© 2014 Paul Craig Roberts

ISBN EBOOK: 0-9860362-9-3

ISBN HARDCOVER: 0-9860362-9-3, 978-0-9860362-9-3

In-house editor: Diana G. Collier Cover: R. Jordan P. Santos

Cover photo: european pressphoto agency

Ebook editor: Hudson Atwell

THE COVER IMAGE: Tanks deployed on the streets of Boston during the mandatory “shelter in place” military curfew that put the entire city on lockdown after the Marathon bombing. All public transportation in and out of Boston was suspended and schools were shut down as authorities conducted helicopter and warantless house-to-house searches throughout the city for the wounded 19-year-old alleged perpetrator.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Except for purposes of review, this book may not be copied, or stored in any information retrieval system, in whole or in part, without permission in writing from the publishers.

eISBN: 9780988406520

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

American Insouciance

August 7, 2008

Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel?

May 28, 2009

Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”

June 19, 2009

Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the US?

August 31, 2009

Another War in the Works:

America Is Led and Informed by Liars

September 29, 2009

Warmonger Wins Peace Prize

October 10, 2009

The Evil Empire

November 7, 2009

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Trial Will Convict Us All

November 24, 2009

The Obama Puppet

December 3, 2009

For Palestinians, Every Day Is Kristallnacht

December 15, 2009

Americans Submit to Tyranny

December 29, 2009

Liberty Has Been Lost

January 6, 2010

Is Anyone Telling Us the Truth?

January 8, 2010

Insouciant Americans

January 11, 2010

It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is a Police State

February 10, 2010

The Road to Armageddon: The Insane Drive for American Hegemony Threatens Life on Earth

February 26, 2010

American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands

March 18, 2010

Washington Murdered Sovereignty at Home and Abroad

March 23, 2010

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty with It

March 24, 2010

America’s Complicity in Evil

June 3, 2010

Hillary Clinton’s Transparent Lies

July 10, 2010

The Business of America Is War

July 27, 2010

Death of the First Amendment /

August 26, 2010

The True Cost of the War

September 3, 2010

The Collapse of Western Morality

September 23, 2010

The War On Terror: Does Anyone Remember?

October 15, 2010

Who Has the Crystal Ball?

November 2, 2010

The New American Credo: Might Is Right

November 3, 2010

America’s Devolution into Dictatorship

November 12, 2010

The Stench of American Hypocrisy

November 18, 2010

Fabricating Terror: The Portland “Bomb” Plot

November 29, 2010

Who, Precisely, Is Attacking the World?

November 30, 2010

Wikileaks II: A Government Caught Up in Mendacity and Lies

December 1, 2010

2011

December 27, 2010

America Has Gone Away

December 29, 2010

Egypt: Things Have to Change in Order to Stay the Same

February 1, 2011

Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Is a Tool of Class War

February 17, 2011

War Über Alles

February 26, 2011

Our Time of Universal Deceit Needs an Orwell

March 13, 2011

Obama Raises American Hypocrisy to a Higher Level

March 28, 2011

The New Colonialism: Washington’s Pursuit of World Hegemony

April 2, 2011

Libya: The DC/NATO Agenda and the Next Great War

April 7, 2011

Osama bin Laden’s Useful Death

May 3, 2011

The Agendas Behind the Fabricated Bin Laden News Event

May 6, 2011

Americans Are Living in 1984

May 11, 2011

The West Is Trapped in Its Own Propaganda

May 12, 2011

Creating the bin Laden “Reality”

May 14, 2011

The Ongoing bin Laden Saga

May 16, 2011

The Strauss-Kahn Frame-Up: The American Police State Strides Forward

May 18, 2011

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: The Establishment Eliminates a Threat

May 20, 2011

Does America Have a Culture?

May 23, 2011

Will Washington Foment War Between China and India?

June 5, 2011

Conspiracy Theory

June 20, 2011

Who Does the Law Serve

June 27, 2011

A World Overwhelmed by Western Hypocrisy

June 29, 2011

Prosecutors Back Off From their Iron-Clad Case Against Strauss-Kahn

July 1, 2011

Will Strauss-Kahn Be the Next President of France

July 5, 2013

The Enemy is Washington

July 22, 2011

9/11 After a Decade: Have We Learned Anything?

