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Paul Craig Roberts Shames Corporate Media Hucksters Masquerading as Journalists
The Economy Has Not Recovered And Is Again On Its Way Down
Charlie Pierce speaks out (once more) against the Republican Party subversives (or am I being redundant?) in Esquire:
Without the support of people engaged in polite - and, occasionally, not very polite - sedition, the Republican party would be a bunch of rich old white guys pissing themselves in the grill room of a restricted country club.
I believe they mean it. I believe they want to carry us back not just to the Gilded Age, but to the golden era in the 1780's when you needed a passport to go from Connecticut to New Jersey. I believe that is the basis for the efforts of people like Perry and Governor Bat Boy down in Florida to poach industries from other states and to hell with the national interest. I believe that is what animates ALEC in its campaign to create little hell-states individually across the map and its larger campaign to keep the federal government from doing anything about it. I don't think the modern Republican party believes in anything called "the national interest."
The Republican party is a mechanism for the subversion of the federal republic. It doesn't matter if the party's stars are doing it to please The Base, or because they don't know any better, or because they think it's the right thing to do. They are actively working to undermine the American union. This should be the first question asked of any Republican leader, of any Republican candidate, and certainly of obvious anagram Reince Preibus, the emptiest suit in American politics. They should be asked, every day, in every forum, if they believe in the Supremacy Clause, the Reconstruction amendments, and the federal union. These are yes-or-no questions.
Andrew Lack, the former president of NBC News, has been appointed by the U.S. decision makers in Washington, D.C., to be the chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, the internationally-famous economist/essayist has been awarded the International Medal for Excellence in Journalism by the Press Club Of Mexico. Read his acceptance speech here and compare these two items of news news. (Underlines added for emphasis.)
As Jesus told the people of Nazareth, a prophet is without honor in his own country. In the United States, this is also true of journalists.
In the United States journalists receive awards for lying for the government and for the corporations. Anyone who tells the truth, whether journalist or whistleblower, is fired or prosecuted or has to hide out in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, like Julian Assange, or in Moscow, like Edward Snowden, or is tortured and imprisoned, like Bradley Manning.
Mexican journalists pay an even higher price. Those who report on government corruption and on the drug cartels pay with their lives. The Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has as an entry a list by name of journalists murdered in Mexico. This is the List of Honor. Wikipedia reports than more than 100 Mexican journalists have been killed or disappeared in the 21st century.
Despite intimidation the Mexican press has not abandoned its job. Because of your courage, I regard this award bestowed on me as the greatest of honors.
In the United States real journalists are scarce and are becoming more scarce. Journalists have morphed into a new creature. Gerald Celente calls US journalists “presstitutes,” a word formed from press prostitute. In other words, journalists in the United States are whores for the government and for the corporations.
The few real journalists that remain are resigning. Last year Sharyl Attkisson, a 21-year veteran reporter with CBS resigned on the grounds that it had become too much of a fight to get truth reported. She was frustrated that CBS saw its purpose to be a protector of the powerful, not a critic.
Recently Peter Oborne, the "UK Telegraph"’s chief political commentator, explained why he resigned. His stories about the wrongdoings of the banking giant, HSBC, were spiked, because HSBC is an important advertiser for the "Telegraph." Osborne says: “The coverage of HSBC in Britain’s "Telegraph" is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-i-have-resigned-from-the-telegraph/5432659
Last summer former "New York Times" editor Jill Abramson in a speech at the Chautauqua Institution said that the "New York Times" withheld information at the request of the White House. She said that for a number of years the press in general did not publish any stories that upset the White House. She justified this complete failure of journalism on the grounds that “journalists are Americans, too. I consider myself to be a patriot.”
So in the United States journalists lie for the government because they are patriotic, and their readers and listeners believe the lies because they are patriotic.
Our view differs from the view of the "New York Times" editor. The view of those of us here today is that our country is not the United States, it is not Mexico, our country is Truth. Once a journalist sacrifices Truth to loyalty to a government, he ceases to be a journalist and becomes a propagandist.
