Archive
Charlie Hebdo: Report from Europe
The culpability of the Western media in lies, death, and destruction is extreme
Source: Paul Craig Roberts |
Note: The second video in the URL below has been taken down, but it is the first video which is just prior to the second one, that has the most visual information.
Here is a video of the execution of Amedy Coulibaly. It is a German website with the actual live French video of the police assault on the deli. There are three videos. The first one repeatedly shows Coulibaly with tied hands containing no weapons shot down and killed when he could easily have been captured. It is as if the order was to make sure that there is no live suspect whose story might have to be explained away. The first video also repeatedly shows the execution in slow motion. Commentary in French accompanies the video.
In response to my Charlie Hebdo update, European readers report that the situation in Europe is much the same as in the US and UK. The “mainstream” print and TV media parrot the official line and raise no unsettling questions. The independent Internet media is where real information is reported.
The German print and TV media have suffered dramatic declines in readers and viewers. This decline accelerated when Udo Ulkotte’s book about CIA penetration of European media was published by Kopp Verlag and became a best seller. Thinking people no longer trust the German media. The German media has lost the intelligent part of the population and only retains the somnolent sheep.
There are efforts to infiltrate the Internet media. Sites funded by money, such as Salon, appear. These sites attempt to discredit all who raise honest and obvious questions. Readers report that the Huffington Post has lost credibility by its move into “respectability.” Salon, apparently, has no more credibility than Fox News or The Weekly Standard.
The view I get from Europe supports my view. The left-wing, or what little remains of a left, supports the official stories of terrorist attacks, For the American left, the stories confirm the left-wing’s emotional need to believe that peoples oppressed by Western colonialism/imperialism are capable and determined and strike back at their oppressors. The left-wing’s sense of justice demands that oppressed and abused peoples don’t just sit there and take it. The French left sees the Charlie Hebdo attack as an effort by obscurantist religion to attack freedom of expression and brings to mind the French left’s anti-Catholic crusade.
The right-wing accepts the official stories for two different reasons. The anti-immigrationists among them use the terror attacks as evidence against immigration. The patriotic right can go along with this, but also responds to writers such as myself, who defend the Constitution against the government, with the argument that it is the government’s job to interpret the Constitution and I should not use the Constitution in order to criticize our government. Much of the American right believes that liberals use the Constitution in order to defend criminals and terrorists, who simply should not be tolerated. In other words, the Constitution is seen not as our defender but as a defender of those the right-wing regards as undesirables, such as criminals, terrorists, abortionists, and homosexuals.
The rest of the population has simply succumbed to the many years of demonization of Muslims. Indeed, Israel has been demonizing Muslims for 60 years and has created the image of Muslims as terrorists wearing suicide bombs. If a person has been prepared to regard Muslims as terrorists, the official stories simply fit that already prepared compartment in the brain.
Additionally, although false flag attacks are commonplace and have been used throughout history to advance undeclared agendas, the public has been brainwashed to regard them as “conspiracy theories.” Thus, anyone who raises questions is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.” Many Americans do not even understand that the official story of 9/11, for example, is a conspiracy theory. So is the official explanation of the Boston Marathon Bombing and the Charlie Hebdo attack. What it boils down to is that official conspiracy theories are accepted as true, but everyone who questions them is a “conspiracy theorist.”
Readers point out that as stupid as governments are, populations are even more stupid and that governments succeed in brainwashing populations. Many conclude that in the absence of an adversarial media, democracy is a sham as the people have no inclination or means of confronting the government.
The hope appears to be that the mainstream media will continue to diminish and will be replaced by the independent Internet media, thus releasing populations from their brainwashed state. Others think that this hope will come to naught as governments will assert control over the Internet and that governments will make dissent the equivalent of terrorism.
Those who try to suppress dissent might be simply defending a personal bias or they might be agents of a cover-up. Regardless, it comes to the same thing in the end. People who raise dissenting points and honest questions are ridiculed or demonized in efforts to silence or marginalize them. Whether or not truth can actually prevail, it doesn’t usually prevail in time. For example, “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction” prevailed over truth. After Iraq is destroyed we learn that the basis for the US invasion of Iraq rested firmly on an orchestrated lie.
