Putin says we are on the brink of WWIII. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

Putin says we are on the brink of WWIII. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

Can Americans Overthrow The Evil That Rules Them? — Paul Craig Roberts

Can Americans Overthrow The Evil That Rules Them? — Paul Craig Roberts

August 29, 2016 

Can Americans Overthrow The Evil That Rules Them?

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Wolfowitz and the lies that he told in the high government positions that he held are responsible for a massive number of deaths and massive destruction in seven countries. Wolfowitz has announced his vote for Hillary Clinton. Does this make you feel reassured?

The real surprise would have been Wolfowitz’s announcement in favor of Donald Trump. So why was what was expected news?

Trump has said that he doesn’t see any future in the conflict Washington has initiated with Russia, and Trump questions the point of NATO’s continuing existence. These peaceful attitudes make Trump into a “national security risk” according to Wolfowitz. What Wolfowitz means is that a peace candidate is a threat to Wolfowitz’s doctrine of US world hegemony. In the crazed mind of Wolfowitz and the neoconservatives, America is not safe unless it rules the world.

Hillary is a warmonger, perhaps the ultimate and last one if she becomes president, as the combination of her hubris and incompetence is likely to result in World War 3. On July 3, 2015, Hillary declared: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. . . . we would be able to totally obliterate them.” 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-clinton-if-im-president-we-will-attack-iran/5460484?print=1 

The crazed Hillary went on from this to declare the President of Russia to be “the new Hitler.” Little doubt she thinks she can obliterate Russia also.

Hillary is the one who brought zionist neocon Victoria Nuland into the State Department to oversee the US coup in Ukraine in order to create more propaganda against Russia and force Washington’s European vassals to impose sanctions and place military bases on Russia’s borders, thus provoking a nuclear power and raising dangerous tensions.

This fits in perfectly with Wolfowitz’s intention. As Wolfowitz is Hillary’s likely Secretary of Defense, the two together mean World War 3.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Wolfowitz, then a high Pentagon official, penned the Wolfowitz doctrine. The doctrine states that the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of other countries that could serve as constraints on US unilateralism. This means Russia and China,  The combination of Hillary with Wolfowitz should scare everyone in the entire world. The prospect of nuclear weapons being in such crazed hands as those of Hillary and Wolfowitz is the most alarming though imaginable.

The question is whether Hillary can be elected in the face of her violations of national security rules, for which she received a pass from corrupt Obama, and her heavily documented self-dealings that have produced a Clinton private fortune of $120 million and $1,600 million in their foundation. It is completely clear that the Clintons use public office for their private aggrandizement. Is this what Americans want? Two people who become even more rich as the world is led into nuclear war?

But with electronic voting machines, the question will not be decided by what Amerians want, but by how the electronic machines are programmed to report the vote. The US has already had elections in which the exit polls, always a reliable indicator of the winner prior to the appearance of electronic voting machines, indicated a different winner than the electronic voting machines produced. The secrecy of how the voting machines are programmed is protected by “proprietary software.” The machines have no paper trails, precluding vote recounts.

As both political establishments are fiercely opposed to Trump, how do you think the machines will be programmed? Indeed, the media is so opposed to Trump, the question is whether there will be exit polls and if there are, will they be misreported?

Republican operatives, not Republican voters, are all in a huff over their allegations that Trump is costing the Republicans votes. How can this be when Republican voters chose Trump over other candidates? Aren’t the Republican operatives saying that they, instead of the voters, should choose the Republican candidate?

If so, they are just like the Democrats. Some years ago the Democrat establishment created “super delegates” who are not chosen by voters. Enough “super delegates” were created in order to give the Party establishment the ability to over-ride the voters choice of presidential candidate. That it was the Democrats—allegedly the party of the people—who first took the choice away from the people is astonishing. Much information indicates that Bernie Sanders actually won the Democratic presidential nomination but was denied it by vote fraud and “super delegates.”

This is politics in America—totally corrupt. Chris Hedges might be right: nothing can change without revolution.

The demonization of Trump by the presstitutes is proof that Trump, despite his wealth, is regarded by the Oligarchs who comprise the One Percent as a threat to their agendas. The Oligarchs, not Trump, own or control the media. So the presstitute demonization of Trump is complete proof that he is the candidate to elect. The oligarchs who oppress us hate Trump, so the oppressed American people should support Trump.