August 24, 2011

In America, the Rule of Law Is Vacated

September 1, 2011

The Latest Orchestrated Threat to America: Pakistan and “The Haqqani Network”

September 26, 2011

Is the War on Terror a Hoax?

September 30, 2011

The Day America Died

October 2, 2011

The Roads to War and Economic Collapse

November 23, 2011

Misreading the Fight Over Military Detention

December 4, 2011

Washington Moves the World Closer to War

January 16, 2012

Drowning in Hypocrisy

January 24, 2012

Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade?

February 14, 2012

Washington‘s Insouciance Has No Rival

February 15, 2012

Silencing the Critics

February 20, 2012

Why Can’t Americans Have Democracy?

March 2, 2012

Empires Then and Now

March 26, 2012

What is ObamaCare?

April 10, 2012

Washington Leads the World into Lawlessness

April 12, 2012

How Liberty Was Lost

April 24, 2012

Trials Without Crimes or Evidence

April 25, 2012

Brewing a Conflict with China

April 30, 2012

Does the West Have a Future?

May 10, 2012

The Case of the Missing Terrorists

May 14, 2012

Washington’s Hypocrisies

May 26, 2012

Can the World Survive Washington’s Hubris?

June 28, 2012

Can Americans Escape the Deception?

July 4, 2012

War on All Fronts

July 16, 2012

Syria: Washington‘s Latest War Crime

July 26, 2012

The Neoconservative War Criminals in Our Midst

August 1, 2012

The Next Election: High Stake Outcomes Based on Non-issues

August 11, 2012

Is Washington Deaf to Russian Warnings?

August 16, 2012

Correa Stands Up to the Jackbooted British Gestapo

August 16, 2012

America’s Future is Death

August 20, 2012

Pussy Riot, The Unfortunate Dupes of American Hegemony

August 22, 2012

A Culture of Delusion

September 27, 2012

America’s Moral Degeneracy

October 10, 2012

The Special Interests Won Again

November 7, 2012

Obdurate Washington

December 11, 2012

Attack on Sovereignty

January 15, 2013

The Institutionalization of Tyranny

January 18, 2013

In America Law No Longer Exists

January 31, 2013

Obama’s Expanding Kill List

February 11, 2013

While Left and Right Fight, Power Wins

February 14, 2013

Hugo Chavez

March 12, 2013

Iraq After Ten Years

March 18, 2013

What is the Government’s Agenda?

June 11, 2013

Washington Is War-Crazy

June 17, 2013

Stasi in the White House

June 21, 2013

A New Beginning without Washington’s Sanctimonious Mask

June 25, 2013

Washington Is Driving the World to the Final War

June 28, 2013

Has Washington’s Arrogance Undone Its Empire?

July 1, 2013

Lawlessness Is the New Normal

July 5, 2013

Putin Dresses Down the Gang of 8

July 10, 2013

Coup d’état

July 13, 2013

Role Reversal: How the US Became the USSR

July 23, 2013

The Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life on Earth

July 24, 2013

America Discredited

August 1, 2013

Bradley Manning Verdict Convicts Washington

August 1, 2013

Washington’s Drive for Hegemony is a Drive to War

August 8, 2013

Humanity Is Drowning in Washington’s Criminality

August 13, 2013

Gangster State US/UK

August 21, 2013

Syria: Another Western War Crime in the Making

August 26, 2013

Will Obama Doom Himself as a War Criminal?

August 30, 2013

America Totally Discredited

August 30, 2013

The Isolation of America

August 31, 2013

Will Congress Now Save Obama’s Face by Selling Out Democracy? / 393 September 4, 2013

How to Stop Obama’s Military Aggression Against Syria

September 5, 2013

The West Dethroned

September 7, 2013

Too Many Years of Lies: From Mossadeq to 9/11

September 10, 2013

Putin Steps into World Leadership Role

September 12, 2013

What Happens If the Shutdown Causes the Treasury to Run Out of Money

October 11, 2013

How America Was Lost

November 7, 2013

What Is the Real Agenda of the American Police State?

