Very interesting and insightful, if disturbing, analysis of the likely forthcoming collapse of the American economic and political system. This Russian does a point by point comparison of the previous collapse of the Soviet system with the impending one of the American corporate/capitalist one, why they happened and what the effects have and will be on their respective societies.

Many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well. Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents. Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production. Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.

Read Orlov’s complete analysis Here. It is certainly worth the time.

Americans might be enjoying a warm glowing vision of themselves while gazing endlessly in the mirror nationalistic self-reflection, but the rest of the world is increasingly seeing a different image of us. This essay from another foreign press source touches on some disturbing realities we have been trying to bring to the awareness of our fellow citizenry.

We ignore this reality at our own peril.

The financial position of the United States has declined dramatically in the last 15 years. The US federal budget is in the deep red, adding to America’s dependency on debt.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is wiping out loads of dollars from US treasury. A government functioning so irresponsible with no sense of the prosperity of its own country and people is not really a superpower in any sense.

Almost no one is saving any money in the United States today. Saving rates are very low or negative. The US debt grows by about $1.5 billion every weekday and has now reached about $6.5 trillion dollars. Private household debt has reached $11 trillion and 50 per cent of these debts have been incurred since 1998. The Americans are enjoying the present spending spree at the cost of their own future and future generations. The fact is that the expanding consumer debt drives the US economy.

In the near future, many US citizens may have to face harsh reality like a poverty-stricken, third world family, living from hand to mouth situation without any kind of financial reserves whatsoever. The imminent economic crisis is waiting to happen in the US and will be the most thoroughly predicted one in recent human history. People spending so irresponsible with no sense of the prosperity of the country is not a superpower.

Half the world is very impressed by the low levels of unemployment in the United States. Only the other half clearly knows very well that these statistics may be the result of a voluntary telephone survey. Is working just ten hours per week enough for one to be classified as “employed”? The US statistics is usually intended to create more positive image and opinion than about its actual condition. The net reality is that the US job growth rate is falling behind its own population growth.

A country that cannot create jobs for its own population is not a superpower.

Today, the United State’s biggest bankers are China and Japan, both of whom could cause the United States very serious financial problems, if they wish to do so at any time. Roughly 27 per cent of the government bonds issued by the US treasury are held by China and Japan. That’s why US doesn’t complain much about China and Japan.

A country whose financial affairs are in the hands of foreigners is not a superpower.

Read The Full Article Here

If there was ever evidence that America as a nation has failed, this is it.

There is a famous “Twilight Zone” episode about a little boy in a small town who has fantastical powers. Through the misuse of his powers, the little boy has ruined the lives of everybody in the town — for instance, teleporting them into a cornfield, or summoning a snowstorm that destroys their crops. Because anyone who thinks an unhappy thought will be banished, the adults around him can do nothing but cheerfully praise his decisions while they try to nudge him in a less destructive direction.

This episode kept popping into my head when I was reading about President Bush and the Baker-Hamilton commission. Bush is the president of the United States, which therefore gives him enormous power, but he is treated by everybody around him as if he were a child.

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…The commission generously avoided revisiting the whole question of who got us into this fiasco and how. As the Washington Post put it, “The panel appeared to steer away from language that might inflame the Bush administration.” Of course, “inflame” is a word typically associated with street mobs or other irrational actors. The fact that the president can be “inflamed” is no longer considered surprising enough to merit comment.

Indeed, everybody seems to understand that if you want to help amend the disaster in Iraq, the No. 1 rule is that you can’t acknowledge it’s a disaster in Bush’s presence. Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes, the court stenographer of the Bush administration, recently reported that this was a key factor in the hiring of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

This is the kind of nonsense one would read about in history books about decaying empires and corrupted societies. The undeserving leadership of heredity leading a nation to ruin while the courtiers look on and the sycophants grab whatever the spoils around them for themselves, oblivious of the fatal damage being inflicted. Works the same everywhere, whether Bourbon France, Czarist Russia, Hitler and his bunker entourage (led by Martin Boorman), or even Elvis Presley and his ‘Memphis Mafia.’

