Pinochet's Demonization Exemplifies Propaganda's Power
By: Paul Craig Roberts|26 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Demonization . Exemplifies . Pinochet's . Power . Propaganda's
Gen. Augusto Pinochet served as president of Chile during a troubled period of that country’s history. His fate was to become the world’s most demonized person in the last quarter of the 20th century, and his death on Dec. 10, 2006, was met with a new outpouring of denunciation by the international left. Just as the neoconservative Bush regime had…
Read more »Is the American Political Establishment a Match for AIPAC?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|14 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: craisisg org.com
The report by the Iraq Study Group [PDF] is an attempt by elder statesmen of the American Political Establishment to take US foreign policy out of the incompetent hands of President Bush and the self-serving hands of the Israeli Lobby. The Iraq Study Group’s effort may or may not succeed. Others have expressed disappointment that the ISG elder statesmen did…
Read more »America's Injustice System is Criminal
By: Paul Craig Roberts|11 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns
The Christmas season is a time to remember the unfortunate. Among the most unfortunate people are those who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned. The United States has a large number of wrongfully convicted. There are many reasons for this. One is that the US has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned of all countries in the world, including…
Read more »How Many More Will Die For Bush's Ego—And Israel?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|08 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: how many more americans will die for israel
Last July in response to Bush-the-Evil’s enabling of Israel’s gratuitous slaughter of thousands of Lebanese civilians and destruction of the country’s infrastructure, I wrote about “the shame of being an American.” With the ongoing slaughter of our troops and Iraqi civilians in Bush’s war in Iraq, it is time to revisit that theme. As the Iraqi civil war (euphemistically termed…
Read more »Iraq War Fuelled By Extremism In U.S., Israel
By: Paul Craig Roberts|06 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Extremism . Fuelled . Iraq . Israel . U.S.
“The real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” John Maynard Keynes A ray of realism appeared in the confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense nominee Robert Gates before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Gates himself said that the US was not winning in Iraq, a statement with which…
Read more »Bush Is No Conservative
By: Paul Craig Roberts|04 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Conservative . George Bush
The conservative movement in the United States has been stamped out, not by liberals but by neoconservatives. Conservative philanthropic foundations, conservative print media, and conservative think tanks have been taken over by neoconservatives, who have exiled real conservatives to voicelessness and joblessness. Neoconservative translates as “new conservative.” However, there is nothing at all conservative about neoconservatives. The name is a…
Read more »America's New Economic Problem
By: Paul Craig Roberts|02 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Problem
Few economists have come to terms with the meaning that offshore production of goods and services has both for the US economy and for the operation of US economic policy. One of the main reasons for the rapid expansion of the US trade imbalance is offshoring. When a company closes a plant in the US and moves its production for…
Read more »Is President Bush Sane?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|01 December, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: George Bush . President . Sane?
Tens of millions of Americans want President George W. Bush to be impeached for the lies and deceit he used to launch an illegal war and for violating his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution. Millions of other Americans want Bush turned over to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. The true fate that awaits Bush is…
Read more »Milton Friedman In Memoriam
By: Paul Craig Roberts|12 November, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts milton friedman
Early in the morning of November 16, 2006, at the age of 94, Milton Friedman passed away. Friedman was the great economist of our time who more than anyone saved the economics profession from dogma. There was Keynesian dogma, which justified increased government spending as a full employment policy. Phillips Curve dogma, which specified trade-offs between inflation and employment. And…
Read more »Is Bush Next?