The presstitute demonization of Trump did not work in the Republican primaries. Is it working in the presidential election? We don’t know, because the polls are reported by the presstitutes, not by Trump.

If the demonization does not work, and the election has to be stolen from Trump by the electronic machines, the consequence will be to radicalize Americans, something long overdue. Perhaps the expectation of this development is the reason all federal agencies, even the post office and Social Security, have acquired arms and ammunition, and Cheney’s firm Halliburton was paid $385,000,000 to build detention centers in the US.

Those who control us are not going to give up their control without a world war. In the United States evil has seized power from the people, and evil will not give it back.

Trump vs. Hillary: A Summation — Paul Craig Roberts

Trump vs. Hillary: A Summation — Paul Craig Roberts

August 25, 2016 

Trump vs. Hillary: A Summation

Paul Craig Roberts

The US presidential election this November will tell whether a majority of the US population is irredeemably stupid. If voters elect Hillary, we will know that Americans are stupid beyond redemption.

We don’t know much about Trump, and anti-Trump propaganda rules in the place of facts.

But we know many facts about Hillary. We know about her violation of classification laws and the refusal of the Democratic administration to do anything about it. The Democrats prefer to control the White House than to enforce the law, another nail in the coffin in which the rule of law in the US lies.

We know from their words and deeds and material success that the Clintons are agents for Wall Street, the Big Banks, the military/security complex, Israel, agribusiness, and the extractive industries. Their large personal fortune, approximately $120 million, and the $1,600 million in their foundation, much of which came from abroad in exchange for political favors, attests to the unchallengable fact that the Clintons are agents for the oligarchy that rules America, indeed, that rules the American Empire from Australia and Japan, through North America and Western and Eastern Europe to the Russian border.

We know that Hillary, like Bill, is a liar.

We know that Hillary is a warmonger.

We know that Hillary made the most irresponsible statement ever uttered by a presidential candidate when she declared the President of Russia to be the “new Hitler,” thereby raising tensions between the nuclear powers to a higher level than existed during the Cold War.

We know that Hillary is allied with the neoconservatives and that her belief in the neocons’ ideology of US world hegemony is likely to result in war with Russia and China.

All we know about Trump is that the oligarchs, who sent America’s jobs overseas, who flooded the country with difficult-to-assimilate immigrants, who destroyed public education, who bailed out Wall Street and the “banks too big to fail,” who sacrificed American homeowners and retirees living on a fixed income, who intend to privatize both Social Security and Medicare, who have given the public killer cops, relentless violations of privacy, the largest prison poplulation in the world, and destroyed the US Constitution in order to increase executive power over the American people, are violently opposed to Trump. This opposition should tell us that Trump is the person we want in the Oval Office.

Some claim that it is all a charade and that Trump is playing a role in order to elect Hillary. American politics are so corrupt that anything is possible. However the ruling elites and their puppets seem to be genuinely concerned about Trump’s challenge to their control, and they have united against Trump. They have used their money to buy up “progressive” websites paid to bring the print and TV anti-Trump propaganda onto the Internet, thus joining the Internet presstitutes with the print, TV, and NPR whores who are working overtime to demonize Trump and to elect Hillary.

The entire power structure of our country is behind Hillary. Both Democratic and Republican political establishments and both ideologies, neoliberals and neoconservatives, are united behind Hillary.

How much more evidence do Americans need in order to know that a vote for Hillary is a vote for their own emasculation?

Apparently, Americans remain captives of their insouciance. According to news reports, a majority of voters still haven’t a clue about the consequences of voting for Hillary. Polls report that Hillary is well in the lead. Are these real polls or just another presstitute lie to discourage Trump supporters? Why vote when they have already lost?

The propaganda assault against Trump, vicious as it was, did not succeed during the Republican primary. Despite the media condemnation of Trump, he swept the other Republican candidates aside effortlessly.

The current media demonization of Trump might fail as well. Indeed, it is so transparent that it could elect him.

All that is required is for enough Americans to awake from their insouciance to recognize that it is the enemies of their own lives, their own living standards, and their own liberty who are violently opposed to Trump.

If Americans cannot reach this realization, they have no future, and neither does the planet Earth.

The ruling oligarchy hates Trump because he disavows war with Russia, questions the purpose of NATO, opposes the offshoring of Americans’ jobs, and opposes the uncontrolled immigration that is transforming the United States into a multi-cultural entity devoid of unity. The oligarchs are replacing the United States with a Tower of Babel. Oligarchic power grows exponentially among the disunity of diversity.

