past and its
invasion of Georgia will require the U.S. to re-evaluate the strategic
relationship between the superpowers, Defense Secretary Robert Gates
said Sunday."

The AP writes,

"Shadows of the Cold War emerged as the Bush administration struggled
for the appropriate response to Russia's aggression against its smaller
U.S.-backed neighbor, which Moscow ruled for most of the two centuries
before the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union."

 

If you take that statement at its face value then you must vote for John McCain. He needs it all to be exactly the way it's portrayed.Otherwise, how can he replace the war president?

I'm not at all convinced that the small neighbor was not egged on byit's Bushco backers and led to believe that it would get away withusing violence to achieve its means.

After all, such has been the foreign policy approach of the U.S.going back to the last months of WWII. That was of course when Japanwas already suing for peace and offering to stop hostilities prior toan American president's inability to resist the temptation to show offmilitary might at the expense of civilians who need not have beenatomically destroyed.

The Georgian attack on the Ossetian capital smells like poor strategic thinking but driven by Bush and Cheney nonsense.

Writers are saying Putin was maneuvered into a mistake, the Georgian president was maneuvered into a mistake, everybody was maneuvered into a mistake but the wide-eyed self-righteously indignant American manipulators.

James Rubin on Huffpo explains it this way:

"But there are still important questions that remain to be debated. Did the Bush administration mislead the Georgian government into thinking support for membership in NATO meant military support in a crisis? What should U.S. policy be toward Russia? And will John McCain be able to score political points out of this tragedy?

Complete answers to these questions may take months. But some conclusions can already be drawn. First and foremost, Georgia has become yet another example of stunning incompetence by the Bush administration. Let's remember it was Chancellor Merkel of Germany who became the power broker when leaders at the NATO summit debated the subject of Georgia this spring. The United States, which has traditionally led NATO on such subjects, failed to push through a so-called Membership Action Plan for Georgia. That failure, as much as anything, gave Moscow a crucial signal that the West could not muster a serious response should it crack down on its troublesome neighbor. And while we don't know exactly what was said by Washington to Georgia's President Saakashvilli, clearly he was not deterred from acting."

Gates' remarks are mis-information start to finish.

Current national broadcast networks besides False News Network continue to think we are all stupid and are not giving us the facts with this one. Gates and Rice are trying to paint paper tiger images on the looking glass and hoping we'll be scared.

Attention all you wide-eyed Bible literalists who John McCain thinks are stupid
The Left Behind fiction writers - LaHaye and Jenkins - do not agree with McCain that Obama might be the antichrist. Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins don't think Obama is the antichrist.

"I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the
antichrist," adds LaHaye, "but from my reading of scripture, he doesn't
meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the
antichrist will be an American."

Jenkins and LaHaye don't take McCain's commercial or the antichrist speculation over Obama too seriously.

Obama's convention protected by Bush/McCain civic governing style
Now that high chain link fences topped with razor wire are considered the norm for anyone who resists the American government's current puppets, we should take in stride the fact that if Cindy Sheehan shouts out at the wrong time or Daniel Ellsburg is quoted saying the wrong thing, the no-smile ear-phone and sun-glass-wearing criminal minders will cart them right off.

Oh, and that of course includes any other of you lesser lights who might be willing to speak out.

God help the ones who dare flash a camera in the wrong direction.
I wouldn't advise taking a picture of an American Flag flying over a stadium.


[Excerpt]
New York Times

Warehouse set to process convention arrests

Video footage of the north Denver warehouse on Denver's KCNC-TV showed coils of razor wire topping chain-link cells. A sign read: ''Electric stun devices used here.''

Gale said each cell will be about 20-by-20 feet. He refused to say how many people could be processed there.

''It's just ridiculous, the thing looks like a dog pound,'' said Mark Cohen of the protest group Recreate-68 Alliance. ''Even if you only put dogs in there, people will be complaining about it. I think you ought to have the Red Cross and Amnesty International come take a look at this thing.''

Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, senior advisor to Mayor John Hickenlooper, said the warehouse was formerly used to store election equipment and construction was still underway to convert it to a processing center. She said the center was an effort to allay fears that those arrested would spend several unnecessary hours waiting to be processed.

Hickenlooper's office said police will ask people to voluntarily comply with their orders before arresting anyone. ''The city does not anticipate the need for widespread arrests,'' the mayor's office statement said. But it noted ''the intention of some organizations to deliberately get arrested.''

The American Civil Liberties Union and the People's Law Project have been talking with the city about giving attorneys access to detainees. The city said attorneys can meet clients in court, not at the facility.

ACLU-Colorado legal director Mark Silverstein said city officials told him detained protesters will be taken by bus to the facility, about two miles northeast of downtown. Those who are unable or refuse to post bail will be taken to a downtown city jail to await a court date.

