One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
Another Phony Jobs Report
March 6, 2016 | Original Here | Use original if you wish to receive his newsletter via email
Another Phony Jobs Report
And if true it is damning
The monthly payroll jobs reports have become a bad joke.
No growth in real retail sales, but 55,000 retail trade new jobs in February.
No growth in real consumer income, but 40,000 more waitresses and bartenders.
86,000 new jobs in Education, health services, and social assistance. February is a strange month to be hiring new teachers. If February brought a quarter million new jobs, how come a big hike in social assistance jobs?
Manufacturing lost 16,000 jobs.
Murder Is Washington’s Foreign Policy — Paul Craig Roberts
March 4, 2016 | Original Here | Use original if you wish to receive his newsletter via email
Murder Is Washington’s Foreign Policy
Paul Craig Roberts
Washington has a long history of massacring people, for example, the
destruction of the Plains Indians by the Union war criminals Sherman and
Sheridan and the atomic bombs dropped on Japanese civilian populations,
but Washington has progressed from periodic massacres to fulltime
massacring. From the Clinton regime forward, massacre of civilians has
become a defining characteristic of the United States of America.
Washington is responsible for the destruction of Yugoslavia and
Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and part of Syria.
Washington has enabled Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen, Ukraine’s attack
on its former Russian provinces, and Israel’s destruction of Palestine
and the Palestinian people.
The American state’s murderous rampage through the Middle East and
North Africa was enabled by the Europeans who provided diplomatic and
military cover for Washington’s crimes. Today the Europeans are
suffering the consequences as they are over-run by millions of refugees
from Washington’s wars. The German women who are raped by the refugees
can blame their chancellor, a Washington puppet, for enabling the
carnage from which refugees flee to Europe.
In the article below Mattea Kramer points out that Washington has
added to its crimes the mass murder of civilians with drones and missile
strikes on weddings, funerals, children’s soccer games, medical centers
and people’s homes. Nothing can better illustrate the absence of moral
integrity and moral conscience of the American state and the population
that tolerates it than the cavalier disregard of the thousands of
murdered innocents as “collateral damage.” http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176110/tomgram:_mattea_kramer,_the_grief_of_others_and_the_boasts_of_candidates/
If there is any outcry from Washington’s European, Canadian,
Australian, and Japanese vassals, it is too muted to be heard in the US.
As Kramer points out, American presidential hopefuls are competing on
the basis of who will commit the worst war crimes. A leading candidate
has endorsed torture, despite its prohibition under US and
international law. The candidate proclaims that “torture works” — as if
that is a justification — despite the fact that experts know that it
does not work. Almost everyone being tortured will say anything in order
to stop the torture. Most of those tortured in the “war on terror”
have proven to have been innocents. They don’t know the answers to the
questions even if they were prepared to give truthful answers. Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn relates that Soviet dissidents likely to be picked up and
tortured by the Soviet secret police would memorize names on gravestones
in order to comply with demands for the names of their accomplices. In
this way, torture victims could comply with demands without endangering
innocents.
Washington’s use of invasion, bombings, and murder by drone as its
principle weapon against terrorists is mindless. It shows a government
devoid of all intelligence, focused on killing alone. Even a fool
understands that violence creates terrorists. Washington hasn’t even the intelligence of fools.
The American state now subjects US citizens to execution without due
process of law despite the strict prohibition by the US Constitution.
Washington’s lawlessness toward others now extends to the American
people themselves.
The only possible conclusion is that under Clinton, George W. Bush,
and Obama the US government has become an unaccountable, lawless,
criminal organization and is a danger to the entire world and its own
citizens.
You will rarely read a book written in a more courageous,
intelligent, and blunt manner about profoundly pressing world problems
than this one. Paul Craig Roberts is a phenomenon; no issue, no matter
how controversial, escapes his astute analysis. He writes with a
tornadic power and logic that convinces as it challenges. Driven by a
passionate concern for the horrible direction of the world – especially
the United States government’s responsibility for so much of its
wretchedness – he is relentless in roiling the waters of ignorance and
complacency in which so many Americans float.
A former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the
Reagan administration and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Paul
Craig Roberts (image right) has escaped all easy labels to become a
public intellectual of the highest order. He is a prolific critic of
U.S. foreign and domestic policies, with a special emphasis on the
nefarious influence of the neoconservatives from the Reagan through the
Obama administrations. A savage critic of the mainstream corporate
media – he calls them “presstitutes” – he dissects their propaganda and
disinformation like a truth surgeon and penetrates to the heart of
issues in a flash.