November 13, 2013

Bin Laden’s Obituary Notice

November 20, 2013

The Kennedy Assassination (November 22, 1963) 50 Years Later

November 22, 2013

Protests in Ukraine

December 4, 2013

Washington Drives the World Toward War

December 14, 2013

Washington Has Discredited America

December 19, 2013

No Need for NATO

December 2013, Trends Journal

Conclusion

Dedicated to: Bradley Manning, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, William Binney, and all others

who stand for truth, justice, mercy

INTRODUCTION

The demonization of the Soviet Union in the post-World War II era was the basis for America’s reputation as the defender of freedom and democracy. Some historians and commentators deny that the United States deserved its reputation. They point to America’s destruction of native inhabitants, to the theft of Spanish territories in Texas and what became the Southwest of the United States, to the internment of Japanese- American citizens during World War II, to the apartheid existence of black Americans who participated very little in freedom and democracy for most of American history, and to Washington’s refusal to tolerate the rise of reformist governments in Central America.

Whether or not America ever deserved its reputation, during the last few years of the 20th century under the Bill Clinton regime and during the 21st century neoconservative regimes of George W. Bush and Barak Obama, Washington threw away America’s reputation in order to better pursue its agenda of hegemony over the world.

The Soviet Union had constrained and limited American power. The collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed American hubris and arrogance. Having declared itself to be the “world’s only superpower,” Washington began reorganizing the world in its own interest, which Washington disguised as “bringing freedom and democracy to the world.”

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon provided the “new Pearl Harbor” that the neoconservatives had written was necessary in order to launch their wars of conquest. The history of the 21st century has been the consequence of 9/11.

The government’s account of 9/11 has been effectively challenged by 2,000 high-rise architects and structural engineers, by physicists and chemists, by firefighters and first responders, by pilots, and by numerous former government officials. No aware and informed person believes that the US national security state and the intelligent services of Washington’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad were outsmarted by a handful of Arabs operating independently of any government and intelligence service.

Washington’s argument has been that terrorists must be killed “over there” before they come “over here” and attack America again. This argument has never made any sense, because Washington acknowledges that terrorists are stateless. According to Washington, almost all of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi Arabians. Yet, Washington attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington arranged the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya despite the absence of any relationship to 9/11. Almost every day Washington murders with drones people in Pakistan and Yemen, countries with which America is not at war. Washington has sent Kenyan troops to fight Islamists in Somalia, and has sent French and Nigerian troops to Mali to fight the Washington- armed Islamists who drifted there after helping to overthrow Gaddafi.

Mao said power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Washington says freedom and democracy come out of bombings. Mao is reviled, but Washington is praised or praises itself.

The second part of Washington’s argument is that in order to be safe, Americans must give up the civil liberties granted to them by the US Constitution. In order to be safe, Americans must consent to citizens being thrown into prison indefinitely without any evidence presented to a court and without any executive branch accountability to due process.

Americans must also consent to their government’s murder of citizens without due process of law. Mere suspicion or unproven accusation by some unaccountable executive branch official is enough to snuff out the life and liberty of American citizens and to confiscate all of their property and assets.

To be safe, Americans must also consent to being spied on—every email, every Internet site visited, every telephone call, every letter written, every credit card used and purchase made, as William Binney and Edward Snowden have proven. On September 28, 2013, The New York Times reported that the NSA is even mapping the social connections of US citizens. Washington’s argument is that unless Americans accept the most complete police state in human history, they are not safe.

Consequently, today no American is safe from his own government. In public discourse in the United States facts are no longer permitted. Propaganda reigns. Washington, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, ruled that Saddam Hussein in Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” and that his possession of such weapons justified Washington’s invasion of Iraq.

