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."
Showing posts with label paul craig roberts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paul craig roberts. Show all posts
What Became of the Left? — Paul Craig Roberts August 19, 2016 | Original Here | If you wish to receive his newsletter via email go to Original and sign up at bottom.
What Became of the Left?
Paul Craig Roberts
Acquaintances of my generation are puzzled by the disappearance of
the American left.
They remember when there was far less war, far less
monopoly capitalist theft, a less rich and powerful elite, less police
violence against civilians, less militarization, less privatization and
deregulation, fewer attacks on the social safety net, less propaganda
from the media, and yet, despite the milder state of affairs, the
leftwing was present raising hell about it all.
For fifteen years, and more if we go back to the Clinton regime’s
destruction of Yugoslavia, the US has been engaged in wars on
populations in seven—eight counting Yugoslavia/Serbia—countries, causing
millions of deaths, disabled, and dislocated peoples. A police state
has been created, the US Constitution stripped of its protective
features, and massive crimes committed under both US and international
law by three administrations. These crimes include torture, transparent
false flag events, naked aggression (a war crime), spying without
warrants, and murder of US citizens. Yet, the leftwing’s voice is
barely heard.
Clearly, my acquaintances are beginning to miss the challenge to
explanations and the country’s direction that the left formerly
provided. I know how they feel. We used to be pushed along by biases
and stereotypical thinking, and the left was there to rattle our cage.
Now we are pushed along by propaganda and there is no countervailing
force except a few Internet voices.
I remember telling the audience in the Q&A session after my Frank
M. Engle Lecture in 1992 that I never realized how much we would miss
US Supreme Court Justices Brennan and Marshall.
Today we need a leftwing far more desperately than we did when we had
one. Today governments considered democratic have the powers of a
dictatorship. In the United States, for example, habeas corpus has been
erased from both law and Constitution. Even worse, White House
officials can create lists of citizens to be murdered without due
process of law. These are the powers of a dictator. Yet, these
attributes of dictatorship are now institutionalized and go unremarked.
One would think that the dispossessed American workers, whose jobs
and financial security have been moved offshore and given to foreigners,
would be protesting in the streets like the French do. But not a peep.
When presidential candidate Ross Perot warned American workers of what
was about to happen to them, they did not have enough confidence to
vote for him. Have the dispossessed American workers gained enough
sense—or is the problem a lack of leadership—to vote for Trump who
acknowledges the job loss that is eroding the prospects of the 99
percent? If Trump does not intend to deliver or is incapable of
delivering, we are still better off because a failure to deliver raises
the awareness of the people.
From the standpoint of the left, there is a perfect environment for them in present day America. So where is the left?
Here is my answer to the question. The left suffered a tremendous
blow when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet collapse deprived the
left of its belief that there was an alternative to American “democratic
capitalism.” The Soviet collapse also disheartened the left because
the collapse removed any constraint on Washington’s unilateralism. With
China shaking off Mao and moving into the capitalist camp, there was no
one to pick up the torch.
People are puzzled why the left goes along with the government’s
explanations of what appear to be orchestrated false flag terror events.
If people of no political persuasion, such as architects and
engineers, physicists, nano-chemists, firemen and first responders,
airline and military pilots, challenge on the basis of evidence the
official account of 9/11, why does the leftwing defend the account of a
government that in other circumstances the left distrusts 120%? The
left knows that Tonkin Gulf was an orchestration for war, that Saddam
Hussein had no “weapons of mass destruction,” that Iran had no nukes.
The left knows that the government lies through its teeth, so why does
the left believe the government’s improbable conspiracy theory of 9/11?
The answer, I think, is that with the demise of Marxism, the left’s
only hope is that the peoples oppressed by the West will rise up. The
left finds huge emotional satisfaction in 9/11 as blowback of the
oppressed against the oppressor. This is why the left clings to the
official story of 9/11. And to the stories of other “terrorist events,”
such as Orlando and Nice despite the lack of any real evidence in
behalf of the stories.
I can remember when the American left, if told that a large truck traveling at a reported 56 miles per hour had mowed down 185 people
and, then, being shown in the immediate aftermath the truck devoid of a
spot of blood, clothing, human flesh, or even a small dent, would have
shouted down the obviously false account.
Ask someone who has hit a dog at 56 mph about the blood and damage to
the car. Ask someone who has hit a deer and the car is totaled. Ask
experts if a large truck hit a person at 56 mph if the person’s body
would remain intact and could be viewed lying without any apparant
damage or blood in the street.
You don’t need to ask, do you? You see the point. The force of a
large truck moving at 56 mph that hits a human is going to splatter that
human all over the street. Yet, the Nice photos show no such event.
