The military operates through indoctrination. Soldiers are programmed to develop a mindset that resists any acknowledgment of injury and sickness, be it physical or psychological. As a consequence, tens of thousands of soldiers continue to serve, even being deployed to combat zones like Iraq and/or Afghanistan, despite persistent injuries. According to military records, over 43,000 troops classified as "nondeployable for medical reasons" have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan nevertheless.---The case of Pvt. Timothy Rich also demonstrates the disastrous implications of the apathetic attitude of the military toward its own. Not dissimilar from Major Hasan, who clearly would have benefited from treatment for the secondary trauma he was experiencing from his work with psychologically wounded veterans, one of the main factors that forced Private Rich to go absent without leave (AWOL) was the failure of the military to treat his mental issues. Rich told Truthout, "In my unit, to go to sick call for mental health was looked down upon. Our acting 1st Sergeant believed that we shouldn't have mental issues because we were too 'high speed.' So I was afraid to go because I didn't want to be labeled as a weak soldier." What followed was more harrowing.---

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire. Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance com-panies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for it-self at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ bil-lion “defense” spending that goes to private companies. In American “capitalism,” an amazing amount of taxpayers’ earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about “socializing” health care.

Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election. And now we are still trying to persuade his opponent to join a national unity government, an administration led by the man whose vote-stuffing was the very reason that same leader of the opposition – the good pseudo-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah – refused to run in a second round of elections. And Karzai got his fawning congrats from the Obama-Brown twins. So that's OK then. Wagons Ho. For Westmoreland, read McChrystal. Send in the brave 40,000 to join the rest of the US cavalry as it fights its way west – or rather south-west – to the Khe Sanh of Afghanistan in Year Eight of the War on Terror.

The mess he helped create on the economic front is only the tip of the iceberg. He supported the Bush administration's call for offshore oil drilling despite the damage such a program would do to the environment and tourism. He opposed lifting the ruinous Bush administration tax cuts. He supports the privatization of Social Security. He voted to confirm, and later publicly praised, former Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He defended Pastor John Hagee, who called Catholicism "The Great Whore" and said Hitler was a Hunter sent by God to get the Jews to Israel, and later compared Hagee to Moses when he spoke at Hagee's Washington-Israel summit last July. He sponsored the Senate version of the Iraq War Resolution, and supported that catastrophic conflict all the way down the line. The list goes on, and on, and on, and on. Enough of this clown. He should be stripped of his Senate chairmanship and sent across the aisle to his boon companions on the right.

Across the country last weekend, there were antiwar demonstrations, modest in turnout, but hopefully a warning to Obama that war without end or reason in Afghanistan, plus 40,000 more troops to Kabul, is not why people voted for him. I spoke at our own little rally in my local town of Eureka, Calif. My neighbor Ellen Taylor decided to spice up the proceedings by having a guillotine on the platform, right beside the Eureka Courthouse House steps. Her father was Telford Taylor, chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg.--- Up on the platform I took the guillotine issue head on. Only 666 aristocrats in Paris had been topped versus 1,543 throughout France. The reward: decisive smack on the snout of the land-holding aristocracy; durable popular power for peasants, workers and the petit bourgeois: M. le patron and M. le proprietaire stepped into history. Here in America, the corporate class is now entirely out of control, lawless and beyond the sanction of prosecutor, juror or ballot box. If every corporate lawbreaker felt that somewhere along the line the retribution of the guillotine might await them, it would concentrate their minds marvelously and cow them into lawfulness.

William K. Black - professor of economics and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - says that that the government's entire strategy now - as during the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts"). Indeed, as I have previously documented, 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980's during the "Latin American Crisis", and the government's response was to cover up their insolvency. Black also says: There has been no honest examination of the crisis because it would embarrass C.E.O.s and politicians . . . Instead, the Treasury and the Fed are urging us not to examine the crisis and to believe that all will soon be well. PhD economist Dean Baker made a similar point, lambasting the Federal Reserve for blowing the bubble, and pointing out that those who caused the disaster are trying to shift the focus as fast as they can: The current craze in DC policy circles is to create a "systematic risk regulator" to make sure that the country never experiences another economic crisis like the current one. This push is part of a cover-up of what really went wrong and does absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem that led to this financial and economic collapse. Baker also says: "Instead of striving to uncover the truth, [Congress] may seek to conceal it" and tell banksters they're free to steal again.

