Paul Craig Roberts and colleagues analyze the shootdown of a Russian aircraft by a Turkish plane for alegedly flying 17 seconds over Tukish soil, given that Russia had made it clear that all parties flying in or near Syrian airspace had agreed "that there be no air to air encounters". PCR gives several reasons why Turkey decided to break rule and three reasons why they are presently lying about their reasons for doing so.

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Turkey Is Lying — Paul Craig Roberts

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November 25, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Turkey Is Lying

Paul Craig Roberts

Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge has posted the flight paths of the Russian aircraft according to Turkey and to Russia. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-24/17-seconds-changed-world-leaked-letter-exposes-turkeys-hair-trigger-reality

We know that Turkey is lying for three reasons.

One reason is that NATO governments lie every time that they open their mouths.

A second reason is that Turkey’s claim that the SU-24 was in Turkey’s airspace for 17 seconds but only traveled 1.15 miles means that the SU-24 was flying at stall speed! The entire Western media was too incompetent to do the basic math!

A third reason is that, assuming Turkey’s claim of a 17 second airspace violation is true, 17 seconds is not long enough for a Turkish pilot to get clearance for such a serious and reckless act as shooting down a Russian military aircraft. If the SU-24 was flying at a normal speed rather than one that would be unable to keep the aircraft aloft, the alleged airspace vioation would not have been long enough to be noticed. A shootdown had to have been pre-arranged. The Turks, knowing that the Russians were foolishly trusting to the agreement that there be no air to air encounters, told pilots to look for an opportunity. In my recent article, I gave a reason for this reckless act: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/11/24/turkey-has-destroyed-russias-delusion-of-western-cooperation-paul-craig-roberts/

Turkey’s explanation to the UN Security Council gives itself away as a lie. The letter states: “This morning (24 November) 2 SU-24 planes, the nationality of which are unknown have approached Turkish national airspace. The Planes in quesion have been warned 10 times during a period of 5 minutes via ‘Emergency’ channel and asked to change their headings south immediately.”

As SU-24 are Russian aircraft, as Turkey is able to identify that the aircraft are SU-24s, how then can the nationality of the aircraft be unknown? Would Turkey risk shooting down a US or Israeli aircraft by firing at an unknown aircraft? If the SU-24 takes 17 seconds to fly 1.15 miles, the SU-24s would have only traveled 20.29 miles in five minutes. Does anyone believe that a supersonic aircraft can fly at stall speed for 17 seconds, much less for five minutes?

Do not expect any truth from any Western government or from any Western media. Governments and media know that the Western populations are uneducated, unaware, and can be relied upon to accept any preposterous story. In the West the Matrix has a firm grip. The Russians need to wake up to this fact.

NPR this morning confirmed that the media is a government propaganda organ. The Diane Rehm show on NPR presented us with a group of talking heads. Only one was informed, a professor at the Middle East Institute of the London School of Economics. The rest of the “experts” were the typical dumbshit Americans. They repeated all of the lies. “Russia is attacking everyone except ISIS.” How can there be anyone but ISIS to attack when the US general overseeing the area recently told Congress that “only 5” of our trained “rebels” remained? Yet the myth of “moderate rebels” is kept alive by these liars.

“The refugees are fleeing the brutal Assad.” Notice that it is always Assad who is brutal, not ISIS which has cut out opponents hearts and eaten them and routinely cuts off peoples heads and commits the most atrocious atrocities. Here we have “experts” blaming Assad. The “experts” said that the refugees are fleeing from Assad not from ISIS. The refugee problem is Assad’s fault, not the fault of ISIS. It is all Assad’s fault because he doesn’t give up and turn Syria over to Washington’s ISIS henchmen.

There was no acknowledgement from the “experts” that ISIS is a Washington creation or that until the Paris attack Washington was strongly backing ISIS with both words and weapons against the Russian air attacks that caught both Washington and ISIS off guard. This is extraordinary considering the fact that US responsibility for ISIS was acknowledged on TV by the former head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. https://www.rt.com/usa/312050-dia-flynn-islamic-state/

Gullible Americans who give money to NPR are supporting lies and propaganda that have resulted in the deaths and dislocation of millions of peoples and that are leading to WWIII. The Western media whores are complicit in the crimes, because they fail their responsibility to hold government accountable and make it impossible for valid information to reach people. The Western media serves as cheerleaders for death and destruction.