I can remember when the American left, if told by a Nice police
official that the French Minister of the Interior in Paris had ordered
Nice authorities not to release and to immediately destroy the entire
filming of the alleged terror event from security cameras posted along
the entire street where allegedly 185 people were hit by a truck and,
additionally, to falsify the police report of the event, the left would
have been demanding blood from the authorities, not calling those who do
demand explanations “conspiracy kooks.”
Today the American left wants to shut down those who do raise
questions about such very strange events in which a few Saudis who could
not fly airplanes prevailed over the American National Security State
and in which 185 people are allegedly hit by a large truck but the
photos show no such results and the Paris officials order the
destruction of the recorded evidence and the falsification of the
report.
The official story of 9/11 is the justification for the wars. It is
difficult to oppose wars when you accept the reason for them. By
accepting the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, the leftwing killed
the antiwar movement.
Why does the left trust the government precisely on those matters
that the government uses to justify war and a police state? The answer
is that those who challenge the official story deprive the left of the
emotional satisfaction that comes from the belief that oppressed peoples
are capable of striking back and do strike back. Alexander Cockburn
once explained this to me himself. He said that when I report the
challenges of experts to the official 9/11 story, I am taking away the
dignity of oppressed peoples by assuming that they do not strike back
against their oppressors. Alex could not accept the truth, because it
meant that the oppressed acquiesced in their oppression.
I understand how Alex saw it. I understand the importance to any
movement of hope, and I regret that the left has positioned itself such
that facts undermine hope, causing the left to come out against facts.
I offer the left, or the simulacrum that remains, a different hope:
trust the power of truth. Don’t defend the oppressor, attack him, and
as you attack him your might will grow. People are not forever fools. A
time comes when their personal situation contradicts the story fed to
them. But if there is no leadership, awareness cannot graduate into
revolt.
The West needs a strong leftwing movement with the strength to
challenge the lies that are leading the world to a war of extinction of
life. I would prefer a reformist left to a revolutionary one, but this
is not to say that a revolutionary left is not preferable to what exists
today, which is revolutionary neoconservatism without opposition from a
countervailing force.
How The American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace — Paul Craig Roberts
April 18, 2016 | Original Here | If you wish to receive his newsletter via email go to Original and sign up at bottom.
How The American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace
Paul Craig Roberts
When Ronald Reagan turned his back on the neoconservatives, fired
them, and had some of them prosecuted, his administration was free of
their evil influence, and President Reagan negotiated the end of the
Cold War with Soviet President Gorbachev. The military/security complex,
the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as
their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of
peace between the two nuclear superpowers.
I know about this, because I was part of it. I helped Reagan create
the economic base for bringing the threat of a new arms race to a
failing Soviet economy in order to pressure the Soviets into agreement
to end the Cold War, and I was appointed to a secret presidential
committee with subpeona power over the CIA. The secret committee was
authorized by President Reagan to evaluate the CIA’s claim that the
Soviets would prevail in an arms race. The secret committee concluded
that this was the CIA’s way of perpetuting the Cold War and the CIA’s
importance.
The George H. W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State James
Baker kept Reagan’s promises to Gorbachev and achieved the
reunification of Germany with promises that NATO would not move one inch
to the East.
The corrupt Clintons, for whom the accumulation of riches seems to be
their main purpose in life, violated the assurances given by the United
States that had ended the Cold War. The two puppet presidents—George
W. Bush and Obama—who followed the Clintons lost control of the US
government to the neocons, who promptly restarted the Cold War,
believing in their hubris and arrogance that History has chosen the US
to exercise hegemony over the world.
Thus was mankind’s chance for peace lost along with America’s
leadership of the world. Under neocon influence, the United States
government threw away its soft power and its ability to lead the world
into a harmonious existance over which American influence would have
prevailed.
Instead the neocons threatened the world with coercion and violence,
attacking eight countries and fomenting “color revolutions” in former
Soviet republics.
The consequence of this crazed insanity was to create an economic and
military strategic alliance between Russia and China. Without the
neocons’ arrogant policy, this alliance would not exist. It was a
decade ago that I began writing about the strategic alliance between
Russia and China that is a response to the neocon claim of US world
hegemony. http://www.rense.com/general77/tus.htm
The strategic alliance between Russia and China is militarily and
economically too strong for Washington. China controls the production of
the products of many of America’s leading corporations, such as Apple.
China has the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. China
can, if the government wishes, cause a massive increase in the American
money supply by dumping its trillions of dollars of US financial assets.
To prevent a collapse of US Treasury prices, the Federal Reserve
would have to create trillions of new dollars in order to purchase the
dumped financial instruments. The rest of the world would see another
expansion of dollars without an expansion of real US output and become
skepical of the US dollar. If the world abandoned the US dollar, the US
government could no longer pay its bills.