The Democrats in Congress, and their main man Barack Obama in the White House, have taken tens of millions in legal bribes from the health insurance industry over the past year, and have obligingly been hammering out in Congress a health "reform" bill that, instead of helping people, has been designed to help the insurance industry. They started out by immediately blackballing any discussion of real health reform in the form of an expansion of Medicare to cover everyone of every age, which of course would have ended the problem of the uninsured, while cutting the nation's overall health bill by at least a third, but in the process shutting down the private health insurance business. Then they chipped away and are at this point on the verge of eliminating any so-called "public option" or government-run health insurance plan to even compete with the private insurance sector. Finally, in a move as breathtakingly accommodating of the insurance industry as was the multi-trillion-dollar bailout financial bailout of Wall Street's biggest banks, they proposed to require (on pain of a $3800 fine by the IRS) to require everyone in America to buy a health insurance plan from the private sector--a gift to the industry of some 40-50- million new unwilling customers.

This Thursday, in a move that would make Baron von Louis Rothschild blush with shame (or burst with pride), Goldman Sachs will announce that it is more than doubling its bonus pool: from 11 billion in 2007 to 23 billion in 2008. I always thought the concept of the “Welfare Queen” was eliminated during the Clinton Regime (where his SecTreas was a former chair of G.S.) however, Goldman Sachs has received billions of dollars in taxpayer welfare and supposedly paid that back, except for the 13 billion that was funneled through AIG to Goldman through loan guarantees. Well, wouldn’t it be hunky dory if every loan we consumers took out from these banksters came with a guarantee that if we failed, our government would pay our loans off?

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday dismissed suggestions that he should step down for the good of Italy's image, saying he was the only person qualified to lead the country now and by far the best in Italian history. Berlusconi, speaking at his first news conference since Italy's top court lifted his immunity from prosecution and opened the way for a resumption of corruption trials against him, also said he was the man most persecuted by judges "in the entire history of the world." Berlusconi was asked by an American reporter about calls by critics that he step down because his personal and legal problems damage Italy's image in the world."The reality is completely the opposite," he said, remaining unusually calm in his response. "In my opinion, and not only mine, I am the best prime minister we can find today.""I am without a doubt the person who has been most persecuted by judges of all times, in the entire history of the world and the history of man," he said.

A federal agency tasked with expanding the American dream of home ownership and affordable housing free from discrimination to people of modest means has been quietly moving a chunk of that role to Wall Street since 2002. In a stealth partial privatization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) farmed out its mandate of working with single family homeowners in trouble on their mortgages to the industry most responsible for separating people from their savings and creating an unprecedented wealth gap that renders millions unable to pay those mortgages. This industry also ranks as one of the most storied industries in terms of race discrimination. Rounding out its dubious housing credentials, Wall Street is now on life support courtesy of the public purse known as TARP as a result of issuing trillions of dollars in miss-rated housing bonds and housing-related derivatives, many of which were nothing more than algorithmic concepts wrapped in a high priced legal opinion. It’s difficult to imagine a more problematic resume for the new housing czars.

The inspector general who oversees the government’s bailout of the banking system is criticizing the Treasury Department for some misleading public statements last fall and raising the possibility that it had unfairly disbursed money to the biggest banks. A Treasury official made incorrect statements about the health of the nation’s biggest banks even as the government was doling out billions of dollars in aid, according to a report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program to be released on Monday by the special inspector general, Neil M. Barofsky. The report also provides new insight into the way the Treasury allocated billions of dollars to nine of Wall Street’s largest players. [Note: This article could not be more vague if written by a child. However, the real point here is the Treasury LIED.]

Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people. The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part. [Note: Complicity is a killer.]

Money to bury Detroit's poor has dried up, forcing struggling families to abandon their loved ones in the morgue freezer. At 1300 E. Warren St., you can smell the plight of Detroit. Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer. Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. "Some people don't come forward even though they know the people are here," said the former Detroit cop. "They don't have the money."

D.C. is a town teeming with corporate brothels. You've got your non-profit bordellos like Third Way, your for-profit massage parlors like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and, of course, K Street is the single biggest red-light district in the world. But bar none, the best little whorehouse in definitely the New Democratic Caucus, and this Bloomberg News story could serve as its advertisement: The New Democrats got Rep. Barney Frank to drop provisions that would have required banks to offer so-called plain vanilla products like 30-year mortgages or low-fee credit cards. The lawmakers were also influential in excluding non-financial companies such as accounting firms, auto dealers and retailers from the agency's oversight... The story goes on to note that in just the first six months of 2009, the 15 New Democrats on the relevant Financial Services committee "received about $1.9 million in contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate industries." They may be high-class hookers - but that's a pittance when considering their work will result in billions of dollars in higher consumer fees - and thus an orgasmic happy ending for bank executives.