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All Americans who don't want World War III should read this, because that is certainly where we are headed if Congress should cave in to Obama's demand that they approve his unjust plan to attack Syria. Democrats should give up their view of Obama as a Democrat trying to do the right things for our country but being impeded by Republicans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He is in the camp of the blood thirsty anti-democracy neoconservatives. Paul Craig Roberts explains with great clarity the Rubicon that our country is now on the cusp of crossing. No exageration, to cross it would mark the end of democracy in the western world. So stop listening to government lies regurgitated nightly by the presstitute mainstream media and demand that your Senators and Representatives refuse to legitimate Obama's intended attack on Syria.

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The High Cost Of Saving Face For Obama — Paul Craig Roberts

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September 4, 2013 | Original Here                                              Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter


Will Congress Now Save Obama’s Face By Selling Out Democracy and the Syrian People and Setting the Stage for World War III ?

Paul Craig Roberts

As I observed in previous columns, obama was pushed out onto the end of the limb by Israel and the neoconservatives. The UN, NATO, the British Parliament, and the rest of the world left the White House Fool there, out on the limb where Israel put him, to make war on Syria all alone.

This proved to be beyond the Fool’s ability, but instead of crawling back off the limb and finding an excuse to get down, obama decided to buy the Congress and to tell more lies.

The White House and its presstitute media are telling Congress that it is too humiliating for the President of “the world’s only superpower” to have to crawl back along the limb and get down just because he told a lie. Congress must ”save face” for the liar who is “America’s first black president,” or the prestige and credibility of the US will be lost.

What this really means, of course, is that the credibility of the Israel Lobby and the neoconservatives will be lost unless America again commits a war crime and destroys the life and prospects of many more people in the Middle East.

Heaven forbid that Washington lose prestige! So money, lots of it, is speaking in Washington and in European capitals. We know that the despicable Cameron will do all in his power to prostitute the British government for Washington.

What has the “socialist” Hollande been promised that makes him so willing to demonstrate that France is obama’s whore?

What larger share of NATO’s military budget is Washington promising to underwrite in exchange for NATO’s support for another American war crime?

Will bags of money enable Washington to gather support for its latest crime against humanity?

But first Congress has to be brought around.

Congress will be pressured “to show a common front” with the White House in order to maintain America’s credibility. Members of the House and Senate will be told that now that America has been abandoned by its allies, Congress cannot leave the President of the United States hanging out to dry. Congress must rush to the rescue of America’s prestige or Washington will lose its clout and Congress will lose its campaign contributions from the Israel Lobby and the military/security complex.

This argument can even be effective with the strongest opponents to the attack on Syria. Americans have a long tradition of jingoism, and the prospect of lost prestige rankles. But before Congress is pushed into wrapping itself in the flag and giving its OK to another war crime, Congress needs to consider whether endorsing obama’s attack on Syria helps US prestige or hurts it.

It is clear that the American people overwhelming oppose an attack on Syria. Whether Americans have caught on over the years to Washington’s endless war lies or whether they simply see no point to the wars and no gain to America from 12 years of costly war, I cannot say. At a time when a large percentage of Americans are having difficulty paying their mortgages, car payments, and putting food on the table, Washington’s wars seem an expensive luxury.

It is not only the civilian populations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria who have suffered. Tens of thousands of America’s young have either been killed, maimed for life, or are suffering permanent post-traumatic stress. Washington’s wars have caused thousands of divorces, alcoholism, drug addiction, and homelessness for veterans who were deceived and had their humanity abused by the criminals that rule in Washington.

For Congress, allegedly the representatives of the American people, not the backstop for the executive branch’s undeclared agenda, to ignore the people’s will and to endorse a war that the American people do not support would be another decisive blow against democracy. If Congress endorses obama’s war, it will prove that American democracy is a hoax.

