Does The West Have A Future?

By Paul Craig Roberts for the Information Clearing House

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they buil[t] one, they probably built more.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder women and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect--what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.

Even alternative news media initially fell for this fake plot. Apparently, no one stops to wonder how al-Qaeda, which has become so disorganized and helpless that it is on the run and left its revered leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistan village alone and unguarded to be murdered by US Navy Seals, could catch the CIA off guard with an “undetectable” bomb, to use the description provided by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the device by US intelligence personnel.

Notice that the Secretary of State has committed the bankrupt US and its unravelling social safety net to the protection of “India and others” from terrorists. But the real significance of this latest hoax is to introduce into the fearful American public the idea of an undetectable underwear bomb.

What does this bring to mind? Anyone of my generation or any science fiction aficionado immediately thinks of Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.

Written in 1951 but set in our time, Earth is invaded by small creatures that attach to the human body and take over the person. The humans become the puppets of their masters. Large areas of America succumb to the invaders before the morons in Washington understand that the invasion is real and not a conspiracy theory.

On clothed humans, the creatures cannot be detected, and the edict goes out that anyone clothed is a suspect. Everyone must go about naked. Women are not even allowed to carry purses in their hand, because the creature can be in the purse attached to the woman’s hand.

Obviously, if the CIA, the news sources, and Dianne Feinstein’s briefers are correct that defeated al-Qaeda has come up with an “undetectable” bomb, we will have to pass through airport security naked.

If so, how will this be possible? If each airline passenger must go through a personal screening by disrobing in a room, how long will it take to clear “airport security”? I doubt there is any place in North or South America that the traveller couldn’t drive there faster. Or perhaps this is an answer to depression level US unemployment. Millions of unemployed Americans will be hired to view naked people before they board airliners.

As the Transportation Safety Administration division of Homeland Security has taken its intrusions, unchallenged, into train, bus, and highway travel, are we faced with the total collapse of the clothing industry? Stay tuned.

A couple of years ago a noted philosopher wrote an article in which he suggested that Americans live in an artificial or virtual reality. Another noted philosopher said that he thought there was a 25% chance that the philosopher was right. I am convinced that he is right. Americans live in the Matrix. Nothing that they know or think that they know is correct.

For example, our non-truth-telling “leaders” continually declare that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This myth is one of the many reasons rolled out to justify American taxpayers’ declining incomes being taxed to provide the Israeli government with the means to murder Palestinians and steal their country.

Israeli democracy a myth you say? Yes, a myth. According to news reports compiled and reported by Antiwar.com (May 8), the September 4 Israeli elections have been cancelled, because the “opposition leader Shaul Mofaz is joining the government.”

Mofaz sold out his party for personal power, a typical politician’s behavior.

Mofaz’s treachery produced protests from his followers, but, according to news reports, “Israeli police were quick to crack down on the protest, terming it ‘illegal’ and arresting a number of journalists.”

Ah, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

In truth Israel is a fascist state, one that has been in violation of international law and Christian morality during the entirety of its existence. Yet, in America Israel is a hallowed icon. Like Bush, Cheney, and Obama, millions of American “christians” worship Israel and believe it is “God’s calling” for Americans to die for Israel.

If you believe in murdering your opponents, not debating with them, dispossessing the powerless, creating a fictional world based on lies and paying the corporate media to uphold the lies and fictional world, you are part of what the rest of the world perceives as “The West.”

Let me back off from being too hard on The West. The French and Greek peoples have shown in the recent elections that they are unplugging from the Matrix and understand that they, the 99%, are being put by their elites in a position to be the sacrificial lambs for the mistakes of the 1% mega-rich, who compete with one another in terms of how many billions of dollars or euros, how many yachts, collections of exotic cars, and exotic Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds they have as personal possessions.

The central banks of the West--the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the UK bank--are totally committed to the prosperity of the mega-rich. No one else counts. Marx and Lenin never had a target as exists today. Yet, the left-wing is today so feeble and brainwashed that it does not exist as even a minor countervailing power. The American left-wing has even accepted the absurd official account of 9/11 and of Osama bin Laden’s murder in Pakistan by Navy Seals. A movement so devoid of mental and emotional strength is useless. It might as well not exist.

People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are. The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. www.paulcraigroberts.org

Check out these police goons - they are for real...

I recently found this video on YouTube. Check it out:

Occupy Oakland: Police Standoff & Brutal Assault, Tear Gas

Aren't they wonderful? Don't they look so evil and dumb that remind you of some Hollywood flick based on Orwell's 1984? 