Europe is dependent on Russian energy. Russia can cut off this
energy. There are no alternatives in the short-run, and perhaps not in
the long run. If Russia shuts off the energy, Germany industry shuts
down. Europeans freeze to death in the winter. Despite these facts, the
neocons have forced Europe to impose economic sanctions on Russia. What
if Russia responded in kind?
NATO, as US military authorities admit, has no chance of invading
Russia or withstanding a Russian attack on NATO. NATO is a cover for
Washington’s war crimes. It can provide no other service.
Thanks to the greed of US corporations that boosted their profits by
offshoring their production to China, China is moderinized many decades
before the neocons thought possible. China’s military forces are
moderized with Russian weapons technology. New Chinese missiles make the
vaunted US Navy and its aircraft carriers obsolete.
The neocons boast how they have surrounded Russia, but it is America
that is surrounded by Russia and China, thanks to the incompetent
leadership that the US has had beginning with the Clintons. Judging from
Killary’s support in the current presidential primaries, many voters
seem determined to perpetuate incompetent leadership.
Despite being surrounded, the neocons are pressing for war with
Russia which means also with China. If Killary Clinton makes it to the
White House, we could get the neocon’s war.
The neocons have flocked to the support of Killary. She is their
person. Watch the feminized women of America put Killary in office.
Keep in mind that Congress gave its power to start wars to the
president.
The United States does not have a highly intelligent or well informed
population. The US owes its 20th century dominance to World War I and
World War II which destroyed more capable countries and peoples.
America became a superpower because of the self-destruction of other
countries.
Despite neocon denials that their hubris has created a powerful
alliance against the US, a professor at the US Navy War College stresses
the reality of the Russian-Chinese strategic alliance. http://sputniknews.com/world/20160414/1037981155/russia-china-cooperation.html
Last August a joint Russian-Chinese sea and air exercise took place in
the Sea of Japan, making it clear to America’s Japanese vassal that it
was defenseless if Russia and China so decided.
The Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu said that the joint
exercise illustrates the partnership between the two powers and its
stabilizing effect on that part of the world.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Russian-Chinese relations are able to resist any international crises.
The only achievements of the American neoconservatives are to destroy
in war crimes millions of peoples in eight countries and to send the
remnant populations fleeing into Europe as refugees, thus undermining
the American puppet governments there, and to set back the chances of
world peace and American leadership by creating a powerful strategic
alliance between Russia and China.
This boils down to extraordinary failure. It is time to hold the
neoconservatives accountable, not elect another puppet for them to
manipulate.
Does The United States Still Exist? — Paul Craig Roberts
March 26, 2016 | Original Here | Use original if you wish to receive his newsletter via email
Does The United States Still Exist? An address delivered to the Libertarian Party of Florida on March 23, 2016 in Destin, Florida
Paul Craig Roberts
To answer the question that is the title, we have to know of what the
US consists. Is it an ethnic group, a collection of buildings and
resources, a land mass with boundaries, or is it the Constitution.
Clearly what differentiates the US from other countries is the US
Constitution. The Constitution defines us as a people. Without the
Constitution we would be a different country. Therefore, to lose the
Constitution is to lose the country.
Does the Constitution still exist? Let us examine the document and come to a conclusion.
The Constitution consists of a description of a republic with three
independent branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, each with
its own powers, and the Bill of Rights incorporated as constitutional
amendments. The Bill of Rights describes the civil liberties of
citizens that cannot be violated by the government.
Article I of the Constitution describes legislative powers. Article
II describes executive powers, and Article III describes the power of
the judiciary. For example, Article I, Section 1 gives all legislative
powers to Congress. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to
declare war.
The Bill of Rights protects citizens from the government by making
law a shield of the people rather than a weapon in the hands of the
government.
The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, the press, and assembly or public protest.
The Second Amendment gives the people the right “to keep and bear arms.”
The Third Amendment has to do with quartering of soldiers on
civilians, a large complaint against King George III, but not a practice
of present-day armies.
The Fourth Amendment grants “the right of the people to be secure in
their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures” and prevents the issue of warrants except “upon
probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.” The Fourth Amendment prevents police and prosecutors from going
on “fishing expeditions” in an effort to find some offense with which
to charge a targeted individual.
The Fifth Amendment prohibits double jeopardy, self-incrimination,
the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process and the
prohibition of seizing property without just compensation.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees speedy and public trial, requires that
a defendent be informed of the charge against him and to be confronted
with the witnesses, to present witnesses in his favor, and to have the
assistance of an attorney.
