What is Henry Kissinger Up To? — Paul Craig Roberts

What is Henry Kissinger Up To? — Paul Craig Roberts

December 28, 2016 

What is Henry Kissinger Up To?

Paul Craig Roberts

The English language Russian news agency, Sputnik, reports that former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is advising US president-elect Donald Trump how to “bring the United States and Russia closer together to offset China’s military buildup.”https://sputniknews.com/politics/201612271049024500-kissinger-trump-russia/

If we take this report at face value, it tells us that Kissinger, an old cold warrior, is working to use Trump’s commitment to better relations with Russia in order to separate Russia from its strategic alliance with China.

China’s military buildup is a response to US provocations against China and US claims to the South China Sea as an area of US national interests. China does not intend to attack the US and certainly not Russia.

Kissinger, who was my colleague at the Center for Strategic and International studies for a dozen years, is aware of the pro-American elites inside Russia, and he is at work creating for them a “China threat” that they can use in their effort to lead Russia into the arms of the West. If this effort is successful, Russia’s sovereignty will be eroded exactly as has the sovereignty of every other country allied with the US.

At President Putin’s last press conference ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46100.htm ), journalist Marat Sagadatov asked if Russia wasn’t already subject to forms of foreign semi-domination: “Our economy, industry, ministries and agencies often follow the rules laid down by international organizations and are managed by consulting companies. Even our defense enterprises have foreign consulting firms auditing them.” The journalist asked, “if it is not time to do some import substitution in this area too?”

Every Russian needs to understand that being part of the West means living by Washington’s rules. The only country in the Western Alliance that has an independent foreign and economic policy is the US.

All of us need to understand that although Trump has been elected president, the neoconservatives remain dominant in US foreign policy, and their commitment to the hegemony of the US as the uni-power remains as strong as ever. The neoconservative ideology has been institutionalized in parts of the CIA, State Department and Pentagon. The neoconservatives retain their influence in media, think tanks, university faculties, foundations, and in the Council on Foreign Relations.

We also need to understand that Trump revels in the role of tough guy and will say things that can be misinterpreted as my friend, Finian Cunningham, whose columns I read, usually with appreciation, might have done ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46103.htm ).

I do not know that Trump will prevail over the vast neoconservative conspiracy. However, it seems clear enough that he is serious about reducing the tensions with Russia that have been building since President Clinton violated the George H. W. Bush administration’s promise that NATO would not expand one inch to the East. Unless Trump were serious, there is no reason for him to announce Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as his choice for Secretary of State. In 2013 Mr. Tillerson was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship.

As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out, a global corporation such as Exxon has interests different from those of the US military/security complex. The military/security complex needs a powerful threat, such as the former “Soviet threat” which has been transformed into the “Russian threat,” in order to justify its hold on an annual budget of approximately one trillion dollars. In contrast, Exxon wants to be part of the Russian energy business. Therefore, as Secretary of State, Tillerson is motivated to achieve good relations between the US and Russia, whereas for the military/security complex good relations undermine the orchestrated fear on which the military/security budget rests.

Clearly, the military/security complex and the neoconservatives see Trump and Tillerson as threats, which is why the neoconservatives and the armaments tycoons so strongly opposed Trump and why CIA Director John Brennan made wild and unsupported accusations of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

The lines are drawn. The next test will be whether Trump can obtain Senate confirmation of his choice of Tillerson as Secretary of State.

The myth is widespread that President Reagan won the cold war by breaking the Soviet Union financially with an arms race. As one who was involved in Reagan’s effort to end the cold war, I find myself yet again correcting the record.

Reagan never spoke of winning the cold war. He spoke of ending it. Other officials in his government have said the same thing, and Pat Buchanan can verify it.

Reagan wanted to end the Cold War, not win it. He spoke of those “godawful” nuclear weapons. He thought the Soviet economy was in too much difficulty to compete in an arms race. He thought that if he could first cure the stagflation that afflicted the US economy, he could force the Soviets to the negotiating table by going through the motion of launching an arms race. “Star wars” was mainly hype. (Whether or nor the Soviets believed the arms race threat, the American leftwing clearly did and has never got over it.)

Reagan had no intention of dominating the Soviet Union or collapsing it. Unlike Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, he was not controlled by neoconservatives. Reagan fired and prosecuted the neoconservatives in his administration when they operated behind his back and broke the law.

The Soviet Union did not collapse because of Reagan’s determination to end the Cold War. The Soviet collapse was the work of hardline communists, who believed that Gorbachev was loosening the Communist Party’s hold so quickly that Gorbachev was a threat to the existence of the Soviet Union and placed him under house arrest. It was the hardline communist coup against Gorbachev that led to the rise of Yeltsin. No one expected the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The US military/security complex did not want Reagan to end the Cold War, as the Cold War was the foundation of profit and power for the complex. The CIA told Reagan that if he renewed the arms race, the Soviets would win, because the Soviets controlled investment and could allocate a larger share of the economy to the military than Reagan could.

