WikiLeaks near release of secret US war documents

Peacenik seems to recall that the Pentagon Papers were credited with changing the public's perception of the Vietnam War. The New York Times published them. Major news. Peacenik thinks the mainstream media's coverage of new WikiLeaks will be minimal. The media has been totally neutered and co-opted. Western mainstream media has become Pravda. And the media doesn't care. And the public doesn't care. Peacenik wonders if anything can light a fire under the anti-war movement. At least the French haven't lost their ability to protest. Of course those protests don't warrant much coverage by the mainstream media either. The U.S. population must watch news reports of French riots uncomprehendingly. Just as they watch news reports of Wall Street corruption, war crimes, unemployment, fraud and violence in the U.S. Uncomprehendingly.

File - The Pentagon is seen in this aerial view in Washington, in this March 27, 2008 file photo. The WikiLeaks website appears close to releasing what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history _ hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports compiled after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a message posted to its Twitter page on Thursday Oct. 21, 2010, the organization said there was a "major WikiLeaks press conference in Europe coming up." (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File) (Charles Dharapak - AP)

LONDON -- The WikiLeaks website is poised to release what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history - hundreds of thousands of classified intelligence reports since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

U.S. officials said Friday they were racing to contain the damage from the imminent release, while NATO's top official told reporters he feared that lives could be put at risk by the mammoth disclosure.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said any release would create "a very unfortunate situation."

"I can't comment on the details of the exact impact on security, but in general I can tell you that such leaks ... may have a very negative security impact for people involved," he told reporters Friday in Berlin following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll Have a Dictatorship Soon in the US’

Will the U.S. end up in dictatorship? Peacenik thinks the Bush era was already a dictatorship. Crime thoughout the government and none of it prosecuted. But a dictator without the trappings of a democracy? Newsmax featured an article calling for a military coup against Obama. A congressman called Obama an enemy of humanity. The rightwing in the U.S. is arming itself and re-arming itself. Factories cannot keep up with ammunition orders. (The only growth industry left in the U.S.) Gore Vidal thinks there will be a dictatorship. Peacenik will watch Seven Days in May tonight. Peacenik thinks it could happen.

The grand old man of letters Gore Vidal claims America is ‘rotting away’ — and don’t expect Barack Obama to save it

by Tim Teeman

(The Times/UK)

A conversation with Gore Vidal unfolds at his pace. He answers questions imperiously, occasionally playfully, with a piercing, lethal dryness. He is 83 and in a wheelchair (a result of hypothermia suffered in the war, his left knee is made of titanium). But he can walk ("Of course I can") and after a recent performance of Mother Courage at London's National Theatre he stood to deliver an anti-war speech to the audience.

How was his friend Fiona Shaw in the title role? "Very good." Where did they meet? Silence. The US? "Well, it wasn't Russia." What's he writing at the moment? "It's a little boring to talk about. Most writers seem to do little else but talk about themselves and their work, in majestic terms." He means self-glorifying? "You've stumbled on the phrase," he says, regally enough. "Continue to use it."

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U.S. Inflation to Approach Zimbabwe Level, Faber Says (Update2)

By Chen Shiyin and Bernard Lo

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy will enter “hyperinflation” approaching the levels in Zimbabwe because the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said.

Prices may increase at rates “close to” Zimbabwe’s gains, Faber said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate reached 231 million percent in July, the last annual rate published by the statistics office.

“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation,” Faber said. “The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.”

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Peacenik doesn't know what to think about the inflation/deflation debate. Faber is a respected pundit, but some accuse him of just trying to sell his book. On the one hand housing prices are still dropping, and some stuff seems to be getting cheaper. But not a pint of beer....yet. On the other hand world economies are running trillion dollar deficits, which in the past has led to inflation. The billion dollar Zimbabwean burger is a scary thought.

