daily blog

It’s a shame that the American people have to endure all the campaign rhetoric and listen to the two presidential candidates and soon to be their vice presidential picks who will only add more to the criticizing and stage craft that focuses more on the weaknesses of the other candidates. It would be pleasing to hear what each candidate has to offer in terms of how he proposes to fix our country. It’s amazing to me that Joe Biden and John McCain have been friends for so many years and now that Senator Biden is a vice presidential candidate he started his first day on television criticizing Senator McCain. By the way, I’m a veteran of the Vietnam war and clearly heard Senator Bidens comment that Senator McCain was only a war hero and what we need is a leader.

I think any war hero is a leader and should be commended. I’m sure I wasn’t the only American veteran listening. The American people need to know what each candidate plans to do about the following which is only a few of the problems we face.

1. How do you propose to pull our country out of the recession we’re in which is hurting everyone?

2. How do you propose to fix the energy crisis which needs immediate attention?

3. How do you plan to correct the health care problems facing the entire nation?

4. How do you propose to handle the foreclosure disaster which is destroying our country?

5. Do you plan to do anything about the poverty within the United States?

6. How do you plan to get job creation going again before everyone in our country faces poverty?

7. The Christian values which you both proclaim to have can be shown much clearer by your actions than by your words.

8. What is your stand on abortion and stem cell research which are two other big concerns in our country?

9. Where do you stand on foreign issues and how do you plan to show strength as well as compassion in dealing with other nations?

These are just a few of the issues facing our nation today but they are very important ones and need to be addressed honestly. Again, the American people deserve honest answers and not political ploy. While Obama is trying to blame John McCain for everything that George Bush has done over the past eight years he needs to remember that Senator McCain has stood against Bush many times but he cannot control him any better than Obama could control his preacher Jerimiah or the other preachers condemning America. This is probably one of the most important elections this country has ever had and whoever wins has his work cut out for him. Please Americans, listen to what the candidates are proposing, not just their ridicule.

About The Author

Garrett Golden is very knowledgeable in the political arena. Having served sixteen years in local county government and having won more elections than anyone in county history, I am constantly observing local, state, and national elections and giving my opinions at every opportunity. Anybody can watch the candidates and listen to what they are saying and determine what is real and what is just political talk to get them elected. Please pay close attention in this presidential election not only to the candidates promises but also look at their past actions. This will help you make the right choice and last but not least, be sure to VOTE.

I haven’t written a book on politics yet but I am gathering a lot of facts and information in preparation for writing a hard cover book in the very near future.

Resources: The best resources to count on now comes from the vast news coverage on CNN, FOX, and all the major news channels. They tend to show what the candidates are actually saying whereas the books, the internet, and the magazines have a better opportunity to tweak what is being said. Also, there seems to be a lot of coverage heading into the conventions and the fall debates. Listen closely!

By now we have heard of Governor Sarah Palin’s invocation of God in order to obtain a natural gas pipeline in Alaska: “God’s will has to be done in getting a 30 billion dollar gas pipe line” for Alaska, “so pray for that.”

And her belief about God’s role in the war in Iraq:

“. . our national leaders are sending them [our soldiers] out on a task that is from God-pray for them-there is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

These comments from a potential Vice President of the United States are of concern from a number of different points of view:

1. The idea that whatever we, citizens and politicians alike, think is in our interest can or must also be in God’s best interest. This suggests that God’s interests are synonymous with ours and all we have to do is pray for this congruence to occur. What we want is what God wants for us-a pipeline and to invade Iraq as we did, or that new house on the block and rising stock prices.

2. There is a deep presumption of knowing the will of God. It seems to me to be the height of arrogance to lay our plans for any foreign or domestic policy initiative at the temple of God, because in some sense this may absolve us of responsibility. If things don’t work out as planned, then we can just say, “It wasn’t God’s will that we reach this particular objective.” If we reach our goals, then we can loudly trumpet, “See I told you so. It was God’s will that the Surge succeed, that violence was reduced, that the Iraqis came together to reach political amity.”

3. You must have a very personal concept of the Almighty to think that He concerns Himself so deeply in human affairs that we can invoke Him to ratify our own approaches to life’s problems. When I was a “born again Christian” my freshman year at Harvard I went to a number of fellowship meetings where some of my classmates would intone, “Well, God willing, I’m going down to the bookstore to get my economics text.” I was always slightly amazed at this-thinking that God cared whether or not you got your required reading done.