The Neoconservative Threat To World Order is a compendium of
his essays written between February 2014 and July 2015. Most of them
deal with Washington’s destabilization of Ukraine and its ongoing
threats against Russia. Roberts sees this new Cold War as rooted in the
neoconservative doctrine of world hegemony. He correctly argues that
this is based on the Wolfowitz Doctrine, written in 1992 by
neoconservative Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (a signatory of
the 1997 Project for the New American Century), which became the
blueprint for NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and the growing
threat of nuclear war that we are faced with today. In the preface he
writes:
Once in place the Wolfowitz Doctrine resulted in the
Clinton regime abandoning the guarantees that the George H. W. Bush
administration had given to Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch
to the East. In violation of the U.S. government’s word, former Warsaw
Bloc countries were incorporated into NATO. Then NATO was used to
attack Yugoslavia and Serbia. Then the George W. Bush regime withdrew
the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and began locating
anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders. Washington
orchestrated “color revolutions” in the former Russian provinces of
Georgia and Ukraine. When the Orange Revolution failed to deliver
Ukraine into Washington’s hands, Washington spent $5 billion cultivating
Ukrainian politicians and creating pro-American Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) that were used in Washington’s 2014 overthrow of
the elected government of Ukraine.
Read chronologically, these essays reward a careful reader with an
understanding of the progressively menacing steps taken by the Obama
administration, including the announcement that the United States is
sending battle tanks, heavy equipment, and thousands of troops to be
permanently stationed in Eastern European countries surrounding Russia.
If the shoe were on the other foot and Putin was sending the same to
Canada, Cuba, and Mexico, one would hear howls of outrage emanating from
the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, etc., media
stenographers for Washington.
In essay after essay Roberts’ analyses give the lie to the Western
media’s misleading reporting on Ukraine and its demonization of Russia.
He sees these developments as leading to war unless the
neoconservatives are “removed from foreign policy positions in the
government and media …. The warmonger neoconservatives must be removed
from Fox ‘News,’ CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall
Street Journal, and in their places independent voices must replace
propagandists for war. Clearly none of this is going to happen, but it
must if we are to escape Armageddon.”
So the reader is enlightened but not encouraged. But this is not
Roberts’ fault. He is being truthful. He is a Cassandra warning of
future disasters if people don’t awaken from “a false reality created
for them by their rulers.” He admits that he struggles with people’s
reluctance to seek truth every time he writes a clarifying essay. Yet
he is of two minds – hopeless and hopeful. He intimates that even if
people awaken, the neoconservatives will maintain their power in
government and media. Yet he stalwartly soldiers on, hoping to change
minds, which suggests he believes at some level that changing minds has a
chance of changing structures of power and ideology. His vacillation in
this regard is understandable.
“People ask for solutions,” he writes, “but no solutions are possible
in a dis-informed world. Populations almost everywhere are
dissatisfied, but few have any comprehension of the real situation. Before there can be solutions, people must know the truth about the problem. For those inclined to be messengers, it is largely a thankless task …. Aspirations and delusions prevail over truth.”
Thankless as the task may be, Roberts elucidates many issues besides Ukraine, so these essays
can also be read as self-standing analyses: 9/11 and the anthrax
attacks, the case for impeachment of U.S. presidents, war crimes by U.S.
officials, American “exceptionalism,” Operation Gladio, “Washington’s
Iraq ‘Victory’,” European governments’ collusion with the U.S., the CIA
and its media control, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the war on terror,
false flag attacks, etc. His reach is capacious and his analysis
penetrating. He questions, probes, presents facts, and admits when
facts are not conclusive. Impeccably logical – and straightforward – he
forces the reader to reevaluate their understanding of these issues.And he references other fine writers and researchers who support and extend his points.
While correct about the rise in power and evil influence of the
neoconservatives over the past thirty years or so, I think Roberts’
understanding of the machinations of secret deep state forces going back
to Operation Gladio and the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK,
suggests he knows that the neocons are but a recent example of an old
problem. The US drive for hegemony has deep roots and a long history.
Wall Street, the banks, and the CIA have been entwined for many, many
decades. Overthrowing governments, propaganda, assassinations, and
instigating wars are their specialty. None of this is the exclusive
bailiwick of neoconservatives; they are just a current, execrable
example. Behind them, and liberals and conservatives of all stripes, sit
powers that transcend nomenclature. I’d like to see him give more
emphasis to U.S. strategy as a long-standing continuum, though this does
not detract from his astute analysis of the neoconservatives. After
all, these essays were written on the fly as the neocons policies were
being carried out by the “liberal” Democrat Obama.
Dr. Roberts is a truth teller and a genuine patriot. Truth is his
country. In a speech he gave in Mexico while accepting the International
Award for Excellence in Journalism, he said, “In the United States
journalists receive awards for lying for the government and the
corporations…. Once a journalist sacrifices Truth to loyalty to a
government, he ceases to be a journalist and becomes a propagandist.”
So if you want truth, read The Neoconservative Threat to World Order. It’s journalism at its best.
Subprime Mortgage Whistleblowers Warn Bigger Crash on Its Way
Whistleblowers Richard Bowen and Michael Winston, along with UMKC's Bill Black, discuss the rampant fraud at Countrywide and Citigroup and how today's high foreclosure rates in states like Nevada could be a sign of what's to come - February 21, 2016 Subprime Mortgage Whistleblowers Warn Bigger Crash on Its Way
William K. Black,
author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics
and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the
Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007.