Recently, Brian Williams, the television news anchor at NBC, destroyed his career because he mis-remembered an episode of more than a decade ago when he was covering the Iraq War. He told his audience that a helicopter in which he was with troops in a war zone as a war correspondent was hit by ground fire and had to land.
But the helicopter had not been hit by ground fire. His fellow journalists turned on him, accusing him of lying in order to enhance his status as a war correspondent.
On February 10, NBC suspended Brian Williams for 6 months from his job as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News.
Think about this for a moment. It makes no difference whatsoever whether the helicopter had to land because it had been hit by gun fire or for some other reason or whether it had to land at all. If it was an intentional lie, it was one of no consequence. If it was a mistake, an episode of “false memory,” why the excessive reaction? Psychologists say that false memories are common.
The same NBC that suspended Brian Williams and the journalists who accused him of lying are all guilty of telling massive lies for the entirety of the 21st century that have had vast consequences. The United States government has been, and still is, invading, bombing, and droning seven or eight countries on the basis of lies told by Washington and endlessly repeated by the media.
Millions of people have been killed, maimed, and displaced by violence based entirely on lies spewing out of the mouths of Washington and its presstitutes.
We know what these lies are: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Assad of Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Iranian nukes. Pakistani and Yemeni terrorists. Terrorists in Somalia. The endless lies about Gaddafi in Libya, about the Taliban in Afghanistan. And now the alleged Russian invasion and annexation of Ukraine.
All of these transparent lies are repeated endlessly, and no one is held accountable. But one journalist mis-remembers one insignificant detail about a helicopter ride and his career is destroyed.
We can safely conclude that the only honest journalism that exists in the United States is provided by alternative media on the Internet.
Consequently, the Internet is now under US government attack. “Truth is the enemy of the state,” and Washington intends to shut down truth everywhere.
Washington has appointed Andrew Lack, the former president of NBC News, who has recently been revealed by his own actions as a know-nothing, to be the chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. His first official statement compared "RT" ("Russia Today"), the Russian-based news agency, with the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist organization.
The purpose of Andrew Lack’s absurd comparison is to strike fear at "RT" that the news organization will be expelled from US media markets. Andrew Lack’s message to RT is: “lie for us or we are going to expel you from our air waves.”
The British already did this to Iran’s Press TV.
In the United States the attack on Internet independent media is proceeding on several fronts. One is known as the issue of “net neutrality.” There is an effort by Washington, joined by Internet providers, to charge sites for speedy access. Bandwidth would be sold for fees. Large media corporations, such as CNN and the "New York Times," would be able to pay the prices for a quickly opening website.
Smaller independent sites such as mine would be hampered with the slowness of the old “dial-up” type bandwidth. Click on CNN and the site immediately opens. Click on paulcraigroberts.org and wait five minutes.
You get the picture. This is Washington’s plan and the corporations’ plan for the Internet.
But it gets worse. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which attempts to defend our digital rights, reports that so-called “free trade agreements,” such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (and the Trans Atlantic Partnership) impose prison sentences, massive fines, and property seizures on Internet users who innocently violate vague language in the so-called trade agreements.
Recently, a young American, Barrett Brown, was sentenced to 5 years in prison and a fine of $890,000 for linking to allegedly hacked documents posted on the Internet. Barrett Brown did not hack the documents. He merely linked to an Internet posting, and he has no prospect of earning $890,000 over the course of his life.
The purpose of the US government’s prosecution, indeed, persecution, of this young person is to establish the precedent that anyone who uses Internet information in ways that Washington disapproves, or for purposes that Washington disapproves, is a criminal whose life will be ruined.
The purpose of Barrett Brown’s show trial is to intimidate. It is Washington’s equivalent to the murder of Mexican journalists.
But this is prologue. Now we turn to the challenge that Washington presents to the entire world.
It is the nature of government and of technology to establish control. People everywhere face the threat of control by government and technology. But the threat from Washington is much greater. Washington is not content with only controlling the citizens of the United States. Washington intends to control the world.
Mikhail Gorbachev is correct when he says that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that has happened to humanity, because the Soviet collapse removed the only constraint on Washington’s power.