The culpability of the Western media in lies, death, and destruction is extreme. Consider the Malaysian airliner that went down in Ukraine. The US, UK, EU, and the puppet government in Kiev blamed Russia and forces of the breakaway eastern province for shooting down the civilian airliner. An investigation was convened. It has been six months since the investigation was completed, and the results have not been released.
Clearly, if the investigation supported the Western propaganda, the results would have been released. We can safely conclude that the investigation does not support the West’s propaganda. There has not been one word from the Western media demanding the results of the investigation. The world has forgotten it, but the world remembers the loudly shouted propaganda, and the conclusion, unsupported by any evidence, is that Russia is guilty.
The Western media works the same way when it reports Charlie Hebdo.
Insider Reveals Collapse Timeline
When will an economic collapse happen?
Alex Jones talks with Reagan insider and economic expert Paul Craig Roberts about the coming collapse and when he thinks it will happen.
Alex Jones also talks with financial expert Harry Dent about the coming economic collapse and what he thinks may cause it.
Magic Growth Numbers From The Government
Everyone wants good news, so the government makes it up
Source: Paul Craig Roberts |
Everyone wants good news, so the government makes it up. The latest fiction is that US real GDP grew 4.6% in the second quarter and 5% in the third.
Where did this growth come from?
Not from rising real consumer incomes.
Not from rising consumer credit.
Not from rising real retail sales.
Not from the housing sector.
Not from a trade surplus.
The growth came from a Bureau of Economic Analysis survey of consumer spending on services. The BEA found that spending on Obamacare drove the US real GDP growth to 5% in the third quarter. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-23/here-reason-surge-q3-gdp
In America, unlike in other countries, a huge chunk of medical spending goes to insurance company profits, not to health care. Another big chunk goes to paperwork, which has a variety of purposes such as collecting personal information on patients and combating fraud (probably the paperwork costs more than fraud). Another chunk goes for tests and procedures in order to justify further procedures. For example, if a doctor thinks a patient’s diagnosis requires a MRI, he must often first order an x-ray to establish that a cheaper procedure does not suffice. If a cancerous skin growth needs to come off, first a biopsy must be done to establish that it is a cancer so that a needless removal is not performed. And, of course, medical practicians must order unnecessary tests in order to protect themselves from the liability of relying on their medical judgment.
To regard any of these expenses as economic growth is farfetched.
There are sampling and other problems with the survey of personal consumption, and apparently Obamacare spending was all dumped into the third quarter. Why the third quarter?
The answer is that the illusion of economic recovery must be kept alive.
Real GDP growth of 5% in the third quarter is inconsistent with the sharp fall in key industrial commodity prices. It is not only oil (down 47%) but iron ore prices (down 49%), natural gas (down 30%), copper (down 15%). Pam and Russ Martens show that the fall in the producer price index for industrial commodities in 2014 is sharper than in 2008, the year of the crash.http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/12/oil-crash-dont-believe-the-happy-clatter/
With 30% of 30-year old Americans and almost 50% of 25-year olds living with parents, with debt-based derivative instruments impacted by falling oil and industrial commodity prices, with the likelihood that the US and EU economic attack on Russia will fail and perhaps produce retaliatory measures that could bring down the European banking system, look for 2015 to be the year that Washington will cease to get away with its economic lies.
The financial media and Wall Street economists by refusing to ask obvious questions have left the American people unprepared for another drop in their living standards and ability to cope.
We Are Above the Law Declares County Attorney
It would be illegal for the county to pay the baby’s medical bills
Source: Paul Craig Roberts |
Habersham County, Georgia, the jurisdiction that allowed intentionally or through negligence a SWAT team to break into a home with violent force in the middle of the night and throw a stun grenade into a baby’s face sending him to a hospital for weeks where he was in life support, has ruled that it would be illegal for the county to pay the baby’s medical bills. http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/lawyer-county-refuses-pay-medical-bills-toddler-hu/ng3s9/
The negligence of the police, and thereby the county, is a triple dose. It was the wrong house. A SWAT team was unnecessary in order to exercise a search warrant for a drug suspect. There was no excuse for throwing a stun grenade into a baby’s crib.
But the county attorney has ruled that the county is not liable for these massive incidences of unbridled negligence.
However, the unjustifiable SWAT team assault on the family in the home was legal.