He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the
University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he
was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a
visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board,
deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal
Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office
of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National
Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.
Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO
or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause
greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime
combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption
initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action
against Fannie Mae's former senior management.
Richard Bowen
was a former Business Chief Underwriter for Citigroup, where he
monitored the credit quality of over $90 billion annually of purchased
residential mortgage loans which were put into mortgage backed
securities. Beginning in 2006, he repeatedly warned management about
the potential losses and ultimately warned Citi's board of directors,
requesting an outside investigation. Richard testified before the SEC,
with his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission being
nationally televised. He story has been reported by all of the major
media, and his 60 Minutes story, "Prosecuting Wall Street" has been
re-aired eight times.
Michael Winston
had a career of distinction in executive positions for over three
decades in five Fortune 100 companies across three industries. He served
as global head of leadership and organization strategy at Motorola,
Merrill Lynch, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed and Countrywide, and was
hailed eight times by Leadership Excellence Journal as one of the "100
Most Influential Thinkers on Leadership in the World."
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson of the NY Times
profiled Michael Winston's courage and integrity in an article
entitled, "How A Whistleblower Conquered Countrywide" and Salon
Magazine's David Dayen profiled Winston's story in a piece called
"Wall-Street's Greatest Enemy: The Man Who Knows Too Much."
Winston authored the recently published book World-Class
Performance, endorsed by key business executives, leading academics and
famed Olympians. See http://worldclassperformancebook.com/
P.S. If any of our readers would like to learn more about our life in San Carlos, how to get here, etc., feel free to connect to me at david_griscom@yahoo.com
The Neoconservatives Are Brewing A Wider War In Syria
Paul Craig Roberts
While you are enjoying your Sunday, the insane neoconservatives who
control Western foreign policy and their Turkish and Saudi Arabian
vassals might be preparing the end of the world.
Any person who relies on Western media has no accurate idea of what is happening in Syria.
I will provide a brief summary and then send you to two detailed accounts.
The neoconservative Obama regime set-up the Syrian government headed
by Assad for overthrow. A long propaganda campaign conducted in
Washington’s behalf by the Western media portrayed the
democratically-elected Assad as a “brutal dictator who uses chemical
weapons against his own people.” Washington organized and supported a
front group posing as democrats and involved them in conflict with the
Syrian military.
With conflict underway, Washington began predicting that something
had to be done to overthrow Assad before he used “chemical weapons
against his own people.” Obama turned these predictions into a “red
line.” When Assad used chemical weapons against Washington’s puppets,
the US would invade Syria.
With the “red line” drawn, a false flag chemical weapons attack was
staged, or an accident occurred, that Washington used to say that Assad,
despite the US warning, had crossed the “red line.”
Preparations for an invasion began, but hit two roadblocks. David
Cameron, Washington’s puppet prime minister of Great Britain was unable
to deliver British support for the invasion as the Parliament voted it
down. This left Washington uncovered and vulnerable to the charge of
naked aggression, a war crime.
Russian diplomacy threw up the other road block by securing the removal of all chemical weapons from Syria.
Their invasion plan frustrated, the neoconservatives sent the
jihadists they had used to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya to overthrow
Assad. Initially known as ISIS, then ISIL, then the Islamist State, and
now Daesh, a term that can be interpreted as an insult. Perhaps the
intention of the name changes is to keep the Western public thoroughly
confused about who is who and what is what.
Washington now pretends that it is fighting the Islamist State, but
Washington is doing its best to frustrate the success of the
Russian/Syrian alliance that is defeating the Islamist State..
The neoconservative insistence that “Assad must go” comprises a
threat to the security of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah is the Lebanese force that has twice defeated Israel’s attempt
to annex southern Lebanon for its water resources. Hezbollah is
dependent on Syrian and Iranian support for its arms and financing.
Israel wants rid of Hezbollah.
The Islamic State that Washington is trying to create in Syria would
provide Washington with a means of destabilizing Iran and Russia by
exporting jihadism into those countries. The Russian Federation has
Muslim populations as do former provinces of the Soviet Union that now
cooperate with Russia. By bogging down Russia in internal conflicts,
Washington can move Russia out of the way of Washington’s exercise of
hegemony. Similarly, non-Persian populations in Iran could be
radicalized by jihadism and used to destabilize Iran.
In order to protect themselves, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah have come to the support of Syria.
The Russians are there legally at the invitation of the Syrian government. The US is there illegally.
Russian air power in support of the Syrian Army has turned the tide against the Islamist State.
The invaders are being driven out. The neoconservatives cannot accept this defeat.
Washington is preparing a Syrian invasion by Turkey and Saudi Arabia,
the purpose of which is to split Syria in half with Washington
controlling the eastern part with the oil fields.
Possibly this is a bluff to get Russia to accept a Syrian settlement
less favorable to Russian, Iranian, and Syrian interests. However, the
Russian government cannot risk that it is only a bluff. If a
US/Turkish/Saudi force were to arrive first in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor,
Syria would be dismembered.
