Day: December 1, 2010

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Is QE2 The Road To Zimbabwe-style Hyperinflation? Not Likely by Ellen Brown

by Ellen Brown
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
webofdebt.com
December 1, 2010

Unlike Zimbabwe, the U.S. can easily get the currency it needs without being beholden to anyone. But wouldn’t that dilute the value of the currency? No.

A month ago, the bond vigilantes were screaming that the Fed’s QE2 would be the first step on the road to Zimbabwe-style hundred trillion dollar notes. Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) is the poster example of what can go wrong when a government pays its bills by printing money. Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed in 2008, when its currency hyperinflated to the point that it was trading with the U.S. dollar at an exchange rate of 10 trillion to 1. On November 29, Cullen Roche wrote in the Pragmatic Capitalist:
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Where to go from Wikileaks? The Peace Movement Responds

by Cindy Sheehan & others
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
December 1, 2010

Oakland, Ca: While only a tiny fraction of the U.S. diplomatic cables scheduled for publication by Wikileaks have thus far been made available, some conclusions can already be drawn.  These cables and the Iraq and Afghan War Diaries provide an opportunity for Americans to see our government for what it is.

Our government is seen here as controlling a global military and espionage empire that impacts every region of the globe and deceives its own population. Secrecy, spying, and hostility have infected our entire government, turning the diplomatic corps into an arm of the CIA and the military, just as the civilian efforts in Afghanistan are described by Richard Holbrooke, who heads them up, as “support for the military.”  Secret war planning, secret wars, and lies about wars have become routine.  The United States is secretly and illegally engaged in a war in Yemen and has persuaded that nation’s government to lie about it.  The United States has supported a coup in Honduras and lied about it.

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Obama and the DLC by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
December 1, 2010

On the day after the 2010 national elections, Evan Bayh, retiring Senator from Indiana, laid out very clearly the current political and policy program of the dominant power in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council. The reasons for the Democratic losses around the country, so Bayh told us (paraphrasing in quotes), were that Obama was “too far left,” that he should have “pushed jobs,” not pushed health care reform so hard, and should have taken it easier on Wall Street and the banks. “Cut taxes, attack the budget, grab the center” was the central headline in the piece. Obama has to “move to the center,” needs to “reach across the aisle,” and “must learn to work with GOP in order to get things done.” Demonstrating all the while just how devoted he is to the future of the Democratic Party, non-candidate Bayh did not mention that he has a $10,000,000 campaign fund of which he apparently did not share a penny with any other politicians. Continue reading →

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Wiki-Creep Assange, The Scamp – Pvt. Bradley Manning, the Champ by Greg Palast

by Greg Palast
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.gregpalast.com
for Truthout/Buzzflash
1 December, 2010

I’m a “hero” and it makes me want to puke.  This week I was voted a “Hero of the Media” in one of those fairly harmless polls that are little more than thermometers of face time on the idiot box.

But this Nation Magazine gong is shared with Julian Assange, impresario of WikiLeaks.  Yuck.

A friend just compared hero Assange to Daniel Ellsberg.  Oh, please!

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The Man In The Bathtub, December 1, 1940 by Philip A. Farruggio

by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
December 1, 2010

He was born and raised in a little town just outside of Licata, Sicily. By the time he was 18, the young man was accepted into university in Tunisia, a far more scholastically advanced place than the Sicily of the early 1900s. Upon graduating, he decided to do what many young Italians chose to do, and he emigrated to the United States. He married a pretty young Neapolitan girl that he met in New York City, and they settled down to raise a family. She could only bear one child, a son, in 1915. Her husband could not get his Tunisian university degree to count for anything here, so he found whatever work he could. Continue reading →