Reagan did not believe the CIA’s claim that the Soviet Union could prevail in an arms race. He formed a secret committee and gave the committee the power to investigate the CIA’s claim that the US would lose an arms race with the Soviet Union. The committee concluded that the CIA was protecting its prerogatives. I know this because I was a member of the committee.

American capitalism and the social safety net would function much better without the drain on the budget of the military/security complex. It is more correct to say that the military/security complex wants a major threat, not an actual arms race. Stateless Muslim terrorists are not a sufficient threat for such a massive US military, and the trouble with an actual arms race as opposed to a threat is that the US armaments corporations would have to produce weapons that work instead of cost overruns that boost profits.

The latest US missile ship has twice broken down and had to be towed into port. The F-35 has cost endless money, has a variety of problems ( http://www.stopthef35.com/pentagon-f-35-wont-have-a-chance-in-real-combat/ ) and is already outclassed. The Russian missiles are hypersonic. The Russian tanks are superior. The explosive power of the Russian Satan II ICBM is terrifying. The morale of the Russian forces is high. They have not been exhausted from 15 years of fighting without much success pointless wars against women and children.

Washington, given the corrupt nature of the US military/security complex, can arms race all it wants without being a danger to Russia or China, much less to the strategic alliance between the two powers.

The neoconservatives are discredited, but they are still a powerful influence on US foreign policy. Until Trump relegates them to the ideological backwaters, Russia and China had best hold on to their strategic alliance. Anyone attempting to break this alliance is a threat to both Russia and China, and to America and to life on earth.

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Dr. 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. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

Christmas Column, 2016 -- Paul Craig Roberts

Christmas Column, 2016

Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2016. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the Bush and Obama regimes are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

Paul Craig Roberts

“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth

Peace, Good Will toward men.”

This Christmas, Give Peace.

The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life.

Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have already been murdered and millions displaced in order to extend Washington’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2017, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, hangs in the balance. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

The Western Presstitutes Are Firmly Based In Nazi Propaganda Techniques

 The Western Presstitutes Are Firmly Based In Nazi Propaganda Techniques

December 20, 2016 

The Western Presstitutes Are Firmly Based In Nazi Propaganda Techniques

The Lesson Taught by Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels Was Well Learned by Washington and Its Servile Presstitutes at the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, BBC, NPR, and All the Rest of the Media Prostitutes in the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Third Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels

As the Coup Against Trump Fails, the Threat Against His Life Rises -- Paul Craig Roberts

As the Coup Against Trump Fails, the Threat Against His Life Rises — Paul Craig Roberts

December 20, 2016 

As the Coup Against Trump Fails, the Threat Against His Life Rises

Paul Craig Roberts

The use of the presstitute media to deny Trump the Republican presidential nomination failed.

The use of the presstitute media to deny Trump victory in the presidential election failed.

The vote recount failed.

The effort to sway the Electoral College failed.

But the effort continues.

The CIA report on Russia’s alleged interference in the US presidential election ordered by Obama is in process. Faked evidence is a hallmark of CIA operations.

In their determination to seal Trump’s ears against environmental concerns, a group of environmentalists plan to disrupt the inauguration. This in itself is of little consequence, but chaos presents opportunity for assassination.

Trump himself seems to think he is in danger. According to MSNBC, Trump intends to supplement his Secret Service protection with private security. As there is evidence of CIA complicity in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (film shows Secret Service agents ordered away from JFK’s limo immediately prior to his assassination), Trump, who is clearly seen as a threat by the military/security complex, is not being paranoid. MSNBC implies that Trump’s private security is to suppress protesters, as if government security forces have shown any compunction about suppressing protesters. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/will-trump-use-private-security-as-president-837040707540

This provides an indication of the threat that the CIA sees in Trump: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/donald-trump-will-ruthlessly-decimate-cia-turning-against-him/ri18205

Global Research’s Michel Chossudovsky has explained that Trump’s peaceful approach to Russia aligns him with oligarchs, whose wealth benefits from business deals with Russia, and puts Trump at odds with the military/security oligarchs, who benefit from the one trillion dollar annual military/security budget. The latter group have been in control since President Eisenhower warned us about them and can muster deep state forces against a Trump presidency.

To take on a group like this requires a tough SOB. Anything less than Trump wouldn’t have a chance. Indeed, if Douglas Valentine’s just published book, The CIA As Organized Crime (Clarity Press, 2017) is even half true, Trump’s life is certainly at risk.

Donald Trump is clearly no saint. Given what we are up against—dangerous tensions between nuclear powers and the military/security complex’s stake in these tensions—a saint is not what the situation calls for.

