Today is Flag Day celebrating a flag that flys over a country that has destroyed thirteen countries in the past two decades. And tomorrow is the 800th aniversary of the Magna Carta, which together with the US Constitution are in the process of being repealed by the US and it's European vassals.

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Happy Birthday Magna Carta — Paul Craig Roberts

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June 12, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

Paul Craig Roberts

Monday, June 15, 2015, is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. In his book, Magna Carta, J.C. Holt, professor of medieval history, University of Cambridge, notes that three of the chapters of this ancient document still stand on the English Stature Book and that so much of what survives of the Great Charter is “concerned with individual liberty,” which “is a reflexion of the quality of the original act of 1215.”

In the 17th century Sir Edward Coke used the Great Charter of the Liberties to establish the supremacy of Parliament, the representative of the people, as the origin of law.

A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the Magna Carter protected rights of the Church, nobles, and free men who were not enserfed, a small percentage of the population in the early 13th century. We hear the same about the US Constitution–it was something the rich did for themselves. I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.

At Runnymede in 1215 no one but the armed barons had the power and audacity to make King John submit to law. The rule of law, not the rule of the sovereign or of the executive branch in Washington acceded to by a cowardly and corrupt Congress and Supreme Court, is a human achievement that grew out of the Magna Carta over the centuries, with ups and downs of course.

Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1759 fed into the American Revolution and gave us the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The Geneva Conventions extended the rule of law to the international arena.

Beginning with the Clinton Administration and rapidly accelerating with the George W. Bush and Obama regimes and Tony Blair in England, the US and UK governments have run roughshod over their accountability to law.

Both the US and UK in the 21st century have gone to numerous wars illegally under the Nuremberg Standard established by the US and UK following Germany’s defeat in WWII and used to execute Germans for war crimes. The US and UK claim that unlike Germany they are immune to the very international law that they themselves established in order to punish the defeated Germans. Washington and London can bomb and murder at will, but not Germany.

Both governments illegally and unconstitutionally (the UK Constitution is unwritten) spy on their citizens, and the Bush and Obama executive branches have eviscerated, with the complicity of Congress and the federal courts, the entirely of the US Constitution except for the Second Amendment, which is protected by the strong lobby of the National Rifle Association. If the gun control “progressives” have their way, nothing will be left of the US Constitution.

Washington and its European satellites have subordinated law to a political and economic hegemonic agenda. Just as under the heyday of colonialism when the West looted the non-white world, today the West loots its own. Greece is being looted as was Ireland, and Italy and Spain will not escape looting unless they renege on their debts and leave the EU.

Western capitalism is a looting mechanism. It loots labor. It loots the environment, and with the transpacific and transatlantic “partnerships” it will loot the sovereign law of countries. For example, France’s laws against GMOs become “restraints on trade” and subjects France to punitive law suits by Monsanto. If France doesn’t pay Monsanto the damages Monsanto claims, France is subject to punitive sanctions like Washington applies to Russia when Russia doesn’t do what Washington wants.

A new slave existence is being created in front of our eyes as law ceases to be a shield of peoples and becomes a weapon in the hands of government. Eight hundred years of reform is being overturned as Washington and its vassals invade, bomb, and overthrow governments that are out of step with Washington’s agenda. Formerly self-sufficient agricultural communities are becoming wage slaves for international agribusiness corporations. Everywhere privilege is rising above law and justice is being lost.

The concentration of wealth and power is reminiscent of the aristocratic era and of Rome under the Caesars. The demise of the rule of law has stripped ordinary people of security and dignity. Peoples of the world must protect themselves by acting in defense of the Great Charter’s principle that governments are accountable to law. Governments unaccountable to law are tyrannies whatever they might call themselves, no matter how exceptional and indispensable they declare themselves to be.

Monday in Westminster in London, the International Tribunal for Natural Justice is forming. If my understanding of this work of Humanitad is correct, we have a cause for hope. Perhaps the Tribunal will try the criminals of our time, almost all of which are “leaders” of Western governments, on the Internet with juries and prosecutors so that populations everywhere can witness the evil that every Western government represents.

Once the West is perceived as the evil force that it is, it will have to reform and again embrace Edward Coke’s vision of the Great Charter or become an unimportant backwater while the rest of the world goes on to better things. The world is saved once the world ceases to bow down to the American Caesar.

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"American taxpayers have built an entire city in Virginia so that the Pentagon can practice occupying American cities and putting down protests by US citizens." "Lecturers in the training courses describe constitutionalists as 'domestic extremists'." "Does this make the President of the United States, whose oath of office is to defend the US Constitution against enemies domestic and foreign, a domestic extremist? Is the fear of arrest by Homeland Security as a domestic extremist the reason Obama refuses to defend the Constitution of the United States?" -- Paul Craig Roberts

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» Amerikan Stasi Police State Staring Us In The Face — Paul Craig Roberts

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February 18, 2014 | Original Here                                              Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Amerikan Stasi Police State Staring Us In The Face

American sheeple stick heads in the sand, pretend to be ostriches

Paul Craig Roberts

Note: The Lorde story is likely a hoax, but it nevertheless captures the truth of the situation.


American taxpayers have built an entire city in Virginia so that the Pentagon can practice occupying American cities and putting down protests by US citizens. http://www.prisonplanet.com/u-s-army-builds-fake-city-in-virginia-to-practice-military-occupation.html This fake city is the training ground for the doctrine outlined in a leaked US Army document http://info.publicintelligence.net/USAMPS-CivilDisturbanceOps.pdf that describes how soldiers are to be trained to put down domestic disturbances and process prisoners through detainment camps where prisoners will be re-educated to appreciate US policies. In situations of “extreme necessity” the training embraces deadly force: “Warning shot will not be fired. When a firearm is discharged it will be fired with the intent of rendering the person(s) at whom it is discharged incapable of continuing that activity or course of behavior.” Lecturers in the training courses describe constitutionalists as “domestic extremists.”

Does this make the President of the United States, whose oath of office is to defend the US Constitution against enemies domestic and foreign, a domestic extremist? Is the fear of arrest by Homeland Security as a domestic extremist the reason Obama refuses to defend the Constitution of the United States?

The Army is being trained for domestic police duties that are in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that prevents the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, another indication that Washington has no respect for the country’s laws and that Obama and his “Justice” Department have no intention of enforcing the laws of the land or abiding by the Constitution.

Where is the media outcry? Where are the law schools? Where is Congress? A government that disregards the laws of the land is both treasonous and tyrannical. Yet, not a peep from “the free and the brave.”