I love the big guy whacking his baton on the barrier to scare off some poor women. 

Fascism is already here, folks, make no mistake about it.

Pensacola City Priest threatened with arrest over Free Speech!

by Joe Vinson for the Pensacola Digest:

So, a priest walks into a city council meeting — stop me if you’ve heard this one — and is nearly hauled away by the police for speaking calmly to his elected officials.

Hilarious, right?

Father Nathan Monk wasn’t laughing at last night’s City Council meeting. During the Boyd Forum, an open comment period named in honor of the late civic activist LeRoy Boyd, Father Monk chided the council members — and Council President Sam Hall in particular — for their actions at Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting. At that meeting, several citizens had spoken in opposition to the proposed anti-homeless ordinances, and in doing so made unflattering comparisons to historical figures (one person mentioned Heinrich Himmler’s “Final Solution“) and questioned the Christian charity of any council member who would support the ordinances. Council members DeWeese and Johnson took offense at the accusations, and Hall had asked Police Chief Chip Simmons to remove several speakers he deemed “out of order.”

At last night’s meeting, Monk told the council they had no right to dictate the content of their speech, and suggested that they instead examine any actions by the city that would prompt such comparisons.

“As Americans, we have the right to redress our government without fear of being arrested,” he said. “Whether or not they’re connecting dots from Hitler to George Wallace to Barney … you should be asking, ‘well what are we doing that’s allowing people to connect those dots?’ It was a sick and gross abuse of power.”

Council President Hall interrupted Monk at that point. “Your time is up, sit down,” he said.

“No, I have a minute and 12 seconds left,” Monk said, looking at the timer at the speaker’s lectern.

“I’m ruling you out of order,” Hall said.

When Monk refused to leave, noting that he had not violated any rules of conduct, Hall asked Police Chief Simmons and two other uniformed police officers in attendance to remove him. He refused to budge until his allotted time was up, after which he was escorted from council chambers by the officers.

During the standoff, council members Sherri Myers and John Jerralds stood up and left their seats in protest.

“I am leaving this chamber as you are in violation of the people’s First Amendment right,” Myers said. “I will be outside if you want to want to address your grievances to your government.”

Returning to her seat later in the meeting, she strongly criticized the “chilling effect” such censorship can have on the public right to speech.

From Tahrir Square to Wall Street and the rest of the USA, the Empire bares its fangs (again)

The level of violence meted out by the Empire against its opponents is clearly on the rise: from Tahrir Square in Egypt, to the many Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, to the constant saber-rattling against Iran, the Empire is clearly cracking down on its opposition.

This new trend is particularly striking in the USA.  People who have never lived in the USA or who, even more so, have never studied here, do probably not realize the amazing degree of freedom US colleges have enjoyed in the past.  Let me illustrate this by a simple example.

I got one of my college degrees from The American University in Washington, DC.  Of of the teachers at this university was a former Ambassador of Grenada to the USA, until Reagan invaded the small island to show the world that the USA was still a superpower after its Marines had just been blown up to smithereens in Beirut two days earlier.  While the USA could impose a puppet-regime in Grenada, it could do nothing to remove this (now ex-) Ambassador from American U. because, in essence, all US colleges had a semi-official status of extra-territoriality due to their academic nature.  Sure, the Reaganites hated having this Marxist ex-Ambassador speaking her mind not only on campus, but also off-campus, but there was nothing they could do about it.  That was the type of freedom US colleges enjoyed as recently as 1986.

So while the pepper-spraying of protesting students in UC Davis might not appear like a big deal to non-Americans, to those Americans old enough to remember the 1980s (or even the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960) this is an outrage which goes against everything the USA was supposed to stand for.

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, after being
hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest.

What matters here is not that some pepper sprayed in the eyes of the students, its the clear message this sends: the time for freedom is over and now we will do what was so unthinkable even very recently.  This is why protesters are being beaten up with batons, tasered, pepper-strayed and even killed in greater and greater numbers: the regime is sending a simple and clear message to its subjects: give it up, or we will crush you.

The gloves are also off in Egypt where the torture and murder of pro-democracy demonstrators has resumed.  Amazingly, stunningly, the Egyptians have found in themselves the courage and internal resources to continue the fight.  The expression "heroic people" is, as a rule, hyperbole, but in the case of the Egyptian people it seems quite appropriate to me.

