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

Like everybody else I've been dazzled by the New President. Nothing like the old Bush, cooler even than Clinton in his best suit. I'm still charmed. Obama wow! Here's a guy who knows how to talk.

On the eve of his first hundred days I wonder if there's anything more to him than saying all the right things, at least to Democrats and European lefties and doggone it the G20 to boot. A huge accomplishment right there that eclipses the standard notion of American Literacy, doing great on a Spelling Bee or making a dumb feelgood movie about it.

I'd give him another 100 days to deliver on what he says so well, but some Americans don't feel that's a good idea I was mildly surprised to find out on a long train ride through the still glacial forests of North Ontario. In the Via Rail dining car the steward sat me down with a table full of Americans doing the continental tour east of BC.

It wasn't long before the small talk turned to Obama. What do Americans back home think of Obama? It's hardly scientific posing the big question to 3 Floridans on vacation who just might be representative of some other Floridans or Southerners or Americans at large or Americans in general. But they looked mainstream middle-aged, so it was worth a try. Is Obama as popular as he was at the Inauguration?

More popular outside the country. One hit, one miss. I didn't have to ask if they were Republicans, nor would you if you wanted to be polite and get at how they honestly felt, politics aside. Still I was a bit puzzled that the tone had changed at our table from yes we can to no we shouldn't have done it.

The odd thing was though if they didn't like Obama much, point after point, except for a few points, I kept hearing that Obama was doing more or less what Bush had done. Though they were for Bush they weren't for Obama.

Whatever Obama said, Obama like Bush was still pushing for a victory in Iraq with Bush's main man Gates. Leaving 50,000 soldiers behind after the pullout to make sure, is hardly the pre-election promise of our troops are going home. But that was a pretty good way out my friends agreed.

After the war and why hit Iraq in the first place, we digested the economy. If Bush started the bailouts -- I said, and they jumped in with -- what did Obama do except throw more money out the window? Bush didn't start the bailouts either, but his hands were tied by the Democrats who controlled the House and pushed for the bailouts. Which measure Bush could have vetoed I forgot to say.

But we were ready to admit to no easy answers on what to do and plenty of risks whatever was done to save the economy. Still for them it came down to Obama as the wrong man for the job. In America it always boils down to Republicans vs Democrats. So can you have a free debate? Not exactly, as R&D runs as deep as two religions at war over Sunday dinner.

Even if the bailouts worked which the table thought unlikely, the only safe money was in T-Bills or under your mattress. Not even bonds were a good bet. The bottom of the market was coming when commercial property prices were bound to be hit hard and printing that extra two trillion dollars was probably going to mean runaway inflation like Zimbabwe. And that was going to make the next generation, though I demurred here, hard-nosed and conservative. More like desperate I thought if worst came to worst, maybe a neo-feudalism emerging from an economic collapse like some Hollywood version of a grimy broken-down future. But I wanted to hear what they had to say.

Like it or not you have to pay the bills, they said. And we all agreed that leaving that problem for later while spending madly now, Obama was asking for trouble he wouldn't have to face after he left Washington.

All hypothetical like a possible economic recovery. But with the Bush record in, with Bush presiding over the biggest combination decline in American fortunes and prestige ever, I had to wince at the fair shake he was still getting from my new friends. Wasn't Bush running two miserable wars, usually enough to fix any economy, and wasn't he minding the store when it went bankrupt?

Clinton started it! Was I hearing things? Hillary? The other Clinton who did a nice job on the economy? With Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. That's when the bad loans started to people who couldn't pay.

Can't say I remember that? With Clinton pursued 24 hour a day by media bloodhounds over his sex life? With impeachment proceedings in Congress going on straight out of The Merchant of Venice? Who was watching anything else, who would know what Clinton did with Freddie and Fannie if anything? That's America for you. You can believe just about anything happening and find something to back it up. Bill Clinton did it! Hillary shredded the Double F Memo! First Lewinski's dress, then toxic assets as government welfare. Maybe somebody should check this?

Then Obama's tax relief, they said, more handouts from Obama for people who don't make enough? If they wanted to work more they could get more money.

Sure they should make more, I said, but how? And what's wrong with a bit of welfare they need that sounds Republican?

It's not America. Every country has their way. Why can't we stick to ours? We're not Europe. We're not Canada.