The Russians can get there first by dropping in paratroopers. In
other words, what the insane neoconservatives are doing is giving the
Russian government a big incentive to introduce Russian ground troops
into the conflict. Once those troops are there, you can safely bet that
the insane neoconservatives will cause conflict between them and
US/Turkish forces. A wider war will have begun from which neither side
can back down.
When one looks at the deplorable state of the world, one cannot help
but wonder at the insouciance of the American people. Where are they?
Do they exist or are they a myth? Have they been put to sleep by an
evil demon? Are they so lost in The Matrix that they cannot get out?
Ever since Clinton’s second term the US has been consistently acting
internationally and domestically as a criminal, disregarding its own
laws, international laws, the sovereignty of other countries, and the US
Constitution. A worse criminal government has never existed. Yet,
Americans remain subservient to the criminals that they have placed in
power over themselves.
According to polls, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders are
splitting the Democratic vote 50-50 as preferred Democratic presidential
candidate. This is extraordinary.
Hillary Clinton represents the interests of Wall Street and the
mega-banks, the Israel Lobby, and the interests of the military/security
complex. These interests are totally opposed to the interests of the
American people.
In his book, What’s the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank raised the
question of why Amerians vote against their own interests? Why do
Americans go to the voting both and do themselves in?
Whether you agree with Thomas Frank’s answer or not, Americans do, on
a regular basis, harm themselves by voting for people who are agents of
vested interests diametrically opposed to the interests of American
citizens.
I can remember when Bill and Hillary were in public office when their
speeches were free. No one wanted to listen to them when the speeches
were free. Clearly, Bill is being paid off for his past services to the
powerful interest groups that control the United States, and Hillary is
being paid off for her future service to the same groups.
How then is it possible that half of Democrats would prefer Hillary?
Is it because she is a woman and women want a woman president more than
they want their civil liberties, peace, and employment for themselves,
their spouses and their children?
Or is it because, given the pressitute character of the American media, the people haven’t a clue?
If you vote for Hillary, you are voting for someone who has been paid
off to the tune of $153 million by powerful vested interests who have
no concern whatsoever for your interests. In addition, Hillary has the
necessary campaign funds from the powerful interest groups for her
presidential nomination campaign. As if this isn’t damning enough, Hugh
Wharton writes that the National Democratic Committee is in league with
Hillary to steal, if necessary, the nomination from Sanders and the
voters. http://usuncut.com/news/the-dnc-superdelegates-just-screwed-over-bernie-sanders-and-spit-in-the-faces-of-voters/
In contrast, the interest groups who rule America are not contributing to Sanders. Therefore, the choice of Sanders is obvious, but 50% of Democrats are too braindead to see it.
Although Hillary is a substantial threat to America, the threat of
nuclear war is much greater, and the Democratic Obama regime in the
hands of neoconservatives has just greatly amplified the threat of
nuclear war.
The United States government, or perhaps we should say the exploiter
and deceiver of the American people, has announced a three-fold increase
in its military presence on Russia’s borders. The excuse for this great
boost in the profits and power of the US military-security complex is
“Russian aggression.”
But there is no sign of this agression. So Washington and its servile
presstitutes in the Western media make it up. They prolaim a lie.
“Russia invaded Ukraine” proclaims the propaganda. No mention is
made of Washington’s coup in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically
elected government and began a war against the Russian populations of
eastern and southern Ukraine, former provinces of Russia added to the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet leaders. In the presstitute media,
no mention is made of Washington’s intention of seizing Russia’s only
warm water port in Crimea on the Black Sea. http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/02/us-control-over-crimea-aim-of-coup-in.html
Having created a nonexistant Russian invasion in place of the real US
coup in Ukraine in the minds of the indoctrinated Americans, Washington
now claims that Russia is going to invade the Baltics and Poland.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but this lie from the Obama
regime now determines that the US military presence on Russia’s borders
will increase three-fold.
The escalation of the US/NATO threat on Russia’s borders forces a
Russian response. Considering that the Russophobic governments in
Poland and the Baltic States have unstable judgement, military buildups
bring risks of miscalculations.
There is a limit to the level of threat that the Russian government
can tolerate. The impotent Obama is in the firm grip of the
neoconservatives and the military-security complex. The neoconservatives
are motivated by their ideology of American world hegemony. The
military-security complex is motivated by power and profit. These
motives bring the United States and its vassals into conflict with
Russia’s (and China’s) sovereign existence.
Within the councils of American foreign policy there is not
sufficient weight to counter the neoconservative drive to war with
Russia and China. In conventional war, the US is not a military match
for the Russian/Chinese strategic alliance. Therefore, the war would be
nuclear. The power of hydrogen bombs is immensely more powerful than
the atomic bombs that the US dropped on Japan. Nuclear war means the
end of life on earth.
Americans can know that democracy has failed them, because there is
no check on the neoconservatives’ ability to foment war with Russia and
China.
The neocons control the press, and the press portrays Russia as “an
existential threat to the United States.” Once this fiction is drilled
into the brains of Americans, it is child’s play for propagandists to
create endless fears that deplete taxpayers of income in order to create
profits for the military-security complex by relaunching the Cold War
and an armaments race.