In other words, Trump is for America and for Americans.

This is why the oligarchs and their whores hate Trump.

The imbecillic Americans who vote for Hillary are voting for war and their own immiseration.

Possibly, a vote for Trump is the same. However, in the case of Trump we do not know that. In the case of Hillary we most certainly do know it.

Of course, it could matter not how Americans vote. Those who program the electronic voting machines will determine the vote, and as the establishments of both political parties totally oppose Trump, the programmed machines can elect Hillary. We know this from our electoral history. The US has already experienced elections in which exit polls show a winning candidate different from the candidate selected by the electronic machines that have no paper trail and no way of affirming the vote.

If Hillary gets into the Oval Office, nuclear war is likely before her first term is over. A vote for Hillary is a vote for nuclear war.

If you look at the forthcoming election realistically, you have no alternative but to conclude that the entirety of the presstitute media and American Establishment prefers the risk of nuclear war to the risk of losing control of the government to the voters.

That Americans permitted the rise of unaccountable power tells us all we need to know about the dereliction of duty of which United States citizens are guilty. The American people failed democracy, which requires accountable government. The American government has proven that it is not accountable to the US Constitution, to US statutory law, to international law, or to voters.

If the result of Americans’ dereliction of duty is nuclear war, the American people will be responsible for the death of planet Earth. One would hope that with responsibility this great on their shoulders, the American people will reject the unequivocal war candidate and take their chances on holding Trump accountable to his words.

Crocodile Tears For Aleppo Poster Child By Paul Craig Roberts

Crocodile Tears For Aleppo Poster Child

By Paul Craig Roberts

August 19, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - Washington’s media presstitutes are using the image of the child to bring pressure on Russia to stop the Syrian army from retaking Alleppo. Washington wants its so-called moderate rebels to retain Alleppo so that Washington can split Syria in two, thereby keeping a permanent pressure against President Assad.

Let us not forget the tens of thousands of children that Washington’s wars and bombings of 7 Muslim countries have killed without any tears shed by CNN anchors, and let us not forget the 500,000 Iraqi children that the United Nations concluded died as a result of US sanctions against Iraq, children’s deaths that Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said were worth it.

Let us not forget that Washington’s determination to overthrow the Syrian government has brought many deaths to Syrians of all age groups. Washington alone is responsible for the deaths. The evil Obama regime has stated over and over that “Assad must go” and is prepared to destroy the country and much of the population in order to get rid of him.

According to the Obama regime, Assad must go because he is a dictator. Washington tells this lie despite the fact that Assad was elected and re-elected and has far higher support among Syrians that Obama has among Americans. Moreover, whatever Washington accuses Assad of doing to Syrians is nothing compared to the death and destruction that Washington brought to Syria.

Perhaps the tragedy of Aleppo could have been avoided if the Russian government had not prematurely declared “mission accomplished” in Syria and withdrawn only to have to rush back after the Russian government was again deceived by Washington.

The Democrats Have Chosen A First Class Crook As Their Presidential Candidate

The Democrats Have Chosen A First Class Crook As Their Presidential Candidate

August 23, 2016

The Democrats Have Chosen A First Class Crook As Their Presidential Candidate

The Presstitutes tell us that the best choice for President of the United States is a partner in a crime syndicate that parleyed favors while in office into a $1.6 billion private foundation and a $120 million private fortune. So far have we fallen. Who will be Hitlery’s successor, Caligula?

Guest Column by Stephen Lendman

Latest Hillary Email Scandal Revelation

by Stephen Lendman

Hillary lied about not having classified State Department material on her personal home server. She lied about turning over to the State Department all emails relating to agency business.

On Monday, the FBI announced discovery of 15,000 previously undisclosed emails. Some are personal. Others show foreign officials sought favors in return for large Clinton Foundation donations.

Judicial Watch (JW) president Tom Fitton asked “(w)hen will State release them? It looks like the State Department is trying to slow-roll the release of the records. They’ve had them for at least a month, and we still don’t know when we’re going to get them.”

A Monday court hearing was held to rule on a release schedule. The same day, JW said it “released 725 pages of new State Department documents…”

They “includ(e) previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state.” 

“In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.”