The Empire probably feels emboldened by its comprehensive success in Libya and by its hope to repeat something similar in Syria  (the counter-examples of Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia seem quickly forgotten amidst all the high-fiving and back-slapping about the "great NATO victory" in Libya).  Amazingly, the always inept and useless Arab League has learned nothing from its shameful role in the Libyan war and seems to be willing to repeat exactly the same actions against Syria.  The only good news here is that at least China and Russia seemed to be saying "no way, not again!".  But does that really matter?  In a world were UNSC Resolutions carry no weight at all, and in which the current UNSC does not even seem be able to produce a majority in favor of a Palestinian state - does it make any difference at all what Russia or China have to say?

The bottom line is clear: both the Obama Administration and the US regime which it currently represents are clearly headed towards a dramatic increase in violent actions.  On one hand, the economies of the USA and the EU are tanking, the political elites are as hated and as openly challenged as ever while, on the other hand, brazen acts of illegal violence yield what the rules of the Empire think of as "successes".  Add to this the upcoming elections in the USA, and a Zionist lobby gone insane with a typical mix of arrogance and paranoia, and you get an explosive cocktail.

Sadly, it appears that we must brace ourselves for a major increase in violence, both inside the USA, and internationally.   Yes, the days of this Empire are numbered, but only in the long term.  For the foreseeable future it still has a lot of "reserve capabilities of violence" to inflict on all its opponents.

The Saker

2011

By Paul Craig Roberts for Informationclearinghouse

”Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”

- -Lewis H. Lapham

The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the U.S. government of U.S. law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.

2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American democracy. The Republican Party has degenerated into a party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the worsening economic crisis and military occupations gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in 2012. With them would come their doctrines of executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law, and the Constitution and America’s rightful hegemony over the world.

If not already obvious, 2010 has made clear that the U.S. government does not care a whit for the opinions of citizens. The TSA is unequivocal that it will reach no accommodation with Americans other than the violations of their persons that it imposes by its unaccountable power. As for public opposition to war, the Associated Press reported on December 16 that “Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. can’t let public opinion sway its commitment to Afghanistan.” Gates stated bluntly what has been known for some time: the idea is passe that government in a democracy serves the will of the people. If this quaint notion is still found in civics books, it will soon be edited out.

In Gag Rule, a masterful account of the suppression of dissent and the stifling of democracy, Lewis H. Lapham writes that candor is a necessary virtue if democracies are to survive their follies and crimes. But where in America today can candor be found? Certainly not in the councils of government. Attorney General John Ashcroft complained of candor-mongers to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Americans who insist on speaking their minds, Ashcroft declared, “scare people with phantoms of lost liberty,” “aid terrorists,” diminish our resolve,” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies.”

As the Department of Justice (sic) sees it, when the ACLU defends habeas corpus it is defending the ability of terrorists to blow up Americans, and when the ACLU defends the First Amendment it is defending exposures of the lies and deceptions that are the necessary scaffolding for the government’s pretense that it is doing God’s will while Satan speaks through the voices of dissent.

Neither is candor a trait in which the American media finds comfort. The neoconservative press functions as propaganda ministry for hegemonic American empire, and the “liberal” New York Times serves the same master. It was the New York Times that gave credence to the Bush regime’s lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and it was the New York Times that guaranteed Bush’s re-election by spiking the story that Bush was committing felonies by spying on Americans without obtaining warrants. Conservatives rant about the “liberal media” as if it were a vast subversive force, but they owe their beloved wars and cover-ups of the Bush regime’s crimes to the New York Times.

With truth the declared enemy of the fantasy world in which the government, media, and public reside, the nation has turned on whistleblowers. Bradley Manning, who allegedly provided the media with the video made by U.S. troops of their wanton, fun-filled slaughter of newsmen and civilians, has been abused in solitary confinement for six months. Murdering civilians is a war crime, and as General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the National Press Club on February 17, 2006, “It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral” and to make such orders known. If Manning is the source of the leak, he has been wrongfully imprisoned for meeting his military responsibility. The media have yet to make the point that the person who reported the crime, not the persons who committed it, is the one who has been imprisoned, and without a trial.

The lawlessness of the U.S. government, which has been creeping up on us for decades, broke into a full gallop in the years of the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes. Today the government operates above the law, yet maintains that it is a democracy bringing the same to Muslims by force of arms, only briefly being sidetracked by sponsoring a military coup against democracy in Honduras and attempting to overthrow the democratic government in Venezuela.