The US government and its puppet auxiliary, the UK government, have turned with vengeance against whistleblowers and their attorneys. Bradley Manning is in prison, Julian Assange is confined to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, and Edward Snowden is under Russian protection from a tyrannical US government. Jessellyn Radack, an attorney who represented Snowden was recently detained and questioned in an intimidating way at London’s Heathrow Airport. http://rt.com/news/snowden-lawyer-heathrow-airport-346/ Washington has taught its British puppet state how to mimic Washington’s Gestapo ways.

The latest revelations of the criminal activities of the Amerikan National Stasi Agency
comes from a leaked NSA document that shows that the Stasi agency considers WikiLeaks Julian Assange to be a “malicious foreign actor” and launched “an international effort to focus the legal element of national power upon non-state actor Assange, and the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” Clearly, the Gestapo is upon us.

RT reports: “The NSA was not alone in its sweeping espionage on the whistle-blowing organization. It also enlisted its partners in the Five Eyes spying network (UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada) as well as other nations. In documents dating back from August 2010, the US urged 10 other countries with forces in Afghanistan to consider pressing criminal charges against Julian Assange -- ‘founder of the rogue WikiLeaks internet website and responsible for the unauthorized publication of over 70,000 classified documents covering the war in Afghanistan.’” http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-assange-calls-prosecutor-526/

In other words, freedom of the press? We don’t need no stinking freedom of the press. We have the presstitute press--the TV networks, the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and all the rest of the officially sanctioned state Ministry of Propaganda.

Julian Assange stated, correctly, “The NSA and its UK accomplices show no respect for the rule of law.”

WikiLeaks’ attorney, Judge Baltasar Garzon, the pursuer of Pinochet, had this to say:
“The paradox is that Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks organization are being treated as a threat instead of what they are: a journalist and a media organization that are exercising their fundamental right to receive and impart information in its original form, free from omission and censorship, free from partisan interests, free from economic or political pressure.”

What has happened that explains the transformation of the UK and all of its former English colonies--the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand--into Gestapo Stasi states? These are the countries best known historically for their domestic civil liberties and rule of law, irrespective of their treatment of their indigenous populations and in the case of England her non-white colonies. The original dispossession was of indigenous peoples. Now these governments have turned on their own.Today the governments of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the Five Eyes) see civil liberty and the accountability of government to law as threats to themselves, and the governments are determined to stamp out the threats. The historical lands of liberty have abandoned liberty and become Stasi states.

What has occurred in the US and UK is that the criminal and treasonous acts of both governments have become so extreme that the governments must destroy civil liberty in order to protect themselves from exposure. Whenever you hear “national security” invoked, you know that government is covering up its crimes and its lies.

The criminal character of both US and UK governments is now recognized by the rest of the world, even by the bought-and-paid-for NATO puppet states, France and Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are discussing the creation of an European communication network in order to protect Europeans’ communications from the NSA and from Google, Facebook, and other US communication companies that shamelessly cooperate with NSA’s spy network as junior members of the Stasi. Brazil and South America are facing the same challenge of protecting their communications from Washington’s National Stasi Agency.

NSA spies on foreign companies for the benefit of American ones, and it spies on US law firms representing clients against the US government. The New York Times recently reported that the corrupt Australian puppet state has been working with NSA to steal the private communications of US lawyers with their clients in the Indonesian government involved in a trade dispute with Washington.” http://on.rt.com/vw8d8v In other words, NSA spying helps the US government to prevail in economic lawsuits against it, but the spying is justified in the name of the nonexistent “terrorist threat.” The terrorist is NSA.

And you thought Washington was only spying on “terrorists” to prevent them from “killing us over here.”

It is impossible to paint a picture of a more lawless government than Washington has
painted of itself.

If it is not a hoax, it took a pop singer, Lorde, to declare in her Grammy Award acceptance speech last month that the emperor has no clothes: “Planet Earth is run by psychopaths that hide behind slick marketing, ‘freedom’ propaganda and ‘economic growth’ rhetoric, while they construct a global system of corporatized totalitarianism. As American journalist Chris Hedges has identified, a corporate totalitarian core thrives inside a fictitious democratic shell. This core yields an ‘inverted’ totalitarian state that few recognize because it does not look like the Orwellian world of Nineteen Eighty-four.This corporate totalitarian core is spreading outward from America. Planet Earth is being rapidly militarized by the world’s major and significant states, including their police forces. Meanwhile, state surveillance is becoming universal and torture is outsourced to gulags.” http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/lordes-suppressed-grammy-award-acceptance-speech-full-transcript-26-january-2014/ The TV channels censored her speech and cut it off by substituting pre-recorded content. http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/clipping-queen-bees-wings-lordes-real-grammy-speech-suppressed/ See also
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/author/snoopman/ and http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/royal-pencil-in-print-lordes-suppressed-grammy-speech-makes-front-page-news-in-far-flung-new-zealand/

This is a very large production for a hoax. An amazing amount of creativity and production effort went into it. Increasingly, our reality is composed of invented news, whether from the government or the Internet.

By cutting off Lorde’s speech, the media moguls are shown proving the truth of her words. Americans must not hear. The dolts might wake up.

Americans should take note that in fact the media is on guard, prepared at an instance’s notice to suppress free speech. Washington is ever so pleased to support protesters in Ukraine, who are witlessly helping Washington to subvert their country, but no protests at home thank you.

If the Lorde story is a hoax, it nevertheless captures the truth of the situation. And in more ways than one. As one reader put it, "the content of that non-speech may be truthful, but, you see, that is what 'they' do -  conflate truth, fiction & satire all into one ball of wax so we look like fools and no longer know what to believe."

With the Pentagon building fake cities for soldiers to demolish while practicing the unconstitutional occupation practices that are in store for us in the homeland, Alex Jones’ predictions move out of the realm of conspiracy theory. Washington has finally noticed that the result of moving middle class jobs offshore is an American population without a future. As Gerald Celente says, when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it. The US military is gearing up for when Americans can’t take it any more.

Meanwhile Washington continues the pretense of America as the land of “freedom and democracy” and “concern for human rights,” blah-blah-blah. People all over the world, with the exception of the paid protesters in western Ukraine, are no longer listening to the bullshit flowing from Washington and its presstitute media.

Note: This from a reader in Germany: "Last year the Green Party complained about Germany's own training field and city.  It's near Magdeburg and, as of last year, they were planning to add a subway station and expect to have 500 buildings built by 2017, including high rises, poor neighborhoods and industrial districts.Its official name is Gefechtsübungszentrum, GÜZ, or Combat Training Center. It's located on 232 square kilometers of practice grounds (30 km long by 12 km wide) and cost 100,000,000 Euros!  or $40,000,000 more than the U.S. version."

