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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
The Case of the Missing Terrorists
If there were any real terrorists, Jose Rodriguez would be dead. Who is Jose Rodriguez? He is the criminal who ran the CIA torture program. Most of his victims were not terrorists or even insurgents. Most were hapless individuals kidnapped by warlords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” for the bounty paid. If Rodriguez’s identity was previously a secret,…
Read more »Unz Research Reward (informational bulletin)
Dear Readers: This is an informational bulletin, not a new column. For readers with research skills and for those who would like to develop such skills and/or explore new historical data now made available for the first time on the Internet, Ron Unz, an entrepreneur who is on his way to becoming a public intellectual, is offering a $10,000 First…
Read more »Does The West Have A Future?
Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider: We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities…
Read more »Disinformation On Every Front
Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans. If I may…
Read more »Brewing a Conflict with China
Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China’s territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a…
Read more »Trials Without Crimes Or Evidence
Dear Readers: To remind. This site is something that I do for you, not for myself. Every article I post on this site further isolates me from long-time colleagues and friends. When the site started up in January, many donations came in. Donations continue to come in, but the flow is much reduced. Sites are an expense. They have to…
Read more »How Liberty Was Lost
When did things begin going wrong in America? “From the beginning,” answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands…
Read more »Unplugging Americans From The Matrix
Americans, the British, and Western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the representatives of freedom, democracy, and morality in the world. The West passes judgment on the rest of the world as if the West is God and the rest of the world are barbarians in need of chastisement, invasion, and occupation. As readers know, from time to…
Read more »Washington Leads World Into Lawlessness
The US government pretends to live under the rule of law, to respect human rights, and to provide freedom and democracy to citizens. Washington’s pretense and the stark reality are diametrically opposed. US government officials routinely criticize other governments for being undemocratic and for violating human rights. Yet, no other country except Israel sends bombs, missiles, and drones into sovereign…
Read more »What Is ObamaCare?
Growing up in the post-war era (after the Second World War), I never expected to live in the strange Kafkaesque world that exists today. The US government can assassinate any US citizen that the executive branch thinks could possibly be a “threat” to the US government, or throw the hapless citizen into a dungeon for the rest of his or…
Read more »Empires Then and Now
Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded, because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. The reason Rome did not extend its empire east into Germany was not the military prowess of Germanic tribes but Rome’s calculation that the cost of conquest exceeded…
Read more »Both The Market and Government Are Irrational
One of the great economic myths is that markets are rational. Not a day passes without this myth being disproved scores of times, but the myth persists. For example, today (March 14) Bank of America/Merrill Lynch reported that “yesterday US markets started the day off with a strong rally after the solid retail sales report. . . . tailwinds are…
Read more »No Jobs For Americans
Today (March 9, 2012) the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that 227,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs were created by the economy during February. Is the government’s claim true? No. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that 44,000 of these jobs or 19% consist of an add-on factor derived from the BLS’s estimate that 44,000 more unreported jobs from new business…
Read more »Why Can’t americans Have Democracy?
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the american invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi’ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another. When the american invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WWII, overthrew the Saddam Hussein…
Read more »Silencing The Critics
In 2010 the FBI invaded the homes of peace activists in several states and seized personal possessions in what the FBI–the lead orchestrator of fake “terrorist plots”–called an investigation of “activities concerning the material support of terrorism.” Subpoenas were issued to compel antiwar protestors to testify before grand juries as prosecutors set about building their case that opposing Washington’s wars…
Read more »Washington’s Insouciance Has No Rival
Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot? According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards,…
Read more »Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade?
The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a democracy? Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in office by the Supreme Court and that a number of other elections have been decided by…
Read more »Will Iran Be Attacked?
Washington has made tremendous preparations for a military assault on Iran. There is speculation that Washington has called off its two longest running wars–Iraq and Afghanistan–in order to deploy forces against Iran. Two of Washington’s fleets have been assigned to the Persian Gulf along with NATO warships. Missiles have been spread amongst Washington’s Oil Emirate and Middle Eastern puppet states.…
Read more »The January Jobs Are Statistical Artifacts
Last Friday the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the first month of this new year 243,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate (U.3) fell to 8.3 percent. This good news is a mirage. It is due to faulty seasonal adjustments and to the BLS birth/death model. In a prolonged downturn, seasonal adjustments and the birth/death model…
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The Real Economic Picture
If you have any money and you want to understand the lies that “your” government tells you with statistics, subscribe to John Williams shadowstats.com. John Williams is the best and utterly truthful statistician that we the people have. The charts below come from John Williams Hyperinflation Report, January 25, 2012. The commentary is supplied by me. Here is the chart…
Read more »Economics Lesson 1
Last Friday (January 27) the US Bureau of Economic Analysis announced its advance estimate that in the last quarter of 2011 the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8% in real inflation-adjusted terms, an increase from the annual rate of growth in the third quarter. Good news, right? Wrong. If you want to know what is really happening, you…
Read more »How Ron Paul Could Win
In the Soviet Union common criminals were punished less harshly and received better treatment than political prisoners. A person who had committed a violent crime had more rights than someone who expressed criticism of the government and could be portrayed as having acted against the government. We now have the same situation in the US. In a recent case the…
Read more »Drowning In Hypocrisy
The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power…
Read more »More On Ron Paul
If Ron Paul’s libertarian handlers and support base could escape their ideology, Ron Paul could be much better positioned to win the Republican nomination. Here are some suggestions. Ron Paul should be making the point that Social Security and Medicare are threatened by multi-trillion dollar wars that are funded by debt, by bailouts of a deregulated banking system, and by…
Read more »Washington Moves The World Closer To War
Since my January 11 column http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/01/11/the-next-war-on-washingtons-agenda/ and the news alert posted on January 14 http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/01/14/news-alert/, more confirmation that Washington is moving the world toward a dangerous war has appeared. The Obama regime is using its Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a., the American media, to spread the story that President Obama, Pentagon chief Panetta, and other high US officials are delivering strong…
Read more »News Alert!