That is what is currently going on. The inability of Americans to
realize that they are being taken into a conflict that benefits only the
profits and power of the military-security complex and the ideology of a
small group of crazies demonstrates the impotence of American
democracy.
Universities and think tanks are replete with ambitious people who,
chasing grants and influence, fuel the Russophobic hysteria. For
example, on February 9 the Washington Post published an article by
Michael Ignatieff, the Edward R. Murrow professor at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School, and Leon Wieseltier, the Isaiah Berlin
Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The article is
a complete misrepresentation of the facts in Syria and called for US
measures that would result in military conflict with Russia. It was
irresponsible for the Washington Post to publish the article, but the
decision is consistent with the Post’s presstitute nature. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-era-of-us-abdication-on-syria-must-end/2016/02/09/55226716-ce96-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html
The propaganda line maintained by the US government, the
neoconservatives, the military/security complex, the presstitutes, and
fiction-writers such as Ignatieff and Wieseltier is that Russia is not
bombing the Islamic State jihadists who are attempting to overthrow the
Syrian government in order to establish a jihadish state that would
threaten the Middle East, Iran, and Russia herself. The official line
is that the Russians are bombing the democratic “rebels” who are trying
to overthrow an alleged “brutal Syrian dictator.” The conflict that the US
government started by sending ISIS to Syria to overthrow the Syrian
government is blamed on the Russian and Syrian governments.
Ignatieff and Wieseltier say that the US has put its “moral standing”
at risk by permitting the Russians to bomb and to starve innocent women
and children, as if the US had any moral standing after destroying
seven countries so far in the 21st century, producing millions of dead
and displaced persons, many of whom are now overrunning Europe as
refugees from Washington’s wars.
The recently retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael
Flynn, has said that the Obama regime made a “willful decision” to
support ISIS and use ISIS against the Assad government in Syria. That
the violence in Syria originated in a US/ISIS conspiracy against Syria
is ignored by Ignatieff and Wieseltier. Instead, they blame Russia
despite the fact that it is Russia’s air support for the Syrian Army
that has rolled back ISIS.
Where were Ignatieff and Wieseltier when Washington and its vassals
destroyed Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, much of Pakistan,
overthrew the first democratically elected government in Egypt,
overthrew the government in Ukraine and started a war against the
Russian population, and supplied Israel with the weapons and money to
steal Palestine from the Palestinians? Where were they when Clinton
destroyed Yugoslavia and Serbia? Where are they when ISIS murders
Syrians and eats the livers of its executed victims?
It would be interesting to know who financed the professorship in
Edward R. Murrow’s name and the fellowship in Isiah Berlin’s name and
how these positions came to be staffed with their current occupants.
Reagan and Gorbachev brought the Cold War to an end. The George H.W.
Bush administration supported the end of the Cold War and gave further
guarantees to Russia. But Clinton attacked Serbia, a Russian ally and
broke the agreement that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe to
Russia’s border. When the neoconservatives’ plans to invade Syria and
to attack Iran were frustrated by Russian diplomacy, the neocons turned
on Russia with fury.
In 1961 President Eisenhower warned the American people of the threat
posed by the military-security complex. That was 55 years ago. This
complex is so strong today that it is able to divert massive taxpayer
resources to its coffers while the living standard and economic
prospects of the American people decline.
The military/security complex requires an enemy. When the Cold War
ended, the “Muslim Threat” was created. This “threat” has now been superseded by the “Russian Threat,” which is much more useful in keeping
Europe in line and in scaring people with prospective invasions and
nuclear attacks that are far beyond the power and reach of jihadists.
Superpower America required a more dangerous enemy than a few lightly
armed jihadists, so the “Russian threat” was created. To drive home
the threat, Russia and her president are constantly demonized. The
conclusion is unavoidable that the insouciant American people are being
prepared for war.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large
arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence —
economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every
statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the
imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend
its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all
involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of
government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this
combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can
compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery
of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and
liberty may prosper together.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general in charge of the
Normandy Invasion and a popular two-term President of the United States.
Today he would be called a “conspiracy theorist.”
Were Ike to be issuing his warning from the White House today,
conservative Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco
Rubio (R-FL) would be screaming at Ike for impugning the motives of “the
patriotic industry that protects our freedom.”
Neoconservatives such as William Kristol would be demanding to know
why President Eisenhower was issuing warnings about our own
military-industrial complex instead of warning about the threat
presented by the Soviet military.
The presstitute media would be implying that Ike was going a bit
senile in his old age, a tactic the presstitutes used against President
Reagan as he struggled to end stagflation and the Cold War.
By January 17, 1961, when Eisenhower issued his warning in his
farewell address to the American People, it was already too late. Cold
Warriors had had their hooks into the American taxpayer for 15 years
after the end of WW II, and the military-industrial complex had replaced
“mom and apple pie” as the most venerated and entrenched US interest.
