How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Welfare State Read online

  Today no one believes that our country’s success depends on an informed public and a free press. America’s success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people’s god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.

  Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News turning in a citizen for exercising free speech. Washington’s assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks’ demise, we are cheering for our own.

  EGYPT: THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE IN ORDER TO STAY THE SAME

  February 1, 2011

  The hypocrisy of the US government is yet again demonstrated in full bore force. The US government invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, laid waste to much of the countries, including entire villages and towns, and massacred untold numbers of civilians in order “to bring democracy” to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, after days of Egyptians in the streets demanding “Mubarak must go,” the US government remains aligned with its puppet Egyptian ruler, even suggesting that Mubarak, after running a police state for three decades, is the appropriate person to implement democracy in Egypt.

  On January 30, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “freedom and democracy” America neither seeks nor supports the ouster of the Egyptian dictator.

  Israeli prime minister Netanyahu told the US and Europe that criticism of Mubarak must be curbed in order “to preserve stability in the region.”

  By “stability” Netanyahu means the unimpeded ability of Israel to continue oppressing the Palestinians and stealing their country. Mubarak has been for three decades the well-paid enforcer for the US and Israel, sealing off Gaza from the outside world and preventing aid flows across the Egyptian border. Mubarak and his family have become multi-billionaires, thanks to the American taxpayer, and the US government, both Republicans and Democrats, does not want to lose their heavy investment in Mubarak.

  The US government has long corrupted Arab governments by paying rulers installed by the US to represent US/Israeli interests rather than the interest of Arab peoples. Arabs put up with American-financed oppression for many years, but now are showing signs of rebellion.

  The murderous American-installed dictator in Tunis was overthrown by people taking to the streets. Rebellion has spread to Egypt and there are also street protests against the US-supported rulers in Yemen and Jordan.

  These uprisings might succeed in ousting puppet rulers, but will the result be anything more than the exchange of a new American puppet ruler for the old? Mubarak might go, but whoever takes his place is likely to find himself wearing the same American harness.

  What dictators do is to eliminate alternative leadership. Potential leaders are either assassinated, exiled, or imprisoned. Moreover, anything short of a full-fledge revolution, such as the Iranian one, leaves in place a bureaucracy accustomed to business as usual. In addition, Egypt and the country’s military have grown accustomed to American support and will want the money to keep flowing. It is the flow of this money that ensures the purchase of the replacement government.

  Because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, the US government has financial dominance and the ability to financially isolate other countries, such as Iran. To break free of America’s grip, one of two things would have to happen. Revolution would have to sweep the Arab world and result in an economic unity that could foster indigenous economic development, or the US dollar has to fail as world currency.

  Arab disunity has long been the means by which the Western countries have dominated the Middle East. Without this disunity, Israel and the US could not abuse the Palestinians in the manner in which they have for decades, and without this disunity the US could not have invaded Iraq. It is unlikely that the Arabs will suddenly unite.

  The collapse of the dollar is more likely. Indeed, the policy of the US government to maximize both budget and trade deficits, and the policy of the Federal Reserve to monetize the budget deficit and the fraudulent paper assets of the large banks, have the dollar heading for demise.

  As the supply of dollars grows, the value diminishes. Perhaps the time is not too many years away when rulers cease to sell out their peoples for American money.

  OBAMA’S FY 2012 BUDGET IS A TOOL OF CLASS WAR

  February 17, 2011

  Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class.

  Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets.

  The effect of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit. When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

  Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget. It is almost as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose—the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are the ones who elect the U.S. Government.

  The U.S. has no enemies except those that it creates by bombing and invading other countries and by overthrowing foreign leaders and installing American puppets in their place.

  China does not conduct naval exercises off the California coast, but the U.S. conducts war games in the South China Sea off China’s coast. Russia does not mass troops on Europe’s borders, but the U.S. places missiles on Russia’s borders. The U.S. is determined to create as many enemies as possible in order to continue its bleeding of the American population to feed the ravenous military/security complex.

  The U.S. government actually spends $56 billion a year, that is, $56,000 million, in order that American air travelers can be porno-scanned and sexually groped so that firms represented by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff can make large profits selling the scanning equipment.

  With a perpetual budget deficit driven by the military/security complex’s desire for profits, the real cause of America’s enormous budget deficit is off-limits for discussion.

