FRONTLINE: “The Warning” on PBS

In this clip from “The Warning,” airing Tues, Oct. 20, FRONTLINE traces back to the Clinton Administration and the pro-business, anti-regulation powerbrokers Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and the man referred to as “The Wizard,” Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan.

In the devastating aftermath of the economic meltdown, FRONTLINE sifts the ashes for clues about why it happened and examines critical moments when it might have gone much differently. Looking back into the 1990s, veteran FRONTLINE producer/director Michael Kirk (“Inside the Meltdown,” “Breaking the Bank”) discovers early warnings of the crash, reveals an intense battle among high-ranking members of the Clinton administration and uncovers a concerted effort not to regulate the emerging, highly complex and lucrative derivatives markets that would become the ticking time bomb within the American economy.

Kilcullen’s Long War

These projections reveal a staggering audacity – not Obama’s audacity of hope but an audacity of martial commitment. A fifty- to 100-year military campaign – the subtitle of Kilcullen’s book is Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One – will span thirteen presidential terms and twenty-five Congressional sessions, casting a long shadow over generations of politicians not yet running for office. The Long War assumes either perpetual democratic approval by many voters not yet alive or that democracy will simply be circumvented by the national security state. Bin Laden will be dead of natural causes or otherwise long before it’s over. The audacity becomes ever more dangerous without checks and balances. Without his acknowledging it, Kilcullen’s plan plays directly into what he believes is Al Qaeda’s strategy of exhausting the United States militarily and economically. And yet he thinks the Long War is inevitable. Full article.

Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Expands Asian NATO Against China, Russia

The joint U.S-Indian operation is emblematic of unprecedented military cooperation between the two nuclear nations over the past few years, in fact a strategic military partnership whose major purposes are to supplant Russia as India’s decades-long main defense ally and arms supplier and to consolidate a U.S.-led military bloc in the Asia Pacific region aimed at containing China and furthering the encirclement of both that nation and Russia. But the New Delhi-Washington axis is fraught with even grander designs and potentially catastrophic dangers. With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanding into Eastern Europe over the last ten years and its upgrading of military contacts and deployments through various partnership agreements the world’s only military alliance spans five continents, the Middle East and the South Pacific, effectively taking over other former Cold War military blocs and thus constituting history’s first international military alliance. Full article.

Literacy study: 1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story

how awful is this: A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA – about one in seven – are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a child…ren’s picture book or to understand a medication’s side effects listed on a pill bottle. Full article.

War is peace, ignorance is strength

On 15 July, Washington finalised a deal with Colombia that gives the US seven giant military bases. “The idea,” reported the Associated Press, “is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations; nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 [military transport] without refuelling”, which “helps achieve the regional engagement strategy”. Translated, this means Obama is planning a “rollback” of the independence and democracy that the people of Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador andParaguay have achieved against the odds, along with a historic regional co-operation that rejects the notion of a US “sphere of influence”. The Colombian regime, which backs death squads and has the continent’s worst human rights record, has received US military support second in scale only to Israel. Britain provides military training. Guided by US military satellites, Colombian paramilitaries now infiltrate Venezuela with the goal of overthrowing the democratic government of Hugo Chávez. Full article.

Ground offensive begins in Pakistan al-Qaida haven

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – More than 30,000 Pakistani soldiers launched a ground offensive against al-Qaida and the Taliban’s main stronghold along the Afghan border Saturday, officials said, in the country’s toughest test yet against a strengthening insurgency. The United States has long pushed the government to carry out an assault in South Waziristan, and it comes after two weeks of militant attacks that have killed more than 175 people across the nuclear-armed country. That has ramped up pressure on the army to act. Full article.

Military Rape Awarness Week Starts At Times Sq. Recruiting Station

aren’t we supposed to bring women’s rights to afghanistan?

“Nearly one-third of a nationwide sample of women veterans who sought health care through the Veterans Administration said they experience rape or attempted rape during their service. Of that group, 37 percent said they were raped multiple times and 14 percent reported they were gang-raped. The Department of Defense has been reluctant to release statistics on sexual assault of men in the military, but anecdotal evidence indicates that the statistics are alarmingly high. Over the past 10 years, more than 700 US Army Recruiters have been accused of sexual misconduct or rape. Sixty years of US military studies and task forces since women began entering the military in larger numbers have not lessened the incidents of assault and rape.” Full article.

“My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying” by Buffy Sainte-Marie

Now that your big eyes have finally opened
Now that you’re wondering how must they feel
Meaning them that you’ve chased across America’s movie screens
Now that you’re wondering how can it be real
That the ones you’ve called colorful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda
They starve in their splendor
You’ve asked for my comment I simply will render

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they’re taught to despise their traditions
You forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country’s birth
Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud Over Kinzua mud
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Hear how the bargain was made for the West
With her shivering children in zero degrees
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it’s better this way
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled
From the Gran Canyon’s caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we’re lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you’ve brought us
The lessons you’ve taught us, the ruin you’ve wrought us
Oh see what our trust in America’s brought us

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity
Now that we’re harmless and safe behind laws
Now that my life’s to be known as your “heritage”
Now that even the graves have been robbed
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you’ve never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story
The mockingbird sings it, it’s all that he knows
“Ah what can I do?” say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye
Can’t you see that their poverty’s profiting you

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Gilani, Putin agree to strengthen ties

The agreement was reached at a meeting between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held here on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Mr Putin said his country would support Pakistan’s request for full membership of the SCO and indicated that he would back resumption of composite dialogue between India and Pakistan because reduction of tension between the two countries would facilitate improvement of Moscow’s relations with Islamabad. Full article.

Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s. Full article.