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Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, explains the REAL reason why Obama has been intent on attacking Syria. It is not to destroy chemical weapons but rather to degrade the Syrian military, leading ultimately to "...the overthrow of Assad and getting rid of some of the opposition groups that the United States doesn't want in there." The only lawful international justifications for a war of agression are (1) self defense and (2) a ruling by the UN Security Council. The only national justification under the U.S. Constitution is an affirmative vote of the U.S. Congress. Obama will violate both if he goes forward with his plan.

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 theREALnews                                                                               Permalink

Fool Me Twice, Shame on US

Michael Ratner: Obama administration asserting the use chemical weapons by Assad feels like deja vu of the lead-up to the Iraq War - August 31, 13

Bio

Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include "Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America," and “ Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.” NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.

Great idea: Bradley Manning nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize!

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Bradley Manning should win the Nobel Peace Prize
As a peace prize winner myself, I am nominating Manning for this honor for his work to help end the Iraq War and other conflicts

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Mairead Corrigan-Maguire

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 June 2013 08.30 EDT

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Army Pfc Bradley Manning is escorted into a courthouse at Fort Meade on the third day of his court martial. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Peace is more than simply the absence of war; it is the active creation of something better. Alfred Nobel recognized this when he created alongside those for chemistry, literature, medicine and physics, an annual prize for outstanding contributions in peace. Nobel's foresight is a reminder to us all that peace must be created, maintained, and advanced, and it is indeed possible for one individual to have an extraordinary impact. For this year's prize, I have chosen to nominate US Army Pfc Bradley Manning, for I can think of no one more deserving. His incredible disclosure of secret documents to Wikileaks helped end the Iraq War, and may have helped prevent further conflicts elsewhere.

I recently visited Syria, where I met a few of the millions of refugees and internally displaced people whose lives have been torn apart by the ongoing conflict in that country. I learned from those I spoke to, both within the government and in opposition groups, that while there is a legitimate and long-overdue movement for peace and non-violent reform in Syria, the worst acts of violence are being perpetrated by outside groups. Extremist groups from around the world have converged upon Syria, bent on turning this conflict into one of ideological hatred.

In recent years this would have spelled an undeniable formula for United States intervention. However, the world has changed in the years since Manning's whistleblowing – the Middle East especially. In Bahrain, Tunisia, Egypt, and now Turkey, advocates of democracy have joined together to fight against their own governments' control of information, and used the free-flowing data of social media to help build enormously successful non-violent movements. Some activists of what has come to be known as the Arab Spring have even directly credited Bradley Manning, and the information he disclosed, as an inspiration for their struggles.

In a Middle East newly dedicated to democratic flow of information, those who would commit human rights violations can more easily be held accountable. If not for whistleblower Bradley Manning, the world still might not know of how US forces committed covert crimes in the name of spreading democracy in Iraq, killing innocent civilians in incidents such as the one depicted in the "Collateral Murder" video, and supporting Iraqi prisoner torture. Now, those who would support foreign intervention in the Middle East know that every action would be scrutinized under international human rights law. Clearly, this is for the best. International peacekeepers, as well as experts and civilians inside Syria, are nearly unanimous in their view that United States involvement would only worsen this conflict.

Around the world, Manning is hailed as a peacemaker and a hero. His nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is a reflection of this. Yet at his home in America, Manning stands trial for charges of espionage and "aiding the enemy". This should not be considered a refutation of his candidacy – rather, he is in good company. Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi and Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo were each awarded the prize in recent years while imprisoned by their home countries.

Last week at Manning's trial, the public learned that at the time Manning released his information, WikiLeaks stated they wanted to publish "the concealed documents or recordings most sought after by a country's journalists, activists, historians, lawyers, police or human rights investigators". Manning's disclosures to Wikileaks only "aided the enemy," as his prosecutors charge, if the enemy is international cooperation and peace itself.

Manning is the only one on trial, yet what of those who committed the atrocities he revealed? The United States, the most militarized country on earth, should stand for something better than war. Its government must be open to "debates, discussions and reforms" concerning its foreign policy, to use Manning's own words. By heeding Pfc Bradley Manning's message on the importance of transparency, America's government can once again rebuild its image in the eyes of the world, and spread democracy not through foreign invasions, but through setting a strong example.

I hope American leaders will embrace the U.S. constitution, and base their national and foreign policies on ethical values, human rights and international law.

If you haven't treated yourself to the film "V For Vendeta," download or buy a copy. It's about people's desire for liberty in a futuristic England, which parallel's today's America ...except that the strength of Americans' desire for liberty remains to be seen.

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Washington Is Driving The World To The Final War — Paul Craig Roberts

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June 28, 2013 | Original Here                                                     Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Washington Is Driving The World To The Final War

Paul Craig Roberts

“V For Vendetta,” a film that portrays evil in a futuristic England as a proxy for the evil that exists today in America, ends with the defeat of evil. But this is a movie in which the hero has super powers. If you have not seen this film, you should watch it. It might wake you up and give you courage. The excerpts below show that, at least among some filmmakers, the desire for liberty still exists.

Whether the desire for liberty exists in America remains to be seen. If Americans can overcome their gullibility, their lifelong brainwashing, their propensity to believe every lie that “their” government tells them, and if Americans can escape the Matrix in which they live, they can reestablish the morality, justice, peace, freedom, and liberty that “their” government has taken from them. It is not impossible for Americans to again stand with uplifted heads. They only have to recognize that “their” government is the enemy of truth, justice, human rights and life itself.

Can mere ordinary Americans triumph over the evil that is “their” government without the aid of a superhero? If ideas are strong enough and Americans can comprehend them, good can prevail over the evil that is concentrated in Washington. What stands between the American people and their comprehension of evil is their gullibility.

If good fails in its battle with Washington’s evil, our future is a boot stamping on the human face forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKvvOFIHs4k&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-gHVGOoE48

If you, an American, living in superpower America lack the courage to stand up to the evil that is “your” government, perhaps the courage of Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and tiny Ecuador will give you heart.

A US senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Ecuadoran government that he would block the import of vegetables and flowers from Ecuador if Ecuador gives asylum to Edward Snowden. The cost to Ecuador would be one billion dollars in lost revenues.

Menendez’s statement–”Our government will not reward countries for bad behavior”–is ironic. It equates bad behavior with protecting a truth-teller and good behavior with betraying a truth-teller. Menendez’s statement is also a lie. The US government only rewards bad behavior. The US government consistently rewards those who conspire against the elected governments of their own countries, setting them up as dictators when Washington overthrows the elected governments.

