Capitalism Short Circuits Our Moral Hard-Wiring

By Gary Olson

Perhaps not since the 1930s have our citizens been more skeptical of received wisdom about our socioeconomic system. That is, the carefully manufactured narrative of market capitalist identity and its assumptions about human nature are now thrown into sharp relief.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21499.htm

The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff

By Chris Hedges

The multiple failures that beset the country, from our mismanaged economy to our shredded constitutional rights to our lack of universal health care to our imperial debacles in the Middle East, can be laid at the feet of our elite universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, along with most other elite schools, do a poor job educating students to think.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21487.htm

Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff to be electronically tagged:

The latest sensational twist in the mushrooming financial scandal came as 70-year-old Madoff fled his £6million New York apartment and went into hiding to escape furious creditors, many of them former friends and lifelong business associates.
http://tinyurl.com/3g2sqk

Bernie Madoff's Victims: The List:

Word on the identities of Bernie Madoff's clients / victimes continues to emerge. The total losses reported so far add up to about $30 billion.
http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/bernie-madoff-hosed-client-list

The American-Made Insurgency in Afghanistan

A Million McVeighs Now

By Chris Floyd

The "Good War" in Afghanistan - the Bush-launched war that Barack Obama tells us we must fight and win - continues to deteriorate before our eyes. Just like every other operation in the so-called "War on Terror" (another Bush-launched campaign that Obama has fully embraced as his own), the Afghan war, now in its seventh year, has proven entirely counter-productive to its stated aims.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21488.htm

Taliban Leader Mullah Omar Urges Seven Point Plan for Peace :

"For this to work, the armies can't be brought from immediate Muslims countries, such as Pakistan, Iran or Turkey...They have to be brought from countries like Jordan, Algeria and Egypt."
http://tinyurl.com/7cdjdw

Should Dick Cheney Be Hanged?

By Rachel Maddow Video And Transcript

We hanged people for waterboarding as a war crime, in Dick Cheney's lifetime. With that is as the historical context, the vice president cavalierly told ABC News that he specifically approved that same technique being used against the prisoner named Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21495.htm

John Dean: 'Serious consequences' if Obama doesn't prosecute torture:

Vice President Dick Cheney's admission that he authorized waterboarding has focused attention on possible Bush administration war crimes, and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean believes there will be "serious consequences" if the Obama administration tries to avoid singling out those involved for prosecution.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/John_Dean_Serious_consequences_for_not_1219.html

Not So Fast:

American and Iraqi military and diplomatic officials insist that a residual U.S. force of considerable size is likely to remain for the medium to long term, as will the U.S. bases in Iraq that Democrats over the last two years have insisted must not be permanent.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3692c736-406c-4ee1-9bb9-4ec6cc15531f

Morales urges action over Cuba:

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, has said that all Latin American nations should expel US ambassadors in their country's until the American economic embargo against Cuba is ended.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/12/20081217165622147627.html

Guantanamo 'worst place on Earth':

AN Algerian-born man who has just been freed from Guantanamo Bay has described the US "war on terror" camp as the worst place on Earth, in an interview published in a Bosnian newspaper.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24816310-12335,00.html