The fact that we as a society are tolerating this is proof that America is pretty much done, stick a fork in it.

Read The Full Article from the Los Angeles Times

Dave Lindorff delivers one of the better analysis of the current political crisis our nation, lo humanity itself, is currently facing.

Are current political systems - our own and others around the world - fundamentally incapable of dealing with the biggest crisis facing mankind, indeed facing life on earth?

Unfortunately, the answer is pretty much - yes.

It might seem strange that in a democracy, ordinary people would prefer to go about their lives in a way that threatens the very survival of their children, or certainly of their grandchildren, rather than to seriously inconvenience themselves in an effort to protect their progeny, but that is what we see happening.

Perhaps the fact that we are not living in a democracy but rather a corporate state might help explain why this is indeed occurring.

Moreover, political systems, including our own, are structured so as to dissuade anyone in politics from advocating the needed revolutionary changes.

Bingo.

As for those needed changes, I highly recommend the work of CELDF and their Democracy Schools. Attend one if you get the chance. You’ll find it one of the more valuable experiences in your civic life that you will ever have.

Read Dave Lindoff’s Full Essay Here

Courtesy our friends at KBR. Wonder what they are calling the first one? “Camp Freedom”?

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush’s “unlawful enemy combatants.” Americans are certain to be among them.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Won’t have the climate of a Vorkuta or the work details of a Bergen-Belsen, I’m sure, but what the hell is this about? Will work bring freedom for those incarcerated here, as well?

Read The Full Report

Here is more on this topic from InfoWars. Make of it what you will.

Is this the beginning of the end?

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331-335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007″ (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”

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Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequently, it will take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007’s Defense Authorization Act contained a “widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation’s governors.”

Wake up America, or else there will be no America left to wake up to.

Read The Full Report

San Francisco’s Indymedia Center has this report posted as well.

Garrison Keillor hits the money shot with this virulent screed against the un-American cowards and hacks that populate the halls of power in today’s Amerika.

He hits it hard, here. Succinctly and powerfully.

It’s good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 — Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright — and you won’t find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they’d collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Court will dispose of this piece of garbage.

If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it’s no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Read The Complete Essay

The Rubber Stamp Congress has gone and done it.

Read More Details On This Legislation Here.

USTV viewer CM weighs in on this…

Andy, I’m afraid you’ve put it together. The way I see it, as of November 1, 2006, the Administration will declare a National War Emergency and martial law, suspending the elections until the “crisis” is over.

We already know that an extra carrier group is on its way to the Persian Gulf and most other units are in place or expect to be there and ready to wage war on Iran as of October 21, 2006. Special Forces are already in-country selecting targets. Mine-sweeper units are being readied to deal with expected Iranian mining of the Straits of Hormuz.

Given the timing, this allows for 10 days of “wiggle-room” such as any good commander would want for unforeseen problems and tidying up the details prior to the commencement of hostilities. It seems to me that on or about Halloween, we can expect some “Dastardly Attack” from the Iranians on our forces conveniently positioned on and inside of their borders (how dare they attack the military of a country that is invading them!) which will “force” GWBUSH to go to Congress demanding blood and revenge. It will probably be very photogenic and horrific-looking, and there will be lots of heart-wrenching video footage to be replayed on all the networks. And of course, in such a state of “crisis”, we just won’t have time for elections; it will be far too necessary to turn all that excess energy into the War Effort. Besides, all those people coming into unsecured schools and retirement homes to vote make such a good target for Evil Terrorists; we surely don’t want to risk such danger to our vulnerable children and elderly.

I suggest you pass this on to every network you can access. Just because we’re paranoid does NOT mean they aren’t out to “get” us. Tyrants like these don’t just give up power based on a free and honest election; those elections will only be held if they can be sure they can control them.

