Paul Craig Roberts
Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do
Hank Paulson, the Gold Sachs bankster/U.S. Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new U.S.debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.
Wall Street’s approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground.
Grounds for Hope and Despair
My Feb. 16 column, “A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs,” received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate. Yahoo News gave this account:
“In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system ‘dysfunctional,’ riddled with ‘brain-dead partisanship’ and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he’d seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a ’shock’ to Congress by voting incumbents out in mass and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.”
Can The Real Estate Predators Fight Off the Oil Company Predators? Or is Florida doomed?
Which organization is the greatest threat to the Second Amendment, the anti-gun Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence or Idaho’s pro-gun Sportsmen for Wildlife?
This might seem like a stupid question until you learn that the Idaho organization recently held three “predator derbies” in which competitors vied to see who could slaughter the most wolves over a two-day period. Similar assaults on wildlife occur in other western states. In Alaska “sportsmen” gun down wolves from airplanes.
Insouciant Americans
The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility.
How realistic is it that al-Qaida, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Mutallab had a one-way ticket, no luggage, no passport, and his father, reportedly a CIA and Mossad asset, had reported him to the CIA and Mossad. Does anyone really believe that al-Qaida would choose as an airliner bomber a person waving every red flag imaginable?
First Circle: Liberty Has Been Lost
I had just finished reading the uncensored edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book, In The First Circle (Harper Perennial, 2009), when I came across Chris Hedges’ article, “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists” (Truthdig, Dec. 28, 2009). In Hedges’ description of the U.S. government’s treatment of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi, I recognized the Stalinist legal system as portrayed by Solzhenitsyn.
Israel Rules
On Christmas Eve, when Christians were celebrating the Prince of Peace, THE New York Times delivered forth a call for war. “There’s only one way to stop Iran,” declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is “military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
Kuperman is described as the “director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin,” but his Christmas Eve call to war relies on disinformation and contradiction, not on objective scholarly analysis.
Americans Are Hell-Bent on Tyranny
Obama’s dwindling band of true believers has taken heart that their man has finally delivered on one of his many promises—the closing of the Guantanamo prison. But the prison is not being closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the Republicans permit.
In truth, Obama has handed his supporters another defeat. Closing Guantanamo meant ceasing to hold people in violation of our legal principles of habeas corpus and due process, and ceasing to torture them in violation of U.S. and international laws.
Israel Lobby Pulls the Strings in America
“Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books” was a London Times headline on Dec. 11, 2009.
These attacks, together with the demolition of Palestinian homes, the uprooting of Palestinians’ olive groves, the innumerable checkpoints that prevent Palestinians from accessing schools, work and medical care, the Israeli wall that denies Palestinians access to the land stolen from them, and the isolation and blockade of the Gaza ghetto, are part of the Israeli government’s policy of genocide for the Palestinians.
Trickle-Up Economics
Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters “are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”
One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sachs, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent “securities” that wrecked the world economy and Americans’ pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the U.S. Treasury during the Bush regime, from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges.
A Trial That Will Convict Us All
Republican members of Congress and what masquerades as a “conservative” media are outraged that the Obama administration intends to try in federal court Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11, and four alleged co-conspirators.
The Republican and right wing ranting that a trial is too good for these people proves what I have written for a number of years: Republicans and many Americans who think of themselves as conservatives have no regard for the U.S. Constitution or for civil liberties. They have no appreciation for the point made by Thomas Paine in his “Dissertations on First Principles of Government” (1790): “An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
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