By Paul Craig Roberts
The world needs intelligence and leadership in order to avoid catastrophe, but america can provide neither intelligence nor leadership. America is a lost land where nuclear weapons are in the hands of those who are concerned only with their own power. Washington is the enemy of the entire world and encompasses the largest concentration of evil on the planet.
I am offensive. Michael Hudson is offensive. Gerald Celente is offensive. Herman Daly is offensive. Nomi Prins is offensive. Pam Martens is offensive. Chris Hedges is offensive. Chris Floyd is offensive. John Pilger is offensive. Noam Chomsky is offensive. Harvey Silverglate is offensive. Naomi Wolf is offensive. Stephen Lendman is offensive. David Ray Griffin is offensive. Ellen Brown is offensive.
Fortunately, many others are offensive. But how long before being offensive becomes being “an enemy of the state”?
Throughout history truth tellers have suffered and court historians have prospered. It is the same today. Gerald Celente illustrates this brilliantly in the next issue of the Trends Journal.
Over the past 35 years I have learned this lesson as a columnist. If you tell readers what is really going on, they want to know why you can’t be positive. Why are you telling us that there are bad happenings that can’t be remedied? Don’t you know that God gave Americans the power to fix all wrongs? What are you? Some kind of idiot, an anti-American, a pinko-liberal-commie? If you hate America so much, why don’t you move to Cuba, Iran or China (or to wherever the current bogeyman is located)?
The ancient Greeks understood this well. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the prophetess who no one believed despite her 100 percent record of being right. Telling the truth to Americans or to Europeans is just as expensive as telling the truth to the Greeks in ancient mythology.
In America and everywhere in the Western world or the entire world, telling the truth is unpopular. Indeed, in the USA telling the truth has been criminalized. Look for example at Bradley Manning, held for two years in prison without bail and without a trial in violation of the US Constitution, tortured for one year of his illegal confinement in violation of US and international law, and now put on trial by corrupt prosecutors for aiding “enemies of the US” by revealing the truth, as required of him by the US military code. US soldiers are required to report war crimes. When Bradley Manning’s superiors showed themselves to be indifferent to war crimes, Manning reported the crimes via WikiLeaks. What else does a soldier with a sense of duty and a moral conscience do when the chain of command is corrupt?
Julian Assange is another example. WikiLeaks has taken up the reporting function that the Western media has abandoned. Remember, the New York Times did publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971, which undermined the lies Washington had told both to the public and to Congress to justify the costly Vietnam War. But today no newspaper or TV channel any longer accepts the responsibility to truthfully inform the public. Julian Assange stepped into the vacuum and was immediately demonized, not merely by Washington but also by left-wing and right-wing media, including Internet. It was a combination of jealousy, ignorance, and doing Washington’s bidding.
Without WikiLeaks and Assange, the world would know essentially nothing. Spin from Washington, the presstitute media, and the puppet state medias would prevail. So the word went out to destroy Julian Assange.
It is amazing how many people and Internet sites obeyed Washington’s command. Assange has been so demonized that even though he has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, the British government, obeying its Washington master, refuses to allow him safe passage out of the London Ecuador Embassy. Is Assange destined to live out his life inside the Ecuador Embassy in London?
Will Assange be a replay of Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty who on November 4, 1956, sought asylum in the US embassy in Budapest as Soviet tanks poured into Hungary to put down the anti-communist revolution? Cardinal Mindszenty lived for 15 years in the US embassy. Today it is “freedom and democracy” amerika that is copying Soviet practices during the cold war.
In contrast with “freedom and democracy” US and UK, the “authoritarian,” “communist,” “oppressive” Chinese government when confronted with Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng’s defection to the US embassy in Beijing, let him go.
It is an upside-down world when America and the British refuse to obey international law, but the Chinese communists uphold international law.
Insouciant americans are undisturbed that alleged terrorists are tortured, held indefinitely in prison without due process, and executed on the whim of some executive branch official without due process of law.
Most americans go along with unaccountable murder, torture, and detention without evidence, which proclaims their gullibility to the entire world. There has never in history been a population as unaware as americans. The world is amazed that an insouciant people became, if only for a short time, a superpower.
The world needs intelligence and leadership in order to avoid catastrophe, but america can provide neither intelligence nor leadership. America is a lost land where nuclear weapons are in the hands of those who are concerned only with their own power. Washington is the enemy of the entire world and encompasses the largest concentration of evil on the planet.
Where is the good to rise up against the evil?
Author’s Website: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Failure-
5 comments
If you think telling the truth about politics is offensive, try telling the truth about religion. Even those who have dedicated their lives to achieving social justice for humans, will bristle when religion is noted as a factor in animal abuse. Often an effort is made to obfuscate with all kinds of rationalizations about why their religion of choice is misunderstood or misinterpreted, despite the logic of the evidence that indicates otherwise.
