The Message From Both Parties Is That Americans Are Disposable ~ Paul Craig Roberts
If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for
intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats
one.
How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties
are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?
The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama
propaganda and their propriety programed electronic voting machines.
For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet
with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while
Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put
in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security
complex).
Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges
despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a
citizen. If Obama were not a citizen, why would the very aggressive
House Republicans not capitalize on it. It would be easy for a
Congressional committee to determine if Obama were a citizen. Despite
the propaganda, the Republicans in office have shown no interest in the
propaganda charges spread by Republican operatives over the Internet.
Either Republicans have no confidence in the charges and do not want
to end up proving with Congressional hearings that Obama is a citizen,
or the Republicans, having destroyed every other aspect of the US
Constitution, reducing it to “a scrap of paper,” feel that making an
issue of the last remaining Constitutional provision other than the
Second Amendment would be the height of hypocrisy and don’t want to risk
opening the constitutional issues that Republicans have run roughshod
over.
If the Republicans can destroy habeas corpus, due process, violate
both US statutory and international law, ignore the separation of
powers, and create a Caesar, why can’t the Democrats run a non-citizen?
Why didn’t the Republican convention raise the issue about the Obama
regime’s claim that the executive branch has the power to assassinate US
citizens without due process of law? No such power exists in the US
Constitution or in US statutory law. This gestapo police state claim
exists only as an assertion. Republicans ignored this most important of
all issues, because they support it.
Why didn’t the Democrat convention raise the issue that the
Republicans took us to wars based on 9/11 assertions without ever
conducting an investigation of 9/11? No qualified high-rise architect,
structural engineer, physicist, chemist, or national security expert
believes a word of the US government’s 9/11 story. Neither do the first
responders who were on the scene and witnessed and experienced the
event.
Many experts keep their opinions to themselves, because otherwise the
federal grants to their universities are over and done with or their
architectural and engineering businesses are boycotted by patriotic
former clients.
Regardless of these risks, there are 1,700 architects and engineers
who have sent a petition to Congress that they do not believe one word
of the official explanation and who demand a real investigation.
Why did not either party raise the question of how can the US economy
recover when corporations have offshored millions of US middle class
jobs, both manufacturing jobs and professional service jobs. For at
least a decade, the US economy has been able to create only lowly paid
domestic non-tradable (not exportable) service jobs, such as waitresses,
bartenders, and hospital orderlies.
Both parties talk total nonsense about jobs. The Republicans say they
can create jobs by not taxing the rich. The Democrats say they can
create jobs by financing jobs programs. The Republicans say that the
Democrats’ jobs programs simply take money from business investments and
give it to those who patronize bars and the drug trade. The Democrats
say that the low taxes of the Republicans just subsidize yachts, exotic
cars, private aircraft, and $800,000 wrist watches for the one percent,
most of which is produced abroad.
Neither political party will admit that when US corporations offshore
their production for US markets, Americans are removed from the incomes
associated with the production of the goods and services that they
consume. Offshoring is defended by both moronic political parties as
“free trade.” In fact, offshoring is the gift of what was US GDP to
China, India, and the other countries to which US corporations locate
their production that they sell to Americans. US GDP goes down, the GDP
of the countries who make the American goods sold to Americans goes up.
The idiot free market economists call the de-industrializing of America
“free trade.”
As an intelligent economist – an oxymoron – would know, destroying
consumer incomes by moving their jobs to other countries, leaves
consumers without incomes to purchase the imported offshored goods.
Neither American political party recognizes this disconnect. Neither
party can afford to recognize it, as both parties are dependent on
corporate campaign financing, and offshoring boosts executive bonuses
and share prices. A political party that opposes offshoring of US jobs
simply does not get financed.
So, the great “superpower,” the “indispensable nation,” the world
hegemon, is going into an election, and no one knows what are the
stakes.
Why did not either political party ask: if Washington has demonized
Iran, why did the 120 countries that comprise the non-aligned movement
convene in Iran last week?
Is Washington’s propaganda failing? Can Washington no longer convince
the world that the countries that Washington wants to destroy are evil
and must be destroyed?
If Washington’s propaganda is failing, the world rule of the
hegemonic power will not succeed. As world rule is Washington’s goal in
keeping with the neoconservative ideology, then Washington is failing
and is not the superpower it pretends to be.
