Writer, Critic Susan Sontag Dies at 71

Reuters

Author and social critic Susan Sontag, one of the strongest voices of intellectual opposition to US policies after the September 11 attacks, has died at the age of 71.

Sontag, who had suffered from leukemia for some time, died in a New York cancer hospital.

She was known for interests that ranged from French existentialist writers to ballet, photography and politics.

Seymour Melman, 86, Dies;

Spurred Antiwar Movement

Jennifer Bayot, New York Times

Seymour Melman, a Columbia University scholar who helped galvanize the antiwar movement from the 1950's on with analyses of the social costs of military spending, died on Dec. 16 at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.

Tap writes:

Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena

Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say. Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.

Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say — a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.

"An Economic 9/11"

Patrick C. Doherty, TomPaine.com

When the chief economist at Morgan Stanley says we have a
one-in-10 chance of avoiding economic Armageddon, one tends
to take notice. When America's second-largest creditor tells
us to get our economic house in order the same week, two
points begin to determine a line. But the Bush administration
has not so much as flinched.

'Democrats play for lunch. We play for keeps.' — Grover
Norquist

Last week, America received two pieces of monstrously bad
news. First, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley (along
with Robert Reich, Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, China and the
currency markets) warned us that the U.S. economy is about to
collapse. Second, we learned that the Bush administration is
willing to ignore the likelihood of collapse and will push
ahead aggressively with tax and Social Security reform. Put
these two pieces of information together and you get a
nightmare scenario.