Paul Craig Roberts On a Roll: Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham

Not to detract from the seriousness all the rest of what Craig Roberts has to say, but the: you can bomb a country back to the stone age, kill who and where you want, to the point of genocide and never have to face the music, that's fine. But get your dick out of your pants and you're toast. That particular philosophy has always been an intrinsic part of this blog. (See, Sex Prudery tag.)

Perhaps on this occasion, Roberts deliberately left Jesus out of the equation. Because again, crimes against humanity are fine and dandy, just as long as you love Jesus. It's the American way.

Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham
By Paul Craig Roberts
November 03, 2011
Updated Below

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. Omama, 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 life time 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. ICH

November 04, 2011 - 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. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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Is The War On Terror A Hoax? by Paul Craig Roberts

Real enough if that drone has you in sights, I shouldn't wonder.

Always a worthy read is Mister Roberts, and not least because he too has a word or two to say about the farcical antics of the Federal Bureau of Instigation.

And if reasons are really required for posting the article, we need look no further than this little gem:

We are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an airliner.

Quite so, you conspiracy theorist you.

My emphasis, drive on!

Is The War On Terror A Hoax?
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 30, 2011

In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the “war on terror.” Washington’s attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000 billion dollars--one third of the accumulated public debt--resulting in a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net, the value of the US dollar and its reserve currency role, while enriching beyond all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington’s “war on terror” has been paid by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights. The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity’s greatest achievement--the accountability of government to law.

If we look around for the terror that the police state and a decade of war has allegedly protected us from, the terror is hard to find. Except for 9/11 itself, assuming we accept the government’s improbable conspiracy theory explanation, there have been no terror attacks on the US. Indeed, as RT pointed out on August 23, 2011, an investigative program at the University of California discovered that the domestic “terror plots” hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents.

FBI undercover agents now number 15,000, ten times their number during the protests against the Vietnam war when protesters were suspected of communist sympathies. As there apparently are no real terror plots for this huge workforce to uncover, For example, the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York city subway plot, the plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago were all FBI brainchilds organized and managed by FBI agents.

RT reports that only three plots might have been independent of the FBI, but as none of the three worked they obviously were not the work of such a professional terror organization as Al Qaeda is purported to be. The Times Square car bomb didn’t blow up, and apparently could not have.

The latest FBI sting ensnared a Boston man, Rezwan Ferdaus, who is accused of planning to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes packed with C-4 explosives. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz assured Americans that they were never in danger, because the FBI’s undercover agents were in control of the plot.

Ferdaus’ FBI-organized plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes has produced charges that he provided “material support to a terrorist organization” and plotted to destroy federal buildings--the most serious charge which carries 20 imprisoned years for each targeted building.

What is the terrorist organization that Ferdaus is serving? Surely not al Qaeda, which allegedly outwitted all 16 US intelligence services, all intelligence services of America’s NATO and Israeli allies, NORAD, the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, Dick Cheney, and US airport security four times in one hour on the same morning. Such a highly capable terror organization would not be involved in such nonsense as a plot to blow up the Pentagon with a model airplane.

As an American who was in public service for a number of years and who has always stood up for the Constitution, a patriot’s duty, I must hope that the question has already popped into readers’ minds why we are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an airliner.

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd “terror plots” that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda. If Ferdaus is brought to trial, no doubt a jury will convict him of a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes. Most likely he will be tortured or coerced into a plea bargain.

Apparently, Americans, or most of them, are so ruled by fear that they suffer no remorse from “their” government’s murder and dislocation of millions of innocent people. In the American mind, one billion “towel-heads” have been reduced to terrorists who deserve to be exterminated. The US is on its way to a holocaust that makes the terrors Jews faced from National Socialism into a mere precursor.

Think about this: Are not you amazed that after a decade (2.5 times the length of WW II) of killing Muslims and destroying families and their prospects in six countries there are no real terrorist events in the US?

Think for a minute how easy terrorism would be in the US if there were any terrorists. Would an Al Qaeda terrorist from the organization that allegedly pulled off 9/11--the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by a Western power, much less “the world’s only superpower”--still in the face of all the screening be trying to hijack an airliner or to blow one up?

Surely not when there are so many totally soft targets. If America were really infected with a “terrorist threat,” a terrorist would merely get in the massive lines awaiting to clear airport “security” and set off his bomb. It would kill far more people than could be achieved by blowing up an airliner, and it would make it completely clear that “airport security” meant no one was safe.