The Seventh Amendment gives the right of trial by jury to civil suits.
The Eighth Amendment prevents excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments.
The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights in
the Constitution does not deny or disparage others retained by the
people. In other words, people have rights in addition to the those
listed in the proscriptions against the government’s use of abusive
power.
The Tenth Amendment reserves the rights not delegated to the federal government to the states.
The Tenth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. The Third Amendment
protects against an abandoned abusive practice of government. The
Seventh Amendment is still relevant as it allows damages in civil suits
to be determined by a jury, once a protection against unfairness and
today not always the case.
The other seven amendments comprise the major protections of civil
liberty. I will examine them in turn, but first let’s look at Section 1
and Section 8 of Article I. These two articles describe the major
powers of Congress, and both articles have been breached. The
Constitution’s grant of “all legislative powers” to Congress has been
overturned by executive orders and signing statements. The president
can use executive orders to legislate, and he can use signing statements
to render sections of laws passed by Congress and signed by the
president into non-enforced status. Legislative authority has also been
lost by delegating to executive branch officials the power to write the
regulations that implement the laws that are passed. The right that
Section 8 gives to Congress to declare war has been usurped by the
executive branch. Thus, major powers given to Congress have been lost to
the executive branch.
The First Amendment has been compromised by executive branch claims
of “national security” and by extensive classification. Whistleblowers
are relentlessly prosecuted despite federal laws protecting them. The
right of assembly and public protest are overturned by arrests, tear
gas, clubs, rubber bullets, water cannons, and jail terms. Free speech
is also limited by political correctness and taboo topics. Dissent
shows signs of gradually becoming criminalized.
The Fourth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. In its place we
have warrantless searches, SWAT team home invasions, strip and cavity
searches, warrantless seizures of computers and cell phones, and the
loss of all privacy to warrantless universal spying.
The Fifth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. The criminal justice
system relies on self-incrimination as plea bargains are
self-incrimination produced by psychological torture, and plea bargains
are the basis of conviction in 97% of all felony cases. Moreover,
physical torture is a feature of the “war on terror” despite its
illegality under both US statute and international law and is also
experienced by inmates in the US prison system.
The Fifth Amendment’s protection against deprivation of life,
liberty, and property without due process of law has been lost to
indefinite detention, executive assassination, and property takings
without compensation. The Racketer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act
(RICO) passed in 1970. The act permits asset freezes, which are takings.
The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act passed in 1984 and permits police to
confiscate property on “probable cause,” which often means merely the
presence of cash.
The Sixth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. Prosecutors routinely
withhold exculpatory evidence, and judges at prosecutors’ requests have
limited attorneys’ ability to defend clients.The “war on terror” has
introduced secret evidence and secret witnesses, making it impossible
for a defendant and his attorney to defend against the evidence.
The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive bail and torture are routinely violated. It is another dead letter amendment.
It is paradoxical that every civil liberty in the Bill of Rights has
been lost to a police state except for the Second Amendment, the gun
rights of citizens. An armed citizenry is inconsistent with a police
state, which the US now is.
Other aspects of our legal protections have been overturned, such as
the long standing rule that crime requires intent. William Blackstone
wrote: “An unwarrantable act without a vicious will is no crime at all.”
But today we have crimes without intent. You can commit a crime and
not even know it. See for example, Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
Attorney-client privilege has been lost. The indictment,
prosecution, and imprisonment of defense attorney Lynne Stewart is a
good example. The DOJ prevailed on her to defend a blind Muslim regarded
by the DOJ as a “terrorist.” She was informed that “special
administrative measures” had been applied to her client. She received a
letter from the federal prosecutor informing her that she and her
client would not be permitted attorney-client privilege, and that she
was required to permit the government to listen to her conversations
with her client. She was told that she could not carry any
communications from her client to the outside world. She regarded all
this as illegal nonsense and proceeded to defend her client in
accordance with attorney-client privilege. Lynne Stewart was convicted
of violating a letter written by a prosecutor as if the prosecutor’s
letter were a law passed by Congress and present in the US code. Based
on a prosecutor’s letter, Lynne Stewart was sentenced to prison. No law
exists that upholds her imprisonment.
Our civil liberties are often said to be “natural rights” to which we
are entitled. However, in historical fact civil liberty is a human
achievement that required centuries of struggle. The long struggle for
accountable law that culminated in the Glorious Revolution in England
in the late 17th century can be traced back to Alfred the Great’s
codification of English common law in the 9th century and to the Magna
Carta in the early 13th century. Instead of issuing kingly edicts,
Alfred based law on the traditional customs and behavior of the people.