The Soviet collapse released a terrible evil upon the world. The neoconservatives in Washington concluded that the failure of communism meant that History has chosen American “democratic capitalism,” which is neither democratic nor capitalist, to rule the world. The Soviet collapse signaled “the End of History,” by which is meant the end of competition between social, political and economic systems.
The choice made by History elevated the United States to the pre-eminent position of being the “indispensable and exceptional” country, a claim of superiority. If the United States is “indispensable,” then others are dispensable. If the United States is exceptional, then others are unexceptional. We have seen the consequences of Washington’s ideology in Washington’s destruction of life and stability in the Middle East.
Washington’s drive for World Hegemony, based as it is on a lie, makes necessary the obliteration of Truth. As Washington’s agenda of supremacy is all encompassing, Washington regards truth as a greater enemy than Russians, Muslim terrorists, and the Islamic State.
As truth is Washington’s worst enemy, everyone associated with the truth is Washington’s enemy.
Latin America can have no illusions about Washington. The first act of the Obama Regime was to overthrow the democratic reformist government of Honduras. Currently, the Obama Regime is trying to overthrow the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina.
As Mexicans know, in the 19th century Washington stole half of Mexico. Today Washington is stealing the rest of Mexico. The United States is stealing Mexico via financial imperialism, by subordinating Mexican agriculture and self-sustaining peasant agricultural communities to foreign-owned monoculture, by infecting Mexico with Monsanto’s GMO’s, genetically modified organisms, seeds that do not reproduce, chemicals that destroy the soil and nature’s nutrients, seeds that leave Mexico dependent on Monsanto for food crops with reduced nutritional value.
It is easy for governments to sell out their countries to Washington and the North American corporations. Washington and US corporations pay high prices for subservience to their control. It is difficult for countries, small in economic and political influence, to stand against such power. All sorts of masks are used behind which Washington hides US exploitation – globalism, free trade treaties . . .
But the world is changing. Putin has revived Russia, and Russia has proved its ability to stand up to Washington.
On a purchasing power basis, China now has the largest economy in the world.
As China and Russia are now strategic allies, Washington cannot act against one without acting against the other. The two combined exceed Washington’s capabilities.
The United States government has proven to the entire world that it is lawless. A country that flaunts its disrespect of law cannot provide trusted leadership.
My conclusion is that Washington’s power has peaked.
Another reason Washington’s power has peaked is that Washington has used its power to serve only itself and US corporations. The Rest of the World is dispensable and has been left out.
Washington’s power grew out of World War 2. All other economies and currencies were devastated. This allowed Washington to seize the world reserve currency role from Great Britain.
The advantage of being the world reserve currency is that you can pay your bills by printing money. In other words, you can’t go broke as long as other countries are willing to hold your fiat currency as their reserves.
But if other countries were to decide not to hold US currency as reserves, the US could go broke suddenly.
Since 2008 the supply of US dollars has increased dramatically in relation to the ability of the real economy to produce goods and services. Whenever the growth of money outpaces the growth of real output, trouble lies ahead. Moreover, Washington’s policy of imposing sanctions in an effort to force other countries to do its will is causing a large part of the world known as the BRICS to develop an alternative international payments system.
Washington’s arrogance and hubris have caused Washington to ignore the interests of other countries, including those of its allies. Even Washington’s European vassal states show signs of developing an independent foreign policy in their approach to Russia and Ukraine. Opportunities will arise for governments to escape from Washington’s control and to pursue the interests of their own peoples.
The US media has never performed the function assigned to it by the Founding Fathers. The media is supposed to be diverse and independent. It is supposed to confront both government and private interest groups with the facts and the truth. At times the US media partially fulfilled this role, but not since the final years of the Clinton Regime when the government allowed six mega-media companies to consolidate 90% of the media in their hands.
The mega-media companies that control the US media are GE, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. (GE owns NBC, formerly an independent network. News Corp owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and British newspapers. Disney owns ABC. Time Warner owns CNN.)
The US media is no longer run by journalists. It is run by former government officials and corporate advertising executives. The values of the mega-media companies depend on their federal broadcast licenses. If the companies go against the government, the companies take a risk that their licenses will not be renewed and, thus, the multi-billion dollar values of the companies fall to zero.