New documents include 20 Hillary email exchanges not previously turned over to State – 191 so far known excluded from 55,000 emails released.

More than a dozen newly released email exchanges show foreign officials donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative to gain State Department access – part of the Clintons’ pay-to-play scheme dating from when Bill was president.

JW was blunt saying what’s known to date “contradict(s) statements by Clinton that, ‘as far as she knew,’ all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.”

How much more official agency business material remains undiscovered, including easily hacked classified documents?

In one message exchange, Clinton Foundation’s Doug Band emailed Abedin, her deputy chief of staff at State and presidential campaign co-chair, about a “good friend of ours,” Bahrain’s crown prince Salman “asking to see her” in June 2009.

He couldn’t arrange a meeting through normal channels, had to go through the Clinton Foundation instead. JW’s Fitton explained he donated over $32 million to the Clinton Global Initiative from 2005 – 2010. Bahrain made separate donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Fitton said this case (and numerous others like it) raise “the question whether public office was illegally used to benefit a private entity or private individual.”

In her June deposition to JW, Abedin said part of her job at State was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”

Apparently she served as gatekeeper for who got access to Hillary at State in return for large donations to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative – clear pay-to-play chicanery, corruption by any standard.

Hillary remains unaccountable. This and numerous other examples of how she operates illegally show she’s unfit to hold any public office, especially the nation’s highest.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Hats Off To Mother Jones -- Paul Craig Roberts

Hats Off To Mother Jones — Paul Craig Roberts

August 23, 2016

Hats Off To Mother Jones

Paul Craig Roberts

How many Americans know that America has privatized prisons, the shares of which are listed on stock exchanges? Free market ideologues provided cover for corrupt Republican politicians to divert taxpayers’ hard-earned money to favored political insiders with the false claim that prisons run by private owners are more cost effective. A Mother Jones reporter took a job as a private prison guard and found that private prisons are places of unimaginable violence. In response to the report published in Mother Jones, high ranking US Department of Justice officials have said that the federal government will cease contracting with privatized prisons.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/department-justice-plans-end-private-prison

Republicans learned to use libertarian “free market” ideologues in order to feather their own nests. Privatization, favored by libertarians, is the Republican way of turning public functions into million dollar businesses for themselves and their friends. In the case of the armed forces, the privatized parts of the US military are multi-billion dollar businesses.

Most Americans are too brainwashed to understand that Obamacare is not “socialized medicine.” Obamacare is privatized medicine. Obama permitted the private insurance companies to write Obamacare. What Obamacare does is to divert federal subsidies into the pockets of private insurance companies. The deductibles and co-pays are so high that those who qualify for the subsidized premiums cannot afford to use the policies.

Republicans intend to privatize Medicare and Social Security. The road to Medicare privatization is the small percentage of medical billings that Medicare pays. Medical care providers are beginning to find that it is unprofitable to provide care to Medicare patients. When doctors cease to provide care under Medicare, the massive payroll tax revenues will be diverted into the hands of “more efficient” private providers.

The road to Social Security privatization is the “reform” of the consumer price index, which under-measures inflation in order to deny Social Security recipients cost-of-living-adjustments. The continuing decline in the real value of Social Security benefits will result in large-scale economic distress. This distress will be used to discredit the Social Security system and to privatize it.

Whenever you hear “privatization,” you are hearing the formation of a scam

 that will create riches for insiders while taking the public to the cleaners.

The Genocide of a Land -- Paul Craig Roberts

              

The Genocide of a Land — Paul Craig Roberts

August 22, 2016 

The Genocide of a Land

Paul Craig Roberts

In our days of darkness, spreading ignorance, and absence of serious debate in public forums, we can take hope from the fact that some scholars still produce serious and informative books on the most critical issues of our time. If in the future policymakers again seek the guidance of truth, they will have the information at hand. One such book of truth is Jeremy R. Hammond’s just published Obstacle to Peace, a closely reasoned, heavily documented (68 pages of footnotes), fully indexed, readable book with a Foreword by Richard Falk, an Introduction by Gene Epstein, and an endorsement by Noam Chomsky.

The obstacle to peace is the United States government, which has consistently opposed the entire world’s decades long effort to stop the Zionist genocide of a land called Palestine.

