Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

April 7, 2017 

Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s military attack on Syria is unambigiously a war crime. It occurred without any UN authorization or even the fake cover of a “coalition of the willing.” Washington’s attack on Syria occurred in advance of an investigation of the alleged event that Washington is trying to use as its justification. Indeed, Washington’s story of Syrian use of chemical weapons is totally implausible. All chemical weapons were removed from Syria by Russia and turned over to the US and its European allies. Syria has no such weapons and has no reason to use them and every reason not to. Moreover, it is none of Washington’s business whatsoever what weapons Syria uses against terrorist forces seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Governments in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan have not condemned this war crime. Indeed, the UK Foreign Minister has declared the UK’s support. Thus does the West reveal once again its hypocrisy.

As Russia has made clear, the alleged chemical weapons attack has every hallmark of a Washington orchestrated event in order to launch a US military attack on Syria. As the Russian Defense Ministry explained, the US air attack had to have been planned in advance of the alleged chemical weapon event. The US air strike on Syria requires advanced planning, but followed immediately the event used as the excuse: http://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12117678%40egNews

In other words, it was an orchestrated event.

Gilbert Doctorow says that the idiot Americans drowning in their own hubris have now crossed a Russian red line with consquences to follow. http://russia-insider.com/en/us-missile-strikes-syria-have-crossed-russian-red-lines-and-risk-serious-escalation/ri19479

Insane Washington is driving the world to thermo-nuclear war. And where are the protests?

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Trump Has Surrendered. Will Putin Be The Next To Surrender?

Trump Has Surrendered. Will Putin Be The Next To Surrender?

April 6, 2017 

Trump Has Surrendered
Will Putin Be The Next To Surrender?

Paul Craig Roberts

Update: Washington has reopened the conflict with a Tomahawk missile attack on Syrian Air Force Bases. The Russian/Syrian air defense systems did not prevent the attack.

The Washington Establishment has reasserted control. First Flynn and now Bannon. All that are left in the Trump administration are the Zionists and the crazed generals who want war with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

There is no one in the White House to stop them.

Kiss good-bye normalized relations with Russia.

The Syrian conflict is set to be reopened. That is the point of the chemical attack blamed by Washington on Syria despite the absence of any evidence. It is completely obvious that the chemical attack is a Washington orchestrated event. According to reports US Secretary of State Tillerson has warned Russia that steps are underway to remove Syrian president Assad. Trump agrees.

The removal of Assad allows Washington to impose another Washington puppet on Muslim peoples, to remove another Arab government with an independent policy from Washington, to remove another government that is opposed to Israel’s theft of Palestine, and for Exxon’s Tillerson and the neoconservative hegemonists to cut Russian natural gas off from Europe with a US controlled gas pipeline from Qater to Europe via Syria.

By ignoring all of these US advantages, the Russian government dithered in completing the liberation of Syria from Washington-backed ISIS. The Russians dithered, because they had totally unrealistic hopes of achieving a partnership with Washington via a joint effort against terrorism.

This was a ridiculous idea as terrorism is Washington’s weapon. If Washington can move Russia out of the way with threats or more Russian misplaced hopes of “cooperation” with Washington, terrorism will next be directed against Iran on a large scale. When Iran falls, terrorism will start to work on the Russian Federation and on the Chinese province that borders Kazakhstan. Washington has already given Russia a taste of US-supported terrorism in Chechnya. More is to come.

If the Russian government had not dithered in cleaning out ISIS from Syria when Russia unexpectedly took the lead from the West, Syria would not face partition or renewed US determination to overthrow Assad for the reasons given above. But the Russians, mesmerized by dreams of cooperating with Washington, have put both Syria and themselves in a difficult position.

The Russians grabbed the initiative and surprised the world by accepting the Syrian government’s invitation and entering the conflict. Washington was helpless. The Russian intervention immediately turned the tide against ISIS. Then suddenly Putin accounced a Russian pullout, claiming like Bush on the aircraft carrier, “Mission Accomplished.”

But mission wasn’t accomplished, and Russia reentered, still with the initiative but set back somewhat from the irrational withdrawal. If memory serves, this in and out business happened a couple of times. Then when Russia has the war agains ISIS won, they hold back on the finish in the vain belief that now Washington will finally cooperate with Russia in eliminating the last ISIS stronghold. Instead, the US sent in military forces to block the Russian/Syrian advances. The Russian Foreign Minister complained, but Russia did not use its superior power on the scene to move aside the token US forces and bring the conflict to an end.