Most credible foreign policy experts, none of which either political
party has, believe that Washington has thrown away US “soft power” by
its obvious lies and unjustified military attacks on seven Muslim
countries, its encirclement of Russia with missile bases, and its
encirclement of China with air, naval, and troop bases.
In other words, Washington’s moral force no longer exists. All that
exists is financial and military force, and both will fail as they are
insufficient.
Neither party asked why the US is at wars with Muslims for Israel.
Why should Americans be losing lives and limbs for Israel while going
broke and running up enormous war debts for our children and
grandchildren? The answer from both parties is to blame the country’s
bankruptcy on what Washington does for its own economically
disenfranchised citizens. America’s financial problems are all the fault
of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, housing subsidies,
Pell grants – any and every thing that gives a leg up to the non-one
percent.
In short, the attitude of both parties is: if you are not the one percent, you are disposable.
Both Obamacare and the alternative Republican voucher program dispose
of ill Americans who confront potentially terminable diseases. The
American people and the ill no longer count; only the budget counts.
Letting the elderly die sooner is cheaper. We can therefore afford more
wars for hegemony and more tax cuts for the one percent.
Have any peoples in human history ever been less represented by their government and political parties than Americans?
The US government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is disposable.
Regardless of the political party whose lever is pulled in November,
every American who votes will be voting for Israel and for their own
demise.
THE REPUBLICANS CROSS THE RUBICON ~ Paul Craig Roberts
Does anyone remember when National Public Radio was an independent voice?
During the 1980s NPR was continually on the case of the Reagan
administration. NPR certainly had a Democratic slant, and a lot of its
reporting about the Reagan administration was one-sided. Yet, NPR was an
independent voice, and it sometimes got things correct.
In the 21st century that voice has disappeared, which was the
intention of the George W. Bush regime. Bush put a Republican woman in
charge who made it clear to NPR producers and show hosts that the
federal part of their funding was at risk.
Money often over-rules principle, and when corporations added their
really big money NPR collapsed. Today the local stations still pretend
to be funded by listeners, but if you have noticed, as I have, there are
now a large number of corporate advertisements, disguised in the
traditional terms “with support from . . .” If you are not listening to
classical music, you are listening to corporate advertisements.
Today the entire “mainstream media” is closed to truth-tellers. The
US media is Washington’s propaganda ministry. The US media has only one
function – to lie for Washington.
What reminded me of NPR’s surrender was NPR’s August 31 report with
its two regular talking voice political pundits discussing the
Republican Convention and Romney’s speech. After witnessing the
Republicans at their nominating convention at Tampa violate all their
own rules and ride roughshod over the Ron Paul delegates, one expected
some discussion of the Republican Party’s refusal to allow Ron Paul to
be placed in nomination or his delegate account to be announced.
The operative question was obvious: How can the American people trust
the Republicans with the awesome power of the executive branch when the
Republican Party just finished demonstrating for all to see its
Stalinist qualities by crushing the anti-war, anti-police state wing of
its party?
The authoritarianism was gratuitous. Romney had a sufficient number
of delegates to be nominated. It would have cost Romney nothing to
follow the rules and allow Ron Paul to be placed in nomination and his
delegate numbers to be reported. Instead, Romney wrote off the liberty
contingent of the Republican Party. The Brownshirts demonstrated their
power.
The last Republican who wrote off a chunk of his own party was Barry
Goldwater, and he went down to crushing defeat. Makes one wonder if the
Republicans are relying on those electronic voting machines programed
with proprietary Republican software that leave no paper trail. The
Democrats have acquiesced to Republican election theft. There have been
numerous cases where exit polls indicate that voters chose a different
candidate than the one chosen by the Republican programmed voting
machines.
One would have thought that NPR and its pundits would have found the
parallel with Goldwater worth comment, but the suppression of the Ron
Paul delegates was already down the memory hole.
One would also have thought that NPR and its pundits would have found
Clint Eastwood’s speech a fascinating topic of discussion. Eastwood had
a Republican National Committee approved speech, but discarded it.
Instead, Eastwood stood beside an empty chair and pretended to be
talking to Obama, but it could just as well have been Romney in the
chair. By pretending to be talking to Obama, Eastwood made his points
without eliciting boos from the Republican audience.
