None of us growing up in Atlanta in the 1940’s were under the delusion that we were equal. We were aware of a myriad of differences that had nothing to do with race or gender. Some were better football players. Others were better baseball players. Some could run faster. Others were more witty, or better...
Author: Paul Craig Roberts (Paul Craig Roberts)
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How the West Was Restored
He had finally done it. He had mastered the physics of time. He was ready to visit the past. He had made his first fortune in U.S. Treasury bond futures in the early 1980’s. Wall Street had thought that the Reagan tax cuts would drive up interest rates because of budget deficits. But he knew...
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Correcting a Legal Transgression
The trial was fixed. The judge knew it. The rancher had the town buffaloed. The jury would deliver the verdict the rancher wanted. The judge was concerned that the rancher’s rowdies would use the verdict for a lynching. The rancher didn’t want any more nesters around. The nester’s wife was a good-looking woman, and the...
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More Lies, More Deception
More Lies, More Deception by Paul Craig Roberts • September 30, 2009 • Printer-friendly “What does imperialism mean? It means the assertion of absolute force over others.”—Robert Lowe, 1878 The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting’s main success was to turn Pittsburgh into...
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The Economy Is a Lie, Too
Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with 1 million schoolchildren now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over. The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusional. Consumer ...
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Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the U.S.?
In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week, Netanyahu called for
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Doubts About the Law
“Rawhide” Andrews was a Texas Ranger. He came to the force after it was reconstituted in 1874, the Rangers having been discredited in the years following the War of Yankee Aggression as an enforcement unit for carpetbaggers. Comanches were in decline from smallpox and cholera and from the near extinction of buffalo by hide hunters. ...
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Measuring Decline By Prices
In 1939, the year I was born, gasoline was ten cents per gallon. A new car cost $700. A new house cost $3,850, and the average rent was $28 per month. Harvard tuition was $420 annually. A loaf of bread from the bakery was eight cents. Hamburger was 14¢ per pound, eggs were 19¢ per...
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Pirates of the Mediterranean
On June 30, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the Spirit of Humanity, kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, and confiscated the cargo of medical ...
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Gun Control: What Is the Agenda?
Some years or decades ago, I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America's first gun-control laws. New York state Sen. Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York's Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by ...
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Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows
Stephen Kinzer's book, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected leader, Muhammad Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen and reporters, and paid ...
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Are You Ready for War With Demonized Iran?
How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina or any other country, get from the U.S. media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan ...
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Succumbing to the Dark Side
Torture is a violation of U.S. and international law. Yet, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, on the basis of legally incompetent memos prepared by Justice Department officials, gave the OK to interrogators to violate U.S. and international law. The new Obama administration shows no inclination to uphold ...
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Exempting Israel From Criticism
On Oct. 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the U.S. Department of State to monitor anti-Semitism worldwide. To monitor anti-Semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel lobby and Abe ...
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How Things Change Out From Under Us
Anyone who has been around for a while and who pays any attention to the news sees many disturbing changes. Recently, I read a report that two children, ages seven and eight, had an altercation at school during recess. They were carted off in handcuffs by the police. The teachers or principal had dealt with...
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What Became of Western Morality?
On the last day of the old year in the newsletter CounterPunch, two Israelis—Jeff Halper, who heads the Israeli peace movement ICAHD, and Neve Gordon, who is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University—asked, “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?” “Not one of the nearly...
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May We No Longer Be Silent
The title of my article comes from the sermon of the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., John Bryson Chane, delivered on Oct. 5, 2008, at St. Columba Church. The bishop’s eyes were opened to Israel’s persecution of Palestinians by his recent trip to Palestine. In his sermon, he called on “politicians seeking the highest office...
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America’s Moronic Iraqi Policy
According to all accounts, the United States faces its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with $2 trillion in near-term financing needs for bailouts and economic stimulus. This is an enormous sum for any country, especially one that is so heavily indebted that it is close to bankruptcy. If the money can’t be borrowed...
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The No-Think Nation
“The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition,” reported the New York Times last Friday. Wow! The entire country is steamed up over the Republicans bailing out a bunch of financial crooks who have paid themselves fortunes...
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Conned Again
If the change that President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America’s wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama’s choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama’s selection of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that...