Silverstein said warehouse cells won't have running water, bathrooms or telephones. Gale said deputies will escort anyone needing those services.

Next question of course is whether or not College Repulbicans outside their party's Minnesota convention will be chauffer-driven to the local Marriott if they get too rowdy.

Famous Hypocritical Declarations of the 21st Century

Presidential Wannabe and former Lt. JG McCain:

"In the 21st century nations do not invade other nations."

President-pretender George W. Bush:

"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century. Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.

An old out-of-touch candidate who ignores his day job while running for CIC


I've had several conversations with other Vets about McCain as a veteran military officer. Unanimously we perceive him as the kind of jackass Lt. JG who might be able to fly a plane until it hits something, but as a squadron commander or running something much larger, more complicated and needful of experience, John is still a little Lt. JG who needs an enlisted man to tell him what's happening.

In the meantime, he wants us to believe that he pays attention to his day job which of course the citizens of Arizona hired him to do.

[Excerpt]

McCain hasn't missed `any crucial votes - except all the crucial votes

I'?ve mentioned before that I'm willing to cut senators, from both
parties, quite a bit of slack for missing votes during their
presidential campaign. It's tough to hold down a day job while running
for president.

But if a sitting senator is going to miss a lot of time while out on
the campaign trail, he or she should be careful to avoid two things: 1)
complain about others not spending enough time on Capitol Hill; and 2) pretend he/she hasn?t missed a lot of votes.

Accordingly, I don't much care that John McCain is blowing off his Senate duties; I do care that he's being so dumb about it.

Last week, McCain, who hasn't cast a vote in four months and who has
a worse attendance record than Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who took
months off to recover from a brain hemorrhage, complained that lawmakers shouldn?t take an August recess.

This week, he insisted he hasn't missed key votes.

O yeah?

Click on the story link above

To Cheney & McCain: Regarding Putin? Prove it !!
Now Playing: Washingtontonian Mike Whitney and ICH
Topic: Foreign Affairs

 

 Putin Walks into a Trap

By Mike Whitney

13/08/08 "Information Clearing House" --- - The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending 40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans still believe that the Russian army invaded Georgian territory first. The BBC, AP, NPR, the New York Times and the rest of the establishment media has consistently and deliberately misled its readers into believing that the violence in South Ossetia was initiated by the Kremlin. Let's be clear, it wasn't. In truth, there is NO dispute about the facts except among the people who rely the western press for their information. Despite its steady loss of credibility, the corporate media continues to operate as the propaganda-arm of the Pentagon.

Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a good summary of events in an op-ed in Monday's Washington Post:

"For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground....What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas....Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia...Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity." ("A Path to Peace in the Caucasus", Mikhail Gorbachev, Washington Post)

The question for Americans is whether they trust Mikhail Gorbachev more than the corporate media?

Russia deployed its tanks and troops to South Ossetia to save the lives of civilians and to reestablish the peace. Period. It has no interest in annexing the former-Soviet country or in expanding its present borders. Now that the Georgian army has been routed, Russian president Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have expressed a willingness to settle the dispute through normal diplomatic channels at the United Nations. Neither leader is under any illusions about Washington's involvement in the hostilities. They know that Georgian President Mikail Saakashvili is an American stooge who came to power in a CIA-backed coup, the so-called "Rose Revolution", and would never order a major military operation without explicit instructions from his White House puppetmasters. Most likely, the orders to invade came directly from the office of the Vice President, Dick Cheney.

The Georgian army had no chance of winning a war with Russia or any intention of occupying the territory they captured. The real aim was to lure the Russian army into a trap. US planners hope to do what they did so skillfully in Afghanistan; lure their Russian prey into a long and bloody Chechnya-type fiasco that will pit their Russia troops against guerrilla forces armed and trained by US military and intelligence agencies. The war will be waged in the name of liberating Georgia from Russian imperialism and stopping Putin from achieving his alleged ambition to control critical western-owned pipelines around the Caspian Basin. Much of this "think tank" generated narrative has already appeared in the mainstream media or been articulated by American political elites. Meanwhile, the fighting in the Caucasus has diverted attention from the massive US naval armada that is presently sailing towards the Persian Gulf for the long-anticipated confrontation with Iran.

Operation Brimstone, the joint US, UK and French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran, ended just last week. The war games were designed to simulate a naval blockade of Iran and the probable Iranian response.

According to Earl of Stirling on the Global Research web site:

"The war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force. The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagen (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan."

