Paul’s stuff is always worth reading:
By Paul Craig Roberts
October 20, 2011 “Information Clearing House” — Now that the CIA’s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya?
If Washington’s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US and Washington’s NATO puppets. US and European firms will now get juicy contracts, financed by US taxpayers, to rebuild Libya. The new real estate will be carefully allocated to lubricate a new ruling class picked by Washington. This will put Libya firmly under Washington’s thumb.
With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments. Obama has already sent US troops to Central Africa under the guise of defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army, a small insurgency against the ruling dictator-for-life. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, welcomed the prospect of yet another war by declaring that sending US troops into Central Africa “furthers US national security interests and foreign policy.” Republican Senator James Inhofe added a gallon of moral verbiage about saving “Ugandan children,” a concern the senator did not have for Libya’s children or Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s.
Washington has revived the Great Power Game and is vying with China. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. Sooner or later Washington’s aggressiveness toward China and Russia is going to explode in our faces.
Where is the money going to come from to finance Washington’s African Empire? Not from Libya’s oil. Big chunks of that have been promised to the French and British for providing cover for Washington’s latest war of naked aggression. Not from tax revenues from a collapsing US economy where unemployment, if measured correctly, is 23 percent.
With Washington’s annual budget deficit as huge as it is, the money can only come from the printing press.
Washington has already run the printing press enough to raise the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) to 3.9% for the year (as of the end of September), the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W) to 4.4% for the year, and the producer price index (PPI) to 6.9% for the year.
As statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) has shown, the official inflation measures are rigged in order to hold down cost of living adjustments to Social Security recipients, thus saving money for Washington’s wars. When measured correctly, the current rate of inflation in the US is 11.5%.
What interest rate can savers get without taking massive risks on Greek bonds? US banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC insured savings deposits. Short-term US government bond funds pay essentially zero.
Thus, according to official US government statistics American savers are losing between 3.9% and 4.4% of their capital yearly. According to John Williams’ estimate of the real rate of inflation, US savers are losing 11.5% of their accumulated savings.
As retired Americans receive no interest on their savings, they are having to spend down their capital. The ability of even the most prudent retirees to survive the negative rate of interest they are receiving and the erosion by inflation of any pensions that they receive will come to an end once their accumulated assets are exhausted.
Except for Washington’s favored mega-rich, the one percent that has captured all of the income gains of recent years, the rest of America has been assigned to the trash can. Nothing whatsoever has been done for them since the financial crisis hit in December 2007. Bush and Obama, Republican and Democrat, have focused on saving the 1 percent while giving the finger to the 99 percent.
Finally, some Americans, though not enough, have caught on to the flag-waving rah-rah “patriotism” that has consigned them to the trash bin of history. They are not going down without a fight and are in the streets. Occupy Wall Street has spread. What will be the fate of this movement?
Will the snow and ice of cold weather end the protests, or send them into public buildings? How long will the local authorities, subservient to Washington as they are, tolerate the obvious signal that the population lacks any confidence whatsoever in the government?
If the protests last, especially if they grow and don’t decline, the authorities will infiltrate the protestors with police provocateurs who will fire on the police. This will be the excuse to shoot down the protestors and to arrest the survivors as “terrorists” or “domestic extremists” and to send them to the $385 million dollar camps built under US government contract by Cheney’s Halliburton.
The Amerikan Police State will have taken its next step into the Amerikan Concentration Camp State.
Meanwhile, lost in their oblivion, conservatives will continue to bemoan the ruination of the country by homosexual marriage, abortion, and “the liberal media.” Liberal organizations committed to civil liberty, such as the ACLU, will continue to rank a woman’s right to an abortion with defense of the US Constitution. Amnesty International will assist Washington in demonizing its next target for military attack while turning a blind eye to the war crimes of President Obama.
When we consider what Israel has got away with, being as it is under Washington’s bought protection–the war crimes, the murders of children, the eviction in total disregard of international law of Palestinians from their ancestral homes, the bulldozing of their houses and uprooting of their olive groves in order to move in fanatical “settlers,” the murderous invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, the wholesale slaughter of civilians–we can only conclude that Washington, Israel’s enabler, can get away with far more.
In the few opening years of the 21st century, Washington has destroyed the US Constitution, the separation of powers, international law, the accountability of government, and has sacrificed every moral principle to achieving hegemony over the world. This ambitious agenda is being attempted while simultaneously Washington removed all regulation over Wall Street, the home of massive greed, permitting Wall Street’s short-term horizon to wreck the US economy, thus destroying the economic basis for Washington’s assault on the world.
Will the US collapse in economic chaos before it rules the world?
Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.
“murdered”
You understand the difference between murder and killing don’t you?
Yes Gil, we understand the difference. Do you? Here. Let me explain it to you. You come home and an assailant has one of your immediate family members down the floor with a knife to their throat. You tell him to stop. He gets up and attacks you. You shoot the assailant. He dies. That’s “killing” (i.e. justifiable homicide). It’s a perfectly acceptable act of self defense in any normal culture (Britain is no longer normal).
On the other hand, you have a neighbor 10 blocks away with a house and land you want. You know he has a bad temper. You pay his ne’er do well son to pick a fight with him. When the fight starts you shoot the neighbor multiple times at point blank range to make sure he’s dead. You claim you were a concerned citizen who “just happened to be there at the right time.” You then have your friend at the newspaper publish rumors that the deceased was a child abuser and maybe even a molestor. The sheeple cheer you for heroism. You buy his property at the foreclosure auction and sell the contents to your friends for pennies on the dollar. That’s premeditated murder Gil. That’s what the Empire has done in Libya, Irag and Afghanistan. And now they intend to spread this brand of “democracy” anywhere and everywhere they can. Welcome to Utopia.
Gil, if you personally played out a scenario like I described above, it would only affect a few people. It would still be a despicable crime, but limited in scope. When a government (or coalition) does this same thing to another country that did not attack it first, it is a crime. And it is a crime committed against tens of thousands or even millions of innocent people. We call that “mass murder”. Is this what you’re trying to tell us you’re on board with Gil?
Nice analogy. I doubt the UN will pass any resolution condemning the attacks. (It does not hurt to have permanent veto power to use when you deem appropriate.)
Politicians and leaders make decisions every day that affect (often negatively) the lives of millions around the world. They rarely pay (or suffer) for their actions. It is often some peon (that would prefer to be left alone and try to make a living for their family) that has to bear the consequences of the leaders actions.
This is a sad state of affairs.
Perhaps I am an idealist and naïve, but it would be nice if this country returned to its roots, willing to trade fairly with all and have malice towards none.
If we could figure out some way to eliminate the psychopaths and Clovers, it could be done!
Trouble is, as long as we have governments and ‘laaaaawwws’, I guess it would be easier to eliminate the psychopaths.
Ken.