Not many in the Republican audience caught on, but there were some
stony faces when Eastwood said “I haven’t cried that hard since I found
out that there are 23 million unemployed people in this country.” More
stony Republican faces when Eastwood showed his opposition to the Iraq
and Afghan wars and asks the chair, “why don’t you just bring them [the
troops] home tomorrow morning?” Those who thought he was digging at
Obama cheered; those who realized he was criticizing hardline Republican
positions were displeased.
But NPR and the US media in general are uncomfortable with such real
news as a political party being told off by one of its heroes and a
political party sufficiently stupid to repeat Barry Goldwater’s mistake.
The establishment might complain. The money might dry up or employees
be fired for permitting such a story to be aired. The Democrats lost
their independent financing when jobs offshoring destroyed the unions.
There are no longer countervailing powers to Wall Street and the
corporations, which have been endowed by the Republican US Supreme Court
with First Amendment rights to purchase US elections, and placed in
charge of the US Treasury, the regulatory agencies and the Federal
Reserve.
In Tampa the Republicans wrote off the Ron Paul vote, because they
are enamored of power and its gratuitous demonstration. Can people so
desirous of power and the thrill of its use be trusted to let go of
power when they lose the next election? There are enough presidential
executive orders and national security orders, even some signed by the
Democrat Obama, that any president can assert them and refuse to face
election.
Once Rome accepted Julius Caesar’s coup, the Roman Republic was gone.
Those who tried to save the Roman Republic by assassinating Caesar
failed, because the majority of the legions had gone over to the
dictatorship, which promised them more money than the Republic had.
Caesar’s name became the title for Rome’s dictators.
In the US, even your friendly local police have gone over to
dictatorship. And they are armed with its tools. A friend, a
competitive shooter for accuracy, told me that as he left his gun club
on August 27, a local sheriff department entered in a military armored
vehicle, something one would expect to see on a battlefield, followed by
a large sheriff’s department truck full of military equipment. He says
that the gun club allows local police to use the club’s facilities so
that club members are not stopped and harassed about their firearms as
they go to and from the club. He reports that the police will line up 30
abreast, with automatic weapons, not allowed to club members, and fire
at one target, with 30 police emptying 30-round magazines at the same
target.
He once asked our protectors if they were practicing for some
competition. The answer was, “No, we are preparing to control the
outcome when there is trouble.”
Control is the operative word. We have seen for a number of years
now that the Republican Party is power-addicted. Remember when the Bush
administration fired the US Attorneys who refused the order to indict
only Democrats? Remember the Republican Party’s transparent frame-up of
popular Alabama Democratic governor Don Siegelman? Evidence indicates
that the Republican operative Karl Rove took advantage of a Republican
federal judge, vulnerable according to news reports to corruption
charges, and a compliant Republican US attorney in Alabama to railroad
Governor Siegelman. The message to Democrats was: if you get elected in
our Southern Territory, we will get you.
But never fear, we have “freedom and democracy.” George W. Bush told us so himself.
The weak, chicken-hearted Obama administration has not commuted
Siegelman’s outrageous sentence. The inability of the Democrats to stand
up for their own members and their own principles is the best
indication we have that Republican tyranny will prevail.
It didn’t take Caesar George W. Bush 10 minutes to wipe out the
prison sentence of vice president Dick Cheney’s chief aid for revealing
the identity of a CIA operative, a felony under US law. But the Obama
Justice (sic) Department supports Karl Rove’s destruction of one of its
most popular governors.
It was the German left-wing’s weak opposition to the National Socialists that gave the world Hitler.
The Republican Party has become the Party of Hate. Decades of
frustration have made Republicans mean. They object to everything that
has happened since the Great Depression in the 1930s to make the US a
more just and humane society.
The Republican Party wants power so that it can smash all vestiges of
regulation and welfare and all those of whom Republicans disapprove:
the poor, the minorities, liberals, the imagined “foreign enemies,” war
protestors and others who challenge authority, those American weaklings
who have compassion for the unfortunate, the US Constitution, that
pinko-liberal-commie document that coddles criminals, illegal aliens,
and terrorists, and all dissenters from the policy of enriching the one
percent at the expense of the 99 percent.
Above all else, the Republicans want to turn Social Security and Medicare into profit centers for private corporations.
Would the world be surprised if Republicans donned brown shirts?
America has declared itself to be “the indispensable nation,” justifying
its hegemony over the world. Any country that does not submit to
Washington is “a foe.” The neoconservative propaganda that America is
the indispensable nation with a right to world hegemony sounds a lot
like “Deutschland uber alles.”
