The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes
February 5, 2015 | Original Here Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter
The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes
Paul Craig Roberts
February 5, 2015. There is a brouhaha underway about an American
journalist who told a story about being in a helicopter in a war zone.
The helicopter was hit and had to land. Which war zone and when I don’t
know. The US has created so many war zones that it is difficult to
keep up with them all, and as you will see, I am not interested in the
story for its own sake.
It turns out that the journalist has remembered incorrectly. He was
in a helicopter in a war zone, but it wasn’t hit and didn’t have to
land. The journalist has been accused of lying in order to make himself
seem to be “a more seasoned war correspondent than he is.”
The journalist’s presstitute colleagues are all over him with
accusations. He has even had to apologize to the troops. Which troops
and why is unclear. The American requirement that everyone apologize for
every word reminds me of the old Soviet practice, real or alleged by
anti-communists, that required Soviet citizens to self-criticize.
National Public Radio (2-5-15) thought this story of the American
journalist was so important that the program played a recording of the
journalist telling his story. It sounded like a good story to me. The
audience enjoyed it and was laughing. The journalist telling the story
did not claim any heroism on his part or any failure on the part of the
helicopter crew. It is normal for helicopters to take hits in war
zones.
Having established that the journalist had actually stated that the
helicopter was hit when in fact it wasn’t, NPR brought on the program a
psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, an expert on
“false memory.” The psychologist explained various reasons a person
might have false memories, making the point that it is far from uncommon
and that the journalist is most likely just another example. But the
NPR presstitute still wanted to know if the journalist had intentionally
lied in order to make himself look good. It was never explained why it
made a journalist look good to be in a helicopter forced to land. But
few presstitutes get to this depth of questioning.
Now to get to the real point. I was listening to this while driving
as it was less depressing to listen to NPR’s propaganda than to listen
to the Christian-Zionist preachers. In the previous hour NPR had
presented listeners with three reports about civilian deaths in the
break-away provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine. The first time I
heard the report, the NPR presstitute recounted how explosives had hit a
hospital killing 5 people in the break-away Donetsk Republic. The
presstitute did not report that this was done by Ukrainian forces,
instead suggesting that it could have been done by the
“Russian-supported rebels.” He didn’t offer any explanation why the
rebels would attack their own hospital. The impression left for that
small percentage of informed Americans capable of thought is that
presstitutes are not allowed to say that the Washington-backed
Ukrainians attacked a hospital.
In all three reports, Secretary of State John Kerry was broadcast
saying that the US wanted a diplomatic, peaceful solution, but that the
Russians were blocking a peaceful solution by sending tank columns and
troops into Ukraine. On my return trip, I heard over NPR Kerry twice
more repeating the unsupported claim that Russian tanks and troops are
pouring into Ukraine. Obviously, NPR was serving as a propaganda voice
that Russia was invading Ukraine.
Think about this for a minute. We have been hearing from high US
government officials, including the president himself, for months and
months about Russian tank columns and troops entering Ukraine. The
Russian government denies this steadfastly, but, of course, we cannot
trust the now-demonized Russians. We are not allowed to believe them,
because they are positioned as the Enemy, and good patriotic Americans
never believe the Enemy.
But how can we help but believe the Russians? If all these Russian
tank columns and troops that have allegedly been pouring into Ukraine
were real, Washington’s puppet government in Kiev would have fallen
sometime last year, and the conflict would be over. Anyone with a brain
knows this.
So, we arrive at my point. A journalist told a harmless story and
has been roasted alive and forced to apologize to the troops for lying.
In the middle of this brouhaha, the US Secretary of State, the
President of the United States, innumerable senators, executive branch
officials, and presstitutes have repeatedly reported month after month
Russian tank
columns and troops entering Ukraine. Yet, despite all
these Russian forces, the civilians in the break-away provinces of
eastern and southern Ukraine are still being slaughtered by Washington’s
puppet state in Kiev.
If Russian tanks and troops are this ineffective, why are NATO
commanders and neoconservative warmongers warning of the dire danger
that Russia poses to the Baltics, Poland, and Eastern Europe?
It doesn’t make any sense, does it?
So the question is: Why are the presstitutes all over some hapless
journalist rather than holding accountable the Great Liars, John Kerry
and Barak Obama?
The answer is: It is costless to the presstitutes to try to destroy,
for totally insignificant reasons–perhaps just for the pleasure of it,
like “American Sniper” killing people for fun–one of their own, but they
would be fired if they hold Kerry and Obama accountable, and they know
it. But they have to get someone, so they eat their own.