If the White House were to succeed in using Congress’ OK to a military attack on Syria to convince the British Parliament and NATO to go along, despite the strong opposition of the British and European peoples, Western Democracy would everywhere be discredited. Where is the democracy when a few elites at the top can do whatever they want, commit any crime, despite the majority opposition of citizens?

If Congress endorses obama’s transparent lies, American democracy will never recover. If Congress makes itself the handmaiden of the executive branch, Congress will never again have an independent voice. Congress might as well close down. It will have rendered itself superfluous and powerless.

If European governments endorse obama’s lies, it means the end of the West’s democratic prestige and will strip away the cloak behind which the West has hidden its crimes against humanity. The voice of the West will never again carry any moral authority.

The loss of Western credibility is a huge price to pay in order to rescue a discredited president whom no one believes, not even his supporters. Essentially obama is a cipher whose term of office is complete. The obama regime epitomizes the degeneration of the American state.

Instead of voting on whether to allow obama to attack Syria, Congress should be voting to impeach obama and kerry. Their blatant lies, dictatorial claims, and arrogant inhumanity are powerful arguments for removing them from office.

The lies told by the obama regime are so transparent that it makes one wonder just how stupid the regime thinks the American people are. Little doubt the white house is relying on its Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a., the presstitute media, to undermine Americans’ confidence in their common sense and to make them accept the latest fiction. The tactic is to use the peer pressure of the prostitute media to silence Americans’ conscience.

Media insouciance is everywhere. Yesterday NPR calmly reported the lies about Assad that the obama regime has concocted to cover another act of naked aggression. In the same breath, NPR voiced “the world’s outrage” over the rape and murder of one woman in India.

I, of course, do not agree with the raping and killing of anyone, but just imagine the raping and killing that will occur when obama unleashes the dogs of war on Syria.

NPR is no longer an alternative voice. Yesterday NPR was beating the drums for war. NPR provided a forum for the head of one of the main neoconservative lobbies for war, and in the next hour had Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders repeating all of obama and kerry’s lies about how America’s prestige cannot tolerate allowing Assad to use “chemical weapons against his own people.” No one listening to NPR heard the voice of those demanding peace and truth. NPR was too busy lying for Obama to care about truth and certainly gave truth no voice on the program.

The presstitute media and the House and Senate “leaders” who report to the military/security complex and to the Israel Lobby keep talking about Assad’s “own people,” but Assad’s own people support him. Polls of Syrians show that Assad has more support from the Syrian people than every head of every Western country has from their citizens. Cameron’s, Hollande’s, Merkel’s and obama’s poll numbers are dismal compared to the Syrian peoples’ support for Assad. http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/05/31/nato-data-assad-winning-the-war-for-syrians-hearts-and-minds/

Just as there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” but the facts did not stop the Bush regime from telling its lies that resulted in massive deaths and destruction of Iraqis, deaths and destruction that continue as I write, Assad has not used chemical weapons “against his own people.” All of the evidence points to a false flag event that obama could seize upon to launch America’s 7th war in 12 years.

Moreover, al-Nusra fighters are not Assad’s “own people.” The al-Nusra front are Islamist extremists recruited from outside Syria and sent in by Washington and Saudi Arabia to overthrow an elected Syrian government, just as Washington used the Egyptian military to overthrow the first elected Egyptian government in history and to shoot down in the streets hundreds of Egyptians who were protesting the military’s overthrow of the government that they had elected.

Whether or not Assad used chemical weapons against Washington-supported al-Nusra jihadists, and US Intelligence says that there is “no conclusive evidence,” it is nevertheless a war crime for Washington to attack a country that has not attacked, or threatened to attack, the US. Under the Nuremberg standard established by the United States, naked aggression is a war crime regardless of the character of the country attacked or the weapons it uses against forces that attack it.

If Washington succeeds in enabling the al-Nusra terrorists to overthrow the secular Syrian government, how will Washington get Syria away from al-Nusra? In Iraq the death and destruction continues today at the same pace as under the attempted US military occupation. The criminal Bush regime did not bring “freedom and democracy” to Iraq. The Bush regime brought death and destruction that continues long after Washington’s exit. In Iraq today, as many people are blown apart and murdered as during the height of Bush’s war of aggression.