As the saying goes, “a fish rots from the head.” The rot in government accountability that began in Washington has now reached the local level.
Washington Caught Again In A Lie
Source: Paul Craig Roberts
In case you didn’t hear from the presstitute media, Syrian president Assad was just re-elected with 88.7% of the vote. Assad is the “brutal dictator” that Obama claims the Syrian people are trying to overthrow. The vote clearly puts the lie, yet again, to Washington.
Voting was not possible in some parts of Syria where the Washington-backed Islamist jihadists hold sway. Nevertheless, the vote clearly shows that it is Washington and not the Syrian people who want to overthrow Assad.
Washington and its British vassal had no choice but to allege, without any proof whatsoever as always, that the election was unfair and unfree.
When Washington puts out massive propaganda about how everyone in Syria wants to overthrow “a dictator” and then the people re-elect “the dictator” by 88.7% of the vote, Washington’s propaganda is exposed.
A Caesar In Our Future?
Source: Paul Craig Roberts
In a speech to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, November 23, 2010, Peter Dale Scott gave a history of the various directives concerned with government continuity during a state of emergency. He showed that these directives could be used to supersede the Constitution.http://www.globalresearch.ca/continuity-of-government-is-the-state-of-emergency-superseding-our-constitution/22089
Image: Barack Obama as Caesar.
The ease with which both the Bush and Obama regimes were able to set aside the due process protections of the Constitution that prohibit indefinite detention and execution without conviction in a trial indicate that Professor Scott’s concern is justified that these directives could result in executive branch rule.
Scott describes how the executive branch efforts to provide government continuity in the aftermath of a nuclear attack dating from the Eisenhower administration were gradually converted into executive or national security (later Homeland Security) orders that confer secret powers to the White House for any event that the executive branch considers to be an emergency.
Generally these various executive orders and directives refer to “national emergencies,” or “national disasters.” However, President Bush’s National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 issued on May 9, 2007 use the term “Catastrophic Emergency.” http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
The directives speak of “enduring constitutional government” which the president maintains by coordinating “as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches,” but it is up to the president and his advisor, the National Continuity Coordinator, to decide what constitutes constitutional government during a catastrophic emergency.
What comprises a catastrophic emergency? It is reasonable for a president to regard a government shutdown, which can threaten everything from national security to default and economic collapse, as a catastrophic emergency, and to take such steps as are necessary to prevent it, such as raising the debt ceiling, on his own authority.
The Federal Reserve also has the power to prevent a government shutdown. If banks are too big to fail, so is the federal government. If the Federal Reserve on its own authority can issue more than $16 trillion in loans to US and European banks in order to prevent their failure, the Federal Reserve can issue a loan to the US government.
I don’t expect either of these two possibilities to come into play. A shutdown and default of US debt obligations would terminate the US as a superpower and dethrone the dollar as world reserve currency. Neither Congress nor President Obama desire such an outcome. Also, Congress would not want a presidential directive to be implemented that subordinates their position and possibly eliminates their meaningful participation in governance. Therefore, I expect a resolution of the current standoff prior to the Treasury running out of money.
I did interviews on this subject with King World News and with Greg Hunter. The interviews are played to the sensational side, but I do not expect it to go that far. However, it could.
My interview with King World News is relatively short, but Eric King knows how to bring it to the most controversial point. What everyone should wonder is, “How did we, a free people protected by the US Constitution, become one step away from rule by Caesar?
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/10/8_Former_US_Treasury_Official_-_President_To_Seize_Total_Power.html
My interview with Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog is, in my opinion, one of my best. The interview covers a broad range of issues or possibilities and makes it unnecessary for me to write a column about the government shutdown and its implications and possible consequences. http://usawatchdog.com/paul-craig-roberts-obama-could-govern-as-a-dictator/
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
Why Are Obama and Kerry So Desperate to Start a New War?
The rule of zombies
Source: Paul Craig Roberts
What is the real agenda?
Why is the Obama Regime so desperate to commit a war crime despite the warnings delivered to the White House Fool two days ago by the most important countries in the world at the G20 Summit?
What powerful interest is pushing the White House Fool to act outside of law, outside the will of the American people, outside the warnings of the world community?