A democracy without an honest media cannot exist. In America
democracy is a facade behind which operates every evil inclination of
mankind. During the past 14 years the American people have supported
governments that have invaded, bombed, or droned seven countries,
killing, maiming, and displacing millions of people for no reason other
than profit and hegemonic power. There is scant sign that this has
caused very many Americans sleepless nights or a bad conscience.
When Washington is not bombing and killing, it is plotting to
overthrow reformist governments, such as the Honduran government Obama
overthrew, and the Venezuelan, Bolivian, Ecuadoran, and Argentine
governments that the Obama regime is current trying to overthrow. And,
also, of course the democratically elected government in Ukraine that
has been supplanted by Washington’s coup.
The new Greek government is in the crosshairs, and so is Putin himself.
Washington and its fawning presstitutes branded the elected Ukrainian
government that was a victim of Washington’s coup, “a corrupt
dictatorship.” The replacement government consists of a combination of
Washington puppets and neo-nazis with their own military forces sporting
Nazi insignias. The American presstitutes have been careful not to
notice the Nazi insignias.
Ask yourself why a journalist’s false memory episode of an
insignificant event is so important to the American presstitutes, while
John Kerry’s and Barak Obama’s extraordinary, blatant, blockbuster, and
dangerous lies are ignored.
In the event you have forgotten the efficiency of the Russian
military, remember the fate of the American and Israeli trained and
equipped Georgian Army that Washington sicced on South Ossetia. The
Georgian invasion of South Ossetia resulted in the deaths of Russian
peace-keeping soldiers and Russian citizens. The Russian military
intervened, and the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian
Army collapsed in five hours. All of Georgia was back in Russian hands,
but the Russians withdrew and left the former province of Russia
independent, despite the lies from Washington that Putin intends to
restore the Soviet Empire.
The only correct conclusion that any American can make is that every
statement of the US government and its presstitute media is a blatant
lie designed to serve a secret agenda that the American people would not
support if they knew of its existence.
Whenever Washington and its whore media speak, they lie.
As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap — Paul Craig Roberts
October 23, 2013 | Original Here Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter
As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap
Paul Craig Roberts
The year 2014 could be shaping up as the year that the chickens come home to roost.
Americans, even well-informed ones, don’t know all of the mistakes
made by neoconized and corrupted Washington in the past two decades.
However, enough is known to see that the US has lost economic and
political power, and that the loss is irreversible.
The economic cost of this lost will be born by what remains of the
middle class and the increasingly poverty-stricken lower class. The one
percent will have offshore gold holdings and large sums of money in
foreign currencies and other foreign assets to see them through.
In the political arena, the collapse of the Soviet Union presented
Washington with the grand opportunity to reallocate the Pentagon budget
to other uses. Part of the reduction could have been returned to
taxpayers for their own use. Another part could have been used to
improve worn out infrastructure. And another part could have been used
to repair and improve the social safety net, thus insuring domestic
tranquility. A final, but perhaps most important part, could have been
used to begin repaying the Treasury IOUs in the Social Security Trust
Fund from which Washington has borrowed and spent $2 trillion, leaving
non-marketable IOUs in the place of the Social Security payroll tax
revenues that Washington raided in order to fund its wars and current
operations.
Instead, influenced by neoconservative warmongers who advocated
America using its “sole superpower” status to establish hegemony over
the world, Washington let hubris and arrogance run away with it. The
consequence was that Washington destroyed its soft power with lies and
war crimes, only to find that its military power was insufficient to
support its occupation of Iraq, its conquest of Afghanistan, and its
financial imperialism.
Now seen universally as a lawless warmonger and a nuisance,
Washington’s soft power has been squandered. With its influence on the
wane, Washington has become more of a bully. In response, the rest of
the world is isolating Washington.
The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, recently declared China
and Russia to be India’s “most important partners” with whom India
shares “common strategic interests.” Prime Minister Singh said: “ India
and Russia have always had a convergence of views on global and regional
issues, and we value Russia’s perspective on international developments
of mutual interest.”
India joined China in expressing concerns about the Federal Reserve’s
practice of printing money in order to cover Washington’s vast red ink.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are taking
steps to create their own method of settling trade accounts in order to
protect themselves from the looming dollar implosion,
China has forcefully called for a “de-Americanized world.” After
watching the “superpower” offshore a large part of its GDP to China and
then add to the diminished tax base the burden of $6 trillion in wars
that brought no booty and served no US interest, China has concluded
that American power is spent. The London Telegraph thinks “it is only a
matter of time before the renminbi replaces the dollar as the primary
currency for trading commodities and resources.”
