I have just has a look at our shrinking bottom line, Not good. I hate to break through the haze of the holiday season to remind one and all that independent media needs fuel or like a car, you can go nowhere. The irony I am writing about missing billions, make that trillions, and the hawk is at the door. I am better at writing about capitalism than practicing it.

I know you are as tired of receiving appeals as we are of making them. Today’s our big Globalbvision 20th anniversary party—will it be our last hurrah? We couldn’t even afford to invite all our well-wishers.

Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I cram into it—original reporting as well as aggregated news and views. We think it matters as do many of you. Can we hold on, and fight another day? We hope so. But if you have not stepped up to the plate with a tax-deductible donation for Mediachannel (Paypal here or by check marked Mediachannel, made out to The Global Center, 575 8th Avenue, NY NY 10018.) please do so now or you will be coming to our next post mortem party drinking tap water watching those who do care will sit around shrugging their shoulders wining, “Didn’t you hear…isn’t that too bad?

Oh well….

Pakistan’s state of emergency will soon be lifted. The emergency was not contained. The President has stepped down from his army post appointing the head of the dreaded ISI intelligfence agency to replace thim. Those were the guys who got the Taliban going in the first place. One day he was Mr Big acting on his own and then Washington barked and he heeled. That’s the story. The biig mess there enters a new phase with so-caalled elections, more unrest, new terror attacks and endless Pentagon subsidies.

Its also time to bid adieu to politicians—a real Jekkle and Hyde combo. Illinois Congresscurmudgeon Henry Hyde, an unreconstructed Neanderthal, was the real Dr Jekkle while Ben Nichols, thes Socialist Mayor of my old stomping grounds Ithaca (some say Mythica) New York has also left us at age 87.

Also on the way out as a robust engine of growth and prospecrity is our economy, The NY Times put that’s story on page one under the headline “LENDERS TIGHTEN FLOW OF CREDIT: GROWTH AT RISK: Rapid Decline in loans Intensifies worries on Recession Chance.”

So there you go—what I have been saying here for months. The economy is on the skids and Wall Street brought it down. Just yesterday the Federal Reserve Bank was discounting fears of a recession while saying a rate cut is not needed Now in a speeh saying the Fed will be “Pragamtic and flexible” (F&B)—which most in the market interpreted as a sign that rates will be cut to get the credit pipe open and probably lead to more inflation. They are talking about bailouts; i want to see some jailouts.

By the way do you think that they would tell us if a depression (that dreaded D Word) was on the way? Carolyn Baker of the indispensable Carolynbaker.net news letter Speaking Truth To Power writes today that my book SQUEEZED is comparable to a “Diary Of The Onset of the Greater Depressiion.” She is a bit critical because she is more conspitorial than I am but at the same time one of the few in our corner of the blogoshere who distributes articles every day the economic decline.

She writes in part:

For more years than I can count I’ve heard Danny Schechter’s name bandied about in progressive circles, but for all his tireless activism, he did not fully capture my attention until I saw his stunning documentary “In Debt We Trust.” By that time I had forsaken my myopic focus on imperialism, the Iraq War, the Democratic Party, and of course, Bush-bashing. It was becoming painfully and increasingly clear to me that history was repeating itself, and being an historian, I was well aware that it never does so in exactly the same manner but often with enough mirroring of earlier eras that it behooves human beings to sit up and pay attention.

About the same time that “In Debt We Trust” appeared on my radar screen, Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis was released, hammering home the inescapable similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and the demise of the United States. Despite the divergence of focus between Schechter’s documentary and Johnson’s Nemesis, both ultimately reveal that the American empire is descending into catastrophic financial collapse, already bankrupt, which will eventually result in the abject impoverishment of all but a very few of its privileged inhabitants.

After purchasing “In Debt We Trust” I showed it regularly to a particularly endangered species in the empire’s economic war on its own citizens, students. As a result, many “come to Jesus meetings” and “true confession sessions” ensued in my classes as they unburdened their souls regarding the gargantuan student loan debt with which they would leave college and their accelerating awareness that glamorous, cushy, lucrative jobs with which they might pay off their debts would not exactly be falling at their feet.

Then came Danny’s new e-book Squeezed and his request that I review it. After reading it, the above description “a diary of the onset of the Greater Depression” came to mind….

On each topic, Squeezed superbly elucidates the key issues and documents the twists and turns of the odyssey that has resulted in the early stages of the Greater Depression which we have now entered.”