The Obama Regime has admitted, as UK prime minister david cameron had to admit, that no one has any conclusive evidence that the Assad government in Syria used chemical weapons. Nevertheless, Obama has sent the despicable john Kerry out to convince the public and Congress on the basis of videos that Assad used chemical weapons “against his own people.”
What the videos show are dead and suffering people. The videos do not show who did it. The Obama Regime’s case is nonexistent. It rests on nothing that indicates responsibility. The Obama Regime’s case is nothing but an unsubstantiated allegation.
What kind of depraved person would take the world to war based on nothing whatsoever but an unsubstantiated allegation?
The world’s two worse liars, Obama and Kerry, say Assad did it, but they admit that they cannot prove it. It is what they want to believe, because they want it to be true. The lie serves their undeclared agenda.
If Obama and Kerry were to tell the public the real reasons they want to attack Syria, they would be removed from office.
The entire world is teetering on a war, the consequences of which are unknown, for no other reason than two people, devoid of all integrity who lack the intelligence and humanity to be in high office, are determined to serve a tiny collection of warmongers consisting of the crazed, murderous Israeli government and their Muslim-hating neoconservative agents, who comprise a fifth column inside the Obama Regime.
The Russian government has given evidence to the UN that conclusively proves that the al-Nusra, al-Qaeda affiliated invaders are responsible for the attack. There is also conclusive proof that the “rebels” have chemical weapons. In addition, a highly regarded journalist has reported, using direct quotes and the names of al-Nusra fighters, that the chemical weapons were given to al-Nusra by Saudi Arabia without proper handling instructions, and that an accidental explosion occurred before al-Nusra could use the Saudi-supplied weapons to frame-up the Assad government.
However the deaths were caused, they are unfortunate, but no more so that the deaths that Obama has caused in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. The proven deaths for which Obama is responsible are many times the unproven deaths that Obama attributes without evidence to Assad.
The indisputable fact is that Syrian deaths occur only because Washington initiated the invasion of Syria by external forces similar to the ones that Washington used against Libya. However the deaths occurred, the deaths are the doings of the criminal Obama Regime. Without the criminal Obama Regime seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government, there would be no deaths by chemical weapons or by any other means. This was a war initiated by Washington, Israel, Israel’s neoconservative fifth column inside America and the White House, and the captive western media that is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby.
Assad did not start the war. The Syrian government was attacked by outside forces sent in by Washington and Israel.
Assad has much higher public support in Syria than Obama has in the US, or cameron has in the UK, or hollande has in France, or merkel has in Germany, or netanyahu has in Israel.
The White House Fool keeps repeating his nonsensical statement, as if the Fool is a wound-up talking doll, that Assad’s unproven “use of chemical weapons is a threat to global security.”
Dear reader, who besides the White House Fool is so unbelievably stupid as to believe that Syria is a threat to world security?
If Syria is a “threat to world security,” like Iraq was a “threat to world security,” like Iran is alleged to be a “threat to world security,” what kind of superpower is the United States? How low does the IQ have to be, how mentally impaired does the public have to be to fall for these absurd hysterical allegations?
Let’s turn Obama’s claim upon the Fool. Why isn’t it a threat to global security for Obama to attack Syria? There is no authority for Obama to attack Syria just because he wants to and just because he has demonized Assad with endless lies and just because Obama is the total puppet of the crazed Israeli government and his neoconservative national security advisor, in effect an Israeli agent, and just because the Ministry of Propaganda, including NPR, repeats every Obama lie as if it were the truth.
Isn’t it a threat to international security when a superpower can, acting on a whim, demonize a leader and a country and unleash mass destruction, as the US has done seven times in the past twelve years,? There are millions of innocent but demonized victims of the “indispensable, exceptional USA,” the “light unto the world.”
Forget about the US media, which is nothing but a propaganda ministry for the Israel Lobby. What the members of Congress and what the American people need to ask Obama is why does the White House only represent the Israel Lobby?
No one supports an attack on Syria but the Israel Lobby.
Why is Obama going to add yet another war crime to Washington’s 12-year record? Wasn’t it enough to destroy the lives and prospects of millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Egypt? Why kill and destroy the life prospects of yet more millions of people in Syria and other countries into which Obama’s war could spread?
Maybe the answer is that Obama, Kerry, and the crazed Netanyahu and his neoconservative fifth column are zombies.
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