Menendez’s threat did not work, but the senator did succeed in delivering yet another humiliating blow to Washington’s prestige. The Ecuadoran President, Rafael Correa, beat Menendez to the punch and cancelled the trade pact with the US on the grounds that the pact was a threat to the sovereignty of Ecuador and to moral principles and was being used by Washington to blackmail Ecuador. “Ecuador doesn’t accept pressure or threats from anyone,” added Communications Secretary Fernando Alvarado who then offered Washington foreign aid to provide human rights training to combat torture, illegal executions and attacks on peoples’ privacy.

Washington, exposed with its hand in the cookie jar devouring the privacy of the entire world and prevented by its hubris from acknowledging its illegal behavior and apologizing, has so mishandled the Snowden affair that Washington has done far more damage to itself than occurred from Snowden’s revelations. Washington has proven conclusively that it has no respect for anyone’s human rights, that it has no respect for any country’s sovereignty, that it has no respect for any moral principles, especially those it most often mouths, and that it relies on coercion and violence alone. The rest of the world now knows who its enemy is.

Washington’s presstitutes, by helping Washington demonize Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Manning, Assange, and Ecuador, have demonstrated to the world that the US media is devoid of integrity and that nothing it reports can be believed. The US print and TV media and NPR comprise a ministry of propaganda for Washington’s immoral agendas.

On June 24, the Stasi State’s favorite whore, the Washington Post, denounced three times democratically-elected Rafael Correa as “the autocratic leader of tiny, impoverished Ecuador,” without realizing that the editorial not only demonstrated the Washington Post’s lack of any ethics whatsoever but also showed the entire world that if “tiny, impoverished Ecuador” can stand up to Washington’s threats, so can the rest of the world.

President Correa replied that the Washington Post “managed to focus attention on Snowden and on the ‘wicked’ countries that support him, making us forget the terrible things against the US people and the whole world that he denounced.” Correa added that Washington’s “world order isn’t only unjust, it’s immoral.”

The reason Washington hates Correa has nothing to do with Snowden. That Ecuador is considering asylum for Snowden is just an excuse. Correa is hated, because in the second year of his first term he repudiated the $3 billion dollar foreign debt that corrupt and despotic prior regimes had been paid to contract with international finance. Correa’s default threat forced the international financial gangsters to write down the debt by 60 percent.

Washington also hates Correa because he has been successful in reducing the high rates of poverty in Ecuador, thus building public support that makes if difficult for Washington to overthrow him from within.

Yet another reason Washington hates Correa is because he took steps against the multinational oil companies’ exploitation of Ecuador’s oil resources and limited the amount of offshore deposits in the country’s banks in order to block Washington’s ability to destabilize Ecuador’s financial system.

Washington also hates Correa for refusing to renew Washington’s lease of the air base in Manta.

Essentially, Correa has fought to take control of Ecuador’s government, media and national resources out of Washington’s hands and the hands of the small rich elite allied with Washington. It is a David vs. Goliath story.

In other words, Correa, like Venezuela’s Chevez, is the rare foreign leader who represents the interests of his own country instead of Washington’s interest.

Washington uses the various corrupt NGOs and the puppet government in Colombia as weapons against Correa and the Ecuadoran government. Many believe that it is only a matter of time before Washington succeeds in assassinating Correa.

American patriots, who feel that they should be on “their” government’s side regardless of the facts, would do well to remember what true patriotism is. For Americans, patriotism has always meant allegiance to the Constitution, not to the government. The oath is to defend the Constitution against enemies domestic and foreign. The Bush and Obama regimes have proven themselves to be the Constitution’s worst enemies. It is not possible for a true patriot to support a government that destroys the Constitution. The United States is the Constitution. Our country is not the Obama regime, the Bush regime, or some other administration. Our country is the Constitution. The Constitution is our country.

Beyond obligations to one’s own country, all humans have a responsibility to human life itself. Washington’s puppet states, such as the NATO countries, Japan, and Colombia, by providing cover and support for Washington’s aggression are enabling Washington to drive the world into World War III.

The temptation of Washington’s money easily overwhelms weak characters such as Tony Blair and David Cameron. But the governments of NATO countries and other accommodating states are not only selling out their own peoples by supporting Washington’s wars of aggression, they are selling out humanity. Washington’s hubris and arrogance grow as Washington bumps off country after country. Sooner or later Russia and China, will realize that they themselves are targets and will draw firmer lines. Arrogance will prevent Washington from acknowledging the lines, and the final war will be launched.

Washington’s hegemonic impulse is driving the world to destruction. The peoples of the world should realize this and force their governments to stop enabling Washington’s aggression.

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A small extract from what you will read below: "An audit of the Federal Reserve released in July, 2011, revealed that the Federal Reserve had provided $16 trillion – a sum larger than US GDP or the US public debt – in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks, while doing nothing to aid the millions of American families being foreclosed out of their homes. Political accountability disappeared as all public assistance was directed to the mega-rich, whose greed had produced the financial crisis."

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Americans’ Economic Prospects And Civil Liberties Have Been Stolen — Paul Craig Roberts

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March 24, 2013 | Original Here

Note: there are many new interviews posted [on his original]. If you have time on your hands, the interviews will give you a better result than video games.

I receive numerous questions from readers about our economic situation and the condition of civil liberty. There is no way I can answer so many inquiries, and no need. I have written two books that provide the answers, and they are inexpensive. I have done my job. It is up to you to inform yourself. Kindle Reader software is available as a free online download that permits you to read ebooks in your own web browser. No Kindle device is required. Here are the URls for Apple and PC free downloads: Kindle for PC: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000426311
Kindle for Mac: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000464931

My latest, The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution of the West, is available as an ebook in English as of March 2013 from Amazon.com and from Barnes&Noble. My book is endorsed by Michael Hudson and Nomi Prims and has a 5 star rating from Amazon reviewers (as of March 23, 2013). Pam Martens’ review at Wall Street On Parade is available here: http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/03/paul-craig-roberts’-primer-on-why-the-great-recession-is-the-new-normal/

Libertarians who have not read the book have had an ideological knee-jerk reaction to the title. They demand to know how can I call the present system of crony capitalism laissez faire. I don’t. The current system of government supported crony capitalism is the end result of a 25-year process of deregulation. Deregulation did not produce libertarian nirvana. It produced economic concentration and crony capitalism.

Amazon provides as a free read the introduction by Johannes Maruschzik to the German edition. Below is my Introduction to my book.

Not only has your economy been stolen from you but also your civil liberties. My coauthor Lawrence Stratton and I provide the scary details of the entire story in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. In the US law is no longer a shield of the people against arbitrary government. Instead, law has been transformed into a weapon in the hands of the government.