The Glorious Revolution established the supremacy of the people over
the law and held the king and government accountable to law. The United
States and other former British colonies inherited this accomplishment,
an accomplishment that makes law a shield of the people and not a weapon in the hands of the state.
Today law as a shield of the people has been lost. The loss was
gradual over time and culminated in the George W. Bush and Obama regime
assaults on habeas corpus and due process. Lawrence Stratton and I
explain how the law was lost in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Beginning with Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, liberals saw
the protective shield of law as a constraint on the government’s ability
to do good. Bentham redefined liberty as the freedom of government
from restraint, not the freedom of people from government. Bentham’s
influence grew over time until in our own day, to use the words of Sir
Thomas More in A man for All Seasons, the law was cut down so as to better chase after devils.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after the Mafia.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after drug users.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after child abusers.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after “terrorists.”
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after whistleblowers.
We cut down the law so that we could better cover up the government’s crimes.
Today the law is cut down. Any one of us can be arrested on bogus charges and be helpless to do anything about it.
There is very little concern in legal circles about this. The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) does attempt to defend civil
liberty. However, just as often the ACLU is not defending the civil
liberties in the Bill of Rights that protect us from the abuse of
government power, but newly invented “civil rights” that are not in the
Constitution, such as “abortion rights,” the right to homosexual
marriage, and rights to preferential treatment for preferred minorities.
An attack on abortion rights, for example, produces a far greater
outcry and resistance than the successful attack on habeas corpus and
due process. President Obama was able to declare his power to execute
citizens by executive branch decision alone without due process and
conviction in court, and it produced barely audible protest.
Historically, a government that can, without due process, throw a
citizen into a dungeon or summarily execute him is considered to be a
tyranny, not a democracy. By any historical definition, the United
States today is a tyranny.
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.
The Proof Is In: The US Government Is The Most Complete Criminal Organization In Human History
Paul Craig Roberts
Unique among the countries on earth, the US government insists that
its laws and dictates take precedence over the sovereignty of nations.
Washington asserts the power of US courts over foreign nationals and
claims extra-territorial jurisdiction of US courts over foreign
activities of which Washington or American interest groups disapprove.
Perhaps the worst results of Washington’s disregard for the sovereignty
of countries is the power Washington has exercised over foreign
nationals solely on the basis of terrorism charges devoid of any
evidence.
Consider a few examples. Washington first forced the Swiss
government to violate its own banking laws. Then Washington forced
Switzerland to repeal its bank secrecy laws. Allegedly, Switzerland is a
democracy, but the country’s laws are determined in Washington by
people not elected by the Swiss to represent them.
Consider the “soccer scandal” that Washington concocted, apparently
for the purpose of embarrassing Russia. The soccer organization’s home
is Switzerland, but this did not stop Washington from sending FBI agents
into Switzerland to arrest Swiss citizens. Try to imagine Switzerland
sending Swiss federal agents into the US to arrest Americans.
Consider the $9 billion fine that Washington imposed on a French bank
for failure to fully comply with Washington’s sanctions against Iran.
This assertion of Washington’s control over a foreign financial
institution is even more audaciously illegal in view of the fact that
the sanctions Washington imposed on Iran and requires other sovereign
countries to obey are themselves strictly illegal. Indeed, in this case
we have a case of triple illegality as the sanctions were imposed on
the basis of concocted and fabricated charges that were lies.
Or consider that Washington asserted its authority over the contract
between a French shipbuilder and the Russian government and forced the
French company to violate a contract at the expense of billions of
dollars to the French company and a large number of jobs to the French
economy. This was a part of Washington teaching the Russians a lesson
for not following Washington’s orders in Crimea.
Try to imagine a world in which every country asserted the
extra-territoriality of its law. The planet would be in permanent chaos
with world GDP expended in legal and military battles.
Neoconned Washington claims that as History chose America to exercise
its hegemony over the world, no other law is relevant. Only
Washington’s will counts. Law itself is not even needed as Washington
often substitutes orders for laws as when Richard Armitage, Deputy
Secretary of State (an unelected position) told the President of
Pakistan to do as he is told or “we will bomb you into the stone age.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm Try to imagine the Presidents of Russia or China giving such an order to a sovereign nation.
In fact, Washington did bomb large areas of Pakistan, murdering
thousands of women, children, and village elders. Washington’s
justification was the assertion of the extra-territoriality of US
military actions in other countries with which Washington is not at war.
As horrendous as all of this is, the worst of Washington’s crimes
against other peoples is when Washington kidnaps citizens of other
countries and renditions them to Guantanamo in Cuba or to secret
dungeons in criminal states such as Egypt and Poland to be held and
tortured in violation both of US law and international law. These
egregious crimes prove beyond any doubt that the US government is the
worst criminal enterprise that has ever existed on Earth.