4. This, of course, leaves atheists, agnostics and some of the rest of us to rely on ourselves and our best thinking in order to solve problems. It may be that folks like Sarah Palin and President Bush also think we must try very hard to succeed even if we have invoked the blessings of the Almighty. When I was in high school I prayed everyday not for peace in the world, but for good grades. I believed what Norman Vincent Peale had taught in The Power of Positive Thinking-that prayer can move mountains. I invoked God for my own personal success. So I prayed nightly, right after spending four to six hours doing homework.

Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain and many other works of contemplation, noted that “Our discovery of God is, in a way, God’s discovery of us.” (New Seeds of Contemplation)

Prayer is one way of establishing a conversation with God through which He discovers us, not by which we gather all the material pleasures we want unto ourselves.

5. And, finally, the essence of Palin’s claim is that she can determine God’s will, God’s plan for Iraq and for natural gas in Alaska. I’m sure we’d all agree that Iraqis deserve to enjoy all the freedoms we do in this country. But was it God’s plan to invade Iraq with so few troops we couldn’t control the country, couldn’t prevent the insurgency that robbed over 4,000 of our fighting men and women of their precious lives? Robbed so many Iraqis of their lives and millions of Iraqis of their homes.

This is the height of arrogance to claim to divine the will of the Almighty.

But among the most troubling consequences of this marriage of God and foreign policy is where it might take us-to Iran, for example. What if McCain becomes President and thinks the only way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to launch an air, missile and limited ground attack? What if, under the influence of his own religious views or those of his VP, he tells us this attack is much better thought out than the one launched against Iraq in 2003 AND, most importantly of all, it has God’s blessing, or it is part of God’s plan?

What this gives any administration is the audacity and arrogance to claim that whoever disagrees is putting interests other than country first. We’ve seen these assertions in McCain’s allegations against Obama. The Illinois Senator has stated his desire to end the war in Iraq and put forces where he, as well as others, believes, they can be more useful-in Afghanistan, in capturing bin Laden.

McCain charged that Obama was seeking votes rather than victory, that he put country second to, as Sarah Palin has phrased it, the desire for votes. This may be tantamount to being unpatriotic, unchristian and treasonous. How can you vote against God’s plan as you divine it?

Hence, the bumper sticker “Country first” as if some of us do not put our country first-always.

All of this emphasis on invoking God in politics is very troubling for someone who considers himself a religious person with a small “r.” I do not go to church regularly, but in my youth, as mentioned above, I had my days with the fundamentalist Christians at Harvard. But, eventually, the emotional zeal withered away as I was simultaneously learning how to fire weapons and command men at sea and perhaps in battle, as part of an NROTC educational program.

So, today my religious concerns focus upon the beautiful mystery of God and His Creation. Again as Thomas Merton noted, “Faith incorporates the unknown into our everyday life in a living, dynamic and actual manner.” How does this work, I wonder.

But I am also a healthy skeptic, wondering what kind of Deity I do believe in-whether the very personal one who cares about my every thought or, at the other extreme, one who set the Big Bang in motion and let all the physical laws of space, time, energy and matter develop as they have, creating stars that became galaxies that merged creating our own Milky Way and some galaxies with super massive black holes deep in the center millions of times as massive as our sun.
This, to me, is the magical mystery tour.

In the last analysis, I wish politicians would be more like Biden, McCain and Obama-keeping their religious beliefs more or less to themselves.

Palin scares me because I do not want another leader like George Bush in the White House who, according to Bob Woodward, failed to seek the advice of his earthly father prior to his pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. He supposedly told Woodward he appealed to a “higher” power or father. The Heavenly Father.

Maybe this invocation told him that whatever plans he made for this invasion, as short-sighted as they were in terms of troop levels would gain the “Mission Accomplished” banner. Perhaps this was why he ignored Secretary of State Colin Powell’s desire for overwhelming force and General Shinseki’s prediction that to control Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops, far more than Rumsfeld and General Franks were willing to commit. He might have thought God’s will was in the Bush, Rumsfeld, Franks plan.