Josie Appleton documents that in England also law has been turned into a weapon against the people. http://www.spiked-online.com/site/printable/13420/ Anglo-American law, the foundation of liberty and one of the greatest human achievements, lies in ruins.

Libertarians think that liberty is a natural right, and some Christians think that it is a God-given right. In fact, liberty is a human achievement, fought for by Englishmen over the centuries. In the late 17th century, the achievement of the Glorious Revolution was to hold the British government accountable to law. William Blackstone heralded the achievement in his famous Commentaries On The Laws Of England, a bestseller in pre-revolutionary America and the foundation of the US Constitution.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, governments in the US and Great Britain chafed under the requirement that government, like the people, is ruled by law and took steps to free government from accountability to law.

Appleton says that the result is a “tectonic shift in the relationship between the state and the citizen.” Citizens of the US and UK are once again without the protection of law and subject to arbitrary arrests and indictments or to indefinite detention in the absence of indictments.

In the US, citizens can be detained indefinitely and even executed without due process of law. There is no basis in the US Constitution for these asserted powers. The unconstitutional powers exist only because Congress, the judiciary and the American people have accepted the lie that the loss of civil liberty is the price paid for protection against terrorists.

In a very short time the raw power of the state has been resurrected. Most Americans are oblivious to this outcome. As long as government is imprisoning and killing without trials demonized individuals whom Americans have been propagandized to fear, Americans approve. Americans do not understand that a point is reached when demonization becomes unnecessary and that precedents have been established that revoke the Bill of Rights.

If you are educated by these two books, you will be better able to understand what is happening and, thus, you will be in a better position to survive what is coming.

Introduction to The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic
Dissolution of the West: Towards a New Economics for a Full World

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed Internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the West. “The End Of History” caused socialist India and communist China to join the winning side and to open their economies and underutilized labor forces to Western capital and technology. Pushed by Wall Street and large retailers, such as Wal-Mart, American corporations began offshoring the production of goods and services for their domestic markets. Americans ceased to be employed in the manufacture of goods that they consume as corporate executives maximized shareholder earnings and their performance bonuses by substituting cheaper foreign labor for American labor. Many American professional occupations, such as software engineering and Information Technology, also declined as corporations moved this work abroad and brought in foreigners at lower renumeration for many of the jobs that remained domestically. Design and research jobs followed manufacturing abroad, and employment in middle class professional occupations ceased to grow. By taking the lead in offshoring production for domestic markets, US corporations force the same practice on Europe. The demise of First World employment and of Third World agricultural communities, which are supplanted by large scale monoculture, is known as Globalism.

For most Americans income has stagnated and declined for the past two decades. Much of what Americans lost in wages and salaries as their jobs were moved offshore came back to shareholders and executives in the form of capital gains and performance bonuses from the higher profits that flowed from lower foreign labor costs. The distribution of income worsened dramatically with the mega-rich capturing the gains, while the middle class ladders of upward mobility were dismantled. University graduates unable to find employment returned to live with their parents.

The absence of growth in real consumer incomes resulted in the Federal Reserve expanding credit in order to keep consumer demand growing. The growth of consumer debt was substituted for the missing growth in consumer income. The Federal Reserve’s policy of extremely low interest rates fueled a real estate boom. Housing prices rose dramatically, permitting homeowners to monetize the rising equity in their homes by refinancing their mortgages.

Consumers kept the economy alive by assuming larger mortgages and spending the equity in their homes and by accumulating large credit card balances. The explosion of debt was securitized, given fraudulent investment grade ratings, and sold to unsuspecting investors at home and abroad.

Financial deregulation, which began in the Clinton years and leaped forward in the George W. Bush regime, unleashed greed and debt leverage. Brooksley Born, head of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was prevented from regulating over-the-counter derivatives by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial stability of the world was sacrificed to the ideology of these three stooges that “markets are self-regulating.” Insurance companies sold credit default swaps against junk financial instruments without establishing reserves, and financial institutions leveraged every dollar of equity with $30 dollars of debt.

When the bubble burst, the former bankers running the US Treasury provided massive bailouts at taxpayer expense for the irresponsible gambles made by banks that they formerly headed. The Federal Reserve joined the rescue operation. An audit of the Federal Reserve released in July, 2011, revealed that the Federal Reserve had provided $16 trillion–a sum larger than US GDP or the US public debt–in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks, while doing nothing to aid the millions of American families being foreclosed out of their homes. Political accountability disappeared as all public assistance was directed to the mega-rich, whose greed had produced the financial crisis.

The financial crisis and plight of the banksters took center stage and prevented recognition that the crisis sprang not only from the financial deregulation but also from the expansion of debt that was used to substitute for the lack of growth in consumer income. As more and more jobs were offshored, Americans were deprived of incomes from employment. To maintain their consumption, Americans went deeper into debt.

The fact that millions of jobs have been moved offshore is the reason why the most expansionary monetary and fiscal policies in US history have had no success in reducing the unemployment rate. In post-World War II 20th century recessions, laid-off workers were called back to work as expansionary monetary and fiscal policies stimulated consumer demand. However, 21st century unemployment is different. The jobs have been moved abroad and no longer exist. Therefore, workers cannot be called back to factories and to professional service jobs that have been moved abroad.

Economists have failed to recognize the threat that jobs offshoring poses to economies and to economic theory itself, because economists confuse offshoring with free trade, which they believe is mutually beneficial. I will show that offshoring is the antithesis of free trade and that the doctrine of free trade itself is found to be incorrect by the latest work in trade theory. Indeed, as we reach toward a new economics, cherished assumptions and comforting theoretical conclusions will be shown to be erroneous.

This book is organized into three sections. The first section explains successes and failures of economic theory and the erosion of the efficacy of economic policy by globalism. Globalism and financial concentration have destroyed the justifications of market capitalism. Corporations that have become “too big to fail” are sustained by public subsidies, thus destroying capitalism’s claim to be an efficient allocator of resources. Profits no longer are a measure of social welfare when they are obtained by creating unemployment and declining living standards in the home country.

The second section documents how jobs offshoring or globalism and financial deregulation wrecked the US economy, producing high rates of unemployment, poverty and a distribution of income and wealth extremely skewed toward a tiny minority at the top. These severe problems cannot be corrected within a system of globalism.

The third section addresses the European debt crisis and how it is being used both to subvert national sovereignty and to protect bankers from losses by imposing austerity and bailout costs on citizens of the member countries of the European Union.