The Dulles brothers ran the State Department and CIA and overthrew
governments at will. (Read The Brothershttp://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret/dp/1250053129/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454270231&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Brothers )
The military-industrial complex had learned that regardless of the
protestations of high-ranking military officers, no cost-overrun, no
matter how egregious, went unpaid. Armaments industries and military
bases were spread all over the country and were important considerations
for every senator and many congressional districts. The chairmen of
House and Senate military appropriations subcommittees and armed
services committees were already dependent on campaign contributions
from the military-industrial complex and for cushy jobs should they lose
an election.
The Cold War was a profitable business that served many, and that is why it lasted so long.
There was never any threat of the Red Army invading Europe. Stalin
declared “socialism in one country” and purged the Communist Party of
the Trotskyist element that preached world revolution. An accommodation
could have been reached, except that for the first time ever the
military-industrial complex saw that it could keep the war business
going for decades and perhaps forever.
George F. Kennan predicted that should the Soviet Union “sink
tomorrow under the waters of the ocean,” another adversary would have to
be invented. “Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the
American economy.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the “Soviet threat” was
replaced with the “Muslim threat” and the “War on Terror” took over from
the Cold War. Despite a succession of false flag attacks and warnings
of a “thirty years war,” a few thousand lightly armed jihadists were an
insufficient replacement for the Soviet Union and its thousands of
nuclear ICBMs. It was an uncomfortable notion that the “world’s only
superpower” could not dispose of a few terrorists.
So we are back to the Cold War with Russia. The propaganda is fast
and furious. “Putin is the new Hitler.” “Russia invaded Ukraine.”
Russia is about to invade the Baltics and Poland.” “Putin is a corrupt
multi-billionaire.” “Putin is scheming to recreate the Soviet Union.”
These accusations become headlines despite US military spending being a
dozen or more times higher than Russian military spending and the
Russian government expressing no hegemonic aspirations.
Conspiracies are real. There are many more of them than people are
aware. Many government conspiracies are heavily documented by
governments themselves with the official records demonstrating the
conspiracies openly available to the public. Just google, for example,
Operation Gladio or the Northwoods Project. These conspiracies alone
are sufficient to chastise those uninformed Western peoples who go
around saying, “our government would never kill its own people.”
Perhaps Russian studies provided my introduction to government
conspiracies against their own people. I learned that the Tsar’s secret
police set off bombs and killed people in order to blame and arrest
labor agitators. I was skeptical of this account and wondered if it was
a reflection of left-wing bias against Tsarist Russia. Some years
later I asked my colleague, Robert Conquest, at the Hoover Institution
at Stanford University if the account was true. He replied that the
story is true as is known from the released secret police files that are
part of the Hoover Institution’s archives.
False flag attacks are used by governments in order to pursue secret
agendas that they cannot publicly acknowledge. If President George W.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had said: “We are going to attack
Iraq and a half dozen other countries in order to exercise hegemony over
the Middle East, steal their oil, and clear the path for Israel to
steal the entirety of the West Bank of Palestine, diverting taxpayers’
resources from serving the American people into the pockets of the
armaments industries and spilling the blood of your parents, spouses,
children, and siblings, even the American sheeple would have resisted.
Instead, following the famous advice of Hitler’s chief propagandist, they said: “Our country has been attacked!”
Generally speaking, an observant person with a bit of education can
recognize a false flag attack. However, few people pay attention beyond
what the official media says, and the media no longer investigates and
questions but simply repeats the official story. Therefore, only a few
realize what has really happened, and when these few open their mouths
they are discredited as “conspiracy theorists.”
This method of control might be wearing thin. There have been so many
false flag “terrorist attacks” in the 21st century that there are now
thousands of experts labeled as “conspiracy theorist.” For example, the
9/11 Truth Movement consists of thousands of high rise architects,
structural engineers, demolition experts, nano-chemists, physicists,
firefighters and first responders, civilian and military pilots, and
former high government officials. Collectively these experts represent
far more knowledge and experience than the 9/11 Commission, which did
nothing but write down whatever the government told the commission,
NIST, a collection of people whose incomes and careers depend on the
government, and the presstitutes who can barely manage arithemetic, much
less the mathematics of controlled demolition.
The neoconservatives, who conrolled the George W. Bush regime, called
for a “New Pearl Harbor” so that they could begin their wars of
conquest in the Middle East. A “New Pearl Harbor” is what 9/11 gave them. Was this a coincidence or a
Gulf of Tonkin or a Reichstag fire or a Tzarist secret police or
Operation Gladio bomb?
The charge, “conspiracy theory,” is used to prevent investigation.
9/11 was not investigated. Indeed, as many experts have pointed out,
there was a conscious effort to remove and destroy the evidence before
it could be investigated. The 9/11 families had to lobby and protest for
a solid year before the Bush regime consented to the totally controlled
9/11 Commission.
The Boston Marathon Bombing was not investigated. A scripted story
was issued and repeated by the media. The San Bernardino shootings were
not investigated. Again, a pre-scripted story took the place of
investigation.