As 2011 dawns, public discourse in America has the country primed for a fascist dictatorship.The situation will be worse by 2012. The most uncomfortable truth that emerges from the WikiLeaks saga is that American public discourse consists of cries for revenge against those who tell us truths. The vicious mendacity of the U.S. government knows no restraint. Whether or not international law can save Julian Assange from the clutches of the Americans or death by a government black ops unit, both executive and legislative branches are working assiduously to establish the National Security State as the highest value and truth as its greatest enemy.

America’s future is the world of Winston Smith.

A timely reminder: The 14 Characteristics of Fascism

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy.

The 14 characteristics are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
   Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
   
   
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
   Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
   
   
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
   The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
   
   
4. Supremacy of the Military
   Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
   
   
5. Rampant Sexism
   The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
   
   
6. Controlled Mass Media
   Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
   
   
7. Obsession with National Security
   Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
   
   
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
   Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
   
   
9. Corporate Power is Protected
   The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
   
   
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
    Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
    
    
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
    Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
    
    
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
    Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
    
    
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
    Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
    
    
14. Fraudulent Elections
    Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

source: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

Don't taser me bro! Don't touch my junk! Daily life in the Imperial Homeland

Don't taser me bro! Don't touch my junk!  These pleas have become the emblematic slogans of life in the US Imperial "Homeland" and they are just the most publicized examples of a far bigger trend: the US is slowly turning into one giant prison.

I am not referring here to the fact that the USA has the highest per capita incarceration rate on the planet or to the fact that its prisons are amongst the worst on the planet.  No, I am referring to what is going every day out outside the prison walls, in the daily life of Americans.

I have lived in the USA from 1986 to 1991 and again from 2002 to today and this gradual but unstoppable evolution towards a Fascist state is really quite obvious to me.  There are three main layers of state intimidation which surround Americans 24/7.

First, private security companies are literally everywhere.  At the mall, inside stores, public libraries or chiropractic clinics.  Nevermind that crime has been in free fall since many years, these rent-a-cops are everywhere.  Their agents feature cop-like uniforms and badges with names like "Internal Intelligence".  The agents themselves are typically overweight, old, sleepy or borderline mentally restarted.  Still, these minimal-wage rent-a-cops are here to send a simple message: we are watching you.

The second layer of intimidation is provided by the numerous police forces also seen everywhere: the city police, the sheriff departments, the state troopers, the park rangers - taser and gun toting coppers are also everywhere.  Even in a small town, a banal traffic stop will result in 2-3 police cars with flashing lights surrounding the offending car.  Vans with ominous "K9" signs often join in the action.  Often, police helicopters overfly my little town, adding a "vertical" feeling to this constant parade of state power.

Lastly, mostly in bigger towns, other agencies can be seen, ranging from the Border Patrol (even if the nearest border is hundreds of miles away) to DOT police, to DEA, FBI, ATF and God only knows how many more 3 letter security agencies.

The general feeling from all this is "you better obey, NOW! And don't even think of talking back!".

The most significant development since 9/11 is that cop impunity has now reached quasi-official status.  Cops can arrest you, throw you on the ground, handcuff you, taser you and, yes, even shoot you with something approaching 99.999% impunity.  Sure, if some cop is dumb enough to shoot somebody for absolutely no reason at all, and do that on video, then he might get a slap on the wrist, even a minimal jail sentence (in extreme cases), but short of murdering somebody on camera cops can do anything they want.

This is what happened to the Russia Today reporters covering the anti-SOA protests yesterday.  And, typically, the courts will fully support whatever the cops do.

This is why the latest outrage over the TSA's porno'scanners and genital-gropings is so important.  It's not just a matter of Mr. Chertoff making money.  Far more relevant is the fact that these TSA measures are really designed to make Americans loose any and all sense of personal freedom or dignity.  Absolute and total subservience to the state is what is expected from everybody.  And if you refuse, you ain't flying pal!

My bet is that tomorrow's "opt-out" action will be a failure.  I just don't see Americans taking any collective action.  Yes, there are hundreds and possibly even thousands of courageous and principled Americans out there, but that is a country of 300'000'000 people, most of whom are passive, frightened, depressed and brainwashed sheep, incapable of any meaningful reaction.

The TSA will probably end up make some minor, cosmetic, adjustments to its most crazy policies, but the policy of "submission through humiliation" is here to stay.

The Saker

Russia Today TV crew arrested while filming at the US 'School of Assassins'