When chemical weapons were used in Syria, Washington instantly blamed the Assad government and attempted to organize support for intervening against the secular Syrian government in behalf of the Islamists. Washington claimed to have conclusive evidence but refused to share it. The ploy did not work. The world saw through it. The Russian government challenged it.

The British Parliament, long an American puppet, voted against Obama’s war against Syria, declaring that Great Britain would not serve as cover for another American war crime. All of NATO except the French “socialist” president abandoned Obama’s war scheme, as did the American people and the US Congress. Putin, the President of Russia, stated publicly that US Secretary of State John Kerry “is lying and knows that he is lying. It is sad.”

At this time of writing, the world seems to be coming to the conclusion that the US is not what it pretends to be. Instead, America is a malevolent force that brings the threat of a Third World War to humanity.

Russia, the voice for peace, has tied down the US government in a UN resolution that ratifies Syria’s agreement to turn over all chemical weapons for destruction and that prevents the use of force against Syria. The criminal Obama regime fought this peace initiative with all its power and with all its purchased governments; yet Russia prevailed.

The columns in this collection from August 2008 through December 2013 document America’s descent into a Stasi Police State domestically and into a warfare state whose aim is world domination. The individual incidents and travesties presented in this collection are most likely forgotten, assuming Americans ever knew of them. When massed together they document the descent of the US into the lawlessness of tyranny. There is some repetition. I was faced with the decision to eliminate the repetition so that the individual selections would read more like chapters in a book or to leave the repetition so that the individual selections could stand independently of the book as a whole. I decided to retain the individual selections largely as written as that presents the reader both with a book and with a collection of essays.

As I write the President of Brazil, an enormous and rich country, has denounced Washington before the United Nations for “violations of international law.” The presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela are bringing a lawsuit against the US for “human rights violations.” Russia distrusts every word said by Washington, and China regards Washington as a crazed entity.

Only a few of the bought-and-paid-for British and European politicians stand by Washington. But can the governments of NATO members, who are subject to the International Criminal Court, afford to take the risk of being in the dock for their complicity in Washington’s war crimes? These foolish politicians allied with Washington need to wake up.

Washington does not represent the American people. Washington represents about six powerful private interest groups. Washington cannot even govern America, must less the world. As I write, the US government has been shut down, because the two corrupt political parties cannot agree who pays in order to close an annual budget deficit that requires the Federal Reserve to create new money with which to purchase $1,000 billion bonds per annum.

The Republicans want the poor to pay. The Democrats partly agree, but want to issue more debt with which to pay. America’s power resides in being the world reserve currency, but America is printing dollars at a rate that vastly exceeds the demand for new dollars. As neither party is willing to terminate America’s multi-trillion dollar wars, it is only a matter of time before flight from the US dollar begins. With this flight comes the end of American power. The end of American power is a prerequisite for world peace.

AMERICAN INSOUCIANCE

August 7, 2008

Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a one-time driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe?

Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden’s dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room?

The Bush Regime with its comic huffings and puffings is unaware that it has made itself the laughing stock of the world, a comedy version of the Third Reich.

Hamdan was not defended by the slick lawyers that got O.J. Simpson off, and he most certainly did not have a jury of his peers. Hamdan was defended by a Pentagon appointed US Navy officer, and his jurors were all Pentagon appointed US military officers with an eye on their careers. Even in this Kangaroo Court, Hamdan was cleared of the main charge.

The US Navy officer who was Hamdan’s appointed attorney is certainly no terrorist sympathizer. Yet even this United States officer said that the rules Bush designed for the military tribunals were designed to achieve convictions. He also said that the judge allowed evidence that would not have been admitted by any civilian or military US court. He said that the interrogations of Hamdan, which comprised the basis of the Bush Regime’s case, were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.

Does this make you a proud American?

Do you think you are made more safe when you stand there while “your” government implements its own version of Joseph Stalin’s show trials?

The trial and conviction of Hamdan has made every American very unsafe.

The one certain fact about US law is that it is expanded until it applies to everyone. Consider RICO, for example, the asset freeze law that was intended only in criminal cases involving the Mafia; it wasn’t long before RICO found its way into civil divorce proceedings.

