Every New Year's we look back or look ahead. I tried it myself and I can't say I was particularly thrilled by any defining moments knocking out what's on tap for next year. Things sucked for most of us and the world. On the plus side Obama got elected and won a Nobel Prize for getting elected, so he had a good year, while for the rest of us cheaper Blue-ray players are now an option.

Wars And The Economy


Next year we could get lucky, but the rules of the game haven't changed enough to make any kind of recovery happen soon. War in Iraq, War in Afghanistan, and more Terror. Any correlation there for our politicians? Don't think they see it yet. And if there's no peace recovery, economic recovery isn't likely either. Any thinkers or tinkerers in Washington see that? When you spend all your money on war and bailing out bankers and banks and Wall Street and Detroit, there's not much left in the pot for Main Street except for potholes. In the meantime all you guys without a paycheck, put on your best torn T-shirt and get into construction before everybody else figures out it's the only real Stimulus we'll get in 2010.

H1N1 Swine Flu

Other big stories weren't good news either. H1N1 Swine Flu did make a two stage attack, as I forecast on NewsHammer months before anyone else did. Now it's over 12,000 dead says the WHO, but the media after going whole hog on the story, are now critical of a massive over-response to a pandemic that missed the boat.

Sorry, it's not over yet. Viruses mutate and this one has developed into several strains. Ordinarily those who got their shots based on the initial virus type or who caught an airborne version of it already, will largely be protected from the new strains. Those still at risk will not have had either, and that means most people everywhere. As it looks like a weak pandemic now, the demand for inoculations is way down, with people ignoring or postponing a shot.

This is an iffy choice that could backfire. Getting the shot and so playing it safe, is the way to go for most of us. The problem is like with all vaccines, a risk of side-effects. The worst case is autism in young children, still debated as a maybe disease from vaccines, and Guillaume Barré syndrome, a dangerous neurological disease that can leave children and adults permanently damaged. A few cases have been reported among many who have had the new H1N1 vaccine. But over the years other flu shots have been blamed for thousands of cases of this otherwise rare neurological disease. Anyone already very sick or immune compromised, could die of complications.

With the heat off for now, it's a good time to talk to your doctor on whether or not to get a shot. It's still possible we could see a million or more dead in countries ill-prepared for another resurgence of H1N1.

Michael Jackson: Dead Like Elvis

The shock of Michael Jackson's death also took our breath away. With a media life of its own, as reported and forecast in NewsHammer, it rivaled and then eclipsed the media hounds hunt for Wacko Jacko, the child molester who never was. A sad comment on them and us, being sucked in for years by bloodthirsty journalism out for a buck. The orgy of how this could have happened, never looked far enough back into how it did happen, just catching the endless parade of weird rumors, alibis and genuine worldwide remorse. Journalists should have fried some of their own for Michael's premature death as well as the standup comics who pulled out their knives nightly for our Caesar of Pop, sorry King of.

Google And The Death Of Newspapers

Another big story on NewsHammer this year still revving up slowly in the press, that newspapers and magazines are being Googled to death. Bleeding slowly at first I guess they didn't notice. Now hemorrhaging they're talking of fighting back, Murdock & Co. Why here's the answer: We'll charge the freeloading downloading bastards! Wrong again. We'll sell our stuff on Kindle! Sure you will. Who's gonna pay though for dull and boring rubber-necking journalism, especially from Iowa if you're in Colorado?

Magazines and newspapers wrecked their future long ago, when they raised prices up and up instead of getting more readers and more from advertisers, and then cut back on journalists and meaningful coverage from City Hall, to city, town and country, while boiling down Culture to gizmos and fashion statements. To relying on the wire services for big stories and forgetting they were the conscience of their town and nation. Now a paper from City X is largely the same paper from City Y and Z. Try selling that. Try selling bloated or useless magazines or cut to the bone crap sheets. It looks like half of all newspapers and magazines today will fail in the next 10 years, only the best surviving and those with a niche somewhere in OpraLand and GossipWorld.

This is also Google's fault as I said this year in 2 stories on NewsHammer, but Google, the Gentle Giant of Publishing, crushes every little thing as it goes for a walk to find some more money. Can't see what's going under its footprint even when it bothers to look.

Well Google is not some mad post apocalyptic monster out to destroy everything, but still we're getting what's good for Google must be good for everyone else outside of GogglePlex. Shades of the old GM philosophy that killed streetcars, trains and the electric car, with their hands out now for more government money for GM's poor starving brother, GMAC.

Why do the Feds listen to these guys in suits? Hey Buddy, can you spare a Billion? Might as well give it to winos or druggies and street people. At least they'd spend it or give it away and provide some real Economic Stimulus.

Will Google be taking corporate welfare handouts one of these days? Well, if it's not blushing now as it steamrolls over journalism and publishing, what will stop it? Not that Google is mainly to blame. By dominating web advertising Google only collects all the loose change we click into big bucks for them without writing one word of copy. Come on Google, play fair, Do No Evil. Rewrite the AdSense rules on web ads and who gets what and how, charging advertisers for display ads and not just click-throughs and share all the revenue with your publishers as the real solution. Google could make even more money this way, but we'll save journalism, get more jobs, more people working again like the good old days before these guys made billions putting Google together for fun in a garage on pizza and credit cards.

Will they? No, Google won't even answer an email, never mind coming to the rescue of an industry they're nailing into a coffin. Can't you hear 2009 scratching the lid to get out and live again! Hey Google! Write home before your old lady croaks and you're up shit creek.