Via John Judis, who has more about this, here's a story I missed a couple of weeks ago from the Boston Globe: When the housekeepers at the three Hyatt hotels in the Boston area were asked to train some new workers, they said they were told the trainees would be filling in during vacations. On Aug. 31, staffers learned the full story: None of them would be making the beds and cleaning the showers any longer. All of them were losing their jobs. The trainees, it turns out, were employees of a Georgia company, Hospitality Staffing Solutions, who were replacing them that day...."It’s unbelievable," said Lucine Williams, 41, who has worked at the Hyatt Regency Boston for nearly 22 years and was making $15.32 an hour plus health, dental, and 401(k) benefits when she lost her job. "I don't know how they can treat people like that." The outsourced workers make $8 per hour with no benefits. Nice work, Hyatt. I think I'll be staying elsewhere in the future. Now please excuse me while I go throw up.

I've made my position on the Emanuel administration's attempts to crush Democratic primaries pretty plain: Beyond it being a disgusting effort to crush the kind of local democracy Barack Obama used to make Rahm Emanuel president, it also makes Democratic legislative unity even tougher to achieve. Additionally, the aggressiveness of the effort reveals a double-standard: The Emanuel administration that categorically refuses to twist the arms of congresspeople to pass legislation is the same Emanuel administration that is more than happy to break the arms of Democratic primary candidates. As I said in my last column, that's the power-worshiping, incumbent-protecting country-club etiquette at work: Just like, say, Tim Russert would ask upstart presidential candidate Howard Dean much tougher questions than sitting Vice President Dick Cheney, President Emanuel is willing to punch those outside of D.C., but not those inside...

For people who love golf, the chance to play at the five-star Greenbrier resort in West Virginia is a dream come true. Especially if someone else pays for it. That was the case this summer for two powerful members of Congress, House Republican Minority leader John Boehner of Ohio and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. Accompanied by top corporate lobbyists , the two golf-loving Republicans spent a luxurious weekend at the Greenbrier, the kinds of cozy gatherings new ethics reform laws were supposed to curb.

This is what Time Magazine pulled from the Huffington Post article about Ron and me. 'The only thing that happens is a check mark in a box in a courthouse.' MARY MCCURNIN, a Rancho Cordova, Calif., woman, on her decision to file for a divorce in order to reap financial benefits. By getting the divorce, McCurnin, who is happily married to husband Ron Bednar, becomes eligible to receive the Social Security payments owed to her deceased first husband They will be hearing from me!!!!!!! Fuckery. God damn it. Nothing about our four illnesses. Nothing about our loses due to those illnesses. Just me wanting money. For those of you who do not know, my husband and I had two major illnesses each that lead to our filing for bankruptcy which ruined our credit which decreased our chances of employment. So we decided that we would get divorced so I could receive social security widow's benefits from my first husband. Shit. I can hardly speak/write.

I got swine flu. Five days later, I was at death's door--because my evil insurance company wouldn't honor my doctor's prescription. Memo to future revolutionaries: if you require a firing squad for the executives of the Health Insurance Plan (HIP) of New York, I'm handy with a rifle. I wasn't worried at first. A little sneezing, slightly achy joints. I figured it was my usual bout of fall allergies. There's usually nothing to do but suffer. But I felt worse each day: achier, more congested, stiffer, headache, fevers. The third night was bad. I went to bed under a pile of comforters, chattering uncontrollably. Then nightsweats. I checked my temperature: 103.7. When your temperature looks like a classic rock station, it's time to see the doctor. I've known my general practitioner for decades. So I pay out-of-pocket to see him even though he's not on HIP's list of plan-approved doctors. Hey, what do you expect for $749.01 a month? My ordeal with the insurance company began when I went to fill my prescription for Tamiflu, an antiviral medication that is widely considered the standard treatment for swine (and other types of) flu.

In "Through the Looking Glass," Humpty Dumpty declared, "When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less." Mr. Dumpty would have loved living in our era of corporate-speak, when even a plain word of obvious meaning can be dumped down the semantical rabbit hole to be swirled and twirled by marketing meisters. Then - sproing! - out it pops, looking like the same word, but now burdened with a convoluted connotation that is the very opposite of what the word appears to mean. This corporatization of language is presently being applied to the common term, "local" - as in: right here, in the immediate vicinity, this neck of the woods, hereabouts, our backyard etc. In the past few years, "local" has become an important commercial term, as small businesses have proudly attached it to their products, services and presence in the marketplace. The term differentiates them from the gigantism, plasticity, aloofness and frequent abusiveness of faraway, big-box, chain operations. The message conveyed by these local enterprises is that "we are your neighbors, you know us and we know you, we share a community bond beyond just taking your money."