The military/security complex has been entrenched since NATO’s formation on April 4, 1949, a provocation that preceded by six years the formation of the Warsaw Pact on May 14, 1955. Any president willing to confront this entrenched deep state superpower deserves the support of all of us.

The 2,700 members of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Continue Their Efforts

The 2,700 members of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Continue Their Efforts

December 20, 2016 

The 2,700 members of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Continue Their Efforts

http://www.ae911truth.org/images/PDFs/AIA-Mailer–Reply-Card.pdf

The CIA Strikes Again?

The CIA Strikes Again?

December 20, 2016 

The CIA Strikes Again?

Were CIA Dirty Hands Behind Assassination of Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey?

by Stephen Lendman

Russia’s investigation will get to the bottom of what happened, why and who was responsible.

Though unknown at this point, it has the earmarks of a CIA plot to undermine growing Russian/Turkish ties, notably their cooperation in Syria, adversely affecting Washington’s regional imperial agenda.

The assassination happened in the wake of Aleppo’s liberation, a major defeat for Washington, NATO, Israel and other rogue Middle East states.

It came on the eve of Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers meeting in Moscow (America, Britain and France excluded) “to discuss in trilateral format the situation in and around Syria first and foremost,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov explained.

On Tuesday, they’ll meet in Moscow “to try to reach an agreement on lasting ceasefire, on resolution of some humanitarian issues with eye of reaching political settlement.” 

“We have the basis for that and it is United Nations Security Council resolution 2254,” he added. Cessation of hostilities and conflict resolution would be a major step toward defeating Washington’s regional imperial agenda.

If Trump normalizes ties with Russia, both countries cooperating in combating terrorism, it’ll represent a major change of US foreign policy for as long as it lasts. Deep state dark forces in Washington want it prevented.

According to Tass, Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov “was assassinated on Monday in the country’s capital of Ankara by former special task police force officer Mevlut Mert Altintas,” citing Turkey’s interior minister Suleyman Soylu.

Karlov was killed during the opening ceremony of a photo exhibition called “Russia through Turks’ eyes,” dedicated to normalized bilateral relations between both countries.

He died later at an Ankara hospital, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explained.

Putin commented on his assassination, calling it “undeniably a provocation aimed at derailing the normalisation of Russian-Turkish relations and the peace process in Syria, which is actively promoted by Russia, Turkey, Iran and other countries interested in the settlement of the internal conflict in Syria.”

“There can be only one response – stepping up the fight against terrorism – which the criminals will find out firsthand.”

“Russia’s Investigative Committee has already opened a case on the murder, and has been tasked with forming a working group which will promptly leave for Ankara to take part in the investigation of this crime together with Turkish partners.” 

“This was just agreed during a telephone conversation with the President of Turkey. We must find out who directed the killer’s hand.”

Separately, Turkish President Erdogan said “(w)e are determined to maintain our ties with Russia.”

Karlov’s strategically timed assassination was likely aimed at undermining Russian/Turkish relations – especially after Aleppo’s liberation and US electors confirming Trump’s triumph.

The provocative scheme seems destined to fail as decisively as the campaign to deny America’s president-elect the office he won.

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

The Saker’s Thoughts on the Assassination:
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2016/12/20/a-few-initial-short-thoughts-on-the-murder-of-the-russian-ambassador-to-ankara/

Will Trump Lower the Cost of Speaking the Truth? Paul Craig Roberts

Will Trump Lower the Cost of Speaking the Truth?

December 19, 2016

Will Trump Lower the Cost of Speaking the Truth?

Paul Craig Roberts

Dear Donors:

Thank you for your committment to this website. You have kept your side of our agreement, and I will keep my side.

This is truly your website. It is here because of you.

I am fortunate that I grew up during a time when, despite the lies and disinformation, both private greed and government were checked by a sometimes honest media and an alert population. The power of the people’s votes had not yet been eclipsed by the power of campaign contributions.

Truth mattered, and those who lost their integrity were shamed.

Today’s world is different. We have no media, only a Ministry of Propaganda, except for parts of the Internet, and the Internet itself is in the hands of a few, such as Google, who are easily suborned by the oligarchic forces that run The Matrix. Now that independent Internet sites, rather than the NY Times, Washington Post, and presstitute TV, are controlling explanations, as Donald Trump’s election makes clear, the independent part of the Internet finds itself along with Trump in the crosshairs of the ruling oligarchs and their presstitute media.

It remains to be seen what Trump’s election will mean.

If I were a young man in need of a career, it is unlikely I would find one by speaking the truth.

Of all the things that are endangered in America today, truth is the most endangered. 

Without truth we cannot save civil liberty, democracy, wildlife, the environment, the working class, health care and old age security, or the planet from nuclear war and environmental destruction.

Truth is the bottom line.

And in America nothing is less respected by the ruling elite and the presstitute media than truth.