According to a January 13, 2012 Reuters news report, Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to NATO who has been appointed deputy prime minister in charge of Russia’s defense sector, told news reporters at a Brussels press conference that Russia would regard any military attack on Iran as a “direct threat to our security.” Will the crazed neocon warmongers and the…
Read more »America’s Last Chance
America has one last chance, and it is a very slim one. Americans can elect Ron Paul President, or they can descend into tyranny. Why is Ron Paul America’s last chance? Because he is the only candidate who is not owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military-security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby. All of the others, including…
Read more »Three Books to Stimulate Thought
January 11 was the tenth anniversary of amerika’s Guantanamo torture prison. National Public Radio commemorated the anniversary by airing critics and defenders of Washington’s violation of US statutory law, the Geneva Conventions, and the US Constitution. Listening to the former government officials justify their crimes, I realized that I was listening to those who had set the table and served…
Read more »The Next War on Washington’s Agenda
Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “Active war preparations directed against Iran (with the involvement of Israel and NATO) were initiated in May 2003.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28542 Washington has deployed missiles directed at Iran in its oil emirate puppet states, Oman and the UAE, and little doubt in…
Read more »December Payroll Jobs Report
The following report is based on the work of statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com. Today’s (Friday, January 6) payroll jobs report of 200,000 new jobs in December is overstated by at least 82,000 jobs. As approximately 130,000 new jobs are needed each month to stay even with population growth, the December job figures actually indicate that the US economy fell…
Read more »The Dismal Economic Outlook For The New Year
Jobs offshoring, financial deregulation, and ten years of wars have severely damaged the US economy and the economic prospects of 90% of the American population. The signs are everywhere in front of our eyes. They are in the income distribution data, the BLS jobs data, the Census data, the poverty figures, and the high number of food stamp recipients. The…
Read more »The Outlook for the New Year
In March 2010 when I resigned from my column with Creator’s Syndicate and put down my pen, I received so many protests from readers that two months later I began writing again. This renewed activity has resulted in this new year in a website of my own. My columns will first appear on my site. Sites on which readers are…
Read more »The Greatest Gift For All
Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became…
Read more »The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples
During an interview with RT on December 1, I said that the US Constitution had been shredded by the failure of the US Senate to protect American citizens from the detainee amendment sponsored by Republican John McCain and Democrat Carl Levin to the Defense Authorization Bill. The amendment permits indefinite detention of US citizens by the US military. I also…
Read more »Bankers have seized Europe – Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over
On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the…
Read more »The Roads To War And Economic Collapse
November 23, 2011: The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President’s statement about his country’s response to Washington’s missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction. As the presstitute media will not inform us…
Read more »Americans: Awash In Spin
I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans. Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are…
Read more »The Latest Orchestrated Threat and The End of History
Have you ever before heard of the Haqqanis? I didn’t think so. Like Al Qaeda, about which no one had ever heard prior to 9/11, the “Haqqani Network” has popped up in time of need to justify America’s next war—Pakistan. President Obama’s claim that he had Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden exterminated deflated the threat from that long-serving…
Read more »Totally Corrupt America
Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. http://www.vdare.com/print/13156 Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. I would not be surprised if Taibbi’s book motivated the…
Read more »Stuck Pigs (and Presstitutes) Squeal
As an economist I have never had much patience with Paul Krugman’s economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan that to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects. However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience. He…
Read more »The Suicide of Liberty
Pat Buchanan’s latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, raises the question whether America will survive to 2025. The question might strike some readers as unduly pessimistic and others as optimistic. It is unclear whether the US, as we have known it, will survive its next presidential election. Consider the candidates. Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, who was likely to have…
Read more »9/11 Truth Critics: Do They Have A Case?
The short answer to the question in the title is no. The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments. Let’s examine the case against the truthers presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn. But first let’s define who the truthers are. The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to…
Read more »Does 9/11 Truth Have A Chance?
In the US on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with “A Day of Remembrance,” a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm. During the…
Read more »The Day America Died
September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated. Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from “patriots” who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to…
Read more »Labor's Demise As A Countervailing Power
It is Labor Day weekend, 2011, but labor has nothing to celebrate. The jobs that once gave American workers a stake in capitalism have left and gone away. Corporations in pursuit of near-term profits have moved labor’s jobs to China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe. Labor arbitrage, that is, the substitution of foreign labor that is paid…
Read more »The Last Whistleblower
Bob and Darin were on a panel together discussing banalities in generalities, as is the usual case. If either had said anything meaningful on the subject, the moderator would have cut him off. Bob didn’t know Darin. He was introduced as a former CIA official. Bob had heard back in those days when he was on the Congressional Budget Committee…
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