Now Washington gives “warnings” to Russia not to get in Washington’s way. Will the Russian government ever learn that coopertion with Washington has only one meaning: sign up as a vassal?

Russia’s only alternative now is to tell Washington to go to hell, that Russia will not permit Washington to remove Assad. But the Russian Fifth Column, which is allied with the West, will insist that Russia can finally gain Washington’s cooperation if only Russia will sacrifice Assad. Of course, Russia’s acquiescence will destroy the image of Russian power, and it will be used to deprive Russia of foreign exchange from natural gas sales to Europe.

Putin has said that Russia cannot trust Washington. This is a correct deduction from the facts, so why does Russia keep putting itself in a quandry by seeking cooperation with Washington?

“Cooperation with Washington” has only one meaning. It means surrender to Washington.

Putin has only part-way cleaned up Russia. The country remains full of American agents. Will Putin fall to the Washington Establishment just as Trump has?

It is extraordinary how little of the Russian media understand the peril that Russia is in.

More Fake News?

More Fake News?

April 4, 2017 

More Fake News?

This afternoon NPR showcased a propagandist from BuzzFeed who denounced the Syrian government for using chemical weapons against innocents in the Idlib province. Somehow the BuzzFeed person knew for certain that the reported event had occurred. I wondered how he could know that, and I wondered what purpose such an attack would serve.

In other words, it smelled like propaganda.

The report is challenged by a real journalist, Paul Antonopoulos, in Information Clearing House.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46801.htm

The presstitute print and TV media will report only propaganda, so you will have to make up your own minds.

The World’s Best Economist -- Paul Craig Roberts

The World’s Best Economist

April 4, 2017 

The World’s Best Economist

Paul Craig Roberts

If you want to learn real economics instead of neoliberal junk economics, read Michael Hudson’s books.

What you will learn is that neoliberal economics is an apology for the rentier class and the large banks that have succeeded in financializing the economy, shifting consumer spending power from the purchase of goods and services that drive the real economy to the payment of interest and fees to banks.

His latest book is J is for Junk Economics. It is written in the form of a dictionary, but the definitions give you the precise meaning of economic terms, the history of economic concepts, and describe the transformation of economics from classical economics, where the emphasis was on taxing incomes that are not the product of the production of goods and services, to neoliberal economics, which rests on the taxation of labor and production.

This is an important difference that is not easy to understand. Classical economists defined “unearned income” as “economic rent.” This is not the rent that you pay for your apartment. Economic rent is an income stream that has no counterpart in cost incurred by the receipient of the income stream.

For example, when a public authority, say the city of Alexandria, Virginia, decides to connect Alexandria with Washington, D.C., and with itself, with a subway paid for with public money, the owners of property along the subway line experience a rise in property values. They owe their increased wealth and their increased incomes from the rental values of their properties to the expenditure of taxpayer dollars. If these gains were taxed away, the subway line could have been financed without taxpayers’ money.

It is these gains in value produced by the subway, or by a taxpayer-financed road across property, or by having beachfront property instead of property off the beach, or by having property on the sunny side of the street in a business area that are “economic rents.” Monopoly profits due to a unique positioning are also economic rents.

Hudson adds to these rents the interest that governments pay to bondholders when governments can avoid the issuance of bonds by printing money instead of bonds. When governments allow private banks to create the money with which to purchase the government’s bonds, the governments create liabilities for taxpayers than are easily avoidable if, instead, government created the money themselves to finance their projects. The buildup of public debt is entirely unnecessary. No less money is created by the banks that buy government bonds than would be created if the government printed money instead of bonds.

The inability of neoliberal economics to differentiate income streams that are economic rents with no cost of production from produced output makes the National Income and Product Accounts, the main source of data on economic activity in the US, extremely misleading. The economy can be said to be growing because public debt-financed investment projects raise the rents along subway lines.

“Free market” economists today are different from the classical free market economists. Classical economists, such as Adam Smith, understood a free market to be one in which taxation freed the economy from untaxed economic rents. In neoliberal economics, Hudson explains, “free market” means freedom for rent extraction free of government taxation and regulation. This is a huge difference.

Consequently, today the US economy is focused by policymakers including the Federal Reserve on maximizing rentier income at the expense of the growth in the real economy. Rentier income has the productive economy in a death grip. The economy cannot grow, because consumer income is siphoned off into payment of interest and fees to banks, and is not available for increased purchases of real goods and services.