The show trial of Saddam Hussein was drawn out until two days before the midterm US elections. The death sentence imposed on the former Iraqi president may help the deluded band of Bush supporters find victory in the defeat that Bush has met in Iraq and motivate them to support the beleaguered Republicans on November 7. But Saddam’s sentence will…
Read more »The Fault Lies In Ourselves
By: Paul Craig Roberts|25 October, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns
During my professional lifetime, liberals and the left wing have focused on failures and misdeeds of the private sector, while libertarians and conservatives have focused on the failures and misdeeds of the public sector or government. It turns out that both sides are right. The Enron case and the other accounting scandals of this new century are testimony to misdeeds…
Read more »Bush Has Achieved America's Demise
The United States as Defined by the Founding Fathers No Longer Exists When does “collateral damage” so dwarf combatant deaths that war becomes genocide? Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives. That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies and conducted by physicians under the direction…
Read more »The New Face of Class Warfare
By: Paul Craig Roberts|09 October, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Class . Face . Warfare
Published in the print edition of Counterpunch, July 2006 For decades Democrats seemed to have a monopoly on class war with demagogy of “the rich.” Today it is the rich who are instigating class war with attacks on middle class jobs. The ladders of upward mobility are being dismantled. America, the land of opportunity, is giving way to polarization between…
Read more »Bush the Pitiful
By: Paul Craig Roberts|10 September, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: George Bush . Pitiful
People are beginning to feel sorry for President George W. Bush. And with good reason. A new poll by Harris Interactive published in the Financial Times reveals that our traditional European allies regard the United States as a much greater threat to world stability than Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. In European opinion, the axis-of-evil is Bush’s America. Almost twice…
Read more »Books Are Our Salvation
By: Paul Craig Roberts|07 September, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Books . Salvation
Those of us who grew up before the time of virtual reality got inspiration from literature and biography. A combative scholar, a good story, the life of an achiever were all part of the mish-mash that formed character. It is still possible to turn off the screen and to pick up a book. Literate Southerners could do worse than to…
Read more »Five Years After and We Still Don't Know
In the five years since three World Trade Center buildings collapsed into their own footprints in virtually free fall time, the convincing power of the official explanation of that day’s events has evaporated. Polls show that 36% of Americans do not believe the official account. As Lev Grossman writes in Time magazine (September 3, 2006), “Thirty-six percent adds up to…
Read more »Pentagon Says War Is Lost
By: Paul Craig Roberts|04 September, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: bush cheney . common sense . iraqi casualties . iraqi government . quarterly progress report . sectarian clashes
The Pentagon’s latest quarterly “progress” report to Congress on Iraq is a grim tale of a lost war. The Pentagon told Congress what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and propaganda organs such as Fox “News” never tell the American public, namely: (1) The Sunni-based insurgency remains “potent and viable” despite spiraling Sunni-Shiite violence and beefed up US forces. (2) Since the last…
Read more »For Whom the Heart Bleeds Not
By: Paul Craig Roberts|31 August, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: defenseless creatures . israeli governments . joe scarborough . lock stock and barrel . mainstream media . military aviators . washington post
With mainstream media, such as William M. Arkin in the Washington Post and Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, taking up my emphasis on the moronic and fascist character of the Bush regime, the gates are open for Democrats to begin the task of bringing to an end the pointless, costly, and illegal war that is doing America’s cause…
Read more »“Israel, the US, and the Muslim world will continue to bleed.”
By: Paul Craig Roberts|29 August, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: bleed." . continue . Israel . Muslim . USA
When the neocons launched the Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and announced plans for invading Syria and Iran, I labeled Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice “the five Morons.” With the passage of time I see that I over-estimated their mental capabilities. The “cakewalk” war has now lasted longer than World War II with Nazi Germany, and…
Read more »Can Anything Be Done?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|27 August, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: jfk www.paulcraigroberts.org/
Many readers have praised me for my courage in broaching taboo subjects and stating obvious truths. Others denounce me for “being unpatriotic and distrusting our government.” One reader, Susan Hartman, wrote to me that I was obviously in the pay of Islamic Jihadists and that she had reported me to the FBI. Despite the lack of evidence to support their…
Read more »Immigration's State of Emergency
By: Paul Craig Roberts|26 August, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts immigration
Patrick J. Buchanan is a brave person who loves his country. In his latest book, State of Emergency, he says his country, along with European ones, is rapidly ceasing to exist. Massive unassimilated immigration is changing the cultural and linguistic face of America. Hispanics are taking back the lands seized by the American empire in the 19th century. Buchanan is…
Read more »Political Correctness—In Science, Scholarship And Statues
By: Paul Craig Roberts|01 August, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns
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Read more »Bush's Hegemonic Fantasy
By: Paul Craig Roberts|06 July, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Fantasy . Hegemonic
Finding itself in Republican sights and with no Democratic power center to offer protection, National Public Radio is turning into an upscale version of Fox “News”. Nevertheless, information still gets out if the listener is sufficiently attentive. On July 5, NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed two warmongers for their views on the North Korean missile test. One was Ashton Carter,…
Read more »A Republic or an Empire?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|05 July, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Empire? . Republic
Gentle reader, did you know that in April President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush’s access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz’s home…
Read more »Iraq War Is Destroying Army—And America
By: Paul Craig Roberts|03 July, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: America . Army—And . Destroying . Iraq
