ABIT OF NEWS BEFORE 2009 ROLLS IN

Which of These Progressive Positions are Extreme Left?
Rob Kall, OpEdNews
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Which-of-These-Progressive-by-Rob-Kall-081220-249.html

Van Jones and the Green Economy
Leighton Woodhouse, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leighton-woodhouse/van-jones-and-the-green-e_b_153109.html

Without Systemic Change There is Only Chump Change as the US Empire Continues
Larry Pinkney, The Black Commentator
http://www.blackcommentator.com/304/304_kir_chump_change.html

Madoff’s Shocking Scheme is Just a Microcosm of a Much Bigger Disaster
Maura Stephens, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/115769/

Was the ‘Credit Crunch’ a Myth Used to sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam?
Joshua Holland, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/115768/was_the_
Even as the media continue to repeat the claim that credit has frozen up, evidence has emerged suggesting the entire story is wrong.

Beware of Obama’s Groundhog Day
John Pilger Commentary
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=515
There is more continuity in Obama’s appointment of officials who will deal with the economic piracy that brought down Wall Street and impoverished millions. As in Bill Murray’s nightmare, they are the same officials who caused it. For example, Lawrence Summers will run the National Economic Council. As treasury secretary, according to the New York Times, he “championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the... instruments – aka toxic assets – that have spread financial losses [and] refused to heed critics who warned of dangers to come”.

There is logic here. Contrary to myth, Obama’s campaign was funded largely by rapacious capital, such as Citigroup and others responsible for the sub-prime mortgage scandal, whose victims were mostly African Americans and other poor people. Is this a grand betrayal? Obama has never hidden his record as a man of a system described by Martin Luther King as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. Obama’s dalliance as a soft critic of the disaster in Iraq was in line with most Establishment opinion that it was “dumb”. His fans include the war criminals Tony Blair, who has “hailed” his appointments, and Henry Kissinger, who describes the appointment of Hillary Clinton as “outstanding”. One of John McCain’s principal advisers, Max Boot, who is on the Republican Party’s far right, said: “I am “gobsmacked by these appointments. [They] could just as easily have come from a President McCain.”

[Duchess Note: Many thanks to Linda in TX and Carol in NY for their contributions to this blog.]