The planners of the crisis in Georgia clearly wanted to make sure that Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war.

What they mean is that no one but the United States can invade
other nations. This has to be insanity; this is disconnected from
all reality. The neoconservatives are insane. They certainly think
they can outplay Russia and they certainly think they can outplay
Iran.

The US seemed to have missed-or gambled it could manage-the depth
of Russia's anger and the resolve of the Georgian president to
provoke the Russians. Both Democrats and Republicans misread
Russia's determination to dominate its traditional spheres of
influence.

War and threats of war have been used historically to distract the
population. 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.

Military attacks on Iran will be totally unjustified because, despite all propaganda, the fact is that Iran is no threat to any nation. Attacks on Iran will put many of us on the street, unemployed and hungry. Should we not care about our own well-being?

Know-nothingism is the insistence there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem. The party's de facto slogan has become: "Real men don't think things through." Republicans believe tweedy intellectuals cause all the trouble.

The success of `the Surge' is becoming almost received wisdom in
the US. This is strange since, if the US strategy did win such an
important victory, why do American generals need more soldiers,
currently 147,000 of them in Iraq, than they did before `the Surge'
started?

The stock market- and real estate-bubble occur in advanced
capitalism. The government response was to create a second bubble,
the great bubble transfer. The real estate bubble crashed last
summer. John Bellamy Foster teaches at the University of Oregon and
is editor of Monthly Review. Financialialization is the shift from
production to finance. The economy has slowed down for decades.
Real wages have not gone up but have stagnated for 30 years.
Consumption has been based mainly on borrowing. Speculation
provided stimulus and kept the economy from sinking. Bundling risk
enabled expanding the mortgage market. Structured investment
vehicles (SIVs) were created so risks did not appear on the balance
sheets. All this created greater risk like a bunch of fire crackers
bundled together.