  The U.S. Secretary of War-Mongering, Robert Gates, declared: “We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril.” The military brass warns of cutting any of the billions of aid to Israel and Egypt, two functionaries for its Middle East “policy.”

  But what are “our” global security responsibilities? Where did they come from? Why would America be at peril if America stopped bombing and invading other countries and interfering in their internal affairs? The perils America faces are all self-created.

  The answer to this question used to be that otherwise we would be murdered in our beds by “the worldwide communist conspiracy.” Today the answer is that we will be murdered in our airplanes, train stations, and shopping centers by “Muslim terrorists” and by a newly created imaginary threat—“domestic extremists,” that is, war protesters and environmentalists. The U.S. military/security complex is capable of creating any number of false flag events in order to make these threats seem real to a public whose intelligence is limited to TV, shopping mall experiences, and football games.

  So Americans are stuck with enormous budget deficits tha
t the Federal Reserve must finance by printing new money, money that sooner or later will destroy the purchasing power of the dollar and its role as world reserve currency. When the dollar goes, American power goes.

  For the ruling oligarchies, the question is: how to save their power. Their answer is: make the people pay.

  And that is what their latest puppet, President Obama, is doing.

  With the U.S. in the worst recession since the Great Depression, a great recession that John Williams and Gerald Celente, along with myself, have said is deepening, the “Obama budget” takes aim at support programs for the poor and out-of-work. The American elites are transforming themselves into idiots as they seek to replicate in America the conditions that have led to the overthrow of similarly corrupt elites in Tunisia and Egypt and mounting challenges to U.S. puppet governments elsewhere.

  All we need is a few million more Americans with nothing to lose in order to bring the disturbances in the Middle East home to America.

  With the U.S. military bogged down in wars abroad, an American revolution would have the best chance of success.

  American politicians have to fund Israel as the money returns in campaign contributions.

  The U.S. government must fund the Egyptian military if there is to be any hope of turning the next Egyptian government into another American puppet that will serve Israel by continuing the blockade of the Palestinians herded into the Gaza ghetto.

  These goals are far more important to the American elite than Pell Grants that enable poor Americans to obtain an education, or clean water, or community block grants, or the low income energy assistance program (cut by the amount that U.S. taxpayers are forced to give to Israel).

  There are also $7,700 million of cuts in Medicaid and other health programs over the next five years.

  Given the magnitude of the U.S. budget deficit, these sums are a pittance. The cuts will have no effect on U.S. Treasury financing needs. They will put no brakes on the Federal Reserve’s need to print money in order to keep the U.S. government in operation.

  These cuts serve one purpose: to further the Republican Party’s myth that America is in economic trouble because of the poor: The poor are shiftless. They won’t work. The only reason unemployment is high is that the poor would rather be on welfare.

  A new addition to the welfare myth is that recent middle class college graduates won’t take the jobs offered them, because their parents have too much money, and the kids like living at home without having to do anything. A spoiled generation, they come out of university refusing any job that doesn’t start out as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The reason that engineering graduates do not get job interviews is that they do not want them. What all this leads to is an assault on “entitlements”, which means

  Social Security and Medicare. The elites have programmed, through their control of the media, a large part of the population, especially those who think of themselves as conservatives, to conflate “entitlements” with welfare. America, in their view, is going to hell not because of foreign wars that serve no American purpose, but because people, who have paid 15% of their payroll all their lives for old age pensions and medical care, want “handouts” in their retirement years. The problem is said to be selfish retirees who think that working Americans should be forced through payroll taxes to pay for their pensions and medical care. Why didn’t the retirees consume less and prepare for their own retirement?

  The elite’s line, and that of their hired spokespersons in “think tanks” and universities, is that America is in trouble because of its retirees.

  Too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that America is in trouble because of its poor and its retirees. America is not in trouble because it coerces a dwindling number of taxpayers to support the military/security complex’s enormous profits, American puppet governments abroad, and Israel.

  The American elite’s solution for America’s problems is not merely to foreclose on the homes of Americans whose jobs were sent offshore, but to add to the numbers of distressed Americans with nothing to lose—the sick and the dispossessed retirees, and the university graduates who cannot find jobs that have been sent to China and India.

  Of all the countries in the world, none need a revolution as badly as the United States, a country ruled by a handful of selfish oligarchs who have more income and wealth than can be spent in a lifetime.