Independently I arrived at Hudson’s conclusion that neoliberal economics is a device for ripping off workers and producers in order to convey awards to the rentier class. Neoliberal economics is a predatory device that justifies the exorbitant incomes of the One Percent while blaming rising debt on those forced into debt-peonage in order to survive. Hudson’s virtue is that he explains the historical development of debt-peonage and makes it clear that this is the status that the One Percent intends for the 99 Percent. He resurrects classical economics and reformulates economic theory in keeping with the facts on the ground instead of rentier interests.

Hudson is a coauthor of mine. In former times it would have been inappropriate for me to review the work of a colleague. However, the neoliberal apologists for the One Percent are not going to confront themselves with Hudson’s facts. As I do not think that my integrity or Hudson’s is in question, I have no qualms about introducing you to this major work.

Buy the book. Read and study the book. Learn to rise far above corrupt neoliberal economics.

The Real Russiagate: Obama’s Stasi State — Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts

The Real Russiagate: Obama’s Stasi State — Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts

April 3, 2017

The Real Russiagate: Obama’s Stasi State

Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts

Mike Whitney has written an excellent expose of the “Russiagate” cover story for Obama’s political use of national security to help his party oppose Republicans. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46775.htm

Covert surveillance of politicians on Obama’s Nixon-like “Enemies List” has been going on for many years, but is only now being unmasked as a result of the failure of Obama’s cover story–“We weren’t spying on political opponents; only on Russians to protect America.”

The presstitute media has passed on the cover story authored by former Obama-administration officials led by CIA director John Brennan, FBI director James Comey, the DNC, and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. The loose ends in this cover-up have now been so widely exposed as hearsay and political that only 13% of Republicans believe the fact-free story – but 67% of Democrats cling to it.

Whitney reports that Comey began the investigation in July 2016. As of last Friday (March 31, 2017) not a scrap of evidence has turned up. This did not deter Comey from telling Congress that Putin “hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.” So the Russians allegedly “engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy.”

Comey based this conclusion on what has become a hilarious bit of gullibililty. The Russians, he said “were unusually loud in their intervention. It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew, that they wanted us to see what they were doing.”

Alternatively, someone wanted investigators to infer that the Russians were doing the hacking. As Wikeleaks Vault 7 releases prove, the CIA can hack computers and leave anyone else’s signature. Due to poor security, the CIA’s cybertechnology ended up in the Internet domain.

“They’ll be back. They’ll be back, in 2020. They may be back in 2018,” warned Mr. Comey. But who is the “they”? “They” seem to be “us,” or at least what numerous former national security officials have suggested: either the NSC, CIA or its “Five Eyes” partner, British MI6.

Wall Street Journal editorialist Kimberley A. Strassel poses the real question: Why hasn’t the Trump administration had the Secret Service to arrest Comey, Brennan, Schiff, the DNC and Hillary for trying to overthrow the President of the United States? “Mr. Nunes has said he has seen proof that the Obama White House surveilled the incoming administration—on subjects that had nothing to do with Russia—and that it further unmasked (identified by name) transition officials. This goes far beyond a mere scandal. It’s a potential crime.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-devin-nunes-knows-1490914396

What we are watching is turning out to be traces of a plot against a government elected by the American people. Attempts to get at the truth by House national security committee Chairman Devin Nunes have been countered with demands by Democrats to recuse himself so as to stop his exposé of how “Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.”

It seems that this has been going on for many years now. Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich has dropped a bombshell about what appears to be his own illegal surveillance under Obama’s NSC. “When the president raised the question of wiretapping on his phones in Trump Tower, he was challenged to prove that such a thing could happen. It happened to me.”

Here’s what happened, which was revealed two years after he left office in 2013 when the Democrats were overjoyed to see Ohio Republicans redraw the election district lines to get rid of his candidacy. The Washington Times asked him to authenticate a secret recording of a cell phone call “from Saif el-Islam Qaddafi, a high-ranking official in Libya’s government and a son of the country’s ruler, Moammar Qaddafi.”

Before taking the call, Rep. Kucinich “checked with the House’s general counsel to ensure that such a discussion by a member of Congress with a foreign power was permitted by law.”

“I was assured that under the Constitution a lawmaker had a fundamental duty to ask questions and gather information—activity expressly protected by the Article I clauses covering separation of powers and congressional speech and debate.”

Given the quality of the recordings was excellent on both ends of the call, Kucinich concluded that “the tape was made by an American intelligence agency and then leaked to the Times for political reasons. If so, this episode represented a gross violation of the separation of powers.”

His repeated Freedom of Information Act requests made in 2012 before leaving office have been stonewalled by the intelligence agencies for five years.