It would be child’s play for terrorists to blow up electric sub-stations as no one is there, nothing but a chain link fence. It would be easy for terrorists to blow up shopping centers. It would be easy for terrorists to dump boxes of roofing nails on congested streets and freeways during rush hours, tying up main transportation arteries for days.
Before, dear reader, you accuse me of giving terrorists ideas, do you really think that these ideas would not already have occurred to terrorists capable of pulling off 9/11?

But nothing happens. So the FBI arrests a guy for planning to blow up America with a model airplane. It is really depressing how many Americans will believe this.

Consider also that American neoconservatives, who have orchestrated the “war on terror,” have no protection whatsoever and that the Secret Service protection of Bush and Cheney is minimal. If America really faced a terrorist threat, especially one so professional to have brought off 9/11, every neoconservative along with Bush and Cheney could be assassinated within one hour on one morning or one evening.

The fact that neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, William Kristol, Libby, Addington, et. al., live unprotected and free of fear is proof that America faces no terrorist threat.

Think now about the airliner shoe-bomb plot, the shampoo-bottled water plot, and the underwear-bomb plot. Experts, other than the whores hired by the US government, say that these plots are nonsensical. The “shoe bomb” and “underwear bomb” were colored fireworks powders incapable of blowing up a tin can. The liquid bomb, allegedly mixed up in an airliner toilet room, has been dismissed by experts as fantasy.

What is the purpose of these fake plots? And remember, all reports confirm that the “underwear bomber” was walked onto the airliner by an official, despite the fact that the “underwear bomber” had no passport. No investigation was ever conducted by the FBI, CIA, or anyone into why a passenger without a passport was allowed on an international flight.

The purpose of these make-believe plots is to raise the fear level and to create the opportunity for former Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff to make a fortune selling porno-scanners to the TSA.

The result of these hyped “terrorist plots” is that every American citizen, even those with high government positions and security clearances, cannot board a commercial airline flight without taking off his shoes, his jacket, his belt, submitting to a porno-scanner, or being sexually groped. Nothing could make it plainer that “airport security” cannot tell a Muslim terrorist from a gung-ho American patriot, a US Senator, a US Marine general, or a CIA operative.

If a passenger requires for health or other reasons quantities of liquids and cremes beyond the limits imposed on toothpaste, shampoo, food, or medications, the passenger must obtain prior approval from TSA, which seldom works. One of America’s finest moments is the case, documented on UTube, of a dying woman in a wheelchair, who requires special food, having her food thrown away by the gestapo TSA despite the written approval from the Transportation Safety Administration, her daughter arrested for protesting, and the dying woman in the wheelchair left alone in the airport.

This is Amerika today. These assaults on innocent citizens are justified by the mindless right-wing as “protecting us against terrorism,” a “threat” that all evidence shows is nonexistent.

No American is secure today. I am a former staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee I had information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning with the CIA’s briefing of the President as well as with endless security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret committee to investigate the CIA’s assessment of Soviet capability. Afterwords I was a consult to the Pentagon. I had every kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government confidence in me including confirmation by the US Senate in a presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending anti-war demonstrations, little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of America’s achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased. In their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in general are incapable of recognizing America’s transformation into a warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world’s only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans.

Indeed, large percentages of these “threat populations,” especially among the young, are enamored of the sexual freedom that exists in America. Even the Iranian dupes of the CIA-orchestrated “Green Revolution” have forgotten Washington’s overthrow of their elected government in the 1950s. Despite America’s decade-long abusive military actions against Muslim peoples, many Muslims still look to America for their salvation.

Their “leaders” are simply bought off with large sums of money.

With the “terrorist threat” and Al Qaeda deflated with President Obama’s alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was left unprotected and unarmed by his “world-wide terrorist organization,” Washington has come up with a new bogyman--the Haqqanis.

According to John Glaser and anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen “exaggerated” the case against the Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of Pakistan, that the Hagganis were an operating arm of the Pakistan government’s secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from his “exaggeration,” an euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby said that Mullen’s “accusations were designed to influence the Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network.” In other words, the Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans the trouble.

If you don’t know what the Haqqani Network is, don’t be surprised. You never heard of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The US government creates whatever new bogymen and incidents are necessary to further the neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the armaments industry.

For ten years, the “superpower” American population has sat there, being terrified by the government’s lies. While Americans sit in fear of non-existent “terrorists” sucking their thumbs, millions of people in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of locating on maps.

Truly, Amerika is a light unto the world, an example for all. ICH

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of the Congress on 30 occasions.

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