  WAR ÜBER ALLES

  February 26, 2011

  The United States government cannot get enough of war. With Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s regime falling to a CIA organized overthrow, CNN reports that a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is looking at all options from the military side.

  Allegedly, the Pentagon, which is responsible for one million dead Iraqis and an unknown number of dead Afghans and Pakistanis, is concerned about the deaths of 1,000 Libyan protesters.

  While the Pentagon tries to figure out how to get involved in the Libyan revolt, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific is developing new battle plans to take on China in her home territory. Four-star Admiral Robert Willard thinks the U.S. should be able to whip China in its own coastal waters.

  The admiral thinks one way to do this is to add U.S. Marines to his force structure so that the U.S. can eject Chinese forces from disputed islands in the East and South China seas.

  It is not the U.S. who is disputing the islands, but if there is a chance for war anywhere, the admiral wants to make sure we are not left out.

  The admiral also hopes to develop military ties with India and add that country to his clout. India, the admiral says, “is a natural partner of the United States” and “is crucial to America’s 21st-century strategy of balancing China.” The U.S. is going to seduce the Indians by selling them advanced aircraft.

  If the plan works out, we will have India in NATO helping us to occupy Pakistan and presenting China with the possibility of a two-front war. The Pentagon needs some more wars so there can be some more “reconstruction.” Reconstruction is very lucrative, especially as Washington has privatized so many of the projects, thus turning over to well-placed friends many opportunities to loot. Considering all the money that has been spent, one searches hard to find completed projects. The just released report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting can’t say exactly how much of the $200,000 million in Afghan “reconstruction” disappeared in criminal behavior and blatant corruption, but $12,000 million alone was lost to “overt fraud.”

  War makes money for the politically connected. While the flag- waving population remains proud of the service of their sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, cousins, wives, mothers and daughters, the smart boys who got the fireworks started are rolling in the mega-millions.

  As General Smedley Butler told the jingoistic American population, to no avail, “war is a racket.” As long as the American population remains proud that their relatives serve as cannon fodder for the military/security complex, war will remain a racket.

  OUR TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT NEEDS AN ORWELL

  March 13, 2011

  If we were to be blessed with a 21st century George Orwell, he would coin a new “speak” to apply to “support the troops.” Would he call this “Deceptive Speak”? Or would he be more clever?

  The words certainly deserve an Orwellian name. The catch-phrase was rolled out the minute the Iraq war started, which makes one wonder about its public relations origin. Who can oppose supporting the troops, at least before we learned from WikiLeaks and Abu Ghraib of the intentional killing of civilians and torturing of whoever happened to be rounded up in the various sweeps? All for the fun and games of it.

  “ Support the troops” originated in the public relations department of the military/security complex. What “support the troops” really means is to support the profits of the armaments industry and the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony.

  “ Support the troops” is a clever PR slogan that causes Americans to turn a blind eye to the brutal exploitat
ion of our soldiers and military families for profit and for an evil ideology.

  Our soldiers and military families are paying for the Bush/Cheney/ Obama/neocon wars with lives, limbs, post-traumatic stress, suicides, broken marriages, children without fathers, wives without husbands, and parents without sons and daughters.

  “ Support the troops” is one of the most cruel hoaxes in human history, and yet the vast majority of the population has fallen for it. “War Is Peace.”

  When a people are so gullible, it is little wonder that they can be marched off to unaffordable open-ended wars based on nothing but lies, deceptions, and fabrications.

  America produces an endless supply of material for a new Orwell. Imagine what an Orwell could do with Hillary’s recent speech on America’s firm commitment to dissent and the First Amendment. CIA veteran Ray McGovern stood with his back to Hillary in an act of dissent from the Obama administration’s policy of coercing Internet companies into helping to eliminate WikiLeaks as a source of information. McGovern was dragged beaten and bloody from the room, while Hillary continued praising America’s commitment to dissent and freedom of information.

  To capture this level of hypocrisy requires a George Orwell. “Dissent Is Subversion.”

  “ Globalism” is another doctrine that needs Orwell’s illumination. Globalism, which presidents since Clinton have told us we can’t do without, enriches transnational corporations and turns workers into serfs who cannot earn enough to pay their bills. “Poverty Is Wealth.”

  The police state measures that accompany the fake “war on terror” subject Americans to far more danger and insecurity than could ever be realized from terrorists other than those of the state itself. “Captivity Is Freedom.”