We are now in a position to see the real story behind “Russiagate.” It’s not about Russia. The real news is the Obama regime’s abuse of the government’s surveillance powers to spy on Donald Trump and other Republicans in order to build a dossier for the DNC to leak to the press in an attempt to slander or compromise Trump and throw the election to Hillary.

They’ve been caught, but we can now see that they took steps to protect themselves against this. They prepared a cover story. They pretend they were not spying on Trump, but on Russians – which only by fortuitous happenchance turned up alleged incriminating smoke against Trump.

This cover story was buttressed by the fake news story prepared by former MI6 freelancer Christopher Steele. As Whitney reports, Steele “was hired as an opposition researcher last June to dig up derogatory information on Donald Trump.” Unvetted and unverified information by so-called informants somehow found its way into U.S. intelligence agency reports. These reports were then leaked to Democrat-friendly media. This is where the crime lies. Obama regime and DNC were using these agencies for domestic political use, KGB style.

The Obama/Clinton cover story is now falling to pieces. That explains the desperation in the attack by Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to stop the exposure. Russiagate is not a Trump/Putin collusion but a domestic spy job carried out by Democrats.

Law requires Trump to arrest those responsible and to put them on trial for treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. If Trump fears to prosecute the Obama operatives within the Deep State, they will try all the harder to attack him to the point of forcing his removal or at least discrediting him and his fellow Republicans to pave the way for the 2018 elections.

Is the Russian Government Insouciant?

Is the Russian Government Insouciant?

April 1, 2017 

Is the Russian Government Insouciant?

Paul Craig Roberts

On March 1 the US National Reconnaissance Office launched a spy satellite carried by an Atlas V rocket that was powered by a Russian RD-180 engine.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/31/the-beneficiaries-of-conflict-with-russia/

The Unites States, an alleged “superpower,” is not capable of putting its own spy satellites into space. The “superpower” is dependent on Russia, which provides the “superpower” with the rocket engines to put up spy satellites to spy on Russia!!! http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/07/17/us-too-dependent-on-russian-rocket-engines-experts-tell-lawmakers.html

Here we have in Lenin’s words, the Russians selling Washington the rope with which to hang Russia!

Does Russia value a few more US dollars more than it values its national existence? Apparently so.

Do the Atlanticist Integrationists, the Washington funded and supported Fifth Column inside Russia, inside the Russian media, and inside the Russian government, so much desire to be part of the decadent and immoral West that they are willing to sacrifice Russian sovereignty and are willing, like all of Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, to be Washington’s vassal? Yes.

What other explanation is there for Russia enabling Washington to spy on Russia and to have the capability compliments of Russia to target Russia with nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive nuclear attack?

It seems Russia is more interested in US dollars and “cooperation with Washington” than in national survival.

Little wonder the neoconservatives believe that Putin will acquiesce in Russia’s demise at Washington’s hands.

Washington’s New World Order of tyranny toward all seems safely on course. Russia is enabling Washington’s dominance by putting Washington’s spy satellites in space for Washington.

Perhaps next Russia will provide Washington with the location of all its nuclear-armed submarines and the movement schedule of its train track-based ICBMs. Why not if it ensures “cooperation with Washington,” apparently the Russian government’s only goal.

Isn’t it amazing. Washington imposes sanction package after sanction package on Russia, and Putin continues to sell Washington the rocket engines it needs to send up its spy satellites!!!!!

God help the Russians.

Jewish Defense League Operatives Arrested for Brutal Assault on American Professor in “freedom and democracy” Washington, D.C.

Jewish Defense League Operatives Arrested for Brutal Assault on American Professor in “freedom anddemocracy” Washington, D.C.

April 1, 2017 

Jewish Defense League Operatives Arrested for Brutal Assault on American Professor in “freedom and democracy” Washington, D.C.

According to the US Government, the Jewish Defense League is defined as a terrorist organization. At the recent AIPAC meeting in Washington, where Congress and the executive branch run to be first to kiss Israel’s ass, the Jewish terrorists assulted with the extreme violence associated with the state of Israel an American college professor for no other reason than he was of Palestinian origin. http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/jdl-aipac-protest-hate-crime-assault?akid=15375.81835.PoGyRs&rd=1&src=newsletter1074758&t=10

Will powerful AIPAC and Trump’s extreme Zionist ambassador to Isreal succeed in lobbying Trump for a pardon and removing the neo-nazi Jewish Defense League from the terrorist list?

What’s your bet?