The chaos in which Washington left Iraq is a far cry from “freedom and democracy.” The obama war criminal did the same to Libya. In Afghanistan Washington added 12 years of war on top of the 10 years of war that Afghans fought with the Red Army. The purpose of Washington’s war in Afghanistan has never been stated. No one knows what the war is about or why it continues.

According to the Bush regime, Afghanistan was attacked because the Taliban would not hand over Osama bin Laden without proof that he was responsible for 911. So why does the war continue 12 years after bin Laden died of renal failure and other diseases in December 2001 and then died again in May, 2011, two years and four months ago when obama claims to have had him killed by Navy SEALs, whose unit was mysteriously wiped out shortly thereafter in Afghanistan. If the purpose of the Afghan war was to get bin Laden, why does the war continue when the man has twice died?

The lies being told by obama and kerry are so transparent that it makes one wonder if their strategy is to make such a poor case for war that the control Israel and the neocons have over US foreign policy will be broken. What else is one to make of such absurd statements as john kerry’s claim that “this is our Munich moment!” There is no comparison between Assad’s defensive effort to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government by foreign jihadists supported by Washington and Hitler’s aggressive stance toward Czechoslovakia.

The Syrian government has initiated no war and has threatened no one.

America as my generation knew it no longer exists. Criminals have taken over and now rule. Financial policy is in the hands of a small handful of banksters who control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the financial regulatory agencies and who run the world for their own greed and profit. Foreign policy is the preserve of the Israel Lobby and the neoconservatives, every one of which is tightly tied to Israel. Americans have no voice, and no representation. Whatever America is, the government is not influenced by the voices of the American people.

Whatever America is, it most certainly is not a democracy in which government is accountable to the people.

America is a country where a tiny elite has all power and does as it wishes.

If Congress rallies to obama’s war, Congress will have pushed the world closer to nuclear war. Russia and China see that the UN is powerless to prevent aggression and that Washington’s aggression is aimed at them. As Russia and China build their nuclear forces, they will draw a starker line at Iran. Iran is Russia’s underbelly, and Iran is 20 percent of China’s oil supply.

From what I have been able to discern, both the Russian and Chinese governments have lost all confidence in Washington. Neither government believes any of Washington’s lies and both countries are aware of Washington’s attempt to isolate them diplomatically and to surround them with military bases. Both countries know that they can expect the same demonization from the presstitute western media as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Assad have received. They understand that western demonization is the prelude to destabilization and to military attack.

With the hubris, arrogance, and insanity of Washington an established fact, Russia and China perceive an enemy that intends their destruction. As neither country is going to accept their demise, Congress’ acquiescence to obama’s lies in order to save “america’s prestige” sets the stage for nuclear war.

However, if Congress refuses to be committed to a war crime based on a lie, rejects obama’s bribes and intimidation, and vetoes the war criminal’s attack on Syria, it means, the end of the influence of the Israeli Lobby, the bloodthirsty neoconservatives, and war mongers John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

Without Washington’s neoconservative belligerence, the governments of the world might, despite powerful and selfish private interests, be able to come together to sustain life on earth by protecting an increasingly vulnerable ecology from the predations of private capitalism.

If Congress fails to restrain the war that obama seeks, the world doesn’t have long to exist before the life-destroying bombs drop.

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Paul Craig Roberts, my nominee for the person of the first quarter of the 21st century, is so furious at the "prestitute" media's failing to report the real evils that our government has been committing and the complicity of certain prominant people and organizations that he refuses to begin their names with a Capital letter. Wake up america!

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America’s Greatest Affliction: The Presstitute Media — Paul Craig Roberts

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June 2, 2013 | Original Here                                                        Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

When Gerald Celente branded the American media “presstitutes,” he got it right. The US print and TV media (and NPR) whore for Washington and the corporations. Reporting the real news is their last concern. The presstitutes are a Ministry of Propaganda and Coverup. This is true of the entire Western media, a collection of bought-and-paid-for whores.