Bush’s multi-year, multi-billion dollar “war on terror” has been reduced to railroading a low-level employee, a driver, for “terrorism.”

One would hope that the Hamdan verdict would be enough shame and ridicule for the US in one day. But no, Bush didn’t stop there. On his way to the Beijing Olympics, President Bush expressed “deep concerns” for the state of human rights in China.

But not in Guantanamo, nor in Abu Ghraib, nor in the CIA’s torture dungeons used for “renditions,” nor in Iraq and Afghanistan where the US is expert at bombing weddings, funerals, children’s soccer games, and every assortment of civilians imaginable.

As the good book says, clean the beam from your own eye before pointing to the mote in your brother’s eye.

But Americans, the salt of the earth, have neither beams nor motes. We are the virtuous few, ordained by God to impose our hegemony on the world. It is written, or so say the neocons.

What would President Bush say if, heaven forbid, the Chinese were as rude as he is and asked Mr. Superpower why the land of “freedom and democracy” has one million names on a watch list. China with a population four times as large doesn’t have a watch list with one million names.

What would President Bush say if China asked him why the US, with a population one-fourth the size of China’s has hundreds of thousands more of its citizens in prison? The percentage of Americans in prison is far higher than in China and is a larger absolute number.

What would President Bush say if China asked him why he used lies and deception to justify his invasion of Iraq. China, unlike Bush, is not responsible for 1.2 million dead Iraqis and 4 million displaced Iraqis.

China’s human rights policy is not perfect. China’s greatest human rights failing is that China is the Bush Regime’s prime enabler of its war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. By financing Bush’s budget deficit, China is financing Bush’s gratuitous wars. Indeed, China can be said to finance the weaponry that the US gives Israel to enable the suppression of the Palestinians and with which to bomb the civilian population of Lebanon.

China is a serious human rights abuser, because China is complicit in Bush’s human rights abuses.

If we are honest about who is actually murdering and abusing people, it is the US, Israel, and the UK. There’s your “axis of evil.”

WHO WILL STAND UP TO AMERICA AND ISRAEL?

May 28, 2009

“Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up to’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.

North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet the president of the U.S. thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Yaser Hamdi, José Padilla, Sami al-Arian, Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by former secretary of defense Rumsfeld as “the 760 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forgo civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.

The real question: who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?

Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?

Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?

Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts who today rule Israel.

Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to North Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslim drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?

Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately 1 million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and turning one-fifth of the Iraqi population into refugees?

Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced 4 million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?

Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?

Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?

Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced 1 million refugees?

“ The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?

On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.

What nuclear threat? The U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Whom is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?

Whom is North Korea bombing?

The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the U.S. and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.

No countries on earth rival the U.S. and Israel for barbaric, murderous violence.

But Obama gives assurances that the U.S. will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”

Where is the media?

Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?

ARE THE IRANIAN PROTESTS ANOTHER US ORCHESTRATED “COLOR” REVOLUTION?

June 19, 2009

A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Tehran. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.

The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the release of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.

As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.

There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs’ lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad’s attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.

Commentators are “explaining” the Iranian elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad’s win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.

On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”

On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”

A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”

The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this.

Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claimed? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.

Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”

WHY NOT CRIPPLING SANCTIONS FOR ISRAEL AND THE US?

August 31, 2009

In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.

The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.

Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?

Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure? No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US. Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes? No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years.

What is Iran doing?

Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy program is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

The position taken by Israel, and by Israel’s puppet in Washington, is that Iran must not be allowed to have the rights as a signatory to the Non- Proliferation Treaty that every other signatory has, because Iran might divert enriched uranium to a weapons program.

In other words, Israel and the US claim the right to abrogate Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. The Israeli/US position has no basis in international law or in anything other than the arrogance of Israel and the United States.

The hypocrisy is extreme. Israel is not a signatory to the Non- Proliferation Treaty and developed its nuclear weapons illegally on the sly, with, as far as we know, US help.

As Israel is an illegal possessor of nuclear weapons and has a fanatical government that is capable of using them, crippling sanctions should be applied to Israel to force it to disarm.