The success of false flag attacks in the US led to their use in the
UK and France. The Charlie Hebdo affair was not investigated and the
official explanation makes no sense. The story has been closed with all
the loose ends dangling. For example, why did a French police official
investigating the crime allegedly commit suicide in his police office in
the early hours of the morning, and why was his family denied the
autopsy report? What happened to this disappeared story? Why did the
police finger a third participant in the attack as the “getaway driver”
who had an iron clad alibi? If the police were so totally wrong about
this member of the gang, how do we know they are right about the two men
they shot to death. How come alleged perpetrators of “terrorist
attacks” are always killed before they can talk? How come the only
story we ever get is what the government says? How can people be so
gullible after the Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Gladio, etc.?
Twenty-four of these contributors do not believe the official story.
Does this make them “conspiracy theorists,” or does this make them
brave souls who are concerned that Reichstag fire type events are
replacing Western civil liberty with fascist police states?
Ask yourself, why are those trying to preserve liberty denounced?
What incentive does contributor A.K. Dewdney, Professor Emeritus at
the University of Western Ontario, author of ten books about science and
mathematics, have to be a conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does Philip Giraldi, former CIA case officer and
Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, have to be a
conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does Anthony Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies
at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, whose latest book
has been endorsed by the American Library Association as “a scholarly
tour de force,” have to be a conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does Mujahid Kamran, Vice Chancellor of Punjab
University, Lahore, Pakistan, a Fulbright Scholar and recipient of
numerous awards, have to be a conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does Stephen Lendman, syndicated columnist and host on
the Progressive Radio News Hour, have to be a conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, have to be a conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does Alain Soral, one of France’s public intellectuals, have to be a conspiracy theorist?
What incentive does Robert David Steele, former CIA Clandestine Services Officer, have to be a conspiracy theorist?
The neocons’ whores in the Western media who call these people
“conspiracy theorists” are so stupid and unintelligent as to be
unqualified to express any opinion.
Dear Western Peoples, if you wish to be able to walk down the streets
of your cities without being accosted by police, demanded to present
identity papers, searched, detained indefinitely or assassinated without
due process of law, if you wish to be able to express your opinion
about “your” government and its use of your tax payments, if you wish to
be able to discuss current affairs or your personal affairs without
being recorded by the NSA or the equivalent in your own country or by
both, if you wish to be able to act on your moral conscience and to
protest the violence the West applies to Muslims and others unfavored by
powerful Western interests, such as Palestinians, if you wish to live
in the freedom that was achieved in the West after centuries of
struggle, wake up, find time from less meaningful pursuits to become
aware of what is being stolen from you. It is late in the game. If you
do not stand up for truth, you will have no freedom as there is no
freedom without truth.
Michael Hudson is the best economist in the world. Indeed, I could
almost say that he is the only economist in the world. Almost all of
the rest are neoliberals, who are not economists but shills for
financial interests.
If you have not heard of Michael Hudson it merely shows the power of
the Matrix. Hudson should have won several Nobel prizes in economics,
but he will never get one.
Hudson did not intend to be an economist. At the University of
Chicago, which had a leading economics faculty, Hudson studied music and
cultural history. He went to New York City to work in publishing. He
thought he could set out on his own when he was assigned rights to the
writings and archives of George Lukacs and Leon Trotsky, but publishing
houses were not interested in the work of two Jewish Marxists who had a
significant impact on the 20th century.
Friendships connected Hudson to a former economist for General
Electric who taught him the flow of funds through the economic system
and explained how crises develop when debt outgrows the economy.
Hooked, Hudson enrolled in the economics graduate program at NYU and
took a job in the financial sector calculating how savings were recycled
into new mortgage loans.
Hudson learned more economics from his work experience than from his
Ph.D. courses. On Wall Street he learned how bank lending inflates land
prices and, thereby, interest payments to the financial sector. The more
banks lend, the higher real estate prices rise, thus encouraging more
bank lending. As mortgage debt service rises, more of household income
and more of the rental value of real estate are paid to the financial
sector. When the imbalance becomes too large, the bubble bursts.
Despite its importance, the analysis of land rent and property valuation
was not part of his Ph.D. studies in economics.
Hudson’s next job was with Chase Manhattan, where he used the export
earnings of South American countries to calculate how much debt service
the countries could afford to pay to US banks. Hudson learned that just
as mortgage lenders regard the rental income from property as a flow of
money that can be diverted to interest payments, international banks
regard the export earnings of foreign countries as revenues that can be
used to pay interest on foreign loans. Hudson learned that the goal of
creditors is to capture the entire economic surplus of a country into
payments of debt service.
Soon the American creditors and the IMF were lending indebted
countries money with which to pay interest. This caused the countries’
foreign debts to rise at compound interest. Hudson predicted that the
indebted countries would not be able to pay their debts, an unwelcome
prediction that was confirmed when Mexico announced it could not pay.