It seems that every day I witness a dozen or more examples. Take May 31 for example.
The presstitutes report that US Secretary of State John Kerry and his German counterpart are working on Russia to convince that country to be a “party to peace” in Syria by not supplying the Syrian government, whose country has been invaded, with arms. Kerry and the Israelis especially do not want Russia to deliver the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria.

This was the extent of the presstitutes’ report. The presstitutes made no mention of the fact that the invasion of Syria by al-Qaeda affiliated radical Muslims was organized and equipped by Washington via its proxies in the region, such as Saudia Arabia and the oil emirates. Americans sufficiently stupid to rely on the presstitute media do not know that it is not Syrians who want to overthrow their government, but Washington, Israel, and radical Islamists who object to Syria’s secular non-confrontational government.

One might think that the US media would wonder why Washington prefers to have al-Qaeda governing Syria than a non-confrontational secular government. But such a question is off-limits for the US media.

Israel, unlike Washington which so far hides behind proxies, has actually openly committed war crimes as defined by the Nuremberg trials of Nazis by initiating unprovoked aggression against Syria by militarily attacking the country.

In reporting Kerry’s pressure on Putin, presstitutes made no mention that the Washington-backed attempted overthrow of the Syrian government has run into difficulty, causing president obama to ask the Pentagon to come up with a no-fly plan, which means according to the Libya precedent NATO or US air attacks on Syrian government forces. As the S-300 missiles are a defensive weapon, obama’s plan to send in Western or Israeli air forces to attack the Syrian army is why Kerry is pressuring Russia not to honor its contract to deliver to Syria the S-300 missiles, which can knock US, NATO, and Israeli aircraft out of the sky.

Those who believed that Kerry could have made a difference as president must be disillusioned to see what a warmongering whore he is. In america marketing is everything; truth is nothing.

The real news story is that Washington is trying to convince Putin to acquiesce to
Washington’s overthrow of the Syrian government so that Russia can be evicted from its only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea, thus making it Washington’s sea, Washington’s Mare Nostrum. The american pressitutes put all the onus on the Russian government for not helping Washington to overthrow the Syrian government in order that Washington has another victory over Russia and can start next on Iran.

William Hague, who serves, with Washington’s approval, as British foreign secretary to the shame of a once proud nation, made this clear when he declared: “We want a solution without Assad. We do not accept the stay of Assad.” This is amazing hypocrisy, because the Syrian government is more respectful of human rights than Washington and London.

While Kerry was trying to con Putin, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the obama administration’s immediate priority was removing Assad from power. http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/302773-white-house-no-role-for-assad-in-transitional-government So for the US and UK, “peace” means the overthrow of the Syrian government by force.

Why isn’t the United Nations protesting? The answer is that the countries and their UN representatives have been purchased by Washington. Money talks. Integrity and justice don’t. Integrity and justice are poverty-inflicted. The UN belongs to the evil empire. Washington owns it. The american Empire has the money. It pays for the headlines and for the budget that lets the UN delegates enjoy New York City,

In the world today, integrity is worthless, but money is valuable, and Washington has the money because, as the dollar is the world reserve currency, it can be printed in sufficient quantities to purchase every country’s government, including our own. One year out of office and Tony Blair was worth $35 million. Look at the amazing Clinton riches. According to news report, $3.2 million was spent on Chelsea’s wedding. http://www.goingwedding.com/news_detail.asp?newsid=67

Hague said that the UK and France “seek to end the ban on arming Syrian rebels.” Hague did not explain how the invasion force was armed if there is a ban against arming it. But Hague did tell us who the invading force is: “the Syrian National Coalition,” which consists of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt (still the American puppet), the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Germany and Italy. Obviously, the talk about a “Syrian rebellion” is pure BS. Syria is confronted with an attempted overthrow of its government by the US and its puppet states. Kerry is trying to convince Putin to let Washington overthrow Syria.

As if this wasn’t enough, also on May 31, I listened to e.j. dionne and david brooks on National Public Radio discuss the state of the obama presidency. Both were protective of “our president.” Neither would dare say: “the military-security complex’s president,” “Wall Street’s president,” “the Israel Lobby’s president,” “Monsanto’s president,” “the mining and fracking president.” obama is “our president.”