Palestine is a stolen and oppressed land. Israel’s greatest leaders themselves acknowledge the fact. Tom Are quotes David Ben-Gurion:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We came from Israel, it’s true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?” http://thomas-l-are.blogspot.com

What once was a country consists today of a few small isolated Palestinian ghettos in the West Bank surrounded by Israeli settlements and an open air prison known as Gaza. Periodically Israel launches military assaults on the civilian population of Gaza, destroying the lives of the people and the infrastructure of the prison camp.

Israel then prevents outside efforts from sending supplies to the suffering people in Gaza. “Freedom flotillas” crewed by Nobel Laurates, present and former members of US and European legislative bodies, and even members of the Israeli Knesset set sail with supplies for Gaza and are pirated and captured in international waters by the Israeli Navy, which, as a warning to others, kills some of the delegation in “self-defense.” The United States steadfastly defends Israel’s criminal behavior with its UN veto and other governments, though disapproving, are unwilling to confront Washington and force a change.

Washington’s 21st century wars in the Middle East were initiated by neoconservative regimes whose principal policymakers are tightly allied with Israel. The wars focused on Arab nations—Iraq, Libya, and Syria—that were supportive of the Palestinians and had foreign policies independent of Washington. Washington succeeded in destroying two of the countries and has not given up on destroying Syria despite the risk of confrontation with Russia.

The risks that Washington is imposing on Americans and Europeans in order to advance Israeli expansion in the Middle East are horrific. Zionists claim a “greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates. Washington’s wars in the Middle East are designed to remove obstacles to “greater Israel.” For example, on past occasions Israel has attempted to seize southern Lebanon for the water resources, but were driven out by Hezbollah, a militia supplied by Syria and Iran. This is one reason Syria and Iran are on Washington’s target list.

To achieve its or Israel’s goals, Washington uses jihadists. Russia sees the jihadists as threats that could spread to the Muslim areas of the Russian Federation, and Russia acts to protect itself. China also has realized that its province bordering Kazakhstan is subject to jihadist destabilization and appears to be aligning with Russia, Iran, and Syria against Washington’s effort to overthrow the Syrian government and install in its place chaos as Washington has done in Iraq and Libya, thus removing another constraint on Israel’s expansion and the restraint of a secular Syrian government on jihadism.

To get all of this from Hammond, you might have to connect some dots. But what you will get is a massive amount of verbatim dialogue that documents beyond all doubt the conspiracy between Israel, Washington, and the US presstitutes to get rid of “the Palestinian problem” by getting rid of Palestinians.

What does emerge strongly from Hammond’s book is that justice is not a thriving characteristic of the Israeli government, US foreign policy, or the media. The United Nations has produced report after report documenting the extermination of a people, but is powerless to act because of Washington’s veto.

What has happened to Palestinians is a replay of what happened to the native inhabitants of North America and Australia. Palestinians have been dispossessed and murdered. For this crime, the United States shares responsibility with Israel.

Become informed while you still can. Propaganda is turning truth-tellers into “conspiracy theorists” and “domestic extremists.” We can’t take the continued presence of truth-tellers for granted. When one appears support him or her. Order Hammond’s book here: http://www.obstacletopeace.com

You will never regret being informed.

Can Russia Survive Washington’s Challenge? Paul Craig Roberts

Can Russia Survive Washington’s Challenge? — Paul Craig Roberts

August 21, 2016 

Can Russia Survive Washington’s Challenge?

Paul Craig Roberts

News services abroad ask me if President Erdogan of Turkey will, as a result of the coup attempt, realign Turkey with Russia. At this time, there is not enough information for me to answer. Speculation in advance of information is not my forte.

Moreover, I do not know if it is true that Moscow warned the President of Turkey of the coup, and I do not know if Washington was behind the coup. Therefore, I do not know how to weigh the scales.  As I see it, whether Turkey stays with Washington or realigns with Moscow depends first of all on whether or not Moscow warned Turkey and whether or not Washington was behind the coup.  If this is what Erdogan believes, whether true or false, Erdogan is likely to align with Russia.  However, other factors will also influence Erdogan’s decision.  For example, Erdogan’s belief about how resolute Putin is to standing up to Washington.

Erdogan will not want to align with Russia if he thinks Russia is not up to Washington’s challenge.  Erdogan sees Putin endlessly asking for Washington’s cooperation, and Erdogan understands that Washington sees this as a sign of Russian weakness.  Washington slaps Putin in the face, and Putin replies by asking for cooperation against ISIS.  I understand why Putin responds this way.  He wants to avoid a war between US/NATO and Russia that neither side can win.  Putin is a man of peace and accepts affronts in order to save life. This is admirable.  But that might not be the way Erdogan sees it.  Erdogan might see it like Washington sees it: weakness.