There were other big stories in 2009 like Global Warming, but politicians think it can wait. We're all too busy with the future, Googling for the Apple Tablet and other wonders soon to drive us crazy everyday, worrying about Tiger Woods ever golfing again and Charlie Sheen overdosing on his own persona in Two and a Half Men. How could they do that when they were so cool? This is the world that matters, I keep forgetting. Oh well there's 2010 and parties tonight. Happy New Year!

--Alan Gillis

Since the big Latino Show on the White House lawn, and some State Dinner party-crashing, the Tiger missing an easy shot around a fire hydrant, I thought there might be some connections to the War in Afghanistan. Yesterday night after 200 assessments of the situation, President Obama gave Afghanistan his best shot.

A bit of déjà vu like Bush at Annapolis for starters, dragged into a full blown time warp. Not hearing anything new as in the Bush Standard in how to win the War on Terror, I was fidgeting, half expecting Rumsfeld to take the stage and liven things up a bit.

If the war is winnable we've got twin it. When you're down, you raise the stakes--(cell phone rings) Right. And stay the course!

What about cashing out? Turn the whole thing over to the UN? Where was all that electrifying Obama spin on reality? Not there, not even reflected from his audience, respectful and subdued but missing the old Obama. The Obama recap of the war with no fresh insights, disappointing. No one totally sure what happened with all the self-serving justifications of a gung-ho Bush era or why we're still there 8 years later. Where was Obama's easy Latino beat? Easier to throw a party or crash one. Harder to get things done.

OK, if the Taliban ran a hard line Islamic State, like Iran, like Saudi, wasn't that their business? Once upon a time they weren't the bad guys. They were popular in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Started by an idealistic group of Afghan students with the backing of the mujaheddin who fought the Russians, supported then by America. Trying to rebuild a war-torn Afghanistan. Stopped the opium War Lords and banned opium farms. Back then who ever heard of them? Who helped them?

Looks like Americans are fighting the wrong war again. Now another 30,000 soldiers to fight the Taliban. Al Qaeda too, but where are they in such a vast inhospitable wilderness of high mountains, snow and desert? Will 30,000 more Americans find them all? If they are still in Afghanistan? The Taliban though are everywhere and the easy target. They're fighting. Opium is back and so are the War Lords. The Taliban are behind it, is the conventional view. Maybe they are or maybe like the Americans and NATO they're turning a blind eye, while fighting for their lives. There's a war on.

All the Taliban ever did was provide safe-haven for Al Qaeda. According to the Bush Doctrine those who harbor enemies are enemies. So we get them all! Well just what kind of harboring was that? Like Iraqis harboring Saddam, or like harboring a brother the police are after?

Isn't Pakistan doing the same thing? Harboring Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Not officially, but sympathetically and effectively? They're all Muslims after all. Is paying informers, is blood money working? Somewhat.

Should America invade Pakistan then? The logical next step. Obama wouldn't do that but what if the war drags on? Past Obama into Palin territory?

Obama wants the war over by 2011, a colossal job. He's counting on something else besides fighting, a bit of sanity delivered into the mix of his low key speech at West Point. Work towards co-opting the Taliban, in effect get them on our side. Which translates into buying them off. At this stage you can't get their real support as you've been smashing them for 8 years for what exactly? And destroying house by house what's left of their country. Is this a workable plan? Looks modest and very long term, something for another generation of Afghans and Americans. Wasn't Obama elected for leadership? Then why not take a quick and effective approach? Turn over Afghanistan to the UN? There's a good chance it will work, an honorable American exit, honorable for the Taliban too, the war finally over for everyone. Isn't that the UN's job anyway, to keep the peace?

Of course in this war the Taliban will pocket American peace dollars, but what will they do with them? What's Karzai doing with his? Not much progress everyone says. Obama wants more money for the Afghan Army, the Afghan Police. Way more soldiers, way more police. Who's side are they on? Many in it for themselves at least, in a lawless and dangerous land where official corruption and abuse of power is once again a way of life. Of course they need better training. I almost fell off my chair! Are we on the same page, in the same world?

By the same token what's happening in Iraq now? Same sort of thing, Obama's Taliban strategy a leaf from lessons learned in Iraq as it happens. Though it seems to be working in Iraq on the surface at least, except Iraqi infrastructure is a war-torn mess, and very high unemployment undermines what forced American Armed Forces stability there is. Just how much goodwill is there left that Americans truly enjoy, indeed in the entire Middle East? Enough for an end to terror and a real peace?

Little enough as we'll find out once Americans leave. Or will they? Is yes we can now yes maybe we can? The unpleasant reality is two Arab countries wrecked. Who is to blame? Stability in any case remains a dream. If most Iraqis didn't like Saddam, most now don't like Americans either, their lives still in ruins, everywhere the shadow of more terror around the corner. Terrorists and bombs, but also official corruption and abuse, police you can't trust, police you fear, and more and more crime on the streets in the crossfire of war. In Afghanistan it's worse. There was no corrupt regime to begin with. Just a backward-looking Islamic State, not despotic but legitimate, not initially anti-American, just ultra-conservative, looking to revitalize itself.

If Obama follows through on his forced pacification of Afghanistan with some more American troops and dollars to grease the wheels, will it work?

Not unless he knows the Arabs better. These are a passionate people from the Middle Ages. They're nurture their grudges and their pain and fight again. Unless they get honorable terms.

But Obama's plan is better than trying to kill every last American enemy. For every dead martyr as Bush saw, another dozen martyrs rise. Even during World War II, was it the goal of the Allies to eliminate every last German soldier, every last Japanese soldier to win the war? Or eliminate even those who harbored them, their wives, their children?

It might also be useful to find out why a handful of Arab terrorists, largely from Saudi, attacked the US anyway? Even Bin Laden hasn't told us yet.

To stop the war shouldn't we find out why everybody is fighting?

--Alan Gillis