Perhaps, because it was God’s will Bush failed for so long to recognize what Powell did early on-that our invasion had not only rid the world of a butcher, but had also unleashed the very forces of civil war that Brent Scowcroft and Dick Cheney (then Secretary of Defense) had warned against in 1991 as reasons for not going to Baghdad at the end of the First Gulf War.

Many of us believe in God. Many believe in widely different concepts of what the Deity is and can do in our universe and in our lives.

But beware those politicians who claim God is on the side of their own special policy in foreign and domestic affairs. Maybe all we have to do is pray hard-whether for good grades or federal largesse to reach our own private, sometimes very selfish objectives.

Or maybe faith, prayer and belief in God are gifts from the Almighty as ways of establishing a conversation we hope will lead to understanding Him and the mysteries of Creation.

I believe it was Abe Lincoln who cautioned us about God’s being on one side or the other: “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”

John Barell
Author, Quest for Antarctica-A Journey of Wonder and Discovery (2007) and Why Are School Buses Always Yellow? (2007)
http://www.morecuriousminds.com
jbarell@nyc.rr.com

John Barell is a national consultant to schools desiring to foster inquiry, critical thinking and authentic assessment in classrooms for all students. He is author most recently of Why Are School Buses Always Yellow? (2008); Surviving Erebus–An Antarctic Adventure (2008); Quest for Antarctica–A Journey of Wonder and Discovery (2007) and “Inquisitive to a Fault”–Preserving American Democracy.

http://www.morecuriousminds.com

I’m going to cut right to the race. The idea of a woman or African-American as president is appealing to me. But if Condolezza Rice was running for president, I’d pass on the best of both worlds. Hilary Clinton’s candidacy represents a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton regime. A hybrid monarchy, rooted in nepotism, that I’d rather not see perpetuate and further tarnish the already scarred history of a nation built on the backs of slaves.

Maybe they should have a law stating that presidents should be picked girl—boy—girl—boy—girl—boy? Or, one year the president should be 11 years old and the next year 65 years old?

Regardless of my day dreaming, Obama stirs a feeling no other candidate has that I remember in my short-time living. I don’t agree with all of Obama’s views and policies; however, I feel a spark of purpose in his life and timeliness. The fact he has exposure living and growing up in parts of the world, other than the United States, makes him a candidate the world can embrace. The potential of Obama to unite people across not only political lines, but religious divide is unmatched by any of our current presidential candidates. His expressed willingness to dialogue, even with some of the most ostracized world leaders, makes him an individual who could bring increased global security that does not rely upon militaries; fostering understanding and mutual respect through dialogue, humbleness and diplomacy.

But Barack Obama is not nearly enough. Inspiring, yes; answer to all of the U.S. and world problems-not so much. A step in the right direction, maybe; but this is about more than just a president.

No president alone will be able to save the drowning waters of the polluted sea. McCain, Clinton, and Obama all represent a two-party system that consistently silences diverse perspectives and limits the capacity of those, who are not democrat or republican, to create change. The two-party system that exists in the U.S. precludes the political voice and will of millions of its citizens. There must be a reason, in addition to apathy, that still over 50% of those eligible to vote in the U.S. never make it to the polls.

None of the candidates are speaking about the demilitarization of the world. About the essential need of our careful disposal of the world nuclear weapons stockpile. None of them have addressed how we shall counteract the institutionalized racism that has allowed the number of people in U.S. prisons to climb and reach over 2.3 million. “A Black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; about 580,000 Black males are serving sentences in state or federal prison, while fewer than 40,000 Black males earn a bachelor’s degree each year; and in 2004, 2,825 children and teens died from firearms in the U.S.-that’s more than the number of American combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of 2006.” (America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline 2007 Report, Children’s Defense Fund). We are in a civil war right here in the U.S.!

None of the candidates have yet spoken about how we can divert huge global catastrophe by radically shifting energy consumption and consumerism. None of them have addressed how the nation’s schools are systematically fueling violence through outdated and irrelevant teaching methods and curriculum. And I am still waiting for the day I hear a presidential candidate, at the end of a speech say, “God Bless the World!”