Americans who get their propaganda from Fox “News” or are told what to think by right-wing talk radio hosts are outraged at news reports that US troops planned and carried out the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman. They are not outraged that the troops committed the deed; they are outraged that the media reported it. These “conservatives,”…
Read more »Supreme Court Rebukes Bush On Guantanamo—What Now?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|30 June, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: supreme court rebukes bush
On June 29 the US Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision ruled that President Bush’s effort to railroad tortured Guantanamo Bay detainees in kangaroo courts violates both US law and the Geneva Conventions. Better late than never, but it sure took a long time for the checks and balances to call a halt to the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of…
Read more »The High Price of American Gullibility
By: Paul Craig Roberts|28 June, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: american citizens . Bush Administration . emotional appeals . intelligence failures . mass surveillance . peaceful solutions . what is the role of congress
What explains the gullibility of Americans, a gullibility that has mired the US in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and which promises war with Iran, North Korea and a variety of other targets if neoconservatives continue to have their way? Part of the explanation is that millions of conservatives are thrilled at the opportunity to display their patriotism and…
Read more »Neocon Plot To Nuke Iran Invites Catastrophe
By: Paul Craig Roberts|11 June, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Catastrophe . Invites . Iran . Neocon . Nuke . Plot
John Bolton, a notorious neocon warmonger who could not be confirmed as America’s ambassador to the UN by even the compliant and corrupt US Senate, got the job as a recess appointment. He is using the platform to push America into war with Iran. Bolton told the Financial Times (June 9) that the Bush Regime has no intention of reaching…
Read more »War Criminal Nation
Faced with mounting civilian carnage, both from war crimes committed by demoralized and broken US troops and from the raging civil war unleashed by Bush’s ill-fated illegal invasion of Iraq, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has decided to waste another $50 billion to continue the lost war for five more months. Our elected “representatives” are so in thrall to the…
Read more »Jobs Update: The Death of US Engineering
The May payroll jobs report released June 2 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the jobs pattern for the 21st century US economy: employment growth is limited to domestic services. In May the economy created only 67,000 private sector jobs. Job estimates for the previous two months were reduced by 37,000. The new jobs are as follows: professional and…
Read more »The Evil In Our Government
By: Paul Craig Roberts|28 May, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Evil . Government
Is the Bush Regime a state sponsor of terrorism? A powerful case can be made that it is. In the past three years the Bush Regime has murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and an unknown number of Afghan ones. US Marines, our finest and proudest military force, are under criminal investigation for breaking into Iraqi homes and murdering…
Read more »How Bush Brewed The Iranian Crisis
By: Paul Craig Roberts|23 May, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns
Why did the Bush regime create a crisis over Iran? The answer is that the Bush regime is desperate to widen the war in the Middle East. What has Iran done? Unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, countries that developed nuclear weapons on the sly, Iran signed the non- proliferation treaty. Countries that sign this treaty have the right to develop…
Read more »The Real Assault on America
By: Paul Craig Roberts|15 May, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: America . Assault
The neoconservative Bush regime has adroitly used 9/11 to create fear of terrorism among Americans that blinds Americans to the Bush regime’s assault on our constitutional system. Americans have meekly acquiesced to the Bush regime’s brutal assaults on civil liberties, human rights, the separation of powers, and statutory law, because Americans have been brainwashed to believe that the “war on…
Read more »The Fading US Economy
By: Paul Craig Roberts|07 May, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: january 2001 US economy lost
[See also National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein: April Jobs: Hispanics Up, non-Hispanics Down] The Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll jobs report released May 5 says the economy created 131,000 private sector jobs in April. Construction added 10,000 jobs, natural resources, mining and logging added 8,000 jobs, and manufacturing added 19,000. Despite this unusual gain, the economy has 10,000 fewer…
Read more »John Kenneth Galbraith: A Great American
By: Paul Craig Roberts|02 May, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns
A great American has passed away—John Kenneth Galbraith. He was 97 years old and still involved with the issues of our time. Galbraith’s most famous book is The Affluent Society (1958). In this book Galbraith argued that Americans were good at making money, but neglectful of the wider public interest. Alas, the same is true today. The environment always suffers from…
Read more »America Is No Superpower
By: Paul Craig Roberts|24 April, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: America . Superpower
Is the United States a superpower? I think not. Consider these facts: The financial position of the US has declined dramatically. The US is heavily indebted, both government and consumers. The US trade deficit both in absolute size and as a percentage of GDP is unprecedented, reaching more than $800 billion in 2005 and accumulating to $4.5 trillion since 1990.…
Read more »Another Grim Report on the Jobs Front
By: Paul Craig Roberts|17 April, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Front . Grim . Jobs . Report:
Is your job safe? Not if it can be done abroad. The only safe jobs are in domestic services that require a “hands-on” presence, such as barbers, hospital orderlies, and waitresses. For a number of years the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly payroll jobs reports have been sending US policymakers dire warnings, only to be ignored. The March report repeats…
Read more »Israeli Electorate Rebukes Bush and Votes for Peace
By: Paul Craig Roberts|29 March, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Electorate . George Bush . Israeli . Peace . Rebukes . Votes
Israeli elections this week swept the right-wing Likud Party from power and installed a center-left government committed to peaceful co- existence with Palestine. Ehud Olmert, the leader of the new Israeli government, told the new Palestinian government that “we are ready to compromise and evacuate, under great pain, Jews living there [the West Bank of Palestine] in order to create…
Read more »Is Another 9/11 in the Works?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|15 March, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Works?