Stirling adds: "A strategic diversion has been created for Russia. The South Ossetia capital has been shelled and a large Georgian tank force has been heading towards the border....American Marines, a thousand of them, have recently been in Georgia training the Georgian military forces... Russia has stated that it will not sit by and allow the Georgians to attack South Ossetia...This could get bad, and remember it is just a strategic diversion....but one that could have horrific effects." ("Massive US Naval Armada Heads for Iran", Earl of Stirling, Global Research)

In June, former foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, presented the basic storyline that would be used against Russia two full months before the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia. The article appeared on the Kavkazcenter web site. Brzezinski said the United States witnessed "cases of possible threats by Russia, directed at Georgia with the intention of taking control over the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline".

Brzezinski: "Russia actively tends to isolate the Central Asian region from direct access to world economy, especially to energy supplies..If Georgia government is destabilized, western access to Baku, Caspian Sea and further will be limited". http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2008/06/13/9798.shtml


Nonsense. Neither Putin nor newly-elected president Dmitry Medvedev have any such intention. It is absurd to think that Russia, having extracted itself from two pointless wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan, and after years of grinding poverty and social unrest following the fall of the Soviet state, would choose to wage an energy war with the nuclear-armed US military. That would be complete madness. Brzezinski's speculation is part of broader narrative that's been crafted for the western media to provide a rationale for upcoming aggression against Russia. Brzezinski is not only the architect of the mujahadin-led campaign against Russia in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but also, the author of "The Grand Chessboard--American Primacy and it's Geostrategic Imperatives", the operating theory behind the war on terror which involves massive US intervention in Central Asia to control vital resources, fragment Russia, and surround manufacturing giant, China.

"The Grand Chessboard" it is the 21st century's version of the Great Game. The book begins with this revealing statement:

"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.....The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics."

This is the heart-and-soul of the war on terror. The real braintrust behind "neverending conflict" was actually focussed on Central Asia. It was the pro-Israeli crowd in the Republican Party that pulled the old switcheroo and refocussed on the Middle East rather than Eurasia. Now, powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment (Brzezinski, Albright, Holbrooke) have regrouped behind the populist "cardboard" presidential candidate Barak Obama and are preparing to redirect America's war efforts to the Asian theater. Obama offers voters a choice of wars not a choice against war.

On Sunday, Brzezinski accused Russia of imperial ambitions comparing Putin to "Stalin and Hitler" in an interview with Nathan Gardels.

Gardels: What is the world to make of Russia's invasion of Georgia?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role Russia will play in the new international system.(aka: New World Order) Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously similar to Stalin's and Hitler's in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putin's "justification" for dismembering Georgia -- because of the Russians in South Ossetia -- to Hitler's tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to "free" the Sudeten Deutsch. Even more ominous is the analogy of what Putin is doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did vis-a-vis Finland: subverting by use of force the sovereignty of a small democratic neighbor. In effect, morally and strategically, Georgia is the Finland of our day.

The question the international community now confronts is how to respond to a Russia that engages in the blatant use of force with larger imperial designs in mind: to reintegrate the former Soviet space under the Kremlin's control and to cut Western access to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia by gaining control over the Baku/Ceyhan pipeline that runs through Georgia.

In brief, the stakes are very significant. At stake is access to oil as that resource grows ever more scarce and expensive and how a major power conducts itself in our newly interdependent world, conduct that should be based on accommodation and consensus, not on brute force.

If Georgia is subverted, not only will the West be cut off from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. We can logically anticipate that Putin, if not resisted, will use the same tactics toward the Ukraine. Putin has already made public threats against Ukraine." ("Brzezinski: Russia's invasion of Georgia is Reminiscent of Stalin's attack on Finland"; Huffington Post)

Brzezinski takes great pride in being a disciplined and rational spokesman for US imperial projects. It is unlike him to use such hysterical rhetoric. Perhaps, the present situation is more tenuous than we know. Could it be that the financial system is closer to meltdown-phase than anyone realizes?

It should be clear by Brzezinski's comments that Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia was not another incoherent exercise in neocon chest-thumping, but part of a larger strategy to drag Russia into an endless conflict that will sap its resources, decrease its prestige on the global stage, weaken its grip on regional power, strengthen frayed alliances between Europe and America, and divert attention from a larger campaign in the Gulf. It is particularly worrisome that Brzezinski appears to be involved in the planning. Brzezinski, Holbrooke and Albright form the "Imperialist A-Team"; these are not the bungling "Keystone Cops" neocons like Feith and Rumsfeld who trip over themselves getting out of bed in the morning. These are cold-blooded Machiavellian imperialists who know how to work the media and the diplomatic channels to conceal their genocidal operations behind a smokescreen of humanitarian mumbo-jumbo. They know what they are doing and they are good at it. They're not fools. They have aligned themselves with the Obama camp and are preparing for the next big outbreak of global trouble-making. This should serve as a sobering wake-up call for voters who still think Obama represents "Change We Can Believe In".