Both brooks and dionne agreed that the media had got rid of the Benghazi issue and that the IRS persecution of Tea Party members was under the media’s control and was not a threat to obama. david brooks did acknowledge that there were economic problems ignored and no new ideas. However, the blatant fact that under obama the US is in a constitutional crisis, well described by Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35134.htm was not mentioned by NPR’s pundits, who define correct thoughts for the NPR audience, people too busy to pay attention.

In america today, the executive branch in explicit violation of the US Constitution detains indefinitely or murders any US citizen alleged without proof by an unaccountable member of the executive branch to be in any way associated with the broad but undefined term, “terrorism,” even innocently as a donor to hungry or ill Palestinian children. The executive branch clearly violates the US Constitution and US statutory laws against torture and spying on citizens without warrants. Congress does not impeach the president for his obvious crimes, and the Federal Judiciary enables them.

President Nixon was driven from office because he lied about when he learned of a burglary for which he was not responsible. President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about a sexual affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
President george w. bush took america to wars based on obvious lies, and so did president obama. Both administrations are guilty of war crimes and almost every possible infraction of constitutional and international law. Yet, no presstitute member of the media would dare mention impeachment, and the House would never bring the charge.

There is no doubt whatsoever that in the 21st century presidents, their lawyers, Justice (sic) Department officials, and CIA and black-op operatives have broken law after law, and there is no accountability. For the presstitutes, this is a non-issue. “Rule of law, Constitution? We don’t need no stinking rule of law or Constitution.”

For the presstitutes, the bought-and-paid for-whores for evil, the issues are obama’s stable poll numbers; teenage girls arrested for fighting at a kindergarten graduation ceremony; ”Microsoft’s Bill Gates extended his lead over Mexico’s Carlos Slim as the world’s richest person,” “the $14 million-dollar girl: Beyonce rakes it in.”

Constitutional crisis? What is that? I mean, really, look at Beyonce’s legs. Didn’t you hear, the dollar rose today?

The presstitutes have not investigated any important issue. Not 9/11. Not the accumulation of unaccountable power in the executive branch. Not the demise of the Bill of Rights. Not the Boston Marathon bombing. Not the endless and unexplained wars against Muslims who have not attacked the US.

The Boston Marathon saga reached new levels of absurdity with the FBI’s murder of Ibragim Todashev, who was being pressured to admit to various associated crimes. The presstitutes first reported that Todashev was armed. It was a gun, then a knife, then after the presstitutes duly reported the false information planted on them, which for the insouciance american public was sufficient to explain Toashev’s murder, the FBI admitted that the victim was unarmed.

Nevertheless, he was shot seven times, one to the back of the head. His father wants to know why the FBI assassinated his son, but the presstitutes could not care less. Don’t expect any answer from the american press and TV media or from NPR, an organization that pretends to be a “listener station” but is financed by corporate contributions.

How’s Todashev’s murder for Gestapo justice? Where is the difference? A bullet in the back of the head. And america is the shining light on the hill, the font of freedom and democracy brought to the world courtesy of the military/security complex out of the barrel of guns and hellfire missiles from drones. And relentless propaganda in the schools, universities, and media.

Washington certainly learned from Mao and Pol Pot. You kill them into submission.

But you will never hear about it from the presstitutes.

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"A DECADE AGO THE BUSH REGIME DEMONSTRATED THAT IT COULD OVER-RIDE US STATUTARY LAW, THE US CONSTITUTION, AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF POWERS IN ORDER TO CONCENTRATE UNNACCOUNTABLE 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. WHEN A PEOPLE HAVE NO POLITICAL PARTY THAT REPRESENTS THEM, THEY ARE DOOMED TO TYRANNY. AND TO WAR." -- PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

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THE REPUBLICANS CROSS THE RUBICON ~ Paul Craig Roberts

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September 4, 2012 |  Original here

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!

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NPR NOW REDUCED TO JUST ANOTHER SOURCE OF RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA?