Totaly agree with this article, very articulated… Hopefully, young people get there news information mostly from the Internet and site like this one. Main stream capitalist media should be abolish… US politic should take exemple from Venezuela concerning media… Are the US citizen will do what german citizen did after WWII: say ”we didn’t knew!” (about the jews!)
Mad empire devours its own children as well as other people’s children. But like Poe (a sane American wizard) writes in his Red Death, the madness resides within and one can sense by reading de Toqueville that the madness traveled with the pilgrims and it spread like wildfire devouring pristine land, indigenous peoples and natural resources till empire needed to flow elsewhere to feed its acquisitive lust. The feeding frenzy syndrome is the epidemic that is trying to gobble up the world now and is choking on its own greed.
In genesis, the animals and plants were given to man, to be subjected to his dominion. This is the source of the fallacy that animals and nature belong to man. This view of the natural world as human property has led to obscenities such as Monsanto, who have taken out patents on plants which have existed for millions of years, long before man created religions granting himself the overlord of the natural world, and by extension of humans perceived as lesser in the arrogant scheme of dominion.
Vandana Shiva is a seed protector. She has started a global movement based traditional indian knowledge of farming. Due to her efforts there are seed guardians throughout the world preserving the wisdom of nature, out of reach of Monsanto. She has taken Monsanto to the World Court when they patented two traditional Indian plants – neem and basmati rice. She won!
Her campaign against monsanto is based on the methodology of Gandhi of non-violence and satyagraha (the pursuit of truth). Vandana Shiva has a PhD in physics, but has given up the luxury of studying physics, because as she puts it the world is in too much trouble. Her intelligence, compassion and understanding of traditional plant agriculture are mighty weapons against dominion inspired Monsanto.
For additional information on her work and her organization – Navdanya:
About Navdanya :
http://www.navdanya.org/about-us
http://www.navdanya.org/campaigns/seed-sovereignity
http://www.navdanya.org/attachments/SFGlobalCampaign_24-12-2012copy.pdf
Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq6jpkDNxtI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=d9K0cZGQgHA
(traditional knowledge)
Her methodology is based on the wisdom of Jain teachings, which encourages cooperation with nature, not domination and exploitation:
“If thinking to gain praise, honor or respect,…a man who sins against earth or causes or permits others to do so…he will not gain joy or wisdom…tyrany to the earth is like striking , cutting or maiming a blind man…Knowing this a man should not sin against earth or cause or permit others to do so. He who understands the nature of sin against earth is called a Sage.” jain acharanga sutra
The strength and intelligence of the work of Vandana Shiva are based on the wisdom of ahimsa. The truth of ahimsa is not offensive.
Truth must be more offensive that I thought. I have been trying to post a comment which offers a couner position to monsanto, big ag and big pharma, The position is based on the traditional wisdom of India, which uses ahimsa as a basis for social change, as the judeo.christian tradition is too steeped in dominon to be a viable model for change. I will make one last effort to post this viewpoint as presented by Vandana Shiva:
In genesis, the animals and plants were given to man, to be subjected to his dominion. This is the source of the fallacy that animals and nature belong to man. This view of the natural world as human property has led to obscenities such as Monsanto, who have taken out patents on plants which have existed for millions of years, long before man created religions granting himself the overlord of the natural world, and by extension of human populations perceived as lesser in the arrogant scheme of dominion.
Vandana Shiva is a seed protector. She has started a global movement based traditional indian knowledge of farming. Due to her efforts there are seed guardians throughout the world preserving the wisdom of nature, out of reach of Monsanto. She has taken Monsanto to the World Court when they patented two traditional Indian plants – neem and basmati rice. She won!
Her campaign against monsanto is based on the methodology of Gandhi of non-violence and satyagraha (the pursuit of truth). Vandana Shiva has a PhD in physics, but has given up the luxury of studying physics, because as she puts it the world is in too much trouble. Her intelligence, compassion and understanding of traditional plant agriculture are mighty weapons against dominion inspired Monsanto.
For additional information on her work and her organization – Navdanya:
About Navdanya :
http://www.navdanya.org/about-us
http://www.navdanya.org/campaigns/seed-sovereignity
http://www.navdanya.org/attachments/SFGlobalCampaign_24-12-2012copy.pdf
Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq6jpkDNxtI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=d9K0cZGQgHA
(traditional knowledge)
Her methodology is based on the wisdom of Jain teachings, which encourages cooperation with nature, not domination and exploitation:
“If thinking to gain praise, honor or respect,…a man who sins against earth or causes or permits others to do so…he will not gain joy or wisdom…tyrany to the earth is like striking , cutting or maiming a blind man…Knowing this a man should not sin against earth or cause or permit others to do so. He who understands the nature of sin against earth is called a Sage.” jain acharanga sutra
The strength and intelligence of the work of Vandana Shiva are based on this wisdom