Richard Holbrooke appeared on Tuesday's Jim Lerher News Hour with resident neocon Margaret Warner. Typical of Warner's "even-handed" approach, both of the interviewees were ultra-conservatives from right-wing think tanks: Richard Holbrooke, from the Council on Foreign Relations and Dmiti Simes from the Nixon Center.

According to Holbrooke, "The Russians deliberately provoked (the fighting in South Ossetia) and timed it for the Olympics. This is a long-standing Russian effort to get rid of President Saakashvili."

Right. Is that why Putin was so shocked when he heard the news (while he was in Beijing) that he quickly boarded a plane and headed for Moscow? (after shaking his finger angrily at Bush!)

Holbrooke: "And I want to stress, I'm not a warmonger, and I don't want a new Cold War any more than Dimitri does....The Russians wish to re-establish a historic area of hegemony that includes Ukraine. And it is no accident that the other former Soviet republics are watching this and extraordinarily upset, as Putin progresses with an attempt to re-create a kind of a hegemonic space."

It is impossible to go over all of Holbrooke's distortions, half-truths and lies in one article but, what is important is to recognize that a false narrative is being constructed to demonize Putin and to justify future hostilities against Russia. Holbrooke's bogus assertions are identical to Brzezinski's, and yet, these same lies are already appearing in the mainstream media. The propaganda "bullet points" have already been determined; "Putin is a menace","Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet empire", "Putin is an autocrat". (Unlike our "freedom loving" allies in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt!?!) In truth, Putin is simply enjoying Russia's newly acquired energy-wealth and would like to be left alone. But it is impossible to be left alone when the US spends 24 hours a day pestering people. The world deserves a break from an extremely irritating USA.

So why are Brzezinski and his backers in the foreign policy establishment demonizing Putin and threatening Russia with "ostracism, isolation and economic penalties?" What is Putin's crime?

Putin's problems can be traced back to a speech he made in Munich nearly two years ago when he declared unequivocally that he rejected the basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine and US global hegemony. His speech amounted to a Russian Declaration of Independence. That's when western elites, particularly at the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Enterprise Institute put Putin on their "enemies list" along with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, Morales, Mugabe and anyone else who refuses to take orders from the Washington Mafia.


Here's what Putin said in Munich:

"The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign---- one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.… What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization.”

“Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves---wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. More are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate. And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.”

Every word Putin spoke was true which is why it was not reprinted in the western media.

“Unilateral and illegitimate military actions”, the “uncontained hyper-use of force”, the “disdain for the basic principles of international law”, and most importantly; “No one feels safe!”

Putin's claims are all indisputable, that is why he has entered the neocons crosshairs. He poses a direct challenge to---what Brzezinski calls---the "international system", which is shorthand for the corporate/banking cartel that is controlled by the western oligarchy of racketeers.

South Ossetia was a trap and Putin took the bait. Unfortunately for Bush, the wily Russian prime minister is considerably brighter than anyone in the current administration. Bush's plan will undoubtedly backfire and disrupt the geopolitical balance of power. The world might get that breather from the US after all.

 

What's wrong with corporate-purchased Republican free market capitalism?
Now Playing: Clive Crook, The Atlantic.com
Topic: Business & Labor

Thank you Mary at Pacific View for pointing me toward this excerpt

Consider a society in which everybody was a profit-maximizer. What would it be like? It would be one in which rulers, soldiers, judges, bureaucrats would take whatever they could. It would be one in which bribery and corruption were the norms. It would be one in which market capitalism of the kind Professor Landsburg (and I) extol would be impossible. It would be one in which almost everybody would be poor. And because it would be one in which almost everybody was very poor, it would also be one in which the only way to obtain wealth would be to join in the race for political power. This would be all too natural. It would also be a negative-sum society, in which life tended to be nasty brutish and short.

Profit-maximization is not a generalizable norm for a successful capitalist society. Indeed, it is not an ethical principle at all, for it violates Kant's categorical imperative -- that one should "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Profit-maximization is a situational ethic, applicable only to economic activity -- that is, activity carried out under competitive conditions. Monopoly providers of public goods -- security, justice and so forth -- must not act under profit maximization.

We do not even want people engaged in private business to be profit-maximizers tout court. Let us suppose, for example, that a business knows of an undetectable way of dumping poisonous waste, thereby saving itself vast sums of money. Do we believe that it 'ought' to do this? I certainly do not. Do we believe businesses ought to create cartels? No, again. Do we regard it as right for business leaders to manipulate their pay -- by back-dating stock options, for example -- in order to steal as much as possible from their shareholders? No, yet again. Yet all these people are doing is maximizing their personal profits, as individuals in the market economy supposedly should