When the criminal neoconservative George W. Bush regime launched its
illegal invasion of Afghanistan, the criminal regime in Washington
desperately needed “terrorists” in order to provide a justification for
an illegal invasion that constitutes a war crime under international
law. However, there were not any terrorists. So Washington dropped
leaflets over warlord territories offering thousands in dollars in
bounty money for “terrorists.” The warlords responded to the
opportunity and captured every unprotected person and sold them to the
Americans for the bounty.
The only evidence that the “terrorists” were terrorists is that the
innocent people were sold to the Americans by warlords as “terrorists.”
Yesterday Fayez Mohammed Ahmed Al-Kandari was released after 14 years
of torture by “freedom and democracy America.” The United States
military officer, Col. Barry Wingard, who represented Al-Kandari said
that “there simply is no evidence other than he is a Muslim in
Afghanistan at the wrong time, other than double and triple hearsay
statements, something I have never seen as justification for
incarceration.” Much less, said Col. Wingard, was there cause for a
litany of multi-year torture in an effort to force a confession to the
alleged offenses.
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has a dim
view of the so-called “economic recovery.” Dr. Roberts contends, “There
has been no recovery whatsoever. . . . If you look at the economy
realistically, and that means you don’t use their phony numbers, there
has been no recovery whatsoever and, in fact, it continues to worsen. We
see that the “Labor Force Participation Rate” continues to sink. . . .
When you consider the full measure of unemployment . . . we still have
an unemployment rate of 23% after 7 years of an alleged recovery? I
think this is the first so-called recovery where the labor force fell. Normally,
when you have a recovery, people re-enter the labor force and the
participation rate rises. . . . How do you have 5% unemployment when
half of all 25 year old people have to live at home with their parents?
What kind of a “recovery” is that? They say there is no inflation, but
everyone that goes shopping knows that is a lie. . . . It’s all just a
package of smoke, mirrors and lies.”
Don’t expect this to turn around anytime
soon. Dr. Roberts says, “There is no opportunity for the middle-class.
It must be shrinking. I would say the U.S. economy is in long-term
decline. Rigging the way you measure inflation, rigging the way you
measure unemployment, that may fool ordinary people, but that does not
fool those of us who look at the numbers.”
On war, Dr. Roberts’ view is dire and goes on to explain, “Everything
that previous presidents have done to try to defuse the kind of
tensions between nuclear powers that could lead to war, all this has
been thrown away by Clinton, George W. Bush and the current White House
fool. It’s all due to the Neoconservatives. So, yes, we are in a more
dangerous situation than in the worst part of the cold war. Thanks to
the Neoconservatives and thanks to the American ‘presstitute’ media with
people who lie for a living, we are in more danger than we have ever
been. A war could result, and if it doesn’t, then it’s just because
Putin has got too much sense. I don’t think Putin is going to absorb
these provocations forever, and I don’t think he’s going to put up with
any more nonsense in Ukraine. That was a part of Russia longer than the
United States has existed. . . .Can you imagine anything more insane and
reckless than you go into a part of Russia, that has only been
independent for a few years, and overthrow a democratically elected
government that is getting along with Russia and stick in an American
puppet with all these crazed right-wing Nazi people and cause all this
trouble with Russia and tell endless lies about it? What is more
reckless and irresponsible? That is the way the United States government
is behaving. If you can do things that stupid, you can cause a nuclear
war.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. (There is much more in this in-depth interview.) https://youtu.be/gZx7JWSOqK0
After the Interview: There are free articles and information on PaulCraigRoberts.org. If you want to support Dr. Roberts, you can do so by clicking here.
This article establishes that the price of gold and silver in the
futures markets in which cash is the predominant means of settlement is
inconsistent with the conditions of supply and demand in the actual
physical or current market where physical bullion is bought and sold as
opposed to transactions in uncovered paper claims to bullion in the
futures markets. The supply of bullion in the futures markets is
increased by printing uncovered contracts representing claims to gold.
This artificial, indeed fraudulent, increase in the supply of paper
bullion contracts drives down the price in the futures market despite
high demand for bullion in the physical market and constrained supply.
We will demonstrate with economic analysis and empirical evidence that
the bear market in bullion is an artificial creation.
The law of supply and demand is the basis of economics. Yet the price
of gold and silver in the Comex futures market, where paper contracts
representing 100 troy ounces of gold or 5,000 ounces of silver are
traded, is inconsistent with the actual supply and demand conditions in
the physical market for bullion. For four years the price of bullion has
been falling in the futures market despite rising demand for possession
of the physical metal and supply constraints.
We begin with a review of basics. The vertical axis measures price.