I did fly this by Ed (Lacy) and am open to a slight refinement of the hypothesis, however. Ed believes that in order to provide sufficient excuse for war, such an attack would need to occur within the U.S. Political considerations suggest two prime targets: the Golden Gate Bridge or the Port of Los Angeles; both located in Republican-unfriendly California where war fever and paranoia are notably lacking and could use some reinforcement. Such an attack by “Hezbollah”, immediately traceable to Iran, would justify both war in the Middle East and unprecedented security measures at home.

I hope they are wrong about this, but I don’t know if I would bet against it.

Yep. It looks like it may finally be here. Full-blown, metastasized dictatorship. Oh, but we don’t have a dictator, we have ‘The Decider’.

Molly Ivins elaborates…

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary - these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law. I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.

This sounds like hyperbole, but she is right. The rubber stamp Reichstag of a Congress has just passed it’s own Enabling Act to give our Dear Leader full range of powers to dictate who is an ‘enemy of the state.’

Read The Full Article from Molly Ivins

This is all starting to sound rather eerily familiar to some past turbulence we had in our history, which stemmed from some whiney complaints from the locals.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

These people didn’t stay in their designated ‘free speech zone.’ It got kinda dicey from what I understand. The local insurgents and terrorists started to endanger public safety and security, too! They wouldn’t even fight by the normal ‘civilized’ rules of warfare, and thus had to be subjected to the utmost of harshest penalties. Wonder whatever became of them anyway?

New Democracy Statement of Principles
newdemocracyworld.org

We live under a dictatorship of the wealthy. Most people want a better world. We can only achieve a new world by openly declaring our goals:

1. We are for revolution to create a real democracy. We call on people everywhere to end elite rule and to create real democracy based on principles of solidarity and equality. Democracy means ordinary people shaping all of society with their shared values. It means people together freely deciding their goals and how they will cooperate to achieve them. This includes transforming the goals, organization, and control of work to create an economy where the productive wealth of society is used to meet the human needs of all.

2. Revolution to achieve real democracy is necessary and possible. Revolution is necessary because the problems we face are rooted in a system of elite rule that controls people by attacking relations of solidarity and equality. These problems cannot be solved without creating a new society. Revolution is possible because the struggle of ordinary people to humanize the world is the force that drives history, and because most people want the new world that only revolution can bring.

3. Our confidence in the possibility of revolution comes from our confidence in ordinary people. Capitalism, communism, and socialism have all led to societies in which an elite holds the power. None of these systems is democratic. Communism and socialism failed as alternatives to capitalism because they accepted capitalism’s view that economic development is the basis of human development, that self-interest is the primary human motivation, and that ordinary people are a passive mass or a dangerous problem. The basis of a new society is a new, positive view of people.

4. The everyday struggle of ordinary people to humanize the world creates the wealth of society and whatever positive human relationships exist within it. Most people in their everyday lives struggle against a culture based on competition and exploitation. They strive in their families and workplaces to create relationships based on equality and commitment to each other. People’s everyday lives have revolutionary meaning.

5. Class struggle is a struggle over what values should shape society, what goals it should pursue, and who should control it. It is a struggle over what it means to be a human being. The values of the capitalist class are inequality, competition, and control from above. The values of the working class are equality, solidarity, and democracy. The goal of working class struggle is to transform the whole world with its values. The most personal acts of kindness and the most public acts of class war are part of the same struggle to humanize the world.

6. The revolutionary movement must not be based on politicians or union officials or business structures or the courts but on ordinary people themselves as the driving force and leaders of change.

7. Revolutions are built on hope. The revolutionary movement will unite ordinary men and women of every race and nationality in a movement in which our confidence in our ability to change the world comes from our confidence in each other.

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New Democracy works for democratic revolution
Write us at P.O. Box 427, Boston, MA 02130
Or call: Boston: John Spritzler, 617-566-9637; Decatur: Larry Solomon, 217-763-4451
E-mail: Newdem@aol.com Webpage: http://www.newdemocracyworld.org