A decade ago the Bush regime demonstrated that it could over-ride US
statutory law, the US Constitution, and the constitutional separation of
powers in order to concentrate unaccountable power in the office of the
president.
The Democrats, when they gained control of Congress in the mid-term
elections, did nothing about the unprecedented legal and constitutional
crimes of George W. Bush. The Democratic Speaker of the US House of
Representatives, who could easily have impeached George W. Bush for his
obvious crimes against US law and the US Constitution, announced that
“impeachment is off the table.” Money was more important to House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi than the rule of law.
When a people have no political party that represents them, they are doomed to tyranny.
And to war.
Russia and China are in the way of Washington’s hegemony. Romney,
the Republican presidential candidate, has declared Russia to be “our
number one geopolitical foe” for opposing Washington’s plans to
overthrow by violence the Syrian government. Why is overthrowing the
Syrian government so advantageous to Washington that Romney in a fit of
pique recklessly brought the United States into direct confrontation
with Russia?
Arrogance and hubris lead to wars. Do Americans really want a person
as president who is so reckless as to gratuitously declare a large
nuclear-armed country to be our number one enemy? The American and
Israeli trained Georgian army did not last an hour when the former
Soviet republic foolishly, on Washington’s encouragement, provoked the
Russian bear.
Meanwhile the Obama regime, concerned with China’s rapid economic
rise, has indicated that it thinks China is the number one enemy. The
Obama regime has forgot that China, when a primitive, backward country,
fought the US to a stalemate in Korea more than a half century ago.
The Obama regime has announced that the US Navy is being repositioned
to the Eastern Pacific, that the US regards the South China Sea as
America’s national interest, and that new naval, air, and troop bases
are being established in the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam,
Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere in the region. The
purpose of these bases is to block China’s access to energy and raw
materials, which is what Washington did to Japan in the 1930s.
Are Americans aware that the hubris and idiocy of their political
leaders have now saddled Americans with the burden of two number one
enemies, both well equipped with armies and nuclear weapons? Only Iran
can be happy about this as it moves Iran off the front burner.
Washington is putting its forward military bases in place, and the
propaganda war is being cranked up. The subservient British press was
quick to fall in line with Washington. A British reader of my column
reports that the Guardian/Observer and New Statesman are at Putin’s
throat: “Every day this week we’ve had Russia/Putin hate stories.
Headlines such as ‘medieval dictatorship’ as we saw in last Sunday’s
Observer [August 26] are common. In this week’s New Statesman we have a
front page picture of Putin with the headline ‘Putin’s reign of terror.’
They’ve got Putin with a crown on his head and dressed as a Tsar-like
figure. It’s a relentless information battlefield assault on Russia.”
Another line of Washington’s attack on Russia is Washington’s covert
backing of Chechnya terrorist groups in the Caucasus and funding of
front groups in Russia for protest and terrorist organizations.
Allegations of corruption and stolen elections come primarily from
Washington-funded groups operating in Russia. See http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaeda-blitzkrieg-wests-terror-battalions-eye-russia-next/ and http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/08/bombshell-us-neo-cons-state-department.html
Through these methods, Washington hopes to destabilize the Russian
government and to isolate it internationally in order to remove a
barrier to Washington’s hegemony.
Two of Romney’s right-wing neoconservative advisors said that Romney
as president would “confront Moscow on its poor record on democracy,
human rights, and the rule of law.” The western media will not comment
on the irony of these propagandistic allegations against Russia issuing
from the US, the country that has destroyed habeas corpus and due
process protections of the accused, tortured detainees in violation of
the Geneva Conventions and its own statutory law, kidnaps, tortures, and
assassinates foreign nationals as well as its own citizens, supports
terrorism against Libya, Syria, Iran, and Russia, runs roughshod over
international law, never submitting to law itself but using law as a
weapon against governments that it has demonized, while it carries on
military operations against seven Muslim countries without a declaration
of war.
The Nuremberg Trials of Germans after World War II established that
naked aggression is a war crime. Naked aggression, renamed by
Washington, “preemptive war,” has become the operative principle of US
foreign policy.
As Putin remarked, Washington is guilty of the crimes of which it
accuses others, but Washington permits all things to “the indispensable
nation.”
Amerika uber alles!