Israel qualifies for crippling sanctions for another reason. It is an apartheid state, as former US President Jimmy Carter demonstrated in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The US led the imposition of sanctions against South Africa because of South Africa’s apartheid practices. The sanctions forced the white government to hand over political power to the black population. Israel practices a worse form of apartheid than did the white South African government. Yet, Israel maintains that it is “anti-semitic” to criticize Israel for a practice that the world regards as abhorrent. What remains of the Palestinian West Bank that has not been stolen by Israel consists of isolated ghettoes. Palestinians are cut off from hospitals, schools, their farms, and from one another. They cannot travel from one ghetto to another without Israeli permission enforced at checkpoints.

The Israeli government’s explanation for its gross violation of human rights comprises the greatest collection of lies in world history. No one, with the exception of American Christian Zionists and Zionist Jews believes one word of it.

The United States also qualifies for crippling sanctions. Indeed, the US is over-qualified. On the basis of lies and intentional deception of the US Congress, the US public, the UN and NATO, the US government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and used the “war on terror” that Washington orchestrated to overturn US civil liberties enshrined in the US Constitution. One million Iraqis have paid with their lives for America’s crimes and four million are displaced. Iraq and its infrastructure are in ruins, and Iraq’s professional elites, necessary to a modern organized society, are dead or dispersed. The US government has committed a war crime on a grand scale. If Iran qualifies for sanctions, the US qualifies a thousand times over.

No one knows how many women, children, and village elders have been murdered by the US in Afghanistan. However, the American war of aggression against the Afghan people is now in its ninth year. According to the US military, an American victory is still a long ways away. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared in August that the military situation in Afghanistan is “serious and deteriorating.”

Older Americans can look forward to the continuation of this war for the rest of their lives, while their Social Security and Medicare rights are reduced in order to free up funds for the US armaments industry. Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden have made munitions the only safe stock investment in the United States.

What is the purpose of the war of aggression against Afghanistan? Soon after his inauguration, President Obama promised to provide an answer but did not. Instead, Obama quickly escalated the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan that has already displaced 2 million Pakistanis. Obama has sent 21,000 more US troops into Afghanistan and already the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is requesting 20,000 more.

Obama is escalating America’s war of aggression against the Afghani people despite three high profile opinion polls that show that the American public is firmly opposed to the continuation of the war against Afghanistan.

Sadly, the ironclad agreement between Israel and Washington to make war against Muslim peoples is far stronger than the connection between the American public and the American government.

At a farewell dinner party last Thursday for Israel’s military attaché in Washington, who is returning to Israel to become deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, and Dan Shapiro, who is in charge of Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council, were present to pay their respects.

Admiral Mullen declared that the US will always stand with Israel. No matter how many war crimes Israel commits. No matter how many women and children Israel murders. No matter how many Palestinians Israel drives from their homes, villages, and lands.

If truth could be told, the true axis-of-evil is the United States and Israel. Millions of Americans are now homeless because of foreclosures. Millions more have lost their jobs, and even more millions have no access to health care. Yet, the US government continues to squander hundreds of billions of dollars on wars that serve no US purpose. President Obama and General McChrystal have taken the position that they know best, the American public be damned.

It could not be made any clearer that the President of the United States and the US military have no regard whatsoever for democracy, human rights, and international law. This is yet another reason to apply crippling sanctions against Washington, a government that has emerged under Bush/ Obama as a brownshirt state that deals in lies, torture, murder, war crimes, and deception.

Many governments are complicit in America’s war crimes. With Obama’s budget deep in the red, Washington’s wars of naked aggression are dependent on financing by the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Saudis, South Koreans, Indians, Canadians and Europeans through their purchase of US debt. The second this foreign financing of American war crimes stops, America’s wars of aggression against Muslims stop.

The US is not a forever “superpower” that can indefinitely ignore its own laws and international law. The US will eventually fall as a result of its hubris, arrogance, and imperial overreach. When the American Empire collapses, will its enablers also be held accountable in the war crimes court?