Nonetheless, I hope, and on quiet nights pray, that for every Osama there must be an Obama; a counter weight; a balancing of the scales; the love that hate produced. But, more important than Obama, or whoever the next president of the U.S. turns out to be is YOU. Where is your heart? What are you doing? The danger in a magnetic personality such as Barack Obama as president is that masses will tend to diffuse responsibility to him for making the changes in our society that are so sorely needed. Obama will be inheriting a Royal Bush-mess. The people of the U.S., the ones electing him into office, will set him (or any other candidate) up for failure if we do not transform our penchant for materialism and placing American interests ahead of the Earth’s.

Out of the current realistic choices available, I believe making Obama president is a step in the right direction, but it is not nearly enough. We have to step with him and ahead of him. This is much more than stepping to the voting booth and casting your ballot. That’s the simple way out. We can’t live our lives behind curtains anymore; casting votes in private. We have to seriously work everyday to change our communities so that they are healthy, nurturing and positive places for all people, regardless of who the president is.

Most importantly, as recently observed, we need to come together as a species, and unite to aid the millions of people who are being displaced and lost through earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, and disease. As long as governments continue to prioritize funding the building of a bomb over digging someone out who has been buried in a landslide, we are in for a dismal future.

Everyone needs to do something. The president of the U.S. would play a more passive role in society if citizens were actually doing their jobs and looking out for one another. This election is about much more than just a president, it’s about our very hearts and souls.

It is not enough to think, ‘Okay, I’ll do my part and vote this year for who will be our elected representatives.’ Instead, we have to become mindful that we vote everyday, perhaps even with greater impact, by where we spend our money. What we buy and which company is producing it. We vote everyday by the seat we choose to give to the stranger on the bus, walking or riding our bicycle instead of taking our car, or, the child that we spend time with and do, or do not love. We vote everyday… simply by opening our mouths. By fearlessly addressing injustice when confronted by it; by laughing, smiling, and spreading joy to others, even those who have caused us pain.

The true change, is taking responsibility. Not a representative democracy but a direct engagement and transformation of the system that is rooted in our conscious evolution. Because this is bigger than any president… this is bigger than any of us.

Traveling the world-in less than 7 years over 23 countries-sparked a commitment in HAWAH to empower those less materially privileged. In 1999, working as an Americorps community organizer and mentor in Washington DC’s most under-resourced neighborhood, he encouraged youth to explore the roots of oppression. After graduating from American Univ. with a degree in Peace and Educational Philosophy, he was awarded a fellowship with the RFK Foundation to work as a special rep. to the U.N. and the World Conference Against Racism. HAWAH is co-founder/ executive director of One Common Unity, a non-profit org. that nurtures sustainable communities through innovative peace education, arts, and media. For 3 years he directed the Peaceable Schools Program in DC’s largest high school-specifically leading Alternatives to Violence, Positive Stretch, Deep Breathing & Yoga classes. A spoken word poet known as EVERLUTIONARY, HAWAH has authored 3 books: Trails: Trust Before Suspicion (2001), Escape Extinction (2003) and zerONEss (2006). His work can be further explored at http://www.everlutionary.net

While listening to Joe Biden’s speech during the Democratic Convention he made reference to a statistic that I had not heard before then. It seemed to be an incredulous statement. I had to rewind the speech to make certain I had heard it correctly.

He had stated that Iraq has an 80 billion dollar surplus. I simply could not believe that it was true. How could this be? Certainly the majority of the American people do not know this or they would feel exactly as I do.

Further research indicated that there was more than just a grain of truth in what Joe Biden had said. In a New York Times article written by James Glanz and Campbell Robertson I discovered that by years end Iraq will have an approximate 78 billion dollars in surplus.

How does that make me feel? It makes me furious, it makes me angry, and it makes me frustrated. How about you?

There were a couple of other interesting facts in the article that I have referenced. United States taxpayers have spent 23.2 billion dollars to rebuild Iraq. Iraq has spent 3.9 billion dollars in those same areas.

A large part of Iraq’s current surplus is sitting in the Federal Reserve Bank. America will be paying Iraq nearly 436 million dollars in interest payments on that amount.

It honestly makes less than no sense to myself that we have put our nation’s economy at risk to finance a war where the people that we are supposed to be helping will do little to nothing to help themselves.

The Iraq war is costing us by one account 7.1 billion a month. The total cost of the war some experts are claiming will be over one trillion dollars. The American taxpayers have financed this war and will continue to finance this war years after it is over as we attempt to pay down the debt owed to the nations and the public who have lent us the money necessary to stay afloat. Our total outstanding debt right now is nearing 10 trillion dollars.