I thought about that later. The big difference was share the wealth vs everybody makes their own in America. But with one in ten Americans on food stamps it wasn't working anymore. But I got the drift in time to add:

When capitalism fails, isn't it time to think a bit about socialism? Bailing out the banks, Wall Street and Detroit, isn't that socialism? Isn't Obama a socialist in the Canadian mode as the Washington Times called him before the election? Is that so bad? Isn't that why he was elected? To share the wealth even if he didn't cross that rhetorical line and promise it exactly, though promising just about anything else he just might be able to do?

That's stumbling block number one. In America it's OK to be a capitalist or a failed capitalist, but not a socialist. Deep down inside the conservative streak in the USA, you can't be a socialist. Obama has got to fail like Rush Limbaugh wants him to. Not strictly on economics, as that will hurt everyone, but on his politics. Obama's been going after Bush. That's stub your big toe for some Republicans.

Publishing the Torture Memos. Obama flips the nice guy Obama wild card for the jackpot. Bush loses, Republicans and Americans lose or that's how these people from Florida took it. America didn't do anything wrong and Obama's going after Bush for doing a good job he had to do that was tough and dangerous and dirty.

We were up against people who killed all those Americans at the World Trade Center, who cut off people's heads. They weren't fighting a war. We weren't fighting a war. The Geneva Conventions don't apply.

Simple explanations are hard to beat. If you disagree all you can do is get long winded or say hey you're wrong. I made a stab at it. Yeah, but. Then you get atrocities on both sides, was about all I could manage. Here's what I thought while while they were talking about what the terrorists were doing and how we had to as tough on them:

That's what Bush thought. Certainly Al Qaeda didn't follow Geneva Conventions. Aggressors often don't in any conflict, but that's no reason to fight terror with terror or start a war with Rumsfeld's Shock and Awe against an Iraq that never fired a bullet at the USA.

What's America anyway if not a champion of justice and liberty? Do you throw that away to fight a dirty war? When the battleground is far from home and you have overwhelming firepower, how do you look in the history books when you torture and humiliate suspects you make prisoners in Abu Graib, in CIA Secret Prisons, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

You lose that war morally. No one can trust you again, not your friends either. The rule of law is fundamental to a democracy. It's no wonder that Obama does want to do the right thing and insists on it. He values America. Words do mean something. The American Constitution means something. America means something.

Before the wars and the bailouts, when America spends 40% of the federal budget on the military, other countries and other people worry, was about all I managed to say. And then with all that firepower you still play down and dirty. No way to get respect from the world or your enemies.

Where did you get 40%? I guess that includes the Coast Guard and the National Guard? We also spend a lot on foreign aid. Or maybe we should do what that comedian George Carlin said and close all our bases and bring home all that money. Would that be better? Might be better for us? But he was joking.

We had a laugh about that. After all we were having a friendly holiday dinner on a train through the snowy woods of a late spring far from the reality of power politics. Though there was a more serious coda of sorts, back in the shambles of the economy.

I mentioned Haliburton's move from Houston to Dubai, where this push for globalization by governments and business literally led to exporting jobs and whole industries to freewheeling unregulated poorer countries where it's also cheaper to do business.

That started the home-grown recession, I said. First Nixon's visit to China slowly cooked up to a boil on Wall Street, fueled further with tax incentives by the Bush Administration into an outsourcing adventure of more empire building.

Instead of a stronger America there was a new and powerful China, a new middle class over there with corresponding higher prices for the local poor and fewer and losier jobs at home. You think that governments could see it coming? That globalization wasn't good for everybody. Good for corporations though.

Wait a minute, said my friends. Was that why Haliburton-KBR went to Dubai? Cheney's Haliburton. Donald Trump might have a laugh at that. Sometime ago he said something like whatever happens the smart people like me can move on with their money.

So why did Haliburton move? I asked.

Let's say they wanted to avoid legal trouble.

Then I remembered all those no-bid cost-plus contracts in Iraq, with $10 Billion missing, as Al Franken the former comedian used to joke about. What if Obama looks into that?

Can't say any of us were laughing, but we smiled and called it a night.

Hope the new Senator Franken by-a-hair of Minnesota remembers to remind him. With Obama taking on just about everything, he might have Haliburton for breakfast.

--Alan Gillis