  

The second consideration is whether Washington or Moscow offers Erdogan the best deal. Washington most certainly does not want the breakup of NATO and will strive to keep Turkey in NATO at all costs. Washington, for example, might deliver Gulen to Erdogan, and Washington might put one billion dollars in a bank account for Erdogan.  This is easy for Washington to do, as Washington can print all of the world’s reserve currency it wishes to print.  It is impossible for Moscow to deliver Gulen, and because Yeltsin accepted US advice conveyed through the IMF, the Russian ruble is not a substitute for the US dollar.

The world is accustomed to seeing Washington prevail, because Washington relies on force. Except for Putin’s response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, the world is accustomed to seeing Putin rely on diplomacy.  As Mao said, power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and so the world believes.  Putin seemed to be decisive when he accepted the Crimean vote and reunited the Crimea with Russia,  but Putin turned down the requests of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk to rejoin Russia, and this made Russia look weak. It also prolonged the conflict and the death and destruction continues.

In my opinion this strategic failure by Putin is the result of advice from the Russian “Atlanticist Integrationists”—the people who think that Russia does not count unless it is part of the West.  In every sense, these pro-Western members of the Russian government are de facto members of the Treason Party. Yet they serve as a constraint on Russian decisiveness. The absence of Russian decisiveness provokes more pressure from Washington. It is a losing game for the Russian government to invite pressure from the West. 

Washington sees that Putin is unable to break away from the influence of the Atlanticist Integrationists, which includes the Russian economic establishment led by the independent central bank. Therefore, Washington continues to make Washington’s cooperation with Russia in Syria dependent on Putin’s agreement that “Assad must go.”  Putin wants to get rid of ISIS, because ISIS can infect Muslim areas of the Russian Federation. But if he agrees to get rid of Assad, chaos will prevail in Syria just as chaos prevails in Iraq and Libya, and Russia will have accepted Washington’s overlordship. Russia will become another vassal country added to Washington’s collection. 

The real danger for Russia lies in Russia’s desire for Western acceptance. As long as Russians have this desire, they are a doomed people.

What Became of the Left? Paul Craig Roberts

What Became of the Left? — Paul Craig Roberts

August 19, 2016 

What Became of the Left?

Paul Craig Roberts

Acquaintances of my generation are puzzled by the disappearance of the American left. They remember when there was far less war, far less monopoly capitalist theft, a less rich and powerful elite, less police violence against civilians, less militarization, less privatization and deregulation, fewer attacks on the social safety net, less propaganda from the media, and yet, despite the milder state of affairs, the leftwing was present raising hell about it all.

For fifteen years, and more if we go back to the Clinton regime’s destruction of Yugoslavia, the US has been engaged in wars on populations in seven—eight counting Yugoslavia/Serbia—countries, causing millions of deaths, disabled, and dislocated peoples. A police state has been created, the US Constitution stripped of its protective features, and massive crimes committed under both US and international law by three administrations. These crimes include torture, transparent false flag events, naked aggression (a war crime), spying without warrants, and murder of US citizens. Yet, the leftwing’s voice is barely heard.

Clearly, my acquaintances are beginning to miss the challenge to explanations and the country’s direction that the left formerly provided. I know how they feel. We used to be pushed along by biases and stereotypical thinking, and the left was there to rattle our cage. Now we are pushed along by propaganda and there is no countervailing force except a few Internet voices.

I remember telling the audience in the Q&A session after my Frank M. Engle Lecture in 1992 that I never realized how much we would miss US Supreme Court Justices Brennan and Marshall.

Today we need a leftwing far more desperately than we did when we had one. Today governments considered democratic have the powers of a dictatorship. In the United States, for example, habeas corpus has been erased from both law and Constitution. Even worse, White House officials can create lists of citizens to be murdered without due process of law. These are the powers of a dictator. Yet, these attributes of dictatorship are now institutionalized and go unremarked.