We need to bring our troops home. Three years is not soon enough for me. Having the majority of our troops home by Christmas would be an ideal goal but will never happen with the current administration.

John McCain continues to look down his nose at the American people as he tell us that we cannot afford to lose this war. Mr. McCain we cannot afford to maintain this war. Your definition of victory will cost us. A stable Iraqi democracy may never come to fruition no matter how much money we throw at the problem or how many American lives are lost. It will not be for lack of trying or because we lost but because the problems arise from within the culture. A culture that has deep roots.

First of all we have not lost this war. We have rid the world and Iraq of Saddam Hussein. We have decimated the terrorist forces that threaten us in Iraq. They have held a national election. Whether or not democracy in Iraq is sustainable will only be decided after we leave and whether we leave now or in one hundred years will have little influence. It is also important to note that Iraq’s current elected administration does not want us there.

Secondly by having our troops in the Middle East we have weakened both our economy and our ability to protect our homeland. Is that what you call winning? I call it foolish.

Of course the terrorists have regrouped in Afghanistan which is now the area that everyone seems to think that we need to focus on. Once we return stability there they will have probably moved back to Iraq or some other Arab nation. We will never be able to effectively rid the world of the anti-American influence in Iran without another trillion dollar war. Policing the Arab nations is not our responsibility. It is not even feasible, realistic or desirable. They are certainly laughing at us as we chase them around the desert from nation to nation while they hide in their caves and we send their leaders money in the form of oil payments. I do not like to think of our enemies laughing at us.

The initial call to action was due to our governments assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. We can reassure ourselves that if Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction that we would have rid Iraq of those fictional weapons.

There is one other cost that must not be discounted. That cost being the loss of many brave men and women. The fact that we have lost less lives than in other wars provides me with little solace. Although I should not speak to their families it is likely that it would provide little solace for them as well. The men and women currently serving as well as the ones that we have lost deserve our utmost respect and admiration.

That sacrifice alone is too much for a nation that does not want us there and who will not take care of themselves.

Perhaps Iraq will loan us the money to rebuild the levees surrounding New Orleans to a point that they are able to hold back the waters from even the most unimaginable storm surge. That would be money well spent.

Dan Bimrose is the creator of coffeeandprozac.com a website devoted to making people think, laugh or cry. Daily Opinions, Editorials, and Stories He suggests dropping bread crumbs so that you can find your way back on a daily basis. Dan has also just unveiled his latest website tuesdaysreleases.com which provides a convenient place for people to discover the latest DVD movies which have been released at their local video store.

“I’m in show business, why come to me?”

“War is show business, that’s why we’re here.”

- “Wag the Dog” (1997 film)

The first week of August 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?

It hardly took psychic powers to see that the Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue. Formally known as the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the PPT was once concealed and its very existence denied as if it were a matter of strict national security. But the PPT has now come out of the closet. What was once a legally questionable “manipulator” of markets has become a sanctioned stabilizer and protector of markets. The new tone was set in January 2008, when global markets took their worst tumble since September 11, 2001. Senator Hillary Clinton said in a statement reported by the State News Service:

“I think it’s imperative that the following step be taken. The President should have already and should do so very quickly, convene the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. That’s something that he can ask the Secretary of the Treasury to do. This has to be coordinated across markets with the regulators here and obviously with regulators and central banks around the world.”

The mystery over what was going on with the dollar the first week in August was solved by James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, who wrote on August 7:

“[T]he banking problems in the United States continue to mount, while the federal government’s deficit continues to soar out of control. So what happened to cause the dollar to rally over the past three weeks? In a word, intervention. Central banks have propped up the dollar, and here’s the proof.

“When central banks intervene in the currency markets, they exchange their currency for dollars. Central banks then use the dollars they acquire to buy US government debt instruments so that they can earn interest on their money. The debt instruments central banks acquire are held in custody for them at the Federal Reserve, which reports this amount weekly.

“On July 16, 2008 the Federal Reserve reported holding $2,349 billion of US government paper in custody for central banks. In its report released today, this amount had grown over the past three weeks to $2,401 billion, a 38.4% annual rate of growth. So central banks were accumulating dollars over the past three weeks at a rate far above what one would expect as a result of the US trade deficit. The logical conclusion is that they were intervening in currency markets. They were buying dollars for the purpose of propping it up, to keep the dollar from falling off the edge of the cliff and doing so ignited a short covering rally, which is not too difficult to do given the leverage employed in the markets these days by hedge funds and others.”