The horizontal axis measures quantity. Demand curves slope down to the
right, the quantity demanded increasing as price falls. Supply curves
slope upward to the right, the quantity supplied rising with price. The
intersection of supply with demand determines price. (Graph 1)
A change in quantity demanded or in the quantity supplied
refers to a movement along a given curve. A change in demand or a
change in supply refers to a shift in the curves. For example, an
increase in demand (a shift to the right of the demand curve) causes a
movement along the supply curve (an increase in the quantity supplied).
Changes in income and changes in tastes or preferences toward an item
can cause the demand curve to shift. For example, if people expect that
their fiat currency is going to lose value, the demand for gold and
silver would increase (a shift to the right).
Changes in technology and resources can cause the supply curve to
shift. New gold discoveries and improvements in gold mining technology
would cause the supply curve to shift to the right. Exhaustion of
existing mines would cause a reduction in supply (a shift to the left).
What can cause the price of gold to fall? Two things: The demand for
gold can fall, that is, the demand curve could shift to the left,
intersecting the supply curve at a lower price. The fall in demand
results in a reduction in the quantity supplied. A fall in demand means
that people want less gold at every price. (Graph 2)
Alternatively, supply could increase, that is, the supply curve could
shift to the right, intersecting the demand curve at a lower price. The
increase in supply results in an increase in the quantity demanded. An
increase in supply means that more gold is available at every price.
(Graph 3)
To summarize: a decline in the price of gold can be caused by a
decline in the demand for gold or by an increase in the supply of gold.
A decline in demand or an increase in supply is not what we are
observing in the gold and silver physical markets. The price of bullion
in the futures market has been falling as demand for physical bullion
increases and supply experiences constraints. What we are seeing in the
physical market indicates a rising price. Yet in the futures market in
which almost all contracts are settled in cash and not with bullion
deliveries, the price is falling.
For example, on July 7, 2015, the U.S. Mint said that due to a
“significant” increase in demand, it had sold out of Silver Eagles (one
ounce silver coin) and was suspending sales until some time in August.
The premiums on the coins (the price of the coin above the price of the
silver) rose, but the spot price of silver fell 7 percent to its lowest
level of the year (as of July 7).
This is the second time in 9 months that the U.S. Mint could not keep
up with market demand and had to suspend sales. During the first 5
months of 2015, the U.S. Mint had to ration sales of Silver Eagles.
According to Reuters, since 2013 the U.S. Mint has had to ration silver
coin sales for 18 months. In 2013 the Royal Canadian Mint announced the
rationing of its Silver Maple Leaf coins: “We are carefully managing
supply in the face of very high demand. . . . Coming off strong sales
volumes in December 2012, demand to date remains very strong for our
Silver Maple Leaf and Gold Maple Leaf bullion coins.” During this entire
period when mints could not keep up with demand for coins, the price of
silver consistently fell on the Comex futures market. On July 24, 2015
the price of gold in the futures market fell to its lowest level in 5
years despite an increase in the demand for gold in the physical market.
On that day U.S. Mint sales of Gold Eagles (one ounce gold coin) were
the highest in more than two years, yet the price of gold fell in the
futures market.
How can this be explained? The financial press says that the drop in
precious metals prices unleashed a surge in global demand for coins.
This explanation is nonsensical to an economist. Price is not a
determinant of demand but of quantity demanded. A lower price does not
shift the demand curve. Moreover, if demand increases, price goes up,
not down.
Perhaps what the financial press means is that the lower price
resulted in an increase in the quantity demanded. If so, what caused the
lower price? In economic analysis, the answer would have to be an
increase in supply, either new supplies from new discoveries and new
mines or mining technology advances that lower the cost of producing
bullion.
There are no reports of any such supply increasing developments. To
the contrary, the lower prices of bullion have been causing reductions
in mining output as falling prices make existing operations
unprofitable.
There are abundant other signs of high demand for bullion, yet the
prices continue their four-year decline on the Comex. Even as massive
uncovered shorts (sales of gold contracts that are not covered by
physical bullion) on the bullion futures market are driving down price,
strong demand for physical bullion has been depleting the holdings of
GLD, the largest exchange traded gold fund. Since February 27, 2015, the
authorized bullion banks (principally JPMorganChase, HSBC, and Scotia)
have removed 10 percent of GLD’s gold holdings. Similarly, strong demand
in China and India has resulted in a 19% increase of purchases from the
Shanghai Gold Exchange, a physical bullion market, during the first
quarter of 2015. Through the week ending July 10, 2015, purchases from
the Shanghai Gold Exchange alone are occurring at an annualized rate
approximately equal to the annual supply of global mining output.