I will suggest that it is in Germany’s interest to leave the EU, revive the mark, and enter into an economic partnership with Russia. German industry, technology, and economic and financial rectitude, combined with Russian energy and raw materials, would pull all of Eastern Europe into a new economic union, with each country retaining its own currency and budgetary and tax authority. This would break up NATO, which has become an instrument for world oppression and is forcing Europeans to assume burdens of the American Empire.

Sixty-seven years after the end of World War II, twenty-two years after the reunification of Germany, and twenty-one years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany is still occupied by US troops. Do Europeans desire a future as puppet states of a collapsing empire, or do they desire a more promising future of their own?

Bradley Manning: A Window Into The American Soul

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December 3, 2012 | Original Here

Liberty consists of government being ruled by law and citizens having control over law. This was the way our founding fathers set up the US Constitution. It is the Constitution that defines the United States.  Every member of the government and the armed forces swears allegiance to the Constitution–not to the government or to the president or to a political party or to an ideology–to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
 
Today the emphasis needs to be on the Constitution’s domestic enemies in “our own” government. America’s foreign enemies are miniscule.  But the domestic enemies are legion. America’s enemies consist, with whistleblower exceptions, of the entire US government, both executive branch, legislative branch (with possibly a dozen exceptions), and judicial branch (with few exceptions).
 
The three branches of our government have united to destroy US civil liberties in the name of a hoax, “the war on terror.”  Even if the US were overrun with terrorists, how could they harm us more than our government has harmed us by destroying the US Constitution?
 
If you don’t believe that the US Constitution has been destroyed by Republicans and Democrats alike, read my book coauthored with Lawrence M. Stratton, The Tyranny Of Good Intentions, and the five articles whose URLs are provided below.
 
Bradley Manning, a member of the US military, complied with his oath of office, with the US Military Code, with the Nuremberg standards set by the US government, with the strictures expressed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the George W, Bush administration, and with his own conscience. Manning, allegedly (we will never know), released to WikiLeaks the video of the US military murdering two journalists and a dozen  innocent people walking down a street.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_shows_murder_of_journalists_and_iraqi_civilians_20100405/
 
After the murder of these people by the US military playing video games with live people, a father with two young children stopped his van to help the survivors crawling in the street. The US military, due to either blood-lust, incompetence, or total evil, killed the father and sent high caliber bullets into the bodies of the two small children.
 
The murderers then blame the father for bringing children into the combat zone created by the incompetence or evil of the US troops, who obviously get their jollies from murdering people. TV cameras are claimed to be weapons and justifications for murdering 15 people.
 
Subsequently, a few people, whom the video shows to be unarmed, walk into a building.
 
The US troops claim the unarmed people have weapons and RPGs and send three hellfire missiles into the building.  The US troops then report that all the “targets” are dead.
 
Any real patriotic American who saw this video would be compelled to release it.  If Manning released it to Wikeleaks, then Manning is the most morally responsible American alive. What has Manning’s moral conscience cost him?
 
It has cost Manning 900 days held incommunicado illegally by the US government. President John F. Kennedy’s presidency lasted 1,000 days. Manning was held and tortured for almost the entire length of Camelot.
 
And the US government has got away with it.
 
Americans don’t care. It is not them. They are too stupid to understand that once law is gone, they can be next.
 
In their desire to punish Manning, US military and civilian authorities failed to realize that the lesson for soldiers is that crimes against humanity will not be punished, but those who reveal the crimes will be punished.
 
On November 29 Bradley Manning testified in federal court about his illegal confinement and torture by the US government. Manning’s testimony was not covered by the US media. The New York Times, in Chris Floyd’s words, “contented itself with a brief bit of wire copy from AP, tucked away on page 3.”
 
In contrast, the British Guardian covered Manning’s testimony in detail in two stories 68 paragraphs long. The British people are informed of the US government’s crimes against humanity in violation of international law and US law, but not the American people.
 
A formal United Nations investigations into the illegal, brutal and inhuman treatment of Bradley Manning denounced his treatment as “cruel and inhuman.” The US State Department spokesman, Col. P.J. Crowley, resigned after publicly protesting Manning’s illegal and inhuman treatment by the US government.
The presstitute media was silent.
 
Glenn Greenwald, the constitutional attorney, concludes that “the US establishment journalists have enabled the government every step of the way.” The presstitutes hold “themselves out as adversarial watchdogs, but nothing provokes their animosity more than someone who effectively challenges government actions.”
 
Greenwald praises Bradley Manning who “has bestowed the world with multiple vital benefits. But as his court martial finally reaches its conclusion, one likely to result in the imposition of a long prison term, it appears his greatest gift is this window into America’s political soul.”
 
The window into America’s political soul reveals total evil. The US government constitutes Satan’s Chosen People.  Nothing else can be said for those who rule and oppress us.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33193.htm  

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33192.htm  

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33200.htm  

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33203.htm http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/29/exclusive_julian_assange_on_wikileaks_bradley

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PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS IS RIGHT THAT THE DISINFORMATION PROMULGATED BY THE U.S. MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOES NOT EMANATE FROM THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. RATHER IT IS PROPAGANDA ORGINATED BY THE SAME MILITARY/INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX THAT PRESIDENT EISENHOWER WARNED US ABOUT ...PLUS THE TOO-BIG-FAIL BANKS WISHING TO BE SHIELDED FROM FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN MISTAKES.

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Disinformation On Every Front

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May 4, 2012 | Original here 

Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans.

If I may give some examples: The other day Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon officials imprisoned for Watergate crimes, died. This gave NPR the opportunity to relive the Nixon horror.

What precisely was the Nixon horror? Essentially, there was no such thing. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about when he learned about the Watergate burglary.

When Nixon learned about the burglary, he did not act on it prior to his reelection, because he reasoned, rightly, that the Washington Post would blame him for the burglary, although he had nothing to do with it, in the hopes of preventing his reelection.

By going along with a cover-up, Nixon enabled the Washington Post to make an issue of the precise date on which Nixon learned of the burglary. White House tapes indicated that Nixon had learned of the burglary before he said he learned of it. So Nixon had permitted a cover-up and had to go, but what was the real reason?

What was the Watergate burglary? We don’t really know. A group of men including former CIA operatives were hired by the Committee to Re-elect the President to break into a Democratic campaign office in the Watergate complex. We don’t know the purpose of the burglary. Some claim it was to wire-tap the telephones in the belief that the Democratic Party was getting re-election money from communists in Cuba or elsewhere. Others claim that the burglars were looking for a list of call girls, that compromised a White House official, as his fiancee was allegedly one of the call girls.