This crisis was resolved with “Brady bonds” named after the US Treasury
Secretary, but when the 2008 US mortgage crisis hit, just as Hudson
predicted, nothing was done for the American homeowners. If you are not
a mega-bank, your problems are not a focus of US economic policy.
Chase Manhattan next had Hudson develop an accounting format to
analyze the US oil industry balance of payments. Here Hudson learned
another lesson about the difference between official statistics and
reality. Using “transfer pricing,” oil companies managed to avoid paying
taxes by creating the illusion of zero profits. Oil company affiliates
in tax avoidance locations buy oil at low prices from producers. From
these flags of convenience locations, which have no tax on profits, the
oil was then sold to Western refineries at prices marked up to eliminate
profits. The profits were recorded by the oil companies’ affiliates in
non-tax jurisdictions. (Tax authorities have cracked down to some extent
on the use of transfer pricing to escape taxation.)
Hudson’s next task was to estimate the amount of money from crime
going into Switzerland’s secret banking system. In this investigation,
his last for Chase, Hudson discovered that under US State Department
direction Chase and other large banks had established banks in the
Caribbean for the purpose of attracting money into dollar holdings from
drug dealers in order to support the dollar (by raising the demand for
dollars by criminals) in order to balance or offset Washington’s foreign
military outflows of dollars. If dollars flowed out of the US, but
demand did not rise to absorb the larger supply of dollars, the dollar’s
exchange rate would fall, thus threatenting the basis of US power. By
providing offshore banks in which criminals could deposit illicit
dollars, the US government supported the dollar’s exchange value.
Hudson discovered that the US balance of payments deficit, a source
of pressure on the value of the US dollar, was entirely military in
character. The US Treasury and State Department supported the Caribbean
safe haven for illegal profits in order to offset the negative impact on
the US balance of payments of US military operations abroad. In other
words, if criminality can be used in support of the US dollar, the US
government is all for criminality.
When it came to the economics of the situation, economic theory had
not a clue. Neither trade flows nor direct investments were important in
determining exchange rates. What was important was “errors and
omissions,” which Hudson discovered was an euphemism for the hot, liquid
money of drug dealers and government officials embezzling the export
earnings of their countries.
The problem for Americans is that both political parties regard the
needs of the American people as a liability and as an obstacle to the
profits of the military/security complex, Wall Street and the
mega-banks, and Washington’s world hegemony. The government in
Washington represents powerful interest groups, not American citizens.
This is why the 21st century consists of an attack on the constitutional
protections of citizens so that citizens can be moved out of the way of
the needs of the Empire and its beneficiaries.
Hudson learned that economic theory is really a device for ripping
off the untermenschen. International trade theory concludes that
countries can service huge debts simply by lowering domestic wages in
order to pay creditors. This is the policy currently being applied to
Greece today, and it has been the basis of the IMF’s structural
adjustment or austerity programs imposed on debtor countries,
essentially a form of looting that turns over national resources to
foreign lenders.
Hudson learned that monetary theory concerns itself only with wages
and consumer prices, not with the inflation of asset prices such as real
estate and stocks. He saw that economic theory serves as a cover for
the polarization of the world economy between rich and poor. The
promises of globalism are a myth. Even left-wing and Marxist economists
think of exploitation in terms of wages and are unaware that the main
instrument of exploitation is the financial system’s extraction of value
into interest payments.
Economic theory’s neglect of debt as an instrument of exploitation
caused Hudson to look into the history of how earlier civilizations
handled the build up of debt. His research was so ground-breaking that
Harvard University appointed him Research Fellow in Babylonian economic
history in the Peabody Museum.
Meanwhile he continued to be sought after by financial firms. He was
hired to calculate the number of years that Argentina, Brazil, and
Mexico would be able to pay the extremely high interest rates on their
bonds. On the basis of Hudson’s work, the Scudder Fund achieved the
second highest rate of return in the world in 1990.
Hudson’s investigations into the problems of our time took him
through the history of economic thought. He discovered that 18th and
19th century economists understood the disabling power of debt far
better than today’s neoliberal economists who essentially neglect it in
order to better cater to the interest of the financial sector.
Hudson shows that Western economies have been financialized in a
predatory way that sacrifices the public interest to the interests of
the financial sector. That is why the economy no longer works for
ordinary people. Finance is no longer productive. It has become a
parasite on the economy. Hudson tells this story in his recent book, Killing the Host (2015). Readers often ask me how they can learn economics. My answer is to
spend many hours with Hudson’s book. First, read the book through once
or twice in order to get an idea of what is covered. Then study it
closely section by section. When you understand the book, you will
understand economics better than any Nobel prize-winning economist.
Treat this column as an introduction to the book. I will be writing
more about it as current events and time permit. As far as I am
concerned, many current events cannot be understood independently of
Hudson’s explanation of the financialized Western economy. Indeed, as
most Russian and Chinese economists are themselves trained in neoliberal
economics, these two countries might follow the same downward path as
the West.
If you put Hudson’s analysis of financialization together with my
analysis of the adverse impact of jobs offshoring, you will understand
that the present economic path of the Western world is the road to
destruction.