India’s silver imports for the first four months of 2015 are 30%
higher than 2014. In the first quarter of 2015 Canadian Silver Maple
Leaf sales increased 8.5% compared to sales for the same period of 2014.
Sales of Gold Eagles in June, 2015, were more than triple the sales for
May. During the first 10 days of July, Gold Eagles sales were 2.5 times
greater than during the first 10 days of June.
Clearly the demand for physical metal is very high, and the ability
to meet this demand is constrained. Yet, the prices of bullion in the
futures market have consistently fallen during this entire period. The
only possible explanation is manipulation.
Precious metal prices are determined in the futures market, where
paper contracts representing bullion are settled in cash, not in markets
where the actual metals are bought and sold. As the Comex is
predominantly a cash settlement market, there is little risk in
uncovered contracts (an uncovered contract is a promise to deliver gold
that the seller of the contract does not possess). This means that it is
easy to increase the supply of gold in the futures market where price
is established simply by printing uncovered (naked) contracts. Selling
naked shorts is a way to artificially increase the supply of bullion in
the futures market where price is determined. The supply of paper
contracts representing gold increases, but not the supply of physical
bullion.
As we have documented on a number of occasions (see, for example, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/12/22/lawless-manipulation-bullion-markets-public-authorities-paul-craig-roberts-dave-kranzler/
), the prices of bullion are being systematically driven down by the
sudden appearance and sale during thinly traded times of day and night
of uncovered future contracts representing massive amounts of bullion.
In the space of a few minutes or less massive amounts of gold and silver
shorts are dumped into the Comex market, dramatically increasing the
supply of paper claims to bullion. If purchasers of these shorts stood
for delivery, the Comex would fail. Comex bullion futures are used for
speculation and by hedge funds to manage the risk/return characteristics
of metrics like the Sharpe Ratio. The hedge funds are concerned with
indexing the price of gold and silver and not with the rate of return
performance of their bullion contracts.
A rational speculator faced with strong demand for bullion and
constrained supply would not short the market. Moreover, no rational
actor who wished to unwind a large gold position would dump the entirety
of his position on the market all at once. What then explains the
massive naked shorts that are hurled into the market during thinly
traded times?
The bullion banks are the primary market-makers in bullion futures.
They are also clearing members of the Comex, which gives them access to
data such as the positions of the hedge funds and the prices at which
stop-loss orders are triggered. They time their sales of uncovered
shorts to trigger stop-loss sales and then cover their short sales by
purchasing contracts at the price that they have forced down, pocketing
the profits from the manipulation
The manipulation is obvious. The question is why do the authorities tolerate it?
Perhaps the answer is that a free gold market serves both to protect
against the loss of a fiat currency’s purchasing power from exchange
rate decline and inflation and as a warning that destabilizing systemic
events are on the horizon. The current round of on-going massive short
sales compressed into a few minutes during thinly traded periods began
after gold hit $1,900 per ounce in response to the build-up of troubled
debt and the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing.
Washington’s power is heavily dependent on the role of the dollar as
world reserve currency. The rising dollar price of gold indicated rising
discomfort with the dollar. Whereas the dollar’s exchange value is
carefully managed with help from the Japanese and European central
banks, the supply of such help is not unlimited. If gold kept moving up,
exchange rate weakness was likely to show up in the dollar, thus
forcing the Fed off its policy of using QE to rescue the “banks too big
to fail.”
The bullion banks’ attack on gold is being augmented with a spate of
stories in the financial media denying any usefulness of gold. On July
17 the Wall Street Journal declared that honesty about gold requires
recognition that gold is nothing but a pet rock. Other commentators
declare gold to be in a bear market despite the strong demand for
physical metal and supply constraints, and some influential party is
determined that gold not be regarded as money.
Why a sudden spate of claims that gold is not money? Gold is
considered a part of the United States’ official monetary reserves,
which is also the case for central banks and the IMF. The IMF accepts
gold as repayment for credit extended. The US Treasury’s Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency classifies gold as a currency, as can be
seen in the OCC’s latest quarterly report on bank derivatives activities
in which the OCC places gold futures in the foreign exchange
derivatives classification.
The manipulation of the gold price by injecting large quantities of
freshly printed uncovered contracts into the Comex market is an
empirical fact. The sudden debunking of gold in the financial press is
circumstantial evidence that a full-scale attack on gold’s function as a
systemic warning signal is underway.
It is unlikely that regulatory authorities are unaware of the
fraudulent manipulation of bullion prices. The fact that nothing is done
about it is an indication of the lawlessness that prevails in US
financial markets.
Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., is a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
Dave Kranzler is a University of Chicago MBA and is an active participant in financial markets.