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The World Tires of Dollar Hegemony
What explains the paradox of the dollar's sharp rise in value against other currencies (except the Japanese yen) despite disproportionate U.S. exposure to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? The answer does not lie ...
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The End of American Hegemony
America has become a pretty discouraging place. If Ronald Reagan were still with us, I wonder if he would again refer to the United States as a city on a hill, a light unto the world. I think not. Reagan brought America back from discouragement, but it didn’t stick. Subsequent administrations erased Reagan’s accomplishments. Reagan...
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There May Be Many Mushroom Clouds in Our Future
The success of the Bush regime’s propaganda, lies and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9-11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost eight years, the U.S. media have served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable...
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American Insouciance
Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe? Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden’s dentist, barber and the person who...
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Marching Off Into Tyranny
In last weekend’s edition of CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn updates the ongoing persecution of Sami Al-Arian by federal prosecutors. Al-Arian was a Florida university professor of computer science who was ensnared by the Bush regime’s need to produce “terrorists” in order to keep Americans fearful and, thereby, amenable to the Bush regime’s assault on U.S. civil...
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Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t
National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan, where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied...
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The Decline and Fall of the American Economy: Offshoring Our Security
The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget ...
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John Yoo, Totalitarian
John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the United States can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving U.S. citizens of habeas corpus protection. A U.S. attorney...
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Why the Oil Price Is High
How to explain the oil price? Why is it so high? Are we running out? Are supplies disrupted, or is the high price a reflection of oil company greed or OPEC greed? Are Hugo Chavez and the Saudis conspiring against us? In my opinion, the two biggest factors in oil’s high price are the weakness...
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The Decline and Fall of the American Economy
The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget deficits that have to be financed by foreigners because the U.S. savings rate is approximately zero. Judging by the dollar’s loss...
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Free No More
In his latest book, Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan argues that hubris, ideology, and greed are among America’s deadliest enemies. Hubris led to overreach. Hegemonic neoconservative ideology turned most of the world against the United States. And free trade has become a no-think cult that permits a greedy few to destroy America’s economic position for...
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Paying Insurgents Not to Fight
It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working. Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would...
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Criminals With Badges—How the Police Create Crimes
Take heed, ye red-blooded American males. The police are operating a new sting designed to destroy your life. The police are planting attractive women half-naked in parks. They entice passing males, engage them in conversation, lay back, spread their legs and rest their feet on the men’s shoulders. After being as friendly and suggestive as...
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Leaderless and Clueless America Heads for the Trash Can of History
In new books, writers as disparate as Naomi Wolf and Pat Buchanan conclude that America as we know her is disappearing. Both writers hope, but are not confident, that enough Americans will catch on in time to find the leadership to pull America back from the brink. If polls are reliable, a majority of Americans...
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9-11, Six Years Later
On Sept. 7, National Public Radio reported that Muslims in the Middle East were beginning to believe that the 9-11 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were false flag operations committed by some part of the U.S. and-or Israeli government. It was beyond the ...
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The War Criminal in the Living Room
The media are silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran. U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran. U.S. Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran. U.S. B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted...
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If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran
The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Sanchez says, is “to stave...
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Losing the Economy to Mythology
Economic discussion in the United States is trapped in ancient ruts. Both right and left are stuck in old habitual ways of thinking. Neither shows inclination or ability to think independently of ideology. For a country beset with economic problems, this is problematic. The ascendancy of free market economics during the past quarter century has...
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The Immigration Bill: Another Failure of Government
The immigration bill does not address the problem. Like most bills, it is the product of influential moneyed interests. It serves these interests at the expense of the American people. I have nothing against immigration in principle and nothing against Mexicans. Illegals, or what are known in the construction trades as “first generation Mexicans,” are...
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How Can Bush Bring Freedom to Iraq When He Brings Tyranny to America?
The Washington, D.C., think-tank The American Enterprise Institute camouflages its purpose with its name. There is nothing American about AEI, and the organization’s enterprise is fomenting war in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies. Its real name should be The Likud Center for Middle East War. AEI has the largest collection of warmongers in America....
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Alien Future
“A nation scattered and peeled, . . . a nation meted out and trodden down.” —Isaiah Like Romans in ancient times, Americans are losing their country to immigration, and few seem to know it. One who does know is Peter Brimelow, himself an immigrant and recently naturalized citizen. In his book Alien Nation, he more...