Looking back from our time during which Bush and Obama have deep-sixed the US Constitution, violated numerous US and international laws, and behaved as if they were caesars unconstrained by any law or any morality, Nixon’s “crimes” appear so trivial as to be unremarkable. Yet, Nixon was driven from office and is regarded as a criminal.

What was Watergate really about?

I doubt we will ever know. But I can offer one possible explanation. Nixon, like John F. Kennedy before him, alarmed the military/security complex with his plans to withdraw US troops from Vietnam (Vietnamization) and his determination to open communication with communist China and improve relations.

As President Eisenhower warned in his last address to the American people, conflict brings power and profit to interest groups that benefit from conflict. Nixon, like Kennedy before him, was perceived as a threat by these powerful interests, because he was working to reduce conflict.

James W. Douglass in his documented book, JFK and the Unspeakable, attributes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secret Service. Douglas reports that these powerful government institutions were concerned by Kennedy’s refusal to approve Operation Northwoods, to back the CIA’s invasion of Cuba, and to confront the Soviets militarily over the Cuban missile crisis and by Kennedy’s plans to end US military intervention in Vietnam. JFK also told his brother Robert that after his re-election he was going to break the CIA into a thousand pieces.

The right-wing view that Kennedy was too soft to stand up to communism was intensified when it was learned that Kennedy was working with Nikita Khrushchev through back channels to defuse the Cold War. In his “A Strategy of Peace” speech (June 1963), Kennedy announced the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the suspension of atmospheric nuclear testing.

“What kind of a peace do we seek?,” Kennedy asked. “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” With his words and deeds, President Kennedy made himself into a threat against the interests of the military/security complex.

There was enough suspicion of JFK’s assassination that yet another president assassinated by another “unhinged lone gunman” might raise more eyebrows. Nixon was disliked by the media, which made him a good candidate for political assassination. The Watergate burglary provided the opportunity. The Washington Post did the job with reports of “Deep Throat” meeting with reporters in spooky underground parking lots after midnight. Little, if any, information of consequence was contained in these reports. Instead, the newspaper’s reporting transferred the spooky danger of the deserted parking garages to Nixon and an aura of evil was attached to Nixon that eroded his support.

It is interesting that it is only presidents who work to reduce conflict who become targets for assassination. Reagan’s anti-Soviet rhetoric was strong enough to fool the left-wing, but the military-security complex knew of Reagan’s intention to end the Cold War. The CIA, formerly headed by Reagan’s vice president, opposed Reagan’s plan to put the pressure of an arms race on the creaking Soviet economy. The CIA argued that the centrally planned Soviet economy allowed the Kremlin to control investment and that the Communist Party could allocate whatever percentage of Soviet GDP to the military as was needed to win the arms race. In other words, the CIA argued that the US would lose the arms race if Reagan raised the stakes as a means of bringing the Soviets to negotiate the end of the Cold War. Did the CIA really believe this, or was the military/security complex trying to keep the profitable Cold War stalemate going?

Washington cannot exist without conflict. Now that the “Muslim threat” is wearing thin, Washington is stirring up a conflict with China. Washington is sticking its nose into every dispute China has with its neighbors and building up its military presence in the Asian-Pacific. As I wrote in my previous column, a China threat is being created as a long-term threat to take the place of the former Soviet threat.

Moving on to another topic, americans are told that education is the answer to unemployment. Get that university degree and live happily every after.

As RT recently reported, the truth is that more than half of recent US university graduates are unemployed or very underemployed. So much for the mantra that “education is the answer.”

“Education is the answer” serves the colleges and universities who want the tuition payments. It serves the companies who make student loans. It helps the offshoring corporations disguise that they are the main cause of unemployment.

Education is not the answer when high value-added, high wage manufacturing and professional service jobs, such as software engineering, are moved offshore in order to enhance short-term profits for shareholders and multi-million dollar bonuses for CEOs, while domestic employment and purchasing power are destroyed. Unless American university graduates can emigrate to China and India, there is no one to employ them. Yet, we still hear the call to run up student loan debts beyond the ability of salaries to repay the loans.

Professional tradable service employment in the US is so scarce that the University of Florida has abolished its computer science department. As few of the graduates can find employment, the university has reallocated the department’s budget to football, a paying sport.

Americans plugged into the Matrix are programmed to believe that they have correct information provided by a varied and “independent media.” In fact the media is owned by 5 or 6 mega-media companies run by corporate advertising executives and Washington.

Recently, Bloomberg gave us the report that “Japan, Denmark and Switzerland are among the countries to rally this week to [IMF chief] Lagarde’s call for a bigger lending capacity beyond the current $380 billion to shield the world economy against any deepening of Europe’s debt turmoil.”

This Bloomberg report is nonsensical. The loans are not shielding the world economy. The loans are shielding the private banks from their own mistakes at the expense of the world economy. The Bloomberg report shows how completely the Western media is involved in forcing ordinary peoples to subsidize private bankers. It could not be more clear; yet, there is no embarrassment at Bloomberg for serving as the bankers’ propagandist.

Indeed, there is only honor. Serving the Matrix is where lie the rewards. Those who oppose the Matrix are the outcasts whose efforts might, as in the film, save the race of humans from the domination of evil, or else, if they lose, confine the outcasts to prosecution and death.

Across every front Americans are fed lies. The official media line is that the Japanese Fukushima nuclear threat from the earthquake and aftermath is well contained and over. However, the fact of the matter appears to be that an amazing radioactive inventory of both spent and unused fuel rods is in damaged cooling pools that could suffer collapse at any time (especially if there is another earthquake), thus releasing enormous radioactivity (reference link). This possibility presents a greater threat than the initial molten cores of the reactors themselves. Michael Chossudovsky points out that the media is yet to acknowledge the widespread contamination resulting from the Fukushima disaster, and there may be worse to come.

But who cares? Back to the Matrix and the “reality show.”

November 3, 2011 at 14:35:49

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 11/3/11:

Permalink

Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham

By paul craig roberts (about the author)

opednews.com

Every day that passes adds to the fraudulent image of what is called Western democracy.

Consider that the entire Western world is outraged that the Greek prime minister announced that he is going to permit the Greek people to decide their own fate instead of having it decided for them by a handful of banksters, politicians, and bureaucrats living it up at taxpayer expense at "talks" in the French resort of Cannes on the Mediterranean.

The Greek economy is facing its fourth year of decline and lacks the revenues to service its national debt held by private European banks. The banks don't want to lose any money, so a handful of power brokers reached an agreement with representatives of the Greek government to write off some of the debt in exchange for EU capital subsidies to be financed by inflicting severe austerity on the Greek population. Wages, salaries, pensions and medical care are being cut while the rate of unemployment rises to depression levels. Government employees are laid off. Valuable public properties are to be sold to private parties for pennies on the dollar. In short, Greece is to be looted.