ANOTHER WAR IN THE WORKS:

AMERICA IS LED AND INFORMED BY LIARS

September 29, 2009

Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed.

The weapons inspectors did an honest job in Iraq and told the truth, but the mainstream media did not emphasize their findings. Instead, the media served as a Ministry of Propaganda, beating the war drums for the US government.

Now the whole process is repeating itself. This time the target is Iran.

As there is no real case against Iran, Obama took a script from Bush’s playbook and fabricated one.

First the facts: As a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, Iran’s nuclear facilities are open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which carefully monitors Iran’s nuclear energy program to make certain that no material is diverted to nuclear weapons.

The IAEA has monitored Iran’s nuclear energy program and has announced repeatedly that it has found no diversion of nuclear material to a weapons program. Every US intelligence agency has affirmed and reaffirmed that Iran abandoned interest in nuclear weapons years ago.

In keeping with the safeguard agreement that the IAEA be informed before an enrichment facility comes online, Iran informed the IAEA on September 21 that it had a new nuclear facility under construction. By informing the IAEA, Iran fulfilled its obligations under the safeguards agreement. The IAEA will inspect the facility and monitor the nuclear material produced to make sure it is not diverted to a weapons program.

Despite these unequivocal facts, Obama announced on September 25 that Iran has been caught with a “secret nuclear facility” with which to produce a bomb that would threaten the world.

The Obama regime’s claim that Iran is not in compliance with the safeguards agreement is disinformation. Between the end of 2004 and early 2007, Iran voluntarily complied with an additional protocol (Code 3.1) that was never ratified and never became a legal part of the safeguards agreement. The additional protocol would have required Iran to notify the IAEA prior to beginning construction of a new facility, whereas the safeguards agreement in force requires notification prior to completion of a new facility. Iran ceased its voluntary compliance with the unratified additional protocol in March 2007, most likely because of the American and Israeli misrepresentations of Iran’s existing facilities and military threats against them.

By accusing Iran of having a secret “nuclear weapons program” and demanding that Iran “come clean” about the nonexistent program, adding that he does not rule out a military attack on Iran, Obama mimics the discredited Bush regime’s use of nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to set up Iraq for invasion.

The US media, even the “liberal” National Public Radio, quickly fell in with the Obama lie machine. Steven Thomma of the McClatchy Newspapers declared the non-operational facility under construction, which Iran reported to the IAEA, to be “a secret nuclear facility.”

Thomma reported incorrectly that the world didn’t learn of Iran’s “secret” facility, the one that Iran had reported to the IAEA the previous Monday, until Obama announced it in a joint appearance in Pittsburgh the following Friday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkoszy.

Obviously, Thomma has no command over the facts, a routine inadequacy of “mainstream media” reporters. The new facility was revealed when Iran voluntarily reported the facility to the IAEA on September 21.

Ali Akbar Dareini, an Associated Press writer, reported, incorrectly, over AP: “The presence of a second uranium-enrichment site that could potentially produce material for a nuclear weapon has provided one of the strongest indications yet that Iran has something to hide.”

Dareini goes on to write that “the existence of the secret site was first revealed by Western intelligence officials and diplomats on Friday.” Dareini is mistaken. We learned of the facility when the IAEA announced that Iran had reported the facility the previous Monday in keeping with the safeguards agreement.

Dareini’s untruthful report of “a secret underground uranium enrichment facility whose existence has been hidden from international inspectors for years” helped to heighten the orchestrated alarm.

There you have it. The president of the United States and his European puppets are doing what they do best—lying through their teeth. The US “mainstream media” repeats the lies as if they were facts. The US “media” is again making itself an accomplice to wars based on fabrications. Apparently, the media’s main interest is to please the US government and hopefully obtain a taxpayer bailout of its failing print operations.

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a rare man of principle who has not sold his integrity to the US and Israeli governments, refuted in his report (September 7, 2009) the baseless “accusations that information has been withheld from the Board of Governors about Iran’s nuclear programme. I am dismayed by the allegations of some Member states, which have been fed to the media, that information has been withheld from the Board. These allegations are politically motivated and totally baseless. Such attempts to influence the work of the Secretariat and undermine its independence and objectivity are in violation of Article VII.F. of the IAEA Statute and should cease forthwith.”