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Home > Publications > Blogs > Beat the Press > NPR Joins Drive to Cut Social Security

NPR Joins Drive to Cut Social Security

Tuesday, 15 March 2011 19:48

NPR ran a piece that largely accepted untrue or misleading Republican assertions about Social Security. The piece told readers that:

"Republicans also believe [emphasis added] the very best time to fix Social Security is now, during a time of divided government when both Democrats and Republicans can share ownership of any changes."

Actually, NPR's reporters/editors have no clue what Republicans "believe." They are just making this up. The Republicans in question (like Democrats) are politicians. They say things that advance their political agenda whether or not they actually believe them. Competent reporters know this and don't try to tell their audience that these politicians actually believe their assertions; competent reporters just report the assertions and let their audience make up their own mind as to whether the politicians believe what they are saying.

It is also not a fact that Social Security needs to be fixed in any meaningful sense of the term. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the program can pay all benefits for the next 28 years with no changes whatsoever and can pay nearly 80 percent of projected benefits indefinitely into the future, even if nothing is ever done to change the program.

The article includes a statement from Alabama Senator Richard Shelby noting that Social Security paid out more in benefits than it took in taxes last year: "

"Social Security is now at the tipping point, the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency if we don't do something about it."

It would have been worth noting that this actually was part of the design of the program. The reason that payroll taxes were raised to a point where they exceeded benefits was to cover the cost of the baby boomers' retirement, which meant that there would be points like the present where benefits exceeded taxes. Otherwise, the increase in the payroll taxes in the 1980s made no sense. It would have been appropriate to point out to listeners that Mr. Shelby either does not understand the program or is deliberately trying to mislead the public.

Similarly, the segment included an assertion from Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn that money was stolen from Social Security:

"The fact is ... $2.8 trillion was stolen from Social Security .., The money was spent. It's broke. And we're going to have to fund $2.8 trillion over the next 20 years just to make the payments that we've got. I would think most people would think we ought to fix that."

Actually, not a penny was stolen from Social Security. Social Security lent money to the federal government by buying bonds, just as individuals, private corporations and banks do all the time. When an individual or company buys a bond from the government, it doesn't matter to them at all (except as citizens) whether or how the government spends the money. The government owes the exact same money regardless.

When the government pays back the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund it will effectively be replacing the bonds held by the trust fund with other bonds. The borrowing took place when the government sold bonds to the Social Security trust fund in the first place. It is not new borrowing when the government repays the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund.

About Beat the Press

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of several books, including False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy. Read more about Dean.

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Paul Craig Roberts: "...the US is a morally bankrupt, self-righteous country that believes that might is right."

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Might Is Right

By Paul Craig Roberts

November 03, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- In my last column, Who Has The Crystal Ball, I questioned the existence of “the liberal media,” and I remarked that it would be interesting to know the manufacturer of the full body scanners and the company’s relationship to the US and Israeli governments.

Conservative readers wrote to me saying that, as I had not mentioned National Public Radio, I had hidden “the liberal media” under the table. Another reader, well informed on the subject, told me about the full body scanner company and its relationship to the US and Israeli governments.

Let’s begin with the latter.

The full body scanners are manufactured by Rapiscan Systems, a firm represented by the Chertoff Group. The Chertoff Group is Michael Chertoff, a dual Israeli/US citizen appointed Secretary of Homeland Security in 2005 by Puppet President George W. Bush. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) used Obama’s economic stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to purchase 150 Rapiscan machines. Much larger purchases are in the works.

Chertoff has been a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a federal prosecutor who convicted and destroyed the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, apparently illegally as the conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court. But, of course, the firm and the careers of its employees were already destroyed by Chertoff.

Chertoff was also appointed Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice by George W. Bush. Chertoff supervised the 9/11 investigation or non-investigation.

Chertoff is also the co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act, a piece of fascist legislation that destroys American civil liberties.

Today Chertoff is using his government credentials to push full body scanners into American airports. A rights group, FlyersRights.org, has criticized Chertoff for abusing “the trust the public has placed in him as a former public servant to privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners.” http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/01/02/group_slams_chertoff_on_scanner_promotion/

Chertoff’s mother, Livia, was an El Al Airlines hostess and according to some a Mossad agent (see, for example, http://www.bollyn.com/michael-chertoffs-childhood-in-israel ).

