By Gerry Hassan, Anthony Barnett - 2009-01-05

In an extract from: 'Breaking Out of Britain's Neo-Liberal State [1]' published as a Compass Thinkpiece [2] today, and based on their original openDemocracy essay in OurKingdom, Gerry Hassan and Anthony Barnett identify seven key steps towards the renewal of British democracy.

By WILLIAM BLUM - January 7, 2009

The building and protection of oil and gas pipelines in Afghanistan, to continue farther to Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, has been a key objective of US policy since before the 2001 American invasion and occupation of the country...A planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support from Washington because...the US is eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. But security for such projects remains daunting, and that's where the US and NATO forces come in to play.

By Valia Kaimaki - Znet

The government...used the masked petrol-bombers to inspire fear of a "threat to democracy". "What democracy?" ask the protesters. It is true that schoolchildren and university students attacked police stations with rocks and that others damaged banks. But only a few days earlier the government, indifferent to the impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of Greeks, gave those banks a gift of €28bn ($39bn). And these are the banks which use private debt-collection agencies to insult and threaten anyone who owes them small sums of money, and to seize their property.

By Seth Sandronsky - December 31, 2008

Millions of Americans face home foreclosures, health care, job and pension losses. However, none of these crises currently threatens to alter the flow of their tax dollars to Israel's government. It takes these greenbacks and buys F-16 jets made by Lockheed Martin to drop bombs on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip...This aggression is an effect of the U.S. military-industrial complex...The Israeli government's intent to liquidate Hamas connects with the U.S. military-industrial complex.

By PATRICK BOND - December 26-28, 2008

...[N]eoliberalism may have another breath of life, with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation applied from above by Barak Obama or the IMF. Much stronger pressure is needed from below to resist. Until grassroots forces again gather their strength to mount an assault, national-scale challenges to global financial power are the only ways forward given adverse global-scale power relations.

By ROBERT WEISSMAN - Counterpunch

Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008:

By Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee

Today, the Israeli occupation army committed a new massacre in Gaza, causing the death and injury of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including a yet unknown number of school children who were headed home from school when the first Israeli military strikes started. This latest bloodbath...culminates months of an Israeli siege of Gaza that should be widely condemned and prosecuted as an act of genocide against the 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied coastal strip.

By Nigel Morris, Ben Russell and Alistair Dawber - December 25, 2008

Britain faces an unemployment "bloodbath" in the new year with many tens of thousands of jobs axed in the public and private sectors...Senior government figures are braced for a dramatic lengthening in [unemployment lines] in the first quarter of 2009, as employers delay announcing redundancies until after Christmas...Thousands of civil servants and town hall workers will share the pain as government efficiency savings bite, while struggling retailers and manufacturing industry are heading for heavy redundancies.

In 1995, just before the Harris Government cut social assistance rates by 21.6%, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty marched from the low-income community of Regent Park into affluent Rosedale. The impending welfare cut and Provincial tax breaks would soon transfer about $1 million a month from one community to the other. Replicated across Ontario, this vast transfer of wealth to the already wealthy was at the very heart of the ‘Common Sense Revolution’. Initiatives around poverty that ignore this continuing injustice are of very limited value.

By Nikos Raptis and Chris Spannos - December 24, 2008

The most important aspects...are the joblessness, the salaries of...the "generation of the 700 Euros" [about US $ 970 per month], the University degrees that are almost useless, the flight of Greek companies to neighboring countries in search of cheap labor, the "flexible" treatment of hiring and firing, the unbelievably high prices in the Greek supermarkets much above the ones in the rest of the European Union, the scandalous treatment of the money of the taxpayers by the Government, the unbelievably bad condition of the National Health System, the exorbitant profits of the Greek banks, and finally the "strange" insistence of the Greek governing elite to follow the "neo-liberal" economic model after what has happened worldwide.

Abolish this illegal privately owned and run banking cartel.

Thursday, 18 December 2008 - National Terror Alert Response Center

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks...State and local police in Arizona say they have broad plans to deal with social unrest, including trouble resulting from economic distress.

By Dean Baker - December 18, 2008

The Bush administration is packing its bags and about to head out the door. As they leave, we should insist they take the garbage with them. Among the items in the garbage pile should be the "ownership society."

The City of Ottawa has now agreed to host the international CANSEC weapons show at the municipality's prime publically-funded facility, Lansdowne Park, between May 27 and 28, 2009...Among the more than 200 military firms flogging their wares inside the Ottawa Congress Centre at CANSEC 2008, were some of the world's biggest and most profitable war industries: BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell, L-3, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman...These six firms are prime contractors for many of the deadliest weapons systems ever made, including dozens of different bombers, fighter jets, bombs and missiles. Remarkably, these six corporate giants sold about US$100 billion worth of military equipment to the Pentagon in 2007, and their combined revenue from global military sales was $130 billion in 2006.

By TOM BARRY - December 12/14, 2008

Mining, railroads, agribusiness, and, recently, construction have been among the many U.S. industries that historically [have] been driven by an abundant supply of immigrants. But now, when the economy is imploding, most industries are shedding immigrants. The private prison industry, however, is booming, largely because of the ever-increasing supply of immigrants supplied by the federal government.