Just as central banks manipulate currencies in concert, so gold can be manipulated by massive selling of central bank reserves. Oil and any other market can be manipulated as well. But markets can be manipulated by only so much and for only so long without fixing the underlying problem. There is more bad news coming down the pike, news of such magnitude that no amount of ordinary manipulation is liable to conceal it.

For one thing, roughly $400 billion in ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) have or will reset between March and October of this year. Assuming 3 to 6 months for strapped debtors to actually hit the wall with their payments, a huge wave of defaults is about to strike, continuing through March 2009 – just in time for the next huge wave of resets, in option ARMs. Option ARMs are loans with the option to pay even less than just the interest on the loan monthly, increasing the loan balance until the loan reaches a certain amount (typically 110% to 125% of the original loan balance), when it resets. The $800 billion credit line recently opened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be not only tapped but tapped out, at taxpayer expense. The underlying problem is little discussed but impossible to repair – a one quadrillion dollar derivatives scheme that is now imploding. Banks everywhere are facing massive writeoffs, putting the whole banking system on the brink of collapse. Only public bailouts will save it, but they could bankrupt the nation.

What to do? War and threats of war have been used historically to distract the population and deflect public scrutiny from economic calamity. As the scheme was summed up in the trailer to the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” -

“There’s a crisis in the White House, and to save the election, they’d have to fake a war.”

Perhaps that explains the sudden breakout of war in the Eurasian country of Georgia on August 8, just 3 months before the November elections. August 8 was the day the Olympic Games began in Beijing, a distraction that may have been timed to keep China from intervening on Russia’s behalf. The mainstream media version of events is that Russia, the bully on the block, invaded its tiny neighbor Georgia; but not all commentators agree. Mikhail Gorbachev, writing in The Washington Post on August 12, observed:

“What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against ‘small, defenseless Georgia’ is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force.”

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power, commented in OpEdNews on August 11:

“The U.S. has long been involved in supporting ‘freedom movements’ throughout this region that have been attempting to replace Russian influence with U.S. corporate control. The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House (includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Obama foreign policy adviser Anthony Lake) have been key funders and supporters of placing politicians in power throughout Central Asia that would play ball with ‘our side’. None of this is about the good guys versus the bad guys. It is power bloc politics. Big money is at stake. [B]oth parties (Republican and Democrat) share a bi-partisan history and agenda of advancing corporate interests in this part of the world. Obama’s advisers, just like McCain’s (one of his top advisers was recently a lobbyist for the current government in Georgia) are thick in this stew.”

Brzezinski, who is now Obama’s adviser, was Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy adviser in the 1970s. He also served in the 1970s as director of the Trilateral Commission, which he co-founded with David Rockefeller Sr., considered by some to be the “master spider” of the Wall Street banking network. Brzezinski, who wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard, later boasted of drawing Russia into war with Afghanistan in 1979, “giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.” Is the Georgia affair an attempted repeat of that coup? Mike Whitney, a popular Internet commentator, observed on August 11:

“Washington’s bloody fingerprints are all over the invasion of South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili would never dream of launching a massive military attack unless he got explicit orders from his bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After all, Saakashvili owes his entire political career to American power-brokers and US intelligence agencies. If he disobeyed them, he’d be gone in a fortnight. Besides an operation like this takes months of planning and logistical support; especially if it’s perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympic games. (another petty neocon touch) That means Pentagon planners must have been working hand in hand with Georgian generals for months in advance. Nothing was left to chance.”

Part of that careful planning may have been the unprecedented propping up of the dollar and bombing of gold and oil the week before the curtain opened on the scene. Gold and oil had to be pushed down hard to give them room to rise before anyone shouted “hyperinflation!” As we watch the curtain rise on war in Eurasia, it is well to remember that things are not always as they seem. Markets are manipulated and wars are staged by Grand Chessmen behind the scenes.

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In “Web of Debt,” her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://www.webofdebt.com/ and http://www.ellenbrown.com/

Her eleven books include the bestselling “Nature’s Pharmacy,” co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.