Ilargi and others argue that the black hole of debt is just mopping up all the liquidity that is being thrown into the system. He argues that there isn't enough money in the world to fill the black hole. Can the average Joe, someone with few assets and/or a chunk of debt, somehow hedge himself/herself against either eventuality? Can anyone? Can Peacenik?

Iran's nuclear terrorism fears

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

"The commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with greater urgency, it is more likely than not a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013."

This statement was made recently by Graham Allison, one of the authors of "World at Risk", a report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, during his testimony before the US Congress. Sounding alarms about the growing risks of a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, the report gloomily states that America's "margin of safety has decreased".

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Its interesting how egocentric the U.S. and the U.S. media is. The rest of the world barely exists. Unless of course the U.S. wants to wage war against some part of it. Does Iran have its own problems? You'd never know by reading and watching the U.S. media. Peacenik got sucked into believing that the U.S and or Israel would attack Iran before the end of George Bush's term of office. Peacenik is still worried about Israel attacking Iran. The New York Times had an opinion piece on the Iranian threat today. The neo cons still have unrestricted access to the media and to Obama. The neo cons still fan the flames. But Iran does have its own problems. Including a nuclear Pakistan. Can Obama reach out to Iran? Or, will ramping up the rhetoric against Iran turn out to be a convenient distraction for Obama. Peacenik is watching and worried.

Perestroika 2.0 beta

by Dmitry Orlov

Congratulations, everyone, we have a new president: a fresh new face, a capable, optimistic, inspiring figure, ushering in a new era of responsibility, ready to confront the many serious challenges that face the nation; in short, we have us a Gorbachev. I don't know about you, but I find the parallel rather obvious.

Obama wishes to save the economy, and to inspire us with words such as "We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories." [Inauguration speech] At the same time, he cautions us that "We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense" -- an echo of Dick Cheney's "The American way of life is non-negotiable." And so we descend from the nonexistent but wonderfully evocative "clean coal" to the more pedestrian "Put a little dirt in your gas tank!"

But these are all euphemisms: the reality is that it is either fossil fuels, which are running out while simultaneously destabilizing the planet's climate and poisoning the biosphere, or the end of industrial civilization, or (most likely) both, happening in that order. According to the latest International Energy Agency projections, the half-life of industrial civilization can be capped at about 17 years: it's all downhill from here. All industrial countries will be forced to rapidly deindustrialize on this time scale, but the one that has spent the last century building an infrastructure that has no future -- based on little houses interconnected by cars, with all of the accompanying moribund, unmaintainable infrastructure -- is virtually guaranteed to fall the hardest. An American's two greatest enemies are his house and his car. But try telling that to most Americans, and you will get ridicule, consternation, and disbelief. Thus, the problem has no political solution. Tragically, Obama happens to be a politician.

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Dmitry Orlov is the author of Closing the Collapse Gap. He foresees the U.S. collapsing just like the Soviet Union collapsed. Peacenik thinks Orlov is on the something. Peacenik thinks the U.S. is going through a slow motion collapse right now. Will the U.S., in a state of societal collapse, be worse than the Soviet Union when it collapsed? Can the world survive a U.S. societal collapse, without falling into global thermal nuclear war, or world resource wars? Will the Coyotes survive in Pheonix? These are things that Peacenik thinks about. Have a good weekend.

US diplomacy tainted by 'militarization'

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - While the Pentagon's budget has risen to heights not seen since World War II, United States diplomatic and foreign aid assets have largely wasted away and must be quickly rebuilt by any new administration that takes office in January, said a new report released in Washington this week by former senior foreign service officers.

The report, written by the American Academy of Diplomacy (AAD) and the Henry L Stimson Center, calls for a nearly 50% increase in the number of diplomats and aid and development specialists recruited into the foreign service over the next five years.

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Peacenik isn't surprised that the U.S. diplomatic core has been hollowed out. The whole fucking world has been hollowed out by the Bush administration policies. Given the state of the world economy its nice that someone is thinking positively about the future. Peacenik is encouraged.