Now let’s have a look at National Public Radio. Once upon a time NPR was an alternative voice. That voice was discarded during the Bush administration when Republican fundraiser Gay Hart Gaines was appointed by Dubya as vice chair for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Cheryl Feldman Halpern was appointed chair of the Corporation by Dubya, and Elizabeth Sembler was appointed by Dubya to the board of the corporation.

These women are certainly not liberals. Gaines is affiliated with right-wing and neoconservative organizations, such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the National Review Institute. According to Common Cause, Gaines was “an ardent fundraiser for Newt Gingrich.” http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gay_Hart_Gaines

Halpern is a Republican donor and a critic of NPR. Halpern has accused NPR of anti-Israel bias and said that public broadcasting journalists should be penalized for biased programs. Biased programs are those that don’t fit Republican and AIPAC agendas. Halpern accompanied President George W. Bush to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state in May 2008. Halpern is a board member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spin-off organization from AIPAC tasked with focusing primarily on influencing the US executive branch while AIPAC focuses on Congress. At her confirmation hearing, Halpern expressed her opinion that Public Broadcasting System’s Bill Moyers was not objective and regretted that as chair of the corporation she lacked the authority to “remove physically somebody who had engaged in editorialization of the news.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/14/AR2005071402099.html

Sembler is director of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Day School in Clearwater, Florida. Her husband is CEO of the Sembler Company, a shopping center development firm.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting board distributes federal funds to noncommercial radio and TV stations. It became clear to NPR that their funding was in question, and NPR deserted truth for money.

The Republican takeover was completed by an infusion of corporate money into NPR. Today the station has as many advertisements for corporate donors as a commercial station. It still pretends to be financed by listeners, but NPR is now part of the corporate media and sounds like the voice of Israel.

On November 2, NPR’s news broadcast showed its new colors. Reporting on the 40-year sentence handed to Omar Khadr by a Gestapo military tribunal for “war crimes,” NPR provided commentary from a widow of a US soldier killed in the firefight that captured the wounded 15-year old Khadr and by a retired US military officer. NPR did not provide any commentary by legal experts who have shown the “trial” to be a travesty of law.

Khadr was captured in wounded condition following a four-hour firefight in the Afghan village of Ayub Kheyl, which came under US attack. He was accused of throwing a hand grenade that fatally wounded a US soldier. It is impossible to know who threw a grenade during a firefight. Moreover, the use of lethal force in military encounters does not constitute a war crime.

Khadr was held for seven years in Guantanamo where he was tortured into confession. At his trial, his confession became a plea bargain.

What Khadr’s trial was about is establishing that “enemy combatants” who resist US aggression are war criminals. The assumption is that only “terrorists” resist American invasion of their countries.

None of this information was revealed by the NPR report. Instead America’s “alternative voice” was thoroughly neoconservative. NPR presented its listeners with the self-righteous celebration of the US soldier’s widow, who, the Guardian reported (Nov. 2) “pumped her fist and cheered ‘yes.’ The widow said that now, finally, that justice was done she could get on with her life. NPR followed up with a retired US military officer, who said that Khadr’s sentence was equivalent to freeing a murderer.

Khadr’s prosecutor, Jeffrey Groharing, declared that Khadr’s sentence “will send a message to Al-Qaeda and others whose aims and goals are to kill and cause chaos around the world.” The irony in this assertion escaped the tamed NPR. The deaths that can be attributed to Al Qaeda are tiny in number compared to the deaths inflicted by gratuitous US and Israeli naked aggression against Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yeman, and Somalia. Groharing declared the 15-year old Khadr to have been “an accomplished terrorist” who committed the offense of resisting American aggression.

Now, really, what kind of idiot would interpret NPR’s report as “the liberal media.”

What message did Khadr’s sentence send? To insouciant Americans only that finally a terrorist got his comeuppance despite the liberal media. To the rest of the world the message is: the US is a morally bankrupt, self-righteous country that believes that might is right. The American claim to world leadership is discredited.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.