One would think that the dispossessed American workers, whose jobs and financial security have been moved offshore and given to foreigners, would be protesting in the streets like the French do. But not a peep. When presidential candidate Ross Perot warned American workers of what was about to happen to them, they did not have enough confidence to vote for him. Have the dispossessed American workers gained enough sense—or is the problem a lack of leadership—to vote for Trump who acknowledges the job loss that is eroding the prospects of the 99 percent? If Trump does not intend to deliver or is incapable of delivering, we are still better off because a failure to deliver raises the awareness of the people.

From the standpoint of the left, there is a perfect environment for them in present day America. So where is the left?

Here is my answer to the question. The left suffered a tremendous blow when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet collapse deprived the left of its belief that there was an alternative to American “democratic capitalism.” The Soviet collapse also disheartened the left because the collapse removed any constraint on Washington’s unilateralism. With China shaking off Mao and moving into the capitalist camp, there was no one to pick up the torch.

People are puzzled why the left goes along with the government’s explanations of what appear to be orchestrated false flag terror events. If people of no political persuasion, such as architects and engineers, physicists, nano-chemists, firemen and first responders, airline and military pilots, challenge on the basis of evidence the official account of 9/11, why does the leftwing defend the account of a government that in other circumstances the left distrusts 120%? The left knows that Tonkin Gulf was an orchestration for war, that Saddam Hussein had no “weapons of mass destruction,” that Iran had no nukes. The left knows that the government lies through its teeth, so why does the left believe the government’s improbable conspiracy theory of 9/11?

The answer, I think, is that with the demise of Marxism, the left’s only hope is that the peoples oppressed by the West will rise up. The left finds huge emotional satisfaction in 9/11 as blowback of the oppressed against the oppressor. This is why the left clings to the official story of 9/11. And to the stories of other “terrorist events,” such as Orlando and Nice despite the lack of any real evidence in behalf of the stories.

I can remember when the Amerian left, if told that a large truck travelling at a reported 56 miles per hour had mowed down 185 people and, then, being shown in the immediate aftermath the truck devoid of a spot of blood, clothing, human flesh, or even a small dent, would have shouted down the obviously false account.

Ask someone who has hit a dog at 56 mph about the blood and damage to the car. Ask someone who has hit a deer and the car is totalled. Ask experts if a large truck hit a person at 56 mph if the person’s body would remain intact and could be viewed lying without any apparent damage or blood in the street.

You don’t need to ask, do you? You see the point. The force of a large truck moving at 56 mph that hits a human is going to splatter that human all over the street. Yet, the Nice photos show no such event.

I can remember when the American left, if told by a Nice police official that the French Minister of the Interior in Paris had ordered Nice authorities not to release and to immediately destroy the entire filming of the alleged terror event from security cameras posted along the entire street where allegedly 185 people were hit by a truck and, additionally, to falsify the police report of the event, the left would have been demanding blood from the authorities, not calling those who do demand explanations “conspiracy kooks.”

Today the American left wants to shut down those who do raise questions about such very strange events in which a few Saudis who could not fly airplanes prevailed over the American National Security State and in which 185 people are allegedly hit by a large truck but the photos show no such results and the Paris officials order the destruction of the recorded evidence and the falsification of the report.

The official story of 9/11 is the justification for the wars. It is difficult to oppose wars when you accept the reason for them. By accepting the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, the leftwing killed the antiwar movement.

Why does the left trust the government precisely on those matters that the government uses to justify war and a police state? The answer is that those who challenge the official story deprive the left of the emotional satisfaction that comes from the belief that oppressed peoples are capable of striking back and do strike back. Alexander Cockburn once explained this to me himself. He said that when I report the challenges of experts to the official 9/11 story, I am taking away the dignity of oppressed peoples by assuming that they do not strike back against their oppressors. Alex could not accept the truth, because it meant that the oppressed acquiesced in their oppression.

I understand how Alex saw it. I understand the importance to any movement of hope, and I regret that the left has positioned itself such that facts undermine hope, causing the left to come out against facts.

I offer the left, or the simulacrum that remains, a different hope: trust the power of truth. Don’t defend the oppressor, attack him, and as you attack him your might will grow. People are not forever fools. A time comes when their personal situation contradicts the story fed to them. But if there is no leadership, awareness cannot graduate into revolt.

The West needs a strong leftwing movement with the strength to challenge the lies that are leading the world to a war of extinction of life. I would prefer a reformist left to a revolutionary one, but this is not to say that a revolutionary left is not preferable to what exists today, which is revolutionary neoconservatism without opposition from a countervailing force.