If media organizations investigate wrongful activities by corporations, they risk the loss of advertising revenues and become less viable.
Ninety percent control of the media gives government a Ministry of Propaganda, and that is what exists in the United States. Nothing reported in the print or TV media can be trusted.
Today there is a massive propaganda campaign against the Russian government. The incessant flow of disinformation from Washington and the media has destroyed the trust between nuclear powers that President Reagan and President Gorbachev worked so hard to create. According to polls, 62% of the US population now regards Russia as the main threat.
I conclude my remarks with the observation that there can be no greater media failure than to bring back the specter of nuclear war. And that is what the US media has achieved.
Need more info on the presstitute's reporting?
Rahm Emanuel and the Useless Editorial Board at The Washington Post
US Unemployment at Lowest Since 2008 - But Young People Still Can't Find Work
"The US economy is booming. On Friday, the Commerce Department announced overall US unemployment had fallen to 5.5%. Yet the unemployment rate for young Americans rose to double digits last month.
. . . Unemployment rate for those aged 20-24 years old was 10% in February – up from 9.8% in January._ _ _ _ _ _ _
. . . You can imagine someone graduating into a weak economy not being able to change jobs. So someone "who graduated in 2007 has seen seven years of a weak labor market, and they aren’t able to move up in their careers,” she says, pointing to the number of voluntary resignations. Since the recession, people who wanted to quit their job for better ones couldn’t do so because those jobs weren’t there.
Juan Cole warns us about the "Hindenburg Trap." He tells investors to "Dump Oil, Coal & Gas Stocks if You Want to Retire."
What is the actual value of the oil, gas and coal fields owned by big energy corporations, which gives them their stock price and allows them to be counted as assets for borrowing purposes?
The real value of those hydrocarbon resources is zero.
Or actually it is much less than zero, since there are likely to be a lot of liability lawsuits and insurance claims for severe environmental and property damage. Coal, oil and gas are now where the cigarette companies were in 1990, on the verge of getting hit with massive penalties. Big Coal and Big Oil are dead men walking.
The only thing that stops the entire world economy, including that of the United States, from collapsing is that investors continue to pretend that what I just said is not true. Because of this pretense, some people will go on making a lot of money with hydrocarbon investments in the short and perhaps even the medium term. Much investment and assignment of value is a matter of confidence.
Flight 370 Did Not Disappear, the Truth About What Happened Is a Scandal
year has gone by, and there is not a trace.
Health Costs of Hormone Disrupting Chemicals Over €150bn a Year in Europe, Says Study
Lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics, says new expert study
Europe is experiencing an explosion in health costs caused by endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that is comparable to the cost of lead and mercury poisoning, according to the most comprehensive study of the subject yet published.
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the human hormone system, and can be found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics.
The new series of reports by 18 of the world’s foremost experts on endocrine science pegs the health costs of exposure to them at between €157bn-€270bn (£113bn-£195bn), or at least 1.23% of the continent’s GDP.
“The shocking thing is that the major component of that cost is related to the loss of brain function in the next generation,” one of the report’s authors, Professor Philippe Grandjean of Harvard University, told the "Guardian."
Iraq Offensive Displaced Tens of Thousands, Says UN
"Military operations in and around Tikrit have precipitated displacement of an estimated 28,000 people to Samarra," the UN said, adding, "Field reports indicate that additional displacements are underway and that yet more families remain stuck at checkpoints."
Around 30,000 Iraqi and allied soldiers launched Monday's operation, the largest of its kind since IS militants captured vast areas of territory last June, which so far has displaced a total of 2.5 million people, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Which Corporations Are Benefiting from Ukraine Fiasco?
In a year beginning with the notorious February military coup in Ukraine, also known as the Euromaidan revolution, the Ukrainian economy has come to the brink of default.
It has turned out that a $27 billion bailout, offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and multinational creditors to Kiev, will not be enough to bolster the anemic Ukrainian economy as well. However, new loans, requested by Kiev to keep its economy afloat will only exacerbate the situation, experts say, pointing to the fact that Ukraine, saddled with heavy debts, will not be able to pay them off in the forthcoming decades.