If you were President George W. Bush with all available US troops tied down by the Iraqi resistance, and you were unable to control Iraq or political developments in the country, would you also start a war with Iran? Yes, you would. Bush’s determination to spread Middle East conflict by striking at Iran does not make sense. First of all,…
Read more »Jobs Update: More Jobs For Bartenders, As Factory Workers Lose Jobs
By: Paul Craig Roberts|10 March, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Bartenders . Factory . Jobs . Lose . Update: . Workers
[See also National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein: A Cold February for White Workers] March 10. The BLS payroll jobs report released today lists 205,000 new private sector jobs for February. As has been the case for a number of years, the new jobs are in domestic nontradable services. The sources of February’s new jobs are: construction (primarily specially trade…
Read more »How The Economic News Is Spun—And Why
Readers ask me to reconcile the jobs and debt data that I report to them with the positive economic outlook and good news that comes to them from regular news sources. Some readers are being snide, but most are sincere. I am pleased to provide the explanation. First, let me give my reassurances that the numbers I report to you…
Read more »Fifty Years Later: Krushchev's Secret Speech On Stalin…And What It Means Today
By: Paul Craig Roberts|24 February, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: khrushchev secret speech creating a political myth
Fifty years ago today, Nikita Krushchev gave his Secret Speech to the Closed Session of the Twentieth Party Congress in which he denounced Joseph Stalin. At that time Krushchev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held the most powerful political office in the world. The power that Stalin had accumulated in this position had made…
Read more »Their Own Economic Reality
Who can forget the neocons‘ claim that under their leadership America creates its own reality? Remember the neocons’ Iraq reality—a “cakewalk” war? After three years of combat, thousands of casualties, and cost estimated at over $1 trillion, real reality must still compete with the White House spin machine. One might think that the Iraq experience would restore sober judgment to…
Read more »Jobs News Even Worse Than We Thought
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is. Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US…
Read more »My Epiphany: From Reaganaut To Anti-War Radical
By: Paul Craig Roberts|07 February, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Radical
A number of readers have asked me when did I undergo my epiphany, abandon right-wing Reaganism and become an apostle of truth and justice. I appreciate the friendly sentiment, but there is a great deal of misconception in the question. When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a war against stateless terrorism into military…
Read more »Job Disinformation From The New York Times
By: Paul Craig Roberts|03 February, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Disinformation . Job . Times . York
[See Edwin S. Rubenstein on January's job numbers A Blowout Month…For Hispanics and here on December's job numbers.] On Friday Feb. 3 the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the nonfarm payroll jobs report for January. New York Times reporter Vikas Bajaj wrote an upbeat news story, obviously based on a Labor Department press release rather than any study of the…
Read more »Bush's Untrue State of the Union
By: Paul Craig Roberts|31 January, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: chicago sun times . discouraged workers . economic growth rates . geneva convention . government sector . manufacturing technology . oakland california
Gentle reader, if you prefer comforting lies to harsh truths, don’t read this column. The state of the union is disastrous. By its naked aggression, bullying, illegal spying on Americans, and illegal torture and detentions, the Bush administration has demonstrated American contempt for the Geneva Convention, for human life and dignity, and for the civil liberties of its own citizens.…
Read more »Unfathomed Dangers in Patriot Act Reauthorization
By: Paul Craig Roberts|23 January, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: chart of how many people were jailed under the patriot act
A provision in the “Patriot Act” creates a new federal police force with power to violate the Bill of Rights. You might think that this cannot be true as you have not read about it in newspapers or heard it discussed by talking heads on TV. Go to House Report 109-333 -USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005 and…
Read more »Evidence Of A Stolen Election
By: Paul Craig Roberts|18 January, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Election . Evidence . Stolen
As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller’s new book, “Fooled Again” (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the Jan. 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat. The Florida panhandle is thoroughgoing Republican. Even Democrats run as…
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Bush's War: On Uppity Muslims, Not “Terror”
By: Paul Craig Roberts|22 July, 2006|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: bush war on terror muslim comments
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There never was any doubt of the Bush Regime’s complicity in Israel’s naked aggression against the Lebanese civilian population. Bush has protected Israel from world condemnation. Bush has blocked those who attempted to bring a stop to Israel’s bombing of residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, and now Bush rushes more bombs for Israel to drop on Lebanon. On July 22,…
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