As there is no legal basis for action against Iran, the Obama regime is creating another hoax, like the non-existent “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” The hoax is that a facility, reported to the IAEA by Iran, is a secret facility for making nuclear weapons.

Just as the factual reports from the weapons inspectors in Iraq were ignored by the Bush Regime, the factual reports from the IAEA are ignored by the Obama Regime.

Like the Bush Regime, the Middle East policy of the Obama Regime is based on lies and deception.

Who is the worst enemy of the American people, Iran or the government in Washington and the media whores who serve it?

WARMONGER WINS PEACE PRIZE

October 10, 2009

It took 25 years longer than George Orwell thought for the slogans of 1984 to become reality. “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.” I would add, “Lie is Truth.”

The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama, the person who started a new war in Pakistan, upped the war in Afghanistan, and continues to threaten Iran with attack unless Iran does what the US government demands and relinquishes its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.

The Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” Obama, the committee gushed, has created “a new climate in international politics.”

Tell that to the 2 million displaced Pakistanis and the unknown numbers of dead ones that Obama has racked up in his few months in office. Tell that to the Afghans where civilian deaths continue to mount as Obama’s “war of necessity” drones on interminably.

No Bush policy has changed. Iraq is still occupied. The Guantanamo torture prison is still functioning. Rendition and assassinations are still occurring. Spying on Americans without warrants is still the order of the day. Civil liberties are continuing to be violated in the name of Oceania’s “war on terror.”

Apparently, the Nobel committee is suffering from the delusion that, being a minority, Obama is going to put a stop to Western hegemony over darker-skinned peoples.

The non-cynical can say that the Nobel committee is seizing on Obama’s rhetoric to lock him into the pursuit of peace instead of war. We can all hope that it works. But the more likely result is that the award has made “War is Peace” a reality.

Obama has done nothing to hold the criminal Bush regime to account, and the Obama administration has bribed and threatened the Palestinian Authority to go along with the US/Israeli plan to deep-six the UN’s Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes committed during Israel’s inhuman military attack on the defenseless civilian population in the Gaza Ghetto during Operation Cast Lead.

The US Ministry of Truth is delivering the Obama administration’s propaganda that Iran only notified the IAEA of its “secret” new nuclear facil- ity because Iran discovered that US intelligence had discovered the “secret” facility. This propaganda is designed to undercut the fact of Iran’s compliance with the Safeguards Agreement and to continue the momentum for a military attack on Iran.

The Nobel committee has placed all its hopes on a bit of skin color. “War is Peace” is now the position of the formerly antiwar

organization, Code Pink.

Code Pink has decided that women’s rights are worth a war in Afghanistan.

When justifications for war become almost endless–oil, hegemony, women’s rights, democracy, revenge for 9/11, denying bases to al Qaeda and protecting against terrorists–war becomes the path to peace.

The Nobel committee has bestowed the prestige of its Peace Prize on Newspeak and Doublethink.

THE EVIL EMPIRE

November 7, 2009

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Will voters vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents? Will our presidents soon be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire?

Obama promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is being written by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare in order to help fund ObamaCare and wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion “defense” spending that goes to private companies. In American “capitalism,” an amazing amount of taxpayers’ earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about “socializing” health care.

Republicans and Democrats saw opportunities to create new sources of campaign contributions by privatizing as many military functions as possible. There are now a large number of private companies that have never made a dollar in the market, feeding instead at the public trough that drains taxpayers of dollars while loading Americans with debt service obligations.

Obama inherited an excellent opportunity to bring US soldiers home from the Bush regime’s illegal wars of aggression. In its final days, the Bush regime realized that it could “win” in Iraq by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll. Once Bush had 80,000 insurgents collecting US military pay, violence, although still high, dropped in half. All Obama had to do was to declare victory and bring our boys home, thanking Bush for winning the war. It would have shut up the Republicans.