Large numbers of Greeks have been in the streets protesting the austerity policy and have reached the point of anger of throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. Greece is disintegrating politically. The Greek people sense that the EU "bailout" is not bailing out Greece. It is bailing out the French, Dutch, and German banks at the expense of the Greek people.

The Greek prime minister, watching his party's support and power crumble, announced that he would let the people decide in a referendum. After all, allegedly that's what democracies do. But it turns out that "we have freedom and democracy" is not supposed to be taken literally. It is merely a propagandistic slogan behind which people are ruled through back-room deals decided by powerful private interests.

The Greek prime minister's announcement that he would put the back-room bailout deal to a referendum shocked the EU hierarchy, Washington, and investors. Who does this Greek guy think he is, permitting the people, who bear the cost of the deal, to have a say in it? Who let this Greek guy out of his cage? This is not the way democracies are ruled.

The EU power brokers are outraged over the Greek prime minister's departure from normal procedure. But the Greek PM is relying on the Greek people to approve the deal, and not without reason.

The Greek people have been brainwashed for decades as to the importance of "being part of Europe." That means being a member of the European Union. When the Greeks realize that voting down the bailout of the banksters means being thrown out of the European Union, which is what they will learn between now and the referendum, they will vote for the back room deal.

Polls already indicate this. A poll for a Greek newspaper indicates that whereas 46% oppose the bailout, 70% favor staying in the EU, which the Greeks see as a life-or-death issue.

If this poll is a reliable indicator, the Greek PM has made a brilliant political decision. The Greek people will vote in favor of what they have been protesting violently in the streets. As the Greek people will do themselves in, the politicians are off the hook. This is the bet that the Greek PM has placed.

Whatever the outcome, keep in mind that the entire Western political and investor world was shocked that a politician, instead of simply imposing a back room deal, said he would let the people decide. Letting the people decide is a no-no in Western democracies.

If you need more evidence of this mythical creature called "Western democracy," consider that Western governments are no longer accountable to law. Contrast, for example, the sexual harassment charges that are plaguing US presidential candidate Herman Cain's campaign with the pass given to high government officials who clearly violated statutory law.

What follows is not a defense of Cain. I take no position on the charges. The real point is different. In America the only thing that can ruin a politician is his interest in sex. A politician, for example, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, B. Obama, cannot be ruined by violating United States and international law or by treating the US Constitution as a "mere scrap of paper." Bush and Cheney can take America to wars based entirely on lies and orchestrated deceptions. They can commit war crimes, murdering large numbers of civilians in the cause of "the war on terror," itself a hoax. They can violate US and international laws against torture simply "because the president said so."

They can throw away habeas corpus, the constitutional requirement that a person cannot be imprisoned without evidence presented to a court. They can deny the right to an attorney. They can violate the law and spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. They can send due process to hell. In fact, they can do whatever they want just like Hitler's Gestapo and Stalin's secret police. But if they show undue interest in a woman or proposition a woman, they are dead meat.

Very few commentators have said a word about this. The House of Representatives did not impeach President Bill Clinton for his war crimes against Serbia. They impeached him for lying about a sexual affair with a White House intern. The US Senate, which had too many sexual affairs of its own to defend, didn't bother to try to convict.

This is Amerika today. A president without any authority whatsoever, not in law and certainly not in the Constitution, can assassinate US citizens based on nothing except an assertion that they are a "threat." No evidence is required. No conviction. No presentation of evidence in any court. Just a murder. That is now permissible to the Amerikan president. But let him try to get a woman who is not his wife into bed, and he is a cooked goose.

In Amerika there is no such thing any longer as torture; there is only "enhanced interrogation." A mere word change has eliminated the crime. So torture is permissible.

In Amerika today, or in the UK and the EU, anyone who tells the truth is a "threat." Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who made public information leaked to him by US government sources horrified by the criminal actions of the United States government, is now, as a result of Amerikan pressure on UK courts, being turned over to Sweden, which, for favors from the "world's only superpower," will turn him over to the US regardless of law, to be prosecuted on trumped-up charges.

Western "civilization" is totally corrupted by American money. There is no integrity anywhere. For a decade Washington has been murdering women, children, village elders, and journalists in the name of the hoax "war on terror."

What terror does the world actually see? The world sees the terror that Israel, protected by Washington, inflicts on the Palestinians. The world sees the terror that the US inflicts on Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Latin America and now Africa, with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran waiting in the wings. The "war on terror" is nothing but an orchestrated invented excuse for Amerika-Israel to achieve hegemony while enriching their armaments industries.

In Greece, at least the PM committed to giving the people a say in their fate. In America the people have no voice whatsoever. The sheeple are content to be protected by "security," porno-scanners, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, and sexual groping. To carry on the hoax "war on terror," the US government has elevated itself above the law.

The American effort to achieve accountability to law, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, if not shut down by cold weather, ice, and snow, is likely to be shut down by police violence. One riot begun by provocateurs is all it takes to transform protesters into "domestic extremists," the number-one concern of Homeland Security. The presstitute media will make the case against the rioters, and the sheeple will buy it.

The police have been militarized by Washington. Community police forces no longer represent the local public that pays their salaries. Local police represent Washington's war against America.

American citizens are all suspects. Anyone who goes through airport security knows this. The only law that the US government obeys is not even a law. It is a bureaucratic regulation that prevents, even in dire wartime, any profiling of suspects by ethnicity or country of origin.

Consequently, all native-born, flag-waving, American super-patriots are suspects when they board commercial airliners. Americans who have a lifetime of security clearances are subject to being porno-scanned or sexually groped. Airport Security cannot tell a "terrorist" from a CIA analyst, a Marine general or a US Senator.

Well-connected members of the ruling elite, such as Michael Chertoff, can become rich from selling the porno-scanners to taxpayers in order "to protect the public from terrorists."

The only terrorists Americans will ever experience are those funded by their own tax dollars within their "own" government. A people incapable of perceiving its real peril has no chance of surviving. America might be a military superpower, but it no longer exists as a free country with accountable government and a rule of law.

Addendum: The Greek prime minister has been forced to withdraw the referendum on the bailout that he promised the Greek people. Europe's rulers made it clear to the Greek PM that democracy has no role to play in the decision. Greece was told to "vote the deal that was handed to you or Greece is out of the EU." The chastened PM warned the Greek parliament that the only way to remain in the EU is to submit to the dictate.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.