According to IMF chief Christine Lagarde, an expanded emergency package will amount to $40 billion over the four year period and will come via international creditors, including major Western powers, for instance Switzerland and the United States, the World Bank, the
European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The chief of the IMF clarified that the decision was made due to the fact that the Ukrainian regime has already carried out a string of tough economic reforms, particularly increasing gas tariffs for the country’s households to 56 percent, adopting a flexible exchange rate regime, freezing numerous social programs and conducting “governance reforms” of state-owned enterprises.
The Ukrainian government is irresponsibly driving the nation deeper and deeper into a debt trap, analysts say, while the country’s financial and industry sectors are facing tremendous losses unable to facilitate the growth of the state’s economy.
More than 50 percent of Ukrainian enterprises are unprofitable: over the last nine months the financial losses of large and medium-sized companies in the country mounted over $14 billion. Ukrainian GDP dropped by 7.5 percent. According to some estimates, Ukraine’s external debt (including the debts of the country’s enterprises) could reach $135.85 billion, with a debt repayment of $58.55 billion in 2015 alone. On the other hand, the internal war, launched by Kiev against the Ukrainian eastern region in 2014 has severely weakened the country’s economy.
Making matters worse, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) reported in November 2014 that the country’s gold bullion reserves had diminished tremendously. Surprisingly, the NBU head provided no explanation where the country’s gold has gone. Valeria Hontareva, the Governor of the Bank, admitted that there was almost no physical gold left in the vaults, adding that the amount of solid gold ingots barely covered one percent of the Ukrainian national reserves.
The statement immediately sparked controversy among experts, since in February 2014 Ukrainian official gold holdings amounted to 42.3 tons, or 8 percent of the state’s reserves. So far, over the year Ukraine’s overall gold and foreign currency reserves reduced from around $17 billion to $6.42 billion, analysts point out.
Meanwhile, a sinister atmosphere surrounds the seizure of the country’s high-quality arable lands by Ukrainian moguls and foreign firms, funded by the World Bank and EBRD.
According to German lawmakers, some prominent Western corporations including Monsanto and DuPont have been involved into land-grabbing in Ukraine, using the ongoing military conflict as a cover. The state’s arable territory comprises of 32 million hectares, however, about 17 million hectares have already come under control of transnational holdings.
As Kiev’s prolonged the moratorium on land sales lasts until 2016, investors took out a 50-year lease on Ukraine’s agricultural territories, planning to buy the lands, once the state ban is lifted. The Ukraine-EU association agreements open the doors to the liberalization of the state’s economy and relaxation of its agricultural laws. While the West is obviously benefitting from the reforms, Ukraine’s small and middle-sized farms have been put under threat.
Ukrainian experts and political activists point out that the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych was replaced by another venal group. According to Tatyana Montyan, a Kiev-based lawyer and politician, the West is not interested in Ukraine’s development: the 45-million nation could become the EU’s economic rival. Using the longstanding turmoil in eastern Ukraine as a smokescreen, the Ukrainian moguls are exporting capital abroad instead of reinvesting money into the state’s economy. So far, the country has no chance to recover, burdened with huge debts. Analysts underscore that the IMF has long been using its “debt trap” strategy, referring to the example of Greece and other European debt-laden countries.
The question remains, if the Ukrainian nation still believes in the success of Euromaidan revolution of February 2014 . . .
From White Sheets to Spreadsheets
March 9, 2015
Rowan Wolf
By Greg Palast
I hate to spoil a happy ending.The movie “Selma,” like this week’s commemorations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma, Ala., 50 years ago, celebrates America’s giant leap from apartheid. Did you . . . .
Read the entire essay here.
The Demolition of Workers Comp
The Transformer: Sabotage for Peace
March 7, 2015
Rowan Wolf
By William T. Hathaway
Excerpt from Radical Peace: People Refusing War
A former student of mine works as a janitor. After graduating from college he worked as a market researcher and an advertising salesperson, but both jobs soured him on the corporate world. He hated being a junior suit, and . . . .
Read the entire essay here.
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