The Obama regime attempted to attack Syria based on the sort of lies
that the Bush regime used to invade Iraq, only to be slapped down by the
British Parliament and Russian government. This rebuke was followed by
the childishness of the government shutdown and threat of default.
Consequently, the Washington morons have lost their monopoly on economic
and political leadership. A few days ago the British government
announced a historic agreement that permits British investors direct
access to China’s markets and allows Chinese banks to expand their
operations in Great Britain.
In Australia, the US dollar will no longer be used as the currency in
which to settle the Australian trade accounts with China. Instead of
dollars, trade will be settled in the Chinese currency.
Washington served as cheerleader, as did most economists and
libertarians, while US corporations, greedy for short-term profits and
executive bonuses, offshored US industry and manufacturing, calling it
free trade. The obvious and predicted result is that China’s demand for
resources needed to fuel its industrial and manufacturing power now
dominates markets. This means that the US dollar is being displaced as
world currency. The only market that America dominates is the market
for financial fraud.
When industrial, manufacturing, and tradeable professional service
jobs are offshored, they take US GDP and tax base with them. The foreign
country gets the benefit of the relocated economic activity. Due to the
revenues lost from jobs offshoring, there is a large gap between
federal revenues and federal expenditures. As Washington’s irresponsible
behavior has raised so many doubts about the dollar’s value and the
government’s commitment to stand behind its massive debt, foreign
countries with trade surpluses with the US are less and less willing to
recycle those surpluses into the purchase of US Treasury debt.
Today the two largest holders of US Treasury debt are not investors
or even foreign central banks. The two largest holders are the Federal
Reserve and the Social Security Trust Fund.
As for those $6 trillion wars, that’s to pay for national defense to
protect us from women, children, and village elders in far away
countries devoid of air forces and navies, and to provide those recycled
taxpayer monies from the military/security complex that find their way
into political contributions.
The Wall Street gangsters sighed for relief over the last minute debt
ceiling agreement. This shows how short-term Wall Street’s outlook is.
All the October agreement did was to push off the crisis to January and
February. The “debt ceiling agreement” did not produce a new debt
ceiling that would last beyond February, and it did not resolve the
large difference between federal revenues and expenditures. In other
words, the can was again kicked down the road. A repeat of the October
fiasco won’t play well.
Obamacare is causing the premiums on private insurance polices to
rise substantially, almost doubling in some situations unless people
move to the uncertain exchanges, and Obamacare’s raid on Medicare
payroll tax revenues has resulted in a cut in Medicare payments to
health care providers. The result is a further reduction in consumer
discretionary income and a further drop in the economy.
This in turn means a larger federal budget deficit and the need for the Federal Reserve to purchase more debt.
Another reason the Federal Reserve is faced with increasing, not
tapering, quantitative easing (money printing) is the decline in foreign
purchases of US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. As the instruments
pay interest that is less than the rate of inflation, holding Treasury
debt makes no sense when the dollar’s value and the potential of default
are open questions.
According to reports, not only are foreign governments, such as
China, ceasing to buy US Treasury debt, China has started to sell off
its holdings, substituting gold in the place of US Treasury debt.
This means that the bonds must be purchased by the Fed or interest
rates will rise as the increased supply of bonds on the market drives
down bond prices. The only way the Fed can purchase a larger supply of
bonds is by printing more money, that is, by more quantitative easing.
With the world moving away from using the dollar to settle
international accounts, as the Fed prints more dollars the rate at which
foreign holders of dollar assets sell off their holdings will rise.
To get out of dollars requires that the dollar proceeds from selling
Treasuries, US stocks and US real estate be sold in the currency
markets. The selling of dollars drives down the exchange value of the
US dollar and results in rising US inflation. The Fed can print money
with which to purchase Treasury debt, but it cannot print foreign
currencies with which to purchase dollars.
The decline in the dollar’s exchange value and the domestic inflation
that results will force the Fed to stop printing. What then covers the
gap between revenues and expenditures? The likely answer is private
pensions and any other asset that Washington can get its hands on.
Initially, private pensions will be taxed at a rate to recover the
tax-free accumulation in the pensions. The second year a national
emergency will be used to confiscate some share of pensions. Those
relying on the pensions will find themselves with less income. Consumer
spending will decline. The economy will worsen. The deficit will widen.
You can see where this is going, and there seems to be no way out.
Policymakers, economists, and corporation executives are in denial about
the adverse effects of offshoring, which they still, despite all the
evidence, maintain is good for the economy. So nothing will be done
about offshoring. Republicans will blame the budget deficit on welfare
and entitlements, and if those are cut consumer spending will decline
further, widening the budget deficit. Inflation will rise as incomes
fall, and social cohesion will break down.
Now you know why Homeland Security purchased 1.6 billion rounds of
ammunition, enough ammunition to fight the Iraq war for 12 years, has
its own para-military force and 2,700 tanks. If you think the
“terrorist threat” in America warrants a domestic armed force of this
size, you are out of your mind. This force has been assembled to deal
with starving and homeless people in the streets of America.
September employment report: According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), September brought 148,000 new jobs,
enough to keep up with population growth but not reduce the unemployment
rate. Moreover, John Williams (shadowstats.com) says that one-third of
these jobs, or 50,000 per month on average, are phantom jobs produced
by the birth-death model that during difficult economic times
overestimates the number of new jobs from business startups and
underestimates job losses from business failures.
The BLS reports that 22,000 of September’s jobs were new hires by
state governments, which seems odd in view of the ongoing state
budgetary difficulties.
In the private sector, wholesale and retail trade produced 36,900 new
jobs, which seems odd in light of the absence of growth in real median
family income and real retail sales.
Transportation and warehousing produced 23,400 new jobs, concentrated
in transit and ground passenger transportation. This also seems odd
unless the price of gasoline and pinched budgets are forcing people onto
public transportation.
Professional and business services accounted for 32,000 jobs of which 63% are temporary help jobs.
So here you have the job picture that the presstitutes, hyping “the
jobs gain,” don’t tell you. The scary part of the September job report
is that the usual standby, the category of waitresses and bartenders,
which has accounted for a large part of every reported jobs gain since I
began reporting the monthly statistics, shows job loss. Seven thousand
one hundred waitresses and bartenders lost their jobs in September. If
this figure is not a fluke, it is bad news. It signals that fewer
Americans can afford to eat and drink out.
The unemployment rate that is reported is the rate that does not
count as unemployed discouraged workers who are unable to find jobs and
cease to look. This favored rate, the darling of the regime in power,
the presstitutes, and Wall Street, also is not adjusted for the category
of “involuntary part-time workers,” those whose hours have been cut
back or because they are unable to find a full-time job. Obamacare, as
is widely reported, is causing employers to shift their work forces from
full time to part time in order to avoid costs associated with
Obamacare. The BLS places the number of involuntary part-time workers at
7,900,000.
The announced 7.2% unemployment rate is a meaningless number. The
rate can decline for no other reason than people unable to find jobs
drop out of the work force. You are not counted in the work force if you
are discouraged about finding a job and no longer look for a job.
The phenomena of discouraged workers shows up in the measure of the
labor force participation rate, which has declined in the 21st century.
The opportunities for American labor are so restricted that a rising
percentage of the working age population have given up looking for jobs.
Yet, the Obama regime, the Wall Street gangsters, and the pressitute
media tell us how much better the economic situation is becoming as more
small businesses close, as memberships decline in golf clubs, as more
university graduates return home to live with their parents, who are
drawing down their savings to live, as Fed Chairman Bernanke has made it
impossible for them to live on interest payments on their savings.
According to the US census bureau, real median household income in
2012 was $51,017, down 9% from $56,080 in 1999, 13 years ago. In
contrast, annual compensation in 2012 for US CEOs broke all records.
Two CEOs were paid more than $1 billion, and the worst paid among the
top ten took home $100 million. When the presstitutes speak of economic
recovery, they mean recovery for the one percent.
America is in the toilet, and the rest of the world knows it. But
the neocons who rule in Washington and their Israeli ally are determined
that Washington start yet more wars to create lebensraum for Israel.
Early in the 21st century the liberal Democrat Senator from New York,
Chuck Schumer, and I coauthored an article in the New York Times about
the adverse effects on the US economy of jobs offshoring. The article
caused a sensation. The Brookings Institution in Washington quickly
convened a conference which was covered by C-SPAN. C-SPAN rebroadcast
the conference several times. During the conference I said that if jobs
offshoring continued, the US would be a third world economy in 20 years.
Wall Street quickly shut up Senator Schumer, but I am sticking by my forecast. Indeed, I think we are already there.
