"Full Spectrum Dominance": A U.S. missile launch -- Photograph by Simon Norfolk, from the Belfast Photo Festival
“THE TIDE OF WAR IS RECEDING.” OH, REALLY?
(World Socialist)
President Obama, twice in his speech on a new “defense strategy guidance,” repeats this summary of “new” American military policy. While the “guidance” does envision a mandated reduction in expenditures for “conventional” ground forces and extended territorial occupations, it simply enshrines as policy what is already taking place in fact: a shift to remote assaults from the air and the sea on ever-shifting targets in an agenda of full spectrum dominance of the U.S. in the pursuit of its “national interests” throughout the world.
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AND THE LONG-PLAYING GEO-POLITICAL GAME OF PIPELINISTAN GOES ON IN CENTRAL ASIA.
(Asia Times)
Pepe Escobar for Asia Times continues his own LP journalistic project of featuring the struggle between world powers, especially China and the U.S., for economic dominance in the oil producing and pipeline transporting activities of the “-stans” of that region. The early bottom line for the new year assessment of that ongoing struggle is that China’s own efforts are succeeding while the U.S. “Silk Road” project is in tatters.
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FINANCES OF THE U.S.: WHEN YOUR DEBTS ARE EATING UP YOUR ECONOMIC GROWTH: TIME FOR A DEBT COUNSELOR?
(USA Today)
USA Today reports projections of a “symbolic tipping point” in federal finances as, for the first time, the total amount of national indebtedness to all creditors, about $15 trillion, is expected to exceed the amount of growth in the gross national product.
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YES, VIRGINIA: THERE IS SOLITARY CONFINEMENT OF 2/3 OF YOUR INMATES AT RED ONION STATE PRISON.
(Washington Post)
A Washington Post article highlights the growing prevalence in the use of solitary confinement in prisons across the country, especially in “law and order” states across the country. The article also features description of the numerous incarceration “watch dog” groups who are struggling to keep this situation in the spotlight of public attention.
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MOVE OVER NEW YORK TIMES: A DAYTONA BEACH MEDIA CONGLOMERATE IS TAKING OVER 16 OF YOUR “LOCAL” NEWSPAPER HOLDINGS.
(Daytona Beach News-Journal)
The Halifax Media Group has purchased these papers from the Times, reversing the trend for the “all the news fit to print” acquisition of local newspapers. In Florida, these include the Gainesville Sun, Ocala Star Banner, Lakeland Ledger and Sarasota Herald-Tribune. In a press release, the Halifax group promises a new emphasis on LOCAL news coverage, an innovation for most of these papers which have relied heavily in stories from the Times and/or national wire services. The proof will be in the pudding—will the Gainesville Sun begin to have reporters available for investigative reporting on local issues?
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Quote of the day…
(The US military will retain the capacity to) secure territory and populations and facilitate a transition to stable governance on a small scale for a limited period using standing forces and, if necessary, for an extended period with mobilized forces.
From a Pentagon document, a “defense strategy guidance” unveiled by President Obama in a speech on a “new departure” in U.S. military policy.
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Analyses of our state of perpetual war tells us that if there were a draft, we would have disengaged long ago; suffering is limited to a few service families without the broad leavening influence of shared sacrifice
We were warned about the Military Industrial Complex by Dwight D. Eisenhower, but no one was listening. To say we would be weakened when we are spending more than all the other countries in the world combined, is one thing and one thing only. Greed. The people who are making billions of dollars supplying incredibly high priced technology we never use, and the privateers who keep us at war somewhwere in the world constantly are the ones who are threatened, their profits are threatened that is.
It is decades past time when we need to dial back militaryt spending and focus on infrastructure spending